Jughead's Basement - Sub Genre - Lo Fi Interviews with JONAH RAY

Welcome to Jughead’s Basement, sub genre Lo Fi interviews with Hi Fi guests.  Since my band podcasts take an incredibly long time to record, edit and produce, I have decided to explore a sub format where I perform interviews that are a bit more off the cuff, and the guests are encouraged to ask me questions too.  These interviews incorporate all aspects of entertainment, not just music, but theatrical, film and Tv performers plus writers and behind the scenes folks.

I took a trip to Los Angeles to conduct my first 4 in these series, and each time, for different reasons my skills with a professional microphone bottomed out, and in each case I ended up with less than quality recording with some of the funniest smartest hard working entertainment people I know.  I want the interviews to be spontaneous, so instead of trying to redo the interviews I decided to leave them as be, and do what I could to make them sound better.

This second episode is with Jonah Ray, actor, comedian and writer.  Jonah hails from Hawaii and ventured out alone to Los Angeles to make a name for himself.  He considers himself a fan boy.  He definitely knows more about punk rock than I do.  He co-hosted the Nerdist Podcast, plus Comedy Central’s The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail. He has a hilarious parody show on Seeso called Hidden America with Jonah Ray.  He has a podcast of his own called Jonah Raydio, and most important to my girlfriend, he is the current host on the well received reboot of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Netflix.

My friend Pam put me in contact with Jonah, on his podcast Jonah Radio he had played a song by my band Even In Blackouts, then I started hounding him to include me in almost anything he was doing.  Eventually he put me on his podcast, which lead to me meeting his friend David Lyons, who invited me to stay at his house in Los Angeles.  He lives less than a mile away from Jonah, and it just so happened that Jonah was coming over to get David and his tools to enlist him to help panel his closet.  This interview took place before the carpentry began.

The microphone problem in this interview had to do with me using a microphone for Jonah, that made clicks and hisses, then 45 minutes in, when my computer fell asleep and I pressed buttons to reactivate the screen, I accidentally shut down the mic.  So after 45 minutes the episode goes mono and is recorded predominantly from my iPhone sitting just a little bit too close to my side of the table

Jughead's Basement - Sub Genre - Lo Fi Interviews with DINO STAMATOPOULOS

Welcome to Jughead’s Basement, sub genre Lowfi interviews with Hi Fi guests.  Since my band podcasts take an incredibly long time to record, edit and produce, I have decided to explore a sub format where I perform interviews that are a bit more off the cuff, and the guests are encouraged to ask me questions too.  These interviews incorporate all aspects of entertainment, not just music, but theatrical, film and Tv performers plus writers and behind the scenes folks.

I took a trip to Los Angeles to conduct my first 4 in these series, and each time, for different reasons my skills with a professional microphone bottomed out, and in each case I ended up with less than quality recording with some of the funniest smartest hard working entertainment people I know.  I want the interviews to be spontaneous, so instead of trying to redo the interviews I decided to leave them as be, and do what I could to make them sound better.

This first episode is with Dino Stamatopolous, writer, producer and reluctant actor.  You may have seen him as Starburns on the hit show Community.  As a writer he is known for his work with Ben Stiller, Dana Carvy, Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, and the Mr. Show with David Cross and Bob Odenkirk… amongst others.  He has also reached out into production with his company Starburns Industries with his writing friends and collaborators Dan Harmon, Joe Russo II, James Fino and Duke Jonhson  Starburns Industries birthed Dino’s very own Morel Orel and Frankenhole, along with Dan’s Rick and Morty, and Charlie Kaufman’s oscar nominated animated film Anamolisa.

Dino is also the author of a Graphical novel called Trent: A light tragedy with music, which was originally performed in an earlier incarnation at the annoyance theater in 1990.

In 2004 my friend Steve Walker directed my play Four Clowns and a Bench in Los Angeles.  The play was a success but the audiences still did not come.  When Steve came back to Chicago to report on that status of the show he told me one of the highlights was on a night when there was only about 4 people in the audience, he heard strong supportive laughing from beginning to end.  And the close of the play, this man named Dino Stamatopoulos stood up and gave it an ovation.  I said that was cool, but had know idea who Dino was.  We had gone to the same college, Columia College in Chicago, but I didn’t know the lore of the man.  When I did a little searching I decided to send him a message and thank him for coming.  He responded immediately and thanked me for the play.  We have been in contact ever since.

The microphone problem in this interview had to do with me accidentally deleting all the audio files from his microphone while uploading them into my editing program.  So it is fairly ironic when we joke about it being MY podcast, because little did we know at the time that MY iPhone used to record myself, placed in front of me, would be the only surviving audio recording