The Age Old Question: A Podcast for Music Fans · Rich Price and Clint Bierman

What Is The Greatest Reference To Another Band?

·39 min·2 clips

Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag” says, “I’ve got two tickets to Iron Maiden, baby.”

1. The Age-Old Question asks what the best reference to another band in a song is, using listener Mark’s follow-up to a previous self-reference episode. 2. Rich Price and Clint Beerman host the show, and they frame the topic as the kind of question they have debated since college. 3. The episode’s goal is to choose the strongest band reference in a song while separating it from diss tracks and outright beef songs. 4. Rich starts with The New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give,” pointing to the line “Fashion shoots with Beck and Hanson” and the names Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson. 5. He adds that Greg Alexander formed the band in 1997 and announced on July 12, 1999 that “The New Radicals will no longer be a recording, promoting, or performing entity.” 6. Rich also notes that Alexander later wrote “Game of Love” for Santana and Michelle Branch on Santana’s 2003 Grammy-winning album. 7. Clint then shifts to Paul Simon’s “The Late Great Johnny Ace” from Hearts and Bones, which he says is one of Simon’s more obscure songs. 8. He explains that the song links Johnny Ace, John F. Kennedy, and John Lennon across 1954, 1964, and December 1980. 9. Rich points out the technical detail of the chord sequence “B-flat major seven to E,” calling it unusual and unnerving. 10. The discussion moves to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” the first track on Born to Run and a record Rich calls critical to Springsteen’s career. 11. Rich focuses on the Roy Orbison reference in “the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely,” tying it to Orbison’s 1960 hit “Only the Lonely.” 12. He also describes how people from New Jersey sing “Thunder Road” in a locked-arm circle at parties. 13. Clint then brings up David Bowie’s “Song for Bob Dylan” from Hunky Dory and quotes “Oh, hear this, Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you.” 14. He links Bowie’s tribute to Dylan’s earlier tribute to Woody Guthrie and the line “Here’s to Cisco and Sonny and Lead Belly.” 15. Clint’s rap pick is Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady,” especially the line about Will Smith not needing profanity to sell records. 16. Rich says the line is funny because of Eminem’s internal rhyming and because the song won a Grammy for best rap solo performance. 17. The tone is conversational and music-nerdy, with both hosts interrupting each other, laughing, and trading memories of songs from college, parties, and radio. 18. The format mixes record history, lyric quoting, and personal listening stories rather than formal ranking or expert analysis. 19. Listeners who like rock history, lyric analysis, and deep-cut song trivia. 20. Listeners who want a short, strictly current-music conversation.

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