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Keeping Skor: Creativity, Curiosity, and the Things We Keep. A podcast about why people collect the things they love. Each episode begins with a collection - but the conversation quickly expands into something deeper: memory, imagination, and the choices we make about what matters. Through thoughtful conversations with collectors of all kinds, Keeping Skor explores the stories, passions, and meaning behind the objects people choose to keep.
Stephen Skorski: What's up, Jeff?
Jeff Wagner: Hey, how you doing, man?
Stephen Skorski: I'm great! How are you?
Jeff Wagner: I'm doing well, doing well. Do you go by Steven or Steve?
Stephen Skorski: Either way. Either way.
Jeff Wagner: No preference. Okay. Well, I'll just call you Skorsky, how about that?
Stephen Skorski: Her… actually, that's great, I love that. And we're recording, if you're good with that.
Jeff Wagner: Oh yeah, of course, yep.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, okay, cool. Alright, dude, I'm so excited.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, good, me too. Me too. It's a little slightly different topic than I usually get interviewed about, so…
Jeff Wagner: That's fun.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, well, we'll go all over the place, I suspect. I mean, I kind of had a… I don't really prepare for these, too much, very intentionally.
Stephen Skorski: Because I like it, you know, to be just more organic, you know, of a conversation than anything.
Stephen Skorski: But in this case, it was particularly difficult to even
Stephen Skorski: kind of wrap my head around what we might talk about.
Jeff Wagner: Sure.
Stephen Skorski: So… which has been really enjoyable. So I'm gonna just kind of set the scene a little bit about how much we kind of know each other, and that's pretty little, really. Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: We know each other from baseball, and… Right.
Stephen Skorski: this is, I don't know if you know this, but this is my memory, or my first memory of you.
Stephen Skorski: And that is,
Stephen Skorski: I think, like, I could be wrong about this, but I know I hadn't played in a while.
Stephen Skorski: And I'm not sure if you had not played in a while.
Stephen Skorski: Am I right in saying that you had not played baseball in a while before we got.
Jeff Wagner: By the time you showed up that year, which was last year, 2025, I had been in the group since June, and you, of course, take the summers off, and you come back, like, you know, early… late summer, early fall, I think. So…
Jeff Wagner: I had been playing and getting better, but I hadn't played baseball
Jeff Wagner: Before 2025? For probably 30 years.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, okay, yeah, that's what I was, yeah, kind of, kind of thinking. And, you know, sort of a lot of us were like that.
Stephen Skorski: But this, okay, so this is my memory, right? As you say, like, I came back from the summer, and you know, I'm out there, I'm playing in the infield.
Stephen Skorski: And you come up to bat.
Stephen Skorski: And, you know, I think, you know, I hadn't seen you, you know, I just hadn't seen anything before.
Stephen Skorski: And you have a pretty easy swing, you know, it's, you know, when you look at it, right, pretty smooth, pretty easy, and again, like, I'm like, okay, this is, you know, like the rest of us, you know, haven't done this in a while.
Stephen Skorski: you know, getting our bearings, and you know, you took some swings, and okay, you know… and I'm sitting there in the infield, and I'll be honest with you, I got a little bit kind of complacent. And dude, you hit a rocket at me.
Stephen Skorski: an absolute rocket. One bounce off my chest, and I was like, oh, man!
Jeff Wagner: Feels good is like, you know, I've stopped…
Jeff Wagner: I have this thing, because I'm 56, I'm almost 57, I'll be 57 later in May, and…
Jeff Wagner: I always want to… I've never hit a home run in my life. You know, when I was in Little League, I couldn't get it over the fence, nothing like that. And I didn't play into my junior high years or my high school years, so… just never had the opportunity to hit a home run, or maybe not good enough. And,
Jeff Wagner: for… you know, when I first started to bat, you weren't there, but my first few at-bats, the first few weeks I went, first few Sundays.
Jeff Wagner: I was hitting pretty good. Like, I was getting them out in the outfield, I'm like, wow, I'm better than I thought. I thought I'd be fucking… sorry, can I say the… you'll… you'll bleep?
Stephen Skorski: You can curse, that's alright.
Jeff Wagner: Okay. You know, I thought I'd be terrible, and, like, I… I was getting close to the fence, I was sometimes bouncing onto the fence, and I thought, well, you know, I can hit a home run. So I started to think home run. And then after a little while, I started to think, no, just think on-base percentage. Hit good hits, you know, make good hits. And so…
Jeff Wagner: I'm really happy that you say that, that you were scared of that, of… not… you didn't say scared, but it… it surprised you. You got complacent, and it surprised you.
Jeff Wagner: And I like that because, I feel a good bit of power off of my bat. And, you know, like, at my age, mid-50s, I'm like, I'll take it. You know what I mean? I really like the crack of the bat and the ball.
Jeff Wagner: And if I can just connect, I'm happy. So, I'm happy that that ball jumped up, and I'm glad it didn't hurt you, but, you know, it's, it's a dangerous game. The first… my first…
Jeff Wagner: Sunday, very first one, Patrick was up there pitching.
Jeff Wagner: And I hit him in the shin, you know, pretty hard. And I just thought, man, you know, we're all taking chances out here.
Jeff Wagner: Even at our amateur level. But, it's just, it's just a ton of fun, so…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, it's awesome, and I mean, the way I look at it, if I take one off the chest, that's on me, you know?
Jeff Wagner: Well, yeah, yeah. The field's not a professional field, it's… the bounces can be rough.
Stephen Skorski: Right, right. Yeah, but you know how that goes. You feel, that competitive side of me is like, yep, get that ball.
Jeff Wagner: For sure.
Stephen Skorski: So yeah, so… but anyway, that was funny to me, and ever since then, you know, I'm like, okay, Jeff's up, let me, let me make sure I focus in here a little bit.
Jeff Wagner: Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. I know you were pitching one time to me, and you gave me some great advice. I was probably having my worst day at the plate so far.
Jeff Wagner: I was… I think it was late last year, and I… for some reason, I thought, well, I'm just gonna choke up. But I was so close to the plate that you're like, wait a minute, man. And, you know, I love that kind of constructive criticism, because nobody in this… in our little sandlot team, is competitive in a dickish kind of jockey way. It's just more…
Jeff Wagner: you know, sharing information and having fun, and I really appreciated your bit of guidance, because I can tell, you know, I've seen you hit, and you're a monster, and I'm like, you know, I'll take advice from you any day, you know, because this guy's clearly really good, you know.
Stephen Skorski: Well, thanks, man, we can just end the podcast right there.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, thank you, we're done.
Jeff Wagner: And on a high note.
Stephen Skorski: No, thanks, I appreciate that. But yeah, it's super fun, can't wait to get out there this Sunday.
Jeff Wagner: Absolutely.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, so here's the thing. So, usually, you know, I like to start out with kind of one of, you know, a getting-to-know-you kind of question, especially when I really don't know the person, you know, outside, you know, very limited, you know, kind of contact. And so, I do want to get to one of those questions, but…
Stephen Skorski: Before we even get to that, before we even get to the topic, I was thinking about it, and you're an author, you've written 4 books.
Stephen Skorski: You're a collector.
Stephen Skorski: you're a podcaster, I'm sure you're a lot of other things that I… that I don't know about yet, but those are, you know, those are 3 pretty big things, right? And so…
Stephen Skorski: In my mind, I'm thinking, Jeff's really passionate.
Stephen Skorski: about music.
Stephen Skorski: And that's…
Jeff Wagner: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: just the opening question is just this word, passion. Like, when you hear it.
Stephen Skorski: what do you think about? How does it fit in your life? You know, is it… is it something… is this… is it something you think about? Is it… is it energy? Is it a philosophy? Like, what's…
Stephen Skorski: You know, again, without even getting into the subject itself, maybe, like, what is it that you get out of, kind of, these things that you do, or maybe what's driving you to do these things?
Jeff Wagner: I mean, those five letters, music, M-U-S-I-C. Like, I… it's, you know, ever since I can remember, and I know a lot of us, of course, have this awakening moment with music earlier in our lives.
Jeff Wagner: because it's such a human thing, right? We respond to it, and it's just this other language, and I, and it's another type of expression, and I just… I've just always been really passionate about it, and the thing was…
Jeff Wagner: you ask me, how much I think about it, or if I think about it a lot, like, I can't stop thinking about it. Like, I love… when I'm not listening to music, or not writing about it, or not talking about it, I'll think about it in my head, in so many various ways, so many myriad ways, you know, and…
Jeff Wagner: I just, I'm just fueled by it, and I never get sick of it. I mean, I certainly…
Jeff Wagner: when I have, like, a deep listening session, I can go about 4 hours, and I just have a blast. It's my favorite time of the week.
Jeff Wagner: And I do it several times a week. But you can, you know, your ears can get fatigued.
Jeff Wagner: You need a break, just with anything good, you know? But I just, I just really love it, and what I found was, as I, as I became more involved and became sort of, I guess, an extracurricular fan, or a superfan.
Jeff Wagner: I guess the main thrust for me is… I re…
Jeff Wagner: I want to evangelize. I don't… I'm not… I never try to be snobby about it. I don't think there's any rights or wrongs here.
Jeff Wagner: But I do like to evangelize in the sense of, like, turning people on. And I have, through all the many, many, many different things I've done, because I've mostly been employed as a superfan.
Jeff Wagner: most of my adult life, since I was 24, I guess.
Jeff Wagner: is I apparently have the ability to turn a lot of people on to a lot of different music over the years.
Jeff Wagner: I've gotten a lot of feedback, a shit ton of feedback, over the years about, you turn me on to this, you know, this is in my DNA because of you, you know, I've collected 40 different versions of this album because you turned me on to it 20 years ago in your writing.
Jeff Wagner: with Metal Maniacs, or whatever it was. And so, I just… of all the hats I've worn in the music industry, my favorite one is the one where I can turn people on. You know, I love to share, I love to, try to help people see what's great about a particular song or album or band.
Jeff Wagner: That I like, you know? And it doesn't always click, and, you know, we all have different opinions and tastes, but,
Jeff Wagner: if that sums it up, I'm just… the passion… yeah, it's an incredible passion. I don't like when people call what I do a hobby, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh, what's your hobby? Oh, you listen to music? No. No, that's far more than a hobby. It's water, blood, oxygen, you know, I need it as much as, all of that stuff, so…
Jeff Wagner: Yep.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, well, there… there's, like, 17 things there that we… we'll need to… we'll need to talk about.
Stephen Skorski: But before we do that, let's set the foundation a little bit.
Stephen Skorski: Meaning, let's get to know you.
Stephen Skorski: What…
Stephen Skorski: First, give me a typical day, right? What's a typical day in your life? What's it look like?
Stephen Skorski: You know, pick the day you want it, you know, it could be a weekend.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Stephen Skorski: We're all the same.
Jeff Wagner: Not really, no. They're not all the same. I've worked from home since 2001. I used to work in offices, like, for instance, a magazine,
Jeff Wagner: In New York City. You know, I was working on Park Avenue at a publisher. Before that, I worked in a record label in Pennsylvania. I mean, I've just been kind of all over, and… but I… I'm kind of an early adopter of the work-at-home thing, 2001, so…
Jeff Wagner: so I don't have, you know, depending on what job I'm doing, or what pursuit, or a project I have going on, no day is typical, and I'm definitely not going to belabor this, unless you would ask more about it, but, you know, my wife and I experienced a horrible
Jeff Wagner: Terrible disaster a year and a half ago with a house fire.
Jeff Wagner: And no day anymore is typical of what it used to be. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's…
Jeff Wagner: It's, you know, it's dealing with the contractor, it's dealing with watching our house get demolished, it's dealing with the new builder, and it's dealing with insurance. It's still, you know, it still reverberates after about a year and a half, so…
Jeff Wagner: Definitely we're in this weird, transitional phase, but right now, I mean, it's almost fair to say I'm semi-retired, because I've had to deal with a lot of this stuff
Jeff Wagner: related to the fire, and related to where we're gonna live, and related to, you know, all this. And I thankfully had the luxury to do that for a number of different reasons. So no, I don't have a typical day, but I will say that
Jeff Wagner: The usual, the normal day, or the average day, would be me waking up, having coffee with my wife, maybe doing a little gardening, because that's something I'm really into.
Jeff Wagner: I get right to work after that. I do whatever it is I do, whether it's selling,
Jeff Wagner: various items on Discogs.
Jeff Wagner: Because I like to buy when I can. It's rare, but right, when I can, I buy big collections and do that as… and now that's a hobby, you know, and that's fun. I'll do some of that. If I'm doing any writing project whatsoever, I block out 3-4 hours each day, each weekday to do that.
Jeff Wagner: I… I… I'm a cyclist, I like to get out of my road bike and do that. I…
Jeff Wagner: you know, will sometimes take long walks with my wife or by myself and listen to music that way. And then 2 or 3 nights, hopefully, I've got a long stretch of hours to listen to music, you know, do the hi-fi thing, whether it's headphones or open air.
Jeff Wagner: Bit of a… bit of an audiophile nerd. I've… I've had to build back my entire,
Jeff Wagner: Hi-Fi, after the fire, but thankfully we got some contents coverage, and I was able to buy some good gear.
Jeff Wagner: And just spend time around my wife and my cats, and I try to… I try to sock in some reading there, too, because I do a lot of reading, so… I'm never bored. Like, I'm really… you know, I have enough diverse interests that I just wonder about people that say, oh, I'm so bored. It's like, well, maybe you're boring, you know what I mean?
Jeff Wagner: You know, there's so much out there, and I like what I like a lot, and I'm one of these people, and you probably, as a collector yourself, and having a podcast about collecting, you know, these people know that
Jeff Wagner: when you get into something, you really get into it, you know? And I'm kind of like that. I mean, I'm kind of like all the way, you know? I want to know everything. Like, I watch English gardening shows, because I want to know how they do it, and what their philosophies are, and what… all the things you can learn.
Jeff Wagner: So, yeah, I think that's… that's a, that's a fair overview of my, of my day. And, you know.
Jeff Wagner: volleying back and forth emails and texts with people I've built friendships with over the years.
Jeff Wagner: Whether it's close friends or just kind of, people that consider themselves followers of what I do.
Jeff Wagner: I befriended a lot of those people, and that's a whole other thing, because I'm constantly sort of just communicating with people, and it's… I think every single one of my close friends, or even distant friends, is… is… it's because of music.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Stephen Skorski: So, okay,
Stephen Skorski: And you can say about this, you know, whatever you're comfortable with or not comfortable with, because you did mention the fire, right? And we, you know, we've talked a little bit about that, and I know, you know, I mean.
Stephen Skorski: I cannot imagine what…
Stephen Skorski: you know, what you and your wife went through. I mean, honestly, that… you know, the idea of sort of all of these things that have been with you for…
Stephen Skorski: you know, a long time, right? And things that are important to you, right? These are the things that didn't get thrown away. Sure.
Stephen Skorski: And then… You know, almost, you know, within hours, it's gone.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: So…
Stephen Skorski: you know, without… I mean, you can really get into whatever you want, but I guess we could focus just specifically on the objects that were lost.
Stephen Skorski: Sure. And so sometimes, you know, when we, you know, have these conversations with people, you know, there is kind of a question that's like, well, you know, if your collection went away tomorrow, or, you know, that kind of question, you know, but it's very, I don't know, it's very theoretical.
Stephen Skorski: hypothetical. But for you, it actually happened.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah. And I wonder…
Stephen Skorski: But, you know, how do you…
Stephen Skorski: You know, tell us what you want about that, meaning, you know, is there a way to process that? Did that part of it hurt more than you expected? Less than you expected? I mean, just help us understand what… how you process losing these objects that obviously mean a lot to you.
Jeff Wagner: Sure, thank you, yeah. If I was told before the fire that one day I would lose, 3,000 CDs and some of my vinyl collection, and I've, you know, there's a spoiler there.
Jeff Wagner: I was able to save a lot of my collection. We can talk about that in a second. Vinyl-wise, I mean. But every single book I owned, which was a couple thousand, probably. I had a ton.
Jeff Wagner: very dear family heirlooms. If I was told I was gonna lose all of that.
Jeff Wagner: That sort of stuff. Things you collect, you know, non-animal or non-human things. I think I would have been absolutely…
Jeff Wagner: just beside myself, with disbelief and thinking that I could never go on. But when you lose 4 deer, dear animals, we had… I'm a crazy cat person, I love cats so much. They have enhanced my life so much.
Jeff Wagner: I'm very close to them, I, you know, you have to take the time to get to know a cat, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: And they… they… they will, they will give you love. It's just, you know, I just have a special touch with them. My wife does too. We… we just love them. We lost 4 that night. Well, we lost 3, and then 30, 30 days later, one that…
Jeff Wagner: sustained a lot of burns, passed away, and I had had her for about 12 years.
Jeff Wagner: Losing that…
Jeff Wagner: And I… yes. Yes, the house. We had a beautiful, old, restored Victorian in Greensboro, that we lost. It was on the historic register. You know, it's a grand and wonderful, beautiful thing.
Jeff Wagner: But losing the animals made losing any part of my collection, any original art, any book, any of that stuff, it made it just trivial as hell.
Jeff Wagner: I'm not gonna say I wasn't affected and burned by it, no pun intended. It sucked, losing that stuff. But really, I didn't even think about that stuff right away. I kind of had it in the back of my mind.
Jeff Wagner: But what we had to deal with right away was this grief about the animals, was this grief about the house, was an entirely new life. Where are we gonna get underwear? Where are we gonna get socks on the first day? You know what I mean? Like, you know, we did have a lot of help from strangers and friends and family and all that, and Red Cross and all that, but…
Jeff Wagner: it really put things in perspective, so I can tell anybody out there who has a massive collection, if you lose it.
Jeff Wagner: It's painful, but if you lose it against something like a child or an animal, which our animal are children, for me.
Jeff Wagner: it's nothing, you know, and you deal with it. And you also realize, especially with music, I think books is another… you know, my book collection was a total loss. Absolute total loss.
Jeff Wagner: because of smoke and fire damage. If they weren't burned up, they were…
Jeff Wagner: drowned in water, drowned in soot. And…
Jeff Wagner: You know, that… those are harder to get back.
Jeff Wagner: Those are harder to access, especially since I'm not an e-book guy.
Jeff Wagner: Whereas music, it's in the air. Like, the day this happened, it happened early in the morning, at 2.30 in the morning, just… and very, very, very suddenly. It was a misfire of a heating pad on our front porch for animals.
Jeff Wagner: that night, some… I guess you'll call a fan of mine, or somebody who follows me, and, sent… got my address from… from me, and sent me a pair of headphones, Bluetooth headphones, so that with my phone, which I…
Jeff Wagner: came out of the house with me that night, I could listen to music. I wasn't ready to listen to music, but what I realized was that music's always there. You know, it doesn't have to be in its physical form for it to be there. Music is invisible. Music is curved air, and
Jeff Wagner: you know, once I was ready to listen to music, I started doing a lot more streaming on Tidal, on my phone, with some decent headphones that I really liked.
Jeff Wagner: Thanks to this wonderful benefactor friend.
Jeff Wagner: And it softened the blow a little bit. And in fact, I had a collection of two CDs, because they were the ones in the car, and, you know, the car didn't get destroyed, so I carried around these two CDs to our various rentals and Airbnbs until we got a little more permanent living space.
Jeff Wagner: But, you know, I took pictures. This is my… this is my collection right now. Got 2 CDs. And… but, you know, it, it, it, it…
Jeff Wagner: I guess to answer your question in the shorter way, it's perspective, you know?
Jeff Wagner: I was able to gain perspective and realize that music will always be there, even if that original artifact of some vinyl piece I had 40 years ago isn't, or that, you know, rare CD that I had
Jeff Wagner: from Norway from 20 years ago is not there.
Jeff Wagner: It's okay, you know. However, I've begun collecting again in earnest. You know, I want to get back what I had. I've gotten sent a lot of things by a lot of different people.
Jeff Wagner: So… Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Again, it's a… it's a… I mean, again, just such a tragic…
Stephen Skorski: You know, painful experience, that obviously, you know, again, like, you know, if you haven't gone through it, it's not really a…
Stephen Skorski: I don't think anyone could really wrap their head around it, so…
Jeff Wagner: For sure. I don't think I could have… Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I could have either. I wanted to… I didn't mean to interrupt you, but, like.
Jeff Wagner: When the LA fires happened. This was, 2 or 3 months after the big ones, from early 25.
Jeff Wagner: you know, I had a lot more empathy, because I was just fresh out of my own fire. And I think I had a lot of understanding about the terror and the loss and all of that, way better than I would have if I was just an outside observer before the fire, you know what I mean?
Stephen Skorski: Could you…
Jeff Wagner: you understand that it's painful and it's terrible and all that, but you really… there's something so horribly visceral about the experience. And, you know, you…
Jeff Wagner: you learn who you are, and you grow from this experience, so… so there is that aspect of this as well. So, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm. So…
Stephen Skorski: Then maybe, just again, to kind of just, you know, follow up on what you're saying, is there…
Stephen Skorski: you know, what's the larger life perspective, then? You know, we asked about the collection, you know, and I love your, you know, kind of statement about, well, it's perspective, and, you know, kind of realizing, like, yep, before, I thought that part, you know, kind of losing all these objects would…
Stephen Skorski: kind of, affect you in a way that ultimately… it still hurt, but it didn't devastate… that part didn't devastate you.
Stephen Skorski: did this whole experience give you some other perspective on just life in general? That, you know, that's really noticeable to you? Like, yeah, before I felt this way, and now I definitely feel this other way.
Jeff Wagner: Do you mean about physical objects?
Stephen Skorski: No, no, just life in general. Yes.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, I was just talking to a friend about that, but one thing I realized pretty early on was, it teaches you to not sweat the small stuff so much.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Jeff Wagner: For instance, we were moving into our first real rental, the one that was gonna be… we were gonna be in for at least 6 months, which was just… just heaven, compared to, you know, moving around every 2, 3, 4 days, up to that point, and I was taking something from the car, just a basket of stuff.
Jeff Wagner: And we had some little ceramic item in it that either somebody gave us or something we recovered, I don't know. But it fell on the ground and it broke. And the old me, the pre-fire me, would have been like, God, god damn it, you know, like, just, like, sweating that thing.
Jeff Wagner: And because it wasn't, like, some super valuable family heirloom thing, I just was like… I laughed at it. I'm like, I've lost a lot more than that, you know? I'm not gonna sweat the small stuff. Yes, I'll try to be careful. Yes, I'll try to conduct myself in a way that I'm just not, you know, breaking everything around, but, like.
Jeff Wagner: it just taught me, that was a very valuable lesson. And I will tell you, just to cap this out.
Jeff Wagner: the night of the fire, we escaped our area, we escaped our backyard… through our backyard over the fence, because we couldn't get through the driveway, because the fire truck had just pulled up by the time we got in the car.
Jeff Wagner: And so we had to jump this fence with our surviving dog and one surviving cat, the one cat that survived.
Jeff Wagner: somehow got out, you know. We have these animals in our arms, we're half-naked, because we were sleeping,
Jeff Wagner: And we go into the ambulance. And we lived in College Hill, and there's that College Hill Sundries Bar, kind of a College Hill institution, and they were just closing. It was about 3 AM, so whoever was working was just… they were hanging out.
Jeff Wagner: with a couple friends, and they were around the neighborhood. They saw all the commotion that was going on, the sirens, the noise, and we were in this ambulance, and…
Jeff Wagner: somebody, from there, like, 2 or 3 people, as I remember, threw some clothes into the ambulance for us, knowing that we would need something. It was a cold night, it was like, you know, late November.
Jeff Wagner: And… The thing that landed on top of the pile…
Jeff Wagner: was a sweatshirt from a sketch
Jeff Wagner: comedy show. Comedy's also another huge passion of mine, but a sketch comedy show that I absolutely worship called I Think You Should Leave.
Jeff Wagner: With Tim Robinson. And it was his dorky-ass face on the front.
Jeff Wagner: And the I Think You Should Leave logo, and then there was… I could see something on the sleeve that was, like, from one of the best skits of that show.
Jeff Wagner: And I looked at it, and, you know, the sirens are going, and I know some cats of ours are dying.
Jeff Wagner: And I know we're losing shit, and I just looked at that, and I wanted to laugh.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Jeff Wagner: And I looked… my wife locked eyes with me, and she looked at it, and she… because she knows how crazy I am for that show. She turned me on to it.
Jeff Wagner: We locked eyes, and we realized that we kind of both wanted to laugh. We've talked about it since. We didn't really laugh then, but we talked about it since. And, it was just this really valuable lesson or realization that humor
Jeff Wagner: is gonna be around, no matter if you want it there or not. You know, levity will be there for you, when you need it.
Jeff Wagner: And that was a moment of levity. It was a moment of, like, wow, I can't… because I had this also very selfish thought, like, I can't wait to wear that. That's ugly, and it's awesome. Like, I… because, you know, I just… you know, I'm a guy, you know, you've seen me at baseball, I'm always wearing band shirts. It's just… it's what I… I just… I wear the stuff I love on my sleeve, literally.
Jeff Wagner: And so, I just couldn't wait to acquire that. I was like, oh my god, that's awesome, you know? But, like, I shouldn't be thinking about that. You know, my cats are dying.
Jeff Wagner: I knew… I knew my cats were dying. I knew that, you know, we were losing objects, and I just felt like,
Jeff Wagner: I mean, it was… it was devastating. There aren't even words for it, but yet, again, this is what it taught me, was that there's always going to be this levity, or there's always going to be this moment to… to laugh, even in the worst of times. So, I wonder if people, like, in, say, a war zone or something, go through that, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: it seems like probably from what I've read and things I've… documentaries I've seen that perhaps it does, but…
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, that's, yeah, those are… so, does the perspective change on life? Oh my god, yes. And you hope you become a better person. You also accept that grief will be with you always.
Jeff Wagner: You don't need to push it away. You do need to deal with it, you do need to accept it, you do need to honor it, but it does change you, yeah, absolutely.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, well…
Stephen Skorski: Again, I really appreciate you sharing that. I mean, that's an experience that, most of us will never go through, but I think when you talk about, I don't know, you know, the… I don't know, the tragedy of life, you know, those moments where…
Stephen Skorski: you don't want to experience it. Nobody should ever have to experience it. You know, it's sort of like an emotional intensity that…
Stephen Skorski: you know, you just think, well, there's no way I could make it through that, you know, so to hear your perspective, you know, about that, you know, there was actually some… I don't know if… I don't know if good is the right word, but, you know, but some positive…
Stephen Skorski: kind of mental shifts, you know, came out of it, and to hear what those are. Yeah, again, I just really appreciate that. That's,
Stephen Skorski: I'm sure it's not an easy thing to talk about, so…
Jeff Wagner: It's not, but it's also, believe it or not, even after all this time and all this talk, I mean, it was, you know, after a week, I remember, like, the week after, I was like, I am so sick of talking about the fire, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Right.
Jeff Wagner: But after a while, you know, it dies down just a little bit, at least communication with other people about it. Like, I, you know, my wife and I live it still every day. But, it is therapeutic to talk about. It's not… it doesn't hurt me too much. There are aspects of it I don't like to talk about. My wife asked me something about it two nights ago. She was wondering about something,
Jeff Wagner: regarding when the event happened that night, and when I woke up to weird sounds. That's something I have a hard time talking about. But otherwise, no, it's actually pretty therapeutic, and it's nice to,
Jeff Wagner: To pass this on to other people who may, at some point, deal with something that is, seemingly insurmountable.
Jeff Wagner: And… hopefully I can just impress on that person that, hey.
Jeff Wagner: you will get through it. It's gonna be okay, I know that sounds trite, but, like, it's gonna be okay. We're gonna get through this. We.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah. No, man, that's awesome. Again, I appreciate hearing that. Well, let's, let's shift gears a little bit here.
Stephen Skorski: you know, we've heard, you know, kind of through some of these things that you're talking about, I think we're getting to know you a little bit, which is really fantastic. But I guess when you think of yourself, right, again, you have this podcast, Radical Research, correct?
Jeff Wagner: Yes.
Stephen Skorski: That's the name of the case. You have this Radical Research, podcast, again, you have these, these four books, you know, this collection of music and books and other things. So, you know, when you think of yourself…
Stephen Skorski: what's the label? You know, are there labels that kind of feel good? Is it a… are you a collector? Are you a fan? Are you a writer? A creator? An archivist? Yeah, I'm always very, very curious how people sort of view themselves
Stephen Skorski: In relation to this, you know, kind of,
Stephen Skorski: I think of them as archives, but, you know, of this thing that you're putting together. What are the labels that feel good for you?
Jeff Wagner: Well, the first thing that I thought of as a label was just one that my co-editor at that magazine in New York had called me once. He said, you're incorrigible, you know?
Jeff Wagner: And I took that as a compliment. I don't think he meant it that way, because he was just sort of like… like, I wanted to buy something. It was at J&R Music World down in Lower Manhattan. Nice. I wanted to buy something that… I wanted to buy something that he thought I could just get for free from some publicist, you know, because we were getting… I was getting free music all the time.
Jeff Wagner: And I was like, no, I want it right now, it's at… it was a new Porcupine Tree album. And… and he's like, dude, you can get that from so-and-so. I'm like, I don't care! I want to buy it, I want to support it. He's like, you're incorrigible.
Jeff Wagner: So… but I think that leads to the more serious answer to your question, which is passionate. You used that word again. I'm just very passionate. I really like… I don't know what else I could do in my life, quite honestly. I'm glad I went this route. I'm glad I followed my heart and my nose and landed where I did.
Jeff Wagner: Because this is really… I shouldn't say it's all I care about, I guess you've heard that I love animals, I love gardening, I love nature, I love, you know, books, blah blah blah. But really, at the end of the day, the thing I want the most is music around me.
Jeff Wagner: Around, around you, around everybody else. I think it's the most wonderful thing that man's ever invented, and it, it, you know…
Jeff Wagner: So I'm passionate, and I'm also an evangelist about it. Again, I'm not in people's face so much, because I have other outlets. I have books, I have podcasts, I have articles I've written for other people, or whatever it is, you know?
Jeff Wagner: So, I don't know, I think… I guess when I look at myself, I think of myself as a passionate
Jeff Wagner: Evangelist for music, somebody who wants to share, what's so beautiful about this stuff.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, okay, I love it. I love Evangelists. I actually, as I took a few notes as you were talking, and I… that was the one I put in all capital letters.
Stephen Skorski: So tell me, tell me about…
Stephen Skorski: music to you, what it means to you, why is it so special? I mean, let's face it, I think most people on the planet
Stephen Skorski: have some relationship to music, right? There's… it's very, very rare that you meet someone who's like, yeah, I don't like music, right?
Jeff Wagner: Right, right, right. Those are the people that end up in an Oliver Sacks book or something, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Exactly. You know, so okay, you know, we know there's a few outliers, but most people have some…
Stephen Skorski: you know, relationship to music, but you…
Stephen Skorski: have something that's fairly unique. I was gonna actually ask a question that was like, hey, you know, tell me, you know, if music wasn't in your life, you know, tell… and I'm like, that's a dumb question, because I think you've answered, like, there is no… you know, like, it just…
Jeff Wagner: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: music, right? These things seem so intertwined. So before we even ask about, like, you know, what music you're into, what you grew up listening, you know, all that stuff that we want to know, what, you know, what is it that… what is it that's so special about music?
Stephen Skorski: In your opinion, that makes it worth preaching this gospel to the masses?
Jeff Wagner: Well, honestly, and this could be another spoiler, especially for people who know me, but I've been wondering about what my fifth book is going to be about, and I've been toying for years and making many notes in my phone.
Jeff Wagner: About writing a book about just listening to music, and getting many, many different people in on
Jeff Wagner: the big question, because I read so many interviews, and I've done so many interviews as an interviewer, and, you know, some… less… less as an interviewee, but I certainly have been interviewed a lot.
Jeff Wagner: And we don't… we usually dance around it simply because it almost seems, silly, or maybe too obvious to ask.
Jeff Wagner: the question you just asked. What is it about music? But I'm fascinated by that question. I always have been.
Jeff Wagner: And I like to dig into that. So my answer to you, you know, it's multifold. You have a time limit here. I could go on for hours, but honestly, as I've gotten older and hopefully a little wiser, I feel like…
Jeff Wagner: you know, I'm very… I'm not misanthropic, but I also… I also see the truth and the ugliness in humanity, and I don't believe it's gonna get a whole lot better. I really just have a very pessimistic
Jeff Wagner: viewpoint about humanity. I think we… I think the Earth may be better off without us.
Jeff Wagner: But the things that make us great
Jeff Wagner: are the reasons you can justify us, you know what I mean? That's sort of my take on us. And…
Jeff Wagner: And, I think that music is the greatest of all the arts.
Jeff Wagner: So, it's the greatest thing that humanity has ever done that separates us from the other animals, you know? I think it's… it's that special, and it's that deep and meaningful of a language, and a communication device, and a way to feel…
Jeff Wagner: Aldous Huxley, one of my… one of the only quotes I really know by… by heart is one by Aldous Huxley that I love, and it's,
Jeff Wagner: After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Jeff Wagner: And I really resonate with that. That's exactly what I think about it. It takes me to places that I could get nowhere else.
Jeff Wagner: No drug, no amazing slice of pizza, none of the other great things, no great sex, none of the other great things in life will ever come close to getting me as deep as I can go when I'm in total surrender to music. And I really…
Jeff Wagner: try to get there every session that I listen. It doesn't always happen, and sometimes it's more fun. Sometimes if I'm taking a road trip to Raleigh, probably to see a show by a band that plays music, I'm listening to music, and I'm, you know, it's maybe a little more casual, and maybe you're not as deep into it, and you're just sort of, you know, just jamming and singing along. It's great.
Jeff Wagner: But really, honestly, like, that deep travel that it can offer at its best is what I'm after, and it's what I find just always so magical about it. I also find that it's amazing that I…
Jeff Wagner: as immersed as I have been in it, I've just not even become sick of it. In fact, the guy I do the podcast with, Hunter Ginn, he and I have talked several times about, isn't it amazing that, like, we're just getting more and more into music as we get older? You know, like, it doesn't… it just doesn't stop, the attraction and the, the curiosity, I guess.
Jeff Wagner: So… It's hard to answer that question briefly, but that's about the best I can do.
Stephen Skorski: No, I mean, I'm with ya. It's, I do think…
Stephen Skorski: I've had this conversation with musician… composer and performer friends of mine. I always like to know what they think about it, because again, they're sort of so intimately tied to music in a way that I'm not.
Stephen Skorski: And it's always interesting. It's always interesting, the questions that you get, because I… I mean, I guess the way I always think about it.
Stephen Skorski: Is music… You mean music is so unique?
Stephen Skorski: It doesn't do… I mean, it does many things that other things do.
Stephen Skorski: But it does all of them. You know, when you talk about, you know, the time traveling, the kind of the communication, the language, the getting deep within your side… inside of yourself, and getting…
Stephen Skorski: far outside of yourself. Like, you know, it does all… the fact that it can make someone dance at a distance, you know, like, you know, I always think about it, like, if some… if music didn't exist.
Stephen Skorski: and somebody described to you this thing, you would say, well, that's not possible. You're literally talking witchcraft, like, that you can't have something that does what you're saying.
Stephen Skorski: So, no, I… You're right.
Jeff Wagner: It's magic, and I'm not… I'm not a, I'm not a believer, I'm not religious, you know, I…
Jeff Wagner: I look at the world in a very scientific way, so magic is a word I would never use, except for music. I mean, it really is… I mean, I'll put that tag on it, it's magical. Yeah. Because it does, like you said, it holds all those properties, all those…
Jeff Wagner: not only, like, life-affirming properties, but ones that seem perhaps in opposition. And then there's the whole thing about, like.
Jeff Wagner: you know, there's music out there that I absolutely detest. I'm like, I don't… I don't understand how to like that, you know, but… but…
Jeff Wagner: you know, I get that…
Jeff Wagner: somebody else does. You know, and that's why, you know, I don't… I don't believe in…
Jeff Wagner: really slagging somebody for liking a certain kind of music. I can definitely offer, you know, hard critique on stuff I don't think's very good and why.
Jeff Wagner: But to slag anybody for liking any kind of music, I've always thought that was some of the lowest, behavior, because it's just, you know, you're responding to something that's, you know, somebody's in tune with.
Jeff Wagner: That's great. You know, it's funny when…
Jeff Wagner: I have this thing where my wife and I'll be driving along in town, and you'll see… you'll see somebody behind the wheel just fucking bopping and singing, and just, you know, you know they're just in thrall to that music, and I just… I always point that out to her every time, like, look at that person! I love that. I just love seeing that, you know, and it makes me happy, so… Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, that's great. Alright, so the way you described it, again, beautiful.
Stephen Skorski: So, maybe answer these two questions at once. The first one is, you know, what kind of music did you grow up around, and when was the first time you felt
Stephen Skorski: What you just described to us.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah. Okay. That's pretty easy.
Jeff Wagner: I didn't grow up in a family that listened to music a ton. You know, it wasn't… you know, I read about musicians or just other fans who grow up in this wild musical household.
Jeff Wagner: I really didn't. You know, it was around. I mean, music's everywhere, you know. My mom would watch the Michael Douglas show, and it had theme music, but, you know, my dad was into crap like the Four Tops, and stuff that I just couldn't, you know, relate to as a 4- or 5-year-old.
Jeff Wagner: So my first… you know, I, I, I, I, I, I was a…
Jeff Wagner: I was around it, and the first things that came my way that made me feel the way that I was describing earlier, that were really impactful, were two songs. Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jax.
Jeff Wagner: Somehow, you know, I had an old… one of those plastic Fisher-Price record players that actually played records, but it was just… it was junk. To my now 56-year-old hi-fi snob mind, but like, you know, at the time it worked, and I… and somehow I got ahold of this 7-inch record, you know? Who knows how you get that stuff, but…
Jeff Wagner: Seasons in the Sun was just this emotional thing, and it was, it was profound. It wasn't dorky. You know, it sort of struck something deeper in my 5-year-old heart, you know?
Jeff Wagner: And a similar song, I think, in some ways, that moved me so much, and almost moved me to tears, I remember, was Kermit the Frog's Green. Just because I like the message so much about, you know, doesn't matter what I am, I'm beautiful as I am, there's a little bit of that…
Jeff Wagner: It's one of the reasons Elephant Man is one of my favorite
Jeff Wagner: kind of stories or movies or things that's ever happened. It's just like…
Jeff Wagner: you know, this beauty in ugliness, or this beauty in just being who you are. And so, those two songs just kind of spoke to me and struck a chord.
Jeff Wagner: And, you know, it would be a year or two later that I discovered something that really turned me on. If you want to go there yet, I don't know.
Jeff Wagner: But it would be KISS. You know, I was one of these many, many, many people who…
Jeff Wagner: 70s kiss, and I was at the right age, and I was very interested in music, it was a total gateway. I mean, it just broke down the doors, because they seemed like worldbuilders, they seemed like something beyond human, they seemed like…
Jeff Wagner: And I didn't get any of the sexual innuendo, you know what I mean? I didn't know what plaster caster meant, I didn't know any of that, but it… but the songwriting…
Jeff Wagner: And the playing, and just every… everything about them.
Jeff Wagner: just spoke to me, you know? And I'll still defend 70s Kiss, I think… I will.
Stephen Skorski: I thought…
Jeff Wagner: I think that stuff's still great, I really do, and I followed them into the 80s and 90s, and I've seen them a ton live, and, you know, I have a lot of
Jeff Wagner: critique about them. You know, they've made some really lousy moves, they've made some really lousy music, but, like,
Jeff Wagner: I think… I think that their influence…
Jeff Wagner: is inarguable, no matter what you think about them. You know, it was like when Ace Braley died last year, it was amazing how many people came out and said, I started playing guitar because of this guy. People who, you know, people like Kim Thale from Soundgarden, or… I mean, it was… just… I'm not gonna start naming names, because it was just so vast and broad.
Jeff Wagner: You're like, damn, man, you know, those guys had an impact, and a very positive one at that.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: So anyway, that's kind of my intro to music in a nutshell. And I was always, you know, music class was my favorite class in school, and…
Jeff Wagner: Anything regarding music was great. I always, you know, I was seeking out magazines that KISS was in, like, whether it was Hip Raider and Cream, or, you know, the teeny bopper ones, like Tiger Beat. Yeah, it was just,
Jeff Wagner: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: I love it. Okay, so… so interesting, because a couple of things. The Kermit the Frog, song, I gotta be honest, I'm not sure that I know it.
Jeff Wagner: Okay, okay.
Stephen Skorski: But the Seasons in the Sun, same thing. I mean, as a little kid… I mean, even now, I mean, that is… I mean, I don't know, there's… you know, that song could definitely make me cry. I mean, like, you know, like…
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, it's good, it's good, man, it works, yeah, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: There's something about that song, like, you know, if, you know, if I was to kind of open that gate a little bit, 100%, so I so, so can relate to that. And it's so interesting, as little kids, how…
Stephen Skorski: how in touch you are with your emotions, and then when something, you know, really external to you kind of gets you in that way, it's amazing. You know, oh my god, like, as a kid, you go, you know…
Stephen Skorski: haven't experienced that. So that, that, of course, I love that story, but the thing about KISS… now, I just have to insert this. My… one of my very, very best friends, I mean, my oldest friend, this guy Jerry.
Stephen Skorski: We have had… I've known him since I was, like, 7, probably. We have had this lifelong battle
Stephen Skorski: About which band is better, Kiss or Motley Crue, and he is just a die-hard KISS fan.
Stephen Skorski: And it was probably 3 days ago, I was on the phone with him for a couple hours, and, you know, the way you're talking about KISS was just, you know, I had to hear a sermon on why, you know, Paul Stanley is, you know, the greatest songwriter of all time, and, you know…
Jeff Wagner: certainly a better vocalist than Vince Neil. I mean, you have.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, man, welcome to my world.
Stephen Skorski: One of the best nights we ever had was we went and saw them when they were on tour together.
Jeff Wagner: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, it was so good.
Stephen Skorski: And I've seen KISS a ton, because I'm with you. I love… I love Kiss, you know, the good, the, you know, the great, the good. The not-so-good, I can, you know, I don't need to collect all those albums, but I do appreciate Kiss.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, cool.
Stephen Skorski: level, but yeah, no, that's so funny. My friend Jerry will be very excited to hear your comments on that.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, yeah, I'm… and I'm still a fan, you know, like, again, I… you know, they collapsed hard and long over the last 20-plus years with the fake Ace and the fake Peter and all that.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Wagner: I could go on and on, but like, you know, the fact is that they… their main catalog remains just so interesting to me, and I'm not talking about them as human beings, I think… I think a couple of those guys are kind of shitty, but
Jeff Wagner: look, you know, I think I've… you know, I've learned, especially being really into metal, like, I've learned to separate the art from the artist. I really had to. And so, you know, I just take the parts of KISS that give me joy, and I leave the rest.
Stephen Skorski: Right, right. Well, one of my, this last thing I'll say about Kiss is, one of my great regrets is, when I was in high school, Peter Criss was no longer in the band.
Stephen Skorski: he was living out, where I lived in North Jersey. Sadly, I mean, Ace was living in the same area when he passed away.
Jeff Wagner: Okay.
Stephen Skorski: And, you know, people were like, oh, yeah, you know, people had known that he had kind of moved into the area, you know, and it was sort of like, you know, ace sightings here and there every once in a while. But anyway, so in high school, Peter Criss,
Stephen Skorski: I think this is true. I never actually… I couldn't go into bars at the time, but there was a place called the Cherrycroft Inn, and he would play there. But he would also give guitar lessons, and…
Stephen Skorski: you know, I was like, what? You could, you can, you know, and I never did it, you know, I never, I never sort of, I don't know, had the, the wherewithal, or the money, or whatever motivation to just be like, oh my god, I think I can go take, you know, guitar lessons from Peter Chris.
Jeff Wagner: Tar? Was he…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I know, weird, even though he's a drummer. That's what I… that's what people told me. They were like.
Jeff Wagner: Wow, never, never heard that. That's, I thought I knew everything about KISS. I guess there's a new one.
Stephen Skorski: I mean, it could be, you know, I could have gotten that information wrong in, you know, my junior year in high school self, but that was the information I had gotten.
Jeff Wagner: Cool, that's cool.
Stephen Skorski: And I was always a little bummed that I didn't sort of follow up on that.
Jeff Wagner: Or even just run into them, that's kinda cool, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, so, okay, so you have these, you know, these things, and you're feeling it, and you're, you know, you knew this thing is different. So when did it go from…
Stephen Skorski: you know, something I like, I love, this thing moves me, into something you pursued. I mean, at this point, you are… you are chasing it, you know? I mean, when… you know, when did this happen? You know, when did all…
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Write about it, you know, live it, that sort of thing.
Jeff Wagner: write about live at… well, you know, by that time, I had, you know, let's say the early teens, I had been immersed in, like, fanzines and things like Karang from across, you know, the ocean in the UK were coming into, you know, record stores and things.
Jeff Wagner: And getting, you know, getting really into metal, getting really into hard rock through FM radio, and then… and then just, you know, the early 80s kind of metal explosion, and onward. And then, you know, I started reading fanzines, and I started,
Jeff Wagner: I would just, when I was, I don't know, 14, just compile playlists of my own for no… like, just on paper, like, what I was listening to and ranking things, and, like, I really had this sense of, like… because I'm… I'm not super OCD or super anal, but I… but I have elements of that, for sure.
Jeff Wagner: where I like to rank, I like lists, I like to categorize a little bit. I certainly alphabet… I'm a big alphabetizer, you know, my previous partner always made fun of me because I alphabetized our spices.
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Jeff Wagner: So yeah, maybe I do have a problem. But I would make these little lists, and then I started, like, just writing record reviews just because I needed to get it out on paper. I was almost too embarrassed to share it with friends, you know?
Stephen Skorski: So, you're 14 years old…
Jeff Wagner: I'm writing on… yeah, and I'm writing on loose-leaf paper, about… what was it? Probably an early Voivaud record, and then I remember when I was about 16 or 17, I, you know, early, there's a German metal band called Halloween.
Jeff Wagner: And I was into their first record, and I wrote a review, just on paper, because I just wanted to express or feel how it felt to express it in that form, right?
Jeff Wagner: And so, that was the beginning, and then I think… My first real…
Jeff Wagner: Attempt or, or, or, move into the superfan world.
Jeff Wagner: For real, would have been…
Jeff Wagner: Let me think… In 1988, I'm in college at University of Iowa. It's my… I'm just finishing my first year, my freshman year.
Jeff Wagner: And I did two things. One… sorry, no, the first thing… the first thing was, I… I bought a fanzine, from Canada that I really liked, and I wrote the editor and said, if you want anybody to write reviews, I'd love to… I'd love to give it a shot. And I just… I had… I was so naive, I had no idea how things worked, you know, I had no connections.
Jeff Wagner: And he wrote to me and said, great, and then I, you know, I got assigned a couple things. I got assigned a show review, like the second Milwaukee Metal Fest in July 88, and Metallica's Injustice for All he let me ride on, and some underground things, some more, you know, kind of, like, death and thrash metal kind of stuff, and…
Jeff Wagner: So I, so I got that assignment, then I got another assignment with a Minneapolis magazine called Sheet Metal, which was pretty legit. Again, just, hey, hey, I write for Antiposer, can I write for sheet metal? And sure, you know. And so…
Jeff Wagner: So, you know, then they weren't… they were not paid gigs, but you got, every now and then, you got a free album.
Jeff Wagner: I remember the first couple, you know, free records I got, it was just great to just, oh my god, I didn't have to pay for these, and I get to write about them, and see my name in print, you know, it was a little bit of an ego boost. Yeah, yeah. Never really did it for ego, but, you know, let's not lie, it's a fun little boost to see your name in print the first few times.
Jeff Wagner: And then…
Jeff Wagner: The next year, I was still at University of Iowa, sophomore year, I got an offer near the end of that year to, take over
Jeff Wagner: I knew, you know, a friend of a friend basically said, oh, the guy that has the metal show, or the girl, I think, that had the metal show on Saturday nights at KRUI, which, yeah, University of Iowa's, you know, a pretty big school, and it's got a decent range with its college radio station.
Jeff Wagner: I used to listen to the metal show on Saturday nights. They said, there's an opening, she's leaving. Like, you gotta do it. And I'm like, because they knew me, and, you know, I was wearing it on my sleeve.
Jeff Wagner: And I went for it, and I got it. And that was a blast, man. I had a 3-hour show from 9 to 12 on Saturday night, just a great slot, and I got to learn how to play records. It was even before they were doing a whole lot of CD. I would sometimes play tapes, but mostly records, and two turntables, and
Jeff Wagner: you know, I'd have to play the carts, they call them carts, which were, like, ads, or PSAs, or whatever.
Jeff Wagner: And I did that, and that was… that went on for a couple years, even after I dropped out of college to be in a band. I kept doing it because it was a popular show.
Jeff Wagner: And that was it. You know, at that point, I think I started feeling like, well, I quit college to be in a band, I'm doing this thing at KRUI, I'm writing for some fanzines. I really didn't think about what was coming the next day or the next week, I just kind of just kept doing it.
Jeff Wagner: And… one thing leads to another, and…
Jeff Wagner: Five years later, I'm… or three or four or five years later, I'm at, in Pennsylvania working for Relapse Records. Two years later, I'm co-editor at Metal Maniacs, you know, newsstand publication.
Jeff Wagner: So it just, you know, one thing led to another.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Stephen Skorski: Dude, I love that. I love that, because now it gives me a timeline to work with.
Stephen Skorski: So, maybe not so music-related, but more…
Stephen Skorski: kind of life choice related. You found something really early.
Stephen Skorski: that you loved. You kind of felt compelled to express yourself.
Stephen Skorski: Even when there was no audience for it. But then, obviously, you did kind of let people know, like, this is a… this is a passion of mine, this is something I'm really interested in.
Stephen Skorski: And it's turned into this lifelong,
Stephen Skorski: Immersion into a world that you really love.
Stephen Skorski: you know, someone's listening to this, and they're 15 years old, or they're 35 years old, or I don't know, whatever, you know, they're 80, I don't know, but they're kind of not quite sure what to do or where to go, like, is there something in there that…
Stephen Skorski: you look back and key in on and go, yeah, that… I did this right.
Jeff Wagner: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I didn't mean to interrupt you if they were…
Stephen Skorski: No, no, go ahead, please, tell me, I want to know what you think about that.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, I… well, I mean, it's interesting, because I've gotten asked, hey, you know, how'd you get to do what you wanted… what you… what you do? I want to do it. But I would never tell somebody to quit college, you know what I mean? Like, that disappointed my mother, you know, it just… it,
Jeff Wagner: I knew it was okay… I knew it was right for me at the time, but, I would never tell somebody that.
Jeff Wagner: And I guess that leads me to the other thing, which is that even though I did follow my heart, and I could tell anybody out there, follow your heart, follow your dreams, you know, all that cliche stuff, but, like, it, you know…
Jeff Wagner: I'm the living embodiment that I've made my way in life by doing that.
Jeff Wagner: It's… it's a little reckless to give anybody else that advice, only because I really, truly believe that a lot of this is luck. It's just a matter of
Jeff Wagner: who you met and who you knew at the time. You know, because I think about those… my friends, my couple girlfriends, they weren't girlfriend girlfriends, because I wasn't swinging like that, you know, I had…
Jeff Wagner: monogamous relationship. But I had these two girls I was friends with, and they were the ones that came up to me and said, hey, that DJ at Carrie Y is leaving, you gotta take the job, you know?
Jeff Wagner: Like, if they had not…
Jeff Wagner: had, you know, just thought of me, or if I… they hadn't approached me at work when they did that, when I remember it clear as day.
Jeff Wagner: well, maybe I wouldn't have gotten that. And then maybe the fire would have not burned as brightly in me if I had not gotten that, or not gone that way, you know? Same thing with, who… what fanzine I ended up writing to, which editor, like, you know, I decided to write and offer my services, like.
Jeff Wagner: they, you know, if I had written somebody else, they may have just ignored it. You know what I mean? Who's this… who's this hayseed from Iowa writing me? You know, I don't know.
Jeff Wagner: So a lot of it is luck. A lot of it's, like, who you meet, who you know, who's sort of, like…
Jeff Wagner: Because we don't… none of us gets anywhere just by ourselves. There's always somebody that's helped us somewhere along the way. And so…
Jeff Wagner: yeah, I can give that advice of follow your heart. That's been very important in my story, but like, you know.
Jeff Wagner: It's also been… I've been very lucky to be certain places at the right time. Same thing with the Metal Maniacs gig, the best job I'll ever have.
Jeff Wagner: the magazine gig, like…
Jeff Wagner: I was going out with a girl, we were long distance at the time, she was in Arizona, I was in Pennsylvania, but she heard about this opening, and she said, look, they offered me the gig, or an interview, but I just got to Arizona for her job, she was working for a record label out there.
Jeff Wagner: She said, but you should do it. I'm like, yeah, I should. And that's a magazine I read when I was a kid in Iowa, you know, or younger.
Jeff Wagner: I should do it. I went for it, and I got it. You know, but again, I, you know, like, all the passion and all the heart in the world.
Jeff Wagner: you know, it led me there in one way, but at the same time, had I not known her, or if she had decided to take the gig instead of me, could be very different. You know, I may not have ever written the books I've written, so…
Jeff Wagner: it's a… it really is a lot of luck. I really do think that it's a lot of, like… I don't know about fate, what you want to call it, but there's just a chain of events that's just…
Jeff Wagner: Probably just random universal stuff that happens to somebody lucky like me.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. Yeah, well, that's… okay, that's an interesting response.
Stephen Skorski: I mean, I… I 100% agree with the part about… like, when I think about anything that I've accomplished.
Stephen Skorski: I mean, I literally take no credit for it. Zero.
Stephen Skorski: No, I mean, I just don't, right? I mean, without… you know, and I know, maybe that's…
Jeff Wagner: Let's go that far, because you've had the brains, you've had the wherewithal to do.
Stephen Skorski: Sure.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, isn't it.
Stephen Skorski: you know what? I had, you know, great people around me, and a fantastic family, and, you know, opportunities, and, you know, and I guess what I'm getting at is I'm fully aware that
Stephen Skorski: you know, the things that I've been able to do, especially the things that I'm most proud of, like, you know, that comes because of, again, you know, family, you know, being amazing, you know, supporting you, you know, making you feel good, you know.
Stephen Skorski: pushing you when you need to be pushed, like, all those things, you know, and then my friends, and again, you know, so… so I really do…
Stephen Skorski: I'm on board with that. But then the part where you said.
Stephen Skorski: you know, you were just lucky. That's the part where…
Stephen Skorski: I'd maybe push back a little bit, because…
Stephen Skorski: While each individual kind of, you know, scenario you described, you're right, it could have gone a different way.
Stephen Skorski: But I think the fact that you were expressing yourself publicly, which I think is a difficult thing to do, I think it, you know, I think it puts people in a very vulnerable
Stephen Skorski: position, especially today. I mean, I'm kind of highlighting this, because I think there's a lot of people who would like to follow their dream, their heart, you know, their passion.
Stephen Skorski: But they're really afraid. They're afraid someone's gonna be like, oh, that's so cringe, or that's, you know, you know, they're gonna get called out for not being cool, or, you know, whatever. And I always get really sad about that, because I feel like…
Stephen Skorski: When I hear your story, what I hear is someone who was, like, really passionate, but also someone who was not afraid to communicate to the world
Stephen Skorski: this is the thing I'm into, and that seems like it drew people to you and helped to create those opportunities where, you know, I guess luck kinda was on your side. I wonder, when I say all that, am I…
Stephen Skorski: Does that… am I on the right page?
Jeff Wagner: Oh, that absolutely resonates. Yeah, that resonates with me. I mean, I think about, you know, people in general who are lucky, they've pulled something toward them themselves, do you know what I mean?
Stephen Skorski: There's some…
Jeff Wagner: thing that they've pulled toward themselves because they're either good, or they work really hard. I certainly worked hard in terms of just putting my nose to the grindstone, and you know, I put out my own fanzine from 92 to 96, right around the, I guess, the years after I quit the band, and…
Jeff Wagner: left Iowa City, I put out a fanzine, and you know, I had to learn about self-publishing, and…
Jeff Wagner: I did that with no monetary reward. In fact, I used any profit I made from the meager jobs I had to fund that. And again.
Jeff Wagner: that maybe I got lucky because I was putting myself out there. You know, that's really putting yourself out there, you know, send flyers in the mail, and…
Jeff Wagner: The old school sort of, like, you know, underground communication, you know, trading tapes and trading… trading zines and stuff, you know, and…
Jeff Wagner: like in 90… 93, I was very ambitious, and I went out to this convention in Burbank, California, called the Foundations Forum. And this was a big industry thing for hard rock and heavy metal.
Jeff Wagner: And I knew that some fanzine guys would go, people that had enough disposable income to afford a plane ticket to Burbank and go. Well, I could barely afford it, but I did it anyway. And again, I met, you know, Matt from Relapse, who offered me a job about 3 months later. Well, there you go. You know, it's like, so there's luck.
Jeff Wagner: because I met Matt that weekend, and I… we got high together, and we talked music together, you know, and
Jeff Wagner: Had I not done that.
Jeff Wagner: You know, so I think… so I'll meet you halfway. I'll say that it's, like, very much a combination of ambition and luck.
Jeff Wagner: Again, there's always luck, right?
Jeff Wagner: But sure, sure, I'll accept that my ambition, you know, is part of the reason that I've been able to do the things I've done.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. No, that's great, I think what's nice about talking to people about the things they love.
Stephen Skorski: is this. It's like, it's like, again, like, moments like that, you know, hearing… hearing how somebody got to do what they loved to do,
Stephen Skorski: The path they took, the chances they, you know, were willing to take,
Stephen Skorski: I don't know, the way they put themselves out there, I don't know, I find… I just find that very valuable.
Stephen Skorski: Because there's a lot of people who…
Stephen Skorski: I think want to do that, you know? And maybe they need to hear somebody else talk about it, give them a little bit more motivation to, you know, kind of just move them off the mark a little bit. I think, you know what I mean? Like, I don't think anyone's gonna listen… I should say anyone. It wouldn't be my… I wouldn't anticipate
Stephen Skorski: That people are gonna, you know, listen to this,
Stephen Skorski: and we're gonna change their musical tastes drastically. Maybe, maybe that'll happen, and if it does, that's amazing. But on the other hand, when people get to ex… you know, see the world through somebody else's eyes.
Stephen Skorski: I think that's the things that can really motivate somebody to do something very special in their own life that's not at all what we're talking about, you know? So I kind of really.
Jeff Wagner: Sure, yeah, no, sure. I mean, right, I remember the first time I encountered what was called a fanzine. Like, I didn't know that kids in their bedroom could do that until I found out that they could, and they were doing it. And, like, I was reading one, and I thought.
Jeff Wagner: well, this is cool, you know? I could probably do this, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it, it is, yeah, that's a really good point.
Stephen Skorski: That's awesome. Okay, so let's, okay, so let's get into the music. So I've loved, I've loved this first hour of, you know, Ken, just getting to know you a little bit, you know, from, I think, multiple different angles and perspectives.
Stephen Skorski: And now let's get into the music. Now, my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is… and I'm not sure if I'm even using the right… I want to use the right term that you're good with, but I would say the music that you often talk about about on your podcast is kind of extreme.
Stephen Skorski: Is that… I mean, is that a right… is that the right word to…
Jeff Wagner: Sure.
Jeff Wagner: Sure, I… yeah, I'm into all kinds of metal. I like all… I like metal in its various permutations, but…
Jeff Wagner: I lean a few different ways. Certainly, there's plenty of melodic stuff I love.
Jeff Wagner: But I also really have an affinity for a lot of the stuff that people would call extreme. It's not a word I tend to use, only because it just seems so general, but I know what you're saying, and yes, absolutely.
Jeff Wagner: We do. We do talk about a lot of extreme stuff on radical research,
Jeff Wagner: Then again, you know, King Crimson is one of our favorite bands, and they were, I think, considered extreme in their time, in the progressive rock world, doing things that were abrasive and just unusual and strange and weird. But yeah, definitely, yeah, we can talk extreme, sure.
Stephen Skorski: Cool. Well, maybe you can do this for me. Connect the dots, right? So what I mean by that is, when I was younger, you know, I remember being, I don't know.
Stephen Skorski: I was… I was in… certainly in grade school, and I saw…
Stephen Skorski: Rock You Like a Hurricane, the video, by the Scorpions, and I was like, oh my god, this is amazing, you know. So, I remember that being a little bit of a gateway, you know, so before that, I, you know, watching some videos, and maybe it's like.
Stephen Skorski: you know, little more, like, synth-poppy, kinda, you know, top 40, and then, you know, you see something like The Scorpions, and you go, oh my god, right? And so, Scorpions, then, you know, Motley Crue, then, you know, I hear Metallica, and okay. But at some point.
Stephen Skorski: that's kind of about as heavy as I got. You know, it was sort of Metallica, a little bit of Slayer, you know, Anthrax, but I, you know, even that was kind of really on the, on the edge for me. So when I say connect the dots, that's what I mean, like.
Jeff Wagner: Sure, sure. Give me the connector.
Stephen Skorski: Dots, and then hold… and then…
Stephen Skorski: Then, connect those, like, explain to me how those dots get connected when you get into that really heavy music. Like, what drew you
Stephen Skorski: to that. Sure. Sure, sure.
Jeff Wagner: I think that…
Jeff Wagner: and I wouldn't have been able to articulate this at the time, but when I was listening to KISS, a lot of the stuff I liked by KISS was the heavier, darker stuff. Parasite, Watchin' You, 100 Thousand Years, God of Thunder, Almost Human. You know, that element of them
Jeff Wagner: just spoke to me in a way that some of their other stuff didn't. And I'm not… and I love the melodic, beautiful.
Jeff Wagner: Paul-led, sort of, kiss, too. But there is this…
Jeff Wagner: this deeper dive into, like, darkness and extremity with that. So then that leads to, I think, the first thing that would have been attractive to me outside of KISS that had some of those elements was Judas Priest.
Jeff Wagner: you know, like, Screaming for Vengeance album, and, some of their 70s stuff, like Hellbent for Leather Era, like…
Jeff Wagner: some of that, and plus, you know, with KISS, and then Priest, I started to really get into playing, and, like, listening to, if not virtuosity, then certainly, like, mastering your instrument, and just, just having character.
Jeff Wagner: So, you know, Priest, and then Iron Maiden was the next logical step, and then it wasn't long before Metallica, and I got into Metallica with Kill Em All. Like, that was… I was already on the cusp of, like, this new band is being talked about a lot, I want to check it out.
Jeff Wagner: And the first time I ever heard Kill Em All, I really kind of had to acclimate. I'm not gonna say I didn't like it, but the palm muting sort of stuff, you know, with the right hand, it was abrasive, and it was just something to get used to. But I remember after maybe the
Jeff Wagner: third listen, I acclimated, and it just hit so hard. And then you said a little bit of Slayer, I went a lot of Slayer. Like, I was…
Jeff Wagner: Again, it was the next… it felt like the next logical step with Metallica, was Slayer. And for me, all these bands, and then the ones that came after, Bathery, Voivod, the more extreme stuff of the time, of, you know, thrash metal, what was called thrash metal or death metal of the day.
Jeff Wagner: Even the band Death, you know, their first album came out in 87, like, that was also attractive to me because
Jeff Wagner: It did the world-building exercise that I loved with KISS so much. It started to push boundaries the way Metallica were, in terms of speed and technique.
Jeff Wagner: It… and it was creative. Like, I felt all these bands were so different from one another, you know? That there was this abounding creativity in metal in the 80s, and I was definitely driven toward a lot of the underground or more extreme stuff. Now, I loved Queensreich, I still do.
Jeff Wagner: I love a lot of the melodic stuff. Fate's Warning. I wrote a book about Fate's Warning. Like, I'm really into that stuff as well. But there was really something so special about
Jeff Wagner: This, exploding underground scene, and…
Jeff Wagner: I don't know if I've answered your question about connecting the dots so much, but I definitely feel like each, you know, each evolution in metal at that time was just these bands pushing it further and further, and just…
Jeff Wagner: you know, how far are we gonna go until we go off the cliff? And it was exciting, and it was international, you know, there's bands from Sweden and England, and Brazil and, like, Japan, and it just, you know…
Jeff Wagner: Of course, the US, Canada, it just… it… it just…
Jeff Wagner: it was exciting, you know, and I'm really glad I grew up in the 80s, and I got to see, you know, I got to see Metallica at the height of their…
Jeff Wagner: their first period with Cliff Burton. I got to see Slayer on the Reign of Blood tour. I got to see, you know, all these bands, kind of at the height, and be in the record stores when the new records were coming out.
Jeff Wagner: So yeah, that's… and that's, you know, and once the 90s hit and death metal was a huge thing, I was interested in that.
Jeff Wagner: Things got avant-garde in the 90s, especially in Norway, and I went with that.
Jeff Wagner: There's just a lot of constant evolution in metal that kept me… kept me interested. At the same time, you know, by the mid… my mid-20s, I'm… I'm rediscovering my Beatles roots, because when I started taking guitar lessons as a KISS fan.
Jeff Wagner: Beatles was a thing that we were taught.
Jeff Wagner: fucking love the Beatles. I mean, you know, they're not overrated. I want to punch people in the face who say they're overrated, so…
Stephen Skorski: Oh, that's a ridiculous statement.
Jeff Wagner: You hate that.
Stephen Skorski: Like, you hear them.
Jeff Wagner: People say this. You hear
Jeff Wagner: And, you know, love Radiohead, one of my top 10 bands, Radiohead. So it's like, you know, I have expanded my horizons. I love progressive rock so much. I'm a complete nerd for a lot of it, especially the 70s era.
Jeff Wagner: But yeah, I, you know, that's… that's for me, that's sort of the latter step in terms of, getting into metal deeply, and… and following…
Jeff Wagner: All the sort of extreme permutations of it.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, that, I mean, that certainly, it helps… again, the connect-the-dot thing is perfect, right? Again, you know, that, you know, okay, started off with KISS, you know, or actually, if we go back to, you know, the Seasons in the Sun song, you know, like, you know…
Jeff Wagner: I'm getting connected.
Stephen Skorski: But there is a moment
Stephen Skorski: And this is, I guess, what you did talk about to a degree, but I'd love to hear more, or maybe there is no more to it, but…
Stephen Skorski: Was it just kind of one step up the ladder, you know, getting into this sort of darker, heavier music, or…
Stephen Skorski: I mean, I guess that has to be a part of it, but it feels to me like…
Stephen Skorski: let's face it, especially in the 80s, late 80s, you know, being a Metallica fan was pretty accepted, you know? Liking Def Leppard, you know, getting into Queen's Reich, like, you know, there wasn't anyone who was gonna look at you kind of sideways, like, wait, what? You know.
Jeff Wagner: Right, right.
Stephen Skorski: you… but you start to talk about, you know, Dark Throne, and you know, kind of these more… these… I mean, to most people, very obscure…
Stephen Skorski: bands. And then when you hear, kind of.
Stephen Skorski: you know, you hear the sound, most people, right, are gonna have a certain reaction to it, and so I wonder…
Stephen Skorski: you know, is there anything about the… I don't, you know, I don't know that outsiders…
Stephen Skorski: Is the right word, but there's…
Stephen Skorski: that is not mainstream at all, you know? Is there something about that that's attractive to you? Or really, no, that just never played into it. It just always was kind of one step up the ladder, and I guess all of the things that surround the music.
Stephen Skorski: are irrelevant to you? Or was there something about that you were drawn to? You go, no, no, I like this… this community that's… that's smaller but intense, and… yeah, what do you think about all that?
Jeff Wagner: That's a really good question, man. That's a really good question, and it can be attacked a number of different ways, and… you know, there is an attraction, I'll admit, to… like, well, I mean, Metallica, I brought Metallica to my high school. Like, nobody… or even junior high, nobody really knew about them. I just happened to be the first guy to buy Kill Em All.
Jeff Wagner: a little bit… same thing with Slayer. And, like, there was this thing of, like, they're my band, you know, and then they're our band, like, when my group of friends got into them, well, it's our band, you know, and…
Jeff Wagner: I never would have thought Metallica would have gotten as big as they did with the Black album. I never…
Jeff Wagner: I like the Black Album, and I don't… I don't… that's, to me, the last great album they did, and I love everything between No Life to Leather Demo and Black Album. I think that's one of the most perfect arcs of any band, metal or otherwise. But I never thought that my band would become everybody else's band.
Jeff Wagner: But I never begrudge them that either. I never get, like, you know, bummed out. You know, I've had people… I know people… there's a band called Opeth from Sweden. I don't know if you've heard of them, but they, were this cult band for so long, and then they just broke out, and they play big venues everywhere, and…
Jeff Wagner: Some people turned their back on them. Oh, I never listened to OPETH anymore. It was because they weren't their band anymore. It was everybody else's band. I find that kind of shallow.
Jeff Wagner: I think you should judge it only on the music that's coming out, so…
Jeff Wagner: yeah, in one sense, it's totally attractive. The obscure stuff is very attractive to me, but then I go discover some obscure stuff, and I find it to be crap. You know, just because it's obscure doesn't mean it's good. I've never lived by that sort of maxim, but, I do…
Jeff Wagner: fine.
Jeff Wagner: that attractive, and I'll tend to check out something only a couple people are talking about versus something everybody's talking about. Because usually if I don't know something that everybody's talking about, I'm usually disappointed. And, you know, I use this sort of metric of, like, look at what sells the most in terms of beer. Miller Lite, well, it's crap.
Jeff Wagner: Look what… look what movies, are the biggest hits. They're usually crap, in my opinion.
Jeff Wagner: So, a lot of the same thing happens with music a lot of the time. So I am… I am definitely motivated by maybe things that are a little less mainstream.
Jeff Wagner: At the same time, like, I love to…
Jeff Wagner: I don't love to. I just like to stay grounded and just check things out for their own sake, and if I respond to them, great. Doesn't matter what the obscurity level is, or even the popularity level, you know? So, you know, I hope that answers your question.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, absolutely. So when we're… okay.
Jeff Wagner: Sorry, do you edit this at all?
Stephen Skorski: No.
Jeff Wagner: Okay, I need to go get a drink.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Jeff Wagner: I need to go get something to wet my whistle.
Stephen Skorski: Totally, totally, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can… I make those edits, no doubt, sure.
Jeff Wagner: I'll… let me, just give me, like, 30 seconds.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, sure, take your time.
Jeff Wagner: Awesome. Be right back.
Jeff Wagner: Alright, I'm back.
Stephen Skorski: Cool.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, okay, so, so this is, this is,
Stephen Skorski: What's the question here? Okay, so you talked about a bunch of different types of music that you like, but your podcast does kind of focus on, again, more what most people would say extreme.
Stephen Skorski: Now, is death metal a good umbrella term for…
Stephen Skorski: Is… or is that not a good… you know, like…
Jeff Wagner: Too limiting? Too limited. Okay. Are you talking about in terms of what Radical Research covers?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, well, you know, really, the heart of my question is.
Stephen Skorski: you know, you've mentioned a bunch of different genres that you enjoy and you like, and you listen to, maybe, and have written about, but then you have this podcast that does seem to focus on, you know, it gets more narrow, I think, at least to some degree. You know, and I'm wondering.
Stephen Skorski: what is the umbrella, you know, that the things that you cover in that podcast would be? Like, what, you know, how do I speak about this music, you know, to ask you questions? Sure. And why?
Stephen Skorski: Why that umbrella, as opposed to something else?
Jeff Wagner: Well, first of all, the guy who does the podcast with me is one of my dearest friends. He lives down in Savannah, Georgia. His name is Hunter Ginn.
Jeff Wagner: He's now the drummer for a band called Agalock from Portland, and they just meet up for the shows they do. But yeah, Savannah Boy.
Jeff Wagner: He and I, when I met him in 2001, we had the most uncanny parallels and intersections with music that I've… of anybody that I've ever met, of all the hundreds and hundreds and maybe even thousands of people I've met and talked music with.
Jeff Wagner: he and I…
Jeff Wagner: liked so many obscurities in the same way. Our main interests are the same, whether it's Beatles, prog rock, metal, whatever. And so that formed a friendship. And then…
Jeff Wagner: We decided to, essentially, do a podcast about 8 years ago.
Jeff Wagner: And…
Jeff Wagner: We defined it by basically saying adventures in exceptional music, but the sort of thing you don't see there is that we're really trying to cover things that are
Jeff Wagner: Either left field, or forgotten about, that we think deserve another notice.
Jeff Wagner: things that, are… were always on the fringes that we want to bring back. I mean, whether it's an Austrian band called Disharmonic Orchestra that nobody liked back then, that…
Jeff Wagner: Almost nobody likes now, that we love.
Jeff Wagner: We're gonna do it.
Jeff Wagner: But our… I think our 13th, or 14th, or 15th episode, we covered, how Rick Rubin changes metal bands, like Danzag and Trouble.
Jeff Wagner: and, Slayer.
Jeff Wagner: You know, kind of like, he comes in and he produces, and just… so we like to…
Jeff Wagner: talk thematically as well, you know, about things. But it's basically…
Jeff Wagner: when we started the podcast, even 8 years ago, I was like, oh man, just what everybody needs is another podcast about music. There were literally…
Jeff Wagner: I think I did some research, and it was, like.
Jeff Wagner: I came across the figure of about 30,000 podcasts in the world about music. And it's like, well, if we're gonna do a podcast, well, we need to offer something unique, and Hunter and my tastes are quite unique.
Jeff Wagner: And specific. But also, at the same time, kind of broad. You know, we are… somebody called our, our, our…
Jeff Wagner: are well of reference points, nasty and humiliating. And they said this as, a compliment.
Stephen Skorski: Haha, okay.
Jeff Wagner: Because we can talk a good deal about a good deal of things, you know, especially when we team up, because he's got even more of a jazz and, like, eclectic avant-garde background, and I've, you know, I've got my specialties, and… but that was the whole idea, was really to cover things that aren't necessarily extreme.
Jeff Wagner: Just more obscure, left field, forgotten, need to come back.
Jeff Wagner: that sort of stuff. You know, not the mainstream stuff. I mean, we love Slayer, we love,
Jeff Wagner: you know, OPETH. But we're probably not gonna do shows on them, because everybody else in Metal World is doing podcast episodes on those bands.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm.
Jeff Wagner: So if we do that, we try to attack it from a different angle, you know?
Jeff Wagner: But yeah, that's… that's essentially the point. And it sounds like it'd be so…
Jeff Wagner: specialized that there'd be almost no audience for it, but man, we have…
Jeff Wagner: we have a pretty big audience, and a lot of people just binge the hell out of us, and even people that find us now… I just got an email from a guy yesterday, he's like.
Jeff Wagner: I don't know how I didn't find this podcast, but I'm gonna binge all of them. He's like, I've done 10, I got 130 to go. I'm like, sweet, that's the kind of people we want, you know? So, we have carved our own little niche with this thing, too. It's just kind of crazy that, I got involved in yet another thing that, you know, gets me out there and…
Jeff Wagner: takes up all of my time, but it's awesome. You know, I have fun with it.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah. No, it's incredible. Yeah, I mean, you know, just, I listen to, some, some, you know, in between, you know, kind of talking to you.
Stephen Skorski: At baseball, and then, you know, us doing this today. Yep. And, you know, there is obviously a fairly wide variety, you know, of topics and bands, and so…
Stephen Skorski: You know, maybe this is more a collection…
Stephen Skorski: question… and when I say collection, I mean, let's imagine your collection is intact.
Stephen Skorski: you know, the way it was, you know, pre-fire, right? Things that you had, you know, kind of really spent time, you know, putting together.
Stephen Skorski: And so I wonder… The things that you kept for your collection.
Stephen Skorski: And also, the topics and the bands that you put onto your… Your podcast.
Stephen Skorski: I mean, besides this element of obscurity, right, because you said, you know, some things that can be, you know, kind of… yeah, it's really rare, and nobody knows about it, but it's also terrible, right? You're not talking about that. What do you think it is? Like, what's the thing that makes it worth talking about or keeping? Is it…
Stephen Skorski: I don't know, is it the energy, the emotion, the, you know, the philosophy? Like, what are you most drawn to that says, yeah, yeah, this is something that we want to dedicate, you know, an hour, two hours, a book, you know, to write about?
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's all of what you said, all those elements that you mentioned.
Jeff Wagner: But really, the answer's very, very simple, and we've talked about it already, which is what really moves me to that deep.
Jeff Wagner: transformative place. If that band has done that, and they've… you know, and I always like bands who surprise you every album. I don't like a band to stay the same.
Jeff Wagner: every album. It's just, it's, it happens a lot, and it's boring to me. I… I appreciate when an artist is truly an artist, which is change, right? So, that's one thing in common that all these
Jeff Wagner: artists have that we're covering, probably, is just this degree of change, or offering the world something that nobody else has.
Jeff Wagner: And…
Jeff Wagner: that's it, man. If it moves us… and, you know, Hunter and I have to agree generally to do a show. I mean, we have yet to do a real counterpoint. We've joked about doing it, because it's kind of novel that we would disagree. But we have, you know, we have places where we veer off and fork off and don't agree.
Jeff Wagner: But it works better when we are enthused about something, and thankfully, and this is why it works, thankfully he and I, you know, every time I come up with an idea, he's like, yeah, that's it. Of course, you know.
Jeff Wagner: And it's just because he's been moved by these things in a similarly impactful way as I have, and that's… and that's… that's it. That's all that really matters, you know?
Jeff Wagner: is that. And why do they do that? Well, all the things you said. Emotion, you know, being transportive, creativity is just fascinating to us.
Jeff Wagner: maybe performance level, imagination. You know, I love… I love bands with great imagination. It's, it's a ballsy thing to go out and do something like… there's a band called Celtic Frost from Switzerland who…
Jeff Wagner: Made their waves in the 80s, early 90s, and, changed dramatically from album to album. I mean, pissed off shit-tons of their audience by the third album, you know? And I love that sort of stuff. Again, it may not always work, but, you know, it's worked for me enough that we've built a podcast around it. So, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Cool. So you play guitar, yeah?
Jeff Wagner: I play… my primary instrument would be bass.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, okay.
Jeff Wagner: When I'm practicing, when I'm good, and especially when I'm with other people, I can be… I can be a pretty good bass player. I'm pretty happy to say that. I don't play now, because I lost equipment in the fire, and I haven't… I haven't bought it… I haven't re-bought it since, because I just haven't had any…
Jeff Wagner: any desire, especially, you know, the last few years, I haven't been playing with anybody. You know, I just never really got into the local scene here, and…
Jeff Wagner: I got a little tired of playing for myself, or I was gonna say with myself, but that sounds a little silly and perverted.
Stephen Skorski: Family, family show.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, Family Show. G-rated. Yeah, so… so I… but I, yeah, I've been playing some kind of guitar, you know… I started on guitar lessons when I was quite young. I wanted to be Ace Fraley, you know, like, a lot of kids picked up guitar because of him.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: And, you know, of course, I'm disillusioned. I get to the first guitar lesson, and we're playing, Hail Hail, the gang's all here, and I'm like…
Jeff Wagner: Man, this is not… this has not shocked me, this is not what I wanted, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Right.
Jeff Wagner: But I stuck with it, and then, like, a few years later, my high school jazz band needed a bass player. And I was like, well, it's got two less strings, and…
Jeff Wagner: how hard can it be? And I found out it was very difficult, especially jumping into jazz. But it was a great trial by fire, and I've been just enthralled with the bass ever since. And really, honestly, man, a lot of times, when I listen, my ear will go to the great bass player, if there is one. You know, it's really… I really enjoy the tone. I really…
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, I respond very much to bass guitar.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm, cool. No, I love that. Okay, so the reason I just wanted to verify, I thought, you know, that was, you know, I knew you played something, and I wasn't quite sure of the level,
Stephen Skorski: So, as you talked about, like, one of the, you know, one of the things that you're really drawn to about your, you know, the bands you talk about, or the people you talk about in your podcast, is something unique, right? There's something unique about them that, you know… Oh, sure. So…
Stephen Skorski: what I find unique about you is that you play music, You intensely listen to music.
Stephen Skorski: And then you also communicate to other people about music, right? You talk about it, you write about it.
Stephen Skorski: what's the difference between these three things? You know, like, what… what… what's itches are being scratched, you know, when you're expressing yourself in those different ways,
Stephen Skorski: you know, I don't know if that… I don't know if having 3 of those… you know, initially I was gonna ask just, like, the difference between listening and talking about music, but then I was like, oh, yeah, but you play music, too.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, I think… I think listening and playing are more symbiotic than talking about it, right?
Stephen Skorski: Okay.
Jeff Wagner: I just think it's… I just think it's very natural for us to talk about the things we like, whether, you know, and now with social media as some people's platform, it's…
Jeff Wagner: you know, it's everywhere to just talk, talk, talk. Podcast, talk, talk, talk. It's great. It's absolutely great. It's how we relate to each other in terms of our passions. But I think that there's a symbiotic nature between playing music and listening, and
Jeff Wagner: I've always known that, but I learned it somewhat recently when about, 5 years ago, I hadn't picked up a bass in a long time.
Jeff Wagner: It was just in the attic. I don't think I had an amp anymore. I had done some projects a few years prior to that with a friend of mine,
Jeff Wagner: that were more arty kind of projects that were… one of them we played live at a film festival in Syracuse University, just really different stuff.
Jeff Wagner: But I didn't play much after that, because again, I like to collaborate. I'm done… I don't like to play with myself anymore. I just like… or to records, I like to collaborate, and there just wasn't any of that happening, so…
Jeff Wagner: Anyway, I stopped for a while. And then when I picked it back up, I think in those 5 years, I was… I had become an even better and more intent listener. And by that, I mean I'm always trying to become a better listener. Some of my best friends have taught me to be a better listener.
Jeff Wagner: And what I mean by that is, you know, the surrender required.
Jeff Wagner: the analysis that you can get into. The, you can be completely scientifically analytical about music at the same time that it's taking you out into space, you know what I mean? Like, so I, so I really, like, you know, I think listening is something to work on.
Jeff Wagner: So I became a better and better listener, and when I picked up the bass again.
Jeff Wagner: It came so quick, and I really, really think…
Jeff Wagner: it was because I had… I had been listening even more intently than ever. There was a period of time from about 2013 to 2017 when I wasn't married. I was living here in Greensboro and just working for a record label, a prog rock record label at the time.
Jeff Wagner: And I would listen…
Jeff Wagner: probably more than I ever have before or since. And, that was my real step up in terms of becoming what I think is a really elevated listener. And so…
Jeff Wagner: when I, when I approached the base.
Jeff Wagner: After that, after that period of time.
Jeff Wagner: something clicked in a way that I was like, shit, I really… I really have gotten better
Jeff Wagner: by just studying music. Do you know what I mean?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Wagner: It was weird. I… and I'd never heard of that happening to people, but I'm sure it does, but, like, it was really strange, and I talked to a couple musician friends of mine, they're like, yeah, I can see that, you know? And…
Jeff Wagner: you're gonna find this crazy, because I'm not… I'm not… I'll never be the greatest baseball player, but I was not a great baseball player when I was young. Like, I just was… I was kind of terrible. Like, I either had no ambition for it, or just didn't have any physicality for it.
Jeff Wagner: I've been a lot better.
Jeff Wagner: as an adult, and I just think I've watched so much baseball that I've learned
Jeff Wagner: certain things. Again, you know, and glove position when you're catching a grounder. You know, I learned that by watching, and understanding the game. And so… so that symbiotic element between playing and listening
Jeff Wagner: I think they're very intertwined. I hope that anybody who's a big fan, who listens a lot, at least tries to play music. Not everybody has the aptitude.
Jeff Wagner: But I think it helps you understand
Jeff Wagner: A whole lot about what's happening when you're receiving music from other people.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, totally. So you, so you… okay, so those two almost… listening and playing.
Stephen Skorski: Feel like they go in the same basket.
Jeff Wagner: In the same basket, exactly. And I, again, you know, I haven't… I haven't played for a year and a half.
Jeff Wagner: But I've been listening. You know, once I acclimated to listening again, and it took me maybe 6 weeks after the fire.
Jeff Wagner: You know, I've been listening a ton. And so, it's not like I need to play to listen, or to listen to play.
Jeff Wagner: But I do… yeah, they are definitely, I think, part of that same basket.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, and then the communication part… Different basket, related, obviously, but…
Jeff Wagner: Related, related, less… less visceral, right? It's less… it's less the actual thing, right? Because I… like I said, I never get tired of listening to music. I do get tired of…
Jeff Wagner: depends on who I'm talking to. I love talking with you about it. I love talking with my best friends about it. But there… there… there are times… I've been in social situations where I'm like, I don't want to talk about music with you anymore, man. I just… it's just this… it's the same shit, you know? We keep talking about the same stuff, and like…
Jeff Wagner: And so, I can get tired of talking about it. I can get tired of communicating about it, you know, and I've done my share, so I feel like there's moments where I do have to tap out.
Jeff Wagner: You know.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Well, I… I mean, what's really interesting.
Stephen Skorski: as you know, I mean, being a podcaster and, you know, just being around
Stephen Skorski: People doing something that you find interesting, so you're talking and you're asking questions,
Stephen Skorski: What I find really interesting about our conversation is, you know, initially, I kind of thought we were going to talk more about the heavier, more extreme kind of music that you were into.
Stephen Skorski: But what… and we haven't, we really haven't talked about that very much, but I think what we have talked about
Stephen Skorski: In just sort of a circular way.
Stephen Skorski: It's how someone can engage with music, That's not just
Stephen Skorski: picking up the record. Now, picking up the record is really important, and really fantastic, and I want to hear about that next. Like, I want to… Sure. My next question is, like, tell me about your listening routine, your setup, because I, too, I mean, I don't want… I mean…
Stephen Skorski: I love sound, right? So sound, and space, and architecture, and how all these things work together, and…
Stephen Skorski: you know, sitting in a chair and closing my eyes and turning the lights off, right? So, I want to hear what your routine is, but my point is that…
Stephen Skorski: If somebody listens to this, I think they're getting a really nice… Roadmap?
Stephen Skorski: With a lot of different,
Stephen Skorski: Kind of ways to get you somewhere.
Stephen Skorski: all centered around this idea of music, right? If you're thinking of, like, well, how can I engage with music in a way
Stephen Skorski: that's just not listening, you know, and again, I'm not saying that to minimize listening, but I think people, you know, when they feel that attraction, they want to, you know, they go, okay, well, yeah, I could join a band, but yeah, and that's not easy, right? I mean, learning an instrument, you know, maybe you don't have the time, maybe you don't have the resources, right?
Stephen Skorski: maybe you don't have the aptitude, right? Then sometimes people just kind of get… they shut it down at that point, but you're talking about, like.
Stephen Skorski: talking about it, writing about it, creating, you know, zines, to engage with it. You know, I think that's really amazing. I think that's really fantastic. So I'm loving the direction of this conversation because of that.
Jeff Wagner: Well, I am too, but I'm a little worried that we haven't talked much about collecting, because you approached me first saying, I have this podcast about collections.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, we'll get there. And if we don't…
Jeff Wagner: It's fine.
Stephen Skorski: No, but this is the podcast. This is what I always try to preface.
Jeff Wagner: And that's fine. I've had a blast talking. It's, you know, again, I can talk, I can talk with, about this stuff a lot, all day.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I mean, anyone who, who… well, if anyone's listened to more than one episode, they, they, they understand that.
Jeff Wagner: Gotcha.
Stephen Skorski: there is a long and winding road to get to. This is not a how-to. This is definitely not like, oh, you know, I'm trying to learn how to do this. No, that's not it. I just think people are real… like, you know, like, it's what I just said before. You have an incredibly unique perspective.
Stephen Skorski: And that's what I want to hear about, right? There's lots of people who tell us about how to collect, or talk about values, and how to store things, but, you know, that's not interesting. What's interesting is you, and how you engage with music, and that's what's so kind of brilliant about this conversation.
Jeff Wagner: Cool.
Stephen Skorski: So, you know, along those lines, tell me about your listening routine. How do you kind of ingest, you know, you're not eating a sandwich, right? You're listening to this thing that's gonna nourish you.
Jeff Wagner: Oh, you know, look.
Stephen Skorski: How do you do it?
Jeff Wagner: Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I'm not, like, militaristic about it in the sense of only doing it one way. I have my favorite way, which I'll get to in just a second. I can eat a sandwich and listen to music. I can do dishes or cook a meal while listening to music. I sometimes will fall asleep.
Jeff Wagner: with headphones on, and, to an album.
Jeff Wagner: I will listen in the car. None of these ways are, to me, the ideal or most rewarding ways, but they're a way to ingest and relate with it, and just spend time with it.
Jeff Wagner: then we get to what I consider kind of real listening. And I've always… I didn't really know…
Jeff Wagner: I guess I… when I grew up, or, you know, as a younger kid, I… you know, I was around music, and it was very… seemed very social. You know, I was in the living room, the record player was in the living room, or people were watching live music together.
Jeff Wagner: But I… but I very early, kind of, discovered… That listening alone
Jeff Wagner: by myself, without distraction in the dark, or a dimly lighted room, was absolutely the best thing ever, you know? Yeah. And so I did that a lot, and you know, I would just…
Jeff Wagner: just… I just did it all the time. And so I've designed… I've designed my life, like, every place I've ever lived, and the two women I've shared, you know, domestic situations with, they have to understand that I need a room, you know? I might need two rooms at this point for my collection, and then the high-five. Like,
Jeff Wagner: you know, I… I… the best thing ever is that the music room, where I sit down, again, like a lot of us do, I suppose, a lot of us complete nerds anyway, sit down, have a few selections ready, or just wing it, see where I go.
Jeff Wagner: Get the atmosphere right, make sure I have no distractions, put the phone away for sure.
Jeff Wagner: Unless… and I have yet, in my hi-fi setup, I have yet to, get a streamer. I only stream through the phone, and that's, you know, for walking and for going to bed or whatever.
Jeff Wagner: But in this situation, I have a turntable, I have a CD player, I have…
Jeff Wagner: floor-standing speakers, and I have a great amp. I'm into integrated amps. I like, I like, sort of, half solid state, half tube. I think I get kind of the best of both worlds with that sound. Okay. And… and that's it. And a decent, you know, decent,
Jeff Wagner: Noise reduction, sort of,
Jeff Wagner: power source, and and I go, and I sit, and I generally will listen to…
Jeff Wagner: albums all the way through, as they're intended to be. I rarely skip songs unless there's something I just can't stand.
Jeff Wagner: Some ugly duckling on some album I otherwise love. Sometimes I'll have fun, sometimes I'll go through… I have a very small 7-inch collection that survived, but I might have a night where I do, like, you know, 8 or 9 7 inches, and then a couple EPs. Just kind of…
Jeff Wagner: you know, shake it up and, like, you know, just volley back and forth between CD and vinyl, but, you know, I try to be very still. I try to be just very, very aware, and that's what I was talking about earlier in terms of being a better listener, was like, I try to just really work on, submission and quieting the mind, so that you can
Jeff Wagner: so that that thing can come in. Because, you know, a lot of the music I do listen to, whether it's extreme metal.
Jeff Wagner: Or, you know, progressive rock with 20-minute long songs, like, a lot of it is, to me, music that requires a lot of concentration.
Jeff Wagner: To really get the best out of it, you know? So, that's… My ideal listening…
Jeff Wagner: atmosphere or aesthetic, I guess, if that answers your question.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Is there, you know, not to get too technical, but I am curious myself, any, whether you have them, or maybe they're Grails for you, is there a set of speakers, and or amplifier that you are just like, yeah, that's it, I can't wait until I.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: No, no, I listen to, you know, what are you listening to, or what do you want to be listening to?
Jeff Wagner: My speakers that I had before the fire were monitor audio.
Jeff Wagner: And that's a UK company. At one time, they were endorsed by Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath, one of my very favorite bands. Cool. Monitor Audio, really good company. And then, you know, after the fire and all that, I re-bought, a pair of the same. So that's my…
Jeff Wagner: That's my favorite speaker, I've just found it works for the variety of things that I listen to, seems to be able to handle,
Jeff Wagner: Some of the intensities, and then some of the delicate elements of, say, progressive rock, or whatever.
Jeff Wagner: And then an amp, you know, I do love, like I said, the, integrated, solid state and tube.
Jeff Wagner: I've been using, Luxeman, which is a Japanese company, but I really prefer, Rogue, which I think they're based in Pennsylvania, and Rogue Amps…
Jeff Wagner: man, whether it's the Pharaoh or the Phoenix, they just have this thing that works so… it's like they made it for me. They made it for my collection. Look them up, R-O-G-U-E. And yeah, it's more expensive hi-fi gear, but it's also stuff that's… that's attainable. Like, I've never… I'm not a rich man, I never have been.
Jeff Wagner: I have…
Jeff Wagner: definitely gotten way more into quality gear as I've gotten older, and as I can afford it. I, for a couple years, had a subscription to Stereophile Magazine, just to learn more.
Jeff Wagner: Because once, you know, once I started making upgrades to my system, I was like, my God, I'm hearing new things in this stuff that I've heard 300 times, you know?
Jeff Wagner: My favorite album of all time is Russia's Moving Pictures, and…
Jeff Wagner: every time I upgrade, which is less frequently these days, but every time I do, whether it's an amp, or a turntable, or speakers.
Jeff Wagner: or even speaker cable, I will put that on, because I tend to hear things in that majestic, perfect production, or nuances, or just, you know, more shape, just a little bit more shape. It's amazing, and…
Jeff Wagner: that's fun. You know, that's a lot of fun. And, I also like to listen with headphones sometimes. I prefer open air, but headphones, work really well, especially if you are living with somebody who doesn't appreciate hearing Creator at 10.30 in the morning.
Stephen Skorski: Right, right.
Jeff Wagner: But yeah, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, so what,
Stephen Skorski: what's your preference? You know, the world is your oyster. Do you… are you listening to vinyl? Are you listening to a CD?
Stephen Skorski: Or, you know, the highest quality stream you can get. What is…
Jeff Wagner: Definitely not the highest quality stream, only because…
Jeff Wagner: I ju- I haven't interfaced with that in the hi-fi room.
Stephen Skorski: Yet.
Jeff Wagner: I will probably get a player at some point, but,
Jeff Wagner: You know, doesn't that involve a phone?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to, but…
Jeff Wagner: It often does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is… which I'm not into in that experience. It's a rule of mine, like, no food, no clocks, no phones, you know?
Jeff Wagner: Beer? Sure. Any drug of your choice? Sure. But certainly not… not a phone. But I'll get there, I'll get there. So not streaming, but I'm cursed because I love…
Jeff Wagner: CD and vinyl equally, for very different reasons. But I love both formats so much.
Stephen Skorski: Talk about that.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, well, I mean…
Stephen Skorski: Why is that?
Jeff Wagner: Well, vinyl has all those things that have made it have a comeback, which I think, you know, you can talk about the extra musical things, like artwork, packaging, something to really, truly hold in your hand. It's bigger, obviously, than CDs.
Jeff Wagner: But it does have
Jeff Wagner: Given the right gear, and the right pressing, and all that, it has that warmth of analog that you just aren't gonna get anywhere else.
Jeff Wagner: I absolutely love it. I also love how visceral it is. I love that a turntable is basically fighting physics. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense if you're looking at it from a physics standpoint.
Jeff Wagner: You know, that needle moving toward the center, and just, you know, you tend to lose a little quality near the label if it's not pressed, you know, if it's not cut right.
Jeff Wagner: But… and I even like to hear a little bit of that surface noise. I mean, ideally, you want to cut it out as much as you can.
Jeff Wagner: But I like the visceral quality of it. It's some… it's just… I don't know, man, it's… I can understand why it came back. For me, it never left, and I was always amused to see it go away and then come back, but it's cool. As long as young kids are buying vinyl and excited, man, it's awesome, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, totally.
Jeff Wagner: It's great, and I love, you know, this is why I love going to see Patrick at Hippo here in Greensboro, is like…
Jeff Wagner: there's always people in there, and there's a lot of kids, you know, enthused about vinyl, and I just love just being the fly on the wall and seeing that happen.
Jeff Wagner: So that's the vinyl thing. The CD…
Jeff Wagner: Oh, and by the way, I don't really care about vinyl colors. I know a lot of people get into, like, all the colors and the marbles. If I get that, that's fine. White vinyl, I absolutely love. Like, I'm kind of crazy for white vinyl. I just think it's, like, that's that negative image sort of appeal, maybe? I don't know.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, cool.
Jeff Wagner: I think it's sharp, but I don't care. I just want a good pressing, I want a good cut, I wanna… I want… I want it to just be as good as it can be.
Jeff Wagner: CDs, just,
Jeff Wagner: I find there's equal collectability with them. Maybe… I don't know if it's my age, I was kind of late to adopt CDs at age 22.
Jeff Wagner: was when I first decided, well, you know, I remember getting,
Jeff Wagner: what was it? Soundgarden's Bad Motor Finger, and… Let me think…
Jeff Wagner: there was something about it that I was like, oh, I see, the CD buyer gets something else. It might have been a packaging thing, it might have been an extra song. That was when, like, a lot of bonus songs were coming out on CD that you wouldn't get on the vinyl.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: It may not have been that record, but it was something, and I was like, okay, I guess I gotta… I guess I gotta do it. I guess I gotta go to the CD player. And then I just fell in love, you know? I do like the crispness of it. I think if you have…
Jeff Wagner: There are certain Japanese audiophile CDs that are mastered in such a way, and I don't know how they do it, I can't tell you the technicalities of it, but they sound so otherworldly. They sound so multidimensional.
Jeff Wagner: That…
Jeff Wagner: It's quite the experience that you're not gonna get with vinyl, because vinyl has these sort of built-in imperfections that make it charming.
Jeff Wagner: Whereas CD's about that perfection, you know? And not cold perfection, I just… I just want to hear the music reproduced as truthfully as it can be.
Jeff Wagner: And so…
Jeff Wagner: you know, I've gotten into that world, you know, various audiophile-type CDs. Again, they're often too expensive to afford, and I lost most of mine, but thankfully, I've reacquired some through either gifts or just buying a few more.
Jeff Wagner: a few that I used to have, but man, they just sound…
Jeff Wagner: So good. It doesn't have to be the Japanese ones. I mean, I think…
Jeff Wagner: I think certain newer pressings of a lot of things on CDs sound fantastic, so…
Jeff Wagner: Big fan. I want to tell you a little sidebar story. Conan O'Brien, is good friends with Jack White, and I was listening to Conan's podcast at one point. Conan and I are on a first-name basis, that's why I said Conan.
Jeff Wagner: No, and so he, you know, and Jack White is, of course, known as this vinyl guy. Like, he's got his own label, he's got his own, like, record club, and all this stuff.
Jeff Wagner: So you'd think that you'd go to his house, and it'd be all vinyl, vinyl, vinyl, vinyl, vinyl. Conan told a story about going over to Jack White's house once, and he's showing him his turntable, and his system, and all the vinyl records he's got, and all his stuff. He's got some CDs over here, and…
Jeff Wagner: They're talking about a particular album, and Conan goes, well, let's listen to that.
Jeff Wagner: And Jack White goes, great! And he reaches for the CD and puts a CD in, and Cohen's like, we're not gonna listen to the record? He's like, no, no, no, this CD sounds way better than the record, you know? And I just… that's kind of how I feel sometimes, right? I feel that it's gotten a bad rap, it's not cool anymore, it's… I think a lot of people think that CD is,
Jeff Wagner: Obsolete, but it's not.
Jeff Wagner: It's not.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, I mean, it does seem like people are getting back into it.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, well, sure. You see it now at Barnes & Noble, hippos starting to carry them. I mean, there's definitely always going to be a market for it. It's smaller, of course, than it would be 20, 30 years ago, but that's fine.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, well, I mean, the prices are great. And I know for the real, you know, the super high-quality audiophile, you know, limited press, that stuff is still crazy expensive, but, you know, you pick up a…
Stephen Skorski: you know, whatever. Pick your, you know, Led Zeppelin album, you know, get it on vinyl, get it on CD, and it's probably, you know, you can probably get the CD for, like, 2 bucks, right? 3 bucks?
Jeff Wagner: Exactly, exactly.
Stephen Skorski: Right?
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, yeah. Well, and vinyl, you know, I think music is always more…
Jeff Wagner: valuable than what we ever pay for it, but the fact is, look, you know, new records are, like, 40 bucks for a single LP. It's… it's gotten a little crazy, and…
Jeff Wagner: you know, if you can find a used CD, or even new version of it, it's gonna cost you
Jeff Wagner: Definitely half of that, if not less.
Jeff Wagner: So…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, there's… no, I get it, there's good reasons for both.
Stephen Skorski: And, you know, well, shout out to Patrick over at Hippo. That's a great, great record store. Patrick's awesome. I'll tell you, one of the things I love about that store is, and it's why, like, I'm totally cool buying stuff, you know, sight unseen, you know, on whatever, you know, he posts them online.
Stephen Skorski: stuff's always in good shape, you know what I mean? Like, you… you're never, you know, so there's good stuff, but you're never, never afraid of, like, you know, kind of getting an album, being like, oh, man, that's not, you know, that's not what I thought it was gonna be, so…
Stephen Skorski: you know, not all record shops are like that, and I appreciate that very much about Hippo.
Jeff Wagner: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, okay, so, you know, we're getting close, you know, I guess, to the end, so just a few things before we wrap it up. And I don't know if you actually talked about this, but I want to clarify.
Stephen Skorski: Has…
Stephen Skorski: podcasting change the way you listen to music? You know, so similar to the way you listen to music helped you, you know, maybe change the way you play? Do you think talking about music
Stephen Skorski: So intensely, to a really large audience.
Stephen Skorski: Has changed the way you then listen to music?
Jeff Wagner: I think so. I think so in the way that writing used to change the way I listened. I think I've kind of,
Jeff Wagner: flattened out there. I don't… I don't think… you know, I'm not writing as much as I used to, and I don't think it's gonna help me as a listener anymore.
Jeff Wagner: But, yes, I have found that about podcasting. That's kind of my…
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, that's what I do more, actually, really, quantitatively these days than writing.
Jeff Wagner: And it, and it has. In fact.
Jeff Wagner: hunter will mention something in our conversations that'll lead me to something I maybe didn't know, or we'll get feedback from somebody saying, hey, you guys talked about this, well.
Jeff Wagner: this is related, or you should really check this out. So, I have gotten a lot of, I was swamped. In fact, I'm still swamped in recommendations, by listeners. I keep a running thing on my phone to… of things to check out, but,
Jeff Wagner: I think because of the fire, and even to this day, a year and a half later, I'm less interested in checking out
Jeff Wagner: As much new stuff as I… than I used to be.
Jeff Wagner: I think I want the comfort of something familiar, but I'm always going to be adventurous, so I'm always checking stuff out. So in that sense, in terms of exposure, it has opened me up to things I might not have known, probably. As just a listener, it has also changed a little bit because
Jeff Wagner: Hunter and I play snippets, we never play full songs.
Jeff Wagner: We play snippets of things that we're looking at. And I like, kind of, you know, obviously, that's not how we listen. We don't listen to just, you know, a little bit of a song. We don't do it ADD style, you know? But,
Jeff Wagner: For the format of the podcast, that's how we do it, and…
Jeff Wagner: I have found myself, really focusing in on, even more, on certain micro aspects, maybe because we snippet things out and we look at, you know, highlights of a certain song or passage or something.
Jeff Wagner: So it's changed in that way, which I've found a little bit distracting sometimes. Sometimes I'm like, that's a neat little snippet, but I, you know, it's not how I really want to come out of the listen. I want to
Jeff Wagner: hear these things in their wholeness, right, in their totality. But it has changed, and it's been a lot of fun, and
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, I think any endeavor like this that's just really passionate and constant, we've been doing this for 8 years, I think it's going to change how you relate to the main subject.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm… because I'm thinking about my own… Experiences with space.
Stephen Skorski: and sound, but, I mean, space in particular, because that's what I teach, right? So I teach the design of spaces. And sometimes that's… I mean, you know, I'm an architect, and I teach, you know, you know, students how to…
Stephen Skorski: create, you know, create space, make space, communicate with space. But part of that, of course, is
Stephen Skorski: I have to explain my experiences with space. And I think that was one of the things that I found most interesting about starting to teach, was that there's this, you know, there's a responsibility
Stephen Skorski: for me to, you know, teach in the most effective manner possible, and, you know, part of that is getting people, like, you know, kind of excited and passionate and, you know, kind of into the thing you're into, but there is a large part of it, is being able to…
Stephen Skorski: Dissect and distill down you know, why I'm responding to a space.
Stephen Skorski: in a specific way, whether it's good or bad, right? So I can't just go into a space and just feel it emotionally.
Stephen Skorski: I mean, I could, but I have to translate that into words so that when I'm in the classroom, I can say, like, yeah, this is exactly what I was feeling and why, right? And so that's what I was thinking about with your podcast is.
Stephen Skorski: You know, when you're sitting down, and you know, you got your beer, and the lights are off, and, you know, you're listening, and you're just kind of taking that thing in.
Stephen Skorski: you know, if you're never gonna talk about that on your podcast, that's one thing, but if you know you're going to talk about it, that's what I was really… that's what I was kind of getting at. Like, I wonder, you know, when you're sitting in that chair, you're like, well, this listen is for the podcast, the next one's gonna be for me to just, you know, kind of go swimming in the deep end of this album.
Jeff Wagner: Oh, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I definitely make a distinction between
Jeff Wagner: you know, we'll call it research. I already know my subject pretty well, but, like.
Jeff Wagner: when I'm, like, thinking about, well, what are the snippets we're gonna play, and what, you know, what are the highlights we want to, like, draw out? That's a very different sort of listen. But it's also been fun, like, I, you know, I really like that, and, you know, because Hunter and I have never lived in the same town, but we are so bonded.
Jeff Wagner: By music and other aspects of life, we,
Jeff Wagner: We use this as time to listen to music, granted, in snippet form, in two-minute snippets, you know, but it's still fun.
Jeff Wagner: And it's really enhanced our friendship as well. And I'm kind of going off on a tangent there, because we're not talking about friendship, but we… it's really changed that, and really helped that. But I also feel a responsibility to our crowd. We have an audience now.
Jeff Wagner: And, I… I want to be able to back up what I'm saying, so if I'm listening to something that's going to be a subject of a future podcast, you know, I really…
Jeff Wagner: I think I've gotten even more deeply analytical about certain things. And that's fine, because it's fun for me. It's not… it's not work, it's not study, necessarily. It's,
Jeff Wagner: It's just fun, and yeah, I'm always… it's just… it's always fascinating to me how fresh it remains.
Stephen Skorski: Hmm. Yeah, that's all. And no, it's great to hear that.
Stephen Skorski: When you… you know, a couple quick ones here, and then we'll wrap it up, but…
Stephen Skorski: we didn't, you know, we actually didn't talk about your record collection, or the specifics of it, you know, how it's organized, those kind of things, and that… that's fine, right? Because I, again, I think.
Jeff Wagner: Well, I want to say one thing about it, but go ahead and ask your question. I'll get… I'll get my… I'll get my soapbox thing in.
Stephen Skorski: Well, maybe, you know, maybe you can work it into, but I guess my question is.
Stephen Skorski: A, it's kind of a two-parter, A, do you consider your podcast an extension of or part of your collection? And.
Stephen Skorski: Along with that, is there, you know, kind of this feeling, this responsible feeling, or feeling of responsibility
Stephen Skorski: In terms of preserving these things.
Stephen Skorski: You know, is there some element of… again, it's archiving, it's preserving, it's… you know, because you're going out and you're seeking things out that you feel
Stephen Skorski: are a little bit, kind of, you know, left in the corners, you know, so do you feel that resp… so is it part of your collection, A, and then B,
Stephen Skorski: Do you think of the podcast as an extension of the collection?
Jeff Wagner: Really, again, really good questions.
Jeff Wagner: I don't know that I've ever considered it a part or an extension of my collection, the podcast.
Stephen Skorski: Interesting, really. Okay.
Jeff Wagner: Not really, not really. Because ultimately, my listening experience is solo, and solitude. I should say solitary.
Jeff Wagner: I like being at shows, I like listening with friends, especially the kind of friends who don't talk over everything, you know, they understand how to listen. You talk after the words, but…
Stephen Skorski: Right.
Jeff Wagner: For me, I've always really preferred the solitary experience, and that, for me, is my own. That's private, that's mine. I don't even do it with my wife. Like, she loves music, but she, you know, she listens in a very different way.
Jeff Wagner: And I do this for myself, and, as much as I share.
Jeff Wagner: in the podcast, in my books, in whatever I'm doing, there is a separation that I guess I need, maybe as an introvert, maybe as somebody who…
Jeff Wagner: needs a shit ton of alone time. Maybe that's, maybe that's why I say this, but, I really don't consider it an extension of my collection.
Jeff Wagner: In terms of… in terms of preservation, if that's… I think that you're… that you were getting… that was your other…
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, sure, yep.
Jeff Wagner: Yes. Yeah, I think it's really important to keep
Jeff Wagner: things in mind. It's the exact reason why we do the podcast, is to shed a brand new light
Jeff Wagner: On something older.
Jeff Wagner: We rarely cover things that are brand new. This is about, digging into our archives, our collections, and yeah, so there you go. In a sense, maybe it is, an extension.
Jeff Wagner: But it's really, more about turning people on, getting people to go out there to discogs, and get that CD or vinyl, you know, that we're talking about. We do that almost every episode, we hear from somebody who went out and bought a few things because of us.
Jeff Wagner: And that's really great. I mean, that's the best part of anything I've ever done, is when people are turned on, and they go and support either a record store, and or the band, and or a label.
Jeff Wagner: So to me, that… and that's part of preservation, that's part of preserving a legacy. We've heard from bands we've covered that said, wow, you know, you guys… you guys really made it feel like we didn't do this for nothing, you know?
Stephen Skorski: That's awesome.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, especially when they're our heroes. There's a band from Milwaukee called De Kreutzen, who released 4 albums, in the 80s and early 90s. Kind of started in the punk hardcore world and became this kind of, like, just eclectic.
Jeff Wagner: I don't know, alternative metal band? I don't know.
Jeff Wagner: And they have an audience out there, you know, but it's small, and when we did our story on… when we did our episode on them, the singer, Dan, contacted us and said, I wanted to cry a couple times, because I realized that people out there still really love us this way, and to hear you guys say it and express it that way was great.
Stephen Skorski: Cool.
Jeff Wagner: Again, yeah, again, I don't know if that's preservation necessarily, but it is,
Jeff Wagner: it is holding something up that we feel deserves, time and attention. Yeah.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, it's over.
Jeff Wagner: So, yeah, there's that.
Stephen Skorski: Okay. I love that. Well, tell me what you wanted to say about your collection. I'm really.
Jeff Wagner: Well…
Stephen Skorski: I'm, I'm.
Jeff Wagner: I'm always… yeah, I, I, you know, you kind of said, oh, you know, how people organize things, or whatever, what, you know, how they do… and look, it's completely personal. I'm not, like, a snob about anything. I think being a geek is great, but I think being a snob is kind of the worst characteristic you could have for anybody about anything.
Jeff Wagner: And there's a big difference to me between geek and snob, okay?
Jeff Wagner: But, I'm always amazed when I go to somebody's house, or I'm just talking to them about their collections, and they segment their collections off in genre. Like, here's my jazz part, here's my soul part, here's my metal part. Like, if they're people that listen, you know, broadly enough to listen to, you know, across genres.
Jeff Wagner: And… I've never… I don't get that, you know? My Billy Cobham record is right next to the corner record, or whatever it is in the alphabet, you know? Like…
Jeff Wagner: Because it's all music. And I think, for me, it's so important to reflect that in the collection, the way it's organized, which is simply A to Z. And artists are artists, music is music, and I just could never…
Jeff Wagner: separate them out into genre, and then there's the argument I always make, which is, like, where do you put Mr. Bungle? You know, like, where are you putting that band? You know what I mean?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: There are bands out there that just don't belong anywhere. I mean, you could put Led Zeppelin in Prague, you could put Led Zeppelin in rock, you could… you know what I mean? Like, it… Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: Same thing with, like, Blue Oyster Cult, you know? Like, I kind of think of them as an art rock slash prog band, also hard rock, also proto-heavy metal, where do you put them?
Jeff Wagner: So…
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, I just find it interesting when I, you know, I had a friend recently who's like, I'm dividing up my collection into genre. I'm like.
Jeff Wagner: You know how I feel, man. Go for it. But, I'm not gonna help you.
Jeff Wagner: I'm not coming over to alphabetize with you.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, I guess.
Jeff Wagner: Anyway…
Stephen Skorski: I like that. I like that philosophy.
Jeff Wagner: With everything, with everything to each their own.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah. But you, personally, you just alphabetized the entire thing.
Jeff Wagner: For sure, for sure. And then, you know, then I've had, you know, I was roommates with a guy I worked with at Relapse Records, also a complete and utter music head like the rest of us. However.
Jeff Wagner: his… I think it was part of just how his personality is, but, like, he never really alphabetized things. He might have all the pentagram records in one spot, and all the ACDC records in one spot, but he wouldn't alphabetize them by name, by artist name.
Jeff Wagner: And so, there were a few times in the year and a half or two years we lived together where he's, like, freaking out because he can't find something he wants to listen to. I'm like, dude!
Jeff Wagner: There's a way to get around that, you know?
Jeff Wagner: I don't think… I think I would drive myself nuts if I didn't have it organized, you know? I thought… I thought that's how everybody did it, but apparently not.
Stephen Skorski: Right, right. Okay, so give me, before we wrap this up, give me 3 albums everybody should go out and buy.
Jeff Wagner: Well, I'm always gonna say Rush Moving Pictures. I think it's a masterpiece of writing, performance, production.
Jeff Wagner: It's a popular one, but, sometimes the cream rises to the top, and that thing is the greatest album of all time.
Stephen Skorski: Alright, awesome.
Jeff Wagner: How about… I'm just gonna throw this out there.
Jeff Wagner: The first version.
Jeff Wagner: And this is very important, the first edition of Typo Negative's Bloody Kisses.
Jeff Wagner: There's a big difference between the one that came out a year later, less than a year later.
Jeff Wagner: just in terms of tracks, track order, some were taken off, one was added. I just think that's a…
Jeff Wagner: album that spans or obliterates genre, really. You have everything from Black Sabbath to Beatles to Doors to…
Jeff Wagner: harrowing doom to, gothic.
Jeff Wagner: stuff. It's just, Bloody Kisses is amazing.
Jeff Wagner: First version, only. God, that's an impossible question, and you know it.
Stephen Skorski: Of course. How about.
Jeff Wagner: Look, look, I, you know, I could list a shit ton of extreme stuff.
Jeff Wagner: But I have a platform for that already, I think I'll go…
Jeff Wagner: Again, very popular record, but one I think should be in almost every…
Jeff Wagner: Collection, if you like anything relating to rock music, or pop music, or art rock music.
Jeff Wagner: Radiohead's OK Computer. I mean, that's, that's probably a top 10 album for me. I just think it's, these 3 albums that I've listed are…
Jeff Wagner: what I consider perfect masterpieces.
Stephen Skorski: Wow, alright, that's awesome.
Stephen Skorski: Alright, before we… before we wrap it up with that one last question, where, you know, you know, plug the podcast, plug the book, tell us where we can find out more about Jeff, you know, and the things you've done.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, well, I think the best way is just the way we've been talking, just, you know, I… I…
Jeff Wagner: I put myself out there, you can know me through…
Jeff Wagner: Radical Research, which is at radicalresearch.org. You can also get it wherever podcasts are, you know, Apple Podcasts has it, Spotify has it, you know, all the platforms have it. If you want to be adventurous and skip around, you know, we've, like I said, we've done… we did a show on Rick Rubin's approach to metal bands.
Jeff Wagner: There's something for everyone, even if it's sort of an obscure left-field sort of thing, so that might be fun. The other thing is, my latest book is on a band called Voivod from Canada, a band I've loved and followed since I was about 16, and I did this with their blessing and with their help.
Jeff Wagner: And I'm very proud of it. It's 540 pages, it's a monster. I describe it as when you get it in the mail, it will drop in your hands like a Chicago pizza pie. It's very heavy.
Jeff Wagner: And that can be found at radicalresearch.org slash voivod. It's on eBay, it's on Amazon.
Jeff Wagner: A few other distributors have it, and I'm very proud of it, and if you have any inkling about this band, or any interest in diving into something different, and just seeing what I do in terms of my writing, it's the first time I did an oral history. It's an oral history because I was inspired by a few
Jeff Wagner: In that format. And so, there's plenty of my narrative. There's plenty of my personality in there.
Jeff Wagner: But I definitely are, you know, Oral histories are…
Jeff Wagner: by design, very quote-heavy. So I did it that way this time. But, there you go. And thanks for talking, Steven, this has been fun to get to know you a little more, and…
Jeff Wagner: I think I have a two-hour interview to do with you about your architecture, background, and your… that's really interesting to me, and we can talk a little… we can talk a little bit about the National League East some more.
Stephen Skorski: Oh, the National… yeah, Phillies, they're… they're my… ugh, they're a heartbreaker right now.
Jeff Wagner: And now, is the National League East maybe the worst in baseball right now? Because, like, four of the teams are, like, under 500.
Stephen Skorski: Terrible. Just, yeah, I mean, my god. Yeah, yeah, well, I would look forward to that. Okay, so let me… and I would, I would, I appreciate you saying that.
Stephen Skorski: So let me just give you one last question here. You… and again, the thing that I, you know, just kind of to reiterate, the way… the thing that I've found most enjoyable about this
Stephen Skorski: It's just the different ways you have engaged with music.
Stephen Skorski: from, you know, kind of the beginning to now, really. I mean, it's pretty rare to find somebody who locks into something
Stephen Skorski: so early on, and then, you know, just, again, engages, you know, and I think that's really the right word. I mean…
Stephen Skorski: It's just… it's so much a part of, you know, kind of who you are.
Jeff Wagner: Oh, God, yeah.
Stephen Skorski: For sure, for sure, for sure. I mean, so I've loved, you know, hearing the description of how you listen, you know, to me, that sounded very, almost meditative.
Jeff Wagner: Yes, yeah, that's a great word. I miss that word, that's great, yep.
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, no, I mean, and I love the way you, you know, kind of talked about the way you research things and, you know, the responsibility you feel to, again, preach the gospel of sort of the music and the bands and the, you know, the things that you love. So, so many different ways you've talked about it.
Stephen Skorski: So, just the last question is, this… all-encompassing…
Stephen Skorski: Relationship that you have with music.
Stephen Skorski: How do you think that…
Stephen Skorski: it helps you to just understand you, yourself, at, like, the core of who you are as a person, you know, like…
Jeff Wagner: I was just talking about… yeah, I was just talking about this with a friend of mine.
Stephen Skorski: Okay, cool.
Jeff Wagner: Palm Hospital from a band called Cynic.
Jeff Wagner: he and I caught up about 5-6 days ago, and he was… you know, we hadn't really…
Jeff Wagner: talked at much length since the fire, and he was curious about the collection, and he was curious about, because he recently moved from LA to San Francisco, and he dumped a lot of books and physical items, and he's a very zen sort of guy, so he was, you know, it was probably, in his,
Jeff Wagner: in his destiny to shed a lot of physical stuff. So we were talking about this, And…
Jeff Wagner: Hold on.
Jeff Wagner: Please edit this, okay?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: And I was just relating to him what happened, and I said, you know, yeah, you know, it's physical stuff, and yeah, it's, you know, it can be burdensome, especially, like, you know, you and I on the baseball field recently talked about books, book collections, and how heavy they are, and…
Jeff Wagner: you know, it's just kind of maybe a good thing that I didn't, we had that conversation, right?
Stephen Skorski: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, yeah, yeah, about how heavy they are, so…
Stephen Skorski: Oh, dragging those things around, it's like, you know, you might as well collect them. Yeah, and I love them.
Jeff Wagner: I know, and I've had to just let them go, but the thing is…
Jeff Wagner: Music for me, whether it's physical or just the stuff in the air.
Jeff Wagner: is very much a reflection of who I am. It's like when you go into somebody's house, and they have a music collection, or a book collection, you look at what's on the shelf, and you understand so much about them. Like, I'm always going toward somebody's collection in their house. You know, I just make a beeline right there, because
Jeff Wagner: It'll tell me a lot about them.
Jeff Wagner: And I love that, you know, and for me, it's the same way. Like, it's… this is the truest reflection of who I am, and music…
Jeff Wagner: the music I listen to is what I am, you know? I mean, I'm more. I don't think there's any music I listen to that really, truly reflects my love of gardening and nature and cats, but, it's all wrapped up in there, and
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, it's… I mean, it's… it's… I often call it DNA, you know?
Stephen Skorski: Okay. Yeah.
Jeff Wagner: It's part of my DNA. And I'm not the first person to say that, but it truly is that. It's that important. So, again, I say, I don't know if I've answered your question, but, there it is.
Stephen Skorski: I love it. Well, cool, Jeff, this has been awesome. I have, really… I've enjoyed it, you know, could this have been 7 hours, 8 hours? Yeah. I mean, you know…
Jeff Wagner: I can, I can go on, yeah, yeah, it's the part of the passion, right?
Stephen Skorski: No, I mean, I… well, and that's the beauty of having podcasts, and multiple episodes and, you know, because…
Jeff Wagner: Sure.
Stephen Skorski: Again, so many things that we just kind of touched upon that, you know, at some point I'd love to hear more about, but I really appreciate your time, and.
Jeff Wagner: Yeah, man.
Stephen Skorski: openness to talk about something that is… and I know you're practiced at it, you know, but it's still really personal.
Stephen Skorski: And, you know, it is something that, it's just really fantastic when somebody shares something that's really meaningful to them, because, I don't know, I'm not sure what else there is in life, you know, besides just…
Stephen Skorski: kind of experiencing the world through other people, you know, and then incorporating some of that into your own existence, and I don't know, somehow, for me, there's this, like, there's something that happens when you get to experience the world through someone else's eyes that makes my life better, which probably makes other lives better, and so I appreciate it.
Stephen Skorski: Jeff, you there?
Jeff Wagner: Appreciate you, appreciate you having me, and get me, you know, the link to this thing, and I'll spread it to all my peeps, the radical research freaks, and elsewhere, so…
Jeff Wagner: We'll get you a few more listeners to your really cool podcast. I love.
Stephen Skorski: Awesome. Yeah. Well, thanks, Jeff, I appreciate it. Well, I hope you have a fantastic night, and we'll see you on Sunday for baseball.
Jeff Wagner: Sunday in the ball field. I'll try to hit another, ripper to you.
Stephen Skorski: Hit a rocket.
Jeff Wagner: I'll do my best while I watch you, you know, leave the yard.
Stephen Skorski: We'll try. Thanks, Jeff. Alright, we'll talk soon.
Jeff Wagner: Sure, man. Alright, bye-bye.