Might As Well Judge (Rerun)

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, might as well judge.

Jackson brings the case against his friend Jesse.

They're at odds about the merits of Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony.

Jesse insists Michael Anthony is an unsung genius.

Jackson disagrees and wants to put this debate to rest.

Who's right?

Who's wrong?

Only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

So when we were first designing the label, my original hot sauce, we came up with this phrase on the front, which I thought was kind of witty.

But unfortunately, places like Trader Joe's take a look at the bottle and they go, oh, no, I don't think we're going to go for that.

So we're in the process of revamping that.

End quote.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the litigants in.

Jackson, Jesse, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God, or whatever.

I do.

Or whatever, I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite his merely competent bass playing?

I do.

I do.

Very well, Judge Hodgman.

Jackson and Jesse, you may be seated.

For an immediate summary judgments in one of yours favors, can either of you name the piece of culture I referenced?

When I entered the courtroom, Jackson, why don't you guess first?

I am going to guess that that is

taken from

an interview Michael Anthony gave about a brand of hot sauce that he is currently selling with a less than savory name.

Michael Anthony, interview regarding a brand of hot sauce.

I have entered it into the guess book.

We'll see what happens.

Jesse, not you, Bailiff Jesse Thorne, litigant Jesse,

whom we shall refer to

by his first and last name in order to make this clear.

This was Jackson's suggestion that he dox his friend on the podcast.

So, Jesse Robb, that is your last name, correct?

That is correct, yes.

And your, just for the record, your social security number, please.

Sure, it's 555-555.

Wait, hold on.

Oh, I've heard about you.

1-900.

Yep.

Very good.

Now it is your turn to guess.

Jackson guessed that it was an interview with the bassist Michael Anthony, the subject of this particular dispute, regarding his brand of hot sauce.

What is your guess?

He is 100% correct.

That is Michael Anthony speaking about his hot sauce,

giving a quote about the name of the hot sauce.

I'm not 100%

sure what the name is.

I do know that it is unsavory and not fit to repeat on this family show, but he is looking to expand it.

Well,

all guesses are mostly right, but wrong enough that we can proceed.

I knew that you would get it because you are both,

well, one of you is a Michael Anthony aficionado, and the other one is a Michael Anthony anti-aficionado.

And that's what this dispute is about, whether or not Michael Anthony, the original bass player for the band Van Halen,

is a good or bad bassist.

Or rather, Jesse Robb, you would say a genius bassist, and Jackson, you would say, not a genius.

You are correct.

Michael Anthony does have a hot sauce.

This interview with Brian Reisman, posted April 2, 2010, at 1 a.m.

on his website, Attention Deficit Delirium,

is about that hot sauce.

The hot sauce, though, does not have a terrible name.

The hot sauce is simply called Mad Anthony.

So that's not so bad.

But the motto that he chose, and neither of you can remember it, right?

No.

No, but I do actually, I would like to posit that the motto in question is only on one of the three hot sauce varieties that he has produced.

Who's talking right now?

Who's talking right now?

That is Jesse Robb.

Jesse Robb?

Yes.

I know you want to come to the defend of your favorite bassist in the world, and you want to say as much as you possibly can about him and show off your knowledge, but you can't go against me in my courtroom.

I got Wikipedia up in front of me right now.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

It's only on the Mad Anthony analog hot sauce.

It's not on his barbecue sauce.

It's not on his mustard sauce.

And the tagline, the motto that he chose, knowing that this is a family-friendly podcast, grown-ups and mature children will be able to figure out the code that I'm using.

The tagline motto is

Mad Anthony hot sauce, so hot you'll need two pie holes.

You understand what I'm saying.

Let's get down to the dispute then.

So, Jackson, you have brought Jesse to this court because he thinks that Michael Anthony of Van Halen is a genius.

You do not.

Correct.

That is absolutely correct.

Jesse Robb, do you verify that you believe Michael Anthony is a genius?

I.

Yes or no, sir?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I'll dig in.

All right.

The best basis to ever lived?

No.

Who's the best basist who ever lived?

You must have

in your Trapper Keeper a list of the greatest basists of all time.

Oh, boy.

That is a tricky one.

I mean, let's just say, here, let's narrow it it down.

Top five?

Sure.

Top five.

Top five bases.

Man, see, now I'm on the spot.

I was here with Michael Anthony on the brain.

Yeah, that's fine.

You're here to defend Michael Anthony.

Yeah, I'm here to defend Michael Anthony.

It's up to Jackson to say who is better than Michael Anthony.

And Jackson, your answer would be everyone, correct?

Most people.

There are definitely bases that are worse than Michael Anthony.

The late Sid Vicious comes to mind, for example.

That punk?

Yes, literally that punk.

Come on.

That guy didn't know how to play bass before his first, before they recorded that album.

Exactly.

I would say that he is one of the few bass players who are recording this.

It's called damning with no praise.

Will you say Michael Anthony is the worst living bassist?

No, I would not say that.

I would say that he is a competent bassist.

I would say that like many

known professional musicians, he he is, you know, already that puts him in the top 10% of musicians, period.

Because he's a professional musician.

Exactly.

He's a professional, known musician, and therefore, therefore, he's better than me.

I'm perfectly happy saying that.

I understand.

And how often does Jesse bring this up such that you felt the need to bring him to court?

Well,

an activity that we regularly engage in when we are in the same city and hanging out is listening to records and spouting trivia and nonsense opinions about those records.

We both love the music of Van Halen.

And every time Van Halen comes on the stereo,

Jesse attempts to convince me that Michael Anthony is actually an unsung genius and does the thing where he's like,

oh no, no, listen to this part, this part right here.

Then shuts me up.

I have to listen very intently for a half a second worth of Phil that is supposed to convince me that he is as good or better than people like Mark Sandman or Flea or something like that.

Not only does Jesse talk to you about it every time it comes up, but he has written a 1,000-word article.

I have it on authority here.

Jesse's a part-time music writer.

He's written a 1,000-word article about the genius of Michael Anthony.

He says he has, yes.

And if I rule in your favor, Jackson,

he's going to print it out and shred it and never publish it.

He doesn't mean if I rule in Jesse's favor, we're going to publish it on the Judge John Hodgman page at maximumfund.org, and I'm going to social media the heck out of it.

I see.

It's going to become the most famous 1,000-word article about Michael Anthony that's ever been published.

Very good.

As much as I want to do that, Jesse, I don't know enough about

basing, I guess you would call it,

to really be able to determine whether or not

your

proposition is correct.

So, Jesse Robb, we have an expert witness here in the courtroom, a friend of the fake Internet Court of Judge John Hodgman.

And Bailiff, Jesse Thorne, would you please bring the expert witness in and introduce him?

Absolutely.

He's not only an acclaimed novelist with a brilliant new book called Universal Harvester, you also know him as the lead singer, frontman, and sometimes totality of the band The Mountain Goats, the court's leading expert on heavy metal music, Mr.

John Darnell.

Thank you, Bailiff Thorne.

Thank you, Your Honor.

Guest expert, John Darnell.

Nice to have you back in the courtroom.

So good to be here.

So good to be here.

You are an expert in heavy metal.

You previously consulted with the court on the topic of death metal.

That's right.

A dude wanted to get his girlfriend to listen to death metal, something that has never happened in the history of time

before it happened on our court.

Is Van Halen, though, heavy metal?

No, right?

Well, it would depend on who you talk to.

I'm talking to you.

According to to me, they're in the tradition.

Not now.

You don't hear them and go, that's heavy metal.

But it's a term that they would have been saddled with a little when they were playing.

Chuck Eddy, who's a critic of Real Insight, he has a much broader definition of heavy metal attitude.

He dates back to Blue Cheer, and even pre-that, he thinks it's more of an attitude.

Really, after the mid-80s, metal changes so much that it'd be hard to call Van Halen heavy metal.

But hard rock, you know, is part of the heavy metal tradition.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Is there a difference between heavy metal as a genre and metal as a genre?

So that's that's a good question.

I don't know.

I mean, metal really is just short for heavy metal, but at the same time, I think it does feel like a more inclusive term.

You know, it's like you can have metal that isn't that heavy, but it's still identifiably metal, you know, but I think probably it's more of an abbreviation.

It's the same thing with hip-hop.

There's a lot of hop that isn't particularly hip.

Yeah, I could never figure when I was just 89, 88 getting into rap, it's like, well, rap or hip-hop are these loaded and freighted terms?

Which one do you use?

So most rappers I know use the term rap instead of hip-hop.

Rap is something you listen to.

Hip-hop is something you live.

That's right.

Hip-hop is

the five elements of which rap is one.

Getting back to heavy metal.

So, all right, so Van Halen is in the terms of the music.

No discussion of Van Halen can ever occur without people suddenly starting to talk about rap music.

They're inextricably tied together.

One always leads to the other.

But before we go down that road, you mentioned that after the 80s, heavy metal diverged and went into a different place.

Where did it go and why did it go there?

It just got a lot heavier starting around 86, maybe 84.

I mean, Bay Area, Thrash, Metallica,

all the guys who were playing up there, and the Southern California people like Possessed

made it so much heavier.

And it also got very far away from blues-based roots.

Van Halen is just building on blues rock.

That's what they're doing.

They're making it faster and cooler, you know, but they're not doing what a band like Possessed is doing, which is saying we don't want to play any blues riffs at all.

We want wicked, evil-sounding stuff.

Now, original lead singer, and I believe now current lead singer again, Diamond, David Lee Raw.

Diamond Dave.

Pushed it all into a kind of vaudeville, glammy, hair metal vein that a lot of bands imitated.

And that became very popular for a long time.

Until I kind of think, and this is why Van Helen always leads to hip-hop, you know, hip-hop and RB started to take over popular music in the 90s.

And now metal has become much much more genre.

But for the children who are listening out there driving around in your cars, the Van Halen, very, very, very popular band throughout the 80s.

Four members, Diamond David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen.

What was the other Van Halen, John?

Alex.

Alex Van Halen, the one whose name everyone forgets.

Coincidentally, also the name of the band, Van Halen's.

And then Michael Anthony, the bass player.

Tell us a little bit about Michael Anthony, John.

The rhythm section in Van Halen is sort of the, I won't say the secret weapon, but it is, you know, Van Halen's the name of the band.

It should be about guitar solos, but that combo of Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen is actually the sound of the band, as far as I'm concerned.

The guitar is great, the riffs are great.

Dave gives a lot of personality, but that rhythm section, especially around the time in 1984, that's the unmistakable sound of the band, right?

Is the Alex Van Halen hitting the ride super hard, and the eighth notes, the bass booing it up, you know?

No, the sound of the band was Panama.

No, no.

What you're hearing when you hear Panama is the ride symbol in the bass.

Without that rhythm section, they're really nothing.

If I close my eyes and listen to Van Halen, I hear their signature sound, which is that flag snapping in the wind as David Lee Roth crosses from one side of the stage to the other.

Yeah, that's right.

That flag snapping sound of David Lee Roth.

The flag snapping sound of Diamond Dave.

Well, when you say secret weapon, I'm willing to accept secret is the term best applied to that weapon.

I do think you could taken any other rhythm section of the genre in that day and told them to do what Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen do, you would not have a band that was even half as good.

So you are saying, if I may, that Michael Anthony, as bassist for this band, is instrumental to the Van Halen sound.

Would you raise your hand and swear to that and make the Hail Satan sign while you're doing it?

Yes, I would, but I would also modify that by saying it's not just as a bassist, but as a backing vocalist, which is a super important craft that people minimize, but actually it's a harder job to do than lead because anybody can stand there and yell if they have charisma.

They don't even have to hit notes.

But a backing vocalist has a very specific job to do that is a more musical job than the lead vocalist, generally speaking.

And he's really good at it.

Him and Dave are sort of the John Doe etic scene of the hard rock scene.

Very distinctive and good harmonies.

Deep cuts for some of the Judge Sean Hodgman listeners, I'm sure.

But,

well, it's interesting you say that because in my Michael Anthony research, you know, he basically parted with the band.

By the late 90s, he wasn't playing on many of their recorded tracks, stopped touring with them in 2004.

But even between that time, he was still singing backup, even when he wasn't playing bass.

He's good at it.

He's a really good backing singer.

One last question before we get back to the case, and then I hope you will chime in as much as you like, John Darneil.

You're a guy who's familiar with the history of dudes sitting around listening to bands and having a fight over whether the bassist is good or bad.

Yes.

Is this dispute between Jesse Robb and Jackson about Michael Anthony's bass playing something you've never heard before or a common fight among Van Halenites?

I haven't heard this particular look at it, but what it does sound to me like is actually more a discussion about the aesthetics of music, about whether you're judging somebody on their playing, on their chops, or on what they contribute to a track, right?

And those are different criteria, right?

Because you can otherwise, otherwise, obviously, Ingve Malstein is the best guitarist of the genre, the end, right?

He's the fastest.

He plays the most.

He plays all over everything.

He never stops.

Agreed.

I would characterize him as the greatest musician of the 20th century.

But the thing is, but Ingve is not,

you know, if you take

Michael Denner from Merciful Fate, well, now he's not an Ingve, but I would argue that he contributes more to his band's songs or Hank Sherman than Ingve does to his bands because Ingve is just playing as fast as he can all over everything, right?

Michael Anthony is not doing that.

He's playing eighth notes, but they always fit really well.

Like, I don't think a Roger Patterson style of bass or Jacob Pastorius or whoever is really going to serve a Van Halen song the way that Michael Anthony holding down a rigid four is going to do.

Larry Graham.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that's the thing.

Funk is like a good, is a good point of contact contact in talking about this.

It's not how much you play or how fast you play.

It's do you land on the one squarely every time?

Or were you doing that before there were computer programs to move your beats over?

And of course, Michael Anthony was doing that before there were computers to make him play good.

Yes, although it's my understanding also that people who were good at tape editing could make a bad bassist seem good if there was enough money back in the day.

Well, let's get a time machine and make a lot of money.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll hear more about Michael Anthony with expert witness John Darneal in just a minute.

Schmanners, noun, definition.

Rules of etiquette designed not to judge others, but rather to guide ourselves through everyday social situations.

Hello, Internet.

I'm your husband host, Travis McElroy.

And I'm your wife host, Teresa McElroy.

Every week on Schmanners, we take a look at a topic that has to do with society or manners.

We talk about the history of it.

We take a look at how it applies to everyday life.

And we take some of your questions.

And sometimes we do a biography about a really cool person that had an impact on how we view etiquette.

So join us every Friday and listen to Schmanners on maximumfun.org or wherever podcasts are found.

Manner Schmanners.

Get it?

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Jackson and Jesse disagree about whether or not Michael Anthony of Van Halen is an unsung genius.

John Darnell is here as expert witness.

Why does Jesse think Michael Anthony so great?

Let's go back into the courtroom to find out.

All right, Jesse Robb, you heard John Darneill talking about your boyfriend Michael Anthony.

Here's my summation of what I understood from John Darneal.

Dude may not play the most notes,

but he's an integral part of the band.

and the secret weapon of the band sound.

Do you agree with that assessment, or would you go further to say that Michael Anthony is even better than John Narneal says?

My original position would be exactly lined up with him.

And then as Jackson kept prodding me more and more and I kept going further down the Michael Anthony rabbit hole, I would say that Michael Anthony is more and more and more of a prestigious bass soloist as well.

So in your dude hang fights,

you were prompted to do even more research and your esteem has only grown.

It is true.

All right.

Jackson, you've heard he's no Ingvi Malmstein of the bass, right?

You've heard he doesn't have the chops.

What else do you want to lay on this poor dude?

Well,

I would like to clarify one thing, which is that this case is exclusively based on

Michael Anthony's bass playing, not on his overall position in the band.

I would agree completely with John Darnell that background singing is an underrated art form, and Michael Anthony does it amazingly.

He also brings a lot of charisma to the band.

He was a very fun person to watch.

Stop buttering up my expert witness.

Of course, everyone agrees with John Darneill.

Nicest guy in rock and roll.

Everyone loves John Darneill.

Oh, boy.

All right, you just want to limit this to bass only.

Yes, yes.

We're going to carve out a discussion for bass.

Yes.

And so you're saying when you listen to Michael Anthony play bass, you're like, that's no good.

It's not that it's no no good.

It's fine.

It does the job.

It's acceptable.

The thing is, is that

the kind of frenetic,

you know, pop, heavy metal, whatever you want to call Van Halen as it is, is inherently, I think, a genre of excess.

It is something where there's no such thing as tactful playing.

If you can play all the notes, you should play all the notes.

And I would argue that somebody like Rush, for example,

Getty Lee is a bass player who plays all the notes when it's appropriate to play all the notes, but in these sections where it's appropriate to play all the notes and play frenetic and fast and do these huge runs and things, that Michael Anthony instead sticks to playing the straight eighth notes, which, again, it keeps the beat.

He's right on the one.

It's fine.

It's good.

But to say that he is this accomplished

virtuoso, I think, is pushing it a little bit.

Jesse Robb, accomplished virtuoso, will you own those words?

I will.

So, when you analyze the music of Van Halen, I think we often like to

look to songs like Hot for Teacher and put them in that category of near-speed metal.

Do they have other songs?

It is true, Judge Hodgman.

But I think the other thing that a lot of people forget is that Diamond Dave often talks about in his autobiography, Crazy from the Heat.

He was born and raised on a lot of the early blues rock and has a lot of RB influence.

You don't need to quote that book.

Just tell me what page you're quoting.

I'll know it.

Go ahead.

I apologize.

He was raised on blues rock.

A lot of blues rock, a lot of RB.

His favorite band of all time was Grand Funk Railroad, and that's all he wanted Van Halen to be.

So if you look at a lot of their covers, and

most of Van Halen is a lot of covers as well,

a lot of them, you know, you've got Dancing in the Street, you've got a lot of these early ⁇ B covers.

A lot of the rhythm section are playing these sort of R ⁇ B style rhythm

pieces.

So you don't really have a rhythm section trying to play a speed metal style

kind of music.

You have, you know, the rhythm section trying to hold the backbeat.

You've got Eddie playing everything up front.

You've got Dave doing his singing thing.

But I would really actually try to liken Van Halen structuring the band a lot more like how Led Zeppelin did.

No one's going to argue that John Paul Jones was a poor bass player.

John Paul Jones was an amazing bass player, but you listened to half the Led Zeppelin songs and the dude barely moved off the quarter note for like 90% of the track and everyone was fine with it.

Once Michael Anthony does the same thing, everybody starts to, you know, make fun of him because the dude had a Jack Daniels bass.

Do you think that...

Go ahead, John Darnell.

I want to say that the claim was made a moment ago that metal is necessarily a genre of excess and that playing more is more metal.

But the band I wanted to say, John Paul Jones is a good site, but also Geezer Butler.

I don't think anybody can minimize Geezer Butler's presence as a heavy metal bassist.

He's one of the founding authors of the genre, right?

He's a Black Sabbath bassist.

And he is not playing as much as he can.

It's a lot like with Sly and Robbie, reggae rhythm section.

It's not how much you play.

It's just what you contribute.

It's how hard do you hold it down.

And Geezer Butler's a monster, right?

And Black Sabbath, like, there's the one band no one can argue about their primacy in heavy metal.

Black Sabbath is ground zero, right?

And

so if we listen to them, we know that it's not about how much you play.

We know that it's more about what you play and what it adds to the track.

Jackson, you just got smacked down by John Darnell.

I enjoyed it.

I would say, I'll narrow my focus then a little bit, and I would say that specifically hair metal, specifically this particular genre of heavy metal from 1977 when Van Halen's first album came out, until I think it was like 1991, when like Cherry Pie came out.

I think that was like the last great hair metal single.

Solve for great.

For certain degrees of great.

All right.

But I would say that that particular subgenre of rock and roll, heavy metal, whatever you want to call it, that kind of sunset strip, primarily Los Angeles 1980s brand of music is inherently a genre of excess.

Yeah, but Jackson, we've already established in this court that Van Halen was a transitional band between RB heavy metal and the later hair metal that it inspired.

Even I have done enough Van Halen research to understand that.

The question isn't whether Michael Anthony should

be playing more notes,

because obviously he played the exact right right number of notes to make Van Halen one of the most successful and definitive bands of its time until he was gradually edged out of the band and replaced now with Eddie Van Halen's son, Wolfgang Van Halen.

But whether Michael Anthony should have been playing more notes, the question is: could he have been?

Jesse,

Rob,

if we took Michael Anthony out of Van Halen

and put him in another band, let's say a band I made up called Chickenfoot.

You did not make up Chickenfoot.

No.

Oh, that's right.

That's because Michael Anthony and Sammy Hagar made up that band when Van Halen didn't want to have anything to do with them anymore.

Because they were off making hot sauce and tequila brands all the time instead of rocking.

That's right.

Come at me, Sammy Hagar.

I can drive 55.

It's the law.

But this is where the litigant has a very strong case, is that if you take Michael Anthony and you put him in early Metallica when Cliff Burton was the bassist or you put him in Atheist when Roger Patterson was alive, it'd be a joke.

He can't do what those guys do, right?

So if you consider music an absolute scale of competence,

then yeah, those guys are better bassists.

They can do more and they could probably do what he did.

But they didn't.

That's the thing.

It's not how much you can do.

It's whether the thing you do is considered useful by a lot of people, right?

So

but yeah, in terms of absolute proficiency, I really doubt he could do the kind of of Jocko Pastorius all-up and down-the-neck

stuff that those guys can do.

I don't think he's bad.

And he did have a bass shaped like a Jack Daniels bottle.

Did Jacko Pastorius have that?

No, he did not.

Though he's rumored to have had plenty of Jack Daniels bottles.

Let's talk about what Michael Anthony can do.

You guys both submitted some evidence.

Talking about bass is not as much fun as listening to bass.

So we have some evidence submitted here by Jackson.

We're going to go with his evidence first.

So Jackson, tell me what I'm going to hear with clip number one.

So, here is

the studio version of Running With the Devil, probably one of Van Halen's best-known songs and an excellent example of this straight-ahead, right-on-the-beat bass playing that Michael Anthony does.

All right, Bailiff Jesse Thorne, spin the disc.

You know what, Jesse Robb?

Uh-huh.

I could do that.

This is very true.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Is that genius, Jesse Robb?

You know, I'm biding my time.

I've got my own evidence submitted.

Okay.

So you declined to defend it.

Well, I think that is a perfect example exactly of, I mean, if we want to look at, you know, the same kind of situation, like I was explaining before,

you know, riding the beat, holding the tempo, I mean, it's exactly what the song needed, exactly when the song needed it.

Do we need anything else from the bass at that point in time?

I think it's one of the most iconic bass lines that any song has ever had.

You hear that kick on, and what does everybody do?

They crack a beer and they rev up the Pontiac GTO.

I was definitely nodding my head along to that.

One of the most iconic bass lines that any song has ever had.

It's a substantial claim.

Yeah, that went from I'm not even going to talk about this to this is literally the greatest thing in history in the blink of an eye.

The thing is, I mean, this is where my, he's good in the track argument is like, if you pull up, the first bass line I thought of listening to that, because I was listening also to the tone, which I think is pretty poor, right?

I have to say, I think it's a Ted Templeman production, and I don't know what they're thinking with that bass tone.

I mean, obviously, come on, Templeman.

Who am I to

contest success, right?

But at the same time, if you think of this to do a Frankie Valley track called The Night, right?

It's a Northern Soul classic, and the opening bass line, which I think is probably the wrecking crew from Motown,

it's just so gorgeous and accomplished.

And you compare it to dom, dom, dom, and the dom dump is a little do the Frankie Valley uh uh bass line, John Darnell.

Can you do it?

This is like uh.

the night is like the, I think it's musical movies, he's like this absolute masterpiece of Northern Soul.

So, Jackson, you've made your case with this picking a rather dull bass line, or I should say rudimentary

bass line, but my head was nodding a little bit.

Your head was nodding.

What are you trying to prove here with this evidence?

So, I have a couple of things to put this in context,

which is that, yes, that is, you know, the thing that

the song kind of needs in order to start it off.

And, you know, one could argue that excess when playing would detract from this.

An argument that Jesse Robb has made with me is that Eddie Van Halen is a kind of a musical tyrant and prevents, he kind of held Michael Anthony back from displaying, you know, his virtuosity.

And there's another example of a band that's a very good thing.

But I'm liking this band more and more.

A bunch of creeps in this band, apparently.

So you were, go on, Jackson.

So a situation similar to Eddie Van Halen as the tyrant

holding someone back is The Who, in which Pete Townsend

reigned in virtuoso John Entwistle on the bass.

And in the track, John Entwistle would play these straight quarter notes, but when live, I would direct anybody to listen to the live tracks off of the Who compilation, The Kids Are All Right.

And you hear these very simple parts just exploding and expanding into these giant fills

that I, you know, would sit in my bedroom and attempt to play over and over and over again.

But in the meantime, Jansen couldn't hold him back on stage.

Exactly, exactly.

And so,

what does Michael Anthony do on stage?

Well, just take a listen.

I've got a clip of him from playing Running with the Devil live from 1983.

Same song, live.

Why don't you spin it for us, Bailiff Jesse Thorne?

Well, that was different because he went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

So that was different.

Well, no,

to be fair, John, he did that, and then he went, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

But I mean,

I want to know what is the argument that Running with the Devil,

a Van Halen track generally accepted by most of us who like the band as one of the good ones, right?

The Running With the Devil would be better if the bass line was a bomb, boom,

boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

This would not be a better Running with the Devil.

I want to hear the Seinfeld mix.

It would be a very different running with the devil and we would not be talking about it right now you should have heard before they put his kid in for a while they were touring with victor wooten oh

it was spectacular everybody loved it

well how does he compare now to the current basis for van halen wolfgang van halen the son of eddie van halen Yeah, I would say that you can make a direct A-B comparison of somebody inserting some more color notes into that live setting to kind of liven it up a little bit.

From specifically, there is a Van Halen live album from 2013.

And as has been mentioned, like all tyrants, Eddie Van Halen has incorporated his adult children into the regime,

where he's brought in Wolfgang Van Halen.

And he skillfully replicates the same feel of Michael Anthony's original part, but he puts in these fun accent notes and also does this spectacular little fill at the end of the intro that is absent from the original studio recording.

I have a recording of this as well, if you would care to listen.

All right.

Hand that to the bailiff.

Bailiff, Jesse Thorne,

play this tape.

That does not improve the song.

That is not serving the song.

But John Darneil, he's playing more notes.

I know he is, and it's not adding anything of value to the song.

I would contend that in a live setting, it adds something of value to the song.

In a live setting, sure, you can argue that when a person plays more, the audience pops for that.

I get that.

Exactly.

But musically, if we're talking musically, I don't think you can make the case for that part.

You can make it, you can, as stagecraft, you can make the case for that.

But John Darnell, I am not an expert of any metal.

And I say, as a naif,

respectfully, as a dumb-dumb, I kind of enjoyed that one a little bit more than the first one.

Yeah, except

for that.

But I don't know, but I've never heard the song before.

That's the only part of the song I've ever heard.

And will ever hear it.

I might finish it now that I've heard Wolfgang's take on it.

But even if I, it is, of course, the maximum of this courtroom that people like what they like.

But even if I, Judge John Hodgman, happen to like Wolfgang Van Halen a little bit more, Jackson, with respect, I don't think it proves your point, right, that Michael Anthony couldn't do what Wolfgang was doing in there.

Just because Eddie Van Halen kept Michael Anthony down doesn't mean that he exercised the same tyranny with his own son.

Indeed, I would imagine he was probably a little bit more indulgent of Wolfgang once he kicked Michael Anthony to the curb to install his own son in the band Van Halen.

All right, I enjoyed that evidence, but I want to give Jesse Rob a chance to present his evidence now.

What am I going to listen to here, Jesse?

So, one of the biggest problems that I think you do run into trying to listen for Michael Anthony's bass parts is that Eddie Van Halen did have a lot of creative control over the production, so it's often turned down really low in the mix.

So, what I have done is- You just didn't want him around.

This is also very true.

That's why he was allowed to do backup vocals, but not allowed to record the bass parts for later tracks

in those later recordings.

So I took a couple of clips from some songs and I turned the bass EQ up a little bit higher.

So it's a few kind of 10-second clips.

It starts out with Where Have All the Good Times Gone?

Push Comes to Shove, Light Up the Sky, and Romeo Delight.

None of these are Van Halen songs that anybody has really ever heard of.

And that's kind of where Michael Anthony has a time to shine.

None of them are really hits.

Nobody really cares about these tracks.

And it's kind of where I think he had a chance to sneak a little bit more out.

All right, let's listen to this bass-boosted medley of the least successful Van Halen songs.

Featuring Michael Anthony on Deep Cuts, Bailiff Jesse Thorne, spinning the wheels.

Daddy didn't didn't need no little ties.

Mommy didn't need no little ties.

Tell the vision almost lost, my mind it said.

Open your eyes, be ready

on the high.

I'm taking whiskey to the body tonight, night and I'm looking for somebody to sweet us.

All right.

That was Deep Cuts from Michael Anthony.

John Darneil,

what's your assessment of Jesse Robb's evidence and art?

So it's good evidence.

Romeo's Delight, especially, is

one that I would actually, back in the day, when people were talking about Van Halen, they would cite that as one of the more musical things because among my peer group, the only question was, does Van Halen suck or not, right?

That was our discussion we would have.

And you'd look at them and go, well, you know, their attitude is sort of not, doesn't have any cultural currency in our peer group, but they can play and they have a very specific sound that they got.

And I think, yeah, he's a better bassist than he generally gets a chance to be.

But again, I don't think how much you flex your chops is a mark of your value to the band.

I think how much is what you're playing part of the band's sound is the bigger question.

There's one thing that I think I need to be illuminated on before I get into my tour bus

that is my traveling chambers and sit in my traveling hot tub and consider this.

And I'm going to leave this to you, Jesse.

Michael Anthony, he was in the biggest band of the 80s.

He was

edged out and not even allowed to play bass on their later albums

and now was replaced by Eddie Van Helen's son, and now he just makes hot sauce.

What happened to this guy?

What's the story?

What am I missing about Michael Anthony as a person that has allowed his career to take this

turn?

Well, so he is

forgetting he's also in Chickenfoot and is also a full-time member of the card.

All right, I've heard everything I need to in order to make

what's the book on Michael Anthony, you guys.

Is he okay?

Misunderstood or all too well understood as a human being.

Jesse.

How bad should I feel for him?

Oh, man.

I think he landed all right.

He's in another super group featuring a virtuoso guitar player and an extremely competent drummer and

another singer who can do whatever he wants.

And he's making his money.

He's got his hot sauce fortune as well.

But I think ultimately his legacy is still going to be those first five Van Halen albums and a couple of YouTube clips that prove that, you know, in the 80s, he was doing some really

interesting kind of

avant-garde bass soloing.

I think he was really pushing a lot of the boundaries of noise-generating bass solos that not a lot of people were seeing in the pop

heavy metal world.

I think he...

And this is all illuminated in your 1,000-word piece?

Well, that piece is actually speculative.

The 1,000-word piece was actually a large.

It's about how good a bassist Michael Anthony had been had the Union lost the Civil War.

This is actually speculative, is I think my favorite thing I'm going to hear today.

So the backstory is that I wrote a thousand-word piece about how Lars Ulrich is the defining member of Metallica.

And really, what that sparked was Jackson

commenting on that piece about how no one should listen to what I'm saying anyway because I feel that Michael Anthony is a good bass player.

Look, your case lost a great deal of its strength with that reveal about Lars Ulrich, I have to say.

Jackson, I'm being told by Jesse that there is no 1,000-word defense of Michael Anthony, his life and works.

Who's lying to me?

Why was I told that this thing existed?

There is no doubt in my mind that Jesse has 1,000 thousand words that he could type

this very moment and submit within the hour if prompted.

That is true.

But I don't believe that such an essay has actually been composed yet.

Certainly not on my podcast.

Jackson, why don't you just let Jesse have his opinion that you disagree with?

People like what they like.

Why do you care?

People do like what they like.

I merely wish that this argument be put to bed.

He can hold his nonsense opinion all he wants in his own head.

I just don't want to hear about it anymore.

I would rather move on and

discuss

how

what's the Eisley Brothers record you're constantly going on about?

That would be Between the Sheets.

How Between the Sheets is secretly the most influential record of all time, because that's a territory we haven't explored yet, and I think that it's worth going into.

Well, I don't need you guys to turn this into your podcast.

It's still my podcast.

Yes, of course.

I think John Darnell and I will be hosting the Between the Sheets podcast.

That's correct.

It's destiny.

Jesse, why does this matter to you?

In your friendship with Jackson, why do you want to convince him of this?

Originally, it didn't matter so much.

The big thing was that he was the original aggressor.

So I had proffered a Michael Anthony joke.

He had came back with another joke.

He then said Michael Anthony was not a good bass player.

I had said, hey, I think he's a good bass player.

And then he actually had come at me about three or four times, prompting me, saying, your opinion is dumb.

None of this matters.

And after that, a third time he came back at me, I decided that I had to go on the full offensive.

And it was more so just a revenge plot of forcing him into the light that,

you know, music sometimes isn't subjective.

So I heard everything I need to.

I'm going to go into my tour bus to consider my verdict.

I'll be back in a moment with my decision.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Jackson, how are you feeling about your chances today?

I think I feel okay.

I haven't been called a monster once for suggesting that Michael Anthony is anything short of a genius, so I think I'm doing okay.

Jesse, how about you?

How do you feel?

I feel pretty strongly here, Jesse.

My opinion was fully backed up by the guest expert.

I think beyond a shadow of a doubt, we have empirical evidence proving the bass playing ability of Michael Anthony.

Well, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a second.

Welcome back to Fireside Chat on KMAX.

With me in studio to take your calls is the dopest duo on the West Coast, Oliver Wong and Morgan Rhodes.

Go ahead, caller.

Hey, I'm looking for a music podcast that's insightful and thoughtful, but like also helps me discover artists and albums that I've never heard of.

Yeah, man, it sounds like you need to listen to Heat Rocks every week.

Myself and I'm Morgan Rhodes and my co-host here, Oliver Wong, talk to influential guests about a canonical album that has changed their lives.

Guests like Moby, Open Mike Eagle, talk about albums by Prince Joni Mitchell and so much more.

Yo, what's that show called again?

Heat Rocks: Deep Dives into Hot Records.

Every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom.

So there aren't a lot of geniuses in the world, and of those very few geniuses in the world, very, very, very few of them are bass players, right?

Because no offense, bass players, but a lot of the job is to go bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb.

And I think that in my own experience

in music, which in practice has largely been in orchestral music, even I know the double basses, and an orchestra are kind of like, yeah, we get it.

We know our job.

We just got to lay down the floor because you got to have a strong floor in order to,

I can't continue this metaphor, dance crazy

like all the soloists get to do.

That's the job.

And even among those bass players who really are artistically, incredibly capable, oftentimes it's not their job to show off and play all the notes.

And what's more,

Michael Anthony is,

I've heard a lot about him and will never know.

As Roland Bart said, the author is dead.

Michael Anthony still lives, I'm glad to say.

But who he is as a person and what happened to him in Van Halen and why they're not a band anymore remains a mystery to me.

And while I've heard some bad things about him, some good things about him, and I hear his hot sauce is great for two pie holes,

ultimately, the guy was in Van Halen.

My guess is, if I had to guess, that Michael Anthony is probably

more okay

with Jackson's assessment of him than Jesse Robb would believe.

He's probably okay with not being a superstar, super genius.

The guy played in a huge band, a definitive band, left a mark that sounded like this, don't, don't, don't, don't.

He's still killing it with chickenfoot and has a hot sauce empire.

I bet he's fine.

I bet he's fine.

I don't know that he needs Jesse Robbs

defense.

I also think that John Darnell is quite right that in the context of Van Halen,

Michael Anthony performed and contributed to genius, which is enough of a legacy for anyone on this earth.

And so

I rule in favor of Jackson.

Jesse, unfortunately, I could not rule in your favor because even though I do think contextually, as John Darnell explained, that Michael Anthony was something of a genius, the fact is you failed your case,

your judge, and yourself in two different ways.

You overplayed your hand by claiming a kind of super genius in order to get back at your friend, rather than just letting him have his smirky snark and moving on with your life and liking what you like.

And second of all, there was a promise made of a 1,000-word

defense of the super genius of Michael Anthony that I now learn does not even exist.

It's only a rough draft in your mind.

And so, as punishment to you, I assign you

to write not a 1,000-word,

but a 5,000-word essay on the super genius of Michael Anthony that we will publish on maximumfund.org if indeed you are able to do it.

He is nodding.

You know what, Jesse Robb?

3,333 words is sufficient, because that's one half of 6,666, and that's the neighbor of the beast.

Then you two will discuss it no further.

Those are the damages that I assign to you, Jesse.

And I look forward to reading

your defense

and

ascension of Michael Anthony, bass player, United States of America.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Jesse, how do you feel?

I feel like I was railroaded a little bit here.

I,

you know, personally, I had never promised that the piece had existed.

That was evidence that Jackson had put out that I had written that piece.

I had always, you know, personally said that it was a speculative piece.

So you feel railroaded.

Completely.

But you're willing to do what you have to do, right?

Well, I mean, I've got words 0 to 3,339 drafted.

I mean, the 1,000-word edit was already cut down, so I think I've got a head start.

Jackson, how do you feel?

I feel swell.

I have no more to act than that.

John Darnell, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Always a pleasure to talk about Van Halen.

Thanks so much for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast, Jesse and Jackson.

Another great case in the books are thanks to expert witness John Darnell, still sitting here with us.

Perhaps he'll lend us a hand in swift justice.

Before we get into that, we want to thank Adam Capybara, Mike Kennedy, and Chris Reaney for naming this week's episode Might As Well Judge.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, we put out the call for submissions there.

You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

Hashtag your judge John Hodgman tweets.

Hashtag JJ H O and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com to chat about this episode.

This week's episode recorded in Minnesota at Minnesota Public Radio by Corey Schreppel, our producer Jennifer Marmer.

Jesse, if I can just say one quick thanks.

I want to say thank you to Josh Sato of Seattle, Washington for the joke, Neighbor of the Beast.

He made that joke when we were in high school together, and I've been stealing it ever since.

Thank you, Josh.

Now, let's get to Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with quick judgment.

Adam M.

asks, is it okay to continue to sing the wrong lyrics to a song even when you've been corrected?

John Darnell, what's your opinion?

Yes.

Absolutely, yes.

It's fine to really sing whatever lyrics you want to any song.

It's fine.

My feeling is that if you don't know the words to the song, sing meow, meow, meow instead.

Well,

that's also a good solution.

I mean, in an ideal world, when a person gets the lyrics wrong, it will always be by thinking that somebody said meow.

All right.

Expert witness is correct.

I am wrong.

You can sing whatever you like.

Meow, meow, meow.

Cheryl W.

says, my friend and I can't agree if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are heroes or superheroes.

John Darnell.

Really hoping the question was going to be heroes or villains.

I liked that universe.

They keep eating our pizzas.

I think they're just heroes.

I think to be a superhero, you have to get a sort of totemic hero stat.

I think only the truly hardcore can state what the individual powers of the

TMNTs are.

They have no powers, do they?

I bet they do.

I mean, Michelangelo is a party dude, but I wouldn't characterize that as a...

Raphael is cool, but really.

That's the thing.

So they have personality traits in place of superpowers.

And that's not enough to qualify as a superhero.

You got to put on a funny suit, and you got to have a code name that isn't your own name.

That's right.

And by the way, it's right there in the title: Heroes on the Half Shell.

Yes, not superheroes on the half-shell.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Meow, meow, meow.

Judge John Hodgman rules.

That's it for this week's episode.

Our thanks again to John Darnell.

Buy his record, buy his book.

You'll enjoy both.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJ Ho.

That's maximumfund.org/slash JJ Ho, or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No case is too small.

We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

MaximumFund.org.

Comedy and culture.

Artist-owned.

Audience supported.