**** Producer's Note: The following is a general transcript of LCC Connect's weekly radio program. Contents include but may not be limited to podcasts, program imaging, announcements, and PSAs. More detailed and accurate transcripts of the podcast episodes featured in this broadcast can be found at LCCconnect.com or by following the links provided in the show notes of this episode. ****

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Now Spinning, the official podcast of the Lansing Community College Vinyl Record Club. We meet twice a month to listen to vinyl and talk about music. Stay tuned to learn about how you can get in touch with us and attend our meetings. All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome back.

Hi.

Today in the room with me, I have Iris Maurici, Leo Ackerman, and Jacob Zokvik.

And the host here is that forgot to introduce himself first.

And of course, I am still Simon Medina. All right, welcome, everybody.

I'm sorry, I couldn't.

It's okay. I set myself up for it. Today's topic is a nice meeting we had on September 24, 2024. There was no theme for this meeting, but that doesn't mean that people didn't bring some very interesting music before the meeting started. Of course. Usually somebody will put on, like, a very, like, long jazz song or something, and we got to sit there and listen to it. And today's was Isis and Osiris by Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders.

Oh, two of my favorites. Alice Coltrane is the wife of John Coltrane, who, after John Coltrane passed, took a big leap into spiritual jazz alongside Pharaoh Sanders, who was sort of one of John Coltrane's students. In a way. This is an incredible collaboration between the two. I cannot recommend it enough. If you like jazz and you like things that are pretty and beautiful, I. I can't recommend it enough. I. It's hard to describe jazz with words because it's all instrumental, but it's very lush, very technical, very atmospheric. I love it to death.

Very good song.

Yeah.

I don't. I know even less about jazz than you do, but I thought I liked it. I was very nice.

I'm not very familiar with Alice Coltrane, but Pharaoh Sanders, it's like. It's all kind of long, it's all kind of slow, but, like, with bursts of energy. And it's so, like, complex without being just noisy. And that's one of those things that, like, jazz can very quickly slip into. And he always kind of nails it.

Yeah, yeah. Pharaoh Sanders has been one of my favorites for years. Love all of his work. Can't recommend it enough. Once again.

Nice, beautiful.

Good start. Yeah, yeah.

Moving on, though, we've got something a little bit different. That is a thrash metal song off of the album Infest the Rat's Nest by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Friends of the show. They show up every time. We can't get away from them.

But that's only played at almost every

meeting that's because they're so gosh darn good. I tell you what, they have a

genre for every single meeting, every single topic. You can play something, you can't get away from it.

We play like Rat's Nest at almost every meeting. Well, that's because it turns out everybody likes the heavy stuff.

No, like, there's like, three different people bring in Rat's Nest, like, on separate days without knowing that the other person brought it in.

It's.

It's magical. But, yeah, this song is Mars for the Rich. That's a powerful title. All their albums are, like, a little bit thematic, but this one especially is, like, about climate change, I think, a little bit. So, like, a lot of the songs on it are kind of.

I think you're thinking of Petro Draconic. Yeah.

Okay. I know all of them are kind

of Mars for the Rich is. Mars for the Rich is directly talking about how, like, a better life for the rich will be available after climate change kills the planet. They'll leave the poor people behind to drown and die on Earth while everyone else migrates.

They got a lot of songs like that. They dive into that subject a lot. Especially on this album, I think. Especially more later, though, on their other thrash metal album. Not to be confused with this one, which is also very good.

Yeah, this is like a real bluesy cut, I think it's like early metal, but it doesn't feel like a pastiche or a tribute. It just feels like a modern band of dudes maybe making cool music.

Yeah, that's the best way to describe King Giz, I think. It's just a modern band of cool dudes making music.

Yeah. And extremely talented musicians should probably be snuck into that sentence somewhere.

Yeah. Cool dudes. Yeah, that's what I said. Right.

Anyway.

And then Twisted Sisters. Metal, Right? We'll call that metal.

Yeah.

Glam metal.

I think they would be. Maybe you would. So I know for effect, Dee Snyder doesn't like the term glam metal, but, yeah, heavy metal, basically. Bordering on hair metal, but kind of different. Yeah. For anybody that doesn't know Twisted Sister, very famous from the 80s and very famous from, like, the MTV era. They are songs we're Not Gonna Take it and I Wanna Rock are everywhere. And everybody heard them, everybody loved them. They were quite controversial at the time. There's your album cover. I don't know why parents would think this was weird in the 80s, but, yeah, I played this song.

Burn in Hell is the song.

Burn in Hell is my personal favorite. Twisted song, Sister song. So we're not gonna take it. I want to rock. Very famous. Very, like, screw you, mom and dad. But like, my. You know, my parents were almost adults by the time this came out, but they still were young enough that there's almost a relation to this. And I've heard my mother screaming the lyrics of we're not gonna take it before it happens. And so, like, for me, not that like, ha ha, sticking it to my parents, but let me tell you what, the song Burn in Hell, absolutely my mother would not be okay with. And so when I was like a little teenager, I loved that song because it was still. It was still me able to be rebellious with music that is way older than even I am.

Right. That's awesome.

But, yeah, so it's. It's personal favorite. And the whole album is very good. It borders on pretty heavy metal at points. Burn in Hell is like, almost. Even has thrash moments. So if you're into it, don't be. Don't be fooled into thinking it's glam metal. It's. It's got some pretty cool stuff on there.

Yeah. I feel. I feel like saying the word glam metal is almost an insult because that conjures up a lot of imagery of, like, over the top. Like, I mean, this is over the top, obviously. Look at that album cover. I don't know what else to call it. Like, yeah, you know what I mean? Like, the musicianship isn't there, but like,

yeah, I'll call them out right now. They're not. They're not glam metal. They're glam rock. And it's the insult. I think there is a bit more

appropriate, I suppose, something. Anyway, yeah, good song. Good album. Yeah.

I kind of just wanted to honorable mention the song I played.

Oh, okay.

Yes, of course.

Yeah, of course. So I played a song From Kingdom Hearts, one I sing a crossroads that I'm not sure exists. Maybe it does. I'm a fan of Kingdom Hearts. I am not a fan of Disney.

Oh, yeah, I get it.

And Kingdom Hearts is for the uninitiated,

a. I can't wait to hear what you are about to say.

It is a crossover kind of collaborative effort. Well, collaborative effort. The effort completely going to the Final Fantasy writer. But it is a collaboration between Disney and Final Fantasy.

Specifically the studio, Square Enix.

Right, Specifically Square Enix. But I don't think there's any characters that aren't Final Fantasy characters from Square Enix properties. There's no Dragon Quest characters or anything, which would be kind of fun. But I'M not a Disney fan. I am a Kingdom Hearts fan. Tetsuya Nomura, you know, the writer for many, many Final Fantasy games and also for Kingdom Hearts. He has turned the storyline into something. It's something.

I'd use the term a jumbled mess, but, you know, you could call it whatever you'd like.

I've had it explained to me by people at least three different times. And every single time, I feel like I couldn't take a single piece of it. I didn't understand a single piece of it.

Hey, write us a letter if you want me to explain to you.

You don't. We don't actually. We don't actually take letters. There's going to be no letters. Yeah, write us a meeting. Come to the meeting. Come to the meeting.

Come to the meeting. We'll explain Kingdom Hearts lore to you, I promise.

She'll explain Kingdom Hearts to you.

Leo can help.

Someone will explain it. We'll find somebody.

Anyway, so this is a game that I kind of just got into around last year when I was doing not much else. And I really like it. And Kingdom Hearts 1 has a good soundtrack. It's not a very good game. Play Kingdom Hearts 1 if you care about the story. Start with Kingdom Hearts 2 if you like good games. Continuing Rock Lobster time, anyway.

Oh, yeah, Somebody played Rock Lobster after that.

Oh, goody.

Back to. This is one of the greatest songs ever written, I have to say. Like, it's a beautiful. I mean, I say this not even as a joke. I just love this song. I adore it. It's just like the surf punk thing and then just the lyrics about Mozart left. Right. Mozart Wept.

It has so much energy.

Oh, God.

And that's. It's one of those funny things where, like, if any other band had played this, it would have been like almost a punk song. Or, like. And it's actually quite close already. Like, it's like I said, it's like, it's. It's heavy and in. In, like the way the riff is played and the way the riff is used, and it really is. It's driving. The song is way longer than a punk song should be.

No.

Yeah, naturally.

The album version's like seven minutes long, which is insane.

But they're not long enough. The whole band is insane.

Oh, what? The B52 is absolutely.

Which. Great. Don't ever change. Like, I love.

No, that's the beautiful thing.

Yeah.

It's really hard to describe the B52 sound because, like you said, there's a lot of punk stuff. There. But also they feel distinctly separate from that movement. Like, of course, they're part of the whole new wave art punk scene.

Disco, even. There's a lot of that that makes its way in.

Are they from. I don't know if they're from New York, but they definitely give me a. They feel like they would be somewhat associated with the talking heads types in the CBGB scene because they're just off the wall. But they're still punk at the roots, which is wild.

Yeah.

Especially not the reputation that they have now at all.

Yeah.

Love Shack. But they're not there yet. Quite pre love.

I mean, I'm a. I hate to sound like a dweeb, but I love the song Nobody.

You don't like that. If you hate the song Love Shack, you're like, you have no joy in your heart. That's all there is.

What if it's.

You're not welcome?

Like, let's. Let's just say, hypothetically, a high school production of a terrible musical.

Oh, my.

Well, see, I could. I could see that. But.

Choreograph dance that you got to do.

Mmm.

Well, I don't know if you have an excuse for that, because I was.

I think there is a. There is a love shake dance. Right? Is there like that? Like, people regularly used to do, like, there was a normal choreographed dance that went with it.

And I was gonna say. I was. I was present for a high school production of Mamma Mia. And I only love Abba, like, 50 times more now, so I think it's just you.

I don't know.

I'm the problem. But again, this is a hypothetical.

Hypothetically. Yeah, well, hypothetical, you would be the problem.

I see. Okay, continue.

Very good. And then a song that got played that I talked about at length, or at least the whole album attached to it was 21:22 by Geese off the album 3D country. It's very good. I love this song. I love this album. But this song is also just very great. I love the intro to it. You just put the needle on the record and you just kind of sit there, and then he just starts screaming at you. And then it just jumps right into the song.

They're making Southern rock cool again.

Yes, they are. They're bringing it back.

It's this wonderful hybrid of, like, off the wall punk and unbridled love for Southern rock. Like, a very clear, like, Southern singer influence. Like, I can definitely hear, like, Greg Allman influencing the way he sings stuff. Very over the top. It's Geese.

It's Geese.

It's Geese.

Incredible band. Love this album. It's good.

I had never heard of this before and I've not gone and listened to other stuff yet. But I specifically added this song to. Okay, go check this stuff out later.

No, yeah, it's very.

You got me with it.

That's the goal. That was the goal all along. It's very great. Anyway, I literally talked about this in a different episode, the whole album. So we're just gonna keep it moving along a little bit. Yeah, I could talk more about it, but I don't want to. I want to, but we have. We have things to get to anyway. Peter Tosh.

Oh, yeah. So another song that I played at the meeting is Wanted by Peter Tosh. One of my all time favorites. Best reggae musician ever. Come at me. Bob Marley fans. For reference, Peter Tosh taught Bob Marley how to play guitar. So you don't have Bob Marley without Peter Tosh. One of Bob Marley's friends. Outstanding reggae musician. Very influential in that kind of like 70s, into the 80s, development of it into like a mainstream music, and just really good. This whole album in particular, as is actually very complex. There's faster songs, there's slower songs. There's like some amount of emotional depth in it that you don't necessarily immediately expect. You know, you expect sort of rebellious or counterculture things with it, but, you know, like talks about personal stuff also. And I think that's very cool in a genre that you don't necessarily. That gets a bad rap as being kind of, you know, silly, which is totally not fair. Like, even Bob Marley has so much more depth than anybody gives it credit for. But let's be honest, most people listen to greatest hits and that doesn't get you very far. But yeah, love Peter Tosh. Highly, highly recommend. Especially if you like reggae. I mean, it's. You have to. But even if you don't like Bob Marley. I like Bob Marley just fine. But Peter Tosh, in my mind, blows him out of the water. It's just a different style. He wrote a lot of the music for the Wailers early on. Peter Tosh did. But once he. He kind of left that group and they did their own thing. He takes the sound and it's just a bit more chill, smaller instrumentation. You know, the ensemble itself isn't as big and it just feels like a. An even nicer vibe.

Nice. Yeah. That's great album, honestly. Yeah, there was a lot that. There was a lot to take in. No, you. I'm sorry. No, that's awesome.

I like Passionate about it go on for 20 minutes.

But no, that's.

That's good though.

That's good.

Quick note. Before we move on, I just want to say I really like the album titled Dread and Alive. Really?

Like that? Yeah.

I think that's fun.

I believe it's actually Wanted, Dread and Alive.

Wanted, Dread and Alive.

Wanted, Dread and Alive.

It's not like Wanted, like that's title track.

No. So the title track is actually Wanted, Dread and that's the song I played. I just call it Wanted because I'm lazy and I don't know if he says the words dread and alive in the song. I'm pretty sure the chorus is Wanted dead or alive. Like the actual phrase that everyone's familiar with. So I don't know. I don't know what that's all about. I probably could have researched that, but I didn't. So that's where we're at.

Alright, next. What do we got?

First, I don't really know if I can say anything about the song, but I just want to say the name of this band here. The Marxist Love Disco Ensemble. I have no idea what this is, but that's just a powerful name. That's all I have to say about it.

Cool name.

Anyway, a little bit of a left turn here. Bob Dylan. This song off the album Blood on the Tracks. Which incredible album. I want to say it's a classic. I don't. Might be his. Might be his best, second best, maybe up. It's up there. I love this album so much. It's what. It's probably his most emotional album. Like it's most personal album, I would say maybe because it was definitely made at a time in his life when he was really going through a lot of, you know, very important personal changes and all that. And I think that every song somehow relates back into that.

It feels like Dylan at his most, like embittered and right. Like it's a very sour record. It's. It's kind of ugly to listen to, but it's incredible. Like the songwriting is incredible.

Oh yes. It's his best in like a decade almost, I'd say for like it's all discography wise anyway.

Do you have to be emotionally prepared before you listen to it? Is it that there are parts where

like it really hits you? Like there's one song, Shelter from the Storm, I listen to that one. That one gets me a lot. I listen to that. If you like gone through like heartbreak and that kind of stuff, you'll listen to it and you'll really? You can start empathizing with it, I think, a lot.

Very divorced record.

Yeah. No, that's what I was gonna say. It's like. It's a very divorce. One of the most divorced albums ever made.

On a less divorced note, next we have Mona, off of Beach Boys Love youe.

Oh, my goodness, I love this. This album is. I don't know how I could start describing it, but.

Kooky.

Kooky. Yes. It's not the best Beach Boys album, but it's. No. God, no. I just love it. It's very. It's very quirky and interesting. Essentially, it is just Brian Wilson with a synthesizer and a drum kit and a dream, basically. And he plays pretty much every instrument on Hit Himself. He writes all of the lyrics on it, which. He's a great songwriter. Like, melodies and all that. Lyrically, he tries his best. But as far as, like, the music itself goes. Like, the melodies are all there, but it's just played very, like, differently. Like, the way that it's mostly synthesizer, but not in, like, a. Like, the way you'd think, like, synth pop would be. It's all like. Like a heavy, like, Moog bass stuff. He plays that a lot on there.

I was just gonna say it's experimental even today, in ways you wouldn't really expect it. Because he wasn't using the synthesizer as, like, an instrument with its own rules. Like, there's not much in way of, like, arpeggios and, like, you know, a bunch of changing timbres and whatnot. He's using it as a substitute for actual instruments. Which is not something that I think the modern listener is really acclimated to.

It wasn't really, like, ahead of its time as much as it was just outside of it.

I think it was exactly its time. So originally, a lot of synthesizers were marketed to musicians as instrument replacement, right? Like this. This will replace your entire band. You can use this in a recording session. A lot of, like, the early push with, like, more mobile synthesizers. Like, once we got away from the Moog and stuff, it was very much with the intention of, like, this synth can replace your entire horn section, right? And he can replace your orchestra. And.

And he definitely. Yeah, he definitely got a lot of use out of that. But, like, I think it, like, of any. Of any album, this kind of went a little bit further than most bands would in that, like, there's basically. There's drums, guitar, bass, but anything else is basically just. In fact, a lot of time the bass is also synthesized. So it's really Just guitar, drums. Another thing about it is that this is not Brian Wilson at his vocally best. As in, like in between this album and the last time he sang on an album, he smoked about, I think like 10,000 cigarettes or so. So his voice, yeah, really very. An acquired taste, I would say. He does not sound good at all. But I think that adds to it. Lyrics are very like, childish. Childish?

Yeah.

It's like his mental state at the time, he was just like getting out of gears of like, drug abuse and he'd like very like serious mental problems. And this was kind of him coming out of it and this was him trying to, you know, move away from it. The juxtaposition between like the like the childish, like escapist lyrics and stuff and like the gruff, like, heavy smoker voice, it's really. It adds something, I think.

I think escapist is the best word you could really use to describe it. It feels like this guy who has reached middle age is trying to like, clamor back for the music he made when he was younger that made him happy. That is like his safe space. And to hear him with his gravelly voice singing that atop of these very of the time instrumentals is just a really interesting contrast.

And like, this song especially is like. Mona is basically like a Phil Spector pastiche, basically, except it's all synthesizer and there's like these really loud, like, chimes on it. And I don't think he actually sings this one. I think it's a Dennis Wilson, his brother singing.

I think it is Dennis.

But he also. His voice is also not sound like anything it used to, you know, in the 60s. But again, I think it adds to the ambiance. Especially like he literally, in the song, he just name drops Phil Spector and he says he's cool, which is really just kind of what I'm talking about when I say the. Lyrically, he's just like naming stuff that he likes and like, you know, he's trying to go back to that.

What have we got up next?

Can we sneak in and just talk about Grimes?

Let's get Grimes. Let's get Grimes out of the way.

Grimes. Notorious ambient pop artist. Extremely influential in her field. I don't really know where to start with Grimes, because she is so prolific in her work.

It was Oblivion that was played at the meeting. I mostly. I just know that song also because a couple of years ago, I think kind of pre Covid, it was on one of those college stations almost all the time. So that's mostly just Where I know her from.

It still gets played on 88. 9. Yeah, quite a bit.

Yeah, I believe that.

No complaints here. I mean, it's a beautiful song. Very spacey, almost dream poppy in its approach, but instead relies on like synthesizers and sampling rather than like bunch of chorus y guitars and whatnot.

Right.

Yeah, she really kind of started the wave of that. I think if. If not started it, she definitely helped like catapult it into the success it has today.

Right.

Beautiful song. It's. It's. It's Oblivion by Grimes.

It really is. After that, we have two artists who, I mean, like, you'd expect to hear them, but like not in the record club, I'd say. Yeah, but like it's. It's not that it's bad, it's just unexpected.

I'm glad they got played.

Yes. And that would be Chapel Ro and then Sabrina Carpenter. But we can talk about Chapel Roan first. Let's talk about Chapel Roan.

Chapel Roan.

Chapel Roan.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my God. So this era that we are in of female pop singers is one of my favorites in pop music in years.

It feels like a renaissance.

It is. I feel like it is. There's like, there's Chapel Rowan, there's Sabrina Carpenter, who like, I didn't love very much before now, but I guess I do.

Even Charli xcx, who's been around for a while and I could talk about for hours. She's getting her dues now. It feels like these like forward thinking women in pop are finally getting the dues that they deserve. And Chapel Roan is kind of the poster child for that. She rose from years of really not being known.

She has yet to fall.

Yeah.

Little joke.

Yeah.

She's. I don't know. Chapel Roan is just a very fresh voice in pop, bringing in influences from Electro Clash on some songs. Just great synth pop. Almost glammy in her approach. Like on the COVID of Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which is her debut and only studio album as of this point. She's just very inspired by glam pop artists and like Bowie. Maybe not sonically, but aesthetically, surely.

Yeah.

And also Cyndi Lauper. Big Cyndi Lauper vibes from her.

I hear it now that you say that. I never thought about it like that. But now you say Cyndi Lauper. I'm like, okay. Yeah, it's there.

Especially the excessive blue eyeshadow.

Oh, yeah.

That is lifted directly from Cyndi Lauper.

Oh, yeah.

I see like clips of her live performances sometimes and I love her looks all the time. There's like that Joan of Arc look that she did. Oh my goodness. There's like them. There's Ke$ha doing her comeback. Absolutely fantastic. Did you not know? Okay. She's finally. Now that you know, all of the business TM is settled, more or less, she's starting to make her comeback wild. I really want to see. I haven't looked. If Joyride is ever going to be.

I think it has to be on the next record at the very least.

Yeah. And if it is, I'm going to be playing it, I'm going to be talking about it. So I might hold off on talking about it for now.

Okay.

Right.

And moving on from Chapel Roan to Sabrina Carpenter, another great pop star. I don't really have as much to say about Sabrina Carpenter because she isn't as openly experimental with her image as, as Chapel Roan is. But still it's just like great, solid pop tunes. It's cheeky, it's fun, it's entertaining.

Speaking of cheeky, have you heard the radio edit for Please Please Please?

Yes, I have. She's just, she's almost like a Katy Perry but with self awareness.

Okay. Big difference. Big thing right there.

She's very self aware, very silly, but never in a way that feels like, I don't know, patronizing or.

Yes.

Or like haha.

Like she's enjoying herself.

See, I'm not gonna like sit here and defend Katy Perry super strong. I'm not like a huge Katy Perry fan or anything, but I think that Katy Perry gives those vibes.

She does. But, but I feel like at some point she did take herself a bit too seriously.

Yeah, yeah.

As a bit there. But there was also like, I mean like the early days of Katy Perry, like every interview and things was like she seemed goofy.

She built her brand off of relatability.

Yeah.

Because she's, you know, silly and quirky and just like you. And now she's on something of a pedestal. She's just not relatable anymore. So it, it doesn't work when her new songs are about female empowerment and it sounds like it's AI generated, you

know, but yeah, closing out the, like the, the pop star ramble went on. Do we have anything else that we really want to touch on?

Actually, Can I sneak one in?

Yeah, you can sneak one in. Go ahead.

What, what did you just say? What was the sentence you just said? I really liked the sound of it. It was something about female empowerment.

Yeah.

Speaking of female empowerment, I, I played Helen Reddy I Am Woman classic, like genuinely classic feminist anthem. I think it came out in the early 70s. I probably should have looked that up beforehand. But yeah, I, I got this record

for a dollar 1972.

I. I had never really listened to Helen Reddy before. I knew the song I Am Woman literally just because of feminism. And it's great. It was something that could really be rallied around. And my understanding is that Helen Reddy really did like sit down one day and say there's no music for women. Like that is like to empower women. Like, I'm gonna write it. And she did, and it's her biggest hit and was hugely successful and probably influenced quite a few people to really say, you know what? I am a woman. I can do stuff. I hope so anyway. It seems like it a pretty big deal at the time and it's actually just kind of a genuinely good song. Like it sounds really nice, very high energy without being over the top at all. You know, she is still basically an easy listening singer, but she's belting it on, on some of those vocals in there and it's very exciting.

Very good. Yeah. Well, I think that does wrap it up for everybody though. It was a very interesting discussion today. It's not often we get to like talk about modern pop music, I think. Oh yeah, that never gets brought in here ever. And then.

But don't be afraid to bring it to you.

Absolutely. That's good. We like hearing it.

We need more of this.

It's a very open, accepting group of people. If you want to learn about how you can attend meetings and learn about our meeting schedule and themes, you can check out our website. They'll be linked with the show. We meet twice a month. Of course. Like I said at the beginning, we're open to anybody. Whether you're a student, you're a staff, a community member, you have any amount of interest in vinyl, whether you have been collecting for your whole life, you only have a couple of them, or you literally don't own any and you just want to expand your musical horizons. There is probably no better place to do it than here at the record club. I guess you could tell from today pretty much anything can and will get played there. Bring your favorite stuff. We will love to talk about it. Bye bye.

Bye bye.

Love you.

Love you. Bye bye.

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lcc, this Is Starz on Sports. Calm down and celebrate with me tonight. We'll all go wild after our victory. Calm down, Go wild. Well, I'll have a real good time. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I'm joined by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter and our producer, Dadalion Lowry. And gentlemen, today we're going to be talking about. I don't even like to use the word but failure, because in our world and even in my office, I use sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. So, you know, it seems like our office uses the word learn more than we do failure. But failure is a big part of our job and a big part of life, and it has a negative kind of tone for many people and it leads them down paths of, you know, we'll even talk about risk taking because again, I think that's where we started. Last one of our previous podcasts, how we just touched on failure and even as a motivation in sports, but. And how often it happens and how much is it focused on. So what do you think when you think of the word failure? The positive, negative, what do you think?

I think that it really determines how much frequency you have for how impactful it can be. But I think in the sports world, you typically hear things like, failure is feedback.

I'd say I typically will try to approach failure with a learning thing, but, you know, it's hard not to get lost in that sometimes.

So that's kind of where the frequency comes in.

Yeah, I think that a lot of

it, it's super challenging.

And, you know, there's two quotes that have come out in public recently that I think really hit on the word failure. And one was by Michael Jordan, one was by Roger Federer, who are two of the best in their sport all time. And I don't have it in front of me, but Michael Jordan talks about how many game winning shots he missed, how many free throws he missed, how many games he lost. And in the end, though we remember him for the game winners he hit, the number of points he did score. And the same with Roger Federer had even a better one about he only won like 50% of his points, but he was still one of the best all time. And the other example that comes up a lot, I think I listened to one of your podcasts with one of your student athletes who talks about 3 out of 10, the hall of Fame career in baseball of hitting the ball three out of 10 times. So you failed seven times out of that. Again, I'm a math genius here for figuring that out. For you guys.

But the difference is though, sometimes when you're looking at the professional athletes is they keep going, they keep playing. And because they're providing action, you can see that they do have some successes beyond just the failures, where maybe not in the professional world, a lot of times you experience failure, it becomes a stopping point, a fork in the road, and sometimes it's a U turn and you don't keep going. But in sports with the professional side, they do keep going. And so they may miss shots, they, they may strike out, they, they may fumble the ball, but they, they get another one and they may score a touchdown. And that's the kind of the difference between the sports and the real world because they keep providing the action where oftentimes when we experience failure, it becomes pretty detrimental and we don't want any more of that.

Well, especially back to your point of frequency and if you get in a slump or if you fail too many times, you could lose your job or lose your position and that even can impact your performance playing tight or thinking about that. And I know in your program you do a lot of visualization of successful things happening. And I think that becoming a trained attribute of more program because of the importance.

But you're not, you're not only trying to visualize successful things happening. You're trying to put yourself in situations where they're going to be tense and they're going to be some. You're experiencing failure because if you're just Visualizing sunny in 75 all the time and it's not, then you're like, why isn't it sunny in 75 right now? I don't know what's wrong. What am I doing wrong? You have to put yourself in situations of experiencing the other side of the coin.

And we talked about that before about trying to practice those situations. And it can be hard to duplicate. But I want to go back to your point of. One of the best quotes I've heard was it's hard to beat someone that doesn't give up. And when you really think about that in sports, we have innings or score clocks and we've seen teams that just ran out of time that were, you know, catching up to the team. But to your point about pro athlete, just keep on going. Even we've seen where that can overcome talent is by doing it over to keep going at it. And I think that's so important. And you, I know you've done podcasts on perseverance before, but I think it's even more important in failure because when you experience failure in something, it, it can change your mindset, as we talked about at the beginning. But one of my favorite cartoons is like a guy digging a tunnel and it's a long tunnel and he quits. And if you pull back, he's like two feet away from getting through to the other side. And how many people quit when they're that close to success because they've experienced their share of failure? And I think that's true in a lot of teams and individuals in sport participation that the frequency of failure could prevent them from continuing in how close they are to success.

Well, I hate to be the pessimist in the group, but at the same time, you've got the other side of the coin. What if the guy keeps trying to dig but doesn't seem to ever get to the end? Which is some stuff that I've dealt with in my life where I'm like, I know I've got to get, I'm going to get there, but I just don't. But in that we got Thomas Edison's quote, I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Love it.

So I guess if you look at it from that viewpoint, there's some success in knowing what not to do.

I use an example like when we have our share of rain in the spring in baseball and softball, lcc and we use diamond dried or some drying agent to put on our field. And I always joke, like, surface, Surface, yeah, Turface. And what a plug for them. Thank you. Sponsored today by. But anyway, we have it in our budget, but it can be an expensive game if you use a lot of turfist to spread on the field. And at some time to your point of that digging, you almost put too much on and it might not work, but you're past the point of, well, we've already put too much on. Well, we have to keep going. And the key is, I think the key to success is knowing when or when not to stop. And that's, you know, probably earlier in that decision, but you know, we talk about stop, go, continue in our office and choosing your battle because going too far into something and wasting that. Like, you know, Brian King said before, if you're hitting the ball 100 miles to the left but the holes to the right, you're not going to be successful no matter how far you hit it. That knowing when to stop or knowing when to accept failure and either pivot directions or change sports is a key factor in being successful too. So I agree. Perseverance is huge. But you're right, if you're digging a hole the wrong way and you keep going, you're never going to get there.

I mean, I'm trying to think of some personal projects that have done that, but I know I've experienced that where. Just does not seem like I'm going to get to the end of that project, whatever it is.

My wife would give you a number of them for me.

Still working on the gutters then, huh?

Yeah, I got a temporary solution for the. For the winner. My wife helped me and we did a nice job of patching that. She had some good ideas. We don't always work well together and trying to solve it, but. But we did get that one accomplished, so. Good example. Well, now we're hitting on lattice failures. You start with yours, but you go right to mine. Couldn't think of any of yours, but. Yeah, but you thought one of mine. Just like that. You want to talk parking today, too?

I'm a producer. I'm supposed to throw it over to you.

Thanks. Well done. Touche.

How is the parking going?

Better, A lot better. But frankly, the last week I've struggled. I don't know if my death perception's getting bad, but I've been mad at my parking the last week, but up until then, I've been doing pretty good, and I have a wider car now, even so. So it's very important to me, but there you go. Keep working on it. But I failed in many ways in parking and home improvement projects that I'm not very handy at. But. And even at lcc, I mean, we have a strong tradition of being successful here, and I think we focus a lot on those. But when you look back, I mean, our teams haven't gone undefeated or they haven't necessarily won certain championship, but we still look back as having successful seasons. I mean, in the end, if you're going, and we've talked about the scoreboard before, one team gets that success on that last game compared to the other hundreds of teams that are participating in that sport. Even when you go to a national tournament, there could be eight to 20 teams there. Only one's going to win it, so that it a failure for some of the other ones. And I didn't have this on my notes today, but there have been some good talk about this in life. The Milwaukee Bucks, Giannis had some. You know, he. They won a championship a couple of years ago and haven't really gotten real close again. And so they keep asking him about failure, and I think he's had some good answers about that hasn't defined us that, you know, we are. You know, we didn't win at all this year. And then the Tennessee baseball coach, Tony Vitalo, had a great. I have it somewhere saved on a picture about, you know, when you look at just one game, it could be a failure, but there could be a lot of wins within that game. You know, when you look at a national championship, that's one game in a season, but you still could have a lot of wins in that season. So there's. There's even, you know, as we talk about microscopic views or telescopic views on your season of. Everyone focuses on that one at the end, even the last play of a game, you know, we focus on that. But there could have been a lot of good things that happened during that game that. That were successful. But we get so focused on maybe one attribute where there were a lot of other successes in that story. One kid could have had a great game, that game, which he alluded to, you know, like someone stepped up even though we lost. So it's all perspective, too. And we. And in sports, we focus on the statistics of win losses or points or, you know, there's other statistics we could look at being successful. Like, you know, our women basketball coach who's had a nice successful run, has really worked on defensive stats, how we've been top five in defensive stats in the country, especially blocked shots over the last year. And she emphasizes that one of the. This will be another podcast down the line because this is kind of the quote that hit me over the last week and I think I talked to you about it, that what is praised is repeated. And back to when you win or do something good, that kind of fits into that phrase that you'll continue to do that where if you fail back to Thomas Edison, that's a way not to do it right. And back to learning from it by. But for some reason, failure has such a negative connotation that it can be very impactful on your performance.

Well, ultimately, we just get kind of stuck in those situations where we dwell on the failures. And I would imagine that's got to happen at the plates. Somebody who's just in a slump. Is that what they call it?

Yeah, that's what they call it.

Where they get that negative mind process in their brain.

And.

And so as a result, they just continue to fail when they get up to that step, up to the plate.

And most of the time, it's not that they've forgotten how to hit. They've Forgotten what success looks like.

Yeah.

And there are two other things I'd like to hit on. That is one, the other person is having success. Like when you think of like the batter strikes out, well, the pitcher struck him out. So that is success for possibly somebody else. And the other is how you handle it, which we've talked a lot about, is, you know, the, I think failure gets a lot of negative connotation in sports because people come up with excuses when they fail. Instead of making it, switching it, and figuring out how to move forward and make it a positive situation and owning up to it. Because, you know, that's why I don't always use a scoreboard, because I want to be the best team. But sometimes that team could be better than us. And if we play our best, you know, that still can be something we build on.

I'm also thinking about my golf game. As always, anytime we get into these

conversations, you're all parking and handyman.

As I think about it, I, I, I can definitely tell you the more I focus on some of those bad shots, more of those bad shots occur.

So I think golf's a great example of that. Like, because they're in baseball in their, the swing is so intricate that usually when you don't think about it, you, you have a nice motion where thinking about going back slow, going back straight, hold, keeping my arms straight. And I think that makes you lose focus and on the thing that will help you be successful. And I'm sure you do a lot of that in baseball, overanalyzing the situation.

We just talk about keeping things simple. If you're gonna run a race against somebody else and they, they say go, and you take off, you're not going to be thinking about what your right arm's doing or, or what your left leg's doing or how hard your feet are going into the ground, you're just running. And I think the, a lot of what you're saying is, comes down to effort and action. And if you can put in extreme amounts of effort and action, and what teams are typically looking for is, there's two words. There's conditional and unconditional. And what you will see from, we'll say middle of the road teams is they'll put in conditional effort or conditional actions. And those conditional things will be based upon what the scoreboard says. Those conditional things would be based upon maybe if they're a starter, if they're a second string, third string. And the great ones put in unconditional effort. And it doesn't have to do with those extrinsic things. It's. It's an intrinsic thing. And so you'll see the great teams put in a lot of unconditional.

Well done, Mr. Cutter. Well done. Because that leads me to a couple of things that. Yeah, that preparation and planning can help with that failure. And I like the word intentional, as I've shared with you, intentional practice. And I saw it firsthand in our cross country team this fall at the national championship. You know, some teams did start out fast to try and get that lead, and we tracked our team, and they were third at the first mile or first kilometer, second in the middle of the race and first toward the end, and then finished first. And they had a plan and they practiced it and they worked it, and that led to probably less failure than being in a tense situation and going out and letting those emotions catch you and go out and run fast. Another example. So preparation, I think, is a big part of that. I was going to send this to you last night, but Dan Campbell, who at some time we're going to talk about on this podcast, which we have already, he's the Detroit Lions head football coach, and he really intrigues me with his style, and I embrace it, but I just want to know if it works or doesn't work. Well, it has worked to the highest level, but he came out last night, and the thing is that, you know, talking about quit making excuses for all the injuries they have, you know, he worked at, talked about how success can lead to complacency, which leads to failure. And these injuries are them getting punched in the mouth, which is a podcast that we have used before. And you know what? Suck it up. I mean, persevere. We know what we're dealing with. And the best thing that happened to us, he said that was losing, because now we'll go back to. And he compared it to drinking, eating FL mignons, to eating bread that they started with bread and now they've experienced filet mignons, and now they're back to bread. And this will make them hopefully work harder. But failure can do that. Some coaches, you know, when you ride a long winning streak into the postseason, some want to kind of lose right before that to maybe refocus or reap. I don't ever want to lose, but the intent is that because of, you know, winning a lot can lead to complacency or that experience failure can help you refocus.

Yes. Complacency is a large thing in teams, and it's a word I despise.

I saw you over there.

But it comes down to stay humble, stay hungry.

Yeah.

Yeah. And again, even doing staying humble and hungry, you could still fail. But back to one of our premises of this podcast is how you respond to failure. And that is something we, in our athletic department, lcc, have tried to use it as a learning thing instead of as a result thing. And even though we've had our share of success and we look back and even in our byline, we talk about all our successes, not our failures, but usually a lot of failure goes into being successful. All right, I think that's a good little shorter, but a good place to end. And so I have kind of two questions for you. And the first question is, is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

Bruce Willis?

Yeah.

I'm gonna say no. I've actually had this discussion before. Every time I think about it, I'm like, yeah, I don't think so. It just takes place at Christmas.

That's it.

That's.

That's just me. That's the way I feel about it.

I've heard a lot of discussion lately on it. I've gone back and forth, and most recently, I am considering it a Christmas movie because it does take place at Christmas and they have. It's not a. It's not centered around Christmas is what some of the people that premise saying. It's not a Christmas movie.

Yeah.

I mean, compared to Elf, that is

not anywhere near Christmas movie.

I mean, that's all I'm saying. You know, I've watched it probably twice in the last couple weeks. I love the movie. It's a great movie. It is a great movie. And you know, again, it has a lot of Christmas. The holiday party at the place of work. Not that we're.

But if I was to put out

a bunch of DVDs that I say are Christmas movies and Die Hards in that I just. I'm not feeling it. You know, it doesn't miracle on 34th Street. Die Hard.

You put it like that, Coach. Cut. You got any thoughts on that?

I think Dadalion's contagious proximity is extremely strong. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna follow him and say no shot.

No shot. Okay. All right. Well, I'm used to being on the short into this. So then let's go into. What is your favorite Christmas movie?

Oh, that is a good question. I have a couple, actually. Grinch is always going to be my favorite. And I'm talking about the classic cartoon version, but other than that, not the Jim Carroll version. I am a Huge fan of Christmas Carol, so you could pick almost any version of that, but I'm always still going to be. The Bill Murray Scrooged version is going to always be my favorite. Go to.

Okay. Okay. Coach Gut, you got anything to add to that?

I think the first thing that comes to mind is National Lampoon's Christmas.

That is a big one.

That.

On another podcast. That was huge. That's not one of mine, but. Okay, good.

No, that'd be in my top three. Easy.

Okay. Any others?

I don't think so.

And it's. It's got one of my favorite holidays tunes in it, too. So the. The one by Mavis Staple. I think that's who does it. It's. It's the beginning. Okay. Yeah, just Christmas Vacation is the name of the tune.

What about you? You know, it's hard because you go back to, like, the older traditional ones, like Miracle on 34th Street's one of my favorites for some reason. You know, when you have kids, it kind of switches perspective. Like, I think some of my kids love elf, as you mentioned, and it is a good movie. Some love Po Express. You know, this year seemed to see Christmas with the Kranks a little bit, which I like Tim Allen, I like the Santa Claus. So I love Christmas movies, actually. So it would be hard for me. You know, the one we didn't mention that seems to be on a lot of people's list is the Christmas Story, but that's not one that our family has really rallied around. It would probably be Elf and Polar

Express, It's a Wonderful Life. I was trying to think, oh, yeah, the other classic. Classic.

Yep.

Yeah.

I don't know why, but my brain would not even go there. I could think of George Bailey, but I could not think of the movie. Yeah, that's a great movie.

It is. And there again, it's a great time of year. Hopefully people are, you know, happy and giving and a lot to be thankful for. If we talk about words, you know, gratitude is a big one in our office. So until then, go Starz. Stars on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ studios. Engineering and production assistants are provided by Dallian Lowery and Journey Robinson. You can listen to the episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand@lccconnect.org to find more information about our athletic program, visit lccstars.com thanks for listening. Be sure to join us next time for more Stars on Sports.

Go stars.

Tonight we'll all go wild after our victory. Calm down. Go wild. Oh, I'll have a real good time.

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