Questlove Reaches Into The Mailbag & Answers - March 5

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Quest Left Show is a production of iHeartRadio. All right, y'all, this is Letters to the Quest Left Show again. If you have any letters, slide into our dms. First of all, follow QLs on all the socials please and also subscribe and like on YouTube. That is the fuel to our fire. If you like these episodes and whatnot. Look it just takes a second. Please like it and subscribe. We're trying to build a nation of inform music heads here.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. I like doing this. Give me more questions.

00:00:38
Speaker 3: All right, all right, this is a fun one from Alan Hey QLs team. I'm a longtime listener and second time emailer. Oh we like that. I'm digging the new format with the mail bag, especially because I might get my question seen. What I want to hear is brother quest talk about Phillies the Goats. They were a big deal to my group of skateboard punk rock friends when Tricks of the Shade came out. They are also massively overlooked group, not just in terms of sound, but a hardcore political hip hop. I've listened to almost all the QLs episodes and what had happened was season It seems like a couple of times Amir was about to mention the Goats when talking about Philly hip hop history and interning at rough House, but I haven't heard anything I want to hear from those who know this underappreciated powerhouse.

00:01:25
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, man, when I started that theory that I always had where I said that the pioneer never gets the credit. It's the person that comes after the fact that sort of gets the punitentent the glory. This is definitely the case for the Goats. Shouts to Sway, Zac and Mad and Odie and all this cats, Chuck Trees and everyone that summer of ninety two when the Roots first started busking on South Street. Subsequently, I was also in turning at Roughouse Records, putting those tricks of the Shade and the no Goots, No Glory posters in, and those guys taught me so so so much about just everything that I needed to know. Like we were just we were literally a band that busked every Saturday and got some you know, hand me down gigs and you know, playing various clubs and whatnot. But those guys would often let us pretty much let us open for them when.

00:02:35
Speaker 2: They did local Philly gigs.

00:02:38
Speaker 1: Some of those guys are on the original on Organics. I forgot who's playing keyboards on Good Music, but yeah, even with Common Dust, like yeah.

00:02:51
Speaker 2: They're they're.

00:02:52
Speaker 1: There are many a goat on on that first Organics album. You know, it's sad that they never got the kind of accolades that Rage Against the Machine had, like all those groups that came after them that were sort of in that mood but pretty much like Doggy Dog, Cypress Hill, all those groups. Man, not much has been said about the goats Man, And you know, I absolutely Mark Boyce. By the way, Mark Boyce was the keyboard player on Good Music. Shout out to Mark Boyce. Shout out to E. J. Simpson. Also, oh and Pierce. Also, I can't forget Pierce anyway, but yeah, shout out to just that whole There was a point in Philly where all those cats like g Love Special Sauce, like the Alt Philly hip hop army was in effect. But I love those guys. And also shout out to Rascill Mills. Also she sang with the goats Love Recill.

00:03:50
Speaker 3: Next question moves to SNL fifty. This is from Alan, not to be confused with the Lawn and this is all the same person. You are going to great lengths. I don't think it is. The fifty years of SNL is an amazing show with over two thousand songs performed. How did you decide which performances to include for the opening six minute montage of mashups? How did you find those tracks that work so well together? Was it luck, trial and error, or or pure science?

00:04:18
Speaker 2: The quickest story of it is.

00:04:22
Speaker 1: Right when we won Sundance the two wards at Sundance for Summer of Soul, I came to work on a Monday and one of the interns came in and said, Hey, Lauren would like to see you on seventeen, And instantly the room got silent. And you know, when Lauren wants to see you on seventeen, that's the equivalent of going to the principal's office and either your life is going to change or you're getting fired. And being as though I got call to that office twice before, I was like, ah, man, there's a three strikes law. Like I try to stall it as much as I could, like you know, and it's a thing where it's not a jump how high thing, but it's like if Lauren wants to see you kind of got to go up there in the next three minutes, and I was trying to stall it, like uh, okay, well I'll be there, and I got rehearsal to due right like two pm, four pm, So I tried kicking the can down the road, and eventually it's like, well, just come after the show taping, I went up to seventeen and it's everything that you've ever imagined. I mean, I've been on seventeen before, but seventeen is like kind of really just the belly of SNL and you know, of course there's the popcorn machine and Lauren's world famous for you know, his love of popcorn and whatnot. I get there and when I enter the office, I'm just like, okay, wait, he doesn't seem like I'm overanalyzed in the situation, Like he doesn't seem confrontational, like if I were to get fired, wouldn't like my manager tell me, like you fucking up and he sits me down. He's like, man, I gotta tell you. And he says that he and Paul Simon watched Summer Sold twice and in my head, first of all, it's just collective cigh of relief. But it was like, oh, you know what I do for a living, because I kind of had the feeling that Lauren really didn't know that the roots meant something unless he's just the best poker player ever. So he was like, you know the fifty is coming up in twenty twenty five, and you know four years from now, I would like to give you a shot to do the doc on that, and immediately, without asking my manager, I was like, Yes, I'll do it.

00:06:52
Speaker 2: Of course. You know. The prime reason why I wanted to do.

00:06:56
Speaker 1: It is because I knew that I would finally be given access to every last episode on that show. Even at the tonight show. There's like a master drive system in that building that you can watch any NBC archive that you want to old different Stroke shows, Flip Wilson shows, anything that's been on NBC. You can go on their computer, type it up and then instantly watch it. So I spend a lot of lunch hours watching SNL shows, watching rehearsal shows. You know they do too they do the actual show and they do a dress versal show, so you get to see different things like run DMC made a mistake on the live show, So I watched the dress versal and the record didn't skip, you know, things like that. So pretty much I've figured out, you know, if you're doing a doc on SNL, you better do do it in the rhythm of SNL and SNL what is SNL. SNL's a show that I feel most of the highlights are music based, even if it's is an artist on the show, like you know Wayne's World. They sing, Buckwheat sings, you know, all the things that you remember, even with Debbie Downer, like the punchline is like, there's.

00:08:16
Speaker 2: Always a musical element.

00:08:18
Speaker 1: So pretty much John McDonald and I John McDonald who is an editor there at thirty Rock, who's also a musician, we treated it like I was doing a DJ set, which is and this is how I do DJ sets. I hear a song, okay, you know, Hungry like the Wolf by Duran Durant.

00:08:37
Speaker 2: All right, that's an E minor. But the bridges in C.

00:08:42
Speaker 1: And but the end Hungry like the Wolf, and it goes to D. So we literally spent a year crafting a CSI FBI database breaking down of songs and literally the songs primarily in the key of Da Da Da Da.

00:09:04
Speaker 2: But there's a bridge that helps you escape that.

00:09:06
Speaker 1: So that helps with things like like John knew that shares last word of since you've been going ends and d which we'll leave right to Queen doing.

00:09:20
Speaker 2: So it's you gotta think. That's how I DJ.

00:09:22
Speaker 1: I think in terms of like rhythmic function way and key function way. A year in two it we gathered about four hundred songs. And while this is happening, my producers are like, hey, we'd rather just work on the storylines because you know you're not going to clear all this stuff. And I was like, over my dead body, I spent a whole year doing this, I'm gonna do it, so kind of against their wishes, I said, look, let me just make it first, and I promise you I'm gonna make this happen. And the hard part was it was done and people were so over excited. Then their attitude chain was basically, okay, let's clear it. I had about three weeks to go hat in hand to my entire phone.

00:10:15
Speaker 2: Like anybody I ever met in the last.

00:10:19
Speaker 1: Thirty five years of my career, yesterday's intern is now today CEO, So thank God for that. So that's really how when Wendy Goldstein told me whenever you meet an intern, you treat them like a celebrity. Treat them like a star, because in fifteen years they're gonna remember. Man Questlove was really nice to me, signed my drum sticks, he gave my mom a poster, he gave us free tickets. That's the you know. So when it came to clearing it, you know, some of the hardest things I had to do, Like some of my friends are on the Eminem's management team, some of my you know, well I'm friends with the Carters, so you know, so basically I cleared everything. There's one magic moment I had to take out, and there was a I wanted a kind of a diva moment, you know, Mariah Carrey's ending of a Vision of Love where she sings the last word oh, and I wanted to oh off when you Houston, Mariah carry Pavarotti, Aretha Franklin, Like, I had a just a crazy song ending thing. And because I couldn't It's not that I couldn't clear Pavarotti, but I physically would have had the gotten on a plane go to Italy. Showed them the clip for them to be like, and it's just a three second clip it wasn't worth it, so I had to take the Pavarotti part out, but to get you know, the roots, Buster Rhymes and Bobby McFerrin and TLC in a mix that was like that made up for it. So when you see that, just know that initially that's what I want it there. But yeah, it was the time of my life. Like for me, it was just a visit through my childhood and three weeks, wow, three weeks to clear everything. Yes, Jay wants to know.

00:12:12
Speaker 3: I know you're a huge Jackson's fan, so i'd love your take on the Jacksons This Place Hotel. It's such an incredible track, but it feels totally slept on. I want to hear with somebody with your musical expertise break down how genius it is.

00:12:26
Speaker 2: I've asked this. I believe on the Randy Jackson episode.

00:12:30
Speaker 1: That why didn't you guys lead with Heartbreak Hotel? See I'm old enough to remember when it was initially called Heartbreak Hotel and then I guess some five six years later, Michael's publisher convinced him to change it to This Place Hotel because of the sort of what I call lazy paperwork administration mixed up between the two songs, like it's easy to get the mixed and you know, maybe Elvis would get Michael's money, or maybe Michael would get Elvis's money, So give it a new title. It's such an unimaginative title, this place Hotel that you know, I just I try to ignore that part and not let it taint me. But really, there's a weird obsession I have with Michael Jackson really being the beginning of gangster rap. I know this is going to be a wild, wild take, but I would almost say that seventy percent of Michael's output.

00:13:50
Speaker 2: With songs are always with about women.

00:13:55
Speaker 1: That he doesn't trust or that break his heart or that it has n't working day and night, or try to trapping him to paternity, or his gossiping about him, or might leave him for the next guy, or cop like if you break down thriller like nine songs, none of the most depressing songs ever like literally song one, betrayal, gossip, song two, relationship abandonment. Song three is a cop blocking song. Song four, Monster is Gonna Fuck You Up? Song five, Gangsters are Gonna Fuck You Up? Song six, That Ain't My Baby? Song seven could sort of be seen as existentialism.

00:14:38
Speaker 2: You know, does God exist or whatever?

00:14:40
Speaker 1: And eight and nine are also songs in which he's begging for love. I remember when Heartbreak Hotel came out when I was nine. I used to watch the clock radio, like you know, you have a clock radio to get up and go to school, and it was such a scary, Like, no, thriller is campy and scary, but Heartbreak Hotel was really so scary to me because it wasn't over the top like Thriller is camp.

00:15:11
Speaker 2: But Heartbreak Hotel. Just as a nine year old, it sounded depressing to me.

00:15:17
Speaker 1: And I guess the story that Randy said was that Sony didn't believe in the song. Probably the funniest thing that I've found in my research of and watching Soul Train is, you know, Don Cornelius is a very colorful way of introducing songs, and the week that this album comes out, he starts by saying, well, you know, cameraman Tony has been begging me and begging me to play you know.

00:15:50
Speaker 2: Meanwhile you hear the.

00:15:52
Speaker 1: Like the intro is like long as hell, and so Don just tells a story about like after days and days and weeks of beg Me. We are finally going to grant cameraman three Tony's favorite song. This is the Jackson's Heartbreak, like literally like it's one of the funniest, funniest stories on Soul Train. But yeah, very depressing song. However, as an album, there's this whole clickbait thing on Instagram right now where this guy's posting that Triumph is a better album than Off the Wall.

00:16:27
Speaker 2: I believe it's the best Jackson's album.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: I don't believe it's better than Off the Wall, only because I do not like the engineering on Triumph. So for my forty fifth birthday, someone was gracious enough to send me all the stems the entire Triumph album, and I've done a way better mix with louder drums and way better and extra songs. You guys should actually hear it. Well again, more humble bragging. The title cut, which didn't make the record, sounds like the People's Court. No, literally, it sounds like the People Wait, so wait, I just gotta play the People Court.

00:17:14
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:17:15
Speaker 1: Intro of this song it sounds like earth Wind and Fire sing a song, but the beginning sounds like the People's Court. Listen, Michael Joseph Jackson from Gary, Indiana, wanted for shoplifting. Bubble Gum Questlam Show is a production of iHeartRadio