First run

I think that's mostly just knowing how good you are, right? Like you don't need to brag about it when you're the best. No, no, no. But mainly it's, it's a, so I do push it, you know, obviously like crap. It's, it's easier to push it to people that you don't know. Um, I think especially from my viewpoint, cause I, I write everything. So a lot of super personal, uh, and it's like, you're, you're kind of, you're making yourself really vulnerable. So it's harder to push that stuff to your friends and people, you know, and say, Hey, look at this. Cause it's, it's, it's harder to hear from somebody that you know that, well, that sucks, right? Like not everybody likes the same thing, you know? And I'm sure there's a ton of people that hate it. You know, I've had a ton of critical feedback, which I use constructively, but it would be more difficult for me to hear that from somebody that I know. Cause then I got to look you in the face and call you a cocksucker because I know you, right? Like if it's somebody I don't know, it's fine. But when it gets personal, but yeah, I do, I kept that pretty, pretty under, under wraps. Yeah, no, I mean, I was just, so the picture of you, Rick, I, and I mean, no disrespect. I thought it was literally just like a Jewish guy or something like that. And I never like clicked on it. And then when you sent the thing, Georgette and I were in the living room and I was like, wait, what the, what is this? And so I like clicked on it and I was like, and the second I was like, wait, there's no way that's Rick. That's Rick. And so, yeah, we were both kind of blown away. I mean, it's awesome stuff. It really is. So the picture of me in the hat by the big R, you thought that was just a Jewish guy, is that right? Yeah. Very Hasidic. Very Hasidic. Very Hasidic. We love our Hasidic people, by the way. I do have to get a haircut because Channing told me tonight I look like a triangle-headed Jew boy, not even a full-grown Hasidic, just a Jew boy. Wow. We're going to get canceled before we go live. Yeah. Once again, welcome to the Jewish League. Rick makes sizable donations to Auschwitz Museum. Yeah, sizable. A lot of trees have been planted. Every diamond store in the tri-state area has assimilated six free music gigs. No one does more gigs for gold than me. A Rosh Hashanah bar mitzvah, I mean. But touching back to what you said earlier, like with the haters or the criticism, is it just like for you or are they just speaking like a foreign language that you don't understand and you pay no mind and just stay true to yourself or how does that affect you? It doesn't bother me, right? Because everybody has. So what I figured out, it's really only I guess like professionally, I would say I've been doing it for like a year and a half, right? Two years. So the criticism I get is mainly from people within the music industry and it's not all like, oh, your music sucks. I don't want to hear anymore. Like some of it, some of it is that, right? But like what I figured out is like everybody that works in this industry that gives you feedback is really just giving you their opinion, right? Like there's a couple people you can talk to that don't have any real like take in giving you their opinion that gives you good feedback. But most of it's like, ah, I would like this. I would do this differently. I would have done that differently. And generally, and this is where I have a hard time too, because I'm not like a boastful person, right? Like so I haven't received negative feedback on my songwriting, right? Like the actual lyrical parts of the songs. I've only gotten positive reactions and feedback on that. I was just going to ask you, like, how long have you written a song? Have you done one in like 10 minutes? Or it takes a week? Or just does it depend? Because I've heard so many different things. Like some people are like, oh, they feel like their best work could be in an hour or less. And then like some of the songs that they like, but may not be their most favorites took a week to kind of force out or even longer or weeks. Yeah. So, so I like to, every day I write something every day, right? Like multiple things, whether it's like, if it's one line, and I'll put it in my notes and save it. Or sometimes I mean, I could sit down like that Midnight Clear song that I just put on Spotify. I wrote that in 30 minutes. It starts in 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, other stuff like I just finished. I just finished another one that I've been working on. I wrote like a good chunk of it while I was driving. The last time I went to the last time I drove to Nashville. I just, you know, voice recorded the song, and then let it sit for a while. And I looked at it the other night, and I had like a, just a verse written down from something else. And that happens a lot too, right? Like I'll write something, and then I'll look at it. And then I'm like, Oh, I wrote something a couple months ago, that fits that really well. And then you just paste them together. But it's, it's pretty random, man. Like there's some stuff that I wrote, probably 15 years ago that I can't finish, you know, and there's other stuff like Midnight Clear where I could sit down and just, it just happens to come out. Yeah, what a gift. Well, I was gonna say, I never really pegged you as that kind of a music fan. To be honest, I mean, I didn't really, which I mean, I think it's kind of cool. But Yeah, I mean, I like I've never pegged you either, Rick. There's very few people that, that has pegged me. And from what I understand, it is the tightest, leanest, bleached hole they've ever pegged. It is so clean, and it doesn't smell at all. It doesn't smell. It has no odor. Usually people do the potpourri in the water. I shoot it straight up my ass. Wow. Yeah. That's tricks of the game right there. Yes. Rick, can I ask a question? Yeah, yeah. When did you find out you were musical? At what age? Like, very young? Yeah. Banging on some drums as a five-year-old? Like, always jamming out? It was more like by It was more like a chance thing, right? Yeah. So I was four, and I went to Bach to Rock music school. Okay. And started taking drum lessons. So how that happened, right next to Bach to Rock, there was a gymnastics studio that my sister was going to. And my mom had us both, right? So the options for me were, well, you could do gymnastics, or you could take drum lessons. Yeah. So I naturally chose gymnastics. And it was a disaster for me. Did you really? Yeah, I did. I chose four, you know? Who knows anything when they're four? Like, I didn't know what I saw, I remember, like, you have a couple memories when you're that small that are vivid, right? Like, the vivid memory for me of gymnastics was the foam pit. Like, I want to jump in the foam pit. That's what I wanted to do. Of course. But day one, they put me in this spandex outfit. No! Yeah, which I didn't like. They couldn't get me out of the bathroom. I remember the gymnastics guy had this. Yeah, yeah, I was in like a, you know, it was 1993. I looked horrendous. The guy had to pick me up and carry me out of the bathroom. And then we're doing somersaults. I'm like, I don't want to fucking do a somersault. Like, that was, to me, at that point in life, a somersault seemed like the worst possible thing to do. So, the next day... Wait, when you say spandex outfit, is this like the Andre the Giant type of caveman? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Can we get a picture in the chat for the audience? I'm going to have to contact the mom and go back to Chronicle and see if we got one. Yeah, well, I think I've got a placeholder for the chat for now, just to get everybody's mind on the same page. Just to have a roster. So, the next day, I started drum lessons the next day. And we quickly found out that I couldn't read yet, but I figured I had to read music before I could actually read a book. Oh, wow. I was playing a full drum kit. That's amazing. Yeah, I was playing a full drum kit, which is excessively hard for a person that small. How do I see the chat? Is there... Oh, yeah. Yeah, a little Andre the Giant. That look on his face is exactly how I felt. Like, I'm not doing this. Because you lasted a day in gymnastics. I lasted a day. Yep. And that was it from there. I started playing drums. They figured out I could read music. I played the full kit. My parents got me a drum set, banged away on that, and then... What instruments do you play? I play guitar, drums, bass, a little piano. I've dabbled in the cello during COVID. I actually went to a music rental place during COVID, and you could go... As long as you say you have a kid in elementary school, you can go to one of these places and read an instrument. Oh, no way. Who's gonna know? Who's gonna know? Who's gonna know? Any luck with the accordion? Do you pull that out for Bar Mitzvah every once in a while? He's got to make up for his anti-Semitic remarks. As long as this isn't my life straight to the viewers. How many viewers do we have? Is it just Greg? It's just Greg for right now. No, let's do it. This is a good way to do a test format on our own. Opt-check everything, kind of get a feel for things, and we can see how it goes from there. I'm down for just putting this one out. Yeah, we might have to edit. Yeah, this will be good to edit and see how it turns out. Highlights. Highlight reel. I think, not to knock myself, but I don't think this will be like, I'm not really a popular figure, so I don't know how many people are going to want to download. No, I mean, I think if it's for us, and if things continue, or whatever the journey might be for this, it can be something more serious. It's like, oh, okay, well, we really have some better equipment, mic, better webcam, and a few other things just to kind of enhance the quality and the sound of it. Yeah, I think we see what the sound is on this, and then if it's too fucked up, like editing, so the big thing with the audio editing is capping. Anything digital is easy to edit because there's no volume cap on it. If the audio is kind of funky, I'll send you a picture of the one that the mic that I had, it was like $20. And you have to get it for sessions, and it works really well. That's the thing. That's the one. Oh, shit. I kind of view this mostly as kind of like those clips we have from just, you know, the wars, it's just for us, you know, just something to look back on and be like, man, that was fun, or like, you know, just to comment on for, you know, a couple days and then, you know, but I mean. Well, if it goes somewhere, though, too, we'll have to get it. It could get traction. I like that we're recording it and can edit it later because that takes the pressure off pacing. Okay, okay, what do we talk? You know, it's no, you know what I mean? Like no dull, dull air. So yeah, it takes the pressure off so we can chop it up. I would like to know. Because that's kind of like, I guess, really, until recently, like, that's my hidden talent. So, so do you guys have anything that you do that you don't really share with other people, right? Like, because so for me, always just for me, right? Like, I always did it for myself. So that's why I never shared it with anybody. So do you guys have something that you do? Just for you that you don't really share with other people? Oh, damn. Yeah, that's pretty tough. You sure about that? You sure about that? For our viewers that are new to the program, Rainer has three only fans. Three only fans. There's Rainer VIP, there's Rainer, there's Rainer Free, which is all. Yeah. Emojis. No PPV content. Yeah, just me. You know what? That's how you up the subscribers. No PPV. You're doing it off the rip. Speaking of, and we will get back to hidden talents. I saw recently in the news that the founder of OnlyFans was making like a million dollars a day cash. I couldn't believe it. That's insane. You know. Not a bad wage. When I hear that, that tells me I don't know the real number. Because the real number I want to know is how much are they making a day for them to still be successful to be able to pay him a million a day. So hearing that he makes a million a day isn't the number I want to know. Yeah. How much is that website? Like what's it all by? For sure. Yeah. It's got to be insane. I'm getting another look. Can we hear you grip and rip it? Open it up? Please talk to Channing so she can tell me what to say. Uh oh. As far as hidden talents. I don't, I mean, obviously as you guys can see behind me. But I really am passionate about like fish keeping. But I don't know about telling everybody. You know, only certain people know. But I don't advertise it. Well, I advertise it for you. I let everyone know. Yes, Ren is my spokesman. I'm always grateful of the good word that he pushes on. So how many, okay, talk about that for a second then, Tyler. Because where do you bridge the gap from being a run-of-the-mill novice? Just I have a fish tank to now you said the word fish keeping. And then how many fish auctions have you been to? And give us a peek behind the curtain of that world then. So as you see behind me, I have my 150 gallon tank. And it's six feet long. There's a bunch of different types of South American cichlids in there. I try to keep like fish from the same region and the tank so that they get along well. And I also have some other fish tanks in my son's room. I have just like little community fish that he likes. They're super colorful and they swim around. They're just live bears called Endler cichlids or Endler live bears. And he likes those as well as two axolotls. And he's a big fan of those. But I would say for me, my fish keeping hobby began in high school. My dad, when I was younger, used to keep fish. And I always liked them. And, you know, I just remember going to various aquariums growing up. And, you know, in mid-2000s, you'd go on the forums back before Facebook existed. And you'd just see what people were keeping. And you'd see all this information that was just available on how to keep like specific types of fish. And as I was transitioning out of the military, I got another fish tank. And then moved those guys down here with me once I got out into Florida. And it kind of took off from there. And I started occupying as much available space in my house as possible for fish tanks. And recently got rid of a few or upgraded them into like a nicer fish tank. So they could be a little bit more aesthetically pleasing than just looking like a pet store in here. But yeah, I really enjoy it. It's super soothing for me. And I read all about them. And it's, I don't know. I tell you something that I'm very passionate about. I'll go to like meetings with other fish keepers and people that have traveled the world collecting fish for a living. You know, biologists, scientists, et cetera. It's just very fascinating to see the levels of passion people have for just what I think that I'm like insane. There's somebody that makes it look like I just started yesterday. Yeah. Can you take us into the world of a fish auction? Yeah. So having like never been to any really sort of an auction, a fish auction is pretty neat. Because you see, there's people that breed fish in their garage or house or wherever. And they'll bring them in to sell the offspring, the fry as it's called. And there's just, you go up and similar to like an estate sale, you can preview what's going to come up for bid. And, you know, you wait for that to come up and you have like your little paddle. And you get to do a bidding war. And it's exciting because most of the time it's not like super expensive. Some things can be, you know, you're talking like five, 10, 15 bucks. That's fun to raise. Oh, $7.25, $7.30. You know, just little numbers and just like get that excitement going. But there are some fish that do bring significantly more. But it is very exciting to go there. And, you know, everybody's, you know, chest starts to puff up when they start bidding. And, you know, there's been definitely a few fish that I've bid on that the paddle hasn't gone down until I won it. So, yeah, it's super exciting. And it's, I don't know, it's really unique. There's people that are, you know, 10 years old to 80 years old that have had fish their whole life and that are just experts. And I've been through every single type of aquarium keeping in super old school ways to people that are very modern with everything they have. And I just think it's fascinating. No, it is pretty cool. And being a aquarium hobbyist as well. I mean, Tyler does freshwater and I do saltwater. It's just fun. I mean, I kind of got sold on to it because the person was like, oh, it's like owning your own little corner of the ocean. And it is. I mean, it's fun. Georgette and I will sometimes just sit there and watch that. But, and of course, it's something else to sink your money into. Yeah. But. I don't think I'll ever buy fish again. I'm traumatized from murdering our five fish. Picked them off one at a time. You know, and I think, sadly, it's like part of the hobby and I don't know what happened, but I had two guys pass this week. Oh, my God. I couldn't believe it. Yeah. I mean, it's heartbreaking. Yeah, I really don't know what happened. Actually, just tonight I did like an antibiotic treatment on the tank just to make sure. Yeah, funeral service, 21 gun salute. Yeah, funeral service, 21 gun salute. Put them in a little casket. A little casket. Half mast. Yeah, off the side of the Enterprise. Long John Silver box. Resting on a tartar sauce packet. Yeah. No, but I just don't know what happened. It's sad losing a fish. Like, I lost a clownfish that I've had for... How many fish have you killed, Rainer? Or lost? I blame you. They're in your care, custody, and control at the time of passing, so... That is true. How many killed them? Probably about... Hundreds. Yeah, hundreds. All of them. Billions and billions. Or 5,000. I went to the football game, sir. Best football game in the world. Yeah, sometimes, I will say, though, it just happens, like, randomly. Like, I mean, there's just, like, no explanation. And it just happens, and that's it. Okay. I buried one of my clownfish in a plumeria. Hopefully that'll give it some... You buried it? I did. The funeral services actually did the arrangement as well. Had a lot of edible arrangements brought in. And what do you do with the dead fish? Because some of them get big. I mean, do you cut them up, throw them in the toilet? Some of them I flush. I lost. Yeah. Stuck in the grill. Yeah. I need this knife. It's a sin. What are you going to do? Rick, where'd you find that GIF of the woman just eating a whole fish? That's... Just put ugly fish in it. Yeah. What is it? Is it a golem? It's... Oh, it's not. Oh, yeah. Looks like it's probably some kind of Asian delicacy. That's got to be fake. Nobody would eat that. Yeah. She eats the tail, too. That's got to be fake. That's what I'm working with. Jamie, pull it up. That's gross. That looks pretty real. Yeah, it could be fried. What percentage are you guys at right now? Tyler, are you updating your calls? Oh, mine's done. I haven't even turned it on. I was just focused on this this evening. Oh. Sorry. Yeah. Oh, he's teasing, dangling it. Yep. Oh, it's just right there. There's a little ruler on here so we can... So... There's no sound to go with it. So, what is your hidden talent? Man. I've always characterized myself as kind of boring. What you see is what you get. I don't know if I have a hidden talent or hobby. I truly... I think I'm a little boring. I'm not a musician. I'm going to interrupt you, man. You might have something hidden, but I know for a fact the talent is definitely the voices that you could do. Oh. Yeah. I think that you are spot on. Spot on. It's really good. I do a lot of fish noises. I think that one of your talents is that I have noticed since obviously we worked together when we were very young is that you have a really good way to interact with people. It's like you have an ability to make people just like really like you. I don't know what talent that's called, but I see it right off the rip. There's just... You have a great character. Well, I'll take the compliment, but it's not hidden. No, yeah, it's not hidden. I appreciate it. But I think there is a way that you... With that being said, the jokes that you can say that a lot of people couldn't get away with. I think that's a weird hidden talent that you can coexist and be able to say things and it's kosher and everybody laughs. But if somebody else tried it, they wouldn't be able to get that same reaction. Yeah. No, that's a good thing to bring up because I feel like I'm physically navigating the walls of the maze, the social maze depending on the scenario or situation. And I'm like, oh, I can go in this room and throw that joke in. Yeah. It is very conscious. So you're pretty good at noticing that then. Yeah, I always have noticed that for a long time and I've often used it for my own personal growth and development in certain situations to be able to read the room. And then with some people, you might just have to drop a lewd joke or something just to kind of break the ice. Relate. Yeah, relate and open up that dialogue with people. And then there's other times where you don't. And you can say things very tactfully in order to break the ice with certain individuals and get a feel for it. Obviously, I work with hundreds of different people on a daily basis. And that's one of the things that you kind of have to that I would say that I've learned to emulate from you is kind of know when to be quiet or when there's that time to make the joke, to be the center of the room for a second and get the laughs. Oh, pizza party. No raise, but hey, get back to work. That sounds like a fair trade. Just like tonight referencing with just like a new person who I've never worked with before. And we had recently did like a bunch of series of testing at work to reach a milestone. And my petty way, I made a little work meme that said, remember why you do it so the people who aren't here won't be sitting late and enjoy their time with their families. And yeah. So I said, well, at least we got pizza. Right. You know, so at least we work 70 hours a week and we got pizza. So I feel compensated. Yeah. I would love to work with you again. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no. It'd be impossible where I'm at. There's no like. It's. I will say you do have the relax there. It probably feels the same way that there's probably nothing anybody can say to get fired. From a government job, it's hard. I think one thing that is interesting as I've grown more into my career and I don't obviously I've noticed that people are just so lazy and they really won't report anything up at all. It just stays at such a bare minimum level. Like nobody wants to push for any really any sort of change or corrective action. Yeah. There's a lot of things in play. Obviously. I mean, you got the bystander effect where all someone else will do it. Yeah. It's not my job. You know, I didn't see nothing. It's just that's a pet peeve of mine. Yeah, I think so, too. And I mean, there's certain things where it's like I will play the bystander card. But there has been like some instances where people have said like some. Cringy. You know, pretty inappropriate things. And I have like, hey, guys, like tinfoil hot time, you know, just kind of have to try to embarrass them or kind of dial it back in. Like they don't care about like certain things, but you just sound crazy and you're allowed to be crazy. And that's great. But there's just certain things that work where you may have to maintain to me that professionalism at some capacity before going off the hedge. We obviously have the. Anti-government. War cries while people work for the government. And it's right. The irony of the situation, you know, what people do throw rocks in a glass house. So that's just been a pet peeve of mine since I began. It's like, well, you applied to work here. Yes. What's your talent? Since Tyler answered for me, which I appreciate. Well, I'll say what Tyler maybe Tyler knows. You'd be off the hook. Why? This is where we have the paywall. Just put the link in there. Rainer. Yeah. No, I didn't. Pretending not to have audio. I can't hear him. Can you hear me? Hey, the yellow building. Are you talking? Are you playing into the joke that we're making fun of you on? I need. Can you hear me? You guys hear him? Are you serious? You can't hear me. His mouth. I think he's fucking with us. I swear. Can you hear me or no? Looks real. Wait. We can't hear you. Can you hear us? You can't hear this. If you can hear us. I can hear you. In audio. I don't think you can hear us. I think this special talent might be. And I've heard I've heard rumors. I think he has the Ticonderoga tattoo on his penis, but he had to put it seven times. They just have 17 stacked up in the stands. He's got Ticonderoga. Just from what I've heard. A little Googling. Case 27. You can find it. Yeah, it's a deep dive. Yeah. You're going to start thinking? Replug. Troubleshoot. Yeah. I wish I could plug Andrea. I could either get her on this or we're going to have a special guest. That's that's part of the proposed format file that I sent out. We could have a special guest. Yeah. Moving forward for the next session. Would you agree have two or three tabs open of just, you know, the stuff that we copy and paste into the plug out all day. You can come to the table and. Say your piece on. And then. Meat and potatoes, I think. Yeah, I think. I like that. We definitely need to have some kind of structure format. If that's what we're going to do, like topic driven based off what we're talking about in the chat, I think that's perfect. And again, I don't think we need to worry about having. Downtime between thoughts or somebody speaking, because I could cuddle that and it'll it'll all blend. Fine. So don't. Yeah. Getting it all out. It's a very common I think nowadays for a bigger podcast to have the P break. And, you know, we're back. Sometimes we just need that quick, you know, to take a walk for a few minutes and, you know, clear your head. Yeah. And that'll all be gone. Right. Like if you want to stop and come back to it, any any breaks, any delay in conversation. If we step on each other and have to restart your thought, all that could be cut out. Yeah. Well, as a normal conversation would. Well, OK. Speaking with you guys. Yeah. Now we can hear you. No, we can't. Well, Tyler, we were you saying. No. This might be a cliche question, Rick, but with your musical. What where do you see yourself? Or is it one of the things where you're just kind of content like of following that you have or it's more for recreation and if it ever takes off, you're going with it or. I don't know. So I think the one thing which I don't know is if it's abundantly clear, like I think we've lost. We lost right here. Oh, he's probably dropping back in. You guys. You guys actually couldn't hear. Could you? Yeah, I could. Oh, no, I couldn't hear a word you said. I could swear that because my little. Can you guys hear me now? I could still I could confirm that I hear I hear you now and I've heard you the whole time. So I thought we were I thought we were talking because you can't like nobody else. Nobody else can hear you, though. You might be muted somehow. Partially muted. Well, he didn't understand. He's got like four applications of this open and he's got Twitch and he's got Xbox and he's got he's got little earbuds underneath his. Yeah. I mean, I stream in so many platforms. It's just like. It's like a new Lincoln Navigator. Like everything's on. Everything's broken. Sure. Am I really? I wonder if they have me muted or something like that. As you were saying. So, Rick, with the continuation of your of your music, if it breaks big or you just kind of happen to say the chorus turn now. Yeah. So. So. Yeah. Something about me that's probably I don't know if it's clear or not abundantly clear. Like, I don't once I do something, I don't intend it. I never intend for it to not be successful or be able to monetize it significantly. Right. Like my ultimate goal with this is to have some kind of monetization, whether it's. You know, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But my intention is for it to be successful. OK. Yeah. I just didn't know if it laid in between like, oh, I don't mind spending, you know, some money on production and everything else, because I do enjoy the music. And if a side effect of it is is getting super popular or taken off, then I'm all for it. But my main pleasure is just making music. And I am glad you cleared that up. That was, you know. Yeah. So there's there's really it's a trickier landscape than it used to be. Right. Like ultimately, like everything else with music, right. Like it's always been this way. It's a little different now. So you have to play live. Right. Like that's really the only way to be successful. Like I have Internet success, which nowadays doesn't really amount to anything financially. Right. Like because nobody buys anything anymore. You know, like if it was if it was 2006, I would have made like three hundred thousand dollars already. Yeah. So but because it's twenty, twenty three, I've made total off like two hundred thousand streams, I've made five hundred and eighty dollars. Okay. Which that's one hand at the craps table for you, Rick. So let's pop a bunch of cigars in. But yeah. Hey, guys. And I think one thing which is interesting and to. With music and an incredibly famous musician is Garth Brooks. That's why he hasn't gone to Spotify because he still believes, well, monetarily with the physical album sales, that's where it brings a lot of money. And well, there's just. Yeah. I didn't know that up until recently because it's like, oh, he hasn't released his music for streaming. He's got to be like one of the few big name holdouts. Yeah. That's just why I brought it up because somebody super mainstream that and going back to like what Rick said is like, you know, the live shows really push it. And, you know, you do see these guys on YouTube now that that have these bands and they get a lot of views. But YouTube really gatekeeps that stuff in regards to monetization. Now that I haven't gotten too deep into YouTube, but I think I'm going to start because I mean, I haven't really done the math on it, but I could see one of the coolest things like when it when it gets released, it goes on all platforms, right? Like it's on YouTube. I don't have a YouTube account. I don't promote the music being on YouTube because I haven't activated that account for it yet, but it is out there. And on YouTube, I think I've gotten like 42 streams, which I think is primarily Garrett because he's the only person I know that YouTube's the music. And so I've gotten in an ad thing from such a low number of streams. I think online monetization, that's probably the best route to promote YouTube stuff. But then, I mean, realistically, you need video, you need like a good video, that kind of stuff to put on YouTube. I want to talk about Garrett listening to music on YouTube. Yeah, what a send. Yeah. Get a better way. Yeah. But that's yeah, the way you make money is like live shows because people buy stuff when they go. They'll buy a shirt, they'll buy a fucking sticker. Right. And those are the people that if they're showing up for your shows, like they really, really like your stuff. So when you put it out now, they're going to buy it. A guy like Brooks, he doesn't need to stream his music. Right. Everybody knows who Garth Brooks is. He can release his greatest hits album. And if he sells, you know, half a million copies, the guy's making a fucking fortune off that. You know, if I don't if I don't do online stuff like that's where the landscape's changed, where it's become a lot more difficult to have success unless you're unless you already have like a huge financial backing. Like anybody you see like a breakout artist now, they've already grinded it out for years to get somebody to pay to do all this promotion and all this like super high level marketing that just costs thousands and thousands of dollars. Right. This douchebag Oliver Anthony. Right. Whatever he wants to say about not taking money. Yada, yada, yada. There's a good article. I'll send it to you guys that a couple of our guys put together about the advertising and promotion that was done really just like the SEO optimization to get his YouTube videos at such a high level that they went viral. That doesn't just happen anymore. Right. Like there's no there's no like, oh, listen to this song. That's not how it works. Right. Like you need to have because I think the numbers are like there's 80,000 songs released per day. Yeah. You don't stumble on anything anymore. Right. Like it's not like it was in the 70s where, oh, your friend saw a show or like even when we were younger, you know, when you saw a show or you heard a song, you're like, hey, check this out. Check the CD out. You know, let me bring you the CD. Oh, well, now we'll go to FYE and buy a CD. Right. That's just not how it works. Like you need to have massive amounts of funding and like incredible technical teams to even get your stuff noticed. Like Spotify, for example, even with Spotify. So. And people say like people in the industry, I thought you like, oh, those are great numbers for, you know, for something that's never released something for you are really good numbers. But. Because I'm new, because I don't have I think it's like twenty five thousand followers on Spotify that live in the continental U.S. I can't promote through Spotify. Yeah. You know, so you have to already be established to be able to use these services that promote shit. But did you see that this article or I just saw the headline, but it was talking about how I don't know if it's ASME or ASMR, but like these ASMR tracks have got like Spotify is paying these people like millions of dollars a year for just like these nature sounds basically like, you know, the rain and the wind and it's one of those and they want to like demonetize it. But it's like, hey, somebody had to engineer that, put that all together. But this has the it's like at the end of the day, it's a song. But it was just an interesting thing of like of. And it should be scary for all musicians of like, oh, well, well, they're going to demonetize that or I'm not going to make any money, even though I get, you know, millions of streams off of it. A month or, you know, a year. It's already there. Like you don't you don't make anything off of streams. You don't. Yeah, it's already at the point where what you just don't, you know, like realistically. Like I said, if it was even as soon as like 10, 15 years ago, like I would have made a significant amount of money. Yes. Yeah. That could have funded me doing larger projects and could have funded larger promotion. Right. Yeah, it's different now. You know, I'm not saying it was it was definitely harder. I don't know if it was harder, but there was like a gap. Right. Like so I look at like the 60s and 70s. That was hard. Right. Like those guys had to grind the fuck out of it. There was so much word of mouth. Right. You name it. Yeah. Yeah. They had to get picked up by a record label because you can't back then you couldn't walk into a studio and be able to pay for that out of pocket. You know, you know, I mean, even Queen. Right. Like. How good is fucking Queen? Queen paid for their first album. You know, they walked into the studio, they recorded the album. But back then, like studios were you walk into the studio. There's some A&R guys there. There's producers there. They heard it. They're like, this is fucking good. They signed them. They promoted the shit out of it. Right. Yeah. You had this gap where. It was just. Kind of when like streaming came into its own. Right. And you could buy music online and then everybody had access to it, but they're still buying it. Right. So you put something out and there's not as many people putting stuff out and you get all these streams. You know, people are buying it. They're buying CDs. They're buying music online. They're still buying merch. There was like this golden age. And then. We got. We got. We got. We got streaming services that pay you. I get three tenths of a penny per stream. And that sounds like, you know, a joke. Our grandfathers would talk about a raise. You know, I got a half a penny of a raise at my first job. What do you do with half a penny? Yeah. It's fucking crazy. So these companies. And there's a lot of people that listen to. I guess like more indie. Right. Like indie is categorized like, you know, more like my stuff. Right. Like it's not a genre, but it's just people that are making music that are putting it out. And there's a ton of people that listen to that stuff on these streaming services. So the streaming services are supported by. All these people either paying their ten dollars a month to use it or the ad revenue they're getting. And they're just put it in their pocket and they're not fucking they're not doing any of the work. None of the work is done by them. Right. They don't. They don't produce the music. They don't license the music. They don't host the stream. Right. All you're doing is saying, OK, we'll download it. They download it and put it on their service. That's it. And then you click on it. It's not posted on their server somewhere. Fucking Spotify HQ. None of that. Right. Like I pay for when you release something, you pay for all that shit, man. Like I pay for the hosting. I pay for the licensing, the copywriting. And then these services pick it up and you pay the service to stream your music. And I think one thing. Yeah. We have had audio issues all night. OK. So Rick is the only one that can hear me. Correct. Can you hear me, Rick? Yeah. Yeah. OK. I need to figure out. Rick will act as the relay channel. Turn your lights off twice and blink three times if you could hear anybody. I can hear. I didn't think Rainer was coming back. Yeah. Anyways, I think one thing as a musician that has to be difficult to deal with is with Spotify, at least for me. And I know there's not as many people out, but your music doesn't get uploaded losslessly and you have to pay to get your song song put on there. But at the same time, it's like, well, you guys are degrading the game. At the same time, it's like, well, you guys are degrading the quality of my production. Wow, that's annoying. Yeah, there's so much of it that's. Besides even besides the stream, like the streaming sucks because, OK, you're just putting it out there for people to hear, knowing that you're not you're not going to make anything off it. Right. So that revenue stream is gone. So now you're looking at live shows. Yeah. There's so many people. That try to trick you and fuck you. Even with that, I went to play a show in Brooklyn a couple weeks ago. I got booked through a booking service that booked me to play. You know, they buy time slots at venues. Right. And then they make money off the ticket sales. And there's a gig for everything. I didn't even have to pay for it. Right. So I got booked through a booking service that was booking for another club. So I show up. I got there at like 1030. My set was at 11. I walk in. You know, I give the guy my name at the door. He's like, OK, well, you got to cover your tickets up front. You got to pay one hundred fifty dollars. I'm like, well, no, that's not that's not the deal I have. You know, I got booked through somebody else. And the guy stood there and argued with me for 10 minutes and she had booked me for an hour. I had an hour booked at this bar. So that's like a big, you know, you're in New York City. An hour is a big slot. And now this guy's arguing with me trying to get me to give him $150. Shake you down. It sounds like more than anything. Yeah. So I told the guy to go fuck himself and just leave. Yeah. And then 20 minutes later, the bookers call me. Oh, you got to come back. You got to come. I'm like, I'm not fucking coming back. Your guy at the door just tried to fuck me for one hundred fifty dollars. Oh, that wasn't supposed to happen. I'm like, well, it did. It did happen. It's like, well, can you come back and play? Are you driving that Cadillac that we always put in the Instagram chat? Are you driving that? Yeah. You have to. You have to. Yeah. So I walked away. Yeah. And then, you know, they sent me email last week, actually looking at me at another venue. I'm like, well, I don't know if you realize, like, what happened the last time you guys booked me. But I don't really have any over my eyes. Yeah. And then there's people that do like this. Clubs and bars used to have promoters that would promote shows. Right. Yeah. A lot of what they do now is those positions are eliminated. And they rely on. Sorry, I was burping. They rely on the person that they're booking to promote their venue and show. And if you don't hit a minimum, you have to pay to play, which is fucking insane. So there's no guaranteed money anymore. You have to show up and hope you've promoted well enough that you meet their, you know, 20 or 30 minimum. Otherwise, when you finish, you're paying them to walk out the door. What time do you. Oh, you said 11. 11 p.m. It just seems crazy. And obviously, with us being down here in Florida, or at least for me being in a smaller city, is that you would actually have to like pay any amount of money instead of just like, hey, you know, versus talking to the bar manager or whoever manages the place and I'm like, hey, you know, I'd like to do like a 30 minute set or whatever, 45 minute live set, you know, kind of like send them your Spotify or whatever you got to do. And then it's like, what do you guys think? If not, skin off my back, but I'd really like to play live versus now where you're saying it's like you have to pay. And holy smokes, it's a job just to get your music heard. Yeah, it's it's a fucked up industry. I think we lost John. Yeah, I don't know what's going on. I think he's still here. Maybe he had to take another Tom's. I've got a few guys. Yeah, really? We'll have to schedule for. We can make it another 15 minutes or 10 minutes, John, and we'll close out the show. I think for the first one, we wrap it up. I think this is a good, a good run. Yeah. Indicator. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll get it edited. Give me like a week and we'll throw it back and, you know, go through and take a look at it. We'll make some points on where we want to change stuff. Like John was saying, get, you know, get a good topic list together, pull the tabs up, sit down and we'll do a full run. Yeah, I think this is just something that we could establish that people don't want to talk about or like that. Do not talk about this in any way. Probably black people, Jews. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're not coming here to hear our opinion on the controversial race things. Yeah, I think it's. Yeah. I mean, I think that they face is always like the mockery. Yeah. I think probably for all of us, it's more fun to make fun of Trump and than anything. And. Sad to say that. Anyways, I don't really think that I have anything that's like off limits, other than like what we talked about in regards to like racially insensitive things. Yeah. For starters, I think that's safe. I think we do a pretty good job. I mean, I don't. Yeah. I don't even know if we have to build those walls because you're going to be able to edit it after the fact. Yeah. If it gets to. If somebody within us didn't like it or it's like, oh, I don't I really don't care to hear that. I think that we have a better grip on this than over the Xbox Live because there's a lot of. I don't know the word, but being anonymous, it's very easy on Xbox Live. You know, you're just user seventy three eight pound sign and you can just, you know, let it eat. That could draw us away from the podcast because 70 percent of the conversation could be game based. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I'm here. I've always enjoyed the dialogue between all of us over the game play like it's always been fun just to talk and spot that we pin dropped on the map and show up at the 73rd time. What a special time that was back during those days. But very, very special coming together at the end. I mean, I kind of I think tonight was really good and hopefully we can find our our groove as things go on. And I really do appreciate it. Rick, I didn't know much about it. No. You're telling me for the first time about your music and that background. And it's it's it's super impressive. And I think the best quality of it all is, like you said, like you weren't trying to force it on on your closer friends and stuff like that. And there was no like humble like there was no like humble brag. Like, you know, you you play in like a little a couple of lines on the Xbox and just like, oh, you know, it's it's it's it's it's just like, oh, you know, it's just like a real hidden talent to us. To me. Sure. And I remember, like, when I first saw it, I think I made a message. I'm like, is this really Rick? Like, or is this just like some Jew? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. My client finds those comments off color and it's sensitive. Some Jew in a town car. Yeah. I'm drinking some wine. I need some thumbs in a second. Rick. Yeah. What are you drinking there? Graduated beyond Tom's age. Twenty thirteen Grand Cru is lovely. Lovely. What kind of sense are you picking up on real quick before we sign out for the night? What's the a lot of a lot of cherry in this. Do you drink out of a particular brand of glass? Because I do hear that the wine aficionados prefer a specific type of glass and it's just not right. Yeah. Yeah. Channing has bought us some some more expensive glassware that we're not taking out until we move into the new house that we're going to have, you know, wine appropriate glasses that we use. And yeah, definitely. It does make the difference, right? Like the shape of the glass is what aerates the wine. Yeah. Right. It's dependent upon that. You know, obviously some wines you have to let them breathe for a while before you even put them in the glass, which that's like a whole different whole different level of thing. But this actually bought a guy in my country club. I recently found out owns a wine store. And this was one that he recommended when I was there. You mentioned the country club, Rick. I just imagine you like an Argyle pattern. I usually wear some kind of Robert Graham Oh, wow. You know, the colorful. Yeah. That's a nice guy. Yeah. And there's a guy there that's that's a Robert Graham fan as well. So we really connected over that. Our love of patterned shirts, which has been nice. And I know that you are also a sneakerhead as well. And I really bought a lot of shoes lately. Probably two, three pair a month. I don't know if I'm up to your levels, but lately I've really fallen in love with the Hoka brand. They're so comfortable. Believe me, my feet have never felt or clouds. I've never tried those. I'm like strictly Nike. Okay. I buy a lot of shoes, but I don't say like I buy sneakers. I'm like, oh, these are expensive or these are collectible. I buy sneakers. Yeah. People are like, oh, that's this. I'm like, I'm going to wear them I doesn't matter. Like it's about to wear them. I usually wear them. So they have an unbearable foot stench and I move on. Yeah, but there's some pair that I buy and there can be and I don't know if you've discovered this with Nike, but they'll be the same size. But it's like it just feels awkward. For me, I have like a couple pair of Adidas and one of them is just like, my God, this doesn't feel as good as the other ones. Yeah. Yeah. That is the announcement here and we'll wrap it up. I know I told John, I don't think I told anybody else that we actually lost George about a month ago. Oh, really? That wrecked his soul. He was an old pup, wasn't he? Like 15, 16? No, he was 12. Oh, I thought he was in his teens, too. Yeah. Yeah. For a dog that size, it was a good run. But we, you know, before he went, we had filled out like a bunch of rescue applications for Cane Corsos. It just so happened like the day after we put him down, we got contacted and we just picked up a puppy. Oh. Yesterday. Oh, wow. Rick's going to step in the piss pile tomorrow morning and it's going to be back up in the adoption circle. Hold on, let me show you. So she's five months old. Oh, how huge is she? I don't know if you can see her. Jonathan, let me click on your screen. Is she in her little pack and play? No, she's here on the couch. Oh, OK. It's hard to make out. Yeah. She's dark. Yeah. She's real dark. What's her name? Maple. Oh, that's cool. OK. Yeah, she came from a drug den in Michigan. Really? Holy cow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, drug bust in Michigan. So the rescue in Mississippi. Deckard passed at five months old. Yeah. Five months. She went from Michigan to Mississippi, to Maine, to Massachusetts, to us over the course of the last two and a half months. Well, Maine would have been a better spot before Jersey, but I'm glad she got you, Rick. Yeah. Any closing thoughts since you can't talk? Sounds good. Good night, everybody. Rick, I was going to tell you. Wish I could hear him. Yeah, we'll have to get through these audio challenges. Hey, Rainer, do you have a message you want me to relay? Well, I was just going to tell you, if you hit slash stop. I don't see the slash stop. Senator, did you hear the question? He's not frozen. He just didn't hear you guys. Rainer, Sennheiser recently released a headphone that costs like 60 grand. You could get something like that. Maybe ask your mom and your dad, grandma. Reverse mortgage your house and have those by Sunday next week. That might fix some of the issues. I'll try my best. Oh, I thought we heard him. That was Rick. I think I've kept the whole house up. Good night. Good fight. We'll see you guys next week. Bye. Sounds good. Hey, Rick, can you hold on? OK.