[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I'm Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City,

[00:27] Meg: where we still live and where we podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines and

[00:33] Jessica: I do pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: Jessica, you are going to be happy about a couple of things I have to say.

[00:39] Jessica: We. I know we spoke about this before we started a recording, but neither one of us had a good night's sleep and that can put someone in a bit of a mood. So I'm very excited to hear something that I'm going to like.

[00:49] Meg: I'm. I'm going to help you out here.

[00:51] Jessica: That's fricking awesome.

[00:53] Meg: It's called Jessica was right.

[00:55] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[00:57] Meg: And we have two examples. Oh, my God.

[01:01] Jessica: Wait, Meg, you really are my bff. Knew it. Jessica was right. Whoever. Whoever you are. Thank you.

[01:10] Meg: So this is from a couple of episodes ago when we were talking about the Wyoming, the building near Carnegie hall. And you said, is that kind of like the Dakota? And I was like, kinda. Well, our dear bff, Michael Hicks. Oh, Michael Hicks wrote in and he took a picture of a book that he has.

[01:33] Jessica: Marvelous.

[01:33] Meg: And I will cite that in just a moment, but first I will read the excerpt. The Dakota fixed the west side's character not only in spawning a rash of western named buildings, the Wyoming, Yosemite, Nevada and Montana, but in helping draw the affluent to townhouses that went up along the avenues, some with suitably upgraded names. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So isn't that interesting? And this is a book called Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace.

[02:11] Jessica: Mike Wallace. That might be Mike Wallace.

[02:14] Meg: I don't know. I should have. I. I should have checked on that.

[02:17] Jessica: You do enough. It's okay. You know, it's okay. This is definitely a week of doing enough. You've done enough, period. I am really just. I'm. I. Yes, no problem.

[02:31] Meg: All right, so that's the first thing. Jessica was right. Jessica was right. Jessica was right.

[02:36] Jessica: Oh my God. Set to music too.

[02:39] Meg: And now here's something else from Mary. Remember who drives? Who drives and listens to our podcast. I know. And her. Her name is actually spelled Marie, but it's pronounced Mary.

[02:51] Jessica: Yes, indeed.

[02:52] Meg: She says she writes in two things. Jessica, you are so right. This pumpkin frenzy is an abomination. They just throw that stuff into everything where it often doesn't belong. And ladybugs called lady birds where I come from are vicious little predators. So Nasty to other insects. Just saying. Mary from upstate New York.

[03:17] Jessica: Thank you, Mary.

[03:19] Meg: So that's why you want ladybugs, because they will eat the aphids or whatever.

[03:24] Jessica: Yes. All right, very good. Thank you, Mary. And thank you, Michael.

[03:29] Meg: Now, in last week's episode, as you recall, we were talking about Michael Klein's wonderful memoir, Junkie Days. New York City Junkie Days, to be more specific. And he wrote in and said he was so nervous about listening because he'd heard our teaser. And he was like, oh, no, it's happening, it's happening. And he's in Barcelona. I don't know if I told you that.

[03:55] Jessica: No.

[03:55] Meg: So he woke up early, braced himself and listened. And he said he loved it, that he was laughing and smiling ear to ear. And a lot of his followers, because, you know, he's got a very active Instagram.

[04:10] Jessica: Yes. And I saw that he linked to us.

[04:13] Meg: Yes. And so his followers are now joining in on the desperately seeking the 80s BFF crowd. And they are following us and they are listening to the podcast. So that is lovely.

[04:25] Jessica: That is. Hey, man, that's synergy.

[04:28] Meg: Thanks. Remember, we asked him two follow up questions.

[04:32] Jessica: Indeed.

[04:33] Meg: Do you remember what they were?

[04:34] Jessica: Meg, I barely know who you are.

[04:36] Meg: Sorry, that wasn't a quiz. It wasn't a quiz.

[04:37] Jessica: I swear. I don't know anything.

[04:38] Meg: I was just trying to engage.

[04:39] Jessica: But no, no, no, it's okay. I'm not. I'm not yelling.

[04:43] Meg: I'm not yelling. Deep breath, deep breath. One of the questions we asked him, and that this one came from you, actually. You asked whether the dope hangovers got better, if the supply was better, if the product was better, the product was higher quality. And this was his response. Those dope hangovers didn't last long. Once we were addicted, and that happened quickly, they completely disappeared. I don't think it had anything to do with quality.

[05:17] Jessica: Maybe because they were addicted, they were shooting up so frequently that they didn't have a chance to get the dope hangover.

[05:23] Meg: Ooh, that's very interesting.

[05:25] Jessica: That's what I'm thinking. Because he's saying once we were addicted to.

[05:30] Meg: The other question that we asked was, and this I think came from me, was whether he's ever returned to the East Village after getting sober.

[05:40] Jessica: Right.

[05:40] Meg: And he responded and said, as I think, you know, I moved to Barcelona a bit over six years ago. But yes, I have visited the East Village after leaving in 1997. I mean, honestly, to talk about it in the way he does in his book, it's very Loving. I mean, you. You suggested, like, oh, all these awful things happened to him, but he still loved the place. So I was just curious whether he was nervous about going back. Maybe it would, you know, trigger. So he said that he did come back. I think the last time I was There was around 2017, and even at that time, I didn't recognize much of it. Recently, I've seen videos and reels, and to me, it's sad what it has become. I don't live in the East Village. I live, what, 15 blocks away from the East Village. I don't find it sad. I will say I still see. And I wrote back to him to say this. I still see the architecture of it. I mean, they're definitely crazy buildings that should not be there, and that's ridiculous. But I feel like I walk down the same streets, and then that's maybe because I'm in my mind's eye seeing what used to be there.

[06:50] Jessica: This is an opportunity for me to use one of my favorite words. What? Palimpsest. Palimpsest is. I think it's you. I will have to check this, but I think it has to do with paper or images. But it's when there's an image underneath, another image that is showing through. Ooh. So it's. It's coming up. And so the way that you're describing that you are superimposing your East Village of that time onto what you see now. So it blurs the edges a bit. I was just thinking. And there's a Gore Vidal book called Palimpsest. Love this. And I'm just sharing that as a little. And it's a memoir, I believe. So the idea of the images and the memories sort of coming through, whatever the current construct is, is very compelling. I think, just as a reaction to what he was saying, that it's sad. I think that there's another thing, which is that you've been here all this time. So it's a long, slow change, and you've been part of the New York that is generally changing, so it's not as abrupt for you.

[08:02] Meg: I also have new happy memories. I love hanging out in the East Village, and there's a new crop of people who are coming to the East Village with the same hope.

[08:13] Jessica: Well, I actually.

[08:14] Meg: And excitement as we had when we first started exploring that area. So I'm nostalgic to a certain degree, but I'm also very happy to make new, great memories.

[08:26] Jessica: I think that's a wonderful, fascinating neighborhood. I'm sorry to cut you off. I'M just so excited to tell you why you're right about something.

[08:32] Meg: Yay. I'm right, too.

[08:33] Jessica: Yes. Or. Or why I think what you're saying, it holds a lot of water. Is that any place where you have a youthful experience, it's not just the physical place. It's the people as well, and the vibe that those people create and those memories with those people. And what you are describing is that you still have a connection to the people of this area. Like you. You see that there is continuity. It's not just now there's a high rise. There's a different kind of continuity that's in mission and community. And so that is really, I'm sure, part of what he missed going back because there's no way for him to access those feelings because he just doesn't know it. He. He. He can't. I never thought about that before, actually, and I. I don't know if I'm really saying that you're right, but I'm saying that you have a. No, it's better than that. Just calm down. That it's profound. I think that what you're saying is very profound and very interesting that at the end of the day, it's. What are the people bringing to the. To the table?

[09:43] Meg: And I'm doing a new play by a young playwright with a bunch of people I just met next week in the East Village. I mean, it lives. The energy. Lives. Love it. Did you ever, ever watch daytime tv? Specifically morning tv? Which is a loaded question because obviously we were in school, but maybe on a sick day.

[10:17] Jessica: No. And I will tell you why, number one, as you know, I don't really enjoy waking up. I don't mean I want to be dead. I'm just saying I don't.

[10:27] Meg: Sorry.

[10:28] Jessica: You seem. That got dark. I don't. I am not a morning person. Let's try that all over again. I'm not a morning person. Even when sick. Even when whatever. So I am the last person. The other thing is, I had to be so sick to stay home. And my mother had a policy that TV during the day was. I don't know if this is the word she used to. But it was like, for degenerates, like, you don't watch TV during the day.

[11:02] Meg: So full of shame, filled with shame.

[11:05] Jessica: Now, of course, my rebellious nature was, you know, okay, now I'm gonna watch whatever, but I can't recall.

[11:15] Meg: So, like, interview shows or.

[11:18] Jessica: Yeah, I mean, soaps. Never soaps. Rerun movies.

[11:23] Meg: Game shows.

[11:24] Jessica: Definitely game shows.

[11:25] Meg: Okay, there we Go. What's a good game show?

[11:28] Jessica: The Price is Right. Nice password.

[11:31] Meg: Love it.

[11:32] Jessica: The however number of dollars. Pyramid. It changed.

[11:36] Meg: It did.

[11:37] Jessica: The Newlywed Game. The Dating Game. Yeah, these were all like, because I, I love the spectacle, which is funny because I don't like reality TV now. So I think I liked that. It was mayhem. That was controlled. No one was flipping tables.

[11:55] Meg: Great answer.

[11:56] Jessica: Okay, thank you.

[11:58] Meg: My sources are esquire, YouTube, man on the Moon. That's a bit of a tip off.

[12:05] Jessica: It is.

[12:07] Meg: On Wednesday, October 15, 1980, Andy Kaufman was a guest on the David Letterman show, which broadcast live from Studio 6A at NBC Studios at Rockefeller center at 10am I love the look on your face.

[12:27] Jessica: Really? Yes.

[12:29] Meg: David Letterman had a morning show in 1980 out. And I'm going to tell you all about it right now.

[12:36] Jessica: This is fascinating.

[12:37] Meg: Earlier in the year, NBC president Fred Silverman had received an award from the Anti Defamation League and stand up comedian David Letterman was the mc. Fred was so impressed with David, he decided to completely revamp the weekday morning lineup for his national television network. Again, NBC. David wasn't completely untested. He'd been filling in for Johnny Carson on the Tonight show, which obviously is an evening show for a couple of years, but he must have really swept Fred off his feet. 33 year old David, with his folksy Midwest vibe and offbeat humor reminded Fred of Arthur Godfrey who had a variety show in the 1950s. So again, like these guys being so influenced by TV in the 50s and 60s is really interesting. And we've talked about Pee Wee Herman and we've talked a little bit about Andy Kaufman. We're going to talk about him again. And now of course, David Letterman.

[13:47] Jessica: Okay.

[13:48] Meg: In order to make room for the David Letterman show, Fred canceled three game shows. No High Rollers, Chain Reaction and Hollywood Squares.

[14:01] Jessica: What? Yeah, but that was revived.

[14:04] Meg: It was revived, but at the time, can you imagine?

[14:07] Jessica: He cut Hollywood Squares. That's, that's a weird choice.

[14:11] Meg: I mean, he just had to have a weekday block and that was what was there.

[14:16] Jessica: He approved Hollywood. I mean, he didn't. Fred.

[14:18] Meg: He just didn't.

[14:19] Jessica: Fred.

[14:20] Meg: He had faith in this talk show, variety show thing that he wanted to do. Yes, exactly.

[14:26] Jessica: Okay.

[14:27] Meg: The show premiered just a few months later and I do want you to follow the timeline because I think that says so much about this story. So again, it's 1980, the show.

[14:40] Jessica: By the way, can I add something? It's really just sinking in right now that the Anti Defamation League hired Letterman. Like, what's that even About. And even more hilariously, there are a lot of Jewish comedians. They took this Midwestern gap toothed Goyisha person that to me is already very funny. Like, how did he get that gig?

[15:07] Meg: So I'm glad you brought that up again. That Anti Defamation League award ceremony where he was so impressed with David Letterman was in February of 1980.

[15:19] Jessica: Noted.

[15:20] Meg: The show premiered just a few months later on June 23, 1980, in a 90 minute slot.

[15:29] Jessica: 90 minutes out of the gate.

[15:31] Meg: The minutes you got a fill this airtime, David. And it is live, live, live. In its first few weeks, David and his writers, who included Edie McClurg, fun, fun, fun.

[15:46] Jessica: Really Rich hall, really Snaglitz Guy and

[15:50] Meg: Edwin Newman, really introduced Letterman, Staples, Stupid pet tricks, Small town news and viewer mail, which we would all become familiar with a few years later.

[16:03] Jessica: Indeed.

[16:03] Meg: But in his contract, he made sure that he, David Letterman, kept ownership of these concepts. What would you call these concerts? Concepts? Yeah, skits. What do you even call them?

[16:14] Jessica: Ip?

[16:15] Meg: Yeah.

[16:17] Jessica: Whatever his intellectual property was that he came. That's a stretch to me a bit, but good for him.

[16:24] Meg: Well, otherwise he would not have been able to use it later on because it would have been the property of, I guess, the network. Right. And as we know, he moved to CBS at some point, so that would have been. He would have lost his shticks.

[16:39] Jessica: Stupid Petrix was so good.

[16:41] Meg: He tested that right out of the gate in the morning at 10am okay. But many morning viewers were not charmed.

[16:52] Jessica: They were not ready for this.

[16:55] Meg: This ironic, deadpan, absurdist, irreverent humor landed with some, but not enough to impress the Nielsen ratings. And by August, the slot was shrunk to 60 minutes.

[17:12] Jessica: Well, that just seems prudent. Anyway, it seems like Fred was a little over enthusiastic.

[17:18] Meg: On September 26, its cancellation was announced.

[17:22] Jessica: Oh, no.

[17:25] Meg: But David had four more weeks to fill and nothing to lose.

[17:31] Jessica: Oh, this is. This is a classic Letterman setup. We've even. This happened again later. So we know how this goes.

[17:39] Meg: Andy Kaufman was the perfect guest. Andy had just quit his lucrative but frustrating gig playing Latke on Taxi.

[17:50] Jessica: Best character ever.

[17:53] Meg: And like David, he'd grown up and been influenced by 1950s shows like Howdy Doody and Mighty Mouse. And we've talked about that a little bit. You did a segment about Andy Kaufman before and I'll look up what number that episode that is. And that can be sister episode to this. David and Andy's response was a commentary on that aesthetic, that 1950s aesthetic, but also reverential at the same time. So they're being a little snarky, but they loved it. They loved it. So how do you balance those two things at the same time? That's what people were witnessing. That was this irony that people were seeing. And it landed with some people. And some people were like, what the hell am I looking at?

[18:44] Jessica: Well, you said that, you know, Letterman premiered a few of his big ideas and you just mentioned Mighty Mouse. Is this where Andy Kaufman premiered his Mighty Mouse shtick?

[18:55] Meg: No, he premiered that on Saturday Night Live, actually.

[18:58] Jessica: Interesting.

[18:59] Meg: So that had already been out in the world. We know about Mighty Mouse.

[19:03] Jessica: Okay.

[19:03] Meg: I mean, Mighty Mouse is partly how he got the Taxi gig, is it? Oh, absolutely, yeah. He had been a regular guest on Saturday Night Live doing that Mighty Mouse.

[19:14] Jessica: So funny.

[19:14] Meg: So that thing that's like, what's happening here? Oh, why is that so fucking funny? Okay. David's Small Town news feels and is folksy, but there's also some snark in there. And Andy loved nothing more than to mess with the audience's assumptions of what was funny or even real, if the 50s gave us safe and predictable. Andy was about chaos and disruption, which is why he couldn't stand working on Taxi.

[19:46] Jessica: The show was good.

[19:47] Meg: Great writers and great actors. But the task of memorizing lines and playing the same character and showing up for work at a time someone else determined was completely antithetical to his approach to art and frankly, to his life. It gave him a good income, though, and lots of exposure. So he was a very appropriate guest. David Letterman's show on this Wednesday morning, again, 10am oh my God. On this Wednesday morning. And it's in front of a live audience, by the way, a very confused live audience on this Wednesday morning. Both David and Andy were at inflection points in their careers. David's show had been canceled. Andy had quit his job. The establishment had made it clear they aren't receptive to what these guys have to offer. But it's 10am on a Wednesday and it's a live show. David introduces him and Andy walks on stage looking a bit bedraggled. His hair is overgrown and he hasn't shaved in a couple of days. He looks like he grabbed whatever dirty clothes were balled up on his bedroom floor maybe half an hour ago. But the audience applauds long and hard. They love Latke, right? And you see, in the last couple weeks since the announcement of the show's cancellation, a whole new crop of viewers were showing up at the studio to sit in the live studio audience. The assumed demographic for morning shows were stay at home moms who liked their game shows and the soap operas. But when college boys found out that the David Letterman show had been axed, they hitchhiked to New York City to watch the show live. And even some Long island housewives blocked Manhattan traffic in protest of the cancellation.

[21:44] Jessica: This is amazing.

[21:46] Meg: And after months of trying to please the network, David Letterman now felt encouraged to do whatever the fuck he wanted. So the studio audience was packed and primed for tomfoolery. So normally we've got a group of people from World War II who are going like, what were they, the Greatest generation generation.

[22:09] Jessica: Actually, it's our parents generation. Who would have been.

[22:12] Meg: Aren't they the greatest generation? Oh, no, greatest is our grandparents. The Greatest Generation people didn't get it. They didn't get irony was not there.

[22:23] Jessica: Okay, strong suit.

[22:24] Meg: Exactly. And those are the people who weren't showing any enthusiasm, and that's why the show was canceled. But we've got niche people, specifically the boomers and our parents, I think, I

[22:42] Jessica: guess, who were like, I love this.

[22:46] Meg: What is this crazy, crazy thing I watch? I want to see it in person. So they are now the. There's no. No empty seat in the house for these last few weeks of the morning David Letterman show. So crazy, so weird. If you watch the YouTube, you can see the Greatest Generation people sitting there going like. Just looking like, I have no idea what this is about. And then you see other people just rolling in the aisles. It's a really interesting thing to see.

[23:19] Jessica: Generational divides.

[23:21] Meg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. David starts by asking Andy about Taxi. It's a celebrity interview. Andy seems kind of dazed and his nose is running, and he keeps wiping his nose as he stutters through the most awkward celebrity interview ever. No, he isn't on Taxi anymore. And no, he doesn't have anything else going on. And so we have two improv performers who are breaking every rule of improv, and it's painful to watch. But the audience keeps giggling as though they know something nuts is about to happen. But all they get is just Andy wiping his runny nose, which is just kind of gross.

[24:18] Jessica: It's just vomitus.

[24:20] Meg: But as much as David and Andy try to tank the interview, that's what they're trying so hard to do. The audience keeps cracking up. Is really frustrating because they just think, like, I mean, these guys don't have to do anything to be funny, Right? Then Andy starts coughing a lot. Very uncomfortable. But the audience is still with him. One woman even calls out from the audience, trying to help him out in the interview, reminding him about the wrestling matches he's doing now.

[24:57] Jessica: Oh, no.

[24:59] Meg: But he. He doesn't pick up on it. Finally, David asks if Andy'd like to do a little piece for them. Andy replies, if you'd like. And he proceeds to the small little stage, sits on a stool, and in a stilted drone, talks about how he met his wife. The story is lingering and pretty boring and a complete and total lie, but there is no way for the audience to know that because, as you know, Andy was extremely cagey about the facts of his life. So it. Could it be true? But is it true? Who knows? Ah, the audience, though, is still laughing. It's like he can't do anything to keep them from cracking up. And now you can tell this is just. He's gonna get them to shut the fuck up no matter what he has to do, right? He even tells them it's a serious story and that they shouldn't laugh, but that doesn't work either. And then he starts coughing again.

[26:02] Jessica: A lot.

[26:03] Meg: And it is indeed very, very awkward and uncomfortable, especially to watch it now, given the fact that he died of lung cancer, and he wasn't diagnosed with the rare form of lung cancer that he had until 1983. So he doesn't know that he has cancer. He might not have even had cancer at that moment.

[26:26] Jessica: But.

[26:27] Meg: So it's just. It's a little weird, all the coughing. Anyway, finally, finally, the audience dies down and listens to Andy's rambling story, mostly about his career and fake family. He even talks about how people hate him wrestling women on Saturday Night Live. He shares enough true facts that it's possible that some audience members start to take him at his word. Maybe they are witnessing an actual confessional of a depressed Andy Kaufman down on his luck. Is that what we're seeing right now? He closes it out with a painful bout of coughing and asks for extra money if anyone can spare some.

[27:16] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[27:18] Meg: And some people do. And some people laugh. And security leads him out to thunderous applause. The irony of these two performers, known for being ironic, trying to fail at a celebrity interview is, first, that David Letterman used those last two weeks of his dying show to solidify his standing as an entertainment powerhouse. NBC had to pay him $1,000,000, $20,000 a week to do nothing except not work for someone else without their permission. Second is that Andy Kaufman, who tried so hard to make people stop laughing, finally succeeded during the November 20, 1982, episode of Saturday Night. Live, hosted by Drew Barrymore. Little baby Drew producer Dick Ebersol held a live phone in poll using a 900 number. Viewers spent 50 cents a call to vote whether to Keep Andy or Dump Andy. And this is after he had started doing the wrestling with women thing, and he was turning a lot of people off. Dump andy won with195,544 votes. Keep Andy received only 169,186 votes. And even though Andy designed that stunt himself, the results were kind of a blow. And he never appeared on Saturday Night Live again.

[29:03] Jessica: That is one of the weirdest stories you've ever told.

[29:06] Meg: Is that crazy? It's.

[29:09] Jessica: It's.

[29:11] Meg: It's.

[29:11] Jessica: So here's what's really funny. You're just talking about. It's so uncomfortable. It's so. I, like. I'm like, oh, guys, like. And they were both. What were they, like, so 30. They're probably. Andy died when he was like, 35, right? Something like that. So they're the same age.

[29:32] Meg: They're about the same age, yeah.

[29:33] Jessica: And so they're the. And I, of course, now think of 33 as like, you know, an infant. And so I'm like, these two fucking embryos are trying to figure out how to be horrible. And hilariously, in Letterman's case, because he lived, he succeeded. Boy. And we've talked about this, this podcast before, that Letterman really honed his craft with being so unappealing at certain points in his career that now. Now I know where he started figuring it out. And yeah, the story, like, it's not Letterman that's really so uncomfortable. But talking about Andy is just like, oh, boy. And I can imagine it. I can see it. The thing about Andy Kaufman, and obviously this is what David Letterman let happen, is his skits, whatever they were, they always went part. And how he got to that awfulness was they went on too long on purpose. And if it wasn't. It wasn't just that, you know, the skit or the wrestling match or whatever went on too long. It's that it happened multiple times. So you were just, like, getting bludgeoned by this absurdist, uncomfortable. And kind of part of. And part of his shtick became being angry. And so, like, it's. It's just so like, you want to crawl out of the room.

[31:14] Meg: I highly recommend looking up this particular interview on YouTube. I was just blown away by the whole thing. I wasn't going to write my story about this. I had a whole other thing in mind, and I came across this and I was like, oh, no, what the fuck is going on right now? Like this. We have to look into this. So that. And also watching man on the Moon, which I have not seen since I couldn't watch it came out in the 90s. It is a fabulous, fabulous movie and it is very loyal to his story. They're not trying to glamorize it in all of its cray cray. And the actual people who were the cast members from Taxi Art played themselves in the movie.

[32:04] Jessica: Oh, wow.

[32:04] Meg: Did you know that?

[32:05] Jessica: No.

[32:06] Meg: No. Cgi, they're just like, they just put some, I don't know, something on the lens or something. But like, they do it.

[32:12] Jessica: They do it. As our friend Nick frequently used to say. They're shooting them through linoleum, but you can tell.

[32:18] Meg: And they're not pretending that they enjoyed working with him. I mean, you see Marilu Henner and Danny DeVito just going, what the actual fuck is with this goddamn asshole? We just need to get through our work day, you know, I love that.

[32:32] Jessica: Yeah, I. It was so evident from the way that the movie was marketed that it was going to be so sad that I just, I couldn't to this day, I have never been able to. To watch it. And as a quick aside, I think that's where Jim Carrey, throughout his career has been the best is when he's doing a drama, a straight thing, and it's really emotionally charged. I think that always was where I wanted to see him. Like, I never liked his crazy, goofy, over the top.

[33:12] Meg: You know, I saw Jim Carrey when he was just a up and coming comic at a small comedy place in Southampton when I was working there over a summer. And they had a special night for the staff, Right. So all the people who worked food service and retail, we got to have a show for ourselves. And Jim Carrey was one of the people on this tiny little stage. And I was like, wow. And all he was doing was impressions. It was all impressions, which isn't really my. Like, I. I think other things are funnier than impressions, but obviously he's very good at that. But he. I remembered him. I frigging remembered him. And then when he suddenly started doing these blockbuster movies, I was like, ah, saw that guy laugh. But you know, there's also a documentary about Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman and how he completely lost himself in that role to a point where it was not healthy.

[34:13] Jessica: Yeah, that. That seems to happen with some people, doesn't it? I'll tell you where I did when he was being funny Where I liked him In Living Color.

[34:24] Meg: Oh, yeah, that's right.

[34:25] Jessica: The skits that he did on that show. And clearly what he was writing those parodies, like all of us. And he was doing the grow like the firefighter. Like he was doing grotesque stuff. But it was the kind of transgressive stuff that hits right with me. I don't know why. Maybe I don't know why. But anyway, I think that's where he was. Very, very funny. But this stuff where, you know, it's all out drama so good that I. I do have to crawl out of the room.

[34:59] Meg: Yeah.

[34:59] Jessica: It's too, too. So true to my word. I'm going to talk about Krishna core.

[35:14] Meg: Very exciting.

[35:16] Jessica: Yes. What interested me originally about what I'm going to talk about is just the pure weirdness of the marriage of hardcore and Hare Krishna. Like, how does that even happen? And it's a musical style that's nihilistic. And I know that Alex is right now taking. He's like licking the end of his pencil and taking notes. It's not nihilism, but, you know, it's aggressive and it's angry and it's all the stuff that's not what Hare Krishna is supposed to be about. And then I realized from the research, the further research that I did that it's not a. About the music, really. It's a. It's a much more human story than a musical story.

[36:03] Meg: And just remind our listeners who maybe didn't hear your trailer last week.

[36:08] Jessica: So in, you know, doing one of my deep dives into the world of music in New York city in the 80s, I stumbled across something that I found bizarre sounding, which was Krishna core. And I was like, that's a musical. It's a movement, a style of like, what is this? I was reading about how there is a crossover between the hardcore community, which is the post punk, and they thought that punk was too soft. So the hardcore scene and the Hare Krishna community in both Philadelphia and New York City. But we're really going to talk about New York City.

[36:50] Meg: And the Hare Krishna community is religious.

[36:53] Jessica: Yes, yes, yes. It's. It's a. I mean, Hare Krishna is a religious sect. You may know them from such airports as LaGuardia, JFK, LAX, and Tompkins Square Park. And Tompkins Square park, for sure. I was actually gonna say. And our frequently referred to favorite movie Airplane, by the way, as a quick aside, you know who played the Hare Krishna guy in Airplane?

[37:19] Meg: Oh, I forget.

[37:21] Jessica: It's the guy who played Joey Suzu in those Isuzu ads. Absolutely love that. Got it. So, anyway, I just thought it was really bananas and I wanted to find out more about it. And what I was able to provide in the teaser last week is basically what I've said that this existed. But I'm going to talk about what it really was and how it happened. And, Meg, you will soon see how, weirdly, the foundational elements of Krishna Core are actually connected to a lot of the sad stories you have told in your true crime portions of the.

[38:02] Meg: It's not a big neighborhood, the East Village.

[38:05] Jessica: No, but you'll see what I. It's not even about the East Village.

[38:08] Meg: Okay.

[38:09] Jessica: You'll see what I mean. So anyway, the thing. And by the way, just because I know our audience, last week I called our buddy Alex and I was like, hey, what do I need to know about Krishnakore? And he was like, you know, what he told me was really what I'm finding Fabulous. But nonetheless, Alex, may God bless and keep you for taking my call and being so informative. I really appreciate that. Krishna Core began the real roots, you could really say, started in the late seventies in New York and Europe. Now, how did that happen? Well, the group that really brought it to the forefront in New York City was called the CRO Mags. The founding member is named Harley Flanagan. Harley Flanagan, his parents were very bohemian, a bit fringe drug users, very all over the map. His dad left pretty quickly. He, you know, was just a kid who was growing up in this really messed up scenario, which we've heard about time and time again. Right. Like, you've got people in the East Village who are junkies and the kids are the collateral damage. But his mom wound up with another man. I can't remember if they married or not. Things were getting a little less weird, but Flanagan definitely was lost. But he was finding himself with other kids who were into music. He was really into being a drummer. And one of the other kids in the East Village, like, stole a drum set and set it up in his room so he could play and, like, practice drumming, which is really adorable. But, like, so these kids are all feral, but they're kind of supporting each other. Put a pin in that.

[40:10] Meg: Okay.

[40:10] Jessica: But his. His mom and the man that she's with, they move to Europe and they take him with them. Oh, he. And she's.

[40:19] Meg: And he's like a teenager.

[40:20] Jessica: No, this is the crazy thing. He's like 8. Oh, okay. So he's running around the East Village and making friends and wanting to do things. And he is way too Fucking young for this to be happening. So then he goes to Europe with his parents and I think they're in Holland or some like they're in the Netherlands. They're someplace Scandi. But he's now being exposed to punk because it's 1977 and the sex Pistols have exploded. So he's seeing this and he's kind of intrigued and. And this is the kind of music that he's getting into. And he's playing the drums. They get back to New York and they're back in the East Village. And his aunt is named Denise Mercedes and she is in a punk band. And that band loses its drummer. And how old is he now? 10. Oh my God. So it's two women, a gay frontman, and at that point, when they finally start going out, an 11 year old drummer.

[41:26] Meg: Oh my God.

[41:27] Jessica: So they're getting some notoriety. Keep in mind, he's 11 and what he's seeing, like he's not really in school and he's running around and there are junkies every place and that's. That's his experience. He is one of these lost kids in the, you know, in the cracks of society. But he has some purpose, right? Like the music is incredibly important. He winds up founding in roughly 1980, at which point he's 13. The embryonic version of the CRO Mags. And the funny thing about the CRO Mags is that the band is so contentious amongst themselves that they can't even agree on what the origin of the band is like. Who's the original frontman? Well, one guy says that he is, another guy says he is.

[42:23] Meg: Oral history.

[42:24] Jessica: Indeed. And it's because the band had a bunch of stops and starts. Why? Very young, right. And their big album, which is going to connect all of this to Krishna Core, doesn't even come out until 1986. There were a lot of different versions of the band. Harley, he winds up being drawn to. To the Hare Krishna community. It wasn't.

[42:49] Meg: Do you know how that happened?

[42:51] Jessica: I'm about to tell you. It wasn't that Krishna or Hare Krishna was part of the band. It wasn't why the band formed. Even though it wound up being really present in the music. It was happenstance. And the reason that it happened, and Flanagan talks about this, is that, you know, these are kids who don't have homes. These are kids where there's so much chaos that they were able to, at the temple, the Hare Krishna temple in the East Village, sleep there. And they were being fed and the food they were being fed was Pretty wholesome, because it was a lot of veget. It was all vegetarian fare.

[43:32] Meg: Did they consider themselves religiously Hare Krishna or just people who were taken care of by Hare Krishna?

[43:40] Jessica: They felt that they had. Well, Flanagan felt that he had a connection to Krishna and God.

[43:47] Meg: Okay, so it is. It does become like some kind of moral.

[43:51] Jessica: It was a connection.

[43:52] Meg: It was a spiritual. Yeah, spiritual connection.

[43:54] Jessica: It was a spiritual connection. He wasn't wearing saffron robes. He wasn't running around doing anything like that. But he was definitely part of the community, happy to be part of the community. He believed. He talked about, you know, his belief in God and reincarnation of the soul's existence beyond the body and the need to master destructive desires. However, by the mid-80s, to answer your question, it really was a serious religious commitment for him. In 1987, he talked about how he read the Bhagavad Gita every day.

[44:30] Meg: All right, so, yes.

[44:31] Jessica: And visited the temple that regularly. Um, he also talked about how life had a purpose beyond just surviving physically. And can you imagine for these kids who are basically like waifs and strays, all you're doing is trying to exist and to be told, no, this is. This is not all there is. Must have been such a relief, right? Like really, really big deal.

[44:59] Meg: And a higher purpose, I guess.

[45:01] Jessica: Absolutely. That defending yourself was not your purpose in life. He found it very comforting that the soul survives death. And he was really drawn to the idea that freedom involves controlling your mind. What's bizarre about Krishna core. And we're gonna talk about this once I talk about the next person who is in the CRO mags who is very into this as well, you know, And I talked about this last week that Hardcore was anti everything and it was violent. The mosh pits. You didn't want to be there. They identified with skinheads. They were shaving their heads. There are people sighling in the mosh pits like it was not good, amusingly, because they were even anti punk and punk was anti establishment. They wound up being a snake biting their own tail by being anti. Anti. Establish worthy establishment. Now, okay, but fuck the establishment. Fuck us. Okay, fuck ourselves. You know, there was a lot of rage and justifiably so, because a lot of bad shit happened to these kids, which I'll talk about in a second. The one place where they were being saved was everything other than how they felt. So there's this huge dichotomy just within these kids. When I say that Flanagan had a hard time, some of the things that he talked about Was that he just didn't have any adult protection. You know, his mother, his name was Rosebud, was just so checked out. Like, kids think that they want to have freedom, Freedom, they don't want freedom. And all of that freedom exposed him to a huge amount of danger. Witnessing violence, witnessing drug use, witnessing death from drug use. He was sexually abused by adults, women and men, and he was using drugs and fighting, dangerous kind of fighting, before he was even a teenager. So his life was complete chaos. Weirdly, he had it better than the next guy I'm gonna talk about because at least he had parents.

[47:16] Meg: This breaks my heart.

[47:17] Jessica: Yeah, it's terrible. All of this added up to anger, addiction and violence. And once he became involved with the Krishna Temple, that started shifting. I know that straight edge, which I also talked about last week, which is, you know, the movement of total anti drugs, anti alcohol, anti anything, destruct, self destructive. That was part of the hardcore movement in the 90s. I believe that it's genesis was at the Krishna temple, okay? Because obviously none of those things were okay. Now, the other person who formed the CRO Mags was its lead singer, who others in the band insist was not the original lead singer. He insists he was. And that's John Joseph. He wound up later talking about how he reconciled his anger, aggression, rage with his spirituality. But getting there was horrible. He was able later to describe that he was a foster kid. And you have talked about so many things on this podcast about what happens to kids, you know, and we've even had moments where I'm like, I can't handle another kid's story. And that's really what this is. And that's why I'm saying there's a connection to the stuff that you've talked about because, you know, these kids survived, but the things that happened to them were the same things that other kids, by just a stroke of bad luck, didn't survive. He was in foster care then he was homeless as a very young teenager. We know how that goes. And that's drug use and hustling and really just doing anything to survive. There was a huge amount of violence in his family. His dad was a boxer.

[49:14] Meg: His foster family, or his biological father,

[49:18] Jessica: where he would return occasionally, okay? His father would rape his mother and beat the shit out of her. And they wound up in foster care because she was so depressed and so ruined that she couldn't look after them. You know, there was all kinds of neglect, Being intentionally starved, beaten, sexually abused in the foster care system, both in foster homes and in between Homes. And also in. When he was not in the homes, when he was with the other kids, other kids were sexually abusing one another, the older kids. So he ran away from the boy's home in Rockaway when he was 14 in 1977. And that's when he went down the drain with drugs, but turned out to be a great frontman. And with these other kids, he. He sort of drifted in a similar way to Harley Flanagan and the other people who were in that band drifted into this music scene. But being a musician was not really that important. It was more about, we're just gonna show. I mean, it was more punk than punk, right? Like, punk was all you need is three chords in the truth. This was all you need is the truth. Like, the music got better as they went on. He, in a similar way and for the similar reasons to Flanagan, wound up finding Krishna. Hare Krishna. Food, shelter, safety, being able to sleep at night, not sleeping in movie theaters, which is where he was, meaning adult movie theaters. And God knows what was happening there. These guys who became really known as the founders of New York City hardcore. Harley Flanagan's like three years younger than John Joseph. And by the way, think about this. He was doing all this stuff. He was three years older than us, not even two years older. And so imagine us at 10 being like, hey, let's not be here, and instead be with a bunch of kids and start a band, because those are the only people who will even listen to us. And let's just avoid being. I was just a long list.

[51:39] Meg: No, When I was 10, I was very much a child.

[51:42] Jessica: Babies. The band that Denise Mercedes had was called the Stimulators. Great band name. And they were really the people who launched Harley Flanagan's musical career. He was so precocious that he joined the stimulators at 11. The next year he was on tour with them. And in his early teens, he started developing his own projects, which one of them became the CRO mags. And 1985 to 1986, when he was 18 and 19, he started playing bass instead of drums on the CRO Mags, the demo, and then the album that became huge for them, the Age of Quarrel. So this is a kid who's had an entire career by the time he's 19.

[52:34] Meg: Wild.

[52:34] Jessica: And the Age of Quarrel is well known again, the genesis of Krishnakore. Because so much of what John Joseph and Harley Flanagan were were learning at the Krishna temple wound up being in that album. Okay, so the Krishna temple wound up being a salvation. But then John Joseph in particular, started to have other feelings. He broke with Krishna in a way, and then sort of remained with it with a different group. But he felt once they started getting famous, more and more kids were being courted by the Krishna temple in on the Lower east side. And he felt that they were being used as marketing and promotion for the Krishna temple. And he was very, very against that. And, you know, you could imagine a kid who was so, you know, used and taken advantage of once he saw that that was happening, you know, with the elders at the temple. That was an absolute non starter. All of this is to say that I started off being really interested in the music. And the CRO mags are important. Were they something I'd ever listen to? Absolutely not. But the idea that this thing could happen is to me really fascinating. But now going back to what you were saying about Michael Klein, what you were saying about Michael Klein, that, you know, he went back to the East Village and felt disappointed. And then you and I were talking about how it's really the people and the community. This whole thing was to me a story about people, not about music and of survival. And how these were kids, displaced kids, homeless kids who tried to channel their rage into this musical outlet, which, you know, they're still doing to this day. These are career musicians now and they are both still alive, amazingly, and quarreling and, you know, all kinds of stuff about the origin story, about the origin life. Okay, awesome. Whatever it is, let's have an argument about it. Particularly John Joseph. To me, this is a story about how sometimes kids can somehow get it right in these unbelievably bad situations. And they were each other's community. And Krishnakore really, to my mind, is their safe house.

[55:09] Meg: Well, it's also interesting because on the other side of the island we have all these young rappers who are also saving their lives by a creative outlet.

[55:22] Jessica: To me, this is a story about kids making their own community and getting lucky with figuring out how to survive with another community, the Hare Krishna community. It really did save their lives. Against all odds. I think I have the tie in.

[55:53] Meg: Amazing.

[55:55] Jessica: The CRO mags were in no way interested, as anyone in the hardcore community was not interested in making people comfortable.

[56:05] Meg: Ooh, well done, Jessica. I love it. And Andy Kaufman.

[56:10] Jessica: Kaufman and David Letterman. And David Letterman had no interest in making anybody comfortable.

[56:15] Meg: And it took a while for people. I mean, that's it. We'll just leave it there. But I'm also thinking about an audience who's like, I'm not quite sure I get it, but I'm gonna hang around until I do because there's something here that I find really engaging.

[56:32] Jessica: Yeah. I mean, speaks to me, I think, with the comedy. That's true. I think that, you know, when hardcore started in the early and mid-80s, the people who were into it were the people who immediately got it because it tapped into the same alienation and rage. They heard it and they. They.

[56:52] Meg: They recognized it.

[56:54] Jessica: Yes, exactly. That's the word. Not knew it. Recognized it. Good. Good vocabulary.

[56:59] Meg: So we are taking next week off because of personal and professional obligations. So we'll be back, though, catch up on some other episodes.

[57:10] Jessica: Yes. And thank you so much to the people who wrote in. So nice. Not that it's your job to make us happy, but it really, really. It's so wonderful to get feedback very specifically on what we're talking about and what we find interesting. It's really nice talking about Community on this podcast today. It's very nice to connect with you guys about the stuff that we find interesting or just goddamn weird.

[57:43] Meg: Sa.