What (In The World) Is Questlove Currently Watching On TV?

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Speaker 1: Quest Love Show is a production of iHeartRadio.

00:00:18
Speaker 2: I am cousin Jake, producer of The Quest Love Show. Throughout this season, as you've noticed, we've been doing many episodes. I'm sitting here with Amir Thompson aka Questlove, and you know throughout the year, just drop us a line. Hit us in the dms of the QLs channels. Go to Questlove Supreme dot com. There's a contact us page, but ask questions, give us comments, give us feedback. We're gonna do some themed episodes beyond those questions. If you have any ideas just for these little mini conversations, do let us know, and please be liking subscribing. So we recently on one of these mini episodes of The Questlove Show, we talked about sinners. I want to move from film to television. You know, you talk a lot in passing about shows, and I don't know how you have the time to watch all these different things, plus have ten jobs. But I want to ask what people sitting next to each other on a plane or a train might ask, what are you currently watching?

00:01:15
Speaker 1: God, you gotta make me do this, aren't you. I've witnessed two couples break up because of not honoring the sacred contract or code of cheating on a series. On a series, I'm dead ass like it wasn't the thing that broke them up, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. And I guess I can tell the story, which is basically a couple I knew that broke up. And this is like three years ago, so you know, the grace period's over. I guess he decided. I think it's either a tragedy, stuck or something like there was a reason why she had to miss four episodes or whatever they committed to watching, and so he decided to get a secret Amazon account or whatever so that he could watch this. And often, you know, with anyone who's technically challenged, and I've been one of these people, there's some people that don't know that if you buy an iPhone and an iPad or another laptop in your name and use the same cloud, all the information is going to go to all three devices. So she's very much aware that he's going further into the series, but she wants to use this as a tester. And so they're watching and he's acting all shocked and oh my god, did you know in his mind, probably a ward worthy acting job of the year whatever, and she gave him a chance to come clean. It's like and wasn't even like, so you didn't see this? Or She's like, why did you go through all that when you saw it already? And then that just like I didn't see it already? Why are you wanted me? Why did you see I She pulled out the iPad says you've seen it already, and then that led to see what else are you lying about? And then they trust issues. They were just never the same. They broke up like maybe four months later. So I vowed to never I was like, I don't care what happens. We're not committing to a show, yeah, because I just never ever seen any good happen out of this if it goes awry, and I have way too many TVs around me to, you know, and I want to cheat or whatever and see what happens. And so we agreed to not do it. And then we started being in a position where we would go to dinner with friends and they started talking about the love story the JFK. And first I was like, I'm good, I'm not a Ryan Murphy head, like I haven't watched all the other stuff, so I was like, all right, well, i'll miss this one out. But I mean people, just the way they talk about I was like, fomo, like you got to see this. And I started noticing that we're in a weird nineteen ninety seven regression right now. There's a lot of new restaurants and bars in my neighborhood that are trying to give you the feeling of what Sex and the City felt like its first season. Like there's literally a club that plays nothing but Sex and the City highlights, and literally people are cosplaying like it's nineteen ninety seven. The jeans right now that are in you know, there you go, so it's it's nineteen ninety seven again anyway. So we're like, all right, well, let's do this. But I was very cautious and against it. But it's like, okay, well, we'll commit to this thing. And it turns out that, you know, there was because of my touring schedule and stuff, we stopped at episode five and here we are now on episode eight, and I find out like two weeks ago that she's seeing it through and I'm like, wait a minute, Like what happened to our agreement that we were, and she was like, well, I didn't know you were serious. Like I was like, no, Like, I told you the whole story of the breakup and all that stuff, and now you begging me to commit to the thing. I was like, I don't want to commit to the thing. I don't want to commit to the thing. I was like, I relented and I did it, and I legit felt away. Yeah, I was heard over that. I was like, and I'm still I'm not caught up, and she's already caught up. So yeah, love.

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Speaker 2: Story, love story, gontch you and I will say this, I've only been married three years. Whole past works if you're traveling, you can give someone a whole past to cheatingh episode, but you got to communicate that.

00:06:03
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, now you know there's there's the pit. She's already ahead on the pit. I have to catch up on the pit. She's also introduced another distraction in my life that is getting really really bad. I didn't resist it for snarky reasons or like because I think I'm better than or whatever, but just in general, I barely have watched any Kardashian related entertainment. Dog I saw one episode because she had it on in the room and they made a reference to something in the past or whatever, and then I started asking questions, So what happened when da da da da da da? He said, well, that was like season thirteen. You gotta know. Well, wait what happened da da da da da? Woll too, that was like season eight, And it just so happened. It was like one of them days where I had, like we had a hiatus, I have three days off, and I was in a hotel that happened to have Apple TV. Dude, I fell down the whole bad. Like I started on season one, I did not recognize who I was watching. It's almost to the point where now I have to watch the entire arc just so I can see them morph into what I am used to now because it's just night and day, like just for science. So like I want to see how this works. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, When is your TV time?

00:07:37
Speaker 2: Does it just vary when you have downtime?

00:07:39
Speaker 1: TV is? I mean the way TV works in my life is TV is more or less like an aquarium. When I explained how I researched Summer of Soul, I just kept all forty hours on a constant rotation.

00:07:54
Speaker 2: It's in the background of many a QLs playing exactly.

00:07:58
Speaker 1: And so those that really know me know that seventy percent of the time. I mean, I have pretty much one laptop with every all one thousand plus episodes of Soul Train on it. I just got all the SNL episodes because of what I did research wise. I mean, it's just constantly playing. Maybe three years ago I decided to stop sleeping to noise. I used to always keep Soul Trained on even as I slept, wake up Soul Train, and it's usually depending on who I'm dating and her tolerance for Whenever the uh wow, you uh you really like Soul Training? Do you like? That's it? When I hear that, I'm like, all right, let me scale back and only do I'm a scale back and just do ten episodes a day, just ten, not twenty, but just ten episodes a day. So in my office at thirty Rock, I have it constantly running. Tarika is man. The way that he dives into every there's no television show he doesn't see. Tarik's schedule is he'll go to bed super early, but he'll get up at three thirty four am. You know, he'll get the kids lunch ready and on stuff. But he'll catch up on his writing and whatever TV shows he missed, like for him being alone while everyone's asleep those four hours I get between three thirty AM and when people wake up at like seven thirty eight, Like that's his thing. So he's always like, Yo, you gotta watch it. That's crazy. So when like a guest comes on the show, he'll already seen it. It's like, Yo, you gotta see it. Jone's crazy. James Poison will be like, yeah, I'm seeing it. So, I mean, I'll usually catch up on any dramas. I'm trying to finish shrinking right now, I'm trying to finish like, uh, Floor of Us, like all of those Apple drama whatever. I'll finish that in the office, But when i'm home, it's either movies or soldiering.

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Speaker 2: Last question, you make some deep poll references. You're the only person I know that has multiple times referenced the Parker Lewis Can't Lose.

00:10:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:10:17
Speaker 2: You also Goooby Snack put me on to the Doobie Brothers bootleg episode of What's Happening comes up a lot as an analogy of other things going on in life and closing put the people onto an overlooked or underrated show just throughout history that you deeply appreciate but might not get the real estate on the streaming apps.

00:10:37
Speaker 1: All right, So Lenda CARLINI was just on the Tonight Show, but she had left the building before I got a chance to tell her how crucial instrumental me watching Freaks and Geeks was to the roots current business operandi right now. Freaks and Geese, of course, is Judd Apatow's series that you know. James Franco's in it, Linda's in it, everyone, yeah, Seth Rogan's Everyone's in it, like all anyone that's ever been in a Judd Apatow sphere like is in this series. It was just one season only, and it's literally it's almost like somewhere in between the wonder years of my soul called life or or almost Famous. So it's a series about a family in the early eighties to whom I don't know it yet, but the daughter is going to wind up being a dead head. She decides to put off college in the gap year. She doesn't even tell her family, I don't believe, and she just blindly hops in a Volkswagen Van and decides she's going to trail to the Grateful Dead, and and it just so happens I happen to be on the tour bus with my manager, down White, who's been my DJ manager for like twenty plus years, and she's like, oh, that was my story. I was a deadhead. And I was like, all right, explain that culture to me, because I don't get like people are constantly telling me, like, yo, you guys should jam more and solo more, Like your shows are so calculated, well rehearsed, and you could run it by the clock and you know, there's no spontaneity in it. You're a band, for God's sakes, like rehearse a little bit. But I think I was more or less gunshy to do that because critics were really not good to jam bands. You know. It just so happens that when she was like, yeah, you should, really, I was like, I don't know, Like I don't see the value and Grateful Dead or whatever. But we just happened to be somewhere in Rhode Island and we happen to be playing a club owned by one of the members of Fish Okay, And she was saying, and the collation between like Fish is the new Grateful Dead and Da da Da. She's trying to explain to me, like why Fish is so important and it's not just a band that has an ice cream flavor that you know, but like this is what they mean, Like I didn't get the meaning of fish. And the other thing about this is that hub our bass player had to miss this gig, so Tuba had to be the bass player. And kind of when that aesthetic is missing, you have to figure out other ways to keep the show punchy. And so we kind of morphed into a jam band or at least a really really funked out hip hop version of like a New Orleans line band with Go Go whatever. But it was real jammy and it wound up like because of that audience, knowing that the establishment that they were in, like they were a jam band audience, and the way they just kept cheering his arm like we'd never seen him at a hip hop show, and that just led me down another rabbit hole and another rabbit hole, and another rabbit hole and another and then next thing, you know, like shout out to Dan Pertussie at okay player like hooking us up with Fish to see like one of their last I guess Dan had convinced them to like let the roots trail you guys, just to see like because he's been trying for the longest on the road. Yeah, we did. Me Sean Gee, my manager, Richard, my manager, and Dan. We went. I went to either two or three shows, and Dan just wanted to see the lay of the land because I was anti taping, like why are they taping our shows? And trading and you know, and then you want us to sell what we just did on stage, like in the at the Merchant, So like one show, I just stayed in the merch area to see, like the band's on stage. It's like, why are you guys stayed in line like they were literally waiting for the tapes from like last night show to be ready. I'm like, but you're missing. I've just never seen anything like that. And once I realized that, because my main question was how's this band making over eight figures a year? How are they selling out Madison Square Gardens seven nights in a row? And they never did TRL or one of six in park, like they don't need a hot sixteen from Jazy right, and like how are they? I know, we do more than like how are they winning? And I had to learn that language. So, you know, I will say that Freaks and Geeks really was the perfect gateway drug for me to understand. And I'm still we're still navigating, and I know we're pioneers in this thing. And yes, I know there's like snarky puppy, I know that on the jam band circuit, like there's more what I will say, groove warriored bands there. But yeah, definitely in those first three years it was like they never or been dying or starving for like funk on a jam level, like really good musicians that are like really know their music and their grooves and stuff. And so it is an uncharted territory. You know. We'll end on with levity.

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Speaker 2: You recently shared a great story in the Jamie Lee Curtis episode of playing in the Air Tonight in a drumstick literally backfire. Yeah, my favorite opening of any episode of Freaks and Geeks is Jason.

00:16:41
Speaker 1: Jason Siegel's character is a drummer. He's in his garage and he adores rush.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the dry mass and the whole thing, and it does not go the way he imagines. Yes, for you did you have a moment in watching that great cold opening that channeled any moment of yours?

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Speaker 1: Of grandeur? I can top it. I believe his first walk on song on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was us doing Tom Oh Tom Sawyer. Yes, us doing Tom Sawyer for for that exact yes, for that reference. Yeah, and he got it. I love, I love want to walk on reference lands? Yeah, because when I walked from behind the curtain, you can faintly hear the band, like if the audience is cheering like that, you can hear the audience louder than you hear the band. So oftentimes, like the band will tease me because I will work them so hard just to pull out some like really weird reference for the artists coming out, and when it doesn't land, they just look at me like we could add an extra half hour of lunch and they missed a reference. But usually a note will come, Oh my god, my publish just told me you did no not from my childhood. How does that upset you all that the secrets out? Or uh no, no, no, I mean it. I mean people generally know, I mean that we tailored, but they know ahead of time. No, no, no, don't tell me that's what I mean. So they get after like on, once they watch the show, they'll be like, wait a minute, I was on the show. This local public asks us, so, how do you know that? So I have a whole slew of how did you know that? It's your hard war? Yes, got okay? Shout out to Tom Hayes and Sean and all the okay player vets that helped me throughout the years. Get those accolades. You know. They're definitely the unspoken heroes of the walk On song. Guys, this is the Quest Love Show. I really appreciate all your feedback. We do read the comments and all your feedback. Please like and subscribe the show. Spread the word of this show and give us suggestions. People you want to see on the show. Let us know and we will try to make your dreams come true. All right. Quest Loop Show is a production of iHeartRadio h