A Life in Six Songs
A Life in Six Songs is a music-interview podcast focused on those particular songs that have a strong connection in each of our lives. These are not necessarily your favorite songs, but rather those times music was seared into your memory attached with what you were going through at the time.
Check out all the info at ALifeinSixSongs.com
So many of the discussions around music are about who the better band is or why a certain genre is not as good as another. Those discussions miss what is so fundamental about our interaction with and enjoyment of music. Here, we lead with Love, Kindness, and Curiosity, to counter the Hate, Anger, and Judgment in the world (and there is a lot of it!) We are a judgment-free zone where we do not critique our taste in music, but are focused on understanding the unique role music has played in each guest’s life.
"Don't ask me how I survived. Ask me what song I played on repeat when I thought my whole world was over."
Listen to the songs from the show! Check out the Life in Six Songs Playlist on:
Apple:
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/a-life-in-six-songs-podcast-playlist/pl.u-kv9lq9mFNvoRK
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4EmPAPejwNo6WwCKDeVmwU?si=a7b1957c464844f8
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Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit or educational use tips the balance in favor of fair use. The original work played in this video has been significantly transformed for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and education.
A Life in Six Songs
Ep. 14 - George Guerrero: Our Music Tells Our Story
On this episode, we sit down with George Guerrero, a life-long New Yorker, now living on the left coast in San Francisco. George takes us back to his earliest music memories, painting vivid scenes of late-night drives with Dad in NYC to pick up Mom from her night shift at the hospital with the soulful tunes of Lou Rawls playing on the eight track player. We discuss the evolution of music technology in cars, exploring how it shapes personal and cultural identities, and reflect on the paradox of choice in today's digital age.
In candid authenticity, George walks us through the moments of 9/11 as seen through someone in Manhattan on that day and opens up about the emotional solace he found in music during those tragic events, offering a poignant recount of how Des'ree's "Kissing You" became the guide that helped him create a video tribute to the make-shift memorial set-up just uptown from Ground Zero. In the closing chapters, we explore the transformative power of music in various aspects of life, from getting comfortable in the kitchen to recovery from physical injuries.
George shares compelling personal stories, like how Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" became a motivational anthem during his recovery from a serious ankle injury, and how, as a lifelong Yankees fan, Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” is seared into his memory. We close with the impact of family trips, the magic of Disney experiences, and George’s quest to create a more equitable financial system. This episode is a warm celebration of music's profound impact on our lives, filled with love, nostalgia, and the enduring power of melodies to bring us together.
Connect w/ George on his Instagram and website.
Check out Just Futures where George and his team are working to bring about a financial system that creates value for people, communities, and planet—not just a privileged few.
Follow your hosts David, Raza, and Carolina every other week as they embark on an epic adventure to find the songs that are stuck to us like audible tattoos that tell the story of who we are and where we’ve been, to help us figure out where we’re going. It’s a life story told through 6 songs.
RESOURCES & LINKS
- Are you a veteran who is struggling? Call the Veterans Crisis Line: Dial 988, then press 1.
- Liked songs from this life story? Check out A Life in Six Songs playlist on Apple Music and Spotify
- Follow A Life in Six Songs on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube
- Find out more at www.alifeinsixsongs.com
Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit or educational use tips the balance in favor of fair use. The original work played in this video has been significantly transformed for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and education.
You always got to find like when you think about it now Poor. Liza. What did she do? Who are we going to?
Speaker 3:play when we lose Liza. Who thought of this idea?
Speaker 1:Right. So, like you know, the last out in the ninth inning, bottom of the ninth, and they lose Liza the speaker. So sad.
Speaker 2:But if it's a win, it's.
Speaker 1:Frank, that didn't last very long. I don't know exactly, yeah, but some people.
Speaker 3:some people contacted some other people and we're like got back to Liza. Yeah, what the hell are you?
Speaker 2:doing here.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I'm a For those of you new to the podcast, on each episode we embark on an epic adventure with our guests to find the songs that are stuck to us like audible tattoos, that tell the story of who we are and where we've been, to help us figure out where we're going. It's a life story told through six songs. We come to these conversations with love, kindness and curiosity to counter the prevalence of hate, anger and judgment we see in the world. Our guiding view, with a nod to Ted Lasso, is be curious, not judgmental. Our goal is that by listening to these stories, you can bring more love, kindness and curiosity into your own life. With that, let's go have a listen together.
Speaker 3:Our guest today is Jorge Guerrero. Jorge is a first-generation American middle child between two sisters, born and raised in New York but now living on the left coast in San Francisco with his wife, janine, and two dogs, duncan and Donut. During the day, he leads a group of dedicated individuals looking to foment change by crafting a financial system that creates value for people, communities and planet, not just a privileged few. Jorge describes himself as a poet who loves math and someone who views his glass as almost always half full. Jorge, welcome to A Life in Six Songs.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3:Oh, we're glad you're here. Thanks for taking the time. We're excited to get into your six songs and six stories Before we do that, just to kind of get us warmed up, get us going. You know what is it about music and the role it plays in your life that made you want to say yes, to be a guest on this show. You know how do you view music functioning in your life?
Speaker 1:So you know, music is a voice for the soul. All throughout life you engage with music in different ways and I promised probably for the podcast. It marks moments in your life. I've even separate. Before I heard about your podcast, I had this concept that started with my sister soundtrack of your life right Along, this idea that all throughout your life different songs, different memories related to music.
Speaker 1:You know, mark the moment it came up in a conversation um, my father loved to play piano, but there's one song he would play over and over and over again, which was, uh, pure lease. Um, which moment of trivia was actually should be named uh, pure turris? We won't get into it, but google it, you'll find out. Pure Turise we won't get into it, but Google it, you'll find out that it's as a result that Beethoven had really crappy handwriting and it was misread as Pure Elise, when in truth it was meant to be dedicated to a woman whose name was Therese.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness. So, Therese is walking around going. Hey, who's?
Speaker 4:this Elise person.
Speaker 1:Pausing all kinds of drama. Isn't that wild, I mean. So it's just like in my mind, it's like the most known piano melody Everybody in the moment knows it. But in truth it's supposed to be pure Therese.
Speaker 2:It's hilarious fear to reason so music here's.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's an example, right, you know, beethoven dedicated a song to a woman he had a crush on. Apparently, therese was just like lost. I don't really want to have anything to do with you and, um, you know, after he passed away, someone came across. The music written in scribble was actually fear therese. And whoever did? The transcription was like okay, yeah, pure release, and that's was recorded in history, um, but yeah, throughout history, right, music has an indelible mark on um, people's lives, and this podcast is an example of that oh, that's great.
Speaker 3:yeah, thank you for sharing it. Thank you for the trivia. We definitely love learning music trivia, especially going back in history like that. That's awesome. So well, yeah, well, let's get into your story and your six. So we're going to kick it over to Carolina, who's going to kick us off with our first question and song.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we'll start at the very beginning. Jorge, what is your earliest music memory?
Speaker 1:The song that immediately came to mind and I almost like I can't say the title of the song without, like, intonating it the way that, in the silky voice that he has, lou Rawls, you'll never find. You'll never find another love like mine.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 3:Let's take a listen. Oh, good stuff.
Speaker 4:It is. His voice is like super silky.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:Totally. Where does this take you back? What's the memory attached to the song?
Speaker 1:My parents had an eight track tape player, one in the car and one in the living room. And you know, you're a kid, you're growing up, you have no idea what, what this is, but you have this like cartridge and, um, you know, you put the cartridge into the thing and and it starts playing music and you're like, wow, this is really neat. You have a record player too, which is obviously, you know, different mechanism. But to have this cartridge, you stick it in you, you press the button and music comes out. It was like magic, and this was one of two cartridges that immediately come to memory that I have. The other one was the Captain and Tennille, but this is one that I would actually stick in there and play.
Speaker 1:And I just have this and I, I, I I Googled it after I, you know, after I you know, answered the question just because I remembered, like I remember like a really nice suit and like Lou Rawls is looking like he's like so smooth and as soon as I saw the picture, I'm like that's it.
Speaker 1:That's what I remember. So my, my mom, she, she was a nurse, she, at the Columbia Presbyterian hospital, which is in the Northern part of Manhattan, which is where we originally settled in when the when they immigrated in Washington Heights, and she worked a night shift, and so we would go pick her up, like around midnight, like me and my older sister, um, pile into the station wagon and you know, we would drive down to pick her up and my dad would always play Lou Rawls. The whole 8-track would just cycle over. This is the song that brings me back to those moments. This song Wise Barbecue Potato Chips which we would get at the golf station. We would eat the snacks in the back of the station wagon in our pajamas, um, you know, each night, uh, you know, driving up, driving to pick up my mom from work, um, but, like again, it's just like that silky sound you'll never find it's, it's, it's, uh, it's that first soundtrack of my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I think the song also has like it's not just his voice, but it's got this like I don't know, like evening jazz club piano to it, you know, and so like I'm envisioning like you driving in the middle of the night through like parts of Manhattan with the lights and this piano and this voice, but you're like tiny, in the back of the station wagon in your potato chips, and so it's just a really sweet story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, it's memories, it's indelible. And you know, I can just I can picture it you know giggling in the back middle of the night, all to the tunes of lou ross nice, did you?
Speaker 3:I mean you, you sort of answered, I think, with what you were just saying, giggling in the back and things. It sounded. Sounds like even at the time, in the moment you were enjoying the moment, like it's not something. In the moment you're like, oh, why do we have to go get mom and I'm tired, or whatever. Like in the moment you were, you were jazzed about it, did it feel a little bit like that.
Speaker 3:Did it feel like, because you were out late at night, did it feel a little bit almost like we're getting to stay up late, or something like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's just part of the routine. But later in life you reflect and you recognize like okay, so that's really tough, like my dad worked during the day and my mom worked at night, right to just have coverage, and that's what's happening, right, like that's real life. But to me and my sister, like we don't, we didn't really sort of see that right, you sort of see, see, you just kind of grow up. This is part of the rhythm of life.
Speaker 1:You're not understanding that sacrifice that's going on like that was a couple of them who spend as much time with each other having non-overlapping things and so like she would get home, be really tired, sleep through. You know this is like midnight, so my dad's going to get up early to go to work, so he's not sleeping all that much before he has to leave for work the next day.
Speaker 1:And it's like these little small things that you realize later on in life, the little sacrifices that your parents make, the little adjustments that, um, that you do as parents to try to make life for your kids as sort of seamless as possible. And you know, I tell you know, now that I'm reflecting on I don't know if necessarily all of that was conscious on the part of my dad, but try to make it as sort of stress-free for us as possible.
Speaker 1:But like we would go in the back, there would be pillows, we'd have our teddy bears and you know we'd just be like, just go to sleep and, um, more often than not we fall asleep back there and we get carried back to bed and we wake up in our bed. We have no idea what the hell happened. Um, and, and that's just the rhythm of of childhood. You know, up until you know. Eventually, my mom stopped working nights, but, but again, like you don't, you don't realize that it was just because we were small and somebody needed to be home during. You know different parts of the day. That's why it was done.
Speaker 5:And the fact that you guys didn't recognize that as kids, you know it was just a part of your life. At that point it sounds like the parents did a pretty good job, right.
Speaker 1:Mom if you're listening you did a fantastic job. No, no, I'm kidding, but like, yeah, it's, you know. And the other thing is like it's different now the way people you know maybe it's more common now to two income households and how kids grow up differently. My, my wife, um, she was fortunate enough, her, her mom was home for much of their childhood and, um, you know, she distinctly can talk, speak to when her mom, you know, went back to work and how different it was. And I think I don't know this for the stats bear itself out I imagine it does that you know two incomes are necessary in these United States of America to make ends meet of America to make ends meet, and the pressures that are involved there are probably even more so than they might have been back in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up, but certainly as an immigrant family, the struggle was real and they came to the US really for this reason right, for the opportunities that were presented and the chance that for their kids really to have a different life.
Speaker 3:And where did they come from? The Philippines, I love you know, on the show we've had a number of people talking about songs that they were listening to or came across, or the story is based around playing it in the car Right and it seems like, you know, I mean it's even like almost a cliche right, like I'm going to go, I need to clear my head or I'm feeling sad. I'm gonna go drive and put on some music, right, it's kind of this. There seems to be something very connected about music and the car right and being in there, and I remember in high school like I had the stereo and the subwoofer box and that you know, like you just want to feel the music and like drive in the car and do it, and people talked about, you know, driving with their parents and their dad would play this song, exactly like you're saying. It seems like a very common theme that that's there.
Speaker 3:Think about of that, that that power of the time, of kind of what we play in the car. Going back to the thing of parents and what parents do and how, like it's not about creating a perfect childhood, it's about just having those moments right and those those moments you have driving your kids around in the car. As a parent, that gets tough. Right, you're driving kids around a lot, but it's kind of this great opportunity for this moment of connection. And it's so cool how you described it of your dad.
Speaker 3:It wasn't even just like accidental that this was happening. It was intentional on his part, like all right, you know we got to wake the kids up to do this, to pick up mom, but we're going to create the kind of best environment we can and it worked, like Raza said. You said, you know, hey, good job, like because it worked, because here we are down the road and you're, you're telling the story. So, um, just really cool that that connection of music and and cars and driving yeah, I mean it's like a private sound stage in that way totally yeah, whatever you want to play, you you can even sing along, right?
Speaker 1:How many people have, uh, got caught um belting out their favorite tune? Look over to the left and oops, there you go, yeah.
Speaker 3:Everyone always talked. This phrase is always like oh, sing it in the shower, and I feel like that it really is singing in the car. That's where I think. If anyone's going to sing and they're not going to sing anywhere else the car is probably the first place for that reason, yeah.
Speaker 5:For those of us who are from the sort of immigrant background, you know we always associated America with cars and the American love of love affair with cars. That's a thing, that that's totally a thing. And you know, from the 40s, 50s, 60s, all those iconic vehicles like the Chevys, the Cadillacs, and then when they installed, you know, like the eight track player in the car, I mean that's a, that's a part of our sort of upbringing and family life, especially in the seventies and eighties. So yeah, that's yeah. As far as connectivity and being connected and connected by a music into a vehicle, that that's definitely a thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't even I didn't even think of that. Right, like you had the AM radio first. I don't know when, exactly when, when FM, you know, came online but like a track was the first Right Like play an album in the car. It was an eight track, yeah.
Speaker 4:And they weren't afterwards Right. They weren't afterwards right, but they weren't like small right they were. I've actually haven't seen any track like tapes were the thing now when I was like they were kind of chunky right yeah, a little bit, a little bit smaller than like a vhs, but the same thickness kind of.
Speaker 4:That's not like, that's not like small, you know think about like how quickly we then got to like cds, where you would have like a whole booklet of like tons of cds. If you had a ton of eight tracks it would like pick up like a considerable amount of space in the car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean it evolved to those carousels, right? Then you would put like all your music in the car. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:The, the, the 12 discs or six disc CD changer in the trunk.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly which ones am I going to put in there, right?
Speaker 3:and, and that that's the perfect example of how much music and cars are are tied together. Like, just think of, like all we just said, all of the technology around music playing. Um, that was specifically focused around cars, right, and and being able to play the music in your car. Um, I know we had um before. Kind of CD players were really popular, for in dash we had the thing where you had like the disc man that had the cassette that you'd put in the cassette player and you would play the CD from there. And then you know it had a little Mount that was like had little Springs on it so it wouldn't skip, and like had little springs on it so it wouldn't skip. And you know, as you were driving and things like that, right, all of this technology bound just around playing, you know, music in in your car yeah, with commute times and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Right like, what percent of your life is in your car on your private soundstage. Right now, you have every song in you can imagine history at your fingertips. What are you going to listen to? You have to listen to the same stuff right, right, that's true, super sure or or.
Speaker 3:There's also that thing I think of. You know the problem of too much choice, right there's oh yeah, the paradox of choice. Right, we think we want some, but too much choice can be bad, right? So when you only can carry, you know, a couple, eight tracks with you, you're like, hey, it's Lou Rawls, that's what we're playing, because that's all there is right, and so yeah, you don't have to think about it.
Speaker 3:You're like, what should we listen to otherwise? The other funny thing about the car too, like we're saying, of, like with Raza, what you brought up and Jorge, what you were saying like in one sense, the car is that private place where you can blast it as loud as you want and you don't have to worry about your sister or whatever in the next room or your parents getting upset. You're kind of, you know, private in there. But it also like going back to what Rod said about kind of car culture and things.
Speaker 3:Right, like we drive our cars in ways, a lot of ways, to be seen right, it's kind of we pick the car, we pick the color, even if you're not a car person. Right, you choose what kind of color feels like you. And that's also true of music, right, because sometimes, yeah, you crank it up and you have the windows closed because you want to private, but then sometimes you roll those windows down and crank it up to let everybody know this is my jam, this is who I am and things. So it's interesting how it's like both, right, the privacy of it, but also like the show of it. Right, here's who I, here's who I am.
Speaker 1:It's an announcement of a definition of who you're, what you're feeling like and in that moment, who you are, as a person, maybe a little bit of a contrast here. East Coast, west Coast. I won't do that thing, but like there's there's a car culture here on the West Coast.
Speaker 1:Sure Very definitive one, and playing music really loud with your windows down is a big part of that. Um, all the time in san francisco, um what you have playing, no matter what time of day. Yeah, it's a message of who I am, what I stand for yeah um my background, how I might be feeling. You know all the things um it's, uh, it's youth culture. It transcendsends ages, even I would say.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4:I kind of love that that's still around. I hope that doesn't go away, you know anytime soon.
Speaker 1:You can't imagine it right Like it's again music is eternal.
Speaker 4:I will move us on to our next question.
Speaker 4:Again, we're talking about cars and music for a whole two hours. So this was a good memory for you, like a good time when you were little, that first earliest memory of listening to Lou Rawls in the car, despite your family kind of juggling difficulties of a dual income, double parent working household. So you grow up a little bit and and life isn't always like easy and fun and carefree in the back of the station wagon. So when you hit a difficult time, right what's a song that helped you through a difficult time or situation?
Speaker 1:So the song that came to mind for this one was easy. It's. It's part of a playlist that's called the melancholic bottom, which is a lot. You know a lot of the collection is love songs and such, but in this case it carries a little extra meaning. It's I'm Kissing you by Desiree, the instrumental. It's a song on the soundtrack of Romeo and Juliet. The instrumental of this is titled Kissing you, so they got rid of the I'm and so when I tell the story, it'll, it'll, uh, become apparent all right, let's take a listen so beautiful it is.
Speaker 1:it is, but when you listen to the words, that's beautiful. I've listened to this thousands of times and so I know. When it's not the version that I'm used to, which is actually from the movie, this is the one that is on her album and it's the one that's on all the streaming. It's the one that's most easily available, For whatever reason. The version that's in the song and even when you go to the streaming services they don't have it on there. It'll just be kind of blanked out. You can't play it.
Speaker 1:I don't know why music rights are voodoo for all, for all the reasons, but the one that, um, I've always listened to is from the CD. Um, that is the original from the movie. It's, it's very subtly different. And, uh, it's, it's very subtly different. And, uh, I don't even know if you, uh, if uh anybody who this isn't a favorite song, uh, would recognize right right you hear it immediately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, interesting so the background of the story. So I I've always loved the movie um and you know this is the the love theme from it, and if you're familiar with the movie, there's like this aquarium scene where Romeo and Juliet are like looking at each other through the aquarium and that's when the song is playing. The background of the story actually why I chose this in a difficult time was 9-11. Born and raised in New York on 9-11, living in New York working, and we've all heard the stories of the day from those who were there, who lived there, and everything rings true. The sky was blue, the air was crisp, and for me the memory of the day starts with work. It was a board meeting and I worked at Midtown, so just to kind of set the geography here and I was going to be presenting at the board meeting. So I showed up at work a lot earlier than I normally would, so it was like some point before 8 o'clock because I needed to prep. I wanted to just be ready and get all my thoughts together. So my focus was on that.
Speaker 1:And I get a phone call and it's my younger sister and she says there's a hole in the World Trade Center. And I'm like, what are you talking about? There's a hole in the World Trade Center. I'm looking at the news right now and I'm like what do you mean? There's a hole. It's like a plane just went into the World Trade Center. I'm like what? Like, why would you do that? Like that has to be on purpose. And it's like is it a big plane? A small plane? And it's like you know, I don't know, I can't tell. And I'm like that's just, there's no way. And so I hung up the phone. No, no, went hung up the phone, no, no. Went online CNNcom and there's a picture there. I'm like holy shit.
Speaker 1:And went to the conference room, turned on the TV watching the news coverage and by then helicopters were hovering around. We're all distracted. Meanwhile, our bosses are just like board meeting Focus. I'm just like hello, we're watching.
Speaker 1:While we're watching, we actually saw live the second plane hit and I distinctly remember what happened, because the angle that it came from it was from ABC, channel 7, came around the back and in that instant, where you saw another plane, I'm like it doesn't register. What am I looking at? Is that a helicopter? Like there were other helicopters. I'm like that's not a helicopter. And then boom, and then the plane and my my colleague was with me immediately screamed and ran out of the office and, like you know, I was just kind of frozen. Holy crap, like what's happening. And then everything from that point on, honestly is a bit fuzzy right, like the board meeting was still going to go on and, uh, we still had to focus really, and yeah, so this is the other part, to get ready to give the presentation you only had to present and do this meeting still have to present.
Speaker 1:And so so, like, what are we doing? And like, well, let's just stay focused. You know, the board meeting, george, get ready to present. I'm like shit. But like hi, like what are we doing? Like this is crazy, yeah. So I tried to lose myself into work, but you can't. You're worried, like where are my, my friends? Okay, what's going on? And so you know, you keep keeping track, keep it stayed on. And meanwhile you're wondering, like should we get the hell out of here? This isn't a good place. We're right by Rockefeller Center, which who knows what's going on? Obviously, this is something that is terrorist related.
Speaker 1:The security for the company, for the building, was like, stay in place, the safest thing to do, which actually made sense. And so, you know, we kind of bided our time by working slash, trying to, you know, keep track of what's going on. Um, you know, like, can they get out of there? Like they must be evacuating time, time kind of ticks on. You know, eventually the decision was made let's let people go like go home, figure stuff out, minimal board meeting to continue to present. And so, fortunately, eventually it was just like all right, george, why don't you just go home? You know we'll skip your part, but like it's. It's.
Speaker 1:One of the strange memories for me is is that like how life went on, how capitalism did not stop in the face of 9-11, which we could probably talk about for a long time. But, you know, ultimately, for the broader people at work, figure out how you're going to get home, right? Obviously, this is not a day to stay at work the whole day. The determination, eventually, was to just go home, right, and so so, and we weren't going to use the elevator, so we walked down the stairs, so that was just a precaution to take, made it down to the ground and so where we were Rockefeller Center if you're not familiar with, just understand, between 6th Avenue and 5th Avenue, on 51st Street, and as a New Yorker you know, if you walk to 5th Avenue and look down, you'll see the Trade Center Straight up Right down 5th.
Speaker 1:And for a moment I thought go have a look, just for a moment. And I said no, you don't want to see that. And so I turned and went uptown, towards where I lived on the airport, and I walked home with a colleague who also lived on the airport. We walked home together, went to the park and, walking down 72nd street, uh, there was a bank, chase bank, on the corner of uh columbus and 72nd. And in my mind, like and we talked about, should we get money? Like, like, maybe we should get money, let's get cash.
Speaker 4:You never know what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:So like these like sort of strange thoughts like go to your mind, like how, how do we do this? Like what should we be doing? Like should we be scared? I'm scared, like maybe we should get cash, let's get cash. And um, uh, you know, continued to walk home and again another distinct memory was a manicure place right before Broadway. So in the middle People getting their nails done. Yeah, getting their nails done Middle of 9-11.
Speaker 2:I love New York. All the seats were taken. It never stops Getting manicures. I love New York All the seats were taken.
Speaker 1:It never stops Getting manicured. I'm just like, okay, maybe that's the way you deal with it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those appointments are hard to get. You can't skip it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, no, I mean no judgment, it's like it was just a really odd time. You know people, just sort of a million out.
Speaker 1:Nobody knew what to do, no one knew where to go. Um, you know, there were, you know, jersey, westchester, rockland, refugees just like walking around because, like you couldn't get out of the city. Um, just kind of know, like buses weren't running, trains weren't running, and so people just kind of like were walking around and and so there was, there was a bit of that. Cell phones weren't working Right, so you tried to, like I was trying to call my dad, like where are you, are you? Okay? He worked down by Union Square, which is 14th Street, and you kept trying. I'm just like I'm just gonna go home and I didn't watch TV. I didn't want to watch it, so I didn't watch.
Speaker 1:TV I didn't want to watch it, so I didn't see any of the. I didn't see that the towers go down, didn't watch any of that found out later on, after the fact, when eventually let's see what's going on. Most of my time was spent trying to get a hold of my dad, which I eventually did, and told him to, just you know, come up to our club. So anyway, there are so many aspects of the day that I could go into, but how it relates to the song is this so on the Saturday after that Tuesday, there was a sort of makeshift memorial that was stood up in Union Square in New York. So by that point, 14th Street was established as sort of the line where how far you can go down.
Speaker 1:Prior to that, you were able to go down a little bit further.
Speaker 1:14th Street was the stopping point and so a makeshift memorial was stood up all throughout Union Square and so I went down there and I recently bought a video camera and I kind of wanted to record the moment and anything I captured.
Speaker 1:I mean, like I can't even describe what I saw right. Obviously there was the flyers of the missing all along there, everywhere, and that was all throughout New York, but in particular because that became the de facto place where, as far as people could go, there was a preponderance of it. Everywhere there were candlelight vigils, there's people standing around singing the national anthem, some artists created all sorts of different expressions of grief and placed them throughout the park, and I spent some time shooting the different scenes, just looking to capture it, and at the time I had never edited the different scenes, just looking to capture it, and at the time I had never edited anything before. And this is again 2001. My movie was sort of the first consumer video editing program if you're giggling me, remember it and this was a new version had just been released that allowed you to edit with a different soundtrack.
Speaker 4:Right, so you could right, not just like the stock songs that came on the software like you could add music yourself yeah, yeah, or just not even like the sound that's of the video.
Speaker 1:You can actually take a separate soundtrack.
Speaker 3:Put something else on top.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah. It's kind of sort of the you know modern linear editing now and I just felt like it was so natural for me to try to do something here and capture that evening what I saw, and it was immediate. The song I should I wanted to use, which was the instrumental version of I'm kissing you, which is labeled Kissing you on the soundtrack, and the way I did it was.
Speaker 1:I started first with the music, and the music told me what I needed to put on, what video made sense to put it on there, and I just and again. This is like me learning how to use iMovie for the first time, figuring out cuts, and how the hell do you do that? Um, what's a fade like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:and um, but you listen to the music, you're looking at all the footage and it just came out and it absolutely was a process of catharsis for me, the emotion of the week culminating here with footage captured of the memorial and yeah, I just like. My mind right now is just all of the flyers are missing and it's tough, you know, it's tough remembering that A girl from high school lost her boyfriend from high school lost her boyfriend and that night, of me and another friend from high school spent time going around the different hospitals trying to find him.
Speaker 1:So he was one of the missing right and so, yeah, it's just like all of this emotion that you carried, all of the getting in touch with friends, like you know, this is before, like you know, that you had to like actually call and be like, hey, are you, are you okay? You know all of those things. And putting together the video for me was a way for me to um, get all of that out right, to process everything that happened and you know the instrumental is actually pretty long, it's like five minutes, something like that but it was so easy to put it together, to weave all of the imagery, the video, the different pieces, and to set it to music was just a very powerful release for me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, can we take a little watch of it? I have it queued up if you're okay with us watching.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:Maybe not the whole five minutes, but we'll watch a little bit of it.
Speaker 4:Of his video.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I was going to ask do you have the video?
Speaker 3:I do, I do here we go.
Speaker 2:So that was the shortened version. Yeah, yeah, so you tell the story behind that.
Speaker 3:So that was the shortened version yeah, yeah so you tell the story behind that, because I don't even know the story between the longer one and then the shortened one.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so the longer one, which is the full. I think it's 5 minutes 41 seconds of the full instrumental song. At some point I think this was like middle of September, I think middle of September it wouldn't be that it would be towards the end of September Apple, again in their promoting of iMovie, was asking hey, send in things you've edited with iMovie with a new version. And so I uploaded it and sent it in because I was really proud of it. It was a weight of a moat, but just to share something I created. A few days later I get an email from Apple, enza Sebastiani, who worked at Apple, and said I saw your submission hard out to New York, really loved it. Would you be interested in sharing that? We'd ask you to edit a shorter version and we'll post it on the site. And she gave me instructions on what to do. We had to burn it to a CD and send it out like the full version.
Speaker 1:But also created a 32nd version, which is the one that you just played, and I'm like, of course, of course, I'm going to do that. It's amazing. So I edited the version we just saw, sent it in and we exchanged a few emails after that, signed a release and it was posted and yeah, I mean remember this is 2001, so there's four YouTube and we exchanged emails after that, signed a release and it was posted.
Speaker 4:And yeah, I mean remember, this is you know 2001.
Speaker 1:So it's for YouTube, for any kind of video service, and so this was really the only means that I remember outside of what was that other? There was like one video service, so I'm blanking on it now. It's long gone, but you know, this was posted on apple's website and it was just almost just like oh my god, I can't believe you, that's my video right and uh, you know the, the video, as you might have seen on the, what we just looked at just now, that the resolution is.
Speaker 1:You know you can only edit to like. Uh, post this to 320 by 240. So the version that I have now is that I found the original version and it was nice to see it for the first time in a long time and just reflecting on that excitement to have that posted, but as well, a dedication to my city, my country and the difficulty that we all kind of went through in really kind of processing the events of that day and the preceding days after, New York was forever different. The rhythm of the city was different. You get used to well, you got used to four weeks. You know army dudes in full fatigues with machine guns in the subway. Yeah, I mean, all of those things are part of maybe the uniqueness for us in New York who were there, which is different than how everyone else experienced it. You know other parts of the country.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much for sharing that and sharing the video with us and really, really, really special.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to reflect on that. You know, for a lot of reasons it's, it's, uh, it's challenging as the years have gone by it's it's been, um you know, different and easier, but, um you know, in in different moments you'll, I'm brought back there and it's tough.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, I'm sure it's. It's something you don't just, you know, kind of move on from, like you said. You kind of continue on, but that's yeah, your life is forever marked by that Absolutely. I really appreciate the way you talked about it too and said how, like, you knew the song and music you were going to use and how the music guided you to, to, to making the, the sort of edits of the video part, like what clips and what shots to put, put where, um, uh, and it kind of hits that point of like how, how I think for some of us, we, we think through music in that way, and that's kind of a great example of that. Like, like the music guides. The music is helping you, not even helping you, the music is making the decisions, in a sense, right for you, and I know I've had that experience in not in that exact way, obviously, but in other ways like the music is what guides me in a decision for myself or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:And so thank you for sharing that part of it too, of that, the way the music guided you yeah, I mean video editing is, um, maybe in part from that experience, has become a hobby of mine, um, and more often than not, when I enjoy it most is when I'm editing to music, and I don't know how real editors do things right, but but, like, for me, it's the music tells me, the music informs me right on that.
Speaker 1:And, like, my favorite things that I've done is um editing footage from wedding right for friends, um to do the sort of the quick clip of uh, of their, of their, of their editing and and um, they always love what I put together and I I think it's really a function of because I know them right, so I know what to capture.
Speaker 1:I know what is special to them. Um and uh, you know, it's just again, it's like an expression for me to to them through the language of music. Um, and it's uh, you know, something I've carried forward in a different way and I've been, I've enjoyed it, I'm, I'm, I'm a little fart now so I don't have like our friends aren't getting married anymore and so I've kind of missed that opportunity to to do that sort of thing and and we're getting closer to all right, kids are. You know, our friends are having kids who are getting married.
Speaker 1:I'll be back in business again, thank you.
Speaker 4:That would be. I love the story. I love you know how it, just like something that was was really tragic, ended up opening, you know, a new world for you in terms of editing, repurposing a song that was meaningful to you to tell a story. And so that leads us into our next song, which is about new perspectives. What's a song that opened you to an entirely new perspective, and how to do it?
Speaker 1:Okay, so this one's more, maybe more, not specifically the song, but symbolic of something. Ain't that a Kick in the Head by, you know, Paul Crocetti, also known as Dean Martin. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3:Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5:How lucky can one guy be? I kissed her and she kissed me, like the fella once said Ain't that a kick?
Speaker 2:in the head. The room was completely black.
Speaker 5:I hugged her and she hugged back, like the sailor said. Quote ain't that a hole in?
Speaker 3:a boat Great song.
Speaker 1:Isn't it, it is, it is.
Speaker 3:And so what's the connection, what's the new perspective?
Speaker 1:So most of my life I've been more of an eat to live than a live to eat person. So like, all right, let's get a bagel, let me eat, let me just shove something in my mouth to be done with it and move on.
Speaker 3:Fuel Food is fuel.
Speaker 1:Right, Exactly, Exactly. But that all changed when I met my girlfriend, my wife, in 2004. Food for her has always been an expression of so many things Family love, how you care for someone, and it's something that she just loves doing.
Speaker 2:She jokes a lot that I wish I had something that I loved as much as you love sports and I'm just like hello, food cooking, that's your thing, um?
Speaker 1:and I think it doesn't. It doesn't occur to her to think of it this way because it's just like part of her right. It's not a hobby, it's not like, it's just something that is like breathing. And so you know, she tells the story of our early dating period. She remembers, like looking inside my fridge for the first time and there would be a half bottle of Prego and like ground beef and like ketchup prego, and like ground beef and like ketchup and that's it. You know, sort of the the, you know typical bachelor dude. What, what do you have in there? Just like sustenance kind of thing, and like right, right too, like tv on the floor.
Speaker 1:One folding chair that's it, you know, I'm proud to say I did a little bit more than that. But as as far as the refrigerator goes, yeah, I pretty much fit that mold. Over the course of our relationship that transformed because, again, food was just such a big part of it. Her family gathering she's an Italian-American filled with food, all sorts of food, more food. If you go to a G and Freddy family event, there's going to be five times the amount of food that is necessary to feed whoever's there. You can have all sorts of different kinds.
Speaker 1:Not that food wasn't a part of my familial experience as well, but it's a whole other level, uh, in my wife's family. So cooking when we eventually, you know, moved in together and then obviously getting married, like cooking was part of our relationship because she's a far better cook than me. She would do most of the cooking. I'd be more than I would even call myself a sous chef like it's like, don don't cut your finger off, maybe get the hell out of here, let me just do it. But over the course of time, over the years, I became more able, dabbled my own cooking things that I knew I liked from my childhood, learned it from my parents, started making that for her, experimenting. She would then allow me to help, and, and, and and do different things. Maybe a side story is that all all through that time and this goes back to my video editing thing let's make a video like a like a cooking show video. That would be really cool.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:She's a perfectionist and it just wasn't anything that she ever found interesting to do. And so there was a point where she was traveling for work and I'm just like screw it, you know what, I'm going to make a cooking show video, which is like ridiculous, because all our friends know I can't cook to save my life. Why are you the one making a cooking video? And but I did, because you know it's like videos, video editing, and I made it. I did it in Instagram and it was like a series of you know stories and it was like a series of stories and all our friends loved it.
Speaker 1:And so my cooking show was born and that started to make in a different way, like okay, I'm not really cooking, I'm just sort of like following a recipe, but to put my cooking show out. It became sort of like following a recipe but to put my cooking show out. It became sort of an interest. I cook different dishes, I look up recipes and sort of try to become more able. Now, meanwhile, of course, life is going on and you know she's doing most of the cooking, and this is where Dean Martin comes in. When she cooks, she's always playing music and there are certain things that she'll play. I mean she'll not necessarily pattern. Anybody who knows my wife Janine will tell you that she is all of different things all the time. There's not too many repeats in her world.
Speaker 1:But because it's familial. I think this is one area where there was a focus and it's probably. You know, if we had to name it, it's because of her dad and his love for music and Dean Martin was one of his favorite artists music and dean martin was one of his favorite favorite artists, and so dean martin was or is and still is an artist that she's just a playlist and hey, siri play me.
Speaker 1:Oh, I shouldn't say that, because then siri's gonna do something, franco Turn it on, so, but this is a song that you know I've heard countless times in the background, you know, while, while she's, you know while she's cooking, so anyway. So back to my fake cooking show on on Instagram. Through that process I actually became even more than a little dangerous in the kitchen, and since then I progressed to doing a little more challenging recipes. My cooking show took on, you know, not just like hot dog, fried rice, which is honestly something I made on the fake cooking show, nice To eat bourguignon.
Speaker 2:Yay.
Speaker 1:Fresh pasta. It's a rolling the dough.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And making my own pasta, stuffed pasta, and every Thanksgiving, the turkey is in my hands and I will here to declare that if you are not spatchcocking your turkey, you're doing it wrong. Um, spatchcocking a turkey is the way to cook a bird and I will forever be spatchcocking in late November Because that's just my way of cooking. It's always delicious, it's not dry and it's because. Are you familiar with spatchcocking? Have you ever had a spatchcock?
Speaker 3:I was just going to say to me it sounds graphic. So you can give me the five second version of what that means, so the images in my head can get out.
Speaker 1:Completely safer word. You take, you know poultry shears and you basically cut out the backbone, turn it over and you press down on it. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:You kind of like?
Speaker 1:butterfly it. Yeah Well, yeah, in a way. And so now the bird is completely flat, right, if you can imagine it. You flail the legs to the side, which is a different like other people have a different view of what that looks like. Like other people have a different view of what that looks like. But like, because it's flat, it cooks so much more evenly.
Speaker 1:And so you don't have to do this trick of like turn the turkey upside down all that stuff and it cooks at dramatically less amount of time. Yeah, that's what I was about to say. I'm sure it's faster. So like an hour under an hour, depending on how many pounds it is. Like normally it's in there for like three hours.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Boom, it's juicy, it's perfect. So Google it. Everybody watching here matchcock turkey. Because come November I promise you you'll try it and you'll be like I'll never do something different again.
Speaker 3:Wow, Come for the music. Stay for the cooking tips. Can?
Speaker 4:we just talk about different perspectives. In this amount of time, you went from prego sauce half-open in the fridge to a cooking show. And what is it? Spatchcocking, a turkey Spatchcocking a turkey.
Speaker 1:How far you've come Chicken too.
Speaker 2:That's impressive.
Speaker 1:Now too, yeah, that's impressive.
Speaker 3:Now the question I have is has the music playing that your wife does when she's cooking? Has that carried over to you? Yes, and are you doing the same playlist? So is it Dean Martin and similar, or is it you've got your own cooking playlist going?
Speaker 1:I've got my own cooking playlist going on. To truth be told, you know, covid kind of killed off the cooking show Also. You know, I think like people were like cooking.
Speaker 3:There's so much competition, all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it was, it's just like it kind of fell. But if you go, if you go to my Instagram net media, you'll you'll see it in the stories, the different versions, and you'll you can hear in the background there's music playing always.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 4:I'm so impressed with how that story took fold from like you had like nothing and like weren't even allowed in the kitchen, basically to like this sort of like gourmet experience now right.
Speaker 3:The song has such double meaning now because man ain't that a kick in the head like wow totally totally.
Speaker 4:Oh, my goodness, um, so we'll. We'll keep chugging forward in terms of like, growth and perspectives and we'll move on to weighty transitions, because our lives take big turns sometimes. For your next song, what's a song that you associate with a weighty transition in your life?
Speaker 1:This is an allusion to. You don't even realize this in thinking through the songs that we ended up with, but there's a video editing element in so many of them, um, so so this was a, a song I used, uh, as a result of a weighty transition. Um, these boots are made for walking by nancy sinatra. By Nancy Sinatra, you've been a messin'.
Speaker 2:Well, you shouldn't have been a messin', and now someone else is gettin' all your best. These boots are made for walkin', and that's just what they'll do One of these days, these boots are gonna walk all over you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe one of the more memorable bass lines, right, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I think a lot of people in this age not when the music was, not when the song came out associated with the Full Metal Jagged the movie, but the boot in this song is related to a boot that I had to wear as a result of breaking my ankle.
Speaker 1:Um, I had to wear as a result of breaking my ankle, so so 10 years ago, in a really silly thing accident, I completely obliterated my left ankle. It's so that the technical term is a trimallular break. Uh, so trivia that's like sounds valuable this's part of an ankle and apparently I broke all three parts of uh of the ankle go big or go home exactly and dislocated, and so my, my, my foot was like pointed to like almost like nine o'clock after it all said and done and I did it.
Speaker 1:Roz is about to pass out. I did a skimboarding.
Speaker 5:Just listening to the description I'm like ow, for real.
Speaker 1:It was a definite ow and I did a skimboarding, which is that thing you do on the beach, where you run and you drop a board and then you jump on top of it, and so what ended up happening for me is there was a, I guess, a soft spot in the sand. So when I pushed off the jump, my foot stuck in the sand and broke, and I knew you heard it, all, all the things, and so I'll try to get past the less interesting part. But you know it was so your foot's broken.
Speaker 3:My foot is broken. It's catastrophic and super painful.
Speaker 1:They reduced it and I had to have surgery as a result Two plates, nine screws and non-weight bearing for several weeks. And this particular injury was a bit more challenging. Fortunately it wasn't as much ligament damage, which happens a lot in ankle breaks, so it's really just bones, but you have metal in it and screws. It doesn't feel all that good and not walking for that number of weeks. Everything just goes to waste your muscle, your tone, it's a complete atrophy and you have this giant boot designed for protection but eventually for walking. And so the process that you go through when you break your foot or your ankle there's a partial weight-bearing stage and a full weight-bearing stage. There's a partial weight-bearing stage and a full weight-bearing stage, and when you're finally allowed to transition to that, your orthopedic surgeon says okay, based on the scans, it's safe for you to try Right.
Speaker 3:Medically, you're allowed to do this. Mentally, you're not there, though.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and so, like my surgeon, dr Chow, if you ever break your ankle, dr Loretta Chow, chief of orthopedic surgery at Stanford, she's the one to go to. But you know her bedside manner maybe not so much Right.
Speaker 4:So she was just like OK, you, okay, you can walk and I'm like what do you mean?
Speaker 1:I can walk, like you can walk, you're you're, you're good. How do I do that? And she's just kind of looking at me like you put one foot in front of the other, just walk, you'll be fine. And I'm like, uh, and at the time I was part of this facebook group for people who broke their ankle and I'm just like what do I?
Speaker 2:do? How do I do this? And you?
Speaker 1:know, trying to explain, and at the time I was part of this Facebook group for people who broke their ankle and I'm just like, what do I do?
Speaker 4:How do I do?
Speaker 1:this and, you know, trying to explain that, different techniques. You know, we're all just trying to figure it out. Like, like, how do you do this? You're not given a whole lot of guidance, right, orthopedists? They know how to put you back together and make sure that your bones are aligned. But this next step is really for the physical therapists of the world to help piece that together. And so shout out to Golden Gate Physical Therapy for that aspect of it.
Speaker 1:But, like, getting to that point even before physical therapy, like, was you just try and do the best you can, piecing it together from the internet? And there wasn't really at the time, there wasn't really this 2014,. There wasn't a lot of videos out there that um explained the concept of of how, what you can do, how do you do it? Once I was, uh, okay, and I learned how to walk. Again. Again, shout out golden gate physical therapy. Um, this is like months later. I'm like you know what? I'm gonna make some videos. I'm gonna make some videos to fill in the space that I, you know, I didn't have or couldn't find available to break down how you go from non weight bearing to partial weight bearing to full weight bearing, all while you know a big, you know five pound a piece of plastic on your, on your on your.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, five pound a piece of plastic on your, on your, on your, yeah, yeah and um. I made the the partial weight bearing video and then the full weight bearing video, and these boots are made for walking, because that's what that full weight bearing uh is is all about made a whole lot of sense to me to use the music again to find the edits, defining the edit, and it just speaks for um, the moment, um, for this is really true.
Speaker 1:The emotion, um, you know anybody who might be watching this, listening this and broke any part of their leg like it's emotional. You see the world in a really different way when your mobility is challenged. And this was another aspect of the break that is really salient for me. You know, people who are handicapped and have to think about the world in a different way. Like for months, I was always mindful of where's the bathroom how am I going to? Get there? How long will it take me to get there?
Speaker 1:um and even at the point where, after I I didn't have crutches, you're still thinking about it and you're still it's on your mind and you're just taking measurements of all these things and people who you know. I'm obviously fortunate that I was able to heal and be mobile again, but for many people that's not possible and this is the lens through which they see the everyday world that we traverse, through which they see the everyday world that we traverse. And you know, I think for most people, forced empathy, at least for this thing, is you don't really get it until you're actually there. You can have a degree of sympathy or try to have a perspective, adopt that perspective, but until you're actually there and you're, doing it when you live it and feel it exactly
Speaker 3:it's, it's so it's so funny, this weird synergy. I broke my ankle and tibia almost that exact same time as you. It was like 2014, 20. No, carolina, am I right in that math? It was right when we were in oregon before we moved.
Speaker 4:It was like 2014 late, 2014 maybe early 2015, something like that.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I'm right there with you. Um, I broke it playing hockey and exactly what you're describing. I was on before. I was weight bearing. I had the little cart, you know where, you push your leg up and you wheel around the scooter.
Speaker 1:Scooter, that's it.
Speaker 3:I was like cart, that's not right scooter and I was, you know where you put your leg up and you wheel around the scooter. Scooter, that's it. I was like cart, that's not right Scooter. And I was, you know, doing my master's at the university of Oregon and on campus. And yeah, I remember I had to get to a classroom that was on a second floor of an older building and there was no elevator and I remember just being like and basically I had to find some other people that were around and they're like, can you help me carry me up the steps and stuff. And so your point about how you know, once you like experience it, you just see the world in a different, different way and and, like you said that, that struggle of how to navigate and and what you have to do. So, yeah, so true, so true I also things you take for granted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I also have your instructional video pulled up on YouTube. I'm going to try and share the screen here so we can take a quick watch and see this.
Speaker 4:I'm glad you have it, because I was going to look it up. I was going to be like I got to see this.
Speaker 1:I found loosening my grip on the handles to be effective. But use whatever technique is comfortable for you.
Speaker 2:You can even try extending the crutch in front of you, using it more like a cane.
Speaker 1:Proper single crutch form means using one on the opposite side of your affected leg. A lot of people get this wrong, so it's worth repeating. The crutch goes on the opposite side.
Speaker 4:Hold on.
Speaker 1:Hold on.
Speaker 4:It's the above head camera angle.
Speaker 3:It's the voiceover, the graphics the music in the background.
Speaker 4:My goodness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you know. Yeah, Definitely a undercurrent here of video editing and things coming through without even necessarily trying to and with a little humor in the song choice.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that almost looked like a TikTok video actually.
Speaker 3:So a little bit ahead of your time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, First one with the iMovie stuff doing that. And yeah, that's cool and and I can say too, as someone who, like I said, was in the exact same position, you were, um, I, I, you know this, this, this notion of you know of, of telling stories, right, I mean it's, it's an idea of what's. The idea behind this podcast is being able to tell stories and seeing the ways you've had experiences in your life where you said there's a story I want to tell here and just did it, whether it was a story of 9-11 memorials that were popping up and the stories there. Or you know, hey, we're cooking food and like let's share this. Or hey, I broke my leg and other people might not do this, let me share this story. Or hey, I broke my leg and other people might not do this, let me share this story.
Speaker 3:I think it's a real cool thing to see coming out in these stories you're sharing of how you tell stories and like this one in particular, like that's incredibly helpful and it'd be really easy to say I don't need to make a video for this, what do I know? But you're just like I couldn't find it and so, hey, here it is, and you know it's also very isolating. Like you said, when you have an injury like this, you just feel so like helpless and you're cause. You know it's new, so you're figuring out how to do it and, um, to tell this story and, like you said, with humor and like music behind it, right, and you know, bringing it back to the you know the the theme of of our show here. There's music throughout all of this that helps you get through. So, like, hey, this sucks and I've got to learn to walk again, but let's have some fun with it. And hey, these boots are made for walking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you know exactly what I'm talking about, david. Having gone through it, the physical difficulty is half of it. Yeah, might actually be more of it. It was. It was so challenging even today, um so recently actually, I had the hardware taken out because it was giving me problems and um surgery and some experiencing a very light version of the aftermath of the original surgery, but it obviously takes me back.
Speaker 1:I see the incisions, my foot is still numb because the nerves are still like what the hell happened and it, you, it. It takes me back to to that time. But the mental aspect is, you know, was was heavy, but being in that facebook group amongst people who were going through the same thing, such a support.
Speaker 1:Everyone talks about social media and it's garbage and we can have a whole long podcast about about that, but that's like one shining bright spot. Right Community that's created. That doesn't always get talked about and it was such a support and it was a way for me to give back right. To the community and leave those videos to be used by those who came after me, those videos to be used by those who came after me. And it's great because every now and then you get a comment on YouTube or in Facebook and like, oh, it helped me so much and thank you for making this.
Speaker 1:It's so nice to see, because you've been there and you know what they're going through.
Speaker 4:That's good stuff. We'll pivot a little bit here and we'll take a trip, if you will, with music. Next, for your next song. What's a song that when you hear it, you're just instantly transported to a specific time or place?
Speaker 1:So for this one I, to nancy's father, frank um new york. I love how you say it, like it's like yeah, one of the family you know like so we heard from nancy, and now now we hear from pops um, at least in my mind, it's the most iconic song. Yeah, new York, new York.
Speaker 2:Start spreading the news. I'm leaving today. I want to be part of it. New York, New.
Speaker 4:York, new York.
Speaker 3:These vagabond shoes are longing to stray.
Speaker 1:So I live in San Francisco now, but New York will always be home city of my birth, where I grew up, and so it. The city is so nice they name it twice, song right, that sort of thing. But also as a lifelong Yankees fan, this song is symbolic of my love for that team and my love for Yankee Stadium, my love for that team and my love for Yankee Stadium. And so ever, since 1980, at the end of a game at Yankee Stadium, as soon as the last out is recorded Frank.
Speaker 1:And this will go on. While baseball is a thing, this will always be a thing at Yankee Stadium. It is how you finish a game there, and so you hear it instantly brought. And so you hear it instantly brought, you bring. I'm brought back to my times that you know watching the Yankees. You know at the stadium, obviously it's better if you win and you hear Frank. So this is a bit of trivia that people will only know if they date back this far. There was a short period of time where, after a Yankee loss, they wouldn't play Frank Sinatra's version, they would play Liza Minnelli, which I'm like you always got to find like when you think about it now.
Speaker 2:Poor Liza what did she do?
Speaker 3:Who are we going to play when we lose? Who thought of this?
Speaker 1:idea. So, like you know, the last out in the ninth inning, bottom of the ninth, and they lose. Liza the speaker.
Speaker 2:But if it's a win, it's.
Speaker 1:Frank, that didn't last very long. I don't know exactly.
Speaker 3:Some people contacted some other people.
Speaker 4:And we're like what the hell are you doing here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but some people some people contacted some other people, right, and we're like back to Liza yeah, what the hell are you doing here? But, yeah, so you know now. Now it's like no matter what happens at the end of the game it's it's Frank Sinatra, but this is. The stadium also has a unique significance for me because of my great uncle, uncle Louie. He lived on Jerome Avenue, which is like right, right, really literally next to the stadium, and so whenever we would go to a Yankee game, it was combined with a visit to our Uncle Louie.
Speaker 1:Uncle Louie was my grandfather's brother and he moved to the US early in his life 1930s and he was a veteran, so he fought in the war. And so another, he would tell us stories, he'd show us his uh, his um, his dog tag and all of all of the things, and so, like he, he was uh, releasing on the us right sort of the patriarch for our uh, my side of the family, and so we would go visit uncle louis, uh, in his apartment on jerome avenue next to the stadium and and spend time there and he um what he did for a living when he was a cook uh, he was a cook at the essex house, which is a okay, yeah, so you're familiar Some of the famous hotel in New York City on Central Park South and it's known for the iconic sign Essex House.
Speaker 4:It's got a big sign out front yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I just realized the whole cooking thing.
Speaker 3:I was about to say it. Yeah, I was letting you finish your story, but I was like oh cooking, coming back in there we go, these threads are just there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, right there, there really is uh you just gotta pull on them continuity to a lot of things in my life.
Speaker 1:Um, but he would always have my, my favorite filipino dish, um adobo. He would make it for our, our visit, and um, he'd have, uh, uh, uh can of seven up. I I've I've since quit soda because it's awful for you, but um, uh, you know that that kind of lemon lime soda was my thing because of my uncle. That kind of lemon-lime soda was my thing because of my Uncle, louis. So again, resonant memories of the visits there. It's so funny You're brought back there, so I'm thinking about it now and I can remember the button to get to his apartment. It was one of those elevators that you had to pull open the door.
Speaker 1:Oh, uh-huh Just open the door so you had to make sure it's closed before you do anything and you ride on up and the smell of his apartment is there as well, and he lived with his partner, my aunt Gladys, and so visiting them again was part of New York, visiting Yankee Stadium and maybe a bit of an aside story to visiting Uncle Louie. Aunt Gladys was white. They never married and again. So when you're a kid you don't process any of it, you don't know, and like I didn't know or have in the mind that they weren't married, I just thought they were no-transcript.
Speaker 1:So my own marriage several decades ago was illegal right, and so you, you process this later on and you think about it, how things have changed um over the course of time, um, it's our experiment. Democracy I mean democracy has, you know, experienced some bumps of late, and how recent, how recent it is.
Speaker 3:That's the thing that people a lot of times don't think about, even if they were like, were somehow aware, like, oh, interracial marriage wasn't, wasn't allowed and it was illegal. It's like, yeah, but that was like a long time ago and it's like no no, you know so many of these things, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's exactly right. And so we're visiting Uncle Louie in the late 70s, early 80s, and it's just a handful of years when that was legalized and I, like you, reflect on these things now. It was a funny thing I do at this point is say, okay, it's 2024, the year 2000, right, 24 years ago. Take 24 years from 2000. Right now we're back in the 70s, like it's like a bright right. And so you, you and you relate it by music, and so I distinctly remember in the late 70s, 80s, beatles, elvis, and thinking like, oh the oldies, even at that point when I was young.
Speaker 1:But that was only a decade or so previous and you think now of songs that were 20 years and it's like like, oh, it's fresh in my head right and that's, that's the true perspective anyway.
Speaker 1:So, again, like it's. It's like it's. It's interesting how maybe this is the thematic again, right, you can mark different times in history according to the, the music of the of the day, and how quickly it, it uh, warps itself the older that you get, and um, the length of time between different musical eras is is is longer than you think and, in certain cases, shorter than you, shorter than you realized, right yeah, yeah, both um.
Speaker 5:So yeah, it's uh we started this discussion with um, where I think the second song uh was was your life story, but it was connected to 9-11 and um. I think for a lot of us millennials, 9-11 was significant for many reasons, but I think, um, for a lot of us, time sort of stopped like that. That's one of those really significant uh moments in history that affects so many people so many different ways. There's a clear before and after. Yeah, exactly, I think, particularly for our generation and I'm talking about sort of millennials you know people that are now in their I guess you know forties not to age ourselves.
Speaker 4:Raza, just as a pause, you're Gen X buddy, not millennial.
Speaker 5:Technically, technically, a zennial yes, yes, you're right, 77 to 82.
Speaker 4:In the room.
Speaker 3:Your younger sister is a millennial. Yeah, Not to age you even more.
Speaker 2:We're all old.
Speaker 4:As Gen Xers.
Speaker 5:But yeah. So if 9-11 is the sort of marker, and that was just over 20, 21, 22 years ago, now, right, 23 years ago, since we're counting every single Fucking year.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry.
Speaker 4:I'm never going to lose doubt.
Speaker 5:But yeah, I think you guys are absolutely right, though it's from a musical perspective, there's like music that was pre 9-11, which seems like a lifetime ago now, like the the last 23, some odd years of music. We know whether it's the shift from cds to, uh, to, you know, streaming and itunes. All this stuff has happened, um. But at the same time it's it's for people in our you know, decade plus minus, um, from our generation. It's like as if no time has passed. But then you look back and go my gosh, it's 23 years.
Speaker 1:So Raz you bring up an interesting point that I wonder about. I'd be curious for your perspective. For us Gen Xers, we consume music by albums and an album was almost like an arc arc, a story arc for the artist to express their, their artistry, their music. And you curate a collection of songs is as part of your album. And then you sell your album, you release it, sure, write singles on the radio, blah blah, but like the album was, this is what you get. Obviously that's changed now with streaming. Um, they, artists, still release albums, but I, you, you see signs of that changing and how it people.
Speaker 1:Uh, experience for the first time is is different. It happens a lot in TikTok or through social media, not on the radio or KC's Top 40. You get it in individual bites, or at least that's my perception of how music is surfaced today.
Speaker 5:I'd love to comment on that. Go for it.
Speaker 1:I wonder, is I wanted? Yeah, so so is it. Is it going to change how we experience that stamp of of music of an artist? Because, like for me, I think of it in terms of the album, and this song was part of this album and it came out in, you know, this kind of time period uh, I don't I don't have that same thing.
Speaker 5:So, and I hate to like jump in here, but this is- I've really thought about this stuff and uh yeah, yeah, I got my post-it notes and everything.
Speaker 5:Um, I think, from a historical perspective, if you go back and look at the original artists, original musical artists, your Johnny Cash's and Elvis, and that generation, that era of music when they started monetizing music, when some record the earliest form of a record exec monetizing music, when some, you know, record the earliest form of a record exec, when they were, the way in which they wanted to make money off of artists was to release singles.
Speaker 5:So it started off as singles and then fast forward, I think a couple of decades later, the idea of a collection, which we now call an album, that came up and then that was huge and you know, then, then, then, you know, selling records became a thing, right, and then with the whole like Napster thing and streaming for the for the last, I wouldn't say 15, 20 years, you know it's all streaming and exactly like you were saying, it's all about singles and like the one one hit and then that kind of that's it. Those of us who were, who were um, who appreciated the collection aspect, and certainly I think artists appreciate that a lot more, especially us in the sort of rock and metal, you know, sort of um in the rock and metal genre. I know that and there's, that's the stuff that I follow. Certainly those artists really really miss the era of the albums and they still continue to put out albums. But anyway, you guys have all seen vinyl is making a comeback and it's starting to sell more and more and more.
Speaker 5:So now we've gone from singles to albums, to individual singles again, to now back to appreciation of the album, like the album way of doing things. So I think that right at this moment is when this is starting to come back, appreciating the collection aspect of it, and it's, I think, re-empowering artists, especially like the old school, you know, like the Led Zeppelins and Metallicas, and you know that generation of artists who have always wanted to put out albums because that's what works for them. They want that artistic expression to be in the collection, right, and I think now we just have options. We have the ability to stream if we want to, but at the same time we also have the ability to have that hard copy, um, at our, at our, you know, at our at our disposal as well. But it's a really, really interesting time I think this is the first time that's ever happened where you're seeing literally like a full circle of starting somewhere and then going back and but having access to everything that came before also it's.
Speaker 4:It's funny you say that because then I I just realized, um, I went to go see one of my favorite artists recently, uh, death cab for cutie, and I didn't realize it when I bought the tickets. But the tour was a commemoration of the 20-year anniversary of an album, of a couple albums, um, and so the whole concert was just that album and it was yeah yeah, I think, because it's like telling of a story, right, yeah, so it's the commemoration of, of this story that that this artist created which is pretty cool and that appreciation for the album.
Speaker 5:I think we only now is the time when we can do that right. Um, um and you're, and you're looking at album commemorations. I mean they have to be at least 10, 15, 20, you know, 25 years old in order to do that. Right Um no one wants to commemorate a single that came out, you know, a year ago.
Speaker 3:The one year anniversary.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's funny.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I also think, Raza, in your point too, about I'm wearing my Rush shirt today, and so prog rock and things are groups that definitely think in the term of albums. Right, Because it's this whole concept album. Right, it's a whole story through all these different songs, Much more like going back to Beethoven or something like that, like an opera would be right, you tell the story through all of these different movements, right? You can't, you don't just have a single, right, it's the story through, through it all. And so I'm curious about how the sort of push for just not even just a hit single, right, Cause that's always been there, Rush struggled with that of like, when you get we need a hit single, and it's like that's not how we think we think about albums and concepts and whatnot.
Speaker 3:But how artists are writing music today, right, or is? Is the? Is the writing of music just thought of as individual bits and not so much of like, like you said here's. Here's songs that are part of this album, even if it's not a whole concept album, but how do they fit together? So I'd be curious to know kind of about that of artists, of how, how it could be affecting them but then going back to what, we're sorry, oh, go ahead.
Speaker 4:No, I was just gonna say well, you see, like today, probably the biggest artist on the planet, taylor swift, um, her fans are always waiting for like, is that a clue to the next album, not the next single? Yeah yeah, they're waiting for a full album from her and it's got a full story behind it. What is the inspiration for the entire album? So I think, yeah, I think younger generations are getting back on board with the storytelling of full albums yeah, and it goes back to hori's original point about that of like.
Speaker 3:It seems like there still is something to that, because, yeah, you could talk about 70s and 80s prog rock or metal or whatever, and it's like, yeah, they write albums, but we're talking about the biggest pop artist right now, taylor swift. Not only is she doing it, but her fans are thinking in that way right because it has a story.
Speaker 3:Not just the album has a story, but there's a story to the release, right, and there's all the easter eggs that come out and it's part of it. So yeah, that gives kind of you know, I guess hope for the future of what raza you're saying of, like maybe they're that's still hanging on and still still there. I also think it's about the, the point of what we were talking about before, of going all the way back to the eight track and how you know you see it, with ebooks in this full circle, holy cow but no, just the, the.
Speaker 3:You know we talked a lot about technology throughout this right Of iMovie coming out and and and all these things and sort of how. It's like great to have like all the music in existence in my pocket, but that's almost too much, right. And so I was going to say, you see it a little. You saw, with eBooks, right, when e-readers came out and everything and everyone was like this is great, I can carry 10,000 books and it's like yeah. But you see a lot of people like true readers going back to like no, there's something about holding a paper book in your hand and the smell of it and all that. And I think that's kind of what we're talking about here with music and stuff. There's an experience to it, right.
Speaker 3:I know, for me, going back to what we said, when, you know, you had the cd case or whatever in the car or whatever, it was like you had to make a conscious decision of what to put on and you were sort of committed to that. I know now, when I just listen to streaming, it's sort of like, because I can click around and click to anything, I'm not as like engaged. I have to, I have to like yeah, I have to like make sure to make myself get engaged to it, because it's just too like, well, I I could click it off and I'm like, do I want to listen to this or do it, whereas you know, going back with LPs or eight tracks or whatever, you've got to like what one are we putting on? And like to then change it. You got to take it off, and things like that.
Speaker 4:And I think there's something to that that's not just generational in the sense of like oh, we want it because that's how we grew up, but something about like humans interacting with something tangible and when it gets too intangible, we, we lose something yeah, folks bringing us home with our last song of the interview and I don't know how we get to a more perfect moment than like yankee stadium and visits to your uncle louis house and like the chicken aloe, but we're gonna go there um for lack Cause that felt pretty perfect, but for your last song. What's a song that was part of just a perfect moment in your life, when everything felt right.
Speaker 1:So I I'm sure if each of us reflected to try to answer this one in a moment, you could think of so many different answers, right, Different moments that were meaningful. This one has a little bit of recency bias for me. Full disclosure. But, it's still a special moment and symbolic of that, the song is September by Earth.
Speaker 4:Wind Fire. It's wind and fire. I'm laughing because you got Rosita Bob his head to something which makes it a pretty damn good song.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's such a classic and like so interesting about this song. Um, you know, that key part that we know so well is the first verse right, and so normally you know the chorus of a song and if I played the chorus you would, you would, everyone would know it too. But it's sort of like, and I struggled with this one when I was pulling out clips. Normally I do this myself to keep kind of Roz and Carolina as much in the dark to hear everything fresh as far as the podcast goes. But I went to Carolina when I was getting the song ready. I'm like, hey, I'm struggling with this one. Should I play this clip or should I play the chorus? And Carolina was like, no, no, it's that Cause of these cool songs where it's like the verse right that you know 21st september, like that, that iconic thing is, is, is the most popular thing, which is, which is normally it's the hook right, the chorus, that that gets you so anyway. So what is the uh, perfect moment with this song?
Speaker 1:so. So last year my mother turned 80 and you know milestone birthday and so we're like, so, um, you know, she lives in florida now, uh, full time.
Speaker 1:And we're like, mom, what do you want to do for your birthday? Like you know, do you want us to do? You want to come fly back to new york? Do you want to go to disney world? And we're like what it's like? Like, yeah, I want to go to disney world. I'm like ma, are you sure, like you know, it'll be hot, like it's summer, that her birthday's in july and, um, you know, we're all gonna broil. No, I want to go to disney world.
Speaker 1:And so, like, there's a point where, like, someone is saying they want to go to dis World, and so, like, there's a point where, like, someone is saying they want to go to Disney World. As much as you kind of think to yourself, maybe we can trick her into not wanting to go to Disney World Because you said enough times like, okay, we're going to go to Disney World, right, right. But, truth be told, all of us me and my sisters were related families. Okay, I mean, I don't know, is this a great idea? The crowds, the heat, okay, this is what she wants to do. We're going to do it. And so have either of you, or all of you, gone to Disney World.
Speaker 4:Yes, three of us grew up in Florida, so a lot yeah. More times than we can count all you have to say, is Disney World in July, and we get it, you get it and, as well, planning the thing and all the logistics that go into it, especially now like there's the genie thing houses, yeah my friend, we have a joke, you need.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, my, my, my friend, we have a joke like you need a pH Disney to understand all of the combinations of things that you have to do to organize, especially when it's a group, all the different things.
Speaker 3:And those people are out there talking about Instagram influencers, old people that like have all the hacks and how to do it, and so here here I was watching all like here's all the things. So it was like it was make self-help videos for stuff.
Speaker 1:There's gotta be people out there that are doing it for this Because I, you know, it's my mom's birthday, so I wanted to make sure that, like, everything went ideal and so that everybody would have a good time. So that's a middle child, right, that's my trauma. Everybody's got to be happy and so, you know, I did all the research, did all the things to try to make this a special time for everybody. How hard can it be? It's like the happiest place on earth, right? That's the tagline. Well, no, I mean yeah there actually isn't a a bud.
Speaker 1:It it all went, so it all went so well. It was a really wonderful time. Um, it was hot, that's fine, I mean like, but we were it's not like we weren't prepared. We had the gadgets with the misting and you know all the, all the things. We all became ready and we just had a wonderful, wonderful time. My niece, nephews, my sister, my younger sister and her partner, my older sister and her husband and just had the best, best time Far and away exceeded all of our cynical thoughts about what Disney will look like in the depths of summer.
Speaker 1:It culminated with a birthday dinner at one of the Disney restaurants. We got a private room, did all the things, and she was just so happy, this picture that that always treasure. We got her like a tiara that said happy birthday and so she wore it during dinner and she was just all, and this is exactly why she did it right. It all made sense, right and and so, like, we made fun of her. Um, you know for for choosing this space, but for each of us, we came away from the trip. So we still talk about it now, like, let's go back to disney. It was so memorable, it was so beautiful, it was so wonderful. We shared the photos. We did the uh, what is that thing called disney photo pass or whatever that thing is like, where they take pictures and they aggregate it so they have pictures of ourselves on the rides? And oh, the different things.
Speaker 1:Maybe, quick aside one of the events we actually didn't go in July. We ended up going in August. We had no concept for this the spooky Halloween, mickey's spooky Halloween. What they do is they close the Magic Kingdom at, I think, like 4 o'clock, something like that, and you have to get a separate ticket to go to Mickey's spooky Halloween thing. And so me and my wife went, my the uh, my sibling, the rest of the family didn't know. It's like, okay, we'll just stay at the resort. And we're like, okay, we didn't, we couldn't, we just wanted to. You know, let's just do something different. It's there and separately, we had the best time. So it's the only time that you are allowed to enter a Disney park in costume and, in particular, sensitivity to Disney characters. And so I dressed up as Aladdin, my wife dressed up as Jasmine, and I can't tell you how, how special it feels to walk through the park in costume and see the kids see you and be so excited to see you and think that you're a character, I mean like it's.
Speaker 1:It sounds kind of silly, but yeah no, I mean it describes like how happy that made me right to see some kids.
Speaker 3:The celebrity of all celebrities Over there signing autographs.
Speaker 1:Aladdin, that's right. I forget what the name of the movie Aladdin Ride is. There, the magic carpet. We also went to Cinderella's Castle for dinner. This is maybe a pro tip Not that I saw it, it was just a fluke but apparently, and maybe by now, people have figured it out. On these Mickey Halloween nights people get confused about reservations. So they make a reservation and then they discover like oh wait, I have to have a special ticket. Oh it's not that a ticket to go to the park.
Speaker 3:Right, right.
Speaker 1:So they end up with a lot of cancellations. So we were able to just like get it on random. It's like, how is there Cinderella dinner tickets? Like this is a really hard thing that people have to reserve yeah, way like months and months in advance, and so we're just kind of lucky, and that's the reason why is because, um, it was mickey's uh, spooky halloween and that was so it was really so.
Speaker 1:It was so fun to be in cinderella castle, have dinner and the princesses were there, and so jasmine real jasmine was there, and so I could be with her and my wife, so I had two jasmines. It was just.
Speaker 3:It was so funny um so all of this is part of this memory birthday in july, trip in august, but we listened to a song about september. So what's the connection of this song and the trip?
Speaker 1:okay, so the best ride in the universe is guardians of the galaxy. So so like uh, I didn't, we didn't know this at the time, but like people in the uh monorail was saying, like have you gone to have you have to go to guardians of the galaxy, we're like okay, um, and so, guardians of the Galaxy. We're like okay, and so Guardians of the Galaxy. If you're not familiar with the movie, right so it's associated with music from the 70s. It's kind of part of the.
Speaker 4:It's a great soundtrack.
Speaker 1:It absolutely does, and so no surprise, the Ride has a soundtrack which is filled with 70 songs. I don't know exactly how many songs there are, but for us it was September, and so the way, the Ride. I won't give spoilers to the Ride, but you go through the Ride and there's a point in the beginning where it's really quiet and it's silent. There's dialogue from the characters and then the Ride starts's like dialogue from the character, and then the ride starts and then you hear the music, and so Right.
Speaker 2:So the horn sounds.
Speaker 1:It's so perfect and I can't imagine like the other songs must be such a disappointment, because it's just so perfect. It's so perfect, yeah, yeah, the mood of the song, the trumpets and the lyrics, and you go through it and it's a.
Speaker 3:Do you know for a fact that it's different songs? Yes, for different people. Oh, okay.
Speaker 4:Now I see people walk it up and being like what's the song? Because, it's not September. What song did you get? I'm going to come back.
Speaker 1:I bet you that people get to the line and like what's the next song, and they may like skip or want to skip to the song.
Speaker 3:I can totally know you go Instead of waiting for, like front or back of the coaster or whatever it's like.
Speaker 1:no, I want to wait for that song and totally that's hilarious like I you know, someday I'll go back and I'm I don't want to experience it in a different song I, I want, I want september, because it's like um for us, who wrote it all at the same time, and like so we were, we did it as a family and loaded up as a family, and so we, we all, remember the same moment to this song and all our ride pictures.
Speaker 1:we're all like ah. And so you see it and you know that moment and you recognize it and it's touched by the songs. I won't ever hear this song anymore and not think of that riding the ride and just the happiest place on earth experience that it gave me.
Speaker 4:That's awesome. Fyi, there is a list online of the songs.
Speaker 1:There are six songs on rotation September.
Speaker 5:September.
Speaker 4:I do think is the best one.
Speaker 5:You know, when David walks up to that ride, the special one they have for him is YYZ, that's right, I'm going to bring headphones and I'm like I got my own playlist.
Speaker 3:Siegel's got nothing on this, it's so funny that you said that, Raza, because I was about to say the same thing for you and be like, oh, you're going to go and have Anjustice for All and Metallica or something playing on yours.
Speaker 5:It is the happiest place on Earth.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 4:But, maybe not with the wrong song. So, like you lucked out that you got the song that you got, because it's created this like amazing life memory for you.
Speaker 3:Oh, I just have an image of them testing the ride and having all of staff ride with all different songs to find, Because they had more than six right. They had a huge playlist, probably, and they're like okay, we got to narrow it down, people voting and stuff. I want that job.
Speaker 4:Yes, look for it.
Speaker 1:All right, ride tester at Disney.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I thought you were probably not a bad game. Jorge, thank you so much for sharing just a wonderful journey of technology and music and life story with us. How does it feel to hear your life reflected in these six songs?
Speaker 1:Oh, it was so much fun, thank you, thank you so much for having me, and I mean, like, genuinely the threads that we picked up on, like it didn't occur to me until saying it all and sharing it all, like, wait a minute. There are some definitive themes here that resonate and I suppose that's not a surprise, right? And an example of how we started the show, talking about how, within the soundtrack of your life, right, it shouldn't be surprising that there are themes, recurring elements that repeat itself, because, you know, as a human right, it's what makes us ourselves.
Speaker 4:Absolutely All right. Raz is going to. We're not quite done, yet we're not quite done. We're almost done. Raz is going to guide us through our lightning round.
Speaker 5:All right. So, yeah, we call this our lightning round, and we would love to know what your first, last and best or favorite concert experience was.
Speaker 1:So, like my first, this is not really a concert, but like it's the first memory I have that sticks in my mind Eddie Murphy, raw, oh wow. It was just like a comedy concert but like and I and I and there was music. Well, he walks out to music.
Speaker 5:You know the red jacket yeah.
Speaker 1:The red the red jacket and I I can't. So it's been a long, it's been a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the red jacket, and I can't, we'll allow it. It's been a long time, but like the song that sticks out in my mind, I'm pretty sure this is true. He came out to this song You're a fake, and I think that's the song that he came out to. I want to check now to see if that's even possible. Was it released before the concert? But I have this memory of him, that song you're a fake baby. And then he came out and the lights come on.
Speaker 3:I can see it, I can't hear it, so I can't tell, but yeah, a little bit of homework for everybody.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, and our listeners. So that was your first concert, last and best.
Speaker 1:My last concert was Christmas with Harry Connick Jr Nice. He had a Christmas album. He came to San Francisco and it was on Christmas Eve and he's so great, he's so natural in his music.
Speaker 5:His voice is awesome. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then favorite or best.
Speaker 1:Andrea Pacelli. He it was. It was special because it was kind of more intimate. He plays the Pact Arenas. This was in Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic and so you know, just being in that small you know cultured stage, small, you know cultured stage, but you know his whole vibe is so beautiful. I mean he could be like singing the phone book and you're still, this is the greatest thing I ever heard.
Speaker 5:No that's awesome. Thank you, that was a good list.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Good stuff. We can't thank you enough again for just vulnerably sharing your life and your stories and your music with us. We're honored and we appreciate it. As we wrap up in these last few minutes, we'd love to let you tell our audience what you've got going on that people might be interested in, how they can contact you if your story resonated with them and they'd like to reach out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mentioned my fake, my fake cooking show. You can look me up on social media and Instagram netmedia N-U-T-T-M-E-D-I-i-a. My youtube channel is also there, so there's some videos that are, uh, on there. Um that you can edit stuff that you can. You can look at um, but yeah, no, you know what's, what's the thing that uh influencers or or uh so you like, and hit the button, follow button, whatever you know. Feel free to do that. We'll link all that stuff in the show notes too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or like and hit the button follow button whatever, the hell, you know, feel free to do that, and we'll link all that stuff in the show notes too, smash the.
Speaker 2:button.
Speaker 3:Smash the follow button.
Speaker 5:Do it here and here and there.
Speaker 1:That's right, all that good stuff, all the pointing and you know, in my bio we talk about the team that I work with and how we're trying to change our financial system Justfuturescom, go it. We're a merry band of people who are trying to create a transition to a different way of doing a just transition to a different way of a financial system. Um, values aligned, investing. So you can see us there and it'll work.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Thank you so much for that. Um yeah, jorge, thank you for being on. Thank you for sharing your story with us, taking us down strolls of memory lane in ways and cars and on roller coasters and at baseball games.
Speaker 3:It was wonderful, so thank you very much. Um everybody out there, like we were just saying with the influencers, you all know what to do uh like subscribe, follow whatever platform you're you're watching and listening this, uh listening to this show on, do whatever it is, so you get the updates and you can hear more stories told through six songs. And so we will see you next time. Thanks for watching and listening.
