By: Tony Price
Telephone Explosion Records is a record label based in Toronto. Founded in 2007 by Steve Sidoli and Jon Schouten, the label has evolved from it’s humble beginnings documenting the local punk and garage rock oriented sounds coming out of the area into a major force in the Canadian music scene and a crucial nexus point for various currents of underground music from the past, present and future. In this interview we traverse a multitude of topics, from vinyl pricing structures and the Toronto music scene of the 2010s to the gentrification of taste, the possible connections between music piracy and reissue culture and beyond.
TP: My first question is a simple and obvious one: why did you start a label?
JS: We had no choice. It's just the classic thing of being in a band and being excited when you’re young and it's really hard generally for bands, you know. Wait, when we started the label, did Spotify exist?
TP: What year was this, 2007?
SS: Or maybe 2008.
JS: Give or take. I think we put it on a sticker somewhere. Hold on, let me look at the printed material. Yeah, 2007. That's how so many indie labels had been born over the years. Like Mute Records with Warm Leatherette, you made a piece of music that you were proud of and you wanted to put it out and that was basically the only way to do it.
TP: Your label has always had a focus on physical media. How would you say that music culture's relationship with physical media has changed since you started? Do you think people care more or less about something existing in a physical form? Do they buy these things for the same reason that they may have in 2008?
JS: I mean, definitely not. We were going through a distribution change in the last year, and we were having conversations with a few different larger indie distributors, and one of the conversations that we had when we were talking to them was about the pricing of our records. We want our products to be affordable and approachable for people. We had this whole case of trying to make these physical items accessible, and the person at the distribution company was like, why? It doesn’t matter anymore, because if people want to hear this music, they’ll do it on Spotify. If they’re gonna walk into a record store to buy it, they’re not gonna give a shit if it's $23 or $26. They’re already committed to wanting this thing in physical form, and they don’t need this physical thing anymore to listen to the music. So pricing strategy for vinyl doesn’t matter. If somebody wants it on vinyl they’re probably going to buy it regardless of the cost, is what he said.
TP: That’s very interesting. Do you think when people commit to spending whatever amount of money on vinyl at this point that they’re even buying it to listen to or are they buying it to own it?
JS: Right. It really changed changed a lot in my mind about our pricing structures and how we were thinking of these things and the difference between physical media and the future. Previously, the whole business was based on physical sales, and now as we’re moving forward, that is quickly becoming a much smaller portion of the business. And it is interesting. We were of the type of business, even three years ago, that was kind of proud of that fact that we were a very physical-based label. Now, we’re thinking more about opportunities for the music outside of it being such a limited release in a physical format. The world gets a lot more broad, opens up a lot more for both the label and the artist in terms of promotion and exposure and how people are consuming this media. I think that often, if you’re really stuck in the format and the physical media, it's very limiting in terms of your mindset.
TP: Did you find the transition from being a primarily physical label into more of a streaming-focused world made things confusing? Or did they become easier for you, from a label standpoint?
JS: Well, number one, I don’t think we’ve become more streaming focused. I think we’ve pulled back and have a bird’s eye view of everything that’s going on, to be able to see that it’s more of a balanced picture. It’s all important, but generally speaking, the opportunity for music is not in physical media sales anymore.
TP: From the other side of things, as music fans or consumers, what are your thoughts on streaming in general? Do you predominantly stream music when you hear it for the first time or do you like to buy vinyl? Just curious as to what you think. I personally love streaming music. Politics, and internet bullshit aside, I love it. It’s an extension of growing up in the era of BitTorrent and stuff.
JS: I think we’re both quite different, so I’ll let Steve answer independently.
SS: I’ve traditionally been more of a streamer. You know, I remember being a pretty average CD collector when that was the predominant medium, and as soon as MP3s came around, that kind of tied into the same time that I moved out of my parent’s place and struck out on my own, alone. As soon as money became an issue, MP3s and finding digital music that way took over.
JS: Soulseek, baby!
SS: Yeah, exactly. Soulseek was a classic.
JS: Still rocks, by the way.
SS: But as time evolved, I did get more into streaming. I found that I enjoyed getting MP3 downloads, whether I paid for them or not, to be better, because it still allowed me to have a collection that I curated, and Spotify was almost too much, too soon. I remember when that first came out, I ended up just listening to like, fifteen to twenty hours of nu metal because it was available. And I couldn’t figure out anything else that I wanted to listen to at the moment, it just like shocked my brain into listening to “Bodies Hit The Floor” or something, you know. But recently I’ve actually been buying vinyl again and I find that I’m enjoying it more because, once again, I’m curating a collection, and so my mind isn’t blown away by the possibilities of what I could listen to, so I don’t get frozen by that, and it forces me to listen to music over and over again, more often. That’s when I really start to connect with music. I can like a record, but I don’t love a record until I’ve heard it, like, thirty, forty times.
JS: I think I’ve always had a lot of records since I was a kid. I don’t have like, a lot lot, I’m not a psychopath. And I was super late to Spotify. I think Steve was on Spotify for years before I got onto it. And I was still like a Soulseek downloader, record buyer, I love digging and all of that stuff too. It’s interesting, now Spotify has become way more of my go-to, and also YouTube. Now when I find that when I’m buying records, I’m trying to buy stuff I’ve never heard before. I’ll just go off of the vibe of the cover or the era, the label, the players, the producers. So I’m buying the records that I’ve been lusting over for ten years, I’m buying things that when I put the needle down at home, I’ve never heard any of it. And that to me is a very exciting thing again, because it creates this thing – when I was a kid, when you’re fifteen you do the same shit, you’d go to the record store and buy the latest Lookout Records release and you’d put it on and home and chances are you’d end up liking it because, going to Steve’s point about the economics, you’d spend so much money on it that you’d just have to listen to it thirty times and by listening to anything thirty times, you’re probably going to like it a lot more. That way of listening to music when I was a kid, it forces you to like everything you buy a little bit, Which is really funny.
This YouTube hack, which is apparently the thing to do if you want to stop giving Spotify your money, is you get the YouTube Premium account so you don’t get any ads, and then you can get a player on your phone – it’s the same thing as Spotify, you can go to another window on your phone and it doesn’t turn off, so it’ll play like a player. I don’t know if everyone knows this, but DSP, the people that distribute music digitally to Spotify also deliver it to YouTube music, so you get the entire Spotify/YouTube catalogue, but you also get all the private uploads that all the weird collectors put up without any commercials, and you can save it to your phone.
SS: It’s incredible.
TP: I have that and it’s changed my life. I like to think about the late 2000s that period I always refer to as ‘the Blogspot era’. You know exactly what I’m talking about, right? Having the ability to go into those people’s YouTube accounts and find this insanely obscure stuff and have it right beside new releases that the digital distributors send out is insane. So that is definitely something that I have come across and love.
You’ve both touched on something, which I also wanted to ask, both from the label side and personal side, but let’s keep it personal for now. Your relationship to collecting physical things. You both buy vinyl, you just said that, but books, magazines, do you still enjoy buying those things and how do you store them? Do you have a system within which you keep these things lined up and organized, or do you like having them around the house, the studio, for inspiration? If not, do you keep that to the computers?
JS: I barely read, straight up. I read like two books last year, and it was strictly because of the pandemic. The books we have around are all like, the book that’s on the coffee table in the studio is that new Don Cherry book, “Organic Music Society” or whatever that’s called. Do you buy any books, Steve?
SS: No, I exclusively listen to audiobooks -
JS: Don’t get him started on this.
SS: - and I only listen to short horror stories.
JS: And they’re horrible. They’re so fuckin’ dumb, it’s like made by some crazy lunatic in his mom’s basement in Delaware.
TP: And when we say short, how short are we talking?
SS: Like, thirty minutes or under.
TP: Okay, that’s a decent bite-sized scare for you.
SS: While I’m going to pick something up in my car, I can get there and back and listen to the whole thing and then come home with goosebumps.
JS: Did you get what you were looking for? Nope, but I came home with goosebumps.
(All laughing.)
JS: Steve plays this shit when we go on tour while I’m driving literally the whole car falls asleep. There is no scare factor. The fear factor is gone. Joe Rogan is not on board for your podcast.
SS: One of the longest running MP3 collections that I have from Soulseek is what’s known as the Mammoth Book of New Horror. And I have Volume 14 or something, and it’s probably like thirty or forty short horror stories, and I have that on my Google Drive and I can share that with you.
JS: Share the link!
SS: Yeah, I’ll send it over. I’ll send it over. But (spooky voice) don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Bruce Haack - “Party Machine” from the Preservation Tapes LP (TER, 2018)
TP: So with all of this being said, and after talking about the conversation you having with distributors, what do you think the future holds for physical music media? Will it serve any purpose in the future?
JS: To be frank, if you’re a business that’s relying on physical media and you want to have longevity, you’re not thinking correctly.
SS: That’s the real horror story (all laughing).
JS: Straight up. Can you envision a world in ten years, all the people that are fuckin’ 23 years old right now, do you see those people as 33-year-old adults that are obsessing over the pressing quality of specific records? I just don’t fucking see it. We’re all dinosaurs, a little bit, that are obsessed with this stuff, and obviously there are new generations that are into it, but I just think that the number of people that are going to be into physical things, very organically, are gonna look at collecting and anything of that nature as pretty weird and obsolete, but again, I think that human nature of collecting is going to move digitally. I think NFTs and that kind of thing are showing us a little glimpse of how that human desire to hoard is going to be manifested in a digital way.
TP: One of the major trends in the past decade has been the increased outsourcing of what were traditionally label or managerial duties onto the artist. More than ever before, artists are expected to play the role of the bank, the producer, the graphic designer, audio engineer, social media manager, model…do you feel that artists that you’ve worked with over the past decade have been able to adapt to these times well or do you think that people still in general have a hard time dealing with these duties?
SS: I think that it’s not always the case. I think that we still do come across artists that are very green in all those aspects, and you’d be surprised that that still exists, that there are people that have no idea of anything outside of just making music, and that’s in a lot of ways, the way it should be. But obviously that might have more to do with the style of music and the artists that we work with, right? If we were a bit more mainstream we’d probably come across people that have their social media situation completely manicured and have everything down and maybe even be acting as their own manager. But I think it’s worse and I think there’s a time that people romanticize, and for good reason, when musicians just had the opportunity to make music without any outside influence.
JS: I mean, what a dream though, holy shit. Who wouldn’t be like, cool, I’m just gonna focus. Honestly, isn’t that still the dream, for people to get to that size where they’re just kind of like offsetting that? I feel like artists have just had to learn how to do this stuff out of necessity and the fact that budgets and sales have determined those resources, the financial resources for those things, has diminished, that’s the result. I think its also so empowering for an artist to be able to fully sculpt their vision and it’s something that people don’t often get to do historically where they’re like, I get to push my brain into thinking about how I want to be represented physically and what this project means. I think it allows people an exercise to have more understanding and depth in their art a little bit too.
SS: That’s the flipside, that’s the good part. You can come up with a concept record and have the concept go beyond the music. It could be everything from the art direction to how the person looks or the people look, to how they want that story to be shown to the world, and that’s a good thing, right? Because you don’t have your board room of usually straight white guys crunching numbers and letting that be the thing that dictates all that other stuff.
TP: I wanna bring it back to something we were talking about before and tie it in to the reissue stuff you guys have done. The Blogspot era, which was around the time that we probably first met, that’s kind of the world that Telephone Explosion came out of, in a way. That was my favourite time for music consumption, that time at the end of the 2000s when there were just thousands of these really highly-curated music blogs appearing with links to MediaFire, RapidShare and Megaupload uploads of these insane records. I was discovering these New Age tapes and Japanese noise and European free jazz and all this crazy dub and shit, it was just mind blowing.
JS: FM Shades.
TP: Do you remember Crystal Vibrations? Did you ever come across that one? That was the big New Age blog, that’s where I first discovered Steve Roach. Some of the stuff you guys have been putting out on TER or Morning Trip seems to be part of this resurgent boom in reissue culture that has emerged in the past decade. It’s almost like you’re filling a void that was left by the disappearance of these blogs. Would you say that part of your intention with rereleasing these lost or forgotten records is sort of a reaction to the gentrification of music curation at the hands of tech companies like Spotify? Filling a void that was left after the last iteration of obscure music sharing systems were around?
Steve Roach - “Structures From Silence” from the Structures From Silence Reissue (TER, 2017)
JS: Yeah. What do you think, Steve?
SS: I think that it’s different, it feels different, anyways. Buying a deluxe LP reissue package with all the liner notes and photos and all the information that you could want, compared to this clandestine, Blogspot download through MediaFire, they’re two separate experiences, you know? I also have memories, share some of the nostalgia for that time, and I did not discover Steve Roach that way but I could imagine listening to that on an MP3 the first time would have been a cool experience. I’m picturing it being 1 a.m. on a pretty big desktop computer or a pretty clunky laptop or something like that, that’s pretty cool.
TP: That’s exactly what it was like for me!
SS: It’s true, I do think that in a lot of ways, the people that buy the reissue records that we put out, and that Morning Trip puts out, probably did have those same experiences and so the landscape changed, and the internet changed, and you couldn’t really have those experiences anymore so we’re providing it in the way that is possible and makes sense now, and it’s not better or worse, but it is different. It’s a different experience.
JS: I think it’s become crazy mainstream. When we started reissuing the Bruce Haack stuff, we thought we were doing something that nobody had fucking done before, which is really stupid of us. People have been doing this shit forever. People were reissuing 70s records on cd in the 90s, it was still very much underground thing in a way for people to access this archival music. We’re probably second wave reissue if you want to get into waving it. And then I think there was a third wave, and I think when that hit, it got to the point where it was really fucking cringe and everything became about the hype sticker and the “lost” classic, and the uniqueness of the story diluted the quality of music. I think that with that came competition, and with competition came more records getting reissued and the quality of that category of music had diminished to the point where it no longer felt special for a while. For me, specifically. It just felt like, oh everyone is doing this and it feels like anything can be reissued. It came very diluted, to the point where culturally, people were more concentrated on the past than the present, and I was guilty of that at point of my life, a hundred percent. And I’ve just had a bit of a shift in my life through the reissue boom where I want to focus more on what’s going on now and cultivating that, because I think that’s more exciting. You’re working with real humans who are still alive and you can help careers and the whole thing is so much more collaborative and feels better, and the future is uncertain so there’s that excitement. It’s an interesting thing where people got so sucked in to living in the past through their music consumption where, regardless of what music you like, whether it was New Age or esoteric jazz or hard rock, there’s always a contemporary band that’s doing that in a new, exciting way that can scratch that itch for you. I feel like if you’re going to put your money and your attention toward something, it should be supporting someone that’s doing it now.
TP: I’m curious, does it seem to you that people are more interested at this point in purchasing physical copies of reissues than they are new music? Are they apprehensive to buy new music in comparison or do you find it’s actually not like that?
SS: I think it’s probably equal. If you’re an artist that is popular and you’re like an “indie” artist or, ‘insert contemporary genre here’, and you’re on a larger label and it’s the type of label that moves vinyl, then I think there’s still a thriving market for that. You go to any record store and you look at the new release section and there will be some reissues there but there’s still plenty of new records, and if you talk to the people behind the cash, they’ll be like yeah, that one moves for sure. I think in a lot of ways, the peak of the reissue scene is over now. I think we’re post-‘that’, where things live a bit more harmoniously and they don’t eat each other’s market share as much.
JS: I actually think that they benefit each other. I think that oftentimes, going back to the physical thing specifically, if you’re getting into physical music, you grew up in the 90s and you’re a backpack hip-hop guy and you go through a resurgence of wanting all your A Tribe Called Quest records again, and you buy the setup and you buy those staple records, then you have the setup, and it becomes a gateway for you to get into buying the contemporary physical products. I think vice versa too, if you already have the setup and you’re into contemporary music, you’re going to buy the old stuff. We used to think that they lived in separate worlds within the consumer, but the more I think about it now, it’s all become the same, a little bit.
TP: What is the process of reissuing a body of work like? Do you hear something that speaks to you followed by this the whole process of tracking it down? If these artists are still alive, how do they usually react to this proposal? Are they excited or surprised? Skeptical?
JS: Each situation is completely different, but the initial spark of a release is always from when you hear something and it literally knocks you over, and you’re just like, I’m gonna investigate this, I’m going to look into this further. The journey becomes very individual at that point. Most of the time I’d say the artists are really excited that somebody’s interested in this music. They’re eager, I would say, is more the response you would get than somebody that’s like “fuck off”. But there are people that have negative attachments to that time in their life. You have to think that, typically speaking, this is a bit of a dark cloud, but typically speaking, the records that we’re reissuing are small, private press records that somebody put their heart and soul into, in the 70s, 80s, 90s where it was hard to do all of that stuff DIY. Going back to your question about the artist in 2022 is the manager, social media person, booking agent et cetera, think about being somebody in 1981 where you’re just like, oh, I have this weird electronic funk music you want to make, you have to go out and buy the TASCAM, learn how to use it, write all the songs yourself, figure out a production plant that’s going to press it for you, you have to make the artwork, you have to distribute the record, you have to create your own record label. Oftentimes these records are coming out on private press record labels that are just the artist putting out their own records, like we started with, which is ironic. And then most of the time, they’re failures. That’s why they didn’t do well, that’s why they only made one round of 500. It was always outsider music and they didn’t know how to distribute it or make it a big thing and from a large industry perspective, they were failures. So that can bring up old, bad feelings for some people. They spend five or ten years of their life and put thousands and thousands of dollars into this record, and now it’s like you’re talking about it again. It’s a bit of an interesting thing. There is no better feeling than getting somebody on the phone for the first time. It’s really exciting and you don’t know what the person’s gonna be like. Most of the time those conversations tend to be an hour too long because it just spirals into the era and what they were doing, what they’re doing now, all that sort of stuff. They’re really wonderful conversations.
Tony Price - “Interview” from the Interview/Discount LP (TER, 2020)
TP: I want to bring it back to the beginning and talk about Toronto now. We first met in Toronto, probably around the time that you started Telephone Explosion. Maybe I was just young, but it seemed to me at the time that there was some kind of a current or a pulse running through the underground music scene in Toronto at that time. There was a healthy blend of DIY venues, independent promotors or curators, and then you had medium-sized venues that were there as a place to play when other bands came through, there was a good selection of record stores, it felt good to be in a band at that time, from my perspective. It seemed like there was always something happening, there were new bands and projects always popping up. There was also this cross-pollination between Toronto and these emergent scenes in Brooklyn or Montreal or even, like, Atlanta or something. This was largely the scene that helped give birth to your label, and to my own career in music. Over the past decade, I’ve lived in and out of Toronto and every time I come back I feel like there’s some drastic change, from all perspectives that I was just talking about. How do you feel that Toronto as a music city has changed and what do you make of the current situation in terms of a Toronto music scene?
SS: Good question. I think there was definitely the prevailing spirit before the pandemic and Covid hit was that gentrification and rising prices combined with streaming and the ability to watch stuff on YouTube instead of live was killing the live music scene and the underground music scene in the city. Then we didn’t do anything for two years, and now that we’re back, we’re in this, it’s not really a boom, but people are so happy to go out and experience musicians playing music live, it’s almost this overjoyed feeling. I don’t know how long that’s gonna last for, but right now it’s once again a really good place to be. But we’ll see what happens in a year or so. It’s an interesting question because I feel like the age you were when a certain thing happened co-relates to your feeling on things. I had just moved to Toronto in 2007, 2008, so it was a brand new city to me. I was in my late 20s and I was meeting all these new people and I still had connections to Ottawa where I was from before, and Montreal, and it was just a time when playing shows meant a different kind of thing, so I wonder if there are people that are 22, 23 in Toronto now that are having that exact same feeling that you and I had in 2007 and we just don’t see it as much because the age difference is a prohibitor from us being involved in that stuff.
JS: Yeah, I think that’s totally it. I think it has a lot to do with youth for sure. The city has changed a lot. Toronto in 2010, to me, was peak fucking amazing city, but that was also because I was like 25 and partying all the time. We would have friends that would come up here for NXNE when that would happen and it became the Northern SXSW, there was house shows and rooftop shows, and it felt like the energy was unstoppable. Obviously Toronto has developed, changed ike the rest. That’s what happens with a city. Pre-pandemic, there was a heavy vibe of all the DIY spots getting shut down, pretty much non-existent as it stands. Obviously Covid had a lot to do with that too, in terms of the new wave of them starting back up. But I do believe there would have been another way. I think that overall, the spirit of Toronto currently is very positive. There was definitely a dark period where people really liked to shit on it, but in terms of the overall community vibe, I think Toronto is actually experiencing something right now that has never happened, and that’s truly breaking down the different scenes and genres within the city. People are way, way, way more open to being in different scenes and seeing different genres of music and having different experiences, where before, if you were a Tranzac person, you were a fuckin’ Tranzac person. You would never go to, like, Coda, or a nightclub, or something. You’d never go to Neutral, the goth bar. You stayed in your lane, and now I feel like Toronto, which is probably representative of the world, is that people are just way more open to going to anything that’s good and interesting. To me, that’s more exciting than where we were at when we met back in 2008 or whatever. I’m just excited.
TP: That’s amazing to hear. Since that time, I have been in Toronto for long stretches of time. I’ve also spent time in these “traditional” music cities, like New York, or London, or L.A., and these places obviously are very storied with their pasts, but speaking right now, being in New York City, the music scene here is, I don’t even know what it is. I do feel that Toronto always has had something special to it. What I think didn’t exist at that time that needed to exist, for a lot of us, was a label like what Telephone Explosion is now. I think you really have filled a void that was very prevalently gaping. I know you guys had your label at that time, but it wasn’t what it is at this point, where it’s this central, powerful hub that could have tied everything all together. I think that’s an important part of a scene. I really understand Toronto’s gentrification has been wild over the past seven years. To watch things change at that rate has been insane. Every time I come back, I’m like, where am I? I think with Telephone Explosion at the point where it’s at now, where it’s internationally recognized as being a force of music, really is and can continue to put Toronto on the map, with everyone making music here. There are so many people crossing boundaries and so many people that are doing amazing things in those spaces between scenes, and I think that you guys have a wonderful knack for recognizing that. I know exploitation is a dirty word, but “exploiting” those interesting links between things. I’m very happy that everything has come as far as it has for you guys and it’s a pleasure working with both of you. It’s such a pleasure to work with people who you don’t have to explain things to. You just get it and you know it, and it’s very amazing that you guys are still Toronto based. I just want to say thank you for always sticking with me and I really appreciate everything you guys have done.
JS: Wow. Thank you, that’s very touching. But isn’t that what it’s all about? Isn’t it all about long relationships? We didn’t set out to be like “we’re Toronto! Check out Toronto!” like billboard people. We did it and it’s just the music that touches us. We truly think it’s extremely special. The way that it's developing – I think in the next couple years you’ll start to see that cross-pollination pushing even further out and I think that’s when you start to break down genre connecting communities, that’s where the real powerful stuff is.
TP: I look forward to what happens with this stuff. You can always draw comparisons to the past. I’ve recently been obsessed with the early 80s in England, again, like I was in 2008. That kind of cross-pollination that was happening in post-punk. The setting and the timing is ripe for something like this to really blossom. That’s basically all I have written down and you guys really answered some cool questions in very compelling ways. I’m excited to type this up.
JS: Well, hopefully should hire someone to do it, because we talk too much. Steve has a theory that we are living in an era, maybe you can describe this better than I can, about the proficiency of being musical, basically.
SS: So going back to that 2007 stuff we were talking about, that was the time when it was not cool to be good at your instrument, or to make records that sounded good (all laughing). If it sounded it was just a microphone going into a soundcard, that’s what everybody wanted. I had people actually come up to me at times saying, “you’re good but I’m not really into drummers that can keep time, I’m more into people that just seem like they’re picking it up and going with it.” Now, it’s become cool to be a muso again.
TP: In the same way that it’s become cool to be rich.
SS: Whoa.
TP: You see what I’m saying?
SS: Now that you’ve said that, it’s going to burrow into my brain and I’m going to start researching it.
JS: Isn’t that what social media promotes? It’s not like, look how shitty I am.
TP: There’s a very interesting correlation between those two things, you know.
JS: Totally. It’s like, look at all the nice shit I bought, look at the nice shit I own, look at the nice shit I’m doing.
TP: That’s interesting. Do you think that there will be a time in 20 years when a new label pops up and they’re like, we’re reissuing these cassette tapes that were made on GarageBand with blown-out microphones from the dollar store? It’s inevitable, really.
JS: Abso-fucking-lutely. People are already reissuing emo stuff that was pretty crappy from Southern Ontario and doing releases that never came out on Bandcamp. The reissue culture has because, again, the 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever has kind of been tapped, it’s all moved up already. You’re starting to see reissues that are like, “originally released only on Bandcamp in 2008” and stuff. It’s moving up. For sure. I think that you’ll see 5th wave garage moment.
SS: Somebody rereleased a Times New Viking cassette or something.
JS: Oh boy.
TP: The Holy Cobras discography, 5 LP box set.
JS: Oh my god, take it. Please. I’m sure they’d be into that. It’s just like, what is time? When you have friends, it’s just a funny thing where your interests kind of grow and stay the same. And it’s wonderful.