Shawn Ryan Show - #91 Deadmau5
Episode Date: January 8, 2024SRS is kicking off 2024 with legendary music producer and DJ Joel Zimmerman, a.k.a. Deadmau5. Deadmau5 has had an incredibly successful music career spanning nine studio albums and seven Grammy Nomina...tions. In this episode, Zimmerman shares his early years coming up in Canada and the dawn of the internet music scene. He breaks down how his first critically acclaimed release came by happenstance and how he ultimately forged a new path in electronic music. Shawn and Joel also unpack how hit songs are made and what it's like to DJ to thousands of people in a digitally equipped mouse head. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://betterhelp.com/shawn https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://helixsleep.com/srs - USE CODE "HELIXPARTNER20" https://hvmn.com/shawn https://moinkbox.com/shawn https://goldco.com/ryan | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Deadmau5 Links: Tour - https://deadmau5.com/shows Merch - https://mau5hop.com IG - https://www.instagram.com/deadmau5 X - https://twitter.com/deadmau5 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/2CIMQHirSU0MQqyYHq0eOx Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/deadmau5/78011850 Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
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Happy New Year everybody! This is the first episode of 2024 and let me tell you it is a banger.
And 2024 is going to be one hell of a year. It's going to be hard to top 2023, but we'll do it. We always do. So anyways, this is a story about a man who made it big by not complying with the typical industry
mandate BS
One off on his own paved his own way and it paid off big time and I
Have it to be a huge fan of this man's music
I can't wait to get this episode out
It's been in the can for a little while and I've been so
excited to get it out. If you guys get anything out of these episodes, please head over to Apple and
Spotify. Leave us a review. Like, comment and subscribe to the channel and for those of you that
already know, actually those that don't know, there are tons of free reels you can download, create your own thing, put them on your channel, whatever
social media platform you want, monetize it, make money, all we ask is that you
tag the show. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome my new
friend Joel Zimmerman, also known as Deadmouse for the Chonrine Show. Love you all, cheers and happy New Year.
Joel Zimmerman, welcome to the Chonrine Show, man. This is great. I like this. I'm glad he liked it. The, and I am like pumped to have you here.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I didn't tell you last night, but I am a, I'm a huge fan, man.
Really? Yes. Like, which, like since, like forever ago?
Since. Man, I don't know when it started, but I have done the majority of my party in career
has been to your music.
Oh, that's cool, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's do it overseas when I was fighting like, I get that.
I love your stuff, man.
I get it. I get a lot of emails from, you know, active service dudes and stuff like
I say, hey, I'm over here and, you know, we listen to your do do do do and
while I'm doing this.
I'm like, wow, that's crazy.
Yeah, man, we used to listen to you
before operations.
That's crazy.
You're ready.
So it was my part.
Yeah, it's pretty surreal.
But let me give you an intro here real quick.
So Joel Zimmerman, aka Deadmouse,
one of the top EDM music producers in the world.
You've been at it for roughly 28 years.
You brought dubstep to the mainstream.
Five platinum singles, seven Grammy nominations.
One of them was what, two days ago?
Two days ago, yeah.
Which one was actual?
I didn't even announce it on the plane.
Are you serious?
Did you see, I always saw my way to the show actually,
this morning.
And I do msgirl, this me, I love it.
Like I don't know, it is not like, you know,
like I'm a sadist or anything, but I just,
I like weird subreddits.
And one of them is called, I'm the main character.
And it's just, you know, like clips of people in public,
like just filming other people on your notes
to them being absolute weirdos.
And there was a young woman on the flight
on a united flight or something like that.
And it's one of those like,
I'm in a seat aisle phone thing.
And his lady starts singing on the plane.
And I was like, oh man, what is this?
And then she's going off about how she was just nominated
for a Grammy.
And I'm like reading this and all the comments
and they're like, oh, it does so cringey.
Mer-mer-mer-mer.
It turns out that the young woman actually was,
but as a backup singer on an album
that was Reese's own gospel album that was released
and I was like, holy shit, no.
And she's like telling the flight attendant telling,
yelling at the plane while they're all eating their chicken
and or beef.
I just got nominated for Grammy.
There were five claps and then a lot of deep-size.
I just enjoy my flight.
You didn't chime in on the comments?
Yeah.
I don't want to.
I wish I was on that flight though.
Programmer, developer, Adrenaline Junky, innovator,
and you know, one of the things that I really like about you
and we just kind of spoke about it downstairs is,
I'm getting people on the show
that don't conform to society's unwritten rules. And what I mean by that is, you're an
innovator. And your music is, in my opinion, very, it's just very unique. It's very different
than everybody else that's out there. And I just just wanna tell you, man, I really appreciate the fact that you have that courage
to just go out and do your own thing, and it works,
and it's awesome.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess I've kinda always,
you know, did my own thing, so to speak,
but, you know, with that too,
you do kinda have to conform to some things.
You don't even mean where it's like,
where you can still be, you know, at these events,
where other people who are doing similar things to you,
where there's some kind of cohesion.
Yeah, you know, otherwise you get just absolute chaos
and randomness and then that's where you get that weird,
insane, genius line kind of thing happening. You know, and
Yeah, so but that that's cool like I
Try I make an effort
You know to kind of invent it shows them and you got a very
It's just a very distinct
style or sound or or
Whatever you guys call it in the music industry, but it's awesome.
So, thank you for being here.
Yeah, but everybody, before we go too deep,
everybody gets a gift.
Oh!
Oh, nothing crazy.
Just something to enjoy on the way home.
Gummi bears. Gummi bears. Eight ounces way home. Gummy bears.
Gummy bears.
Eight ounces per bag.
They're legal.
What are they?
It's just gummy bears.
It's just candy.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
2023, I'm like, can I eat these?
We have to make plans.
I cancel my day before I pound some of these actual gummy bears.
Yeah, it's just gummy bears, man.
That's amazing. I get to put these around the house
and they're gonna be like,
bro, I didn't know you were into that.
Come on, rock, come on, you guys.
But thank you.
So you're welcome.
So we kind of met through,
well, we didn't kind of meet through,
we met through Bryce Jr.
And who I just interviewed
and his is coming out on Thanksgiving
and he had mentioned to me that he knows you
and I said, oh man, I would love to interview that.
We made it happen real quick.
Yeah, so how do you know Bryce?
I've known of Bryce, right, forever.
He's a nerd core rapper, dude.
And that's the one side of him
and we all know the other side of him, and he's just a super smart guy.
Good dude to bounce ideas off of, and talk tech, and nerd shit, and little stuff, and all that.
So we've been, me and him have, like, circulated in those communities, like, since the dawn of the internet, basically. So he's just an OG.
And I have always had the utmost respect for the dude,
and the things he's done, and it's just all his approach
to solving problems, I guess,
in the technical world and stuff like that,
when it comes to like Andy Sag and stuff like that.
So we actually kind of really got into I guess, you know, in the technical world and stuff like that when it comes to like Andy Sagan stuff like that. So
we
We actually kind of really got together when he had posted an acapella of one of his songs on the website and
He he became friends with one of my great friends Steve Duda for a minute there who's another software developer, but he does more audio software and
I remember doing this song and it was almost complete.
I don't know, it was like, man, I gotta get it.
I'm just like, you know, finished the track and me and Steve are sitting in the studio.
And I was like, I'm trying to just run through what rapper would be great on this track,
kind of thing.
And then Steve mentioned, he goes,
oh, you should get Bryce.
And then I was like, oh yeah,
and I was looking him up again.
I was like, oh, he's got all this like all this new stuff.
And then in his folder, he had acapella's,
which means it's just his voice with no music and stuff like that.
So he would like, he just put that up on his site
for people to use, I guess.
So I just, I literally won to one that Acapala
and then laid it in the track and it worked perfectly.
And I was like, oh, this is the dream, okay, cool.
And I'm like, give me Bryce's like actual contact.
And he's like, yeah, it's just, oh, I'm gonna say it,
but the email is so blatantly hilarious.
You know, and I was like, oh my God, like this guy's,
he's still legit.
You know, so I hit him up and he was like, hell yeah, let's put this out officially.
And then easy breezy.
I own the label and I control everything, so it's just like, yeah, let's do it.
That's awesome.
Yeah, no.
How far back do you guys go?
Well, like, I mean, like in Birds of a Feather way, you know what I mean, it's not like
we're like, we've been besties for a while.
It's just, you know, I'm sure I'm sure he's heard my name in passing.
I've heard his name in passings, but like,
late 90s?
Late 90s, that long.
Yeah, that's like over 20 years.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But knowing of each other,
not necessarily interacting or working
on the same kind of projects.
We were in two different camps.
I was in a hashtag audio apps,
and I pretty sure he was more 2600 kind of guy.
I don't know, actually, we never really talked about it.
What is that being 2600?
2600 is like just an old IRC group,
or USENED group that just hackers from back in the day like when it was all
dial up, there was no internet, it was pre-AOL, it was pre-net scape.
It was just like foam hacker dudes and people who exploited like facts, data modem lines and stuff like that.
It was just little group of dudes.
So this is like, this is your childhood.
Kind of, yeah.
Yeah, but I never got into a deep as some of my friends, right?
So like, I'll admit it, I was a bit of a script kiddy
when I was a kid because like the internet for me
was like IRC or something like that.
And then the most damaged, you know, evil hacker stuff I would do
is run some like teardrop scripts on IRC
because I was the only kid in the neighborhood
who had like a cable modem that it was brand new
and you can get like a mega second
so you could ping flood this kid you don't like
off the IRC channel, we can align them
and we do all this dumb stupid kid shit. this kid you don't like off the IRC channel, we K-Line-O,
and we do all this dumb, stupid kids shit.
We're talking like 15, 16 years old,
just trying to have the big internet dick,
and that stuff, because there were really no in-place systems
that were in our reach to really get involved,
and we didn't care about white-hiding anything.
We just dumb little shits.
It was all brand new bad then, huh?
Yeah, yeah, it was cool.
And that's what was interesting.
So it was like a lot of,
I think maybe that's kind of contributable to why
I might do things a little unconventionally a lot of times
because I honestly believe that I was probably the only kid in high school that was like even
into that thing. I didn't have a group, you know what I mean? In like in real life, you know,
of dudes, hey, come over, let's hang out, let's make a BBS, which was, that was the internet,
it was bulletin board system.
So you had to pick up your phone,
put it on a thing and use a 2600-bod rate modem,
which is like unbelievably slow,
compared to like today.
And it was text only.
So all the artwork weren't JPEGs and stuff like that.
Those even weren't a thing.
It was ass-y art.
So pictures of things that were made up of letters and numbers.
You sometimes see it, but that's what it was back in the day.
We used to play games with...
Before email was invented, actually.
It was a genie came first and then email and stuff like that. But what you had to do is you would start a computer up and you would run a BBS, like
a bulletin board system.
So your computer would act as a server and only one person could connect you at a time.
So if you call a BBS and it's busy, it means someone's on it.
So it's like, it's imagine an internet.
When you go to the webpage, but the webpage can only be displayed to one person at a time until they're done using it. So it's like, imagine in the internet, when you go to the web page, but the web page can only be displayed to one person at a time until they're done using it. So that's what kind of how a BBS worked,
right? But then then renegade BBS, I think was the first one to support what was called a dual-node
BBS, meaning two people could be on it, but you needed two phone lines to do it. So two people could be
on the same BBS at the same time, and that just blew my mind, right?
Because a guy from Toledo, Ohio,
and I could be in there,
and we could be playing Legend of the Red Dragon together.
Or, you know, like, which is like a text-based RPG,
kind of dumb thing, you know,
where you could log in, log out,
let someone else go on and stuff like that,
but there was a point where, you know,
two people could be connected at the same time,
and I'm like, oh my God, I'm talking to a guy in Toledo.
For free, like, or, yeah.
Yeah, she, you know what I mean,
you saw the pay-long distance,
you've had to call a BBS in Toledo, right?
But it was just, it blew my mind.
And, you know, I was like, oh, what do you do?
And I'm like, I'm talking to a person and they're like,
okay, that's the meaning, you know?
I can't wrap my head around that, but you do, you, boo.
Well, how old were you on this, what's happening?
Hey, 13, 14, five hour, I don't know, dude.
That's a good one.
I was young.
I was good.
Well, let's go.
I was still, it was probably like grade seven.
So yeah, probably when I was like 13.
This stuff is fascinating to me.
Let's dive into your childhood
Where did you grow up? I grew up in the thriving metropolis of Niagara Falls, Ontario
So the pretty side of
Niagara Falls we had the like the because the falls is actually on the American side
So but we get the view which is pretty funny
Yeah, they're like we want the false well, I find happen. You know, it's like a big thing, right? And you have to look
over to see them. They're like, okay, fine. So that's where they
drew the line, I guess. And yeah, it was interesting, man,
because it's, it's a very like touristy place. So growing up,
your destiny was working at Marine Land or a hotel, or, you
know, some tourist attraction thing you know that was it
like it's it's very tourism well I don't I it still is I guess but like that was your destiny yeah
and so part of grade school was like I'm not I'm seeing it now is that they would teach a lot of
I'm seeing it now, I said they would teach a lot of French and Spanish and stuff like that so that you could accommodate, you know, like, because you're going to, you know what I mean?
It's as it was kind of depressing when you think about it now, but yeah, they really kind
of kind of groomed you up to be in the service industry if you lived in Niagara Falls for a
minute, you know?
Not too many people that I know, like, kind of got out when it did not Niagara Falls things.
Were you in the service industry?
No, no, no, no, I escaped it.
Like I mean, I just didn't do anything.
I was just a little shit in my mom's house
playing on the computer, like trying to think of a way out,
you know?
Yeah.
I'm not saying like that's every kid in Niagara Falls.
I might be over exaggerating that,
but that's what it felt like, you know what I mean?
So, yeah.
What were you into?
I was into music and computers.
And computers were so like a fad.
You know, people weren't using them at work,
you know, or for work or anything like
that because these things were, it was like the dawn of the 286, you know what I mean,
which was like the hobby machine plus, you know, and they didn't really have courses
in school that had anything to do with a computer, but they did, you know, when
I started getting to high school, they started to introduce networking or simple things
or whatever.
And that was cool, but like the computer when I was a kid wasn't a tool.
It was more of like a hobby, you know, it was like an Nintendo plus, you know, for whatever,
you know. So, yeah, we had a typewriter, you know.
So you grew up in the age where
you went from the typewriter to the computer.
So how did you get into computers?
What was the fascination for?
The fascination was the little PC speaker.
The beep, that's it.
There were no DACs, there were no sound cards of the first computers that I owned. They were just like little PC speaker. The beep, that's it. There were no DACs, there were no sound cards,
the first computers that I owned,
they were just like little PC speakers
and they could just emulate monophonic tones
and stuff like that.
And at that time too, my parents enrolled me
into like classical piano and stuff,
just like shit to do after school,
till they're done work,
and then I go home kind of thing.
So I did that for a while.
And I got, I got a lot of like classical,
like kind of drilled into me and I was a little reluctant
because it was more, we spent more time like doing drills
than farting around, you know, playing songs I like,
you know, or something like that.
And I developed really great muscle memory
like so that I think in some alternate reality,
I would have been a great pianist,
but I just, I liked the computer,
and I wanted to do what I was doing there on the computer,
but there was no software really available for PC.
Mind you, we had Atari STs, which were early PCs that ran basic as an operating system
and they had some music making capability, but it was MIDI only, meaning that the computer
itself didn't produce audio. It just produced MIDI signal to go to synthesizers that had
that capability to do it. And there were very few and far between, as there is today for that kind of thing.
And it was really expensive for the MIDI gear,
not so much the computer.
So there was like C-lab and Octomed.
And they were just big pieces of hardware
that you would plug a MIDI cable into.
And it was like kind of a,
some people might know what I'm referring to
is like a tracker style of composing music, not so much like notation or MIDI notes and
stuff like that.
And I basically experienced creating music through the evolution of it, through into the computer
age, which is crazy when I think about it,
how fortunate I am to be able to see it from when
it was just barely possible to now,
you know, whereas like I see a lot of like, you know,
younger people try to get into music
and they just have all everything ready to go.
Here's all the tools.
And not to say that they're at a disadvantage there
because they don't know the history,
but it's just really interesting to see where it's kind of heading and where it's been
and what worked, what didn't,
that kind of thing from the start.
Yeah, so I mean, we had kind of spoken last night about it.
We're gonna go back to childhood
when I'm jumping around here, but we had kind of talked
about it last night about some of the, about your music versus some of the other DJs out there and some of the some of the
Over exaggeration when you see a guy on set
Okay, well that's that's like kind of two different arenas. I feel I don't know
um and
and
I've been harping on it,
and I'm sure it's all very readable and look upable.
But like in DJ traditionally, right?
This is like, it's like talking about,
shit you shouldn't talk about,
because you're always gonna bum somebody out.
And I don't, I've always like,
I don't waste too much time thinking about it,
but I've always tried to think of this like totally Geneva answer for what a DJ is.
You know what I mean? Because like, I'm like, okay, I added, it's like fundamental,
a DJ plays music, right? He's a, he's a human iPod.
And then, with all due respect, you get dudes, Mixed Master Mike and, you know,
Cue Burton and DJs who are like technical scratch DJs
who play on whatever, and they're like,
no, this is like an art or kick Koala, right?
Who's made an entire album out of turntableism
and stuff like that.
And they're like, okay, yes, also a DJ,
but that's different, you know what I mean?
And then a DJ who uses controllers
and no traditional DJ equipment, also DJing, you know what I mean?
But doing it live, there's a guy right now
who's absolutely destroying everything,
this guy called Fred again,
and he does a lot of padwacking and stuff like that.
And is he making an album up there?
Well, he could, you know, make to a degree, you know what I mean?
But he's doing a lot of sampling,
he's doing a lot of like, you know, cutting and stuff like that.
And that's another thing.
But you could also say, oh, he's DJing.
You know, playing back some elements of pre-recorded material,
you know what I mean?
So that there's your answer.
There's like eight fucking hundred ways
to skin the DJ cat, right?
And I think now at least the last like 10 years,
people have gotten smarter to know
that he's not up there like just like a jazz musician
creating original music for you on the fly.
Yeah, I'm so glad that era's gone, you know,
because when electronic music became, you know,
more and more popular,
and producers were producing music, but then they're like, well, how are we going to do this
on stage?
Because me in the studio is listening to the same fucking loop for like fucking 30 hours
straight back to back, trying to find tune shit.
You know what I mean?
That is not something you could sit through and have a great time to, you know, like it's annoying.
You know, it's, but it's work, you know.
It's like a painter.
You know, like you can watch like a painter,
like a finger painter guy, like what's his name?
You see, Garbaldi or whatever,
and he does, he's like really quick half time
during a sporting event, kind of finger painting of an artist.
And it's like boom, it's done.
That's entertaining because you can do it in like five minutes
and have a really cool thing, right?
But if you're, you know, try to imagine
a crowd gathered under Leonardo at the Sistine Chapel.
And this guy's like,
you know what I mean?
It does put things into perspective. I'm just saying, you know what I mean?
So it's all about the methodology and the delivery
of good and short or amazing and high effort.
Yeah, so.
Thank you. Let's effort. Yeah, so. Thank you.
Let's go back to childhood now.
So we were talking about how you got into computers,
programming, a little bit of hacking.
Yeah.
How did music come into play?
Where did the inspiration come from?
Well, I think it was, it wasn't music felian because I like, I think I was,
I was decided around, you know, when I was like eight or nine, I'm like, I don't care what
I do when I'm older as long as it involves a little computer. You know what I mean? I'll
be a graphic designer, I'll be a programmer, I'll be a, I don't give a shit, I'll be a
little hacker. I don't know, you know what I mean?
But I just, I wanna be at this computer,
I wanna be hunched over and unhealthy in my 40s.
So, um, that's what I wanted to do.
But then, you know, like I'm thinking,
okay, well like I started hobbying music myself,
like researching what little resource I had.
I had to go to the public library
to read up on like digital audio, you know,
because again, like there was an internet,
there was BBSs and there was Archie and Gofer
and all that stuff too, but very limited on
how to make a club banger, you know what I mean?
Like, no, it just didn't even exist.
So I had to find people, you know,
that did that kind of thing
because there were electronic musicians back there,
before me, you know, and while I was interested in it,
who was before you?
Tears for fierce?
They were electronic, nice nails were doing stuff.
Very early, like when they were 10,000 homomaniacs,
that kind of that era and stuff like that,
ministry, all that early industrial stuff,
skinny puppy, I actually lean more towards,
dude, club music wasn't even on my radar,
like the, no kidding.
Oh, fuck, oh no, it was all early industrial stuff.
Like my dad bought that, remember that Columbia house deal where deal where you buy like he'd see these for a penny. Yeah, yeah, yeah
They come in the magazines. Yeah, I was I was one of those kids so I'm me too. Yeah, my dad went out and so I
Don't know you know, but my dad he's not he my dad's not into music
You know, we won't find him barefoot in front of the record player, you know, with his harming cordon.
You know, like, nah, nah, nah, nah.
He just, he just like, might as well,
but a receiver, CD player and the whole thing,
we're just like, holy shit, like that.
Oh, weird thing to splurge on, dad, you know,
like, cause it's just totally not his thing.
He's a auto manufacturer guy.
He worked at General Motors, you know,
he drove around tow motors
and he was just, man, it's man.
You know, like, and we weren't very, very,
lower middle class upbringing,
just a standard family, shit.
You know, so it was really weird to come home
from school one day and see my dad,
like I'm boxing a CD player.
You know, I was like, oh geez, okay, here we go.
Okay, so, and then he, I don't know,
honestly I'm not like incredibly close with my dad,
but like he liked some music, like the doors and stuff like that.
So I think he just got like the best of the doors
and I don't know, dealer's choice for the other seven.
So they sent some weird shit, right?
So we got like a warrant,
for the other seven. So they sent some weird shit, right? So we got like a warrant, um, uh, uh, uh, Steely Dan, the best of Steely Dan, uh, some U21 and, uh, you know what I mean?
Just kind of like a mixed bag of shit, right? And I was like, okay, well, these are the
eight CDs we own. And this is what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna, I'm fucking listening to
this shit because there's nothing else to fucking do. You know, so, the really, like, I was
that bored when I was a kid, right?
So, um, I would just find myself sitting in front of the CD player,
like just fucking listening to shit.
And what I liked was the tears for fears all.
It was really cool because like, yeah, warranted,
you know, in YouTube, and then everything else was all very, you know,
constructed.
Steely Dan shit was groovy, it was cool, like,
but again, I don't think my musical brain was developed
enough to be able to differentiate between the play styles
and stuff like that of these like,
staple musicians who have guitarist drums a base,
but they're all kind of doing their own thing,
they have their own style, there's funk, there's this,
and that, but the thing that really stood out
was the tier-suffer-shit, and I'm like,
that's not a fucking guitar, and those aren't real drums, you know what I mean? Those funk, there's this and that. But the thing that really stood out was the tier sufficient. I'm like, that's not a fucking guitar.
And those aren't real drums.
You know what I mean?
There's all, you can pick it out.
Well, yeah, of course you could.
You know a guitar when you hear it.
You know what I mean?
And you know drums when you hear it.
And you know, I synth when you hear it.
You know, and you're like, oh wait, you know.
And so listening to the tier's for fierce stuff,
I was like, wow, this is really cool.
Because it's all done by computers, obviously,
it has to, or some form of thing. You know, I was like, wow, this is really cool, because it's all done by computers, obviously, it has to, or some form of thing. So I had no fucking idea how
this was being made. So, you know, I gotta go figure it out. So this is before dance music
was probably out in some pockets somewhere, but it just wasn't on my radar at all.
but it just wasn't on my radar at all. This is shit, this had to be 1992,
93.
You know what I mean?
So yeah, there wasn't,
there was Chicago was just starting it basically,
you know, and Detroit and stuff like that,
and some pockets of Europe and shit like that.
So like, but again, it just never got to me.
Cause there was no mass media, there's no internet, there's no nothing, you just never got to me. Because there was no mass media, there's no internet,
there's no nothing, you just kinda had to wait.
So I researched into like,
oh, what's tears for Fears doing?
So differently, the warrant in YouTube and Steely Dan
you know, aren't, oh, well they're using computers
and you know, again, like I'm so bummed out
and so kind of envious of like if a kid today heard that
Oh, yeah, you know, it's just YouTube that, you know, and there it is, you know, I had a fucking I was swimming in the
fucking dark, so
so yeah back in my tree and um that was really cool so
That was the connection I think was was the tears for fears shit off the
Columbia House fucking CD player deal that like stood out from those other seven albums and I was like,
oh, okay. I mean, from what I understand, you were correct me if I'm wrong, but you were one of the
first to make music from computers in the electronic space. Hell no.
No.
Fuck no, dude.
No.
Not by a generation.
Not even close.
The first to make music with a computer?
Well, with the, in the EDM world.
Oh, nope.
Roger that.
No, I think that's bullshit.
Well, how did you get started then?
If we're talking about the first to make music,
oh, Jean-Jacques Parais in the 50s
was probably making electronic music?
No kidding.
Yeah, fuck yeah.
Check out the on needle, on needle-in.
It's a synth, but it's not a computer.
It is a computer, but it's not microchips.
It's valves, like, like, I don't even know how to
fucking explain this thing.
You're gonna just have to research this.
It, O and E, a knee deline, or whatever,
like a John Shock Paray, and there are some other guys too,
like it's just totally escaping me right now,
cause I know someone's gonna come and go,
I'm actually, but like we're talking like,
you know, the 50s, they were making electronic music.
Oh yeah, I'm so long. Dr. Who, those dudes, the 50s, they were making electronic music. No shit, it's been running for so long.
Dr. Who, those dudes, the M.S. Synthy,
I have synths that are twice as old as me
that I still use today.
Well, how did, so what does it look like
when you started making music?
I mean, because it was, I mean, it wasn't,
I wasn't listening to it, I'd never even heard about it.
What did it look like?
What did it look like making music on a computer in the early 90s?
Well, it could have been a number of ways really. I my first computer when I really started making music. I had a corg
God I can't remember a poly
Um, oh god, I can't remember.
A poly, a rack mount, it's, it's not a poly six. It's like a poly six, but it's, it's the rack version of it.
So meaning it was just a module, okay?
So no keys, just, just a box, um, and it had some buttons on it and stuff like that.
And then I had a midi in and a midi out and then an audio out, right?
So what I had to do is I had an Atari ST
that was basically a Commodore 64 more or less
that ran the software that sent messages to this box
to say, hey, play this, no, play that.
So it was kind of like a little sequencer thing.
But that's just one piece of equipment.
And that was at a time for me, it looked like,
like, you know, electronic music or making music or accompaniments to your band with electronic
components like a drum machine or a synthesizer was just coming of age. You know, so meaning that,
like, yes, it's been around since like, you know, the 60s and 50s, pink Floyd used, were huge purveyors of electronic music. On the run,
was in EMS Synthe A, which is like a really ancient old synth with like bank dial kind of
vaults on them and they did it it it it it it it it it it it it it it it it that's all like that's
as far as I'm concerned yes that's electronic music. Not as we really know what it is
So if you say to someone oh you listen to electronic music people do not go that far back and go. Oh, yeah, I love Pink Floyd
You know
But I you wouldn't be wrong, you know, because they employed a lot of that stuff
The Beatles to so it's it's in it's in like doses. The beetles were doing it too?
Yeah, they used a few electronic instruments.
No, for sure.
I didn't know idea.
Yeah, most of the sudden I started to pepper stuff.
Okay.
When they started getting a little weird.
Yeah.
Hot take, I hate the beetles.
Oh shit.
But when did you,
I mean, because this was
strictly a hobby until what, around 1995?
Is that true?
No, it was still a hobby then.
It was a hobby all the way to 2000.
OK, for sure.
I know, because I had jobs that whole time, right?
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My two.
Yeah, right.
My first job was working for this fucking guy, printing t-shirts.
He wanted to start like a clothing company.
He was like, oh, sorry, guy.
He was just kind of shady.
But he wanted to start a clothing line,
like a kind of like skate brand kind of stuff too.
So it wasn't like,
hope,
howdy-cuder- howdy,
f*** him menswear.
It was just literally,
putting drawing logos in illustrator and then printing them
and then going to a press and then doing that
and then bringing them literally down to the store
and just selling them out of a store front.
That was fun.
It's good learning experience for like,
what it's like to have a job.
Yeah, I mean, like, I took nothing from it.
You know what I mean?
I have to say, it's other than, yeah, okay,
this is what it's like to have to wake up at fucking nine.
Get driven 20 minutes to the mall, you know what I mean?
And go sit there all fucking day and just pick my nose
and do this and I'm gonna go out at five o'clock
and make like a couple hundred bucks every two weeks.
Cool.
Now I worked in a cannery. That was fucked. That was a real fucking job.
That was the worst job ever for me because I had to... The enagra is the best region for pairs,
peaches, and wine. Like, Niagara on the lake. It's just the way that the geology is, the soil,
and stuff like that. I mean, some
of the best wine in the world down there, right?
No good.
So everything grows like fucking crazy out there, right? So when peach and pear season starts,
it's 24 seven at the Del Monte processing plant. It's like one of the big ones, but there's
a few down there, but the big ones Del Monte. And when those are in season, they have to run
that shit 24 fucking seven.
So you had two shifts, you had a day shift and night shift.
So I had to do the fucking show up at one in the morning.
Can I swear by the way?
Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry, because I really do a lot.
So I had to go at like five in the morning till like two p.m.
You know what I mean?
I had that shift, right?
So I'm already just out of it.
Because this is also when I'm like learning to make music.
So I'm like up all day on a fucking computer and then oh shit, I could go to work.
Okay, cool, but I'm like fresh for like an hour, but then I just start fading.
And I'm like, and I had to, I had a number of jobs there, but like, but the one I hated the most was you got to like
basically watch a conveyor belt of peaches or pairs,
it depends what you were doing,
and then you had a little like knife.
And if one got away with like a stamina,
you had it and then put it back on the belt,
or load the, or you had to load the peeler machine,
which was sketchy as far, I can't believe they let
like a fucking 15 year old kid do this,
but there's this machine and they,
and there's one's like about six cups
and you have to be fucking fast
or you're gonna lose your fucking hand.
It was crazy, I couldn't believe it.
I hope they still don't do this.
But it was not.
So these pairs of peaches would come out
and you had to go one, two, three, four, five, six
and then this machine would just, right,
and then load them into this fucking thing.
And it was like the open end of a V8,
you know what I mean?
Like it would no barrier, nothing.
Like if you were too slow with that thing,
I've never seen it or heard of it,
but I'm like, well, you could really get hurt
on this fucking thing.
And they have me like this 15, 16 year old kid
fucking doing this, right?
And then like it's like a race.
And so I had to do that all night.
To the point where it's like a race. And so I had to do that all night, to the point where it's like, my mom caught me
like doing this in my sleep.
And she's like, just like, thought I was having a nightmare,
but it's just because I've been doing it all week.
And to this fucking day, I will not go anywhere near a peach.
Because my first day on the job, I was like,
oh, yeah, pe I was like, oh,
peaches. Me. Yeah, no, no. Every time I smell a peach or get peach and something is like,
because it's just like it's permeated and stained this part of
my brain, which is how I wash out. Yeah. I have pptsd.
Where did you go after that?
What was the next job?
Um, I do after that.
I think it was just like dumb shit, odd jobs for like a year or two.
And then, um, then I got a real job, um, with a company in Toronto.
Because I was, mind you, this whole time, I'm still mostly focusing my time
and energy and thought power on music and computers, right?
So there was a software company that had just started out very popular now, but they were
just a bunch of goofballs out in the Netherlands that used to make porn, interactive porn
games, and stuff like that in this company called the Image Line. that used to make porn interactive porn games
and stuff like that in this company called the Image Line.
And the guy that owns a really, really cool dude,
this Jean-Marie Kenye dude,
oh, Cardigan wearing typical Belgian dude,
businessman, and he had a programmer named Didier Dambrin
working for him on this thing.
And I guess as it goes,
is this guy who programmed,
just basically,
these kind of adult games, weird, but it's a business.
On a company time,
I guess he kind of developed a music software,
like a simple step sequencer,
because there were one or two out that were okay, there was like hammerhead, which I think
was the big inspiration for this software, and there was rubber duck.
And these are like primitive, like we're talking like rock, you know, the invention of the wheel,
like audio softwares that were almost usable,
you know, so there was hammerhead.
There has always been trackers
that had predated that like five years ago.
But anyway, it was just a bunch of dudes,
you know, just chilling out and doing this.
And then Jean-Marie, the big,
the business guy that owned that company,
I guess, kind of said, what are you doing?
You know, he's like, well, I'm just, you know, kind of making this audio looper software
stuff.
He's instead of firing his ass, you know, fucking best decision he ever made.
So, okay, you know, he kind of culminated that.
And let's go in this direction.
And they did, and then it went to like version one, two, three, four, five, whatever. And then
over the years, they started to gain popularity because a select few hip hop guys started really
liking this software. And they were like, oh, this is great. We should use this because the other
alternatives were like really expensive sweets like cakewalk or cubase or
these high powered systems that required all this additional hardware. Meanwhile, this guy
opened Belgium's making this kind of easy to use cheap as free software that, well, you know,
doesn't behave the same, doesn't sound the same, And, you know, age, but gets something done, right?
So a lot of attention started to get to that.
And then it was in those like that, those three, four years
we started to see all these like little DAW projects pop up,
DAW meaning digital audio workstation.
That's like you're all in compassing software
that makes music, right?
Because Steinberg had come out with this new technology called
Virtual Studio Technology, and that's called VST. People call it just plug-ins now, right? But it's
actually just patented software from Steinberg, which is like a kind of language or a framework that
digital signal process engineers can make things
like a reverb or a distortion pedal or something like that.
It's all done in this VST architecture so that that just started blowing everyone's mind
because they're like, wait, I don't need to buy an external compressor.
This will run as software and I could just plug it in on a track and they're like, yeah,
dude.
So they invented that.
And so, and you were a part of all that?
Well, yeah, well, I was a witness of it.
I had no development of it.
Or I made my own dumb shit.
Like I made my own compressor, I made my own limiter
and just to play with the SDK
because it was a SDK as a software development kit
that some times companies, when they release new technology,
if they're cool, they'll provide an SDK saying,
hey, like if you want to contribute
or make your own things, here's the framework for it.
This is all the tools you need in libraries
and includes that you need as a programmer
to make this dynamic link library,
which is what a plug-in is, what was,
go nuts, but if you're gonna sell it,
you gotta license it, and that's where Steinberg made all the boo-coo bucks, because they own it.
So you gotta, same with MP3, by the way,
like an MP3 is owned by a company,
from or was at one point, you know what I mean? By the way, an MP3 is owned by a company from...
Or was it one point, you know what I mean?
It's an encoder, it's a patented piece of software framework
that's used to make...
There are billions of encoders out there,
but ultimately, an MP3 is owned by someone.
Or the tech that made the MP3 not the contents
So it's like that and it's really cool. So anyway, this this company out in Belgium
called was called fruity loops back in the day and
A lot of people used it so it was a small community of
Users and developers so I could get in there like I just go sign up on their phone
Hey guys, and they're like, oh, is this idiot? You know like whatever. No, yeah and developers. So I could get in there. Like I just go sign up on their phone,
take guys and they're like,
oh, is this idiot?
You know, like whatever, no,
yeah, I'm doing this and this.
And they're like, oh, that's an interesting way
to use the software.
And I'm like, yeah, there,
here's some more music.
And they're like, oh, okay, cool.
And I be, you know, it just be back and forth about like feature requests,
feedback, if they added something,
oh, can you change this?
Because this is like, we're all musicians.
And here I'm like, cause playing.
Like, they might have thought that I was like a legitimate
accredited musician who knew what he was talking about,
but like I'm learning at the same time.
But if you learn some of the language,
then you kind of pass that threshold,
well, wait, am I a musician now?
You know what I mean?
So I was really young too.
And maybe they didn't know that.
Wow, like 16, 17?
16, 17 years old.
And there's some other guys on there that like,
oh, my old field was on that forum.
He's the guy that did tubular bells.
So he was the big celebrity that, you know,
used FL or fruity loops when it was called fruity.
It's called FL studio now because they got sued by Kellogg's
and they had to change the fucking name.
It was hilarious.
Yeah.
Well, what are we gonna call?
I'm like, please call it something other than fruity loops
or fruity anything, just like stop toyifying this fucking
software, you know.
Let's get serious.
Okay, we're gonna call it a full studio.
All right, whatever.
You're a company, you name it, whatever you want.
But, so it had some credibility because there were some your company you name it whatever you want but
So so it had some credibility because there were some hip hop dudes that were using it Mike old field was like the big
Celebrity dude using it and then you know at the time 16 you know
Fuck his Michael fields and then they'll play tubular bells. I'm like oh, yeah, I remember that you know
I mean oh, he's an OG, you know, so
Maybe they're on the right. Yeah, you know what I mean? Oh, he's an OG, you know, so maybe they're on the right,
you know what I mean?
So I met a lot of people through that forum.
Actually, I met my best friend through that forum,
Steve Duda, who he worked for Avid.
No, sorry, he worked for Pro Tools,
which what, I don't know, I don't know, sure,
but about the timeline here,
but Pro Tools was Avid at one point,
before Apple Bottom, before, about the timeline here, but Pro Tools was avid at one point, before Apple bought them,
before the companies go through everything.
But he was a Pro Tools developer,
or sorry, like he worked in the tech support kind of thing.
So like if someone was having a problem
or something like that, Steve knew a lot
about the Pro Tools platform and stuff like that.
So he was like an audio DSP dog guy,
and he would go look at all sorts of software.
So he was part of that community,
and that's how I met Steve Duda.
And we just became friends, because he's weird, I'm weird.
We liked similar things, and we weren't big fans of...
The then just starting out EDM things. We were
like kind of anti-EDM and doing like weird glitchy. No kid.
Broke in your stuff. You guys are anti-EDM. Well, yeah, actually. So long story short, so I ended
up actually going to work for this company in Belgium. So Jean-Marie and Frank Van Bees flew me out to Belgium to go consult. Hold on. Let's what caught their attention?
My music. So they so they really liked your stuff. Yeah, because it was just like I had
been making noise on a lot of other communities like in terms of just my music. Not the
tech, nothing. I was just do some weird stuff. Under different names, like all the time.
Now, Deb Mouse wasn't even a verb,
or a noun, or anything.
It was, I was just like making noise on other forums
and popular music communities of underground musicians
and stuff.
So somebody from the FL story goes,
hey, I know that kid, he's the dude.
You know what I mean?
He did this thing, oh, cool.
Yeah, you know, and I had to obviously, I couldn't kid, he's the dude. You know what I mean? He did this thing. Oh, cool.
Yeah.
And I had to obviously, I couldn't just like float off of me putting stuff out there and
say, well, listen to this.
I'm therefore qualified.
No, I had to engage in the developers, sorry, with the developers and the other users and
provide feedback and show them ways of broken ways of using their stuff and how we could take this broken way and make it an official way or
Design a new plug-in for it or you know change some things around the application. That's kind of like a beta what a beta tester did
You know, so I was a beta tester Steve was a beta tester
You know and some other people were just users
and stuff like that.
But again, we're talking less than 50 people
in a kind of forum setting where we were all just,
let's do this, let's add that.
And it was a young fresh company,
so they're like, okay, cool.
That'd be me walking into Tesla now,
and going, oh, you guys should like maybe,
they're like, that's not happening,
because it's gotta go through this huge big company thing.
You know what I mean? So it's not very grassroots over there as it was at that time. So
so through that recognition and that involvement and that kind of like social injection of, you know, my
ways of doing things, they were like, hey, well, why don't you come to Belgium and work?
How do that feel for you?
Was that one of the, that was so bizarre.
Was that one of the first times
that you really got recognition for some of the stuff
that you were creating in a positive way?
In an internationally positive way, yeah.
Like in the sense that this is company in Europe
that's interested in what I do
and want to fly me out there and work for them
for like a year or however long.
And I was like, Holy shit, that's fucking crazy.
So like I went and did that for like six, seven,
actually maybe a whole year, I can't, such a blur.
And I lived with one of the developers,
the owner of the company put us up in a flat in GENT,
and then on the offseason, I would go to Kanok
and stay at his like beach house basically,
and just he would dump meaty controllers,
new peripherals, and hey, test us out,
hey, we're making all these new plugins.
It's just so much easier if I'm like,
basically in the same room with the programmers,
and I can sit there and play with it and work with it and say, okay,
let's tweak this a little bit and do this this.
And the company felt cool.
There's like holy shit, we actually have like a musician consulting with us and we're
not just a bunch of programmers because sometimes you get like audio developers who are
really talented and make great applications and filters and stuff like that, but really
just don't know shit about music.
You know, like nothing,
like they're literally musically stupid as fuck,
but they make this great technology,
and sometimes it helps when a musician is like,
that is amazing what you're doing,
but you know what I mean?
Could we maybe do this a different way?
And they're like, oh, why?
And then you gotta walk them through it sometimes,
and they're like, oh, okay, well, that's weird,
but I'll do it anyway.
And then it's just better for everyone, you know, because not all musicians are programmers
and all programmers are musicians.
So you need that kind of team thing.
And that's now I see why that's why they have me up there to, you know, consult and
be like a power user and help them push it in a direction.
They go, I have no involvement with them anymore, but man, they went and did some big things.
Now they're probably like the second or third
biggest widely used digital audio software for hobbyists.
And I've heard a lot of like big names
putting out platinum albums with just their weird software.
No good.
This is weird to me because I don't use it.
I'm not saying it's weird because it's inferior.
It's great.
It's just different.
Was Steve Duda with you on this?
Steve, yeah.
So Steve was part of that forum,
but he's also working for Avid.
So Steve worked more on the hardware side.
And then I got sick in Belgium.
Like pretty sick.
Like I don't mean like I got a disease
and I had to get fucking weird shit
I just mean like I got like a really bad flu and
I was there like no visa nothing like
Because again small company right there like I'm like so smuggle them in so what do I do?
Like you just come in to visit
I'm like yeah, okay, but but a Canadian, I'm part of common law.
I can go up there for up to six months
on a tourist visa or whatever,
but they don't, it's Belgium.
Like they're like, yeah.
I'm not showing up with like a U-Haul.
I just literally, the clothes in my backpack
and, oh, we'll just get you whatever you need
when you get here.
And, you know, I'm like, okay, cool, whatever.
So I did that and I managed to fit it,
but I got sick and I needed to go to a hospital.
Like, I had to get taken care of.
And they were like, well,
you're not exactly on our medical insurance,
you know what I mean?
So I'm like, you know what, fuck, just,
I'll just fly home.
I'm still within my visa thing.
I'm not, you know, it's been real,
but like, the rest I gotta do from home,
because I gotta go back to my socialized medicine,
kind of fucking place, so I get my shit
taking care of for free, okay?
And they're like, okay, cool.
So I flew home and then they're like,
oh, just let us know when you're better
and then just come back, right?
And I was like, okay, cool.
So like, whatever, I got that like stomped in like two weeks.
It was just a gnarly flu or something.
And I'm like, okay, I'm good.
And then I went to go back and I got nicked.
So they were like, wait, no, before I left, right?
Because I guess they check ahead or something,
when you buy your ticket or so, I don't know how that worked,
but like a basic, they could say,
were you just in Belgium?
And I was like, yeah, and they were like,
how long were you there?
And I was like, like, five months, you know,
kind of thing.
They're like, or whatever.
And they says, well, it says here,
because they saw my return ticket or whatever.
And they were like, no, dude,
now you have to apply for another,
you have to apply for an actual visa
because you've extended your fucking thing.
And you can't just go home for like a week
and go right back.
It doesn't reset, you know what I mean?
It's, I don't know what the drama was.
Basically, I was denied entry before I went, thank God,
because otherwise I would have went,
and they would have denied me there,
and then I would have to fly all the way
to fucking back.
And I was like, well, okay, well, that was fun.
Now it's time to figure out, you know, whatever,
because they're not gonna pay me like a salary or cash
or whatever, because this is basically what it was.
I gave James seemed like my banking information
and swift codes, and he would wire the money
basically to my account, my checkings and savings account in Canada. So I had to use my
debit card to eat and do shit out there, right? So it's like totally off the books. I'm
like, okay, well, that was a fun little fucking thing. No harm, no fouls. It's not like
I was doing anything crazy. So is that the company that sent you out
to your friend Tommy Lee's?
No, no, see this and this is where it gets funny, right?
So that's now I'm like, fuck, man, I don't have a job, right?
I'm at home and I like, I know how to make music better
than ever, you know what I mean?
So I'm still like experimenting with shit.
I had my my space was going crazy,
like, you know, because remember that?
Yeah.
So like that was the dawn of my space.
I would put my music up there and stuff like that.
And people were like, oh, neat, you know what I mean?
And I worked with another band in LA called Orgy.
Oh, no shit.
You work with them.
And Lou Gordon and all of us, I did.
I got the back of the fucking Orgy story for you.
Let's hear it.
So, and this actually fits because I worked with them
kinda like,
we're talking about the band or a general orgy.
No, I'm just kidding.
So, I don't know how this even happened,
but for whatever reason, Jay Gordon,
who's the singer at the time,
or still is, or whatever, hit me up,
and he's just like, I heard your stuff on the MySpace thing,
and you know my friend Steve Duda,
and I'm like, yeah, I know Steve,
and then I was like, yeah, cool.
So he knew I checked out,
because Steve is like, you know,
pretty high up in the
Pro Tools world as a tech and stuff like that. And he's like, yeah, well, you want to remix
one of our songs. And I'm like, holy shit, this huge fucking band from LA, right? Once
you need a remix, their song, neat. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. I'm doing it, right? So I
did that for him. And then there was another guy from the same band
who had a side project called Julian K, which is one of the guitarists. No, that's a
mere. Well, anyway, one of the other dudes from Orgy had a side project. He had me remix
his stuff, and they really liked the remixes. They were like, wow, it was cool. It was
all very industrial. As Orgy, you know, kind of was off their massive hit
Blue Monday, which is, you know, their cover.
Hey, I love the word.
It was cool.
Which one?
So, so Lou Gordon is J. Gordon's dad.
He managed the band, right?
Lou's like, we're gonna get you to the States.
You're gonna come work for us.
I was like, really? Okay? Lou's like, we're gonna get you to the States, you're gonna come work for us. I was like, really?
Okay, that's interesting, Lou.
You're gonna take it.
Cause I had just been through a very traumatic
fucking immigration experience with fucking Belgium.
So I do know for a fact, you have to get me a fucking visa,
right?
Like whatever, you want me?
Get me a fucking visa.
I don't even can pay me dog shit, like all work,
whatever, but just get me that fucking visa
and I'll come to the fucking States.
He's like, okay, cool. the this is the most fucked up story. So so Lou
Sends me this email right lose big fucking manager, right?
It's so funny looking back at it now
But like he kind of did instill a little bit of management terror into me because it's just this big powerful fucking dickweed
So he he's like oh, come, come, come.
Oh, here's what you do.
I got an email you this letter
and you're gonna show that to the customs
and I'm like, okay, Lou, I'm not,
I don't think that's right.
But, you know what, like,
and so I'm like reading this letter,
it's literally like a half-pager eye Lou Gordon.
I'm like, so it's an employment, like agreement thing, basically, is what he wrote.
I wish I still had it. Now, maybe I can find it. But it's just, yeah, I know you laugh it already,
right? Wait till I get to the border, right? So I'm like, he's like, no, we do this all the time.
I'm like, okay, fine, fuck. So I like pack a little fucking bag. And I bring this letter thinking like,
there's just no way.
This is like legit, right?
So I'm like, hey, I have a letter from an employer.
Like like, you know how you as Customs get.
You know, it's like, they don't have time
for your fucking shit, they don't fucking care.
You don't even mean they're just like the heat.
So I'm like, like, I don't wanna be a pain in the ass,
but I have a letter from the thing. He asked me to speak for someone there. Like, and they were actually kind of cool about it. Like, okay don't want to be a pain in the ass, but I have a letter from the thing he asked me
to speak for someone there,
and they were actually kind of cool about it.
They're like, okay, you need to go just have a seat
because someone will come get you, right?
And so like this is the border in Niagara Falls, Canada.
So it's no skin off my ass because I literally live
like a 20 minute walk from the United States.
So it's not like I'm taking a huge risk here, right?
So I just, I go to the border, the thing,
I take a cab there, whatever, and then kind of,
like, well, the cab has to go,
because the cab is not coming into the fuck side.
I don't wanna fuck the cab, I'll just get out
and I'll figure it out after that.
Like, okay, have a seat.
This guy comes over and he's like,
all right, next thing, fun to go over, and I go,
and I'm just playing to him, and I'm like,
look, this is what the guy told me.
He said, here, I'm to show you this letter and whatever,
and then I plan to go, you know, work there for like six months on their new album.
It's a punk static paranoia.
And then he's like, what do you want me to do this?
Like, what is this?
And I'm like, I don't know.
He said, like, I show you this and then you let me in.
I don't, like, I don't fuck the mall.
And he's like, dude, he goes, you need to be the, the... You need to, like, he's telling you, you need either.
H1B and O1, you know what I mean?
I'm like, okay, well, can you like educate me here?
So I can go back to this guy and tell him how stupid he is.
Like, cause he's like, hey,
he's just kind of glazing me over, cause look.
All right, I get a, I get a, I get a send you back.
You gotta get yourself an immigration lawyer.
He was cool about it,
like, but it was so deceivingly cool
because what he ended up fucking doing,
he's like, okay, so you have to go back to Canada.
I'm like, yeah, okay, you know, no problem, whatever.
Like, I'll go do what I, that's what I figured.
So, all right.
He's like, okay, so now you need to sign this.
And I'm like, what, sign what, why do I gotta sign that?
Just, I literally just turn around.
Let me go back to fucking Kenna.
I'll walk across the fucking bridge.
I don't give a shit.
He's like, yeah, yeah, but you're withdrawing.
You're admitting, he kept stressing on this.
He goes, you're withdrawing your admission
into the United States.
I'm like, well, yeah, I guess technically,
because I'm not, I don't want to be,
I want to go home and get an immigration lawyer.
Like, I'm just trying to be like legit here.
And he's like, okay, well then what you need to do
is you need to sign this form.
And I'm like, all right, you know, like,
and I'm not like at matured Joel yet.
So I'm like, sure.
Can I, can I go now?
And he's like, yeah, I don't wanna say, okay cool.
I leave, go home.
And I'm like, my mom's like, I think we're gonna
the fucking LA to go work with her. I'm like, no, man like, I think we're gonna fucking L.A. to go work with.
I'm like, no, man, it's just guys and you call Lou up.
I'm like, Lou, you're a fucking idiot.
You gotta give me an immigration lawyer
like, cause this is stupid.
Like, and he's like, oh, okay, well, let me get back to you.
And I'm like, all right, fine, fucking.
Okay, square one again.
I'm back in fucking Canada, I'm in Niagara Falls,
fucking talking to Steve and telling him.
He's like, bro, he goes, that's so fucked up. He should give you an immigration lawyer and I'm like, I know, like, and I'm like Niagara Falls, fucking talking to Steve and telling him, he's like, bro, he goes, that's so fucked up.
He should get you an immigration learn on that.
I'm like, I know.
Like, and I'm like, what ever, man,
just let's keep fucking grinding away
and me and him, we're like working on music
and music software together.
Couple weeks go by.
Or actually, a couple of months probably.
And I remember Steve's like,
hey, when did you come by?
Like, when did you just come visit for like a week
or something like that?
At least come check it out before you make any
fucking crazy decisions.
Like, you know, because Steve's telling me
this whole horror story about how you move to fucking
New Orleans with two garbage bags full of clothes
and I was like, eh, and I was like, yeah,
but just like, you know, like just come chill.
Cause I've never actually met him,
but I've been working with him for like, you know,
five, six years.
Oh really?
Like, really? And I was like, yeah, I could use a fucking break. Cause I've been working with him for like five, six years. Really? Internet, right?
I thought, yeah, I could use a fucking break because I've been to the States before.
I worked in a programming language called Action Scripting.
One of the companies that I worked for, we won an award for a flash-based shopping cart
thing.
They flew us out to San Francisco to the flash-forward award.
I've been in and out in like in that capacity, right?
So it's not like a big deal.
So I'm like, okay, cool.
So I like literally just packed some clothes up
in a fucking suitcase and went to the border.
And they're like, hey, you know, like they don't remember me.
They were just like, what are you doing
with your purpose for travel?
I'm like, oh, I'm just going to visit a friend in LA.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like who? I'm like, oh, I'm just going to visit a friend and I like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, like who?
I'm like, oh, Steve Duda, yeah,
the Hittis here's his address.
And they're like, how do you know a guy,
a thousand miles away in California?
And I'm like, the internet, you know, like,
I don't know, like, I don't, I've never actually met him.
So they're doing their job, you know what I mean?
So, and they're like, okay, beer it back.
And they come back out and they're like,
okay, you're gonna have to come with me.
I'm like, what the fuck?
And they go, yeah, no, you are banned from the States.
You're going to work.
And I'm like, I'm not going to work.
I'm going, I'm, I really wasn't.
I'm like, I'm going to fucking hang out with my friends, Steve.
I'm like, I, I'm not working. Like, he doesn't have a job for me or whatever. And they're like, like, I'm going to fucking hang out with my friend Steve. I'm not working.
He doesn't have a job for me or whatever in there.
No, you're going to work.
I'm like, no, I don't know what to tell you,
you know, whatever in there.
You apply, you applied, you were here, whatever,
because I guess they made a note of it or something,
but they were like, so they thought that I was actually
evading that whole visa process to go and work for that long.
Oh, no kid.
Yeah.
And of course, it's all getting back to me.
I'm like, dude, that is so unrelated.
Like I'm just literally going for like a week to hang out
with this guy and they did the whole Gestapo thing.
You know, it was fucking crazy.
I was scared shitless.
And they're like, they're thinking, oh no,
you're going to jail tonight.
You know, kind of shit.
And you know, and I'm like, fuck man.
I'm like, I don't know what to tell you.
Like, like, seriously, like I am not going to work.
But honestly, so then they legitimately banned me
from the States for like seven years.
No shit.
Yeah, swear to God.
I'm so I'm like, well, fuck, there goes my fucking Hollywood dreams,
right?
Whatever.
So for whatever thing, they let me go back
and they say you cannot enter the States
or whatever, and if you do, you'll be arrested.
I'm like, okay, fuck, all right, cool.
I guess Canada is, go back home, tell between my legs,
and again, my mom, like I'm just like, dude,
you have no idea, like this is just absolutely fucking crazy.
They think that I was trying like, you know, smuggle myself in, and then, and then, and then, she's like, dude, you have no idea. This is just absolutely fucking crazy. They think that I was trying to smuggle myself in.
And then, and then, and then, and then, and then,
and she's like, well, I don't know.
And I'm like, well, now I should get a lawyer.
Well, but not really,
because I have no point to go there anyway now,
because I'm not going to do it.
And I definitely don't want to get an immigration lawyer
to fight a case for me to just go visit my buddy, right?
So I'm like, totally defeated, right?
And I'm like, tell him, well, fuck, fuck, you know, like, fuck that up, I'm gonna totally defeated, right? And I'm like, well, fuck that up.
I'm gonna stay in Canada.
A couple of years go by.
And I'm still just like granted away
the deb mouse thing hanging out in the scene in Toronto,
doing all the nightclub stuff
and then just kind of making my music and stuff.
And then still working with Jake Gordon, by the way,
and this is where it comes full circle.
Jake Gordon sent me a photo of him like, wasted, like in his like underwear on a couch, you know,
that's some party thing. He's like, look at this photo. It was kind of thing, right? I'm like,
you're fucking idiot. You know, cool. And I'm 100% bad. Like just why would you? I don't care, you know, like cool, dude.
And at that time, I was getting into 3D animation
and rendering and all that stuff too.
So I had designed a shader model,
this is such a long story, but like,
I'll do my best to keep it short.
I did a shader model.
You know the Pixar lamp, you know the T-Pot.
Yeah.
Okay, those are shader, like model tests that they'll use to test shaders.
And every kind of animation studio has their own dumb thing.
Like ZBrush has a kind of weird,
or Blender has a monkey thing.
You know what I mean?
Everyone's, it's just the corporate gag, right?
So in my, I'm gonna be a 3D artist now, mode, right?
I'm like, I need a shader model.
So I made this circle two years
and fucking some balls for eyes
and I cut out a mouthpiece and went cool.
That's, I'm gonna just use that to test all my shaders out,
you know, and whatever it is, right?
It wasn't even deadmouse, like it was just,
it was the helmet, as you know it,
but like it just, I didn't think deadmouse
or anything like that, right?
I was just, that's all just use that as my MDL
for testing out shaders.
So Jay sends me that photo.
And I was just getting into, it was kind of new
at the time called HDI, which is like high density,
or high density
radiosity imaging, which is a member back
in some CG behind the scenes things,
they would take pictures of mirror balls, like spheres,
and they would take a whole bunch of pictures,
and you'd see them on sets,
they're like mirror, like Christmas ornaments,
kind of like, you know what I mean?
Mirror finished balls. So what that, what that is is if you took a picture of that mirror ball at different
um, f-stops for the camera, right? You could create a basically an HDR map of the lighting of that scene
so that if you were to build that scene in 3D space and you use that HDR image, that has like, it's in the XR or whatever of different levels of light,
then when you put your 3D model in it, it would apply that light to the 3D model of the same room.
So it looked like it belonged there versus it was composited, right?
So I'm testing this stuff out with just like I I had a cannon and I bought literally like a garden ornament
when it was mirror ball, things,
and it actually had like a bluish tint to it.
So I had to, I had to color correct it in Photoshop
or whatever, but I was like, I should make my own H.
So I did that.
And then I took the photo of Jay Gordon,
like fucking laying down like an idiot
and I put the mouse head on him.
And I sent it to him, and I said,
Jay, look at this, and he's like,
oh, he goes, so how did it,
because it's like fucking magic to him,
and because it's new technology,
he's like, how the fuck,
and I explain it to him, he goes,
ah, that's cool, he goes, what is that?
And I'm like, oh, it's just like my shader model,
and he goes, dude, if you ever perform one,
you gotta wear it, you gotta make that and wear it. Jade Gordon told me that, now I said, you're and it goes, dude, if you ever perform a line, you got to wear, you got to make that and wear it.
Jake Gordon told me that.
Now I said, you're a fucking loser, dude.
I swear, he was the fur.
I'll give him credit.
He goes, you know what, if you ever make it, you know, you should wear that on stage.
And like, yeah, no, that's stupid. But like, I'm, and it never happened
to like five, six, seven years later.
But like, honestly, it's been in my brain
the whole fucking time, just never acted on it or whatever.
And I started like, I first started
then using it as my logo, as dead mouse
when I registered all that shit.
And I was like, fuck, maybe I should.
So I go to this guy in Toronto who makes props
for like film and television, name's Warren Keeler and I said,
can you make this and I gave him of course the Cads, the FBX of everything
because I've modeled it in 3D and he's like, yeah,
it gets a hamster ball, fucking does this thing and makes a really nice one.
I fucking throw it on and like, fucking,
this is so stupid.
So I played my first show in Halifax with that head on
and everyone was like,
what the fuck is this dude?
It was pretty funny.
What did they say?
What did they say?
That was kind of like,
because it was like before Dattpunk was popular,
so like it was, you know what I mean?
It was kind of like around the same time, but they they were like more Europe than North
America at that time.
So everyone was just like, that's really weird.
Yeah, man.
And it was like I was saying, you're like breaking the mold.
Yeah, you're all thing.
So yeah, and that's just kind of how that happened.
But then a lot of like nowadays, everyone's like,
yeah, he was like one of the,
no, that punk was the first, fuck you all.
You know who the first fucking electronic music bands
with a head was?
Not Devo, that's a hat.
I mean a full head.
Who?
The residents.
The, I don't know them.
Oh wow. Yeah, look them up. I will. They were eyeballs't know them. Oh wow.
Yeah, look them up.
They were eyeballs.
No shit.
Giant eyeballs.
And this is like in the 80s, something like that.
And pen, pen jellette used to play with them.
The pen and teller, pen jellette used to play with the residents
and stuff that used to do around and stuff like that. I did a whole interview with him and I'm like,
dude, that is so wild. I had no idea.
That, yeah, it's really cool stuff. How was it received when you...
I mean, how big were the shows you were playing?
Oh, no, like the time. Like literally twice the size of this room.
No kid, and that's more. 100 people.
Did they like it? Yeah, I love it. It was great.
Because I had actually gotten big in
Europe, in England, before I was big in Canada or were airing in America, which was really weird
because we had a mega club in Toronto at the time called government. And they just like again, fast forward like,
five years deep into my, what I would say started as Debb Moussie had a few hits out,
and then Faxing Berlin was such a big track,
and Pete Tongue would play in England,
and then government of course would say,
oh, we booked Debb Moussie,
and he's like holy shit, Debb Moussie,
all the way from England.
Dude, I live like four blocks from that fucking venue.
You know what I mean?
And I'm going in there and the capacity of like
some international fucking DJ,
just blew my fucking mind, you know what I mean?
And I was like, wait, you're Canadian?
Wait, you're from Toronto?
Wait, you live right fucking there?
Oh my God, it was really weird.
Man. Because I had played my music out. Again,
this is all very condensed, but like, it's, it's, everyone's got a story, you know, and it's
always, life stories are really long, but I remember playing some of my music for Chris Lake, like, who's a who is now and has been a huge fucking DJ on the UK. And he would play it
and then Pete Tongue of all fucking people like hear it. And they're like, what the fuck?
You know, Pete Tongue starts playing it on his show. And who's this? Dad Mouse, color
me intrigued. It's not DJ so and so. It's not
Captain awesome or you know, it was just like you know when you hear that dead mouse for the first fucking time when it's
I'm not saying it's commonplace, but I just mean imagine fucking
It's me explaining to the guy at customs now every time I go through the fucking states They're like okay, where are you going? I mean I have my visa and everything's fucking cool fuck
But I go through sometimes and they say you know
Maybe an older gentleman maybe like a okay, what you doing?
Going to Nashville for what I don't just gonna play some music and stuff. Oh you oh you got no one. Oh cool. What been you in?
Dad mouse, he's like
Or you know, oh yeah, my grandkids are big fans! You know, or, you know?
Oh yeah, my grandkids are big fans, you know, like, fuck.
Damn.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So, I guess I think that's what kind of caught Pete Tongue.
Well, that in the music, maybe.
But he was just like, what is this weird head thing
and cool, you know, and then he reaches out.
And then kind of, the rest just kind of steam rolls,
you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I mean, not really.
But no, it's like you make your own luck.
You kind of, you know what I mean?
I say that, you know, there are people
as and by far more talented than me.
That just literally are just waiting for the thing
or enjoy the solitude
of their basement or whatever. But I say, you, this is so luck. It is so fucking luck.
This has absolutely so less to do with skill than an artistry and the innovation.
I mean, that of course helps it along the way.
But what I always say is that if you want to me get, you know what I mean, or be whatever
it is you want to be, you got to just make your luck better.
You know, like add more tickets to the raffle every day.
You know what I mean?
And eventually, yeah, you're gonna hit.
You know what I mean?
But if you're just throwing one ticket in
and there's 100,000 tickets in there,
you gotta be pretty fucking lucky
and you very well may be and that's cool too.
But the more kind of tickets you throw in that pot,
the better.
So it's like, you make noise here, you make noise there,
you involve yourself
in this kind of sector of all stuff you like, you know, shit you're interested in. And
sooner or later, you know, those pieces are going to kind of like connect like neurons,
you know what I mean? And then then you're, then you're in two places at once, you know
what I mean? And then at some point it's going to converge and then someone's just going
to pick up on that, you know what I mean? And then at some point it's gonna converge and then someone's just gonna pick up on that,
you know what I mean?
And then that puts you in that position where you're like,
I totally understand what you're saying.
I mean, I'm not saying meet a lot of people
and cling to fucking people better than you.
I just mean apply yourself in like all these
little fucking weird ass areas.
And sooner or later, you know,
someone's gonna pick up on that and say,
hey, this guy's doing shit.
I mean, to you, maybe that's love to me.
That's just dedication.
That's getting it out there.
That's having the courage to put something new out that nobody's ever heard and be willing
to face the critics and you just kept going and going and going and going.
Yeah.
Whereas most people would just, oh man, people don't like it.
I tried it once.
Yeah.
And it just wasn't for me.
You know what I mean?
Oh, dude, I tried it like 80 times and it wasn't for me until I tried it 85 times.
Then it was for me.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
I mean, all the way even all the way back when you said you were putting
your stuff out, was it wasn't Reddit, but you were putting your stuff out in those forums.
You know, just stuff that you created.
Created.com, bank camp, you know, all that dumb shit. And I'm gonna say, and I'm sure there's
like one or two of them that really wouldn't have made the fucking difference whether I put
it there or not. You know what I mean? Do you remember the first, the first,
what would you call it a track?
Yeah.
Do you remember the first track that you put out
to the work?
It was called, I don't want no other.
How was that?
It was me working with another guy.
I used to work, oh Jesus Christ, I skipped over
like a lot of shit.
So I used to work in a record store.
And I was just like in the rear with the gear.
You know, like I'd hang out at the back and play on the computer and make noise.
And they had turntables and DJ equipment back there because we also recorded a radio show
for the, for their local radio station stuff.
So a lot of DJs would come in and out.
And that was my big intro and electronic music was working on that fucking record store
because I met every fucking DJ that came through
and bought records, you know,
and it was got a little friendly and cool and stuff like that.
And I just got to it.
I became known as the kid who knew how to use all the shit,
like the computer to do the recording to edit
and all that stuff.
Of course DJs knew how to DJ,
but like I had to format it into a show
and use the computer to do it.
So I would use like sound forage and go wave and wave lab
and all these like archaic fucking editing suites
to produce a radio show, insert the commercials on.
So I just became the nerd, you know,
and that was really a proponent to like,
hey, call Joel Hill, you know what I mean, come to your studio and hook you up with this or that or,
you know, when you, when you put your first track out, what was, how was it received?
Was it, did they butcher it? Did they crush or sow?
That was at a time like it was vinyl. There was no digital distribution happening
anywhere. It was vinyl. There was a guy in Toronto who knew the DJ that I worked with on
that song. It was a DJ dread, right? He was kind of like a thing in Niagara Falls,
but then would also go to Toronto play sometimes too.
And there was a guy, Austin, Mawan,
who worked popular records.
It was like a sub label of that called Awesome Records.
And I was just like, yeah, I'll press it.
And then we give it to Eugene, it played the record.
He would sell it and stuff like that.
So I'm talking, Joe, I'm talking early days.
Like, he's pretty early.
Like, like Belgium, you had said that the owner of that company
had noticed that you were putting stuff out
and like super early.
Oh, yeah, no, that was earlier than that.
That means working in the record store was way before Belgium.
No shit.
Yeah, that's me.
I was skipping school to go to the record store downtown way before Belgium. No shit. Yeah, I was skipping school
to go to the record store downtown Queen Street.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
This was like my first year in high school.
So you got positive recognition right off the bat.
Well, yeah, I guess.
Not like, oh man, he's the bomb.
Just know he's a fucking nerd
and he's fucking doing shit on a computer
and that's as far as it goes. Not, he's, hey. Just knowing he's a fucking nerd and he's fucking doing shit on a computer and that's as far as it goes.
He's, hey, watch this space, not that.
Just...
Did it sound like anything that you're doing today?
Absolutely not, no, it's terrible.
I can't listen to it.
It just makes me fucking cringe,
but I'm sure that if you were to maybe guys
that does something else in the Senate,
someone would be like,
was there any critics?
Was there a lot of critics?
Always critics.
I don't know.
Well, the reason I'm asking is I wanna know
how you got over it.
Over the criticism.
Of what you're talking about.
Oh, I never got into it.
Really?
No kidding.
You just didn't give it any time.
You don't have time for that.
Man, it's like those who can't, you know,
I just shouldn't.
Yeah. That's it. Yeah, I mean, dude, I just shouldn't. Yeah, that's it.
Like, yeah, I mean, dude, I get it all the time.
I get it today.
I got it last week.
But it kinda, it's like to me, it's empty
because there's no substance to the criticism.
Okay, so like, your set sucked.
I'm sorry, like, that just is literally not doing anything for me.
It's not even hurting my feelings because a you failed to quantify it.
It sucked how?
You want to hurt my feelings?
Fucking do it, bitch.
You know, like tell me what it was.
And then when you really egg them on and I remember, okay, all right, how did it suck?
Well, okay, you got to, did I play a song you didn't like?
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't understand.
Was the, was the audio bad?
Did you have a bad time with your girlfriend?
Like, I don't understand.
Like, there's so many things in the universe
that could make that suck for you and you alone, you know what I mean?
But there's 50,000 you out there,
and I don't really give a shit about your bad fucking time.
I have a don't give a shit about hearing about your bad time.
You know what I mean?
Fuck man, you gotta be kidding me.
And then on the internet, you multiply that by a billion, right?
It's okay, or like whatever.
You know what I mean?
Or like critics, critics, critics.
You know what I mean?
It's just like, I am so unaffected by criticism.
I think, and that's a really nice thing to develop.
Did you develop it or did that just come natural?
I think naturally, just like I've always been really
not really part of any need to fit into anything,
you know what I mean, like a group.
And that showed really early, I think,
for me in high school,
because he had your goths and your jocks
and your nerds.
And, you know, I didn't really vibe with any of that.
I would just go bump smokes from all of them.
You know what I mean?
And just I'd be there, not saying I was bullied
and I was an old cast and I cried in my locker every day.
You know what I mean?
I knew I'd have socially function.
You know what I mean?
You just kind of, you gotta get a bit of this
and a bit of that sometimes and flack from peers
or people that are like, you know,
occupying the same spaces you at that age.
You know what I mean?
Because I think everybody's so really bent on fitting in
and fitting in with that group.
That's most likely to succeed at being the fucking coolest,
which is pretty petty, but like that's high school
in a nutshell, you know what I mean?
I just didn't, I just kinda,
I played fucking all sides of the war, you know what I mean?
Like, I fucking...
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All right, Joel, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to dive into you meeting
Tommy Leif at the first time.
Oh, first time.
Guy.
Um, so Steve Duda, who's basically been there from the start, you should get him on the
show. The guy's, he's crazy. Mad genius, really quiet hippie dude, long blonde hair.
Just, I'd love to get him.
Yeah, he's awesome.
So me and Steve, you know,
having, we met through that company in Belgium
and we were just like back and forth banner,
some tech stuff in between and stuff.
At some point before the dev mouse stuff,
I was like, we should just start a band
and do some industrial stuff that we like.
This isn't even dance music.
And many years go by and then of course,
I was barred from the United States.
Steve said, I'll just fly up there. I was like, oh, okay, perfect. Okay, then we can hang out
We can just do whatever right music. Yeah, cool. So he came showed up and I was living in a basement apartment in Toronto at that time and
I was like well like what do you want to do like what kind of music should we do?
It's like how do you start a band? You know basically it's like you I guess you all have to agree on some kind of music should we do? It's like, how do you start a band, you know, basically?
It's like, I guess you all have to agree on some kind of like
style or something.
I don't know, I don't know the formula.
I don't know how bands form.
You know what I mean?
But don't you think that they all sit down and go,
okay, we're gonna sound like this, you know what I mean?
Because you can't have like four different,
you can't have a, like, what maybe you can,
but you can't have like a country, full't have a, like, what maybe you can, but you can't have like a country,
full dude, and then a black metal guy,
and then, you know, and then as they're like,
well, how are we gonna make this all fit?
So sort of thing.
I think we were both into that kind of early industrial
kind of sound, like the 90s, nails,
and kind of stuff.
So we did that for about 20 minutes, you know,
but then we realized we were doing our jobs, like, and then that sucked, did that for about 20 minutes, you know, but then we realized we were
doing our jobs like and in that sucked because that's what Steve did, you know, for other bands
and stuff like he worked with nice nails. He worked on the fragile with them in New Orleans
and he was an engineer and he played some violin on the album and stuff like that. So he, I think
we both just realized, wow, we're doing shit. Like we do for other people and this kind of, it's not really fun or creative.
And we're like, yeah.
So we just, you know, kind of collectively side.
And then for whatever reason, I said, we should do dance music.
And then it was like, you know what I mean?
Like a joke, literally a joke.
And I was taking the piss.
And then, then, then Steve got thinking like he's like, well, it's so fucking for me, like, like, and I'm. And I was taking the piss. And then Steve got thinking, like, he's like,
well, it's so fucking formulaic, like, and I'm like,
I know it right.
And, you know, so we're like, I don't know.
It's like, admitting you're gonna do something,
but detesting it at the same time,
because like, honestly, it's like,
it tends to far as me and Steve were concerned,
like, and dance music was kind of like the ass
end of the joke of, you know, the pinnacle of,
where we were at
with technology and music and stuff like that,
why dumb it down to a 424, 128 BPM fucking thing
with some boom boom boom boom boom.
The same baseline over and over again, we're like,
puff, you know, like, we're better than that,
let's do it anyway, right?
Just as a joke, right?
So, so we did, we lit, and this is no exaggeration, we produced
eight tracks in eight days, dance tracks. Very palatable, pretty, what we thought, that
will do, pig, you know, there's some dance music. And I'd be friended some people in the
technology department out in Denver Denver who started up a website
that was brand new at the time called Beatport and they were an early digital distro
but more oriented for DJs so that DJs would have a place to go and buy digital music and serve it out
and they were kind of the kings at that time of the up-and-comers because digitally like there was
no Apple music and it wasn't even invented because digitally, like there was no Apple music,
and it wasn't even invented or whatever.
There was no real place, like DJs would go to record stores
and get holds from the record shop owner
if they're like a DJ and reservations and stuff like that.
So getting music be part made it more accessible
because they were one of the first
and probably the most renowned
kind of source for where the digital DJ would get their music, right? So I ended up just like
making up a record label out of fucking thin air and sending it to Tom Havens who was working at
Beaport at the time and said, how do we release this? And he was like, oh, just do this.
It's some IRC codes and that's pretty easy to do. And I was like,
okay, do I need to like sign anything? He's like, no, just, if I can send it, whatever,
it's good. And we'll do the accounting on it and all that stuff. I'm like, okay. And I
shit you not. The BSOD tracks, which was our moniker, were on the charts as number one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, out of the top 10.
Are you serious?
I shit you not.
It was the weirdest fucking thing
and we're like, why is this working?
And we're kind of laughing, right?
Cause we had no intention of doing this, right?
And cause we actually kind of ironically took the piss
out of electronic music with a title track called
This Is The Hook, right? And it's this test to speech stuff describing about how the track should go
because it was so formulaic. So it was like this computer voice that just basically said, okay,
so first we're gonna add 16 bars of just a kick drum so the DJ can mix it in, right? No,
no, it's so predictable, okay. Now comes in the bass line. No, no, no, no, then the bass line comes in.
And then it's like, now here's the breakdown.
It syncopates, you know, the,
and it's like this text of speech,
shit, that's just just describing how,
how formulaic it is, right?
And then that was, it was called this is the hook
because then the hook was called this is the hook.
And it was like a sky sing.
This is the hook.
D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D, you know, this is the hook.
And then, and then we were like, this is the stupid and it was like a sky sing. This is the hook. D-D-... You gotta be shit me. So you weren't even really into dance music.
No, no.
I'm still kinda not.
Baaah!
But that's another story.
So it was a joke.
Cause we wanna do this like industrial Apex Twiny.
Apex Twins is this like, I've on guard stuff.
And square pusher-esque, nine inch nails kind of medley thing.
You know, like just we wanted to we had such grand visions of being the next not inch nails
or whatever, you know what I mean? Because we were just so big huge fans of Trent and Atticus
and that whole camp which he all knew, you know what I mean? So it's like I'm like what better
candidates would there be to create the next thing? It would be me and Steve, you know what I mean? So it's like, I'm like, what better candidates would there be
to create the next thing?
It would be me and Steve, you know, do this.
But then instead we make like a joke eight track dance album
and it just fucking blows up.
And then there's this huge DJ like Benny Benossi's,
you know, that satisfaction song.
And then Benny's like, he, me and Steve,
we printed our own T-shirts.
This is how like fucking chop shop, this is is when we go to winter music conference, right like in Miami just it's like
On a spectator level, you know what I mean like we're not going for meetings
We're not going for you know like appointments or to sign autographs or fucking play any shows
We had no shows we have one show just because of Steve's friend, Jonathan Peters, who was playing at Space,
and we got a slot from like four in the morning to 4.30.
You know, or something like that, right?
So we went in that capacity, right?
Is this an ultra-music festival?
Yeah, yeah.
When?
When are music conference was at the same time.
So they used to always time those two events together because like shit, half the industry is there,
half the DJs are there.
Let's just make it a conference thing too
and give out some bullshit awards and talks and conferences.
And but really it's just for like, you know,
the dance music guys, agents and labels and DJs,
just go fucking party for like a week.
Then play a festival, get paid, everybody fucking cool.
Who doesn't love Miami, right?
So we decided to go to this thing,
and this is like at the peak of WMC
when it was like a really cool thing.
So like the rally would be booked
and Pete Tongue would have the rally
and the national was booked
and some adjuno would have that and all the labels,
all the big swing index tool room records
and ultra music and the label and all that stuff.
So we go to this conference and we're wearing our printed BSO D shirts, right?
And walking down our member Colin Street or or known we were at the national just like having a
lunch because we just managed to just black our way into getting some passes to go into this like,
you know, kind of private party things. So we're sitting around at the table and Benny Binossi walks by
and he's like freaking out.
It like me and Steve, I'm like, oh, I was like, yes,
that's Benny Binossi.
And I was like, oh cool, like we're not freaking out,
but I was just like, that's really weird.
And Benny's like, oh, you guys are BSOD, BSOD.
And I was like, yeah, I love this is the hook.
And he says, this is the nicest,
wonderful Italian dude, you know, we're like, holy shit, this is a satisfaction guy, right? We're like, oh, I love this. He's the little guy. And he says, this is the nicest, wonderful Italian dude.
You know, we're like, holy shit,
this is a satisfaction guy, right?
We're like, awesome, cool man.
He's like, yeah, no, no, I really, really like the song.
And you know, Benny Benossi's playing our shit.
And we're like, dude, this is so fucked up.
Like, we fucked up because now we're a thing.
And, oh shit.
You know, like, okay, cool.
They're like, hey man, yeah, cool.
So we gave him some stuff.
And he's like, yeah, you know, whenever you guys do music, you know, send it, we're like, okay. Yeah, cool. They're like, hey man, yeah, cool. So we gave him some stuff. And he's like, yeah, you know, whenever you guys do music,
you know, send it, we're like, okay, yeah, sure.
No problem.
And then Chris Lake was just, you know, a friend of ours
too, and Chris Lake loved our stuff.
And in hand, you know, Pete Tong kind of caught on
to wait again to and all that stuff.
And so it's like, we're like, what the fuck do we just do?
Whoops.
And this is getting into the whole Tommy thing.
So the MBS OD is just kind of up and coming and stuff like that.
But then we just kind of decided Steve was just like,
I don't want to be a superstar.
I don't want to be a DJ.
He doesn't.
He really honestly, truly doesn't.
Like he loves technology, loves programming.
I don't necessarily want it to be a big superstar.
I love it too, but I like making music
and stuff like that.
Steve loves making tools to make music.
He's like solving those kind of problems.
I like solving creative problems.
And ultimately, we just kind of just stopped
with the BSOD stuff for like a hot minute.
You know, and just like and Steve is like,
oh, I'm working on this new sin thing.
Give me like 20 years and maybe I'll finish it, you know, and just like, and Steve is like, oh, I'm working on this new sin thing. Give me like 20 years, and maybe I'll finish it, you know.
I'm not good at it.
Um, and, and, but we, we still remain best friends.
It wasn't a breakup.
It was just like, yeah, that was cool.
We made some money and we know it works, you know?
Yeah.
Okay, game on, let's go do something else.
And that's kind of when I forced off and did deb mouse
because I'm not just gonna be bored while Steve's like fucking off being Steve, you know, I mean, I got to keep it moving, you know
so
You know all good
All as well that ends well, so that's when I started that mouse stuff after that and then he was like
Oh, it's the guy for BSOD's the guy that did faxing Berlin and then and then save dude. Okay cool
Let's put a mouse hat on him and throw him on every fucking festival fine
then Steve was gone to LA on business
through, because he still worked for Avid.
He was an operator for a ProTool System
that Tommy Lee bought that has no idea how to fucking use it,
like himself.
He has a studio at his home and he's got an engineer
He had like Scott Humphrey and Chris Bayesford, you know
Running the shit Tommy just knows how to you know, and that's about it
Well now you I'll give him more credit than that, but um
So Steve went over to Tommy's to do some op stuff either upgrade a PT system or troubleshoot some bullshit with Scott and Chris
and all that stuff.
And Steve, he's not there and Tommy's not an asshole.
So it's like anyone that kind of goes into his space
or his home, you're broated.
Like it's not, you know, just get to work.
Don't look at me, just do what you need to do.
No, and they got chummy, right?
So they got talking music and then Steve's like,
oh, have you heard this dev mouse dude?
And times like no, right?
And he would play him some of my weird shit,
not my dance music.
He would play him the stuff I did, like, you know,
the B roll shit, you know,
then nobody really hears that I just kind of do for fun.
And I give it out to friends and stuff like that.
And then for whatever reason,
Tommy emails me, he's like, oh, your boy, do the gay me some of your shit.
It's fucking whack and no love it.
And I'm like, okay, cool.
Like, thanks.
I hope that's neat.
You know, if you want more, send you more.
I don't know what you would do with it,
but whatever, cool.
Like, I just didn't see the connection, you know what I mean?
But I was like, I was, it was still pretty cool.
Like, he sends me this email and I was like, yeah,
your boy, Steve. And then, I'm like, rad, cool. So like, it was still pretty cool. Like he sends me this email and I was like, yeah, your boy, Steve.
And then I'm like, rad, cool.
So like every month or so, when I finish something cool,
I send it off to him and get some feedback.
And then the feedback would turn into like,
like just dumb jokes or like just a stupid chain emails
of some meme, you know what I'm like?
Okay, cool.
And then I get another email from him
and I'm living in the, I couldn't go to the States. I was banned still henceforth. Yeah
so I'm in
Niagara Falls back at my mom's house debating on moving to Toronto or not and I get this email from Tommy's like
Oh, I'm playing in Hamilton. You want to come and I'm like yeah, I'm threatened me with a good fucking time of course
I'll come
Yeah, threatened me with a good fucking time. Of course I'll come.
Ah!
Ah!
So Hamilton's like, you know, 30 minute drive from Niagara Falls.
So it's just like our local thing he's doing some molly cruise shit.
So he's like, yeah, you know, here's Tony's number.
Email and just go and send him, he'll put you on the will call and whatever and get you
whatever, something.
I'm like, cool.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, fuck it. I'll go. I've never been to a concert.
I'll go happily sit in G.A. or whatever ticket you fucking
got me in on fucking chill.
So I get there and a message to Tony guy on my fucking
phyto and he's like, oh yeah, come to gate.
I'm like, fucking Christ.
So I'm like trying to like navigate my way around this whole
like idea of being at a venue which I've never been.
And then anyway, this fucking BT bleach tip,
douchebag looking dude, fucking finds me.
And he's like, hey, you Joel, right?
And I was like, yeah, he was like, oh Tony,
I'm like, oh, hey man, nice to meet you.
He's like, yeah, come on, come on.
So he walks me in through the loading bay
and just takes me into like one of the locker rooms.
And it's like just draped with like fucking hippie sheets
and it just reeks of nogg chomp
but that's why I discovered that shit by the way.
The incense, right?
And fucking Tommy's just sitting there
and I was like, oh, hey, he's like, oh, dude, dude, dude, dude.
And he's like the nicest guy.
Like he's that kind of dude that'll look like,
you know, like if a friend brings a friend
to like a dinner event because he's a good friend of theirs,
like he makes everybody feel welcome.
You know what I mean?
He doesn't just kind of have you around as a prop.
You know what I mean?
He'll be like, you know what I mean?
He's a really, really cool dude.
I'm really ambious of that
because I can't be like that.
Like as on as he is when it comes to social awareness.
Even though he's not aware he's doing that,
he's just got some weird thing with his brain, I guess.
I don't know, but he's a really, really cool dude.
And I was like, oh, hey, hey, nice to meet you, man.
He's like, yeah, rad dude, you like fucking,
you wanna be here?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
so I was like sitting around drinking.
And the funny thing was is that my first interaction with the guy really was so he's like
It was a locker room, right?
But they just draped over the the the pissers basically right with some bullshit just to make it look a little
Homely or whatever and he's got he's got this sound system that is got big he pushed in there
Forms so that he can like you know kind of party before the show, which I thought was absurd.
And he's, he had these contest winners,
like kind of shuffled into the room
and they're losing their fucking minds.
I'm just kind of just like witnessing at this point.
I'm not like shivering in a corner.
I'm just like, this is so bizarre, man.
Like, what am I doing here?
How did this happen, you know?
And while I'm in that thought, this is a younger girl came in,
like I mean like 15, 14 maybe,
and I would assume mother, right?
I'd like kind of come in.
So I'm like, oh, maybe she want a contest thing
and she had to come with her mom because,
fucking, you know, that's whatever.
So, Narell sitting around and the mom is just kind of like,
like kind of like me.
We're just like, what the fuck is going on in here?
You know what I mean?
Tell me he's just like partying.
He's like, be kinder.
And so I'm sitting down and there's this like little table here.
I'll never fucking forget this.
And he just kept putting beers in front of me like Corona.
So I'm like drinking a beer.
And he said beside me
He stands up so watch it
Stands up and just whips it across the fucking room hits the wall it fucking explodes and I was like
Like oh my god, that's funny, but why why would you do that? You know and then in the 14 year-old girls just like
Like laughing or asking
if the mom's terrified, glass is flying,
fucking everywhere, and he starts handing me,
and she's like, do it, do it, do it.
And I was like, bro, come on, man.
I was like, literally my very first rock and roll moment.
And then he's like, just fucking whip it, man.
It's like whipping these empty corona bottles
down the fucking home, thinking like, see,
like anyone else, me especially, like in any other circumstance,
I get arrested for this shit.
You know what I mean?
Or at the very least yell that, you know,
or something like that, but I was like,
like why is this fun?
I mean, it felt great to do it, but I was like,
this is so juvenile, this is so stupid.
Like I thought you were like an adult, you know,
and I think legally you are,
but why are we acting like children?
I don't know, it's a good time.
And there's actually a really fucking thing.
I got a photo from that night.
I just have to show you this and get your reaction.
This is the weirdest fucking photo.
Because it's like, come on, we'll take a selfie
and I had like one of those shitty phones.
It's very Googleable.
Where's the...
Yeah, this is the first picture.
So this was that night.
So this is in that dressing room.
I think I'm like 18 years old.
Holy shit.
It's so weird.
I gotta get that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's strange.. I gotta get that. I gotta put that up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just literally Google it.
Oh, and this is Steve do.
That's when we started our game thing.
Oh, right on.
Yeah, he's cool, dude.
We'll put that up.
Yeah.
That's cool, man.
Yeah, so I'm out there, like, just hanging out
with this fucking rock star thinking, you know, like, okay, but think, you know what?
It's cool, it's an experience, cool.
And I'll watch the show, I enjoy it.
And then he's like, what were you doing this week?
And I'm like, what do you mean, what am I doing this week?
Like I'm going back to my fucking normal ass fucking life
and figuring out more music shit, you know?
I was like, well, you should come to Montreal.
So he's like, I'm like, well, I don't drive.
First of all, I had to get dropped off here,
and I got a fucking, I don't know,
I got a figure out actually how I'm getting home.
Actually, you know what?
As a matter of fact, I think I had to borrow 50 bucks
from, I had to ask it, I did.
I said, dude, I don't want to be that guy,
but can I borrow 50 bucks so I can get the fucking
go train back to Niagara Falls?
Cause it's like 45 minutes away.
It's gonna be like hundreds of dollars for a cap,
but I can wait till morning and then get on the go train
and go back.
And he's like, yeah sure dude,
but when he come to Montreal, I'm like,
well, I can't afford a flight to Montreal.
If I can't afford a fucking train right home,
he's like, oh, it's fucking come on the bus,
it's fucking idiot.
And I was like, all right, so I got on the bus with him,
his tour bus, and then we drove up there.
And of course, it was all night just chatting about dumb shit.
Nothing music, nothing, no business, no, no nothing.
And I was like, oh, yeah, the guy's actually kind of fun
to hang out with.
He's like a fucking kid.
He's really cool, dude.
So I ended up like staying with him for like a week.
So we do Montreal, we do Quebec,
well, Canada.
And he's like, can I go back to the States later, dude?
And I'm like, okay, drop me off.
Fucking hell, yeah.
And actually, funny story, my mother was like,
this, I so I lived off the highway pretty much.
Like so once the highway kind of ends,
you go left or right or straight, right?
Straight goes into like a tiny suburb,
left or right goes down this mean streak of Montrose Road in Niagara Falls. And we lived in like a
little bungalow thing in that subdivision. So Tommy had to come back through Niagara Falls to go
over to the US border to go to Buffalo, right? And I was like, dude, perfect. Can you drop me off?
Like just literally, like just exit the highway, fucking, and then just drop me off, and I'm good.
And he's like, oh yeah, easy,
because we gotta take the QEW to go to the fucking rainbow bridge.
Anyway, and I'm like, oh, this works out perfectly, thank you.
So I stayed on tour, we went to a few shows,
and he trashed me off.
And my fucking mom sees this motley crew tour
bus fucking pull up literally out front of the fucking house
because right off the fucking highway.
Hey, later did, K-Bike, getting in the house.
And I was like, what the fuck, you know what I mean?
I'm like, yeah, I'm just, it's so weird.
Cause my mom obviously knows who Tommy Lee is.
She's like, you were just with Tommy.
And I was like, yeah.
I don't know, like, show her the picture.
And I was like, yeah, we did whatever.
Casino Steve and I was just like, that is just,
all right, okay.
Get a job now.
Get a job, whatever.
It was just the most bizarre thing.
And of course, we stayed in touch.
And we collaborated together, me, Tommy Lee, Steve Duda
and our other mutual friend, Tommy Lee, Steve Duda,
and our other mutual friend, DJ Aero,
who works with Tommy the most,
like when Tommy does the DJ show stuff at Chester,
his name is Ben, we call him Aero.
All started a group called WTF,
we produced some tracks together.
So WTF is me, Tommy Lee, Steve Duda, and Aero,
and we did some
electro and stuff like that. Put that out. It did okay. And I still rock it
from time to time. It's pretty fun. So every like few years we get together
and fucking all go play a show together and some quiet thing or something
just for funsies. But on that, it's like mostly hangs.
Do you guys still do that?
A shows? Yeah.
We almost did.
Where, Ireland.
Yeah, we almost did a show in Ireland
because we had a Motley tour was intersecting
with a mouse tour.
So it was like, bro, we hung out.
But I was like, we should do a show.
But we would have to fly Arrow up.
But Arrow had fucking tore his ankle up like real bad.
He had to get surgery and pins and shit,
and walk enough some stairs, something lame,
and he couldn't make a flight, and we're like, yeah, all right.
So we just ended up hanging out and went to the show.
But man, I love that dude, though.
He's such a good point of reference for me,
because I mean, in
my space, particularly EDM, there's just so much like main character shit that I cannot
fucking stand.
It's like, I go to shows and I'm in and out.
Like I'll literally show up five minutes before I have to go do the thing and then walk off, get in the car and just get the fuck out.
Generally, I, from when I started, I've noticed and probably still very prevalent.
There's always like this like compound that goes on for hours before and
artists will go on.
So there's like groups and it's party this party that
or not party or just you know what I mean? Little cliques of we have other artists and I mean
I don't I don't know the headliner and why why am I not playing the main stage is just like
shut up. So I don't I don't deal with that. And neither just really Tom. He just kind of
zends out does this fucking thing, gets on and gets off.
And, you know what I mean?
And he just like, he's so blissfully happy, I guess.
You know what I mean?
So they like really, he's the only guy that I think
I can talk to about a lot of problems that I have
with my mental health and touring and stuff like that
who gets it. You know what I mean? I can have the best psychotherapist in the fucking world,
I've had to go, I've done some therapy sessions here and there with some big swing and dick MD,
fucking pro brain pickers, but I don't think they ever really get it. You know what I mean?
Like, they, oh, I can see that I can try to understand it
But this dude's fucking lived it, you know what I mean? So he gets it
So I don't I don't he doesn't need to have a fucking PhD to tell me
Yeah, that's annoying, you know, we're like that's cool. You know, he's like he's been through it
He's done with it and and I he needs nothing from me
You know what I mean? Yeah, like and I need nothing from him. So there's no parasitic shit between the two of us.
And that aspect, I know exactly,
I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, you know, that's, so it's like,
it's nice to know somebody that doesn't want
something from you.
It really is.
And it's good, like anybody needs that.
One or two, if that's all you can get cool,
that's all you need.
You know what I mean?
People in your life where there's just a symbiotic
needlessness from both sides.
You know what I mean?
Where it's just like, is there a single
best piece of advice maybe that sticks out
in your head from him that you've really, you know, from him.
Don't, don't, don't sweat the petty pet.
No, what is it?
Don't sweat the petty pet the sweaty or something.
He always says, what is it?
Oh my God.
Why do I forget it?
But he says it all the time.
It's like, shut up.
Don't sweat the petty, pet the sweaty or something.
I think it's a little more clever than that,
but he says something like that and I'm like, dude,
that is just so on brand.
Would you consider him kind of like a mentor?
Yeah. Oh, 100%.
And whether he knows it or not doesn't even fucking matter. You know what I mean? Yeah. Which is kind of cool too mentor. Yeah, 100%. And whether he knows it or not, doesn't even fucking matter.
You know what I mean?
Which is kind of cool too.
Because like I said,
I think he just stopped developing
after like 13 or something like that.
No, for real.
Like he is just,
he's like a pet sort of like,
but he's smart in certain areas,
but just not mine.
And so when he comes to me with like a gadget,
oh, my favorite Tommyism is,
I, you know, red cameras.
Yeah.
So I go out and I'm doing a music video out in LA
and we wanted the shit, right?
And this is like a long time ago, right?
So you a Dana
White and all the UFC guys kind of pitched in for this video because we tied in a lot of UFC kind of themery around it So it was a big deal. It was a huge production. It was like easily seven figure fucking thing, right? And so part of that was
They got the bomb squad from fucking red to come in and bring us all this thing and then we looked at like I
We were all looking over the PNL and costs everything and stuff like that and it turned out the operating and rental cost of
One of those red cameras was like so insane that it actually made more sense to buy one
So I bought one and then I hired a knot to come and
fucking did that, right?
So that's my red camera now.
So I'm like, holy shit, I got a fine red camera.
I'm gonna fucking shoot all the crazy shit, right?
So, you know, I think,
because I get into these hobbies, you know what I mean?
And sometimes they stick, sometimes they don't, but yeah.
But when I get into a hobby, I go like,
fucking full tilt, you know what I mean?
It's like, oh, you're like, way serving?
I mean, yeah, fuck it.
I'm gonna buy a 25 footer, fucking,
teagov, fucking, wave ripper thing.
And then I was like, wow, you really like that shit,
and oh yeah, for now, you know, like,
so I'm like that guy, right?
So I was really into videography and cinematography
and photography and all that shit.
So I get this red.
And I'm showing, okay, of course, whenever one of us
get something red, we're on the phone, right? of course, whenever one of us get something red,
we're on the phone, right?
And like, hey, bud, check this out, check this out.
He's like, oh, dope.
I was like, one of those fucking red cameras.
I'm like, yeah, dude, shoot some fucking like 4K,
like 8K, like 120 frames a second.
And he's like, oh, rad, cool.
And then a week later, he'll message me, he's like, dude,
I'm like, what?
And he's like, I just got this like the GoPro the new GoPro. It does 4k
I'm like yeah, but he's like yeah no, but it's it's the same as your fucking red dude, but it's like this being I'm like
Yeah, he goes he goes dude. It's 4k. It says right on it. It's I'm like it is but it is not Tommy
It's not that he's like I don't I don't see the fucking difference. I'm like, oh my god
Bro, I love you. It's shut the fuck up
It's 4K
So you never really got into the you never really got into the the the the party
No, no festivals and stuff. No, I'm always so I'm too socially awkward for that.
Actually, one of my worst memories was like trying to be that for like half a second.
It's a guy I really like. His name is Jeff. He goes by the name Exision. He does like
a drama base and a dubstep like the really like, look shit. Yeah. So he needs killing it. He's killing, he always has.
And he would be on tour with me.
He was actually my opener for like a little bit
on a dev mouse thing and he was just really cool, dude.
Chill, he's gonna work with.
And now he's just like this.
Fuck, I couldn't afford him if I wanted to.
He's just killing it.
And I remember we, like I hadn't seen him
in like five years or something like that.
And it was like, again, it was one of these like artist
compound things.
He had his own little trailer thing.
And then people just tend to kind of just pop by
trailers of people they know or whatever.
And they're like, hey bro, you know whatever.
And I was like fucking five years deep.
And I was just already a little hungover.
And I don't know, I think,
I don't know if this is even true or not,
because I don't really remember it,
but I opened up the fucking door
and Jeff was in there with like a whole bunch of like,
you know, hangers, outers, you know,
probably some of them actually is friends,
but just like whatever, you know,
it was like a whole big party thing.
And then when I came and went, yeah,
or I don't remember how it went down,
but I must have made noise or something like that.
I wasn't being rude or anything,
but it was just like, everyone's drinks just like,
just silence.
Radio, yeah, and everyone's looking at me like,
what are you doing in here, kind of vibe?
You know what I mean?
And then, and so, but I'm just trying to talk to Jeff,
but everybody's watching Dead Bounds talk to excision.
You know what I mean?
And I was like, fuck.
Hey, like, I don't even know what the fuck it's saying, right?
Like, like, cause now, like, I'm being auditioned.
You know what I mean? It was just really weird.
And I was like, hey, man, he's like, hey, hey.
And I'm like, okay, good to see you, man.
And I just kind of walked out.
You know what I mean? Cause it was just so weird.
You know, it's like, I was like,
fuck, I'm never doing this again.
Unless I truly know the guy.
I'm like, this is like, I can count on one hand.
How many DJs or EDM dudes that I actually really like
to just hang out with and shoot the shit.
Who is somebody you really enjoy?
Eric Prince.
I love that dude.
He is great.
He's fucking amazing. He's that dude. He is great.
He's fucking amazing.
He's so chill.
He's just so easy going.
He's not pain in the ass to work with.
Don't get me wrong, but like in terms of if you want to do a show with him, like, oh my
God, it's just like pulling teeth with this guy because he's as lazy as me when it comes
to collaborations and putting in effort on a project that you're not really going to be
permanently invested in anyway, but it's gonna be a one-time thing
You know, so like bless them for that like I'd be the same too
But just like as a dude to go have a dinner with and just talk about
How's the farm?
You know what I mean? How's fucking Sweden? What's new? You know what I mean?
Then that's that's my dude now like I love him
Wolfgang Gardner Another really cool dude like and it's all the older dudes What's new, you know what I mean? And that's my dude. Now I love him.
Wolfgang Gardner. Another really cool dude.
Like, and it's all the older dudes,
cause it's just over it.
Yeah.
So what are you working on?
Like musically, you know what I mean?
Like what's your next move?
Like, you think I wanna talk about that?
You know what I mean?
Like I'm like so vested in this,
especially in like this kind of area
of fucking music that I don't even like anyway.
And now you want to know what my big Grammy aspirations are
this year?
Like fuck off, dude.
Man, I find that so odd that you're not even,
you don't really like eating.
No, I don't hate it.
I don't hate it.
I don't suggest it.
I'm not up there hating my fucking life going,
look at all you
No, it's not that it's it's like I don't I don't listen to it. How about that? Yeah, okay
You know what I mean like if I want to relax and and just zone out or be inspired
I'm not inspired by modern day EDM or my own you know what I mean like so there
I'll throw myself under that bus, too
You know what I mean? So I a lot of people throw myself under that bus too. You know what I mean?
So a lot of people might take that out of context
when I say, I hate EDM.
I get it, man.
I never listen to any of my interviews.
Half the time I don't even remember
what the hell we talked about in there.
Because you know, but I get it.
I don't hate it.
I don't hate it.
I love doing my job.
That's not your theory. I don't hate it. I don't hate it. I love doing my job. That's not your very self-critical
We're making someone else's fucking content. You're right now, you know what I mean?
Like that's that's the way I feel when I'm up there
So I'm not up there like I said being oh, you know what I mean here we go again
You know, I mean maybe that's a little bit of the attitude. I think that's like sold my shit
You know because it's kind of funny. It's, you know, I'm not, I'm not malicious about it.
I'm not like, spiteful, but it's you.
It's just me being me and that's it.
And a lot of people really like, what is that shit?
Marmite.
Yeah, you know, some people love it.
Some people are like, yeah, I mean, it's like,
I like being in that arena.
You know, I don't like, I can't imagine
what it would be like if everyone just fucking loved you. Yeah. You know what I mean, it's like I like being in that arena. You know, I don't like, I can't imagine what it would be like if everyone just fucking loved you.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, who talks shit about radio ad, you know?
Yeah.
What's that guy's day like, like, you know,
like having to go through all my inbox
and not getting a single use suck for no reason email?
That sucks.
Yeah.
I love that.
It's like, who goes, ready?
Fucking, rage against the machine.
Terrible.
I mean, you get pressured a lot to partake in the party.
Oh yeah.
Oh, no, no, no, no, not on site, not at the workplace.
Okay.
And by workplace, I mean the music festival,
not that shit.
No, I'm nowhere near that shit anyway. And even if I was, you know what I mean? But like, if I'm
dragged out to an after party, you know what I mean? And then there's some shit going
on. There's fucking lines all over the fucking place. And they're like, boo, I'm like,
I'm good. I just, I can't. I can't for health reasons. Like, not that I want to.
And it's just the doctor said, no.
And you know what I mean?
It's just like, hmm, but I don't, I can already,
it's like going to Burning Man.
I don't want to go to Burning Man ever.
You know what I mean?
Not because it's the trendy thing.
It's a no cultural hate thing. It's just like, I don't want to be dusty and hot and
not have a shower possibly. You know what I mean? I just, and I don't want to get
accosted with good vibes. And you know what I mean? That's just not my thing. You know what
I mean? I'm not into that. So I don't need to try it.
You know, because I have a very clear image in my head,
very clear, I was almost like, like blind faith,
like a Christian thing.
Like God is totally real belief in my head
that I will get dusty and I'll just be,
I rate at all the good vibes and plur and peace
and love and open your mind and just let it go kind of thing. I am just so faithfully sold
that that's what will happen that I won't do it is the same way I feel about drugs.
I don't think I'm going to have a good time. I think I'm going to freak the fuck out,
go into cardiac arrest, it possibly die. I don't know, but either way, it's gonna end with me in the hospital
or me being, oh my god, you see that guy last night?
That's how I feel about partaking in the party scene.
You know what I mean?
So, but, I mean, I'm happy to go hang out
and have a good time with people who are having a good time
for their playing some really great techno that I really love.
And it's all like hanging out and having a fucking beer
too with some friends, absent fucking lily.
But when it comes to like, you know, just fucking,
you know, being in some fucking opium den
with a fucking shitload of drugs,
and this is gonna make you feel so great.
I don't think it will.
So I just don't, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I mean, last night you had mentioned that you get a lot of people
think that you're all like, yeah, that's a funny one.
I saw a few posts on that.
It was like, oh man, we really gotta talk to Joel about this thing
because the only time people I ever see me
is when I'm on stage, right?
Mostly, right?
And I have like three, four maybe on the top
and five beers, like over the course of like two hours,
just to take the edge off, because it's like, it's a lot.
It's a lot of sensory input.
It's the loud music, the monitors, which I need loud
because they have to overpower the mains,
because when you're mixing, you know, sometimes you
can't have that delay, right? So you got to have your monitors, like basically a PA system here
and here. And that's like in excess of 130 dB, which is already like fucking, okay, I'm up, you know,
and then, you know, you got all these people looking at you, not hoping for you to fuck up, but just
like they want to hear your shit, but you don't wanna fuck up for them,
so there's pressure on that.
And so it's not like I assume everyone out there's judging me.
I think everyone's out there
and have a great fucking time
and be with their friends and enjoy the music.
So having said that, you know, you don't wanna disappoint
that many people, or make it complete, ask yourself,
or fuck up, you know what he means?
Like, well, wait, why are you even in this position?
You know, so it's a lot of,
it's very punishing on yourself,
and a lot of it, you're doing it to yourself.
It's not even the audience, you know what I mean?
I've never had a,
ooh fuck you, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Resounding, boo fuck you, anyway.
But a couple drinks help.
And so like I'm just, that's part of the show
is me having a fucking corona all of a sudden.
And like, you know, not all of a sudden,
but just over the last like 10 years,
it's like, wow this guy drinks a lot.
Now just one of my stage, then after that,
then I pee, I get in the car, I go home,
and then go to bed, I don't go to the after party
and then I'm on the floor.
That's the routine.
Jack, is that gotta be a rarity?
What?
That routine.
No, not a rarity.
I don't think so.
You don't think that's a rarity?
No.
Do a lot of guys do that?
I think a lot, like maybe the older dudes, you know, probably,
oh, don't get me wrong, when I was saying my 20s,
my first fucking tour, holy shit.
Yeah, no, it was that.
Let's go to the after party, let's do this, let's do that.
And it was just alcohol and then hangovers and fuck it.
Yeah, it was rough, dude.
Yeah, my first or second tours were like
exhausting in the sense that I went hard,
but then I just like, okay, this year I'm not going to do that.
How long did that take for it?
Three, four years.
That's it to calm down.
Man, that's not all.
Yeah, well, some people don't.
Like I know, Stevie Elkie's still fucking.
I'm like, I don't know how you do this, dude,
but he works out and shit.
He's pretty fit.
Like, I don't.
Yeah, so there's that.
Let's go into, I wanna ask you about how the mouse hood
is developed in the, since it's existence.
It's not much.
It's not much.
It has not really changed. You know what I mean? It's not like It's not much. It's not much. It has not really changed.
You know what I mean?
It's not like an evolving art project.
It's just like I built new ones
with just like different looks to them
just because like the other one got fucking destroyed.
What do you see when you put it on?
What's in there?
My fucking nothing.
Oh, oh, what do you mean?
Like how?
Like, can you see in there?
Yeah, absolutely. That'd be weird if I couldn? Like, can you see in there? Yeah, absolutely.
That'd be weird if I couldn't see.
Is there electronics in there?
No, no, no, no, there's like a grill.
Okay.
And it's just perforated just enough
that it looks solid coming this way,
but out that way, you're like, oh, yeah.
Oh, no, I see plain as fucking day.
So you got like 360 degree, no, no, no, no.
Just this little mouth part, so like 180.
Okay, you're looking through the mouth.
Yeah, yeah.
Turn your head.
I could have sworn, so...
No, no, no, no.
There was one that was entirely covered with LED
that had goggles on the inside, but so the whole thing lit up.
It was like an LED mask, so I could draw pictures on it
and do all this crazy light shit.
And that was cool.
And I wish I could still do it.
But the problem is with that tech is it was so finicky.
The upkeep on that stupid helmet, like,
because it would have been great, like if I would be playing
in the same couch in the same quiet room every night,
where I could just kind of put that thing away and do that thing.
But everything that you do for that touring purpose has to be built fucking robustly
because that thing is just gonna get beaten the fuck up.
It's gonna be in road cases, airplanes every fucking day.
And the like that head required soldering every fucking
all dad because a LED broke or a near broke or something like it.
So it was just maintenance maintenance maintenance maintenance.
And I rocked it for like almost a solid year,
but then it was just like, this thing is such a pain in the ass.
When I stopped wearing it half my crew were like,
oh,
no!
And I mean,
because it was literally one of the jobs was to solder this back on,
get this battery working again,
or this cable got disconnected somehow,
or yeah, it was, and it was heavy.
It was a neck breaker too,
so I can only wear it for like a little bit,
and then I'd have to replace it
with one that looked exactly like it,
but didn't have the electronics in it.
That wasn't on.
So we called it the dummy head.
So it was like ultra light,
but it looked like the real one.
Yeah.
So it was just, it was such an operation.
It was like, fuck, what a stupid idea.
Wear a mouse hat, they said. It'll be fun, they said., fuck, what a stupid idea. Where I'm out of set, they said,
it'll be fun, they said.
In the name.
In the name.
Where did the name come from?
The name came from a long story short,
fucking a mouse crawled into my computer
and died on my GPU, and it just wreaked up my whole apartment.
And I'm like looking around everywhere in my apartment
for this fucking carcass, cause you just smell it.
You know what, dead shit smells like, right?
And it's like, fuck me, man.
And I'm like cleaning everything.
And it's like the last place you're gonna look, right?
It's inside your PC.
And your PC's got like a little fan in the back too,
so it's just blowing this fucking smell around.
And I remember I was on some internet,
like chat
room on IRC and my name used to be like Halcyon 441 because it fit in the
thing and so I would go into this group that I had a lot of familiar friends in
and then stuff like that and then I would tell them oh my god guys I found it
there's a fucking mouse like that got fried on my GPU,
like inside the tower and the fans just been blown
out of the small time.
And I was like, oh, fuck, that's nasty.
There's no way you would have found that.
No, no, no, because I had to change a GPU.
That's the only way I found it.
Because otherwise, I don't need to open up my computer.
It's good to go.
And I was like, fucking, they're like, dude,
that's so fucking gross. No, no, no, no, no, no. So that was like, fuck in there like, dude, that's so fucking gross. And I was like, haha.
So that was kind of like the story of the day, right?
And I remember leaving the room or whatever.
And then going back the next day,
like, because I was also programming
for a company called Robust Tech.
So a lot of the employees would be in there, whatever.
And there was a lot of trains in that channel too,
like meeting people that would just like log on,
log off, see what's going on.
So there's always like someone new.
It wasn't just the same 20 people.
It was like about 100 people in this room.
And then when I would get back on,
I'd be like, hey, morning,
and they're like, oh, it's a dead mouse guy.
So they would say the dead mouse guy.
They would come on me, the dead mouse guy.
And so I'm like, fuck you guys. Dude, like, come on, it's not funny. And then, and so I just decided to get
on the joke, so I changed my nickname to DEADMOUSE, but then, you know, on Fnet, when I go to
fucking return that and say, give me that Nick, it would do DEADMOUS because the E was one character
too long. You can only have eight characters as a name on F.
You couldn't just have a long name.
On down that you could, but on F that you couldn't.
So I had to trim it down.
So I had to do D-E-A-D-M-A-U-5,
which is like the lead-speak version of melless,
like all these, say, hacks or, right?
Like H4, X, zero, R.
You know what I mean?
It's just kind of part of that cerillic using a number
in the place of a letter kind of stylization of a word.
So I changed my name to like dead mouse with a five.
And I'm like, basically like it was a,
they're happy.
Now everybody knows it's me, right?
Like kind of thing.
And I wasn't really actively putting out music
as that mouse when I did that either.
And so then when it came time,
before the mouse had even,
to release like Faxing Berlin
and some of my first tracks might that actually got picked up.
I was like, I didn't have a name.
And they were like, was it gonna be that Halcyon 441?
Shit, now it's like, actually, let's just do that mouse.
And I go, yeah, let's just do that mouse, fuck it. And they were like, what? And I was like, actually, let's just do dev mouse. And I go, yeah, let's just do dev mouse, fuck it.
And they were like, what?
And I was like, yeah, because like, you know,
like I think all good DJ names should be two syllables.
And they're like, what are you talking about?
And I go, have you ever heard of crowd go,
T.E.S.T.L.?
No, it's always like,
Nett, nett, nett, nett.
And I'm like, dead mouse.
And I go, okay, now imagine a whole bunch of people
yelling, dead mouse at the same time. How fucked up is that? That's pretty funny. And they were like, dad mouse and I go, okay, now imagine a whole bunch of people yelling, dad mouse at the same time, how fucked up is that? That's pretty funny.
And they're like, okay, whatever. You can pick it, man.
Like go for it. I was like, dad mouse, I'm doing it. Like, Jay-Z is already taken.
So when you look back at your catalog over the last,
what, 28 years, 28 years maybe more.
No, less.
What, what,
which tracks of your music really,
I mean, do you enjoy not the fans, not,
hmm, just you?
Oh, well lately, it would have been my where's the draw?
Because I actually wrote a symphony,
and nobody knows who's sore cares.
Well, of sure, the fans do, they love it.
But me and Gregory Revaret wrote a symphony.
I've always wanted to write a symphony.
And it's, it's a 80 minute long fucking symphony.
Wow.
Of actual shit, and it was scored.
I did the original score and then Greg did the transcription and then it was performed by the Finneck, which is
like an 80-piece orchestra. And we did two shows at the Wilterne Theatre in
Los Angeles with 80 players. Oh man. It's all music, you probably wouldn't even know,
like, or it's none of my hits, really.
Like, maybe some abstractions on some of them,
like monophobia and avaricia and imaginary friends,
but they were all like super orchestrated.
And I, because I noticed this kind of trend in EDM
with the old timers, I like, you see that,
the us of dudes that have just kind of taken
their classic songs and then had them reimagined
by Orchestra.
But then when I would listen to them,
they would, they're the same tracks.
I mean, good look, it's kick drum in it.
And it's all very syncopated and it still sound like
a dance track just with a really good string section in it.
I was like, nah, I think they need to be,
I think this needs to be like an actual fucking symphony. Like, let's write a fucking, like, I was like, nah, I think they need to be, I think this needs to be like an actual fucking symphony.
Like, let's write a fucking, like, I need this,
you know what I mean?
I wanna make music in the way that the fucking Prokofki did
back and fucking way back when, like,
dual legitimate orchestra, no bells and whistles,
no of no, here's a symphony playing
with some EDM sprinkled on top.
No, fuck the EDM.
Let's just make M.
No kid.
Yeah, it was really cool.
When did you do that?
Five, six years ago.
Yeah, I still have this score and everything.
It's really cool.
It was like, it was just like one of those things
that I've done that I was like, wow, that was really cool.
Like I'm especially proud of that
and I've always wanted to do that.
And it was neat hearing it, you know,
being sitting there surrounded by like 80 fucking top
tier fucking players play shit that you wrote
is here like holy fuck. Very cool. Yeah, it was the coolest fucking experience.
Where can I find that? It's just called Where's the Drop?
You can Google it. I will. It's just not, it's just like,
because it's just not, it wasn't pop, you know what I mean?
But like, I didn't care. Like, it was something I wanted to do and title really helped out with that.
They helped find it because that shit is not fucking cheap. That is way over some figures to pull something like that
together because you got all those players, all the composers, the conductor, John Beale.
He was amazing and yeah, it was a whole lot. We rented out East West Studios and fucking
did it in their big room, you know, where they do all the major film scores and stuff like that.
Oh wow, that's amazing.
That's amazing.
Really cool.
So I got to sit through and listen to that and I was like, okay, no, that's it.
Like I'm done.
I have music.
You know, that's what I took away from that.
So that would be it.
Not so much me just kind of like toiling around in my own personal studio space with my computers
and stuff and just kind of coming up with shit.
It's fun too, but it's not the same as working with a team of, you know, people and, and being respectful of that space
to do it exclusively in that space, not, not force fucking my shit into it.
You know what I mean? Like saying, here's a whole bunch of EDM. I just want you to be like
an accompanying thing in the back so that I can say that I did that. You know what I mean?
No, we, I just like, no, we're doing this 100% fucking traditional pen and paper fucking.
That's amazing.
Let's do it. Yeah, it was great.
When you are making your music, do you know what's going to be a hit?
I really don't know.
My biggest hit, I almost shitt canned.
I did the guy.
There was a guy at a mouse trap that was working for us named Harvey Topman.
He was my tour manager for like a little bit.
I wrote strobe in a fucking hotel room at the greatest
turn hotel in England. I have my computer and everything. And I was just kind of
did that track. And then I just basically kind of packaged it together with
five other things that I just went here guys listening to these. What do you
what's the takeer? What are we what are we doing here? And I have my money on this
other one or something. And um, Harby's like, oh, I fucking love this one.
This, this strobe one, I'm like,
and now I'm not doing it.
Nope, nope, Marifus, no, it's just,
I just, it's not there for me,
like the sound and the thing.
It's like, me, you gotta put it out.
And I'm like, no, dude, it's not happening.
He badged me for months.
And then finally, when we had to,
we had to get something else out that that I literally ran out of options,
I just gave in.
I was like, fine, Harvey, and then we put it out and it just became my biggest fucking
track.
Like, a short of ghost and stuff.
Which was also written in the same hotel room, actually.
No kid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why I called it ghost and stuff because allegedly that hotel
is haunted.
And my door kept opening.
Sorry. And I arbitrarily, like, I'm like,
I love lamp.
That's how I name tracks.
You know what I mean?
Like, like, literally, if I were finishing a track
right now, I'd call it a Fanda.
No kidding.
That's it.
Just done.
Kick it out the door.
Yeah, just, okay, there's the name. Oh, yeah, just okay. There's the name
Not like named after some natural disaster or poison this animal which seems to be the fucking trend in EDM
What's it called tsunami? What's it called true?
What's it called?
I'm just not that pretentious I guess
What's it called? It's called shit fist McGee, I don't care, just put it out. What's your newest Grammy nomination for?
Oh, me and Cascade for a Kex 5 album.
Dance album of the year.
It's pretty cool.
I...
Meet...
I don't know what to say.
I mean, I get it.
It's nice.
I think it's more for the fans than it is
for my personal satisfaction.
I remember actually I had a really funny conversation
with Trent Resner about Grammy's ones
and I was just like, he was up for,
oh no sorry, Emmys or Grammys or some gold globe.
I don't know, some bullshit.
He did Gong girl soundtrack, right,
without a kiss Ross.
And it's like, I still, like one of my favorite soundtracks
and he was up for like either a Grammy
or some fucking thing that you get in Hollywood
for doing a thing, right?
One of those.
And he was, I was talking to him about
some other unrelated shit and I knew he was up for the thing and he didn't win it over some other bullshit, right?
Like or whatever, you know, I'm sure it was in bullshit, but just like he just basically
didn't win it.
I remember saying, I'm like, yeah, but I mean, come on, man, like fuck, you've done so much.
Like do you really need a shiny piece of fucking plastic to validate your position in what you fucking do, dude, really?
And then he went, yeah, fucking do.
Because I, it could, his, cause he worked so fucking hard at it.
You know what I mean?
Like, and I mean, that was like his thing.
And I was like, I was not expecting that fucking answer
from him at all.
And I was just like, holy shit.
And I was like, okay.
I, I kind of got it,
because I did feel that way once or twice
when maybe my third or fourth nomination
and then just decided, I'm not even gonna show up
because it's the same batch every year
and it's the same batch this year too, same shit.
And I'm like, I think we all know how this is gonna play out.
But cool, it's good to be recognized, you know what I mean?
I feel good that like, hey, I'm still getting nominated
for these fucking things, which means I'm still doing it
like kinda okay, you know what I mean?
Like I'm not like falling off and pigeon-holing myself
into the same sound that would just stagnate my shit
into back into obscurity. You know what I mean?
Like that's a really hard thing to do as an artist. I would imagine is being able to keep it up.
You know what I mean? Like because a lot of guys will come out with some really great ideas and
have these original hits and just come flying out of fucking gate two years.
Oh, yeah, you know what I mean?
Yeah, there is a lot of that.
It's it's it's not the act of making that hits.
The act of being consistently doing things.
And and that's not even just music because I am I do so much other shit. I even now outside of EDM so that when,
when my music career just decides to,
I like to say, I'm only ever one tweet away from ending this.
You know what I mean?
So you gotta keep that in mind and that's not just for me.
That's anybody.
You know what I mean?
You're only ever one tweet away from ending your fucking career.
So, so keep your in-cillary fucking ports open
and your interests vested in all sorts of things.
And, you know what I mean?
Not that I'm planning on something,
but I just mean, you know, it's just,
I like, I like, I like the idea
that my house can burn down and I'll be like,
just move over here. You know what I'll be like, just move over here.
You know what I mean?
And then just go somewhere else.
Yeah, or do something else.
What I mean, you have a lot of other interests.
Yeah, software, technology,
I'm in the beverage space, apparently.
That's fun.
How did that start?
Just some buddies from Toronto, local dudes.
We're like, hey, we're starting to drink.
You wanna be a, you wanna invest?
You know, hey, kind of, okay, that's not really a big ask.
You know, it's not a big commitment for me
other than my brands don't fuck it up.
You know, and yeah, I went in with them
and they just, they rocketed it.
They're such businessmen. I'm not, like, I'm, I went in with them and they just they rocketed it. They are such businessmen.
I'm not, like I'm, I've got a brand and I've got like aesthetic and stuff like that.
So I lent them that and you know, those kind of social networking things that need to happen.
But yeah, they killed it.
They now they're distributed all over fucking Canada and the States and everywhere.
And I'm like, wow, you guys are really doing this. What is it? It's called cocoa vodka.
Coco vodka. It's like
what it sounds like. Coconut flavor vodka. Got it. Nice. And apparently it's pretty good. I mean,
I like it. But like, but like I like I like eating dry ice tea mix. So what does that tell you? You know,
But I like eating dry ice tea mix, so what does that tell you?
But I like a lot of people like it. So people come over, I know,
and I tend to associate myself with like,
I could say people that won't blow smoke up my ass
because there's nothing more I can't stand
than is a fucking yes person.
Like that just, like, prove me wrong, educate me.
You know what I mean?
Don't just say you're wrong and then say,
fuck you and then walk out. I just mean, like, you know, contribute educate me, you know what I mean? Like, don't just say you're wrong, and then say, fuck you, and then walk out.
I just mean, like, you know, contribute.
And then I'll learn something,
and that's amazing for both of us, right?
Because you get to correct a fucking dude, who, you know,
is that, and I get to learn something, you know,
and that's cool.
So like, again, but,
when he even comes to video games,
like the taste of like, what games you like to fucking play,
you know what I mean?
I like to tell someone I play fucking PUBG and they're like,
dude I can't fucking trash and you should put it in.
And then we can have a conversation, you know what I mean?
So I don't surround myself with like, oh yeah, guys, you know what I mean?
So, and those people, like I said, I've given them this stuff and they're like,
yeah, it's pretty good. Like I like it. Can you get me a case?
I'm like, okay. So they're like, yeah, it's pretty good. Like I like it. Can you get me a case? I'm like, okay.
So they're doing it right.
How long, when did that start?
Three years ago?
Oh, right on.
Yeah, yeah, so they've been at it.
Like they, they're, they're, the definition of,
they can peel oranges in their fucking pockets.
They're like grinders, dude.
Yeah, they're out there.
But that's cool.
Man, I've got to tell you,
that's refreshing to hear that you don't surround yourself
with a bunch of yes men.
I mean, I feel like a lot of people do.
That, well, some people, that's the validation they need.
I don't know.
I think everybody just wants to.
You appreciate that.
You appreciate somebody calling you out.
No, well, within reason.
If it has substance, you know what I mean?
If it can be empirically backed up, you know what I mean? If it can be empirically backed up,
you know what I mean?
Like I said, I love criticism too,
but I don't love you suck.
You like constructive criticism.
Constructive, but not even constructive,
like I'm saying, hey, I need a fucking 20 page essay
and then I'll take you seriously.
No, I just need a point.
You know what I mean?
Like something like empirical,
I'm very empirical based.
You know, in terms of like,
I don't know, you say that,
but why would you say that?
You know what I mean?
Because there's a lot of like,
and maybe I'm kind of crusading in such a way
that's like, there's a lot of tutorials on like,
YouTube and stuff
like that for dudes that like you know kind of poise themselves as professionals and maybe by
qualification that says um I once got paid for this therefore I'm a professional or I don't know
where we draw that line nowadays with a lot of this kind of noise you see on social media of I'm a this guy, I'm a I do this and
I'm not saying I need to see your credentials before I take your fucking opinion because you don't
Like you could be smart without having done anything
A lot of people I like that, but
There's a lot of tutorial stuff where people are then kind of enforcing that education on other people
and they're like, basically, I don't know what this does
but you should do it.
Yeah.
And we should all just homogenize our sound to this.
You know, use this limiter at the end of the chain
to make it as loud as possible.
When empirically you'd be saying,
hey, let's strip all the dynamic range out of your tracks
so it'll sound shit in a nightclub,
but it'll sound really great on your earbuds, you know what I mean?
Which kind of is a play, I suppose?
And then, and then when they're kind of called out on that bullshit,
they're like, well, that's the style.
I'm like, well, you can't fucking argue that.
You know what I mean?
It's like, you remember, they were like, we used to,
we, our black metal was recorded through a fucking headphone.
You know what I mean?
And it was done stylistically.
That of course, it's empirically wrong.
You know what I mean?
But then they like to hide behind this art wall
to hide their ignorance.
You know what I mean?
So like that, I don't like like that those are the kind of arguments.
Is hiding behind our you know hiding ignorance behind or I hate that because there's such a
shield you can fucking throw up in front of anything these days. You know what I mean? That could just
invalidate anyone's justified opinion over yours. Yeah.
You know what I mean?
So it's like saying one plus one is three.
What are some things that you struggle with
to bother you?
Ooh. I'm not gonna be able to improve how it's going.
Being social, I think.
You'd like to be able to improve how it's going.
Being people that I like.
You know what I mean?
Like I said, I don't know.
I mean, I've known Tommy for like 20 fucking years,
you know what I mean?
And I still feel like maybe there's like just some shit
about him that isn't what I would want.
You know what I mean?
Like to be like or something like that,
but I've just never seen it, you know what I mean? Like to be like or something like that, but I've just never seen it.
You know what I mean?
But like I struggle to kind of be a person that I respect.
You know what I mean?
Because it's hard not being myself, which is this kind of like abrasive dude sometimes.
You know what I mean?
Like in situations, you know what I mean?
It's like I can make a conscious effort
not to be addicted to someone.
I think I should be addicted to.
You know what I mean?
Like I can behave like that.
That's fine.
But I sometimes can't,
I don't know if that makes any sense.
I can't, everybody wants to be
liked, I guess.
You know what I mean to a degree?
Or, I don't think anyone really wants to be hated
or villainized or whatever.
Nobody, nobody probably gets any satisfaction out of that.
If they say they do, it's just because they've just
gone so far down that fucking road, that's all they know.
And they're like, okay, I think I like this. I'm'm a bad guy look at me. I'm gonna go to Mars, you know like whatever
but
like
it's just really hard to
constantly put myself in a headspace where I should be like someone I respect when I'm dealing with
Unknown person, you know what I mean?
That's tough. It's hard not to be yourself. Yeah, do you
How often do you?
How often are you? I don't know how to fucking ask this question.
It is weird, I think I know where you're going.
How often do you find yourself not being yourself,
not being true to yourself, not being who you are?
Not that often, not that often,
because I've made a point to be just so reclused,
you know what I mean?
And I avoid people, like I avoid them in shows not like like
Get away from me. No, I just mean like
For you avoiding people or certain situations. Oh
Certain situations with people. You know what I mean? I guess
I
Don't I don't have the best empathy at all. You know what I mean? I don't know what it is. I don't have the best empathy at all.
You know what I mean?
I don't know what it is.
I can admit that.
You know what I mean?
This is a lot of people are just totally virtually
signaling on how they feel for everybody
and this and that.
No, this is why I'm so nice is because I understand this.
I sometimes, I just don't get people at all.
I don't get, I don't feel that same kind of like,
bummed outness that you would feel
if your cat died.
You know what I mean?
I can relate, but I can't be as sad as you
and fully understand you
and that's why we wouldn't get along at that time.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, so that's weird.
You don't take other people's, you don't take on the baggage.
I can't.
I can't.
And it's not because I can't.
I'm not emotionally equipped to deal with.
I just mean that like, yeah, this is really deep.
Because I've never, I've never really thought about that that much.
Because it's my fucking point.
But, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't really empathize as much as people would want
you to. I'm not saying I'm like totally devoid of empathy. I fucking, no, I've just been
in, I've been in relationships and I've been through, you know, family tragedies and stuff
like that. And I've always felt like I was the guy who gave the least amount of fucks. You know what I mean? Like, but I mean the least amount of fucks not like in the world.
Like I'm like, I get what you're saying, man. You're saying you feel guilty because you
don't feel guilty. And then they're like, well, dad, you just, that's kind of a form of
empathy too. But yeah, but it's, it's different. You know what I mean? I do.
Because I remember, I remember getting called out
for that once.
I'm probably gonna catch shit for this,
but like I remember my grandma's funeral.
It was like everybody was like,
you know what I mean?
Well, fucking funeral, it's bummer, you know,
grandma's dad and we were,
me and my grandmother were the closest, right?
She's the one that got me into computers
and she bought the Atari for herself
so we could go over and play it and stuff like that.
She was the one that kind of got me in there, right?
And I was like, I remember being at the service
and I'm just like,
and my sister actually kind of gave me the what for.
You know what I mean?
Like, why aren't you, and then we got,
we got a fight over it.
You know what I mean?
Like, not like on site or whatever,
but there was some friction.
Some friction there.
You know what I mean?
I'm just like, I just, I don't know.
I just, I'm not that upset over it. You know what I mean? I'm just like, I just, I don't know. I just, I'm not that upset over it.
You know what I mean?
Not like I'm glad.
I just mean that this is fucking, that's what happens.
And I'm, you know what I mean?
Like I don't wanna put myself where you're gonna dwell on it.
Oh yeah.
And, you know, whatever.
And it was really weird.
And that's what I was like, fuck man.
Am I just, am I gonna grow up to be a fucking serial killer?
Like, what's going on here?
You know what I mean?
That may be questioning a couple fucking things.
So yeah, that's in, and I haven't even really thought
about that until you literally just brought that up
and like, fucking 20 years.
So that's really weird.
But yeah, I guess that's,
I, if I could do better at that, it would be at that,
or at least faking it.
You know what I mean?
I don't know if, I mean,
I don't think there's a reason to fake it.
I mean people, people, well yeah,
because people like to, why are you so weird dude?
People like to, man, I don't wanna say lower themselves,
but they, you know, they will,
they like to do all-on stuff.
They don't want to leave the tragedy or whatever they're in at the moment that's keeping
them down.
A lot of people, I think just, they dwell in that space.
Yeah.
Yeah, but it's not even just that.
It could just be a simple basic,
it doesn't have to be that heavy.
I just mean even things like where I had some fans come up
to me at an airport once and it was the worst possible
fucking time to come talk to me.
Like I was so fucking pissed.
Long story short, but like, I just,
like this shit went down with my fucking tack
and I had a show and I was like on zero fucking sleep
and I'm losing my fucking mind
cause this piece of shit software was doing this thing.
Anyway, it was enough to throw me into a murderous rage
and these people came up to me
and I didn't know what the fuck they were, right?
They just started talking at me, right?
And I'm just like, not having it, right?
And just like, and I said, would you just fuck off?
Like basically, I don't know who the fuck you are.
I didn't know who they were, right?
And then as they were leaving, they're like,
well, we were big fans and then I was like, fuck, sakes.
You know what I mean?
Like, fuck, I can't believe I just did that.
I felt terrible, like, holy shit.
But then I'm like, well, why did I even act like that?
Why not just say, hey, you know what,
I'm just having a really bad time.
Like, like, like Tommy would, you know what I mean?
Or someone else I know would, you know what I mean?
Like, where I just like literally let him have it
in the fucking airport, where people were like,
what the fuck's going on over there? And I was like, yeah. One thing, I mean, I'm new with this, you know,
and my name's gaining a lot of recognition these days with the show. And one thing I'm starting
to notice is the bigger things get, the, it's like you're not allowed
to have a bad day.
No, everybody's allowed to have a bad day,
but you can't have a bad day or else you're a fucking asshole.
Mm-hmm.
You feel like that?
Yeah, sometimes, sometimes, but then when you think
about that way, like literally the audacity of it,
just like absolves you from any fuck you,
you've ever fucking said, and you get on with your fucking day.
Like I said, I forgot about that incident,
like fucking two days later,
and then I'm like, fine, cool.
I even went to Twitter, I was like, dude,
because I felt fucking terrible, and I didn't like,
yeah, okay, I've got like, ooh, million fucking fans,
but what's two?
You know what I mean?
Well, it sucks that just the thought of somebody's
just thinking about when an asshole you are in in your entirety because of that one
You know what I mean? You don't like yeah, I'm a judge by one bad one. I lost fucking major like big deals
Like literally some figure fucking sponsorship things because of something they dug up, you know
And they're like, you know, and they're like, well, you know, back in 1997, you said this on the internet,
and yeah, and they're like, fuck, I did, I know.
And that sucked, and it was stupid,
but fuck me if that's gonna fucking, you know,
bite me in the ass like in 2020, you know, like, yeah.
Yeah, it's just fucking weird.
But can't be too mad at that,
because that's just the fucking world we live in, you know.
Do you think the, do you think that the lack of empathy affects relationships that you're
in?
Personal ones?
Personal ones.
Uh, yeah.
But only the ones that just are kinda here there and gone.
Every relationship I've ever made that I feel like I have a solid relationship with,
I've been doing friends for life and probably will be till fucking dead and gone, you know.
So, like, it hasn't affected the relationships that I have, like with Tommy or Steve or Bryce
or fucking my lawyer or fuck, you know, like my business team and all these people that I've
been working with for decades and decades.
No, that doesn't matter.
Well, family or women.
Family, no, family's family, that's unconditional.
That's not like, with my family anyway.
It's been cool.
It's just like, we all plug each other
and we all meet up at Christmas
and fucking hang out at each other's houses
every now and again.
So it's things have all mellowed out.
Now that we're all like adults and again. So it's things to all mellowed out now that we're all like
adults, shit.
So it's cool.
I've been fortunate to have that kind of stability
within the family there.
Women, eh, not so much.
I just gotta find the right one.
That's just willing to just enjoy
just not fucking talking about shit. I'm sure there's one out there.
What are you looking for in a woman?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm not looking for a woman, you know what I mean?
I'm just, I'm looking to like figure out
what I'm fucking doing this week, you know?
Like honestly, like I'm just,
I'm kind of over relationships.
Cause I just, I don't have that capacity
to be the 50, 50 kind of fucking thing, you know what I mean?
Because it's like,
I used to always wonder,
why do actors always date actors?
Why do musicians always date musicians?
I don't like, I kind of got that now.
Not that I want a date and actor or fucking musician
been there done that.
Fuck no thanks.
It's just crazy.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I think maybe,
as I get older and wiser, I'll calm down and
get a more solid routine.
Like some dudes are great.
Fucking at that shit.
Like, cascade. Fucking amazing. It's like a wife and three fucking at that shit. Like Cascade fucking amazing,
he's got wife and three daughters
and you tours like a mother fucker
and he just makes it work
cause he's just a Zen fucking cow in fucking India,
you know, like he's just, he just goes with it.
He's all good.
But me, I'm like, I'm just high octane stress and travel
and then thinking
of my next kind of thing, you know.
When we talk about kind of the, I want to ask you how you handled the come up and when
it comes to fame.
How have you dealt with that?
Like I said, I've always felt it's like,
that just, it's weird.
Like I was really put by somebody coming up with me
and asking for an autograph,
not because it was inconvenient to me
because I can't relate.
I don't know what it is with me or whatever,
but I just, I don't care who it is.
I mean, of course I I respect people, and I,
I like look up to people that, you know, some people that are like, you know, really brilliant
in an area that I only wish I was a fraction of, or talented in music, but I don't think I
have ever had that so much of a feeling that I wouldn't know how to control myself if I was near them
or was locked in a room with them or chance to meet them and shit like I just don't get it.
And maybe that's the same part of your brain that the empathy thing, I don't fucking know, but
I would have imagined that like say meeting Trent Rezner at Mel's diner at fucking LA would have been
like this big, I've waited my whole life for this moment thing, but it was literally
honestly just diluted down to two fucking nerds eating shitty food at Mel's talking about
fucking, how Twitter sucks or something.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's just, it wasn't anything.
It wasn't like, you know, me looking into his eyes
and thanking him for inspiring me to be this.
You know, it's like, and it was because I just like,
people do that to me all the time.
And I'm like, and I'm not saying I'm gonna spare you that.
I just didn't feel compelled to do it.
You know what I mean?
It's just like, I don't, like, I don't think he personally picked me, you that, I just didn't feel compelled to do it. I mean, I just like, I don't think he personally picked me,
you know, and then decided to start a career
so that he could get me where I would need it to be,
you know, that's a weird way to think about it, you know.
Yeah.
Because that's how I would imagine it would make him feel it.
If I said that, you know what I mean, you know,
and it's almost the way, but you can't be rude,
you can't be, you can't fucking tear people down by saying nothing to like, like, I do
mean rates, like I can perform like socially with people, like I can deal with a fan. That's fine,
you know, in the right setting. Of course, not when I got my dick in my hands
of the fucking urinal, all the dude comes up
and said, he's like, bro, really look,
you fucking music, and then you turn around and go,
what, you know, like is that fucked up?
Like there have been some weird shit things like that.
But in the right setting, at the right fucking time,
read the fucking room, you know, and I'm approached
and says, hey man, you know, I'm a really big fan,
you know, I do this because of you, you know,
and I'm like, that's like, that's heavier than you know.
You know what I mean to put on somebody.
You know what I mean?
I'm not saying I'm like, I'm gonna yell at him.
I just go, oh cool man, good, good, go, you know, best of luck.
Just don't go getting better than me.
You know what I mean, you're like, whatever, you know,
you play it off, but like, I truly, truly, truly,
don't know how to respond
to, I do this because of you.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
I don't know how to deal with that.
I'm not saying, nobody should, I do not.
I am not emotionally equipped to deal with like praise
or anything like that.
Like I've done some supernatural thing that you can't do.
You know what I mean?
Because I'm not.
You could totally do this.
Anyone could do it.
It's just, and that fucking weird anomaly that did, you know,
and lucked out somehow.
You didn't quit?
Didn't quit, yeah.
But by that logic too, if you're saying well if everybody
fight well why aren't we all you know like fucking big EDM mouse head wearing DJs well I mean
everybody's got a gift you know do you believe that I do 100 fucking 10% I believe that I believe
everybody has something that they're good at but I I think that you know, I think it takes I think it takes drive in
dedication and time to develop it and most people don't they're not willing to put forth the effort
Half of them never even fucking discover their gift then when it's given to them and they do discover it
They're too fucking lazy to develop it
Okay, well that's fair. That's kind of like Schrodinger's gift though.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I guess that's 50, 50 on the argument
that everybody is...
I mean, and then there's the risk too.
You know, there's the risk.
They're not gonna take the,
a lot of people aren't gonna take the risk.
I mean, that's just entrepreneurship 101, right?
If you're not gonna take the risk,
then you're not gonna get the reward.
Oh yeah, no, I mean, yeah, my risk was quitting at SIT,
holy shit, I quit a full-time fucking job
with, you know, pretty decent benefits and stuff
to just say, fuck it, I'm gonna do music.
Nobody does that, man.
Nobody does that.
Very rarely.
And when they do, it's not every one of those
is gonna come out, you know what I mean?
Like, that's why I was a risk.
Yeah, fuck it's, that's what the, I just don't know what to say.
When anyone's like, what advice can you give me as,
I'm just starting my journey.
What advice would you give me?
Like, dude, I do not wanna lead you down.
Yeah. The fucking, the wanna lead you down the fucking,
the pathaglory or the fucking,
the rest of your nightmarish life, you know,
like I don't know, dude.
Yeah, like that's, like again, that's so heavy too,
is that I get the lightness of the question,
hey, if you had one piece of advice to give a musician,
what would it be?
I'm like, dude, this is dangerous. You know what I mean? Like, like, fuck me. Quit your
job and do it full time. You know what I mean? But then, you know, like, I mean, a lot of
the advice, you know, that I think people just don't, some of it's so simple, you know,
the advice to, to success can be so fucking simple. It's shit like, trust your gut, man.
Fuck what everybody else is saying.
Do what you want to do.
Do what you believe is the right thing.
Get a good lawyer.
Nobody does it.
Nobody does it.
You know, but on that note, let's take a quick break.
When we come back, we'll start digging into
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All right, Joel, we're back from the break.
So much chipper.
I've got enough to say, Grant.
Yeah.
And we're getting ready to dive into some of the new ventures
that you're going on outside of music.
But you have a very
you have a history, you have a nice legal career. Yeah, well no my lawyer does, that's for sure.
What uh, well I've gotten in shit, but not like dumb shit like criminal or a shit I didn't
bring on, but it's just like the mouse logo was, I guess
Disney had a huge problem with that, but not until like after eight years of me actually
using the mark, you know what I mean? So even the trademark office is like, but you could
have contested this a decade ago. Oh, you just waited for him to get big, and now you're scared, you know what I mean?
But, I mean, we're also talking about a company
that's been known to sue daycares
for paying their shit on their wall, you know what I mean?
So, I mean, I'm all for that go-get-em fuck you,
don't touch my brand attitude, but that was a bit excessive.
Their big point, their problem was basically confusion.
They didn't want people confusing me for Mickey Mouse.
That was their biggest home run.
You know, that was the, you know,
we don't want people thinking your dad, your Mickey Mouse,
and you don't want people thinking Mickey Mouse is you.
And basically, it's like just common sense.
Like, I don't think my fans confuse my brand for yours.
I don't think so.
I think so.
But we have to prove that.
So we had to do, like literally, they went out and did,
like, kind of like surveys and stuff like that.
Like, like, kind of almost man on the street sort of,
do you know who this is? Like, well, kind of almost man on the street sorta,
do you know who this is?
Like, well, either yeah or no.
You know what I mean?
And then like, do you know who this is?
You know, you know, you know, you know, like yeah.
And they had to use that as part of the discovery process
for this seven year long fucking battle.
That was seven years.
Something like that, yeah.
I mean, what is it like when you get it,
what'd you get a cease and to cease?
Kind of. They, they, they, they, every, I think it's like five years or so.
I don't, I don't, I don't actually know.
I should know this.
I'm, I'm really, my lawyer is going to kill me for not knowing this
because she makes it a point to educate me on, on IP law and all this stuff.
And I actually do know a lot about it, but just this one particular thing is that
you need to register and re-register your marks every period or something like that.
So basically, Disney, McDonald's, whoever, right?
They're registration like expires after a certain amount, but they've got someone already
ahead of that, you know what I mean?
So that just, it's literally rolls over and everything's smooth and all the correct things are filed to the UP STO or whatever or USPTO and
I guess someone fell asleep at the wheel of contesting it when I
Renewed mine, right and then Disney kind of tried to proactively
Stop me from doing that, but all the while
they stopped me from doing that. But all the while Disney, being as huge as they are,
more lawyers than animators, you know what I mean?
They were also asked, there were certain parts of Disney
getting asking me to do things with Disney
while this other part of Disney was preventing me
from trying to stop me from using my mark.
So they're like, no, no, true story. And this is kind of like how we got out of it.
To some degree was that they wanted me to score the new Fantasia.
And then they wanted me to stop being Deb Mouse.
Interesting. Pick one. I was really weird.
And it was, it made some textbooks
over like a copyright law and stuff like that.
So, too. So while they're trying to shut down
deadmouse, they're also using deadmouse music
in some of their stuff
without even licensing it from me.
Are you serious?
Where'd it go? It was a thing.
And so we had to put a C&D back on Disney too.
So all these little, like, little hoodnotes came up
and the fucking thing and I'm like,
I can't believe this is so expensive.
Like, because it is, to just to perpetuate it,
to keep it going, just to keep the,
like you got to pay lawyers,
the Disney lawyers aren't working for free.
And my lawyer's not working for free.
So this is just whole thing, it's just, they won. They won. The lawyers won. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's
how it always goes, right? Yeah. And we, as far as I'm allowed to say, I've reached
an amicable agreement where we can coexist, you know, that just, I think, like me and
Eisner should have just duked it out in a room, you know, but it didn't happen.
Hey, I mean, but I remember, I actually, I really remember, I was playing, you know, but it didn't happen. Hey, I'm in. But I remember, I actually, I really remember,
I was playing, I think it was Orlando,
where I had to play, I think it was a hard rock
or something like that, but it was on Disney property.
And this is like, right, the heat of this fucking
like lawsuit, right?
That's all over the fucking place.
And they're like, yeah, so you're playing Disney, basically.
You know, because this venue is like inside Disney world
or whatever.
And I'm like, dude, I don't know, man,
this sounds pretty skish.
Cause I'm gonna like, what are they gonna like walk me in
and that dark room and then, you know,
goofy's gonna come out with a fucking bat.
And you know, like, I don't know, man,
like how's this gonna end?
And it was just so weird. I wonder if I'm on a list. I
But I went to Disneyland when I was like a little kid like with the family for like a little trip thing
But I've never been since but I heard it's pretty cool. I don't want to go
just to see
Just see what happens see if it made the list.
Yeah, so the Disney thing was cool.
Oh, and I've been in court with cheer bear
from the Care Bears for probably another seven or eight years.
What? Yeah, no, cartoon characters only, man.
Yeah.
I've only ever been in court with cartoon characters,
three of them, Mickey, Mouse, and cheer Bear, and a cartoon cat named Miaoington's.
Hold on, what's the, what's the Care Bear one about?
You like that one, eh?
Yeah, so when I first started publishing my music, immediately after the BSOD stuff, right?
So the like, faxing Berlin, like that old stuff.
I signed to this record, they would call play records
in Toronto, but like, I didn't have a lawyer,
I didn't have anything, and I was just kind of basically
like kind of hauled into a kitchen, basically.
I was like, I'm just signing that,
so I'll be your manager, and I'm like, you know what?
They're paying my rent.
All right.
Sign this bullshit. Cool go start putting music out.
And then I outgrew, you know what I mean? I outgrew the label.
And it wasn't like, there was nothing nefarious
or there was no friction between us towards that part
because it was just so common sense, so obvious, right?
Like I'm doing, I have the potential
to do so much business, I think,
with the mouse brand now,
that you can't handle it.
You're just this, like, the basement literal basement label
that like, you won't be able to book me gigs,
you won't be able to like, you know,
keep up with a distribution and all this stuff.
And it's just, it's just like, you're just not competent
enough to handle that.
So, I'm gonna go and sign with another,
a new label out in the UK,
which I think was club class at the time.
And it was, who was my manager still to this day,
Dean Wilson, and I had a conversation,
I'll never forget with this lady.
Oh, so the lady, she was the voice of cheer bear
from the Care Bears.
And her husband basically kind of had a lot to do
with Nalvana, the studio that did like,
he walks the cartoon and Star Wars and rock and rule
and those old vintage cartoons from Cannot,
you probably didn't know, but it was a thing
and it was kind of a big deal.
And so they made a lot of money doing that.
And she was kind of like a trophy wife
that was like in the basement,
and we're on a record label.
So that's how it came to be, right?
And so again, like I said,
it got to this point where I was like,
I'm gonna go do this and she got really mad at that.
Like, cause I'm just like, look,
it's just, I don't hate you. And this isn't Like, cause I'm just like, look, it's just,
I don't hate you or this isn't anything personal.
It's just like, honestly, like I will starve
in this little pond.
I need to go and fucking explore some other shit
and she just got fucking nasty.
She was just like, wow.
And my favorite quote from it,
you go do whatever you want.
I'm like, okay, sweet, thanks.
She goes, you know, you're not TS style.
Literally.
She said that and I went,
hmm, you know what, like, you know,
and maybe at the time it might have hurt my feelings
a little bit, but now I just, I love to say you're right.
I'm fucking dead mass.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, it turned into this petty shit
where it was just like, you know, go do whatever you want.
You know, kind of like verbally said that to me.
And I'm like, I guess that's all I need.
You know what I mean?
So I go to Dean and I, I just closed everything to Dean.
I said, well, Dean, I do have this thing
with this like small label and whatever.
And he's like, whatever, we work that out, you know,
like me, we're gonna fucking shop you to EMI you know like they can buy and sell
them in a fucking minute so whatever it's all good we'll work it out and I'm like okay
but just you know like I like transparency I'm not like a shitty person business wise so
let's just fucking do this thing and and and we did for two three years you know we we
developed Ed Mouse,
and we started MouseTrap,
and then we signed the EMI,
and I got some big fucking swing-and-dick lawyers
out in the UK shared in.
So they represented the Beatles,
and Pink Floyd, and all those guys.
And I'm like, okay, this is good.
The path of righteousness.
Finally, a team big enough to, you know,
fucking do my shit.
Then, you know, some music comes out.
I start making a lot more noise, and then all of a sudden I'm getting booked
And I'm like yes, so I'm playing like ministry of sound and government and all these international night clubs and
Of course this gets back to Mel right and fucking ghosts and stuff comes out and it's a big hit and and then Mel's like
I got this contract that says, you know what I mean?
I'm like, oh, you fucking kidding me.
Okay, whatever, I'll entertain it.
You know what I mean?
So then the lawyer started coming out
and it's like, and she retains the rights
to a lot of my early stuff that I made in that basement.
You know what I mean?
So it's been really petty.
Yeah, you know, so it's like, she'll release
these things every year that's like, because she can, you know, so it's like she'll, she'll release these things every year that's like,
because she can, you know, I mean, but I can also be a dick. I can, I can refuse any remixes,
any remakes, you know, any kind of like derivative works of those. I can shut those down because
they need my approval, you know, not all is lost, but I just, there are certain pieces of my
earlier catalog that I just can't touch, because that'll make her a dime.
Damn.
You know what I mean?
I'm like, that sucks, but that's the business, honestly.
So, like, I'm not even that mad, because you gotta get fucked
a few times, you know what I mean, to learn a thing.
You can't just, you know what I mean?
And then be totally fine.
Like TLC and Hammer and all these people,
you know what I mean?
Like no one's immune to it.
So that's maybe not advice for a beginning musician,
but like if you really wanna be active in this business
and be a, have a journey in there,
you're gonna get fucked.
Yeah, it's not, it's not if, it's who and when,
and hopefully not so bad.
And that honestly wasn't even that bad.
I mean, it's just annoying,
and it's just a part of my story,
but like it just,
I just wish it wasn't, but oh well.
You know, yeah.
Yeah, and then,
so that's cheer bear, Mickey,
and then Miaoingtons, a cartoon cat.
I had a cat, I mean, Miaoingtons, who just recently passed away,
lived to be about 16, and that cat, I bought,
I adopted him from the Humane Society in Toronto,
and it's just been my bro, you know what I mean?
Like my sanity from the very start,
like 16 years, you know what I mean? Oh wow. So this cat's seen some shit, you know what I mean? Like my sanity from the very start, like 16 years, you know what I mean?
Oh wow.
So this cat's seen some shit, you know?
But of course he doesn't travel with me.
He just kind of hangs out the house.
But he's just a little, you know,
the little floor duster that comes and greets me
when I get home and you know what I mean?
He's like my bro, you know, like so that was,
I love that cat.
And so like, I'd share a lot of that cat's
like kind of stuff with everybody and it's like the cat
had fans, right?
So, Mjöngtens was a big part of my brand.
I put them on album covers and we made Mjöngtens merch and stuff for kids and stuff like that
in cat toys and all this dumb shit, right?
And it was just like, Mjöngtins was part of deadmouse. It's just like
deadmouse of meowing tins. You know, it's like, of course, I know it's cat. You know
what it means? So because I really like, I located the cat. And he was just part of the crew.
So there was a cat toy company, meowing tins, like that just kind of came out of nowhere
and then said, you know, no, not happening. You gotta cut out all your meowing to the smart.
I don't even, I can't even remember what the claim was
or something like that.
I think it was like a, probably like a copyright thing,
but I mean, I had all the marks.
I owned, you know, all the meowing to the stuff
and, you know, you could have contested this.
And, you know, some startup, Catoy, fucking bullshit in Toronto.
And my lawyer, God bless her.
She is a fucking genius.
So this, this, this,
this Miaoingtons company was from Toronto,
which I thought, oh, funny that.
You know what I mean? Like, okay.
So they're neighbors.
I got to pose.
That's how stupid that was.
So, um, by, you know, a company run
by like a 20-something-year-old girl, you know, that does this thing. And I have to go
sit through a deposition. Like, I'm like, this is like something you do when you like kill somebody, defraud someone of millions, I don't know, in bezel company money
or something serious, you know what I mean, but they just want the name meowingtons.
And I'm like, but that's my cat's name. And you know what I mean? It's like it's nothing
personal, dude. I'm not selling cat treats. I swear. I could, but I that's a good idea,
but I won't.
You know, instead of just some co-exist,
fuck you, you know, they just decide to take it
and then make it a big deal.
So, it was my first deposition.
So I was kinda like, I didn't know,
like I think you can get to post for the Disney thing, right?
So I'm thinking like this is gonna be weird, right?
So I'm in this deposition.
My fucking lawyer's here and then this fucking their lawyer is doing the fucking asking me
at least.
God damn fucking questions, right?
Like it like, not like you, but like I mean just like asking me my life story, right?
And he's like, and then I, and he's like, so when did you start making me get, you know,
I'm like, oh, don't be about it.
And I'm just like spilling my guts, right?
Like I'm just telling the facts, right?
And then we get a timeout, going to the Southern group.
And then my lawyer's assistant is yelling at me.
She goes, you, why are you blabbing?
Why are you talking so much?
I'm like, I'm fucking, because I didn't do anything wrong.
You know what I mean?
Like, whatever, you just asking the same,
she goes, okay, well you just got it. And I'm like whatever you just asking the subject goes cable you just got it to me. I'm like
All right, whatever get back into the devil
I sit down then and then he's like it started getting weird. He goes
Did you
Did you in fact date cat Von D and I'm like?
The Vondi and I'm like,
Google it, you know, yes, you know what I mean? Like why?
And it goes, did you know that cat Vondi
was very good friends with Lemmy from Motorhead?
Yes.
What the fuck are you, what are you doing dude?
Like, you know, and then he goes, did you know that Lemmy had a cat?
And I'm like, no, actually.
I didn't know that, that's pretty funny.
Cool story, bro.
Do you know the cat's name?
And I'm like, no.
You're gonna tell me or do I have to go to the,
like, it just turned into like a big joke because this guy's like, he's like, I got him, I got him with this. No. You're gonna tell me or do I have to go to the...
It just turned into like a big joke because this guy is like, I got him with this.
And I'm like, it's in there.
He's like, did you know the cat's name was Miaoingtons?
I'm like, no.
He's like, okay.
Next question.
You know what I mean?
Let me start asking all these stupid fucking questions. And my lawyer is like, shut up. You fucking idiot. You know what I mean? Let me start asking all these stupid fucking questions and my lawyer is like shut up
You fucking idiot, you know what I mean?
And then I'm like holy shit like you can't see that just go stop gaslighting my client you fucking piece your shit
You're a piece of shit and then the
Stenographer ladies like on fucking fire my lead my lawyer is just killing her like and I'm like oh my god
This is madness like is going to be my light?
Is this a taste of like, you know, like any weird copyright case that I run into with music or
something like that? And then it turns out it was. And I was like, oh, dude, this is the worst. This
is so TV weirdness. Stop it. So then, and then my lawyer comes out
for our turn to talk or whatever, and she starts to throw down this fucking envelope,
like basically saying, okay, well,
hey Emma, is this your boyfriend?
She's like, yeah, is this your boyfriend a DJ?
And she goes, yeah, and you guys don't know who Deb Mouse is.
And she goes, no, not really.
And then everyone's like kind of rolling their eyes,
but okay, sure, that's your fucking claim,
that's your claim, because you can't just prove that,
they didn't know me, but,
I can every fucking millennial
on Toronto knew who I was at that time, right?
And so, okay, yeah, so basically,
she's just trying to say,
you didn't name your company,
because that mouse had a cat named fucking Miaoington's
and now you're just here to be a bitch, basically, right?
And so that was kind of the sell.
And then she's like, yeah, no, no, we didn't know who he was.
And she goes, yeah, your boyfriend,
she's like, yeah, how long you been with him?
She's like, oh, I don't know, like 10 years, whatever.
She's your boyfriend's a DJ, right?
And she's like, yeah, he plays a,
da da da da, and okay, and your DJ boyfriend
doesn't know who Deb Mouse is.
And she's like, no.
And she found a fucking picture of her boyfriend
DJing and she zooms in on the fucking see shit my fucking name right across that
It was so fun. I was like
D-n-a-you fucking madman like holy shit. You are the best
Oh my god, it's like holy shit. You are the best. That's awesome. Oh my God. Holy shit. Try like this is amazing
Still my Lord. That's awesome. How I met her was even good. How'd you made her Dina? Yeah. Oh my God
I was on a tour bus with Tommy Lee Tommy Lee had a little person on the bus because it was he was like kind of part of this
Band of this troop of little people that
We're part of that carnival of Sins theme tour and his name is Mike McGara mighty Mike
They call them and Mike was a little shit talker heavy drinking little guy who just loved to fight everybody
And one time on the bus he was just getting out of control and we were all like kind of little sauce to and we were
Fucking around so we picked him up and we hung him out of the bus window and we were in a parking lot,
like a mall, the America kind of thing, like just slowly driving around.
We told the bus driver guy, we're like, hey, we do a couple fucking laps, whatever.
And we were holding Mike out of the bus window, like by his feet and we're laughing our ass
as off and fucking whenever we're gonna fucking kill him or anything but then we just kind of pull them back in. Well it
turns out somebody saw this and then called the police. So the police start kind of
showing up. This is like when I'm like this was that that first tour right basically
after we all got friendly and shit and Tony Tommy's
assistance like fucking guys I don't know what fucking
just gonna pack it up close to fucking window and don't fucking come out
because we saw the blue lights and all this shit we're like oh like what
what happened what did we do you know like we're not doing anything like
hmm so Tony's like fucking Tony's on the phone with Tommy's lawyer,
like dealing with shit and then for whatever thing
he made it go away and it turns out that somebody thought
we were hanging a child out of the window of the bus
and called the police as as they should.
And yeah, but we then Tony had to basically say,
look, it's not a child, but either way, it won't happen again.
Yeah.
It's Tommy Lee's in the back just, let's not make this a thing.
And I guess the cops were cool with it and laughed.
And they'd talk to the lawyer and stuff.
And it all went away.
And that was that.
That was business as usual.
Like that was just pretty funny thing.
But what made that funny is about 10 years later,
I was going into a lawyer's office,
I was getting a new lawyer,
and they tell me her name's Dina.
She wraps all these people.
She's like a great lawyer and all of a sudden,
go meet her say hi and
Deal with some unrelated like other she's not my lawyer, but I still had to deal with her kind of shit
so I go up to meet her and
She's cool sitting there to say oh hi, and I'm like hi. Hi. How you doing? She goes oh, yeah, so you're
Your Joel and I'm like yeah, Joel. She goes Joel Zimmerman. Yeah. Yeah cool. She goes okay cool
So what do you do you like you do me? She really didn't know and I'm like oh,, Joel, she goes, Joel Zimmerman. Yeah, yeah, cool, she goes, oh, cool, so what do you do?
You like, you do me, she really didn't know.
And she's like, oh, it's like DJ stuff.
She goes, oh, okay.
And she goes, oh, what's your DJ name?
And I go, deadmails.
And she just fucking,
just fucking just changed people on in front of me.
And she was like, you, it was you.
And I was like, oh shit, I'm terrified,
because I know Dina,
like I knew her by reputation
and the havoc she's done
and the fucking legal business.
Like of all the lawyers you want to not like you,
she's the last.
And I was like, oh my God, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done.
And I'm just like sinking in my chair
and she's like pointing her finger and she's like, it was you and I'm thinking like, what, what, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. And I'm just like sinking in my chair and she's like pointing her finger,
and she's like, it was you and I'm thinking like,
what, what, like a dude, she's gotta have like,
some weird person or something
or has me confused with someone else.
I'm like, me what, what, what, what did I do?
She goes, you were hanging Mike out of the tour bus
with Tommy, me back in it,
because she was the lawyer on the fully shit
when Tony had to call because she was representing Tommy
at the fucking time.
And we had a laugh.
You're like, well now you know what you're in for.
There you go.
It goes every time I hear your name,
it's you and Tommy and then Tommy.
It's like, who's getting in shit for something,
but it was really funny.
And then, did you have the retainer?
I retainer, that's my lawyer, yeah.
And she charges me hourly.
My nom, no retainer.
Well, there's another one too
that I want to talk about, the Ferrari.
Oh, yeah, there's not really much to it.
Other than Ferrari, you just really got bent out of shape that I wrapped the Nyan cat stuff on their car
Which is funny because you know who had a bigger case than Ferrari the guy that own Yan cat
And he was chill as fuck. He was like, oh, that's funny. I'm like cool, right?
He's not kill yet. I was like, okay
Because he was actually the only one
that could have done something, really.
Ferrari just kinda like sent us a C&D on it.
And we're like, how do you see a D for Rory?
You know what I mean?
You buy it, it's your property kind of thing,
but technically not.
There's some weird stuff with Ferrari,
whereas even if you buy one,
it's like they own a piece of like IP of it.
You know what I mean? Not the vehicle of course, own a piece of like IP of it. You don't even mean not not the vehicle
of course or the you know they can't come and take it, but they can send a C&D over or future
sales and stuff like that they can prevent you from buying a new one. Oh okay. Like like MSO or
not MSO. For our wishes they had an MSO. They like they if you were on a list for a lot for our wishes, they had an MSO.
Like, if you were on a list for a law for our, I was definitely taken off.
So that was part of it.
And it was just kind of like a dramatic thing
because they sued an Italian company called
Piro Sonny, or I'm boatering this.
Pure sanga, singu, I don't know.
What means pure blood in Italian, right?
Okay.
So that, for our, we was making a car called that,
whatever it is, and there was a charity
that was donated blood by the same name,
and they sued the charity.
Oh man.
Yeah, because they wanted the name
their fucking car that damn.
Yeah.
So then I switched over to McLaren
and they were way more fun.
But wait, was it their Lambo?
Didn't a Lambo call to say?
Yeah, Lambo came and I was like,
Oh, get a hurricane,
you can do whatever you want to it.
And I was like, okay.
So I kind of bought it as a punch line.
And well, I wanted to try it out anyway,
because it was the new shit hot Lambo, right?
But I just couldn't get behind it,
because it was like four-wheel drive.
I mean, it got off the line quick,
but I like to get off the line sideways.
You know what I mean?
I'm not like A to B.
Ooh, you know what?
Because you get a Bugatti for that.
You know, like if you like drive fast and straight line,
but I don't.
I like to get all squirrely and weird.
Yeah.
And you just can't do that four-wheel drive really.
And you couldn't disengage it.
You couldn't shut it off.
It's all just part of it.
So I was like, yeah, I mean, it's a fun,
last loud car, but...
Did you do an Uber?
Into McLaren, yeah, 650.
What the hell, where did that come from?
I just thought it would be really cool.
Because I always, I always find it Uber.
It's a little bit different.
I've always had a friend with one of the guys that
founded the company and stuff.
I thought, you know what's really funny?
Because they drive their own cars, right?
And he's like, yeah, you drive whatever you want.
It doesn't matter. And I was like, oh, cool. And I're like, yeah, you drive whatever you want. Doesn't matter, you know, and I was like, oh, cool.
And I'm like, well, how come nobody Uber's
like a really cool car, like a fucking my box
or something, or a frory, or whatever,
and he's like, well, they could.
And I was like, I should do that.
And he was like, can we film it?
And I was like, yeah, sure.
So it's like, it's like, be a Uber for a day.
Well, let's get into some of the stuff
that you're doing today.
Yeah, I'm doing a lot of like, okay.
So there's a, I'm really big with like GPU tech,
which is like basically everything that kind of runs
on a GPU, but just not AI.
That's the one thing I've never really gravitated towards,
because I just, not that I like,
I don't think I could understand it ever fully like programmatically and stuff like that.
It's just like if, but if I were to, I know I would deep dive on that and that would consume
a couple of years. So I had a couple of years. It was our blessed year of 2020, 2021, you know, so
2021, you know, so two years, no shows. All right. Let's play with game engines. So Epic games, the basically coming that makes Fortnite as they're mostly known, they make an engine, which
is like basically the backbone of a video game. Everything that runs in the background,
it's kind of like the suite of tools
that is used to make a video game, right?
There are many engines, there are, you know,
but there are two pretty big engines,
one being unity, one being unreal,
because they're publicly accessible, they're free, unreal,
also their engine. They post all the code for it online, so it's open source. So if you want to
modify the engine, however you want, you can do that too and recompile it and make your own.
You know, so it's just been a really, really great thing as it should be with billion dollar
companies, you know, as where they share their technology so that people can do derivative works of it.
I'll be, you got to pay a license once your, once your shit gets selling.
And I, and they have a thing where it's like, oh, I'm not sure how accurate it is now,
but it's probably very similar.
It's like, you're, you can use our engine as long as you do under a million dollars of sales.
So if I sell 800,000 copies of my $1 video game, I made it in $100,000.
But I think it's after a million, they do 8% or something like that.
I don't know. Don't quote me on that.
But it's something fair.
You know what I mean? And totally reasonable.
You know what I mean? So it's a great thing to learn on it.
And that particular engine, unreal engine, has involved into such a big set of tools
that you could do virtual reality experiences, you could do video games, you could do
DMX pre-visualization software, you know, all sorts of crazy post-production video rendering tools.
Most notably, what's that Star Trek guy,
the bounty hunter with a little baby Yoda?
What's the name of that show?
Shit, dude, I don't know.
I'm such a huge Star Trek fan.
What is it?
Mandalorian, there you go.
So the Mandalorian was actually a lot of that,
use that video game engine.
So they would do these XR volumes basically,
so they would have these LED screens
that ran on real engine scenery,
rendering real time, so as the camera moved,
you know, the background would move
in relation with the camera.
So that's like a video game engine,
creating those live real time effects, which is insane. So that just like a video game engine creating those live real-time effects, which is insane.
So that just goes to show you how high you could,
how of a level you could take those production tools,
they're using them in major motion pictures
and stuff like that.
So it's badass toolset.
So I'm working on a framework,
which is a toolset within the toolset
of real-time visualization software for what I do, meaning
that I could build my stage with the cube and all the LED panels and all the lights and
all their beams and every little fucking thing that turns on and off on my stage.
I can build it in an environment that you can walk around, look at, play with, and see,
and I can pre-vis my show because the other alternative,
the reason I do that is because I have to go rent a warehouse,
20,000 square feet, that has 700 amps,
and then we have to build it to test it,
to pre-vis it, to make sure it looks good.
Cause you, certain pre-vis softwares are only so good.
You know what I mean?
You want to really like, get it in a room,
turn off the lights, fog the lights,
and see how it really looks,
how it would look in a venue,
and how it would behave,
because again, you know, it's a simulation,
but then there's like motor times and light colors,
and stuff like that,
that you just can't really simulate properly.
But I have found with Unreal Engine,
I can simulate all that shit.
So I just saved $20,000 a day,
running a warehouse and having 12 crew people
in 80 computers, you know what I mean?
By being able to pre-visit in this suite.
So I'm thinking like, okay, well, that's good for me.
You know, how can I make this good for everybody, right? So I'm building a kind of framework that
can be a virtual show, so to speak, right? Now let's, I'm not putting all my bets on
that, you know, virtual shows are the future. They're not. They're a thing, but they're
not the future. They're not going to're a thing, but they're not the future, they're not gonna replace shit.
Nothing will ever replace you getting in a car
with your friends and driving and getting lost
and fucking puking in a fucking porta-party.
And you know what I mean?
And just, that's the event.
You know what I mean?
Those are the memories you take home from a show.
You know what I mean? Not fucking what he did, are the memories you take home from a show. You know what I mean?
Not fucking what he did, not what he played.
Maybe a couple songs in that shit,
but honestly dude, my concert memories
are like just the crazy shit that happened.
Getting there, being there.
You know what I mean?
And then out, you were just kind of like a passive
purveyor ringleader at that time.
You know what I mean?
It's like going to the circus and yelling at someone
for like looking at, you know,
yeah, where they're not supposed to at a certain time.
It's stupid, right?
So VR will never replace that, but it would be cool
to have that kind of synchronization of that
to a real show
at the same time.
Just because like shit, man, fucking dead mouse,
fucking leechin' us, $70 of fucking ticket.
I mean, he's no Taylor Swift, but fuck, man,
I think I'll just sit this one out or be at home
or I'm not flying 5,000 miles to catch this one show.
I wanna fucking catch, but I would gladly put a dollar
in a fucking machine
and kind of watch it as a video game kind of thing
as it unfolds kind of thing.
So.
And this also shows, I mean,
this is everything from your angle too as well.
Am I correct?
No, no, you can freely navigate it
like you would a video game.
Well, what I mean is they could get,
they could get, they could get,
what is it, a simulation?
Would you call it a simulation?
It's a hard thing to describe.
If it's a simulation, I mean, what I'm,
I guess what I'm getting at is they can,
they can also get your perspective from up on the stage.
If they moved in position themselves up that way,
if I designed it that way, yes.
Yeah, I could.
That's pretty cool.
I could, but the big challenge for me on that is,
it's not just creating like, you know,
a video game environment of my stage that does it.
It's the cross communication protocols
that need to happen in real time
that can be interchangeable
between the two things, one being the reality that I'm on this fucking cube.
And then we have this like dark fiber or however we're fucking doing it to go to servers
to distribute to thousands of other clients that same information.
So they're all doing the same thing at the same time.
So everyone's kind of having that similar experience.
Like everybody that goes to the show,
they don't have the same experience.
Even though they're all at the same venue, no.
You can't possibly have the same experience as someone else.
Someone loves this, one hates it, someone's fucking,
you know what I mean?
Like it's just whatever.
But there are shared points of information
that come from the stage to the crowd
that can be assimilated out to a video game type engine.
How close is this to being? Is it ready?
You know, not even fucking close. It's just me.
And again, I'm no fucking, I don't think I'm a genius.
I'll admit, and I'll do this sometimes
when it comes to like, I'm a good generalist,
I can pick up on tech really quick
because I grew up with it and I understand it
and the ones that I've chosen to deep dive
tend to have a common root of a new technology that comes out.
So when a new technology comes out, I can say,
oh, I understand how like, actually 25% of this works,
or even 50 or 75, but here's the mystery shit.
I gotta take some time on that,
but it's all very similar to how this works over this works.
You know what I mean?
So when I'm, of course, when I've been learning
to make music and software and stuff like that,
I didn't know shit about like stage lighting and design
and all that stuff too.
But as soon as I got put in that environment,
when it came time to like, when I got big enough,
I could start like, you know, taking time with the FOH guys
to say this is how the show's gonna look,
I, oh, you guys are using computers.
Okay, that's a start.
I know how a computer works.
Let's start from there, okay. Oh, this is are using computers. Okay, that's a start. I know how a computer works. Let's start from there.
Okay.
Oh, this is just like MIDI data.
Oh, okay, because MIDI is, you know,
this protocol that was invented, well,
the deeper story and that's MIDI nerds going to be
more actually.
Fucking, let's just say MIDI was invented
for like, you know was invented for a computer
to talk to a music instrument, right?
And now there's a protocol called DMX.
It's a very basic protocol that uses a computer
to talk to a moving light to say,
hey, do this, do this, do this, change color,
turn on, use your beam, don't use the beam.
It says, the protocols are almost identical.
Like, because Mitty was actually derived from DMX,
but anyway, it's very similar protocols.
So when I'm looking at this,
like what anyone else would look at this,
like computer screen, see all this alien code everywhere,
they're like, ah, this is how they control the lights,
holy shit, how do you know all this?
I see it as, oh, that's cool, it's fucking four-bit MIDI.
Let's fucking do this and this and this and this.
And then, oh, okay, cool.
And then I get more hands on to it.
Of course, I learned shit because DMX is pretty old school.
Now they use like ArtNet and fucking SACN
and all the fucking acronyms.
And you can think of for like all this new light tech
and protocol and stuff like that.
So I'm like, I pick up on it super quick, right?
Do you think you'll do this with all your shows,
or just particular ones?
It's just particular ones,
because a lot of them we call them throwing go shows,
whereas I'll show up to a venue,
and it's just like, it's their festival,
it's their production,
everything's already done,
and I just have to bring what little gear I need
on just what I use,
and then I'm off another guy's on.
You know what I mean?
But I do run a festival in Toronto called Veld,
music festival, well, I don't run it,
but I like, I own it, a piece of it.
And so does Inc, Talal, and Charles Kabuth,
and Trial Fully Cies, our business partners in that venture.
And we're on our, we just did our 10th year holy shit.
So every year we go to Downs Few and book all these festivals
or these festival acts like Martin Garrix and DJ So-and-So
and this and that and sometimes me,
I'll play it sometimes for funsies.
But like shit like that, I get a little more control over
obviously because we
are the production company that supplies all this stuff too. And that's another thing
that I love to do. It's actually just, even if it's not for me, I've done Dylan Francis'
rigs a few times. There are probably DJs out there that hate my fucking ass, because I'm such a prick or bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim-bim where we supply a lot of LED products, stage design, lights,
all that shit for big festivals and solo acts
and stuff like that.
We ran our shit out to like Motley Crew,
the fucking dolphins, the fucking,
oh man, all kinds of different.
The goo-dalls, we did them recently.
No shit.
Yeah.
It's everywhere.
Yeah, yeah. Because actually, how how it started was I actually ended up
Realizing it was cheaper to buy some of the stage backline that we were using unlike my first couple of tours
Then it was to rent from the ER or PRG or when you know those other companies
So I just kept accumulating all this really like good staging equipment and then when the tour was over were like
Wow, we should start a company and rent this shit out like they do.
And so that's what we do.
So now I've got, I think we have over 900 LED panels,
600 fixtures, easily.
Trust, backline, we got a whole staff of 12 people
that work in that warehouse
that shall not be named. And yeah, they just designed stages and build stuff. And we supply
it from my shows whenever I need it. And anyone else who needs a quite the businessman and
innovator, yeah. Well, that was just kind of common sense because we didn't know what to do with
all this fucking product. We were fucking slapping around and storing, right? Well, that was just kind of common sense because we didn't know what to do with all this fucking product. We were just fucking slapping around and storing, right?
Well, there's a lot of DJs out there.
I've had it.
That's why I met Pete.
I don't know if it's that common.
I, common sense you're talking about.
What?
I've given you props.
There's a lot of other DJs out there
who aren't doing this.
Oh, well, but, you know, they might not need to.
You know what I'm saying?
I'm not, that everyone seems to think I have this
like huge grudge with like, you know,
other like pop DJs that go in and do a thing, you know what I mean?
But I mean, honestly, if your head is in the game
that you just wanna go in,
make a lot of fucking money, get the fuck out.
Good job.
I mean, it's not for me.
Yes.
I'm in it like just because I like the challenges
and I like developing other stuff,
not just like I like the challenge of being dead mouse
and I want to be dead mouse.
I'm totally at peace with this being my sunset ears.
Like I'm 40 fucking two.
You know, that's not far off from 50.
And you think I'm gonna be wearing a fucking mouse
at it, fucking 50?
You know, like hanging under the dream?
You know, no, I'm probably, I'll be in the space,
but I just, you know, I won't be as mousy.
You're evolving.
Yeah, I'll just, I'll be a designer.
You like to evolve, and I'll stay on the same level.
I'll go, like, I'll go Maynard, make wine.
I don't fucking know.
His wine's pretty good.
He's serious about this fucking wine.
Do you believe a manifestation by chance?
No, I mean, I don't over think shit like that.
Yeah.
I can't get my head around it like the secret shit.
Like I can just get a secret shit into my life.
I don't know.
I don't know. I'm not as whimsical and faithful to things I don't know. I, yes, I don't know.
I'm not as whimsical and faithful to things I don't get.
You know what I mean?
Like, I cannot, I cannot wrap my head around religion.
Yeah.
You know, just because numbers don't work for me.
Really?
You know what I mean?
It has nothing to do with like how that affects social
political stuff, which it does, unfortunately, but just
as like, if you stripped all that shit away too,
there's just another reason to fucking hate it
or dislike it or not be a part of it.
Even just like if it was holistically like benign
to everything else that it affected,
I still wouldn't buy into it.
Do you believe in a higher power?
No, no, no.
What do you think happens when you die?
Well, I want to say nothing,
but then that brings in the argument of,
oh, so nothing is the great creator,
and where do you go when you die?
And you go to the world, nothing.
Oh, so you're reunited with your creator?
You fuck you, you fucking guy.
That's it.
But you know what I mean?
It's a paradox.
It's it.
What do I, what do I hope?
I'll tell you what I hope doesn't fucking happen.
Okay?
I hope I don't go to heaven
and I have to fucking stand in front of some fucking dude
and get psychoanalyzed before I'm allowed in or not.
I hope that doesn't happen
because I'm gonna fuck that up.
I hope that I don't go into a dream state
and have a dream.
Cause my dreams are fucked up.
And I wake up from nightmares all the time going,
you know what I mean?
I hope that's not what it's like when you die
cause it was weird.
I don't really have great dreams.
I can't remember the last good dream I've had.
So all my dreams are really like weird.
Not like, just fucking weird.
But like, sometimes I dream that like I've committed
some god awful like crime, like I killed someone
or something and I'm running away from everything.
I don't know what that means.
And please, I'm not leaving it open for interpretation.
So I always have a dream that like I'm being persecuted for something and I'm on the
run or I'm not and then I'm like I'm eating my neighbor.
You know what I mean?
Like it's just weird shit dreams.
You know what I mean?
So like I hope that doesn't happen.
I never know where to hide the body.
Actually I do know where to hide the body.
I know exactly where I'm hiding my body.
But in the dream, I never know where to hide the body.
It becomes as big.
Oh, I don't even deal with the body.
I just don't know.
You're just like fuck it, I'm out.
I'm always, do you ever have the dream
where your body comes up to you who killed somebody
and then you get involved hiding the body?
No.
No, I don't think I've ever had a body.
I have that dream all the time.
Really?
Yeah, then I help them hide it, then I'm like, fuck.
Now we're all in deep shit.
Yeah, I never get caught though, so that's good.
Meaning there always be good.
But it's just the paranoia, the feeling of,
oh God, what have I done, what have I done?
Ah!
That's the unsettling part.
And then I wake up thinking, why do I dream this?
Oh, you know why?
You know why I dream this?
Because there's a fucking channel in America
that I'm like, I absolutely obsessed with called a
what, home life network?
And all they play is forensic files.
Like non-stop, HLN, forensic files, Texas here.
They have four seasons everywhere, right?
Just forensic files on repeat.
I watch it all the fuck it. That's exactly why I do you ever watch? I can't even believe I'm about to say this. Do you ever
do you ever fuck yeah? No, no, no, it's it is the dumbest shit. Do you ever watch this fucking show of love is blind. No. Oh my God. You got to watch this. No, I can't.
I can't watch reality.
It's it's it's it's fascinating.
Well, you know, they cast like,
oh, I love this.
They should make a show of them casting these people.
What?
They should make a show of them casting these people.
Absolutely.
Dude, American TV is just weird.
Well, I don't really watch a lot of TV.
I watch movies and documentaries.
Yeah, I don't really.
I don't watch it.
I don't watch it.
I don't even watch that much TV.
So if I'm really that bored, I'll just go play a video game or do something productive.
Yeah.
Like, work on some problem with code or something.
Well, let's talk about last night you were bringing up
some really interesting stuff with the company Nvidia.
Well Nvidia is cool.
Like I mean, okay, like this is not financial advice.
I am not a professional investor.
advice, I am not a professional investor. And what do they call that? When I say financial advisor? Yeah, I am not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice, but man, what
a great company to invest in in today's age because I love, well, like not just because they're a great company,
I mean, I'm into it.
Like honestly, I will not put money behind,
or brand, or any of my time even into something
I wasn't in do, right?
So it only made sense.
All these guys make GPUs and they do really great things
with like, you know, computing and all this stuff too.
And I'm like, well, so I'm gonna fucking out of here.
So when it came time, basically, I have like a little bit of chunk of money came in one day
and it was like, oh, wow, you need an accounting, like an accountant.
And, you know, someone to look after your shit or like a company needs to do this
because it's now its wealth management.
It's not like a family savings and bought.
Like, we'll make that happen. And then it came down to the sit down and say, hey, you's not like a family savings and bond. You know what I mean? Like, we'll make that happen.
And then it came down to the sit down and say,
hey, you need to like, you should probably invest some of this money.
I'm like, well, sure.
Okay, what do you think?
And they're like, well, I don't know.
What do you think?
Were you like?
And I was like, oh, I like this.
I said, no, no, no, it's like, okay, cool.
So I go, and I put my shit into like tech.
You know what I mean?
Not just in video, but just, you know, like tech, like tech that I back, you know what I mean? And sometimes it's hit or miss, you know,
like, but within video, it's been pretty fucking cool. But then I got thinking like, wow,
what a great company. And they make GPUs. How are they worth like all these like nearly
a trillion dollars if they're only selling like these GPU units
and stuff like that. And then you think, okay, well, I mean, GPUs are everywhere. They
have the most patents on GPU. So I'm just trying to quick math in my head, like, okay, no,
it can't just be game cards, like graphics cards for computers. So maybe they're doing graphic cards for other
consoles, like PlayStation and stuff like that. That would be a big deal. No, they're not
Intel's doing it. Okay. Nintendo Switch. All right. Okay. There's that. You know, I'm just
like, yeah, something in and out. And then I read this article way back when
where there was this Israeli chip manufacturer
called Melanox, like basically wanting to sell the farm.
And Melanox, I believe, made chips for like three
or four different chip manufacturing companies
that had the rights to go in there
and have that sanctioned and
fucking made their chips and then sent back to wherever the fuck they got to get sent.
And I'm like, huh, that's really weird.
I guess that makes sense because it's a pretty specialized fucking factory.
You can't just spring up a chip plant somewhere like overnight and for cheap or whatever,
you know what I mean?
And just all the shit that goes into chip manufacturing, it's got gotta be insane. So a lot of these companies were just kind of using
this one manufacturer.
And then I guess in video you had this great idea,
it's like, let's buy them.
I'm like, holy fuck, that's a big boy move.
I mean, they just spent like $4 billion
on a new office in Santa Clara,
and like fuck, why not?
Buy the whole, buy the cow.
You know what I mean?
Why buy the milk basically was, I think, the thing with them.
And I was like, wow, that's cool.
And then I'm talking to you nut bags
and all you military guys over the last like a little bit.
I've just, for whatever been like,
I don't mean that disrespectfully,
you know you're a little crazy.
You have to be.
So like for whatever reason,
I just like kind of poke into, you know,
what's going on with, you know, these things and stuff like that
Just not not like in an investigatory level just out of just sheer curiosity just because I'm a curious person and then
I start becoming wise to the ways of how
Military contracts are obtained because there was a company that I used to like
use their products a lemur and they made a touch screen control surfaces for musicians
and I thought this was before iPads and and where they were like the coolest fucking things ever
and I was like wow you know you can like touch the screen and move these faders and you can
you can design your faders all you want this This is before iPads. So this is how mind-blowing it was, okay?
I know, every kid with a phone right now is like,
so I went at my bot, two of them, one for me and Steve,
and we performed on them for a minute
and the daft punk actually used them for a minute too
and all this stuff.
And then the iPad came out and that just like,
kicked those to the curb,
because the iPad was actually cheaper.
These things were like four grand.
For like a piece of shit thing,
it was just, it was nowhere near as good as an iPad.
But then when the iPad came out,
me and Duda were like first in line,
like at the Apple store,
because we wanted to make a touchscreen controller stuff.
And we did, and it was like,
fucking, this is so much better.
And then I remember like talking about it some years later
and I go, remember lemurs, and he was like, yeah,
I like fuck man, that sucks for them.
They like Apple did, just like the iPad,
just put them out of business.
And I'm like, yeah, I think they're in avionics now.
I was like, fuck, that's an interesting pivot.
Well good for them, at least they were able to
fucking do whatever, but then they got some military contract.
And I'm thinking like, fuck man, I wonder how that works out.
Like how do you do that?
Like basically, and then, you know, reading and all this stuff is like basically the idea
of taking like a $40 screw and turning it into a $200 screw, like just magically by
being blessed by this guy who just showed up
at some weird trade show and said,
hey man, we like what you do.
We'll take your entire stock at a factor of 120%.
Done, cool, fuck the public sector.
I'm gonna make this stuff for the military.
And I thought, wow, that's cool.
I wish they could militarize like music
because that would help me.
I mean, there is some shit you could play
that would definitely piss off a lot of people.
But I mean, I think it is just,
I mean, to have a company like that
sending you stuff to just test out,
I mean, that is, that's pretty cool, man.
Yeah, but that's kind of where I'm going with this, is that I was like, cool, man. Yeah, but that's kind of where I'm going with this is that.
I was like, fuck man, so like military contracts are really interesting.
You know what I mean?
Because it's just like, it's got to be like, like, if you, if you wanted to make a product
that you know you wanted like a military, the US military, whatever to scoop up, yeah,
I guess you'd have to kind of approach it the same way I'd approach trying to get signed by a major label, right? So a lot of it's handshaking and working them
fucking room and having a solid product and all that stuff too that you can kind of at least
convince somebody is better than what they're using. Yeah, I mean, so I'm like, fuck, man,
that's really interesting shit, you know. Now, I kind of applied that mindset
and came up with this bad shit like fucking photos
on the wall with the red string fucking theory
that Nvidia bought Melanox so they could make fucking chips
to sell it to the fucking military from Israel.
I don't know, that's a hot fucking take, Joel.
Said in the comments.
Might not be too far off.
I don't know, but I'm sorry. I didn't even know there were be too far off. I don't know.
I didn't even know.
I didn't even know there were making chips in Israel.
I thought everything was time.
No, no.
Melanox is in Israel, it's in Tel Aviv.
I think.
It's fucking weird.
And I'm just saying, like, well, there you go.
There's the path of leasers' assistance
of getting technology out of United States
to another country.
Do it in another country, right?
I mean, I don't know.
Like, again, there's so many people watching this video going like,
if you use this idiot DJ, you got on your show, dude.
Have you heard about these, these like ships that are processing centers,
that are floating out in the middle of the international waters?
Yes.
Doing what?
I don't know. Computing.
You would know more about this.
Timing boxless, uh,
a gloveless boxing fights.
I guess there's like half a billion dollar,
like chip enterprises out there.
Well, it's tax-free.
And if you don't like your coworker, you can just fucking throw them over the side.
That's a good point.
I'm just saying that is a good point. I'm just saying.
That is a good point.
Stephen, I'm gonna meet those TPS, right?
Fuck it.
Goolag.
But that is weird.
Yeah, yeah, I think it just came out yesterday, today's what?
November 13th?
You know, I think it just came out.
Just hit the news yesterday.
Well, what are they doing? Like, or, we don't know what they're doing,
but somebody's doing something and about.
It's, well, it's, I guess it's processing centers.
For what?
Processing what?
Tatsurterns?
Yeah.
Maybe.
It could be.
It could be that boring.
But, I don't know.
I just find it interesting that,
that Naviti is putting boats out there with half a billion dollar
Chips and oh, I'm eating is doing this. You're saying that's what it's oh see now that makes sense
I thought you just said somebody I'm like no, no, no, what are they doing? Oh, well maybe maybe that's just a maybe they just
found a way to
Fuck cut 2% of margins off of
I just found a way to fucking cut 2% of margins off of manufacturing costs by fucking not paying some kind of crazy tax or something.
I don't fucking know.
I don't know.
So I don't make questions, man.
But I'll tell you what, if I'm ever in a head of a trillion dollar company, I'll keep
you in the know.
You'll keep your hands.
Yeah, I'll let you know why we're doing it.
Because I don't even think, I don't even think the people that really like kind of like control
the board or whatever know have the show.
I think a company gets so big sometimes that it's just like, it becomes a digitally autonomous
organization, a DAO, which is actually the thing, which is kind of cool.
But yeah, that's what happens, you know, it's like, it's like, America, you
know, kind of said one day, hey, these are the rules and they're unchangeable and unbendable
like your constitution or whatever, you know what I mean? But like, is it really just
like a huge mental exercise to say, hey, what if we just fucking scratch that and just wrote
a new one?
You know what I mean?
Like mentally not a big deal.
You know what I mean?
Let's get some people together and get them on island and have them fucking do whatever
they did again, you know, like, or whatever.
I don't know how the process fucking should work and I'm not an expert in these political
manners.
But I'm just saying, why are we so like clinging on to like,
well, no, it's always been like that.
And always will be like that, but will it?
You know what I mean?
So it's like, why don't we just,
some people can't think outside the box.
I don't know, but we do.
And then there's this, we'll do, again, what's it get?
I am just a vessel.
Yeah, but
Well, Joel, do you have any other companies that you're working on any other
Future things outside of music
No really I don't
Just music tech. I'm like kind of just working on
positioning myself so that I can develop
More projects that involve more people.
In the sense that like, like, I would love to run a software company, making what?
I don't know, like a pre-visualization software or a game studio or something like that.
But the only way I can do that at this rate is kind of just like Sunsetting off this step mouse stuff. You know what I mean?
Not not killing it off, not retiring. I can't retire.
It's just I'm it's too far gone. There's no such thing. I've heard fucking DJs cry about this shit.
I'm retiring. Dude and doing what exactly you could go work at a hot topic like what the fuck?
You know, because you're gonna run out of that fucking money real quick.
You know what I mean,
at the rate you're fucking spending it,
or whatever, you didn't put it in anything,
you know, you're gonna be unretired,
you're gonna have your welcome back,
fucking cotter, fucking tour,
in about three years max, you know what I mean?
And they have, you know what I mean?
So it's like, get that notion out of your head.
I'm not retiring, but I will slow down the shows a little bit.
You know, it'll spend a lot more time at home.
And when that happens, then I'll be able to get my like, my eight teams together.
And I'll have some liquidity to be able to funnel into this and just say, like, let's
take another chance.
Let's fucking try writing this software and see what it does.
You know, Yeah, man.
Well, that's the future.
We're kind of wrapping it up now
before we do wrap it up,
who are three people that you'd like to see on this show?
On this show?
On this show.
Oh my God.
Well, I think Tommy would be really funny
if you like that. If you're into that little band from Los Angeles, he's a really great
guy.
I would love to interview Tommy Lee.
Yeah.
You know what?
I think he's coming by this neck of the wood.
No, sure.
So I'll ask him about it.
Yeah, yeah.
They're doing some like, appreciate it.
Like, next year.
Oh, cool.
Thank you.
Steve Duda would be a good one.
That would be awesome.
But he's like, he's, yeah, he's Steve.
And Danny Loner.
Danny Loner.
He's like laughing.
It's my security guy.
It's best friend.
Danny Loner is a good one.
Right on.
Danny Loner's crazy.
He'll get weird with you all fucking
to he does not give a shit.
Like he'll be like, I don't, he'll be like,
I wanna talk about that.
I wanna know the truth.
Yeah, he's, he's a good guy.
Well, let's wrap it up.
Well, Joel, yeah, thanks man.
I just wanna say man, thank you so much
for giving me your time and it was fun.
Yeah, it was a real pleasure. But I will say, you know what the best fucking interviews are what six-year-old kids six-year-old kids asking you questions
They are just dumb as shit, but they are so funny and they don't they ask you the best fucking questions
I swear to God I like I really don't do interviews
I like I fucking at orm just because I always say the stupidest shit.
And then it's always like at the end,
wow, he's so stupid.
And I'm like, okay, whatever.
But I sometimes like,
some freak accident, like a kid will show up
with like a microphone, a little six year old.
Like, asking me the weirdest questions,
like, I love them, they're hilarious. Well I have to do that sometime.
Interview a kid.
Well hey man, I just wanted to say thank you.
Thank you so much.
Pleasure, honor.
you