Stray Flipper Strut
**The Brilliant Jason Barnard: https://jasonbarnard.com/
^Follow Brother Jason NOW: https://www.youtube.com/c/kalicube
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmbarnard
VISIT: https://czg123.blogspot.com/ & https://www.youtube.com/@czg123
Who is Tex 5581?: www.truthgods.blogspot.com
READ THIS: THE NASTIEST GUIDE EVER
On this episode’s “Why Music?” segment, the incredible Jason Barnard. A talented and musical smarty, Brother Jason knows a ton about how Google can work for you and music!
Host CZG123 spins everything from Scott Joplin to Men at Work; and Jason Barnard with dashes of The Jungle Brothers! Spanning all genres of music, CZG123 plays it all! New episodes every T&T. CALL: 213.839.9830 for requests and complaints.
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Christopher Gordon [00:03:20]:
Okay. Folks, right now on Why Music?, I have the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Jason Barnard. Now, Jason Barnard is an absolute genius. And what’s amazing is while you think he’s just all about business, he’s got Kalicube. He has a lot on his plate. He helps a lot of people, mostly in the tech, tech industry and also learning about search engines. Yeah, this sort of thing, how to get recognized.
Christopher Gordon [00:03:50]:
It’s a whole world on, as you all know, out there listening on the Internet, and it’s just kind of like the Wild West. And I feel that our guest here is trying to help rein in, but he’s got a lot of music in his blood, so let’s bring him on. Here he is, Jason Barnard. Jason, thank you so much for being on The Rainbow Flipper Musical Explosion.
Jason Barnard [00:04:11]:
Brilliant. Thank you, Christopher. And I do love the fact that I am trying to rein this in. I’m trying to give us all self determination in a world where Generative AI is taking our own self control, our own representation of ourselves away. And I have a music career and it’s huge and I can control it. That’s huge.
Christopher Gordon [00:04:41]:
Yeah. Do you feel like you’re able to control more in your music than you are in your business?
Jason Barnard [00:04:48]:
No, I can control both. Easy peasy.
Christopher Gordon [00:04:40]:
How is that? How is it that you’re able to take your ability to be in control of music and apply… how does one do that and apply it to Kalicube and your other endeavors?
Jason Barnard [00:05:05]:
Because I’m the same person in both universes. So these machines are simply trying to understand who we are and what we do, and then it’s a question of focus. So I’m a musician first and foremost. That’s where I started. That’s 25 years of my career. But now I’m a digital marketer. And what I’ve done as a digital marketer is ensure that Google perceives me as a digital marketer more than a musician. And what’s interesting is that my audience now perceives me that way.
Jason Barnard [00:05:45]:
So by convincing Google, I’ve convinced my audience. Or maybe by convincing my audience, I’ve convinced Google. That’s philosophical. Off you go.
Christopher Gordon [00:05:01]:
Interesting. Yeah. What is… I’ve seen that you’re not only an entrepreneur, you’re not only a marketer. Musical, obviously. Do you serve as mentor? If someone like me wants to learn more about what I can do for my brand online, can I reach out to you? And do you mentor, do you mentor folks that need help with their Digital Marketing or their brands?
Jason Barnard [00:06:24]:
What I see is that I have discovered the secret to manipulating, influencing, educating these machines. And that’s a huge power. And it’s really simple. And it’s so simple, anybody can do it. So on kalicube.com, K-A-L-I-C-U-B-E .com, you can get all of this for free.
Christopher Gordon [00:06:55]:
Amazing.
Jason Barnard [00:06:54]:
So what I then do is help one on one people who can afford to employ me or my company. And that’s all to do with time. If you have the time, you have the energy, you have the desire and you know what you’re talking about. You can do it all on your own. Just come to kalicube.com and we will teach you everything you need to know. It’s free. Because I think this is hugely important to… Sounds pretentious, but humanity.
Christopher Gordon [00:07:27]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love that in a world where, you know, to get this kind of information costs a pretty penny, you know, and then you get sucked in the sloop of pay pay. I mean, it’s all right here for everyone. Also, in addition to the website you just mentioned that’ll be in this episode’s description, I want our listeners to please visit jasonbarnard.com. J-A-S-O-N B-A-R-N-A-R-D .com. Again, that and his other links will be in this episode’s description, either down below or to the side. What do you feel is holding people back these days? I mean, it seems like everyone wants to market themselves.
Christopher Gordon [00:08:10]:
You see everyone on YouTube, on this site and on this platform. I think people, especially younger people, have this idea the more content they just kind of throw at the wall, it’s going to stick and they’re going to become an influencer and everything like this. But so what about the people that have an idea of what they want to do, but they’re a little hesitant because of the space and the way it is now. What do you tell that person that wants to get their brand out there?
Jason Barnard [00:08:09]:
Yeah, that’s a beautiful question because being big, being in your face isn’t what makes things change. Google wants to understand everybody. And I say Google, but I actually mean Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity. Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, they all want to understand everything about everybody. You don’t need to be big to be understood. If you’re understood, they can place you in the right position for your audience. So tiny digital footprint still makes sense.
Jason Barnard [00:09:20]:
If that tiny digital footprint resonates with your audience.
Christopher Gordon [00:09:19]:
Right on. I hear that. My other question for you is you’ve been doing this for quite a while. What sort of changes have you recognized through trends and analytics? From the time you started doing this to now? What’s changed the most in this industry, the industry that you’re in, in digital and tech.
Jason Barnard [00:09:46]:
The way these machines understand. So 25 years ago, when I started, they were just looking at the string of characters. Jason Barnard, Kalicube, Christopher Gordon, they didn’t understand what they were talking about. Today, they’re much closer, but they’re still not there, is that they will understand who I am but probably not who you are. And the reason they understand me but not you is because I’ve worked on it. So if you don’t intentionally work to educate these machines, you’re going to lose self determination in the future. And whether you want to drive business or not, from your personal name or your company name, if you’re not intentionally driving understanding that allows these machines to correctly represent you to the subset of their users, who are your audience, you’re losing out on pretty much everything in the future and you’re delegating your own identity to machines. And that’s hugely, hugely scary, disappointing and foolish.
Christopher Gordon [00:11:06]:
Yeah. And I mean, from the time you started to now. Well, I’ll start. I’ll ask it this way. When you started doing this, was there as much of a drive for Google and others to try and take our information? Has that always been there? Like the idea of third parties buying our information from Google or other Facebook, has that always existed? Or is that kind of like a fairly new phenomenon past ten years or so, would you say?
Jason Barnard [00:11:04]:
I love the question because, yes, they’ve always wanted to do it, but they haven’t been capable of doing it. Now they’re capable of doing it. Now, we should be scared.
Christopher Gordon [00:11:50]:
Wow. Speaking of scared, what’s your take on artificial intelligence?
Jason Barnard [00:11:48]:
Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy, as we say in the UK. Obviously not. It’s scary, it’s difficult, but the machines remain relatively simplistic and you can control how they understand you. So if you present yourself clearly, consistently and relevantly, they will understand and they will represent you the way you want. If you leave it up to them, they’re going to get it all wrong. So you need to be intentional and you need to take control. And you need to take control now.
Christopher Gordon [00:12:30]:
That’s interesting. And then why is Google the best business card for us to have?
Jason Barnard [00:12:42]:
Right. And that’s going to change, is right now, if I’m speaking to you, I’m going to Google your name, but tomorrow I might ChatGPT your name or Perplexity your name, or Bing your name. And Google are probably going to lose the war. They’re 90% now. They’re going to be 50% in five or six years time. Wow. So you need a strategy that nails all of these machines. And interestingly enough, they all work the same way. You need to control your digital identity and then you can control these machines, or at least the way they represent you.
Jason Barnard [00:13:26]:
And it doesn’t matter if it’s Google, Bing, Microsoft, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, you need to intentionally take control. And if you don’t, you’re in huge trouble.
Christopher Gordon [00:13:38]:
It sounds as though you have a real lasso and true, deep understanding of Google itself. In other words, instead of, you know, I just never even considered that one could do that, sort of take control of Google. How did you arrive at that? How did you arrive? And knowing, like, hey, it’s more than just a search engine, hey, it’s more than this. And their algorithms and things like this, I’m going to take control and make Google work for me. How did you arrive at that?
Jason Barnard [00:14:08]:
Maybe I was lucky, is that twelve years ago, I was understood by Google to be a cartoon blue dog because I made a tv series, because I was a musician. It was saying, Jason Barnard is a musician, cartoon blue dog, and it represented me that way. And I was looking for work and I thought, well, I need it to represent me as a digital marketer. And at that point I thought, how can I, at the end of the day, manipulate Google to understand me the way I want it to understand me, so that it represents me the way I need to be represented for my career. And I figured it out. Took me six months, and I’ve built an entire platform and company and service, which is how do you get these machines to understand you the way you want, so that they represent you to the correct audience in the way that you need for your business or your career or even your family for that matter?
Christopher Gordon [00:15:22]:
How much do keywords really matter these days?
Jason Barnard [00:15:28]:
Very little.
Christopher Gordon [00:15:29]:
Wow, interesting. Actually, you know what, for listeners out there, can you just shoot off some misconceptions we may have? I mean, right there I just thought, you know, keywords are important. You’re like, nah, not really. What are some other things that you hear? What are some other things you hear people say like, oh, you definitely got to have this. And you find yourself being like, not really.
Jason Barnard [00:15:20]:
Pretty much everything you think you know about SEO is going to fall into that category.
Christopher Gordon [00:15:59]:
Interesting.
Jason Barnard [00:15:59]:
So keywords. Let’s look at Christopher Gordon.
Christopher Gordon [00:16:03]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:16:03]:
That’s a key word.
Christopher Gordon [00:16:05]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:15:58]:
You compete with a million Christopher Gordons, the string of characters. Christopher Gordon.
Christopher Gordon [00:16:14]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:16:13]:
Doesn’t mean anything. Everybody is guessing. Once they see that string of characters, what you are then associated with and understood to be and your topical authority, what you’re interested in, music in this particular case, is what makes a difference. So once these machines understood… understand, excuse me, who you are, what that string of characters represents, then you start to make progress. Second misconception in SEO is links.
Christopher Gordon [00:16:49]:
Links, okay?
Jason Barnard [00:16:48]:
If Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Apple, Facebook, Twitter have understood who you are, they don’t need the link. They just need the string of characters that they understand to represent you. So links become not completely redundant, but certainly significantly less important.
Christopher Gordon [00:17:16]:
Interesting.
Jason Barnard [00:17:17]:
Number three would be speed. Website speed. If somebody’s interested in Christopher Gordon, they will wait 2 seconds for your website to load. Google, Bing, Perplexity, ChatGPT, they know that.
Christopher Gordon [00:17:36]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:17:37]:
So if somebody’s interested in you specifically, they will wait. Site speed doesn’t matter.
Christopher Gordon [00:17:35]:
There is a speed for which it’s in controlled speed, because I see that a lot. Sometimes a website will pop right up. Sometimes it does take a little bit, and sometimes I dismiss it. Oh, my. Wifi may not be working so well, but then the other site will pop. You just blew my mind. That’s, that’s, that’s intentional? Is that what you’re saying?
Jason Barnard [00:18:08]:
No, no, no. What I’m actually saying is that Google doesn’t care. You, as a human being, do care. So we need to separate our desire to please the machine from our desire to please our human audience. So I want to please Christopher Gordon if I want you to engage with me. The machine is simply an interface between you and me. If you’re looking for me or I’m looking for you, the machine is the way that we connect. So the choice of the machine is simply the way that we are prioritized to connect together on the online world. And site speed is a factor. It might be important, it might not be important, but if I really want to connect with that specific Christopher Gordon, site speed doesn’t matter at all.
Jason Barnard [00:19:03]:
Links don’t matter at all. What matters is that Jason Barnard, this particular Jason Barnard of the 3000 Jason Barnards in the world wants to connect with this Christopher Gordon, one of the 20,000 Christopher Gordons in the world, and the machine simply wants to connect us. And it’s nothing to do with links, site speed, keywords.
Christopher Gordon [00:19:28]:
Amazing.
Jason Barnard [00:19:30]:
Yeah.
Christopher Gordon [00:19:26]:
So is this to say even a platform like YouTube, which you also do have a channel on, the link will be down below in the description. Something like YouTube. You know, they… It seems like they want you to put all the bells and whistles. It’s like not enough, right? To come up with the thumbnail, to come up with the content. They want you to have a good title. They want you to load it with, you know, hashtags. Do they need anything? I mean, like how… there used to be no rhyme or reason, and I feel like there still isn’t much of a rhyme or reason to how videos are seen on a platform like YouTube.
Christopher Gordon [00:20:06]:
Am I wrong?
Jason Barnard [00:20:06]:
Yeah. Well, there isn’t. There isn’t. Number one is they want to make it simple for themselves, but we all do. It’s not like they’re doing something that’s completely original. They’re saying, well, simpler it is for us, better it is. Number two is they’re trying to dig down into what you’re interested in, and if they can figure out who you’re interested in, they can connect you to the people, potentially you don’t know who you will want to engage with. And maybe that’s the point, is if I’m explicitly looking for you, they need to understand which Christopher Gordon I want to talk to.
Jason Barnard [00:20:50]:
But if I’m engaging with you topically, they want to know which is the most topically relevant and helpful person they can put me in contact with. So there are two different perspectives there, one of which is your name and one of which is your topicality.
Christopher Gordon [00:20:48]:
Interesting. Jason, I’m curious to know, as I’m sure you already know, they want to ban, in the United States, TikTok. So they’ve come up with the bill. They all agreed on it, and now it’s gone to the Senate. So now they’re going to choose, you know, it’s on the Senate. What’s going to happen? Are we going to ban TikTok? What is your take on this whole TikTok issue? I mean, I get callbacks and flashbacks to Vine. I don’t know if you remember Vine, but it was kind of like a… remember that?
Christopher Gordon [00:21:39]:
It was like Twitter, but for videos, right? They had to be really quick. And that was it. You were in and out, and then they got rid of that. So we have TikTok, extremely popular. What’s your take? Is it a bad thing for the United States to ban it? Should we just keep it? What do you feel?
Jason Barnard [00:21:55]:
It’s political rather than communicational?
Christopher Gordon [00:22:03]:
Absolutely.
Jason Barnard [00:22:00]:
We want to communicate. And who owns the communication platform is fundamentally important. Control over the company that controls it is important for government, but it’s super, super important for us as well. I mean, when you get on something like TikTok, who are you giving your data to? What would they do with it in the future? We don’t know. This is the future. And self determination, which is what we deal in at Kalicube. We don’t know what’s going to happen with TikTok, with Google, with Facebook, with Bing. What we can do is help you to manage it as best you can as the digital landscape evolves and changes.
Jason Barnard [00:22:58]:
And I’m super confident that we are the best bet for people to actually start to manage it. With an AI world, it’s always going to be super scary, super difficult. It’s always going to be this game that’s going to be running away from you that you struggle to control. You have now the choice of saying, do I want to control as much as I can, which might not be all of it, or do I just want to let go and let the machines decide? And I would argue that the second choice is really rubbish.
Christopher Gordon [00:22:56]:
Why or can you please explain what the Brand SERP Guy is? S-E-R-P. And also, I believe you’ve written a book, yeah?
Christopher Gordon [00:23:49]:
With regards to SERP?
Jason Barnard [00:23:52]:
Yep.
Christopher Gordon [00:23:54]:
Can you tell us the title again and what it all means for the listeners?
Jason Barnard [00:23:51]:
Which is. Yeah, an interesting point is the Brand SERP is the search engine results page. SERP, for your own name, for your company name, and if you can’t control that, you have no hope for the future. And I’ve never said it quite like that. Ten years ago, it was this kind of weird, wonderful, strange, huge thing. And now I’m saying, if you can’t do that, you might as well give up.
Christopher Gordon [00:24:33]:
Wow.
Jason Barnard [00:24:36]:
Yeah. Honestly, I’m thinking, wow, because I’ve never said it like that before.
Christopher Gordon [00:24:41]:
I mean, I can’t imagine how many… I mean, that’s such valuable information, right? How is that? Did you arrive at that on your own? I’m just dying to know, like, what prompted you to write this book? What prompted you to dive into SERP? I mean, that’s just. So everyone just focuses on SEO, yeah? But they don’t really focus on SERP. So what drove you to write this book?
Jason Barnard [00:25:09]:
100%.
Christopher Gordon [00:25:09]:
And where’s the…
Christopher Gordon [00:25:11]:
How did you…
Christopher Gordon [00:25:11]:
How did you develop the focus on that? Like, how did you know it’s SERP?
Jason Barnard [00:25:17]:
Well, the old music aspect that you’re talking about today is that I was a punk folk musician. I played, you’ll play the song the Ace of Spades, playing with all bass in a punk folk band. I come from music world. Then I created with my ex-wife Boowa and Kwala. We had the Twirly Dance Game, which is one of my favorite songs in the whole universe. And I feel slightly ashamed that I’m saying one of my favorite songs in the universe is one that I wrote.
Christopher Gordon [00:25:49]:
No, no, no.
Jason Barnard [00:25:52]:
I wrote a hundred songs and some of them are really rubbish.
Christopher Gordon [00:25:56]:
That’s great.
Jason Barnard [00:25:56]:
Some of them are good.
Christopher Gordon [00:25:57]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:25:57]:
And that one is great.
Christopher Gordon [00:25:58]:
Yeah, no, that’s awesome.
Jason Barnard [00:26:02]:
And that comes back to Brian Setzer, who wrote Stray Cat Strut when he was 17 years old. And it is the best song in the entire universe ever, ever, ever. And goes above the Twirly Dance Game and the Ace of Spades. How does it feel to write a classic of the universe when you’re 17 years old? I didn’t do that. Brian Setzer, wow, I love the guy.
Christopher Gordon [00:26:27]:
And he still plays. He’s still playing shows, you know. I mean, what I love about Stray Cat Strut is like, it feels like it’s a song from eons ago. Like, it could easily have been a song from eons ago. You know, when you hear that on the radio, you’re like, oh, that’s. What’s that from the fifties or the sixties? Because it’s just so… it’s such a…
Jason Barnard [00:26:47]:
Well, it could be from today as well. Yeah. It could have been from the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. It kind of moves from the start, 17th century. Maybe not on the loot, but it could be from today. And it is this classic that you simply cannot deny. Yes, but the point about that is that Google and these other machines understand the music industry and the film industry significantly better than they understand the rest of the world. So from my perspective, my first job was to say, well, Google is using Wikipedia, IMDb, MusicBrainz, Rotten Tomatoes, Spotify, to understand the world.
Jason Barnard [00:27:33]:
So they’re hugely biased towards everything that’s entertainment.
Christopher Gordon [00:27:36]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:27:37]:
How do I refocus Google away from something it understands implicitly to something that it really is struggling to understand, which is Digital Marketing? And that’s been my last ten years. And I figured it out.
Christopher Gordon [00:27:54]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:27:55]:
And when I can do that with Google, I can do with it. Sorry. When I can do that with Google, I can do that with any machine. They all work the same. If you can master one, you can master them all. And that’s hugely powerful.
Christopher Gordon [00:28:11]:
Yeah, boy, it really is. And I just… to master that understanding is just so valuable, you know?
Jason Barnard [00:28:21]:
Well, if you take a step back and you look at these machines as children, all you’re doing is educating them. They’re not here to trick us. They’re not here to. Well, maybe they are. That’s a whole different question. But from the outside, our intent and our power is educating these machines, and these machines are children. And if we can educate them and bring them to understanding our existence, our representation in the world in the way that we want is our only hope of self determination. And that is a huge question
Jason Barnard [00:29:05]:
approach problem for humanity, not just for you, not just for me, for all of us.
Christopher Gordon [00:29:11]:
That’s amazing. What a fantastic point.
Christopher Gordon [00:29:15]:
When you look at it that way and then I understand you also are host of your own podcast, Branded Search (and Beyond) with Jason Barnard. Can you tell me what you explore a bit about your podcast? And the link down will be down below in this episode description.
Christopher Gordon [00:29:32]:
But yeah. Would you tell our listeners what your podcast is about?
Jason Barnard [00:29:37]:
Yeah, I use the podcast to understand Digital Marketing because I come from a world where I focus on Google and understanding Google. But Digital Marketing is much bigger and now we’re moving out into business. So it’s how can I use Digital Marketing packaged for Google SEO to drive my business? And that’s been a huge move from, for me, from being somebody who just wanted to figure out how to trick Google, which I do very successfully. So how can I use that to build a Digital Marketing strategy that makes sense to my audience? To how do I turn that into money business and move myself forwards? And a lot of it is to do with focus. How can I change Google’s focus? If I can change Google’s focus, then I can change all of these machines, how they perceive me, how they represent me. But to do so, I have to change my audience’s perception of me, because all these machines do is look at how my audience engages with me. So at the end of the day, by using these machines as an insight, a window into my digital ecosystem on my audience, I can actually make a more fundamentally meaningful, helpful and profitable business and use the machines to understand what I need to do and then measure how well I’ve done it.
Christopher Gordon [00:31:22]:
Once again, going back to the metaphor that these machines are children. You’re making them work for you, which is incredible. What’s your take on Google My Business? How important is that? I see a lot of companies that are freaking out, and it’s kind of like Yelp almost. It’s like in order to be seen, if you’re a mortar and brick, brick and mortar, rather, you’re a garage fixer-upper mechanic in Idaho. They say, you should go to Google My Business. You’ll get known. Is there any truth to that? How important is Google My Business for companies out there?
Jason Barnard [00:31:59]:
It’s hugely important. Sorry to say that, but you need to do the minimum, which is to fill in the field they asked. Because they create the profiles without asking people.
Christopher Gordon [00:32:15]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:32:17]:
So 99% of these profiles are not filled incorrectly.
Christopher Gordon [00:32:21]:
Wow.
Jason Barnard [00:32:21]:
So as soon as you do it, you’re winning the game to a certain extent. Then you can say, well, I filled it all in. My competitors have done the same thing. How do I get the next step up? And the next step up is Google understanding truly who you are. Because Google Business profile, Google My Business is simply a business listing, like the Yellow Pages. The fundamental understanding of Google is what’s going to make the difference. Because what you say in Google Business profile is you saying something. If Google can corroborate that and understand that the rest of the world agrees with you, then you’ve won the game. So that’s the next step up.
Christopher Gordon [00:33:02]:
It’s interesting because, yeah, when you go around and you’ll notice, as you said, you’ll find a company and you see them on the map, and then it says, claim this business, it’s like, is this yours? And I just find that so interesting. You know, if I’m looking for a company and, like, I guess psychologically does something to me that the company hasn’t been claimed by its owner. Hmm. You know, it’s kind of a red flag. That’s weird, right? Like, they have a listing. Everyone’s claimed except this CEO or whatever, hasn’t claimed their business. I wonder what’s up with that. Do you think that that’s the message that’s sent out when you don’t hop on board? Something like a Google My Business, like you’re not taking seriously.
Jason Barnard [00:33:48]:
But it goes beyond Google My Business. It’s the entire Internet. If you’re not intentionally managing who you are and how you’re represented by these machines, you look amateur. And that’s going to be amplified more and more as the world moves forwards in the next few years. What I find is some companies and people come to me and say, well, Google and other machines should simply understand, it’s their job. It’s not. It’s your job because it’s your life and your universe. You need to intentionally educate these machines, and that’s what we do at Kalicube.
Jason Barnard [00:34:30]:
And if you’re not doing it, in my opinion, you’re a fool. Because any hope of self determination in the years to come is based on what you’re doing today to make these machines or ensure these machines understand you.
Christopher Gordon [00:34:46]:
And is it your belief and Kalicube’s belief that for a company to keep up these days with competitors and even get into the zeitgeist of users followers, what have you, how important is it for a company to be on social media? Like, you know, I’ll see ads, I’ll see posts from a company on Instagram, on TikTok, on Facebook. I guess, is it more than just having a website or a podcast? You have to join all these social media platforms?
Jason Barnard [00:35:27]:
Not all of them, no. You need to join the right ones and focus on the right ones. So your website is the key. The website represents you as a person or a company, it doesn’t matter. But the website is the place that a, all of these machines will understand to be the focal point, the representation of you by you. It’s the place that you need to drive your audience to. But you also need to understand that there is a necessity and an importance from a business perspective, but also from a search assistive engine perspective, that you are present on multiple platforms serving your audience where they’re actually standing. So in SEO, which is where I come from, there is a tendency to focus on the website.
Jason Barnard [00:36:20]:
But Google isn’t just looking at your website, it’s looking at everywhere else you are. And that’s a really interesting point, is until Google could understand who is the website owner, it was just focusing on the website. Once it’s understood who the website owner is, it can look around the web and say, well, where else do we see this website owner and how are they engaging with their audience? So Google becomes this overarching beast that is watching every move you make. So you need to make sure that every move you make makes sense for you and your audience and that you’re not just filling the world with junk. But if you’re doing that, you’re immediately working with the people who are interested in your solution on the platforms where they’re hanging out, which makes business sense because you’re doing business with or without Google, with or without ChatGPT, with or without Perplexity, with or without Bing. And so I’ve moved from an SEO perspective of let’s please Google to let’s please the user, our audience, and package it so that Google understands that we are the best solution for that subset of its users who are my audience. That is the key to Digital Marketing in the future.
Christopher Gordon [00:37:42]:
Interesting. That’s just so enlightening. When…
Jason Barnard [00:37:47]:
Can I ask a question?
Christopher Gordon [00:37:49]:
Yes.
Jason Barnard [00:37:51]:
Weren’t we supposed to be talking about music?
Christopher Gordon [00:37:53]:
Yeah, I’m getting there, I’m getting there, I’m getting there.
Christopher Gordon [00:37:57]:
I just find this all so interesting. It’s really, what’s going to be great is, you know, this is all built up to see the… your musical background and then how it may have influenced you, right? I mean, I just, I just finding this all so. Okay, here we go. You ready? Here’s a segue.
Jason Barnard [00:38:13]:
Brilliant.
Christopher Gordon [00:38:15]:
How has the digital age affected music, and has it affected music for the better or for the worse?
Jason Barnard [00:38:25]:
Oh, that’s a huge question. Yeah, I’m a… In music, there are multiple stages. Number one is author, composer.
Christopher Gordon [00:38:36]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:38:36]:
Number two is performer, and number three is live performer. Live performance has hugely benefited because people are so detached by the digital aspect. The human touch has become significantly more important from an album performer perspective. I get, you know, peanuts for the seven albums I’ve recorded.
Christopher Gordon [00:39:06]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:39:06]:
And you know, it literally five or $6 every three or four months. And from a composer perspective, I’ve written 120 songs.
Christopher Gordon [00:39:18]:
Wow.
Jason Barnard [00:39:19]:
You know, I get another five or $6 a year. But if I went out and performed in public, I would get a few thousand dollars a year.
Christopher Gordon [00:39:28]:
Right.
Jason Barnard [00:39:29]:
So live performance and that relationship with a performer live on stage has become significantly, significantly more important. So it’s a real pity that my recordings on albums don’t make money. But I suppose as a musician, if I were a professional musician today, would be to say, I can’t. Oh, it’s like being an author of a book. I published a book.
Christopher Gordon [00:39:56]:
Right.
Jason Barnard [00:39:56]:
I make zero money out of it, but I get authority, credibility, and I get clients because they believe that I’m an expert.
Christopher Gordon [00:40:03]:
Right.
Jason Barnard [00:40:04]:
And it’s very similar in music. It’s saying, well, I record an album that makes me look credible. People will come see me in concert, but it’s actually the concert and the t-shirt sales that are going to make me some money.
Christopher Gordon [00:40:16]:
That’s right. In fact, you’re echoing the message and what I’ve been told by so many people, including some guests, that that’s the only way a band or performer can make money. It’s more than just here’s my new thing on Twitter and watch this video and now go on iTunes, especially the bigger bands. Like, from what I understand, a lot of bigger bands that were on the charts, well known a few years ago, now they’re writing jingles because that’s going to bring in the money. Pay for the rent is writing jingles for commercials. It’s quick, it’s easy.
Christopher Gordon [00:40:47]:
You come out with an album. If you’re not on the road with it, selling the merch, putting butts in the seats, you’re kind of… You’re not really going anywhere.
Jason Barnard [00:40:56]:
But I think music has always been like that. Is that the way you make money from music and the way you make a living from music has changed over the years, and it goes in cycles. If you look back to the 15th century, it was playing in front of people, then the Beatles. Let’s say that was the moment when all of a sudden you could sell albums and make a fortune. Go on TV. Then it was tours. I think from a musical perspective, I’ve been in a world where I made enough money to survive, but right now, that wouldn’t be possible. My strategy would not be albums, it would not be TV series. It would be live performance.
Jason Barnard [00:41:51]:
And lovely for me. I love live performance. And that’s going back to Robin Hood and His Merry Men in the 16th century with the prior talking. No, that isn’t the correct analogy, but you know what I mean.
Christopher Gordon [00:42:05]:
I do. So while we’re here, I gotta ask you, from what I understand, your parents were jazz musicians. I was going to. And if you could tell us a little bit more about that, and I’m curious to know, being that you were, you know, raised by musicians, what kind of music did you hear in the house? What kind of influenced you in your liking of music? What was in the house? What were they playing?
Jason Barnard [00:42:30]:
Right. No. Well, I’ve got a bit of a surprise for you is that my mother left when I was five years old.
Christopher Gordon [00:42:38]:
Wow.
Jason Barnard [00:42:38]:
So I wasn’t brought up by a jazz musician. She is my mother, but she wasn’t there when I was a child. So I wasn’t brought up in a musical household. I was brought up in literary household.
Christopher Gordon [00:42:54]:
So were they listening to any music in your household? Like, if anything, what was being played?
Jason Barnard [00:42:59]:
No, it was books. You had to read books. It was silence. My two sisters are both literary-obsessed, and my mother, who wasn’t there when I was a child was a musician with her husband, who is a great musician, a famous British seventies jazz musician. And I’m the only… Exactly. Thank you very much. He’s a lovely, lovely, lovely guy.
Jason Barnard [00:43:28]:
And he’s so, so, so creative, brilliant. I mean, I think since my mother left when I was a child, they have made an average of more than one album a year.
Christopher Gordon [00:43:45]:
Wow.
Jason Barnard [00:43:42]:
Stunning. So my musical side doesn’t come from my upbringing day to day. It comes from genes. It comes from…
Jason Barnard [00:43:57]:
Hanging out with them when I was a kid.
Christopher Gordon [00:43:59]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:43:59]:
But not very much. That’s a great question. Do I get my musical genes? I mean, fundamentally, I’m a musician. If I would say there is one thing that I am, it’s not an economist, it’s not a geeky Google mastering mad scientist.
Christopher Gordon [00:44:23]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:44:23]:
It’s a musician.
Christopher Gordon [00:44:25]:
It sounds like you’re saying you’re not a nerd. You’re like, hey, folks, I’m not a nerd. I’m a cool musician. I’m kidding. But, no, I hear you. This is the core of who you are. And I feel like, you see, this is going and going back to what you do now. I feel when you’re composing your own music and you’re performing it, you’re composing, you’re performing, you’re writing, you’re in control of that.
Christopher Gordon [00:44:45]:
So I feel that that may have spilled into a professional career, right?
Jason Barnard [00:44:50]:
Smart, smart, smart, smart, smart. Yes. Is think about. Oh, there are two things about music, and it’s a very good point, is, number one is when I’m playing music, I control, and that gives me that desire to control what Google is thinking. And the other is that music is about imagination, creativity. And if you try to beat a machine by outsmarting it on pure ones and zeros, you’re going to lose every time. But if you can outsmart it by being creative and by staying a step ahead, you’ve got a chance. And the other thing is, chasing Google is a hopeless, hopeless task.
Jason Barnard [00:45:35]:
We’re never going to catch it up. It’s always going to be ahead of us. And music is the same. You’re never going to master music. There’s always something to learn. And the things that I’ve done in my life that have stuck with me and that I’m still doing, which is music and video chasing algorithms, they’re all things that you will never master. That’s what I love about my life.
Christopher Gordon [00:45:59]:
That’s amazing. And you see, I’m so curious to know, Jason, how you get from and mind you, I’m a bit of an Anglophile myself and I happen to adore a lot of British television, a lot of British entertainment, frankly. Music, entertainment, television. Black Books happens to be, you know, Black Books? It’s like one of my favorite shows.
Jason Barnard [00:46:23]:
I mean, Manny. And Black Books is number one top favorite human being in the universe.
Christopher Gordon [00:46:34]:
So, yes, I grew up watching Fawlty Towers. My parents introduced me to Monty Python and the like. But then also a lot of great music, a lot of great garage band music. So what I’m curious to know is you’re growing up in England at this time, yeah? Okay, so what, how do you go from being in a literary household to playing punk? What influenced you to get into punk music? Why punk music?
Jason Barnard [00:47:06]:
Oh. Interesting. Number one is when somebody tells you you need to be literary and understand intellectually everything that’s being shown to you, your first reaction as a child is to say, either I accept or I revolt.
Christopher Gordon [00:47:25]:
Right.
Jason Barnard [00:47:26]:
Punk. And I was lucky to be hanging out at a period where punk was growing. So my first ever musical purchase.
Christopher Gordon [00:47:41]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:47:42]:
Was the Sex Pistols.
Christopher Gordon [00:47:44]:
Yes.
Jason Barnard [00:47:47]:
I was lucky it was then. And I completely faced up to my upbringing by being a punk. And then I was lucky that some friends of mine, friends of friends said, do you want to join a band? I said, yeah, and the rest is history. And, you know, I could have said no, and become an accountant.
Christopher Gordon [00:48:10]:
And did you?
Jason Barnard [00:48:11]:
I didn’t.
Christopher Gordon [00:48:12]:
Are you self trained?
Jason Barnard [00:48:13]:
I think that’s, that’s…
Christopher Gordon [00:48:15]:
I’m sorry, go ahead.
Jason Barnard [00:48:15]:
No, I’m not trained at all.
Christopher Gordon [00:48:18]:
I’m sorry. What were you going to say? What were we going to say there? I’m sorry?
Jason Barnard [00:48:21]:
No, I think, I think it’s one of those moments when you, somebody says, do you want to be in a band? You say, yeah, I’ll be in a band. And if that hadn’t happened, I might have become an accountant and I might have had a proper job, but I’ve never had a proper job in my life. And that is almost certainly thanks to people who I met in the street saying, do you want to join our band? Which is brilliant. And it’s one of those things, a moment in life that can change everything.
Christopher Gordon [00:48:51]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:48:52]:
And you never know what that moment is going to be. Which of those decisions you make that is going to change the rest of your life? Which of the decisions you make that changes absolutely nothing. Nothing.
Christopher Gordon [00:49:03]:
Yeah. You know, I tell my son, you know, he didn’t really, he kind of likes baseball, but I love baseball. He played little league. I didn’t expect him to continue with it, but I told him I wanted him to play just to get that sense of camaraderie. And I feel that that’s what happens in bands. There’s a sort of organic way of collaboration, and it’s really instrumental, pun intended, in being able to branch off and go solo and write your own sort of stuff. Like, you have these experiences of working with others.
Jason Barnard [00:49:40]:
Right.
Christopher Gordon [00:49:41]:
And then you’re able to take that and go into this own world. So I’m… That’s what I’m curious to know is then. Oh, and by the way, are we… Are you a Buzzcocks fan or you strictly Sex Pistols?
Jason Barnard [00:49:53]:
Yes.
Christopher Gordon [00:49:53]:
You are a Buzzcock fan.
Jason Barnard [00:49:54]:
No. Jerry on the Blockheads, The Clash.
Christopher Gordon [00:50:01]:
There you go. Nice.
Jason Barnard [00:50:03]:
Sex Pistols. That’s my entire childhood.
Christopher Gordon [00:50:06]:
Awesome. Yeah. So what’s the next step? What’s the bridge that gets you from there to now? You’re composing your own music. That’s not very punky. It isn’t.
Jason Barnard [00:50:18]:
Isn’t it?
Christopher Gordon [00:50:19]:
I mean, you have an edge for sure, but.
Jason Barnard [00:50:22]:
Yeah. Well, there are a couple of things. Number one is, being in a band is like being married to five people who you don’t even like. And you’re forced to live with them, create with them, sleep with them. Not obviously, in a sexual sense, but sleep with them in a bed, eat breakfast. It’s horrible from multiple perspectives. And at the entire band experience, I ended up with one great friend who, for some reason, by the end of it, he was thinking, well, actually, this has made our relationship stronger. So being in a band, if anyone is thinking about being in a band, imagine being married to four people, five people, three people, who you don’t even like.
Christopher Gordon [00:51:19]:
Oh, boy, it sounds like a bad. Or it could be a bad swinger party.
Jason Barnard [00:51:25]:
Oh, yeah. Very, very, very bad.
Christopher Gordon [00:51:27]:
Depends on how long. How long the band lasts. If it lasts a while, I’d say it’s a marriage. If it’s a few months, that’s a swinger party.
Jason Barnard [00:51:38]:
But after ten years, you get to the end of it and the band splits up and you feel both relieved and incredibly sad at the same time. There’s a huge empty thing. It’s like the end of a five marriages at once, let’s say.
Christopher Gordon [00:51:54]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:51:54]:
So there’s huge relief. Huge disappointment. And then you say, well, what do I do now?
Christopher Gordon [00:52:00]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:52:00]:
And that, I think, is the biggest problem for a musician, is I’m on my own. What on earth am I going to do now? And I figured it out with children’s music. And I was happy and I created that. But I had my ex-wife, Véronique, and we created this new universe.
Christopher Gordon [00:52:20]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:52:20]:
Without her, I think I would have struggled.
Christopher Gordon [00:52:23]:
Hmm, interesting. Yeah, that’s… Are you… Are you and your ex to this day? I mean, I know you guys, Kalicube, are you still in touch?
Jason Barnard [00:52:35]:
Yeah. We’re so great friends. She works at Kalicube. And I think that’s maybe key is we created an entire children’s universe of songs and cartoons together.
Christopher Gordon [00:52:51]:
Amazing.
Jason Barnard [00:52:52]:
And we had a wonderful daughter. And both of us are smart enough to understand that whatever happened in our marriage relationship doesn’t affect what we created together for children… Children of the world and our own child.
Christopher Gordon [00:53:10]:
Is this where the blue dog and yellow koala come into play?
Jason Barnard [00:53:14]:
Yeah. I was the blue dog. She was the yellow koala.
Christopher Gordon [00:53:17]:
That’s amazing. So I want to dive into your Rainbow Flipper Musical Explosion. You’ve chosen… well together, we chose three songs. I mean, you have so many under your belt. So without further ado, I’m going to jump into this, and then we’ll come back and discuss these songs. Right here on The Rainbow Flipper Musical Explosion. Okay. So then we take a break.
Christopher Gordon [00:53:41]:
I’m playing the songs, and then we come back. All right. That was brother Jason Barnard’s fabulous Rainbow Flipper Musical Explosion. The last song we heard was the Twirly Dance Game. Can you tell us a bit about this track?
Jason Barnard [00:54:01]:
Yeah, it’s my favorite Boowa and Kwala track. It’s a song for children that sounds very simple but is actually musically quite complex.
Christopher Gordon [00:54:12]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:54:13]:
And it’s the song that my stepfather, the husband of my mother, said, this is a much more complex song than at first appears. And that’s the day, I think, he saw that I am a musician, but not just a musician from somebody who can play music. But deep down, he said to me, you could have been a great musician. And that is a song that sounds so simple and yet is musically, I don’t understand what I did.
Christopher Gordon [00:54:53]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:54:53]:
But musically, very much appreciated by somebody who understands how music functions. And, you know, I’d love to say I was just lucky, but I think maybe deep down in my soul, that’s who I am.
Christopher Gordon [00:55:04]:
I don’t like the could have, because I think you are. You know, I wish he told you. No, seriously, I wish he told you, like, you’re a great musician, instead of you could have been a great musician. You are a great musician that you have, like, a whole catalog of work here, which is just phenomenal. And that’s what I wanted to ask you before we get to the next track.
Jason Barnard [00:55:24]:
Oh, sorry. I would say yes, I’m a very good musician and if I learned the theory, I could become a great musician.
Christopher Gordon [00:55:33]:
Got it.
Jason Barnard [00:55:33]:
But more than anything, I’m a showman and an entertainer.
Christopher Gordon [00:55:36]:
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Jason Barnard [00:55:38]:
And I just use music as the vehicle.
Christopher Gordon [00:55:41]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you have to have charisma in order to be able to speak to companies and to people. I mean, you do that. You give lectures and stuff, so. But then you also play out live, I think. And that perhaps your, your background in playing punk and being in these bands helped you gain that confidence in being able to…
Jason Barnard [00:56:00]:
Yeah, and that’s a really good point. Playing punk, you don’t care.
Christopher Gordon [00:56:06]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:56:06]:
And it gives you the openness not to worry about what people think as long as you’re doing a show.
Christopher Gordon [00:56:13]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:56:13]:
Everybody’s happy.
Christopher Gordon [00:56:14]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:56:16]:
Maybe I never would have got into music or become a musician if that hadn’t been one of the opportunities I had, because I would have been too scared, ashamed, worried. And punk is brilliant for that because it allows you to just throw yourself in there.
Christopher Gordon [00:56:31]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:56:32]:
Give it a go. Some people are going to be great, some people are going to be rubbish. And it gave me an opening that. Yeah, I think I probably would have missed my musical calling if that hadn’t happened.
Christopher Gordon [00:56:47]:
You know, I was going to ask you this. Now I’m thinking it’s kind of a lame question, but like, what influenced you? What kind of music did you hear when you were composing these songs? Or how did you come to write music for children? But it’s in you. I mean, we were talking earlier about the genes and I do feel it’s in you. I don’t think you have. Sure, you’ve listened to music all your life growing up, but perhaps this is all you like when I hear these songs, like, yeah, you cover some songs, but then your original music, it’s so original that I can’t find the influence, which is really cool because I do think that’s coming from you as a testament to you as a musician. I think that you just have the smarts to be able to go about it your own way again, that control. And you don’t really. You have influences.
Christopher Gordon [00:57:32]:
Yeah. But you’re not trying to replicate, you’re not trying to be derivative. You were able to find your own niche, especially with the children’s music.
Jason Barnard [00:57:41]:
Right. Well, the children’s music, there was a huge barrier, which was I felt I had to write three minute songs right. And the day I said, I don’t need to write a three minute song, I can write a 45-second song.
Christopher Gordon [00:57:53]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:57:54]:
Was the day that everything fell into place.
Christopher Gordon [00:57:56]:
Amazing. And then before that, we heard one of my favorites. I know it’s one of your favorites, the Stray Cat Strut. Now, this is your rendition of the Stray Cat Strut. Tell me about this song and what it means to you.
Jason Barnard [00:58:12]:
I absolutely love Brian Setzer. I mean, super amazing guitarist, but more than anything, he has taste, and he doesn’t play any old stuff. He actually plays stuff that makes sense. And even the worst songs of the Stray Cats were still very good. And the thing about that particular song is when I play it, it sounds so obvious because the melody follows the chord progression. And yet, 35 years later, 45 years later, I can’t remember. It’s still phenomenally good.
Jason Barnard [00:58:55]:
And I have sung it 15,000 times, and I still love singing it.
Christopher Gordon [00:59:01]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:59:03]:
He wrote the best song he could possibly ever write in his life, and one of the best songs in the entire universe ever when he was 17 years old.
Christopher Gordon [00:59:14]:
I can’t believe.
Jason Barnard [00:59:15]:
Wow.
Christopher Gordon [00:59:15]:
Yeah. You told me that.
Jason Barnard [00:59:16]:
Where do you go from that? But that’s the thing is, if I was 17 and I had written one of the greatest songs of all time.
Christopher Gordon [00:59:25]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [00:59:26]:
What do you do? And he just carried on and did loads of other stuff. And kudos to Brian Setzer, he kept going. Cause you could just go, I’ve done it.
Christopher Gordon [00:59:35]:
Still going. He’s still doing it. You know, that’s longevity for you. That’s what I love. One time I was speaking with someone here, and we were talking about the longevity of some bands. And I mean, boom, instantly it comes to mind is Rolling Stones. But then when you step back, it’s kind of like. It’s interesting, right? Like the longevity of these bands and songwriters.
Christopher Gordon [00:59:57]:
You know, how long can they go? How much inspiration can you consistently get? You know, someone like Billy Joel, Elton John, what makes them keep going? And Brian, certainly he falls into that. You know, he’s… As soon as that first, his debut album came out, he’s just always been doing it. So that’s amazing. I love your rendition.
Jason Barnard [01:00:19]:
One thing he said was when the Stray Cats were touring, Lee Rocker, who’s the double bass player, and Slim Jim Phantom, the drum player, just went out and hung out with the chicks and drank and had parties, and he went back to the hotel room to write the next album. And he actually said, I felt pretty pissed off about that because the whole onus was on me to write the next album, keep the band going. And they were just off having fun and I was back in the hotel room on my own, lonely, sad, depressed, trying to write these songs.
Christopher Gordon [01:00:56]:
Wow.
Christopher Gordon [01:00:58]:
I mean, how did that royalty break down? I mean, did he. You know, Nirvana was like 75-25. You know, Kurt Cobain got 75%. Grohl and Novoselic split 25%. Does Brian Setzer get like all that? He’s the main songwriter, right?
Jason Barnard [01:01:15]:
Yeah. I mean, he probably gets the majority, but from his perspective, it was, this is the… I’m 23 years old, let’s say. And this is the best fun you can possibly have in the entire universe playing in front of 5000 people. Everybody loves you. The other two members of the band go off and have a party and I go home back to the hotel in some faceless, boring hotel in a terrible town to write the songs for the next album. I can’t imagine how awful that must have been.
Christopher Gordon [01:01:51]:
Yeah. But also how driven he must have been to do that.
Jason Barnard [01:01:55]:
Yes.
Christopher Gordon [01:01:56]:
The drive to be like, I could do this anytime. Like a party means nothing. I could see these girls, I could do whatever. I could do this anytime. Writing another album, that… It usually takes people forever. I’m gonna go. I mean, that’s extremely driven, but also…
Christopher Gordon [01:02:10]:
Yeah. Extremely lonely to be the one that’s like, this is it. Like we’re the Stray Cats. This is awesome. And, you know, your mates are just off doing whatever I think is. I mean, that’s a…
Jason Barnard [01:02:21]:
And then you look at. No, but you look at what he did later on in life, which is revive the swing jazz thing.
Christopher Gordon [01:02:28]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:02:28]:
I mean, he created that entire universe.
Christopher Gordon [01:02:32]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:02:32]:
And if you read his biography, you will see that he almost went bankrupt because nobody believed, nobody wanted to do it. He created his own record company, which I also did, but less successfully. He paid an entire big band.
Christopher Gordon [01:02:51]:
Wow.
Jason Barnard [01:02:52]:
To the point at which when they went on tour, he was about to go bankrupt. And if it hadn’t worked, the whole thing was down the pan and all the money he made out of the Stray Cats would have been gone.
Christopher Gordon [01:03:03]:
Wow.
Jason Barnard [01:03:04]:
And it worked. And he created that entire swing jazz, late eighties, early nineties.
Christopher Gordon [01:03:12]:
That’s revival.
Jason Barnard [01:03:13]:
Yeah. And that’s true belief, true drive. Wow. I mean, for me, he’s an absolute hero. I mean, somebody once asked me, who would you like to have on your podcast that you’ve never had? Who would be your dream? And the answer is Brian Setzer except I would have nothing to say to him, other than, wow, aren’t you wonderful? And it would be the most world awful, ever terrible interview, because I would just be going, wow, I love you. You’re so wonderful.
Jason Barnard [01:03:47]:
It was this terrible fanboy thing going on. Yeah, because he’s so cool. But I bought. He’s as boring as pig shit when you actually talk to him. But I love him. Brian, if you’re listening to this, I love you.
Christopher Gordon [01:04:01]:
Yes, we love you. But Jason loves you, I think, a little more than I do. No, but seriously, because I’m learning. I’m learning more. More about Brian’s life now from you than I ever have. I mean, I didn’t even realize he was 17 when Stray Cats hit the scene. So, Brian, if you’re listening, you got to get on Jason’s podcast. Please.
Christopher Gordon [01:04:20]:
We can figure this out. Visit the link.
Jason Barnard [01:04:25]:
Hang on. He can come on my podcast, and it will be a 30-minute embarrassed silence.
Christopher Gordon [01:04:31]:
I think he’d be very flattered. Perhaps you’re right.
Jason Barnard [01:04:36]:
I can do it. Yeah. Brilliant.
Christopher Gordon [01:04:40]:
And then before that, setting off your Rainbow Flipper Musical Explosion, we heard once again from you doing an awesome rendition of Ace of Spades, where you’re playing the double bass.
Christopher Gordon [01:04:51]:
How? It’s so good.
Christopher Gordon [01:04:55]:
Why? How? I just have so many questions about this song alone, but I prefer to hear from you about this track.
Jason Barnard [01:04:54]:
I don’t remember why we decided to play it, but that was with The Barking Dogs back in the nineties. And the singer Hugo, who remains a huge, huge friend. I mean, I said earlier on, you’re married to. It’s like being married to five people you don’t even like. He’s the one I absolutely love.
Christopher Gordon [01:05:23]:
Great.
Jason Barnard [01:05:23]:
And he has such a stage presence, and he has an ability or a God-given talent. He sings like he breathes, and wow, it knocks completely the socks off me. And we decided to a punk folk version where I played double bass. We had a drummer, we had a guy on the violin, and Hugo playing the mandolin.
Christopher Gordon [01:05:56]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:05:56]:
So there’s no guitar.
Christopher Gordon [01:05:57]:
No guitar.
Jason Barnard [01:05:58]:
That’s mandolin, violin, double bass, drums, and vocals.
Christopher Gordon [01:05:55]:
That arrangement is what I love about the track. That arrangement is what I adore about this track. Because you guys could have gone that route. So many people go that route. Oh, we’ll just cover it. We’ll cover it.
Christopher Gordon [01:06:16]:
But then they do something a little different. This is completely. I mean, you guys kind of made Ace of Spades your own.
Jason Barnard [01:06:22]:
Yeah. And when you’ve got a singer like Hugo, you can take away an awful lot of stuff because he fills up so much space. And from a double-bass perspective, I mean, the double bass is so simple. But what we did very well with Marcus, the drummer, was we were so in sync that the whole thing just rocks. And everything that’s built on top is simple, logical, and makes sense. And it made, I think, Hugo and Chris’ life, who were the two people playing the lead instruments and singing, it made their life so simple because the foundation was so rock solid with me and Marcus. And that is the key to music. A rock music, at least. Drums and bass, if we can get it right, we’ve got the solid foundation that allows everybody else to do whatever they want.
Jason Barnard [01:07:17]:
And the base is the connection between the rhythm and the melody. And if I get it right as the bass player, then everybody can get it right. And if the bass player gets it wrong, it all goes horribly wrong, which is me saying bass player is the most important person in the band. Which, of course, I would say, because I’m a bass player.
Christopher Gordon [01:07:40]:
No, but that is true. It is true from my own experience. When I was in a band. I was in a band one time, the bass player wasn’t in tune, and it wrecked the whole entire song. And it was one of those things where we started so we couldn’t stop, you know? You know how lame that is when you’re like, oh, and the person has to tune? So we just plowed through the song. Obviously, as soon as the song ended, we were like, yo, you gotta tune your bass. But it’s true. Like, you can fake it if your guitar goes out of tune.
Christopher Gordon [01:08:12]:
You know, you can’t necessarily fake it if your rhythm’s off, as a drummer, but usually they’re metronomes anyway, right? But a bass, it’s so in your face and everything that if it’s off, that’s it. I feel like it just kind of destroys.
Jason Barnard [01:08:26]:
I think it. Well, I mean, for me, it’s less that it’s in your face and more that it’s the connection between the rhythm and the melody.
Christopher Gordon [01:08:34]:
Absolutely.
Jason Barnard [01:08:35]:
So when that goes wrong, both of them go completely out of sync. And we had a period, and it was kind of interesting is me and the drummer lost our mojo, or our synchronicity, whatever you would call it.
Christopher Gordon [01:08:48]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:08:49]:
And we couldn’t play together. And it was really weird because nothing ever sounded right. And it was about three months, and he hated me, and he thought it was my fault. I was annoyed and frustrated, and then one day, it just went back into sync, and I don’t know why. He doesn’t know why. And it was three months of absolute torture, and it went back into sync. And then he said, you’re the…
Jason Barnard [01:09:18]:
You’re my favorite bass player in the entire world ever. And I was going, I don’t know why, because I’m not particularly good. And you’re a phenomenally good drummer. And he said, because you’re always there when I need you. You’re always in time. Whatever happens, I can always rely on you, and that is what I need. And then the stinger ego said, you’re my favorite bass player because I can always rely on you. You’re always there. As a bass player, I’m going, I’m desperately struggling to keep all this together.
Jason Barnard [01:09:50]:
And they all thought it was completely natural and it was actually, I made a huge effort.
Christopher Gordon [01:09:55]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:09:57]:
To bring the two together and I did it consciously and it worked. And I think a bass player has to pay attention to the rhythm and the melody and is possibly the least appreciated member of a rock band. So any bass players out there, I love you.
Christopher Gordon [01:10:18]:
Yeah, agreed. Bassists of the world. You’re the best, I gotta say. Really? And it’s… Yeah?
Jason Barnard [01:10:26]:
And Lemmy. Lemmy, the bass player for Motörhead. Now, the song the Ace of Spades played by Motörhead.
Christopher Gordon [01:10:32]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:10:33]:
Lemmy is absolutely so phenomenally good, and he’s a singer and a bass player, and singing and playing the bass at the same time is one of the hardest things to do because singing is all about freedom of expression and bass is all about linking those two parts together.
Christopher Gordon [01:10:49]:
Very different.
Jason Barnard [01:10:50]:
And the two together is, by far, in my opinion, the hardest thing to do.
Christopher Gordon [01:10:31]:
I agree. Sting, so good at it. Like, I think of Sting. Oh, I think of Les Craypool. Like, just that Geddy, what’s his name from Rush? Like, these guys who play but, like, complex bass lines and just sing. Like, it’s not. Like they’re not even playing the bass.
Christopher Gordon [01:11:12]:
It just blows my mind. Yep.
Jason Barnard [01:11:13]:
No, Sting is an amazing example. He’s just going to help. How on earth does he do that?
Christopher Gordon [01:11:19]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:11:20]:
I mean, I can’t even play the bass line, let alone sing on top of it. And so my whole life is, let’s simplify the bass line so I can sing, or if I’m not singing because Hugo’s singing, I can do something complicated on the bass, but I can’t do the two at the same time.
Christopher Gordon [01:11:34]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:11:19]:
So, you know. Yeah. I agree 100%. And one thing I managed to do, which was delightful, is part of my job is manipulating Google. I convinced Google that if you search for who played the bass on the Ace of Spades, it would say Jason Barnard and not Lemmy. That’s true.
Christopher Gordon [01:12:01]:
Which is true. You do play bass.
Jason Barnard [01:12:03]:
Yeah. No. And people say, well, you’ve tricked Google. That’s naughty. And you’re going, but actually it’s true. I did play the bass on the outer space, not the version of the Ace of Spades that you all know.
Christopher Gordon [01:12:16]:
Right.
Jason Barnard [01:12:16]:
But I did play the bass on the Ace of Spades, so it’s true. Therefore, you know, maybe not reasonable, but certainly truthful.
Christopher Gordon [01:12:25]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:12:26]:
I don’t lie. I just changed Google’s focus from Lemmy to me. And if I can change Google’s focus from Lemmy playing bass on the Ace of Spades to Jason Barnard playing the bass on the Ace of Spades, I think I’ve pretty much mastered Google.
Christopher Gordon [01:12:42]:
And if I’m a company and I want you to trick Google into something, is that something that happens? Like, is that one of the things that Kalicube can do for someone? In other words, I see a lot of pay services that are talking about what you’re talking about. And I’m always like, there must be a way to do this without paying. I mean, you’re tricking Google. I’m going to pay to trick it.
Jason Barnard [01:13:06]:
No, I don’t pay Google.
Christopher Gordon [01:13:09]:
You know what I mean? Like, there was no certain… You can’t figure it out on your own.
Jason Barnard [01:13:16]:
Yeah. No, 100%. What we do is change Google’s focus and change Google’s attention. So if I can dominate the information about in our example, Lemmy playing bass in the Ace of Spades, you’ve got two people who have played bass on the Ace of Spades. All I need to do is make Google think that this is the one that it understands the best. Now, what has happened recently is Lemmy has taken my place because obviously that’s the most probable answer to the question.
Christopher Gordon [01:13:53]:
Sure.
Jason Barnard [01:13:53]:
So what I did was beat the Google machine by confidence. It was so confident in the fact that it knew that I had played the bass on the Ace of Spades that it showed me. And now that it’s understood that Lemmy played the bass on the Ace of Spades that everybody else is talking about, he’s got his place back. Which is fair deuce. But that’s the point. I was manipulating Google’s attention, manipulating Google’s confidence in a piece of information, and I was being slightly ambiguous about it. So you can trick the machine, you can’t create. You can trick it, but you can’t create truth that doesn’t exist.
Christopher Gordon [01:14:35]:
Right, right. So in other, right. So it’s true. You did play bass, but so did he. But you’re able to trick it into. Yeah. Right. So, in other words, if you didn’t, then that’s. That’s where it becomes harder.
Jason Barnard [01:14:48]:
Yes, If you take a truth and amplify it, you can get Google to pay attention, but you can get your audience to pay attention. It’s not just Google, because what I actually did was attract Google’s attention to the fact that I played the bass on the Ace of Spades by amplifying the message to my audience. So my audience also saw that.
Christopher Gordon [01:15:15]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:15:15]:
So it’s not just Google. By changing Google’s focus or. Sorry. In order to change Google’s focus, you need to change the focus of the audience, because Google simply reflects what the audience is seeing or what the audience is understanding and what the audience believes. So it’s that fact to truth thing. You need to change the audience’s appreciation of the facts to match your truth, and Google will represent it. It’s as simple as that. But actually, it’s as complicated as that because that’s looming hard to do.
Christopher Gordon [01:15:52]:
And this is all stuff that you’ve learned on your own through your experiences in doing this? Yes? Or did you have someone teach you these things? No, it’s all you. I mean, I got to tell you, Jason, wow, you’re so brilliant to be able to figure all that out and then also to just sort of pick up a bass and do your thing. That’s just… None of these is easy. I’m sure. I’m just kind of blown away. I wanted to know, are you…
Christopher Gordon [01:16:17]:
Do you still play out? Do you still play live? On occasion, music?
Jason Barnard [01:16:21]:
Yep.
Jason Barnard [01:16:23]:
Yeah. I can send you, in fact, the videos I sent you.
Christopher Gordon [01:16:26]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:16:27]:
One of them with Fred on stage. That was from six months ago.
Christopher Gordon [01:16:32]:
Oh, wow. I didn’t realize that.
Jason Barnard [01:16:33]:
So yeah. I still play.
Christopher Gordon [01:16:33]:
Great.
Jason Barnard [01:16:34]:
Oh, the one with the red shirt is me and Fred six months ago.
Christopher Gordon [01:16:39]:
Okay.
Jason Barnard [01:16:40]:
Playing Stray Cat Strut, I think, is on that particular video. So, yeah, I still play. I actually, if you ask me, what is your foundational human being raison d’etre in French? Music. I just happen to enjoy manipulating Google. But if you ask me, if you could do one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? It will be singing. Play with double bass.
Christopher Gordon [01:17:14]:
If you could do one thing for the rest of your life, what would that be?
Jason Barnard [01:17:19]:
Singing and playing double bass. Thank you for the question.
Christopher Gordon [01:17:24]:
Oh, man, you are an absolute treasure. Again, I cannot thank you enough for being on The Rainbow Flipper Musical Explosion on the rest of this program. And even before we sat down, I’ve been playing your music. So I’m going to continue playing some of your tunes because I want everyone to hear it. I think you are a phenomenal musician and I just can’t believe… it’s got to be like a gene thing. I just don’t understand you’re able to do all this stuff. I mean, I can’t even dive into your brain right now, but, boy, it is a busy space up there. I can imagine.
Christopher Gordon [01:18:02]:
And one which is so much experience and knowledge. I just… And I can’t thank you enough for offering all these to your audiences, your services, what you do from Kalicube to your own original compositions and covering songs, and then to share it all. I mean, I think it just not only exudes your confidence in what you’re doing, but I think it’s just so helpful and meaningful to folks like me and your audiences. I can’t… Oh, yeah?
Jason Barnard [01:18:36]:
Can I add a couple of things? Number one is every night I go to bed.
Christopher Gordon [01:18:40]:
Yeah.
Jason Barnard [01:18:42]:
Super excited to wake up the next morning, I don’t want to sleep. I’m like a twelve-year old child and I’ve been like that my whole life. I wake up in the morning, I think, what am I going to do today? What can we conquer? What can we change? What can we figure out? And that whole thing is, I don’t want today to end because there’s so much left to do. And I can’t wait for tomorrow to start because there’s so much to do. And part of it is mastering Google. Part of it is music. Part of it is love. Part of it is friendship, cooking, how many things we got to do? Isn’t it so delightfully wonderful? And music is one of the things that you never, ever, ever master.
Jason Barnard [01:19:26]:
However good you get at it, there’s always more to learn. And Brian Setzer will be a great example. When you’ve written one of the greatest songs in humanity, when you’re 17 years old and you’re still writing songs when you’re 70 years old. Yeah, that shows that music never, never, never has a conclusion.
Christopher Gordon [01:19:45]:
Actually, before I let you go, what kind of music are you listening to these days? Who do you like that’s out there, contemporary wise?
Jason Barnard [01:19:51]:
Oh, lots of soppy love music because I’m in love.
Christopher Gordon [01:19:55]:
Oh, interesting.
Jason Barnard [01:20:03]:
But that’s what music’s all about, is you listen to the music that makes sense to your position and your perception of the world at the time. And right now, I’m in love. I’m listening to lots of stopping music and it makes me so happy, you know, maybe in a few years I’ll be listening to punk again.
Christopher Gordon [01:20:24]:
Yeah, well, that’s a beautiful thing about music too, right? Is how it affects us mentally, even physiologically. Like, you could smell something, it could take you back in time and all the properties it has in terms of helping people heal. You know, people in a catatonic state, you put on a song from the twenties, they perk up. And then even I’d say, you know, when I was listening to Twirly Dance, Twirly Dance Game, that affected me emotionally. That just took me back to…
Jason Barnard [01:20:54]:
Oh, really?
Christopher Gordon [01:20:54]:
Yeah, absolutely. It took me back to a time. I got really emotional actually listening to that because reminding me of my childhood and then being a father to my kids, it just kind of. It affected me, you know, so it’s true. Music can really affect people. And I completely get why you’re listening to lovey songs. You know, some people want to fill the world with silly love songs, right? Isn’t that what… is that Wings?
Jason Barnard [01:21:22]:
Yes, that is. That’s Paul McCartney. Don’t you love him?
Christopher Gordon [01:21:27]:
Well, thank you, Jason Barnard.
Jason Barnard [01:21:29]:
As I wrote 100 songs for children and some of them will take you back to your childhood, I would say half of them do. 20 another 25% fairly rubbish. Not particularly interesting, but I don’t think any of them didn’t serve a human purpose that helps children understand and believe in the world they’re seeing. And I’m super proud of every single song I’ve written, even the ones that I think that isn’t so very good because technically it might not be so good, but it does mean something to somebody.
Christopher Gordon [01:22:10]:
Totally. That’s absolutely right. I completely agree with that. You know, even when, you know, the band or artist suffers from what they call, you know, a sophomore slump, you know, their second album, yeah, it’s not so good, but that album is definitely in. Some of the tracks are definitely affecting people in some way. So I think that isn’t. That’s a really good point you make that, you know, maybe the artist may think it’s rubbish or someone thinks it’s rubbish, but there’s always going to be someone out there that it affects. Always.
Christopher Gordon [01:22:39]:
So…
Jason Barnard [01:22:40]:
Brilliant. That’s a really lovely way to end it. Thank you so much.
Christopher Gordon [01:22:44]:
Thank you, Jason Barnard. You are amazing. I really can’t thank you enough. And all you listeners out there, do yourselves a favor. Please look in this episode’s description to find all the links for everything Jason Barnard. And definitely dive into his world of music as I’m about to right now.
Christopher Gordon [01:23:02]:
Jason, thank you again so much.
Jason Barnard [01:23:06]:
Thank you so much, Christopher. Have a lovely, lovely day.
Christopher Gordon [01:23:09]:
You too.
