#also: thank you for liking my birthday project for carlos! it was really really fun! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

usaghinanami99 · 5 years

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Hugh Jackman’s world tour: a personal comment

Hi, everyone! I know I'm a bit late, but I'm here to post a not-so-brief coverage of Hugh Jackman's world tour The man, the music, the show, or at least of the performance I've been able to witness myself. To be precise, I attended the concert held inside the Hallenstadion, Zurich, on the 19th of May, which, by a lucky coincidence, also happened to be my 20th birthday. It's been a long trip by train to reach Zurich, and I want to deeply thank my mum for being the kindest parent in the world and going through all of this just to give me the best birthday present I'll ever have had. Oh, please bear with my English, which is less than stellar, unless I’ve written something absolutely incomprehensible (in which case, please don’t hesitate to contact me!). I must say I’m very grateful that Hugh, knowing he was in a non-Anglophone country, purposefully spoke at a very slow rhythm. Thanks for being so considerate and kind. [Edited to put all this wall of text under a cut]

First things first, I have to say I had never been to such a big event, and concerts I had previously attended were nothing like this one. I mean, the only non-classical music concerts I had been to before were shows by Cristina D'Avena and/or Giorgio Vanni (who are Italian national stars specialized in anime theme songs), where the relationship between the artist and the public was completely different, in the sense that it was a given that, after the performance, they would have got plenty of time to meet every fan who wanted to do so for signing sessions, answering questions etc., with no additional price or need to preorder whatsoever. Well, things are obviously different when one's level of fame goes from "national" to "global", so what I felt was lacking more from Jackman's show was a real contact with the public... save a few horribly lucky exceptions. I mean, it's not like I thought he could do a signing session with over twelve thousand fans, but all in all, I reckon that seeing a concert with so little first-hand contact is not all that different than seeing said artist through a screen (which, BTW, we still had to do, since it was not humanly possible to see Hugh and the dancers from the furthest places without the aid of the maxi-screens). I'm sorry to have to start this post with a negative opinion, but I also have to say that this was absolutely the only bad thing about this concert; that, and the fact that Hugh always had a shirt on. Because, otherwise, I was totally blown away by the majesty of the music, as always happens when my ears are graced with hearing Hugh's fabulous voice, with the added bonus of the spoken intermissions, which were endless fun to listen to (and quickly translate to mum).

The show, as probably expected, opened in medias res, with no sort of introduction (apart from a very brief on-screen montage of various scenes taken from Hugh's filmography), but directly on the notes of The greatest show, which, thanks to the meta nature of its lyrics, may very well work as the most fitting show-opener of all time. The first verses of the song already worked very well when the film started at the cinema, but were no less than perfect to introduce a real-life show like the one that Barnum was about to start in-universe. Unfortunately, the version performed was the one from the official soundtrack – I say "unfortunately" because I prefer the film version, where The greatest show is actually two different songs and we manage to hear sad!Barnum's amazing verses at the end of the first part – albeit tweaked a bit to cut Zac Efron's solo lines out. Nevertheless, this song is breathtaking in every rendition, as are all songs from TGS, at least in my opinion, so I was still blown away right from the start of the show, and I remained in a state of hyper-excitation for its whole duration. After the show-opener ended, the first spoken intermission came, which made us understand from the get-go that this was going to be a little bit more than a normal concert, with the inclusion of these short but interesting comedic numbers by the star. This sketch consisted in a weirdly long declaration of the importance of numbers, which in the end was only functional to Hugh declaring in a depressed tone that he's fifty. A fact which matters not, seeing how he is still the sexiest man alive (disclaimer: I am not a gerontophile by any means, I usually lust over younger men and women, but Hugh's sexiness is something that transcends this, also because he objectively looks at least a decade younger than he is) and how insanely athletic he is for his age, a thing which we can confirm first-hand with all the crazy dancing he did on stage... and dancing while singing, may I add. And always with his shirt on, to boot. Man, that must have been hard. Oh, and he also said that, in case we were those horrible people who left before the show ended to have an easier time with the traffic, he would tell us when there'd be only two songs left. I wonder who on earth could have been that insane.

Immediately following this, Come alive came next, with its usual irresistible catchyness. The only negative side is that PT didn't actually put his red coat on in the epic and sexy way we see him do in the film, but I think I can live without that. I really liked the following transition, because, right after starting the show with his latest musical project, Hugh took us back to the start of his thetrical career, telling us how he still can't believe he won the audition to portray Gaston in the Sydney 1995 version of the Beauty and the beast stage musical (the theatric adaptation of the 1991 Disney Classic), seeing how he still had to take singing lessons. Now, the following part was my personal favourite of the whole show, given the fact that B&B is, in my opinion, the very best film ever created, as well as featuring my eternal OTP and sporting Alan Menken (the greatest composer alive) at the very highest of his career, who graced us with the most breathtaking songs I've ever listened to; oh, and Marjorie Biondo is my favourite singer on earth, to boot. So, you may imagine just how elated I was at the perspective of my favourite film meeting one of my favourite singers/actors! I had obviously already listened to Hugh's rendition of Gaston's songs from the official recording of the Sydney cast, just how I also watched Beauty and the beast in every language it's ever been dubbed into, because that's just how much of a fangirl I am; the only other film I've got such an extensive experience of is Frozen. That being said, I honestly reckon that Hugh's singing skills have dramatically improved during the almost-24 years that passed between that recording and this concert, even if he was already an excellent singer at the start of his career! Well, to put things shortly, Gaston was the musical number that followed, and it was undoubtedly the one that I enjoyed the most. The one performed was obviously the stage musical version, which is a bit longer than the original film version because of its lenghty dancing-only intermission; well, the crew didn't actually dance on tables, but the atmosphere was still there, thanks to Hugh being very in character as the sexy but sexist asshole that is Gaston, and the choreography involving tons of fake beer. That being said, since there was no LeFou present, the song was presented in a somewhat abridged rendition, starting from the "When I was a lad..." lines, but then recuperating some of the earlier stanzas and putting them out-of-order before the finale. The visual highlight of the number was Hugh lifting one dancer per arm to prove that Gaston has indeed "got biceps to spare", but sadly he didn't open his shirt like Gaston does in the film to show that every last inch of him's covered with hair. That was the saddest thing ever, imho. Still, I can confirm Hugh Jackman as being on the second spot in my ranking of the best Gastons ever, right after the inimitable Carlo Lepore, not to mention the fact that he's the sole and only baritone I can accept as Gaston. I mean, the character really needs a basso to fit his physical appearance and personality, especially in the film, and a basso also sounds much better in Gaston's songs, but Hugh somehow manages to make a baritone Gaston credible, like no other's been able to. Well, to be honest, maybe he's helped by the fact that he portrayed him in a stage musical and not in a film, so he didn't have to adjust his voice in order to be perfectly glued to the already-present face of a character; still, I regard this feat as something amazing, and you can't change my mind. As a side note, my mum, too, was quite happy during this number, because Gaston was pretty much the only song in the whole concert that she already knew; after all, you can't not know Beauty and the beast if you live with me, since I watch it obsessively every month (I'm still amazed by the fact that the videotape has never broken).

After an introduction with his own music repertoire, Hugh then went on to a small series of covers from different artists, starting with Fred Astaire's classic The way you look tonight (taken from the film Swing time), and on with other songs I had never heard him perform; which was a very nice surprise, because I really didn't expect to listen to anything new that evening! He thanked Switzerland for existing because that's where his parents first met (awww), which means that the country is very important for him, and thanked his public for being there for him, especially those of us who came by train or by plane – which means that Hugh Jackman thanked me, I'm definitely not delusional. But next time come to Italy, pleeease! After this, he performed I've been everywhere, which seems to be a popular Australian song where the singer mentions the hundreds of cities in the country that he's visited; this number was particularly hilarious because Hugh randomly added Zurich to the mix, and because, during an instrumental break, he asked the cameraman to show the audience the small screen where he could read the lyrics... seems that even Hugh Jackman is a human being after all, who would've guessed? Next came two songs from the film Dear Evan Hansen (absolutely watch it if you haven't!), which happens to be scored by the same Benj & Paul of The greatest showman fame, starting with the melancholy, but at the same time uplifting, You will be found, which was my personal favourite among the unreleased covers of this concert. The second song was the tearjerker For forever, a romantic ballad that Hugh aptly dedicated to his wife, and even played by himself on the piano, because apparently there's nothing this man can't do. The number was accompanied by pictures of Hugh, Deborra and their children on the screens, at which I literally couldn't not cry of too many feels... And, at the end of the song, she even went up on-stage to hug and kiss her hubby. Gosh, I envy her so much even as I still totally ship her with her husband, but really, Deborra Lee-Furness may very well be the luckiest woman alive. Returning to Benjamin and Paul, he then told us of how they composed and wrote This is me during a plane trip, one single day before a workshop where the film would be pitched. He then proceeded to recount the famous anecdote of how Keala Settle, who should've only sung this song at the workshop and wasn't to portray Lettie in the film, stunned everyone with her performance so much that she was immediately chosen for the role. This intermission, of course, served the purpose of introducing the night's special guest: the audience seemed to explode when Hugh announced Keala's entrance, to the point that I think that quite a few of them hadn't read that she would make an appearance. Anyway, even without her beard on her impression as Lettie is incredible, and her rendition of This is me was as breathtaking as always (incidentally, she also sang Tom's lines as well as her own). After her number had ended, she briefly thanked everyone who gave her the opportunity to play Lettie, and even the character herself, since she helped her become more determined, all while weeping tears of joy, which caused Hugh to cry, and... I can't. I just can't. These two are so amazing together and I want to see them in thirty more films singing and being happy one with the other.

After Keala exited the stage, a medley consisting of three songs from Les misérables started, introduced by footage from the film of Colm Wilkinson as the bishop giving Valjean the candelabra (you know the scene). The first part of the medley consisted of the aptly titled Valjean's soliloquy, which Hugh soloed with all the amazing skill we've already witnessed in the film. What I wasn't expecting, though, was for a background singer to own the spotlight as a full-on soloist: the second part of the series was none other than I dreamed a dream, in a rendition where a singer called Jenna Lee-James played Fantine. And, oh my gosh... I still have to listen to all versions of the stage musical, but what I know for sure is that I liked this performance even better than the one from the film (sorry, Anne!). I didn't think I would come out of a one-man show determined to check out a never-heard-before artist, but here I am, and it was definitely worth it; Jenna has got such a melodious, angelic voice, that I'm sure you'll be enchanted by her, too. The last number of the medley, as well as the closer of the first act, was One day more (which is already more or less a medley by itself, lol), where basically everyone had the opportunity to shine: since this is such a big ensemble number where almost every main character has got some solo lines, many different background singers managed to step out of the shadow and be recognized for their raw talent. While I'm somewhat sad that Bring him home wasn't included in the concert, this song was a truly satisfying act-closer, thanks to it epic proportions and majesticity.

After a well-deserved pause of twenty minutes for the artists, the second hour-long act opened with the cameraman gracing us with a glorious zoom-in on Hugh's butt (though I prefer his buttshots as Wolverine because here he was sadly wearing his trousers); it doubled as sexy and hilarious when the cameraman started to zoom out, only for Hugh to reprimand him and ask him to keep the focus on. By the way, at this point Hugh was already in-costume as Peter Allen, which means that he was wearing that absurdly sparkling jacket, so unfortunately it was a bit difficult to look at him without being blinded by all the *sparkle sparkle*. The initial musical numbers of the second act consisted in a series of freaking seven songs composed by Peter in various occasions and then posthumously used for the biographical stage musical The boy from Oz (I'm writing it here so that I don't have to repeat the various songs' origins every time), for which Hugh played the protagonist role in the Broadway version. The first one was obviously the legendary Not the boy next door, which was as spectacular as you can imagine, with the highlight consisting in Hugh taking the sparkling jacket off (for which my eyes thanked him in every possible sense) and spend the better part of the medley in a bright red shirt. All in all, this was probably the funniest number of the show; but then came the most irritating part, where Hugh invited a random man from the public to dance with him, and by "dance" I mean "being impossibly close and touchy-feely to the point that it was almost hard to distinguish where one ended and where the other started". I reckon it would've been sexy if the other person had been slightly hotter (for example, Hugh Jackman on Zac Efron brings infinite possibilities to mind), but he was just your regular middle-aged man, so no, there wasn't much fanservice for everyone except for him. I mean, Hugh even stroked. his. chest. Not fair. While rationally I know that it could never have been me because 1) I was as far away from the stage as you can get, since we bought the most economic tickets, and 2) he was in-character as Peter, so he needed a man, I'm still impossibly envious of this random man who's got the greatest luck of us all for no particular reason. Jeez, maybe I'm unneedlessly bitter, but I almost hope he's hetero, 'cause if he's either gay or bisexual, then he'd really have got the biggest luck of his life. Not-so-funny sketch aside, the show went on with a preposterous medley of songs from Peter's repertoire (and, indirectly through the musical, also Hugh's own) with no further interruptions: these were, in order, Best that you can do, the only one recycled from a previous musical, namely Arthur; Don't cry out loud, a pop song that Peter originally composed for a female voice, so it was a bit unexpected to hear Hugh sing it; I honestly love you, another pop piece, this one originally sung by Olivia Newton-John (which happens to be Hugh's childhood idol, by the way); Quiet please, there's a lady on stage, this one written, composed and sung by Peter himself; the iconic I go to Rio, where we found out that Hugh's red shirt actually concealed another layer of clothing – that is, the hilariously iconic pineapple shirt (and yes, he did use the maracas); and Tenterfield saddler, with which the medley closed. As previously mentioned, these songs were created by Peter for various different occasions, either for musicals or for more traditional albums, but were later reused for TBFO, sung either by Hugh-as-Peter or by other characters. All in all, this part was really enjoyable, and a totally deserved tribute to Allen's musical legend, even if one can question the inclusion of some minor pieces which kept the much more beloved I still call Australia home from being in the show.

After this, Hugh went on a speech about how dreams are important, and we know what this means: it's A million dreams time! The cutest thing is that this song was accompanied by a woman translating the lyrics into sign language... even though I must admit I struggle to conceive that a deaf would want to attend a concert, so the sense of the operation is a bit lost on me. Anyway, the version performed followed once again the soundtrack instead of the film, and once again I confess I prefer the latter, mainly because kid!Charity is also featured in it; on the other hand, it's true that the soundtrack version has got some additional verses, and the abrupt transition between the kid and the adult Barnum (which is much more nuanced in the film) is breathtaking. The parts were divided between Hugh Jackman as adult!PT, Jenna Lee-James as adult!Charity and another female singer whose name I'm desperately searching for as kid!PT. This song, which was already one of my absolute favourites, is still amazing in this rendition, but Jenna is possibly even better than Michelle (who is awfully talented in her own right), and now I really want to hear her sing Tightrope.

Following this, it was the turn for another long medley, this time a set of five covers from classic US musicals; this part of the show was introduced by Hugh confessing that he's got a very difficult upbringing... because there was only one TV channel when he was a kid, so he watched the same things over and over again (not that we do things differently even now that we can choose among many different channels), which led to his infatuation for old-style musical comedies. The songs composing this medley were: Luck be a lady tonight from the film Guys and dolls, then made even more famous by Frank Sinatra; Gene Kelly's preposterously famous Singing in the rain from the homonyme film, complete with fake rain and real umbrellas; I got rhythm from the film Girl crazy; Fred Astaire's Stepping out with my baby from the film Easter parade; and Benny Goodman's crazily-paced Sing sing sing. Needless to say, Hugh totally owned all of these songs, and I think this is the part of the whole show where his unadultered love for singing, dancing and generally being on stage shone through the most; of course the man is an excellent cinema actor, but you can clearly see that he's more elated when in a theatre or otherwise in front of an audience.

Immediately after came what was very probably the most physically prowing number for the cast, as well as the only non-sung one: after narrating that his brother was so much of an asshole that he discouraged him from taking dance lessons when he was a child, he proclaimed his happiness for having finally managed to study tip tap, which transitioned into a full-fledged tip tap routine with accompanying background music. This was admittedly the part of the show that I enjoyed the least, even if I did like it well enough (that's just to say how much I love this concert), because of the lack of singing and because I'm not the biggest fan of tap dancing. The funniest thing is that, at the end of the routine, Hugh exclaimed: <<Do you think that Ryan Reynolds could do that?>> and then did his Wolverine shtick using the battery sticks. Absolutely amazing. Oh, and after this exhausting number he turned back to drink, and even lampshaded the fact that we could take advantage of his tiredness to enjoy the view.

Then some brief footage from Australia was shown to introduce the members of a humanitarian organization called "Nomad two worlds", which made up the serious part of the show: the number in question consisted of a few men singing while two other men played the didgeridoo and a woman recited a poem. I should mention that all of these people were Aboriginals. After the end of the performance, it was explained to us that the woman who was on stage next to Hugh was actually a member of the Australian parliament who had a key role when their nation finally asked official forgiveness to the Aboriginals for the prosecution of their people. It was a very touching moment, indeed. With this over but still keeping on theme with Australia, Hugh performed a cover of Somewhere over the rainbow from the film The wizard of Oz (like his colleague and friend Nicole Kidman did in that film), and I wouldn't be lying if I said that I honestly prefer him over Judy Garland.

Then cam the most unexpected number of the whole concert, i.e., a cover of Mack the knife from Bertolt Brecht's Three-penny opera, which maybe would've fit better earlier in the programme; after which, Hugh actually told us that there were only two songs left, in case anyone wanted to leave early (I mean, does he think we’re crazy?). The following one was From now on, which I honestly expected to be used as the show-closer, but was nevertheless incredibly breathtaking; this is my favourite song of The greatest showman, in particular because it lets Hugh Jackman show everyone that he's truly the best belter of the world. From now on is also one of the two cases in which I prefer the soundtrack version of the song over the one from the film, since, like Tightrope, it features a bunch of additional verses. Unfortunately, though, Hugh performed an abridged version of the song, only starting with "I drank champagn with kings and queens...", maybe because it would've been difficult to hear him during the first part of the piece, which is sung while whispering. Anyhow, it was still exciting as heck, and the background dancers were even more amazing than usual. And, right when I was left asking myself what the final number would be, Hugh started singing another piece written, composed and sung by Peter Allen (albeit this time not in-character) and then used for TBFO; namely, Once before I go, which is incredibly fitting as a show-closer thanks to its lyrics. Thus the concert ended, with the main star, the special guests, the singers, the dancers and the orchestra bowing in front of the audience. I was appalled by the lack of an encore, and especially by the fact that no one in the public was apparently screaming for one like you usually do at a concert, but I was still utterly satisfied by the experience. Every member of the crew was simply fantastic, not just Hugh, and I'm very happy I've been so lucky to witness this show. ...I'm just still wondering why What a beautiful morning wasn't included in the programme, nor any other song from Oklahoma. That's jarring, I think.

Believe me, I would've totally stayed and bought some souvenirs, if it weren't for mummy, who wanted to go straight to bed; but, after all, she's already done so much for me, in exchange for nothing, that I can hardly believe it. She is the person I have to thank the most for this out-of-the-world trip and I couldn't be happier of being her daughter. So, many thanks to Hugh Jackman and all the others who made this concert possible, but even more thanks to the only one who made me being at this concert possible. Anyway, I simply cannot wait for Hugh to come back where he belongs to, now that his partecipation in The music man has been announced; I obviously won’t be able to go to Broadway to see the musical, but you can be sure I’m going to purchase the soundtrack album as soon as it comes out. What can I say, I love the man and I’m very happy he’s been able to realize both his personal and professional dreams.

If you've come this far, congratulations! I hope you've liked this totally unprofessional coverage, and I'd love it if you could link me to someone who's written a similar piece about a different performance, because I'm very interested in knowing how they differ between one another. Thanks for reading!

#hugh jackman #the man the music the show

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wtnv-panels · 6 years

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Good Morning Night Vale, episode 1: “Pilot”

Symphony Sanders: A friendly desert community where the sun is hot…

Meg Bashwiner: The moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep.

Hal Lublin: [Cecil voice] Good morning, Night Vale.

Symphony: I was like ooh, I got a little chill when you said that Hal, that was cute.

Hal: Thank you. I exist to give people chills, that’s what I’m here for. I’m a chill monster.

Symphony: You’re very talented.

Hal: Some people say I have no chill, [laughter] but I think I just proved differently.

Symphony: I think you have lots of chill.

Hal: Thank you.

Meg: All right everyone. [laughs] I think you have the most chill.

Hal: Oo!

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome to Good Morning Night Vale. A new podcast where we recap every episode of Welcome to Night Vale!

Symphony: Woo!

Meg: Woo! Everyone’s afraid to talk. [laughter] I know.

Symphony: [laughs] I think I’ll get better later but right now I’m like, do I say yes?

Meg: Welcome to the clunky intro of our brand new show. My name is Meg Bashwiner and I am the woman who talks to you at the end of every Welcome to Night Vale episode. I also play the voice Deb, sentient pyatch o’ haze, and I am the MC of the live shows, if you’ve been to one of our live shows you’ve seen me, for the most part, unless you came to the show in Birmingham in 2015 you didn’t see me, I wasn’t at that one. Other than that, that’s me. Who else is on the call with me, who else is here? Silence.

Hal: Oh I was saying ladies first, but I’ll go.

Symphony: I was waiting for you, you go.

Hal: OK. My name is Hal Lublin and I am the voice of Steve Carlsberg and I have been since… 2013. Wow. I can’t believe it’s been since 2013, my mind is ready to explode, with happiness, and I’m really excited to be a part of this and to stroll back through Night Vale with the both of you.

Symphony: And I’m Symphony Sanders and I play teen militia leader Tamika Flynn, in Welcome to the Night Vale. And I have since… I also think 2013, I’m not sure, someone would have to tell me. And I’m super excited to go through all of these episodes with you guys.

Meg: I’m also excited to go through all these episodes, it’s been fun, it’s nice to take a look back on the, oh lots and lots of episodes. By the time this airs, I think there will be like a 129, 130 episodes of Welcome to Night Vale…

Hal: Wow.

Meg: ..which is really wonderful.

Symphony: That’s a lot of episodes, Meg.

Meg: Not to mention all the live shows and uh, and yeah all the things. Yes so we’re going back, we’re gonna be talking with some people who are involved in the Welcome to Night Vale world. On this episode, we’re going to hear from the voice of Night Vale, Cecil Baldwin. We’ll chat with him about his experiences and his reactions to the pilot episode of this show, and we’ll have that for you later, which is really exciting. Yeah so we’ll be hearing from different people involved in the Night Vale world over the course of the podcast, and in this episode specifically we’ll be hearing from Cecil, and we’ll be talking about the different episodes of the show, our personal reactions to them, as well as the global reactions to them.

Hal: Can I jump in for a second and say what I love about the show that we’re doing?

Meg: Please.

Hal: Even if it’s the first episode and the first, five minutes of it.

Symphony: [laughs] Yes.

Hal: This is what’s cool about it. For all you Night Vale fans out there who have not been able to come to a Comic Con where we’ve done a panel, who have never got to see us in person or gotten to sort of learn a little bit about what’s going on behind the curtain of the show. I think it’s really cool that you get three people who have been involved in the show for a very long time, sort of walking you through it, and not only talking about what happened but giving you some insight and we’ll be answering your questions on occasion as well. So this is really for all of you out there who are fans of the show, to give you another layer of Night Vale, maybe answer some questions you had, or raise some new ones if we’re doing our job.

Symphony: Agreed. [laughter]

Hal: Was I wrong?

Symphony: Correct.

Hal: Was I bad?

Symphony: No you were correct.

Meg: No that’s really beautiful.

Hal: OK, good.

Meg: Yeah, it’s really beautiful.

Symphony: It was just such a good, you really impacted us, it was such a good description. [laughs]

Meg: Yeah. I was speechless. I’m really looking forward to seeing where this podcast takes us. So let’s get down to business, we’re doing the pilot of Welcome to Night Vale, we’re discussing that today. The plot description of which is: “A new dog park opens in Night Vale. Carlos, a scientist, visits and discovers some interesting things, seismic things. Plus a helpful guide to surveillance helicoptering.” I’m a really good reader. [laughter] So yeah.

Symphony: That’s why you do this fictional podcast.

Meg: Yeah, that’s why I do this fictional podcast. So we, to reel us in, do you want to talk about what our reactions were?

Symphony: Yeah. I mean if you really look, not even that deeply into it, a lot of the things that come up in the first episode are some of our biggest fan things, like the dog park obviously what were, or so many people are known for talking about hooded figures and the Sheriff’s Secret Police, and kind of introducing the town of Night Vale and immediately putting you in this space of, uh, distrust. [chuckles] Right? And you can’t go in the dog park, even though a new one was built, dogs aren’t allowed in there, people aren’t allowed in there. Basically don’t acknowledge it.

Meg: Yeah I was struck by that too, by how so much of the Night Vale world that we know today existed in this first episode. So we’ve got the dog park, we’ve got hooded figures, we’ve got the Sheriff’s Secret Police, we’ve got Old Woman Josie and angels and Big Rico’s Pizza and the Desert Bluffs rivalry, like there’s so, and Carlos and Cecil, like he says in this episode “I fell in love with Carlos”, Cecil says it’s. it’s just like, there’s so much of what makes Night Vale Night Vale just in this first 20 minutes.

Hal: Yeah I think the hallmark of really good storytelling is, rather than beginning at the beginning is to start in the middle, and you are dropped into the middle of what feels like a fully realized world. And it’s a testament to how it was written that all those elements of the pilot have just been built on. And even that thing that, the great humor in Night Vale for me, the thing that I enjoy the most is that contrast in the ordinary with the fantastic that’s being treated as completely mundane and, like standard. So there’s no wink to the audience, there’s no we get this is weird, it’s just this is the world you’re in, and that allows you to sort of jump into it completely. And I love that Joseph and Jeffrey joke rhythm they have where they’re like, there are no dogs allowed in the dog park. Do not look at the dog park, do not taste the dog, like that building rhythm, where they just attack a type of announcement or an angle of something over and over again and keep building on it, I really loved seeing that from the beginning. I forgot, I hadn’t listened to this in years and years and years. And it was really interesting to see how formed their voice was for this from the jump.

Meg: Yeah I hadn’t listened to this episode until like it was probably, this episode premiered June 15 2012, which is Night Vale’s birthday. Almost six years ago to the airing of this episode. That was the last time I listened to it, when Joseph was like “hi do you wanna listen to this thing I made?” And I was like sure hun, you know, what do you got? And that was the last time I listened to it, and it really is great to be able to look back at it and hear so much of their voice and also Cecil’s voice, and the development of the character of Cecil as our reliable unreliable narrator.

Hal: What did you think the first time you heard it, way back then when it was like listen to this thing I made, what was your impression of it?

Meg: I think I was initially just, it was so different than anything else I’d seen Joseph make before and also so, I’m always impressed by Cecil the actor. Cecil the person, you know I love and is a dear friend and Cecil the actor blows me away every time. No matter how many, how long I’ve worked with him and how long I’ve known him, so I was really impressed by his voice acting and how much world he was able to build just behind the microphone. The world of audio fiction was in a newer place then, so it was interesting to kind of see what one man and one microphone could build and that was really cool, I remember being like, this is cool. And you know, that was before Night Vale was a thing, so I was like this is cool, what do you want for dinner? Like [laughter], Joseph you made a nice thing, it’s great.

Symphony: Yeah along that..

Meg: I remember him sa-

Symphony: Along that line, where did you think this was going? Did you think it was gonna go anywhere, did you think it was just a fun project that he is working on? What were your initial ideas?

Meg: I remember him saying to me: “I feel like this could be thing.” Which is interesting now, cause it definitely has been a thing, but at the time it was like he never, we’d have projects that we worked on, we’d had projects that we did. And I think the confidence that he had in this project was different than what we had seen before from him. And he had definitely had successful projects before, but definitely nothing with the audience and impact that Welcome to Night Vale has had. So… yeah.

Symphony: And so past this pilot when, cause this happened in 2012 but like, when did you guys, do you remember the day that you were like oh this is, more than just a thing you do?

Meg: Yes. I don’t remember the specific day, but it was about a year later.

Symphony: Nice.

Meg: The first year of Night Vale was great, people listened to it, Joseph and Jeffrey were like, hey some of our friends have listened to this show, how great is that? I remember there was like one fan that we saw, Joseph would search Twitter to see if anyone was listening to it and we would often get people being like up all night, [vale]. [Vale] is the verb in Spanish does it mean I think it, what does [vale] mean? So we would get those tweets, we’d search for Welcome Night Vale tweets, we’d get people in Spanish saying [vale]. And then eventually we saw people talking about and there was this one fan who’s named Dana, and Dana would tweet about listening to the show with friends, and there was one tweet that was from Dana that was like “Mom, stop ftrying to bring us enchiladas, we’re listening to Welcome to Night Vale.”

Symphony: Aww!

Meg: And so we thought that was really super sweet, and so they named the character Dana after Dana the person who was tweeting at us. [chuckles]

Hal: That’s cool.

Symphony: That’s so funny. Also I love enchiladas.

Meg: Yeah. But if you’re trying to listen to Welcome to Night Vale, and your Mom was trying to bring you enchiladas, I would personally be like thanks Mom, but…

Symphony: Right, it’s like a listening snack.

Meg: No shade to Dana but [laughter]. So yeah, about a year into it it started to get some tractions. We did our first birthday party at a space in New York that had about 100 people come to it, which was awesome. So cool that we had 100 people that knew about us. And then things changed pretty rapidly. In July of 2013, we used to sell Welcome to Night Vale T-shirts on Amazon, and I think we printed like 50 of them. And once a week or so, we’d get an order for a T-shirt. Joseph would package it up and take it to the post office and send it out. And then over the course of a weekend, we got an order for 1000 T-shirts. Before Amazon shut it off, because it kind of went out of control super quick.

Symphony: It’s like too much.

Meg: It was too much, it was like there was, we didn’t have the stock for that, so we went and had more T-shirts printed…

Symphony: You broke the system.

Meg: One weekend just sitting in our studio apartment in Brooklyn, packaging T-shirts, a thousand of them. Which is a number that doesn’t really make sense until you actually sit down and do it, and it was so hot..

Symphony: That’s a lot.

Meg: I sat in the apartment and I just did it, and I think I watched like the first season of A Chef’s Life on Netflix while I did it. And I was using packaging type, touching it over and over again so I had no skin left on my finger tips at the end of it.

Symphony: It was just slowly pulling off layers of skin.

Meg: Yeah. And then I made Joseph take me out for ramen and.. [laughter] That was my payment for packaging 1000 T-shirts was my husband or my boyfriend at the time took me out for ramen.

Symphony: That’s like, in Seinfe- I probably can’t mention that. In that one show where that lady died, she was sending out her wedding invitations and she kept licking the stamps, licking the stamps and the glue was poisonous, good thing you’re still alive though.

Hal: Wait…

Meg: Yeah, I still have use of my fingers.

Hal: Why can’t we mention that show? Are we restricted from (--)?

Symphony: I mean can you?

Hal: Sure.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: I don’t know the rules of audio recording.

Hal: I’ll tell you what.

Meg: Seinfeld! McDonald’s!

Symphony: [laughs hysterically]

Hal: I’ve been around the block and let me say something, Jerry Seinfeld. You’re welcome to come on this podcast anytime you wanna show your face.

Symphony: Yes, yes!

Hal: We’ll all get into an old car with you, you can take us out for coffee.

Symphony: Ooh, for coffee!

Hal: We can complain about comedy, it’ll be great. Making that offer right now.

Symphony: I’m very funny.

Hal: He who will not be named.

Meg: I will make sure I say nothing funny. [laughter]

Symphony: I won’t even smile the whole time.

Hal: I do love that show, but he complains all the time.

Meg: Yeah, it’s gotta be hard being him.

Hal: Yes, really difficult.

Meg: Anyway, that’s not to throw shade on Jerry.

Hal: No.

Meg: Yeah so that’s, we kind of got off on our lovely little tangent talking about the very beginning and where we are now.

Symphony: Yeah. But we can go back, look…

Meg: Let’s go back.

Symphony: That’s the great thing about a nice conversation. Let’s go back, let’s talk about the beginnings of Celios, the beginnings of Carlos and Cecil.

Meg: Yeah, the [C’s/seeds?) [0:14:11].

Symphony: Before it was Cecil, just nameless announcer, just announcer. Or narrator, right? But people I guess didn’t even, did they reference him, what did they do before he had a name?

Meg: I dunno. I dunno if anyone listened to the show, like (if we had) fanbase before the.. [laughter]

Hal: Yeah, we’re in the early early days. It struck me, was it weird for either of you now, listening to it through the lens of six years of content almost? Five and a half, wherever we’re up to as of this recording, that everything sort of takes on extra meaning? For me in particular, playing somebody who’s like not the conspiracy theorist, but the guy who seems to know the truth about what’s going on? That through that lens I was like, he’s lying, he’s a puppet. I can hear it right now, because all of that was just being established. Did either of you get that sense or am I just going in too deep?

Symphony: No I think that is like, I’m not as conspiracy theorist but I am also dazzled by magic. And there are things in the early episodes of Welcome to Night Vale that I’m like, how did they know?

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: Like how did they know? And I just love it, I like going back and listening to and I’m like oh my gosh, talking about like, seismic activity and there’s something happening in Night Vale like how he was talking about the different, how it was very interesting scientifically. Just finding out those things, you’re just like oh now I’m like, did they know from the beginning? But then now I know because they’re my friends I’m like, they didn’t know. Or maybe they did, who knows? Maybe they’re possessed.

Meg: They’re probably possessed. We’ll find out later…

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: .. in season 18 of Welcome to Night Vale, it’ll be revealed.

Hal: [chuckles] I remember talking to Joseph, and this had to be some time in I think 2013 early 2014. And I know at that point, things were still being sort of plotted out. Like hey we had some thoughts about what, and that conversation was about Steve and Cecil’s relationship and maybe Cecil’s not the most reliable narrator. So now that’s something, that sort of rung in my head and it developed over the course of a couple years, but now going back, when you go back with that knowledge of what’s to come, it colors everything that you hear. Which I think is a hallmark of how good the writing is that they were able to take it, even if that’s not something they had planned out for 2014-2015, that they got there in a way that the internal logic stays intact. As a whole.

Symphony: Yeah. That you can go back and relisten to stuff and you’re like, oh yeah there’s no gaps where you’re like oh, that was totally forgotten about. It’s not like Lost.

Hal: Yeah, you’re watching like they don’t even know, he doesn’t even know what’s gonna happen, I can’t believe I’m listening like I have more knowledge than the character does.

Symphony: Right.

Hal: And it’s you’re getting to watch them, you get to rediscover it by listening along, which I think is really really cool.

Meg: That is really cool. I hadn’t thought about that, but it is a pretty cool experience to be like uh, I’m the reliable narrator know cause I know.

Symphony: Cause you’re from the future.

Meg: I’m from the future.

Hal: Oh my goodness, we’re all time travelers! This is very exciting.

Symphony: Ah, you guys!

Meg: (You’re all) Is this the best time to time travel?

Symphony: [laughs] I feel like I’m in Quantum Leap! I’m just gonna start mentioning major television shows. [laughter]

Meg: Yes, hey I think it’s fun, they can all come for us, they can all come directly for us.

Hal: Yeah what are they gonna do, send us to Cheers? [laughter]

Symphony: The Borg gonna get us from Star Trek?

Meg: Yeah I mean we're just like Raymond, everybody loves us. [laughter]

Hal: Sesame Street. You were saying, Meg?

Meg: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was just thinking. Alright, so yeah I think it was interesting what we were talking about for a moment, with the sparks of love between Cecil and Carlos. I think it’s interesting to, this show was not one that describes people’s physical characteristic very much, but Carlos is described right away. His teeth and hair are described, which when I wrote that down I was like, teeth and hair! [laughter]

Symphony: What wonderful notes.

Meg: What wonderful notes, yeah, and Cecil’s description “I fell in love instantly”. And so they describe his perfect hair and his teeth like a military cemetery,a nd that he is beautiful.

Symphony: Hey, you like what you like, I guess.

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: The lens of Cecil’s developed.

Hal: Yes.

Symphony: Is that how you felt about Joseph the first time you saw him?

Meg: I felt, being honest about the first time I met Joseph, I did not think that he was uh.. I thought he was gorgeous, I mean like he’s a good-looking dude.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: But we did not get along on a personal level, I think cause I didn’t quite understand who he was, and then once I got to know him I fell in love, over time slash instantly. But yeah we met in the box office of the Kraine Theater, which is, the Kraine Theater is the place I met Joseph, I met Jeffrey Cranor, and I met Cecil Baldwin. So it’s a sacred, sacred space, yeah when I met Joseph and..

Symphony: Most of the important men in your life.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: Yeah. When I, all of them except for, you know like my Dad and Hal Lublin.

Hal: Correct.

Meg: I met my Dad in the hospital when I was born. [laughter] It was a good day. Like I met my Mom and my Dad and maybe my sister all in the same day, which was pretty great.

Symphony: That’s a big day!

Hal: That’s pretty important.

Meg: Did I know at the time like how important these people would be to me? No, I was an infant, I was a newborn but, I felt it I think, maybe. [laughter] Alright. So when I first, but this isn’t a love podcast. When I first met Joseph I was like, who is this kid? What does he want? And then yeah we became friends and I, only wanted things from him from that point out.

Symphony: Then you made him yours.

Meg: Yeah so then I realized how wonderful and smart and, I always knew he was attractive, he is a good looking kid.

Symphony: Yeah.

Meg: He really is. Anyway, alright. Other things in this episode, there’s the NRA bumper stickers.

Symphony: OK, here’s the thing.

Meg: The intr-

Symphony: Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.

Meg: I wasn’t gonna say anything, I was making..

Symphony: I’m sorry. I got really excited, because I was thinking about this in the first two episodes, they make their stance very very clear about where they stand with like governments, and the NRA and guns and all sorts of business like that. So to all of you (friendlings) out there, who love your second amendment, we love you too, however listen to the episodes.

Hal: Yeah, it is really striking, I agree. I had the same, I wrote that down too that idea of like, you know where they stand right away and sadly, it’s really sad that six years later, that is really relevant to the point that listening to it I was like hold on, this could have been written any time in the last year.

Symphony: Three weeks ago.

Hal: It could have been an hour ago, and it would feel just as relevant. Which is, that’s a piece of commentary about a lot of different things, but in particular it’s..

Meg: Yeah.

Hal: It’s nice to see like, it’s very much them, and what’s inside of them and then writing their, what’s in their heart. Probably with the idea that hey it doesn’t matter who listens to us, we’re gonna make something that we care about. And that comes through big time, in moments like that in particular.

Meg: Yeah if Night Vale is an American city, which it’s a city in the American southwest, it’s set in the America so the people who, we can’t hide from that, we can’t run from that whether it is this totally bizarre world where up is down and down is up, it is still footed in America. And so there’s these things that are unescapable about it. And yeah, Joseph and Jeffrey are not ones to ever really hide their opinions when it comes to things like gun violence…

Hal: True.

Symphony: True. So and as we have also evidenced by, when we travel throughout this beautiful country of ours, I remember there has been airports that we’ve come through, where there’s been a sign that says: “Did you forget to take the gun out of your luggage?” And I’m like oh, I never put one in there, dang it!

Hal: [laughs]

Symphony: I guess I forgot to bring that.

Meg: I can’t bring dry shampoo.

Symphony: Right?

Meg: But.. [laughter] Like literally, you’re like we can’t bring that dry shampoo.

Symphony: What about my yoghurt?

Meg: What, hang on, sidenote. Tangent, why are old people always trying to bring yoghurt on the airplane? Like it’s a liquid, friends, like…

Symphony: [laughs] Constant struggle.

Hal: Oh my god. One time I was at the metal detector at LAX and I was behind a group of older German tourists, and it was like they huddled up beforehand, they were like alright, which rule do you wanna break cause we shouldn’t all do the same one.

Symphony: What?

Hal: I’ll have a pocket full of coins, meanwhile you’ll have a gallon of water in a camel bag that you’ve strapped on that you don’t understand you can’t have for a variety of reasons. [laughter] And then could you be juggling grenades as you try to walk through? That would be great, alright, break. And it took forever, it felt like I mean, again probably wasn’t that long but it felt like nine days, of waiting for them to get it together and realize that they can’t drive a car through the metal detector. It was bizarre.

Symphony: You grew a beard in that time.

Hal: I grew a long wispy bread. I scratched several lines, both horizontal and vertical, into the wall to mark how long I’d been there.

Meg: Alright. Welcome to this very important podcast where we talk about, how things can be frustrating at lines at airport security.

Hal: Yeah. We’re so sorry (it’s all)..

Symphony: It’s all part of the Night Vale experience.

Hal: Yeah. I was gonna say we were talking about Joseph before, I wanted to bring it to the weather. Meg: Yeah, the weather. Let’s tease it like they do on the show so we’ll be like, next up we’re gonna talk to Welcome to Night Vale’s voice, Cecil Baldwin, but first – we’re gonna talk about the weather. [sings] Da-daa..

Symphony: That was a good, that was a good teaser.

Meg: We teased it. Really teased that.

Symphony: We teased the shit out of it. [laughter]

Meg: Yeah, so the weather. These and More than These…

Symphony: It was Joseph!

Meg: By Joseph Fink.

Symphony: That’s your husband.

Hal: I didn’t know who, I was listening to it, I was like this guy sounds super familiar, but I don’t, I can’t place him musically to any other songs that I would have heard from him.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: And then I’d get to the end of the episode where like, (-) the weather was These and More than These by Joseph Fink, I’m like get the fuck out of town!

Symphony: Right?

Hal: That was Joseph? And…

Symphony: He’s such a good singer!

Hal: He has a beautiful singing voice, how do I not know this after all this time? And it’s an enjoyable song.

Symphony: It’s a good song.

Meg: It is, the lyrics are great, they’re super weird and fun.

Symphony: OK so first of all, let’s talk about the weather being a song.

Meg: Yeah, this is the first time that happened.

Symphony: The first time I ever, I remember back in the day when I first listened to the episode, I remember I was like, OK and now the weather. Cause it had other installments like Community Calendar and whatever and you’re like OK, that’s cool that makes sense it’s like weird and kind of funny. But then the weather is music. What a brilliant idea. And now that I know Joseph as well, it makes so much sense. Joseph and Jeffrey, it makes so much sense because they are so focused in music, they both love music so much, and Joseph especially loves independent music. And I admire that. And listening to this show, I have found more musicians and more music that I would have never ever heard of in my entire life.

Hal: Sure.

Symphony: And it’s like getting a recommendation from a friend, right? You’re like, they’re like you would like this song, and they play the song and it’s like wow. But this song in particular being the first song, I keep thinking I’m like, was he just like oh, I’m gonna put this song on there, or had he thought oh I’m gonna try to see if I can find other people, or whatever. I guess I don’t know that bit.

Meg: I mean knowing Joseph and knowing his process behind this, he was definitely like well OK what do I have the rights to? OK, something that I own.

Symphony: [laughs]

Meg: And then yeah, I don’t know his process behind selecting. Joseph has a lot of songs, he’s had some be on the weather, he’s had some that weren’t on the weather that just exist. I used to go see him play at open mics and (-) places in New York City, and he would play his original songs, and he would also play a Leonard Cohen cover or two, because that’s how adorable he is. So I think, I don’t know why he selected this one “These and More than These”, but I like it, I think it’s really fitting in the first episode, I think you’re gonna get an interesting.. Joseph’s voice as a songwriter as well as Joseph’s voice as a writer.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: So yeah I think he was first starting to place the weather, he was like who do I know that will say yes to this, and he was the one who could do that for the first episode. [chuckles]

Symphony: It me, you know.

Meg: It me, and now it’s branched out like so many people, people like the Mountain Goats have premiered songs on the show and..

Symphony: That’s phenomenal.

Meg: ..Dessa has premiered songs on the show and people have, like The Felice Brothers have premiered stuff so it’s like, there’s all these bands that we love and have loved forever, and musicians that are putting their work on our show and it’s so cool to start from here and get to a bigger place.

Hal: Yeah.

Meg: As well as the submissions. There was a while we were taking submissions for the weather, and we got so much great music from people. And that’s the point where it’s like, we still use those submissions, we opened submissions I think for like a couple weeks, and we still use some of those submissions. As there were just hundreds of great great songs.

Hal: Amazing.

Symphony: But that’s also how we get introduced to so many great artist that we’ve heard from and once that we’ve worked with. Mary Epworth and Eliza Rickman and Dessa and Doomtree and all sorts of people, people from all over the world which is really phenomenal and actually I’m going to see Dessa this weekend, for her new Chime tour so I’m pretty excited about that.

Meg: It’s a great album.

Symphony: It’s so good.

Meg: She hasn’t made anything I don’t like. She hasn’t sent a text message I didn’t like. Like every piece of her writing is that good. [laughs]

Symphony: She’s a poet.

Meg: She’s a poet, yeah seriously. She Facebook comments in a beautiful way like she just.. [laughter] Which is a, super (sick) (--). Yeah it’s like, we get to meet such great people and luckily we get to work with them when they came on tour with us like we’ve had, and we’ve really bonded with all of them. I think tour will bond you to people.

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: It’s cool to bond to people who are like, they start as outsiders and then they become insiders.

Symphony: They’re from the inner circle. Actually we should, just a sidenote, we should have a maybe special episode talking about tour, I feel like we’ll talk about it anyways but, be like oh tour shows, Investigators… what else did we do, Ghost Stories?

Meg: Yeah we did Ghost Stories, Old Oak Doors we didn’t tour but we did it live.

Hal: The Debate.

Meg: Condos we sort of toured, The Debate.

Symphony: That’ll be really interesting when we come across those. And we’ll have to go over the controversy of, what we call the controversy of the original Tamika Flynn. [laughter]

Meg: I think we will, stay tuned audience, we’ll go over that controversy.

Symphony: It’s me, it’s always been me!

Meg: There’s also the controversy of the original Carlos.

Hal: Oh yeah, for sure!

Symphony: Yes, we’ll talk about that with Jefe.

Meg: Yeah, with our Jefe and maybe even with Dylan Maroon, short of Dylan Marron.

Symphony: Ooh!

Meg: We have more fun guests coming, but speaking of more fun guests coming, we go now to our conversation with Cecil Baldwin.

Hal: Stay right there. Good Morning Night Vale will return after a brief break.

Meg: We go now to our conversation with Cecil Baldwin. Alright, so who do we have with us on the line, who could it be?

Cecil Baldwin: Wait, is that me?

Meg: It’s you.

Hal: Do you know who you are? You get three guesses.

Cecil: It’s me!

Hal: Alright, that’s fun.

Cecil: [chuckling] That’s one. Also me! And my telephone.

Meg: Cecilia Joyce Baldwin.

Cecil: That’s right. It’s me Cecil Baldwin!

Meg: So Cecil Baldwin, what is it that you do for Welcome to Night Vale? [laughter]

Cecil: What don’t I do for Welcome to Night Vale?

Meg: True.

Cecil: I’m a voice actor on Welcome to Night Vale. I play the character of Cecil Palmer, although we’re talking about the pilot episode..

Symphony: Yes.

Meg: Sure are.

Cecil: So there was no Cecil and there was no Palmer. It was just “guy”. It was like, dude on mic.

Symphony: Unbodied voice.

Cecil: Just the voice of.

Meg: Yeah. You were the voice of for a very long time before you got proper-named.

Cecil: Yeah.

Meg: So yeah we have Cecil Baldwin with us, Cecil is of course of the voice of Night Vale, the velvet host of Night Vale Radio, the velvet-voiced vost, the velvet… voiced host.

Symphony: Yeah. That’s a lot of words.

Meg: So as you mentioned, we’re discussing the pilot episode. So the pilot episode aired June 15, 2012. What was your life like in June 15 in 2012? [chuckles]

Cecil: Oh my god. If I was better at multitasking, I would totally look up my Facebook page from 2012, just to see what was up but I literally can’t talk and uh, handle technology at the same time so…

Symphony: You need a time hop.

Cecil I know I know, I was thinking about that. See, had I done any preparation for this show, I would have already done that. But the prep I did was listen to the pilot twice, while I made dinner tonight. So you know, I was like that’s enough. What was my life like? I was probably waiting tables six days a week at a restaurant in Chelsea, New York. Probably doing Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Trying desperately to get onto Law and Order [laughter] or, oh man, what was…

Symphony: Like every New York actor.

Cecil: Like every New York actor. What was the one on HBO? That was like…

Meg: Carnivale?

Cecil: No, no no it was like..

Meg: Oh no, the one.

Cecil: Like (five points) New York, old rough New York.

Meg: Yeah yeah, with Steve Buscemi.

Cecil: With Steve Buscemi, yeah.

Hal: Boardwalk Empire.

Cecil: Boardwalk Empire. I was like…

Meg: Boardwalk Empire, yes.

Cecil: That was like, as long as that show was on, somebody kept calling me back and I was like maybe this time, and I never got it. So that was probably what I was doing, [chuckles] at that point in my life and living in like, the tiniest apartment in West Harlem with the tallest man that could possibly fit into that apartment with me. And that was where I recorded this pilot episode.

Hal: You were living in a sitcom. [laughter]

Symphony: He is (-).

Cecil: Yeah, it was like a sad kind of foul-smelling sitcom.

Hal: I have a question for you, Cecil.

Cecil: Yeah.

Hal: This is Hal Lublin, I play your uh, brother outside the law, Steve Carlsberg. Just to introduce myself, it’s me.

Cecil: Who are you?

Hal: We’ve roomed together, we’re road roomies.

Cecil: Who am I?

Symphony: Me too!

Meg: Me too.

Cecil: I think we’ve, have we all roomed?

Meg: I’ve, yeah.

Symphony: Everybody except for like, I haven’t stayed with Hal before.

Meg: I haven’t stayed with Hal either, so yes Cecil you’re the unique one in this conversation, you’ve roomed with Hal.

Cecil: Nice.

Meg: We’ve all roomed with you.

Cecil: I’m the spoke of the wheel. Everybody’s like..

Symphony: Cecil’s gotten around.

Cecil: Next tour Cecil has his own room, it’s fine. [laughter]

Hal: So my question is, which room mate was the best? No I, my actual question…

Cecil: Which room mate was... [laughter]

Symphony: Wow.

Hal: In (listening to -)..

Cecil: And the (--) breakfast (-).

Meg: Symphony Sanders is a pretty good room mate. I’ll say it. I mean I can’t speak (--) but Symphony Sanders is an excellent room mate. She always brings you water…

Symphony: I’m a pretty good room mate.

Meg: She always brings me water so…

Cecil: Coconut water and, yeah no (-).

Symphony: I like to create an experience, you guys.

Hal: I wish I hadn’t asked that question.

Cecil: And you leave to go exercise, wakes me up, so I can then go back to sleep. And then say hello to you after you’ve worked out, and be like oh maybe I should get out of bed now. [laughter]

Symphony: I come in glistening and I’m like hey wake up, are you ready? Ready to face the day?

Cecil: The sun’s been up for six hours. [laughter]

Symphony: I’ve had a full day.

Cecil: Did you have a question, Hal? I can’t remember.

Hal: Yes. I did have an actual question listening to it, one thing that struck me even in like the first three minutes of the episode listening to it, was like oh I’m listening to Cecil find his character.

Cecil: Oh yeah.

Hal: As you were doing it it was evolving, even in the first couple moments which was really impressive to watch you kind of zero in on it. Cause I know, we’ve heard the story before in panels, but I’d love to hear a little bit about your initial approach for this episode, looking at it, how much direction you had an like how you were directing yourself, how many takes it took, that kind of stuff.

Cecil: Well, first it sounds like Cecil on Xanax, like it sounds real, I was like wow I sound very sedate in this.

Symphony: Yeah.

Cecil: And I think, that more than anything set the tone for people who then later would be like, oh my god I fall asleep listening to your voice, so soothing. Because listening to those first couple of episodes it really is super neutral, like it’s so neutral and like just really quiet, just reading. And there was, like the character of, which would later evolve, wasn’t there as much. Because I don’t know. I guess I knew this idea it would be like an episodic thing, and it would go on from there but I had no idea, how many we were doing and where this was all going and stuff like that, so I was like well let’s just, you know, keep it really basic and simple and just start by words on the page, and then finding ways to you know, have that sort of very neutral narrator voice, and slowly finding the moments in Joseph and Jeffrey’s writing when Cecil does comment on stuff. And there’s little ones in this first episode. It’s just like, so and so brought the corn muffins and they needed salt. Oh like that was a moment when I, that was like a Cecil moment rather than a neutral narrator NPR, late night radio DJ, generic.

Symphony: Right. So when you were initially finding the character, a lot of that was just like feeling it out..

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: And you weren’t sure where it was gonna come from.

Cecil: Mm hm, yeah.

Symphony: Right or where it was gonna go so you just were like, I am gonna read this thing as well as I can.

Cecil: Yeah exactly like, put words on sound, into a mic.

Symphony: Exactly. And as an actor of course obviously you’re trying to do the writers’ words justice, right?

Cecil: Mm hm, yeah.

Symphony: So I think that’s part of it but now listening to it when you go back and have heard it again, what would you think you might have done differently?

Cecil: What I’d done differently?

Symphony: If anything, or was it a perfect read?

Cecil: [laughs] No it was not perfect. I dunno, I do wish that I’d had a chance to take a crack at it again. I think I would have, in a way getting to do kind of the last paragraph as the foreword to the book, the first book, was kind of a chance to do a do-over. And it was so much fun to be at the studio, in a fancy, you know like midtown studio with an engineer and a director and all that stuff getting to redo what was essentially the very first episode of the podcast. And having 70 plus episodes of Night Vale under my belt at that point, that was really cool, that was super cool.

Symphony: So did you feel more connected to it?

Cecil: Yeah, I felt more connected and also giving every part of the language weight. Cause when you’re reading something, for the first time especially if it’s absurd like no-linear. You just have to kind of be like, OK these are the things that I’m gonna try and hit, and highlight and let the chips fall where they may. But if I had a chance to go back and redo the pilot, I think I would have made some of the one-off jokes, like the two-sentence jokes punchier, punch it up kid, you know?

Symphony: [laughs] Well I feel like that we get to do now in the live shows where we get to repeat and do the shows over and over again, but..

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: When you record it one time, you’re like oh man, now that I listen to it I can do something differently.

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: Speaking of taking a time travel, let’s go back to the time hop thing for one second. So in your world, back then you said you were just recording this, you didn’t know where it was going and you were waiting tables, right?

Cecil: Yeah.

Symphony: So when you recorded this, how did you record it? Did you go to a place, can you tell that sort of story?

Cecil: I had to borrow Joseph Fink’s Snowball microphone. Which is this giant plastic, you know like ball on a tripod. You know it’s like…

Meg: I still have it.

Cecil: Oh really?

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Get out of here!

Cecil: Like you can just throw them around and, but they’re kinda bulky. And so he had wrapped it up in a sweatshirt. [laughter] And we met at a coffee shop near Union Square, and he was just like OK, here take this, plug it up to your computer and just record it, just do it. You can use Audacity or Garage Band, whatever. And I had heard of Audacity through the Neo-Futurists for free sound editing software, so I was like OK I’ll check, OK. So I took this like contraband, little straw baby back to my apartment. [laughter] And I plugged it in. And I think I recorded maybe the pilot and the second episode at the same time? Or I think one, two and three happened within the same week.

Symphony: OK.

Cecil: So that way, cause I had the microphone borrowed, and then eventually I had returned it and got my own. And then we did the reverse of this, like pass off this weird little small child sized microphone, wrapped in the sweatshirt in front of the coffee shop on the street. It was podcast drugs, it was like illegal podcast contraband. [dramatic voice] In a world where podcasting is illegal and the penalty is death! [laughter] It’s somewhere..

Meg: And the rest is history.

Hal: It’s like a Logan’s Run scenario where there’s only podcasts inside the dome.

Cecil: That’s right, it’s… [laughs]

Hal: If you live outside the dome, you’re gonna find your way in that city.

Cecil: It’s like A Handmaiden’s Tale, except for podcasting.

Hal: Did you record them in order?

Cecil: Yes. For the most part absolutely. It wasn’t until like literally years later that I started getting, it was like three episode arcs or stuff like that where stuff would be out of order but mostly was like, literally one two three four five six in succession, for years.

Symphony: And did they give you any indication, were they like, oh we’re just gonna keep doing this until we can’t do it anymore, or?

Cecil: Yeah. I think around like episode seven or eight, I emailed Joseph I was like, heeeeyyyy. So where’s this going? You know like, is there a, do y’all have like a giant dry erase board that you’re, have like characters written out and shit like that? And they were like, absolutely not. [laughter] I think Joseph’s reply was like, we just figure we’re gonna keep making it until we don’t wanna make it anymore. Until it stops being fun, I think literally he was, we’re gonna make it until it’s not fun to make anymore. And I was like, OK, well here we go.

Meg: And here we are.

Cecil: And here we are.

Meg: 125 episodes in.

Cecil: I know, right? And I know that’s been like, there’s been a lot of fun stuff along the way involving like, continuity and stuff like that because, literally that was how we made it was just like, OK here’s an episode, and here’s another episode that kind of mentions this other character, however many episodes back. And like you kind of half-remember stuff. For me it was a lot of, for my end it was more about like, trying to find episodes that that character was mentioned, to be like wait, does Telly the Barber have a voice? Did we ever give him a voi-, does he ever say anything?

Symphony: Right.

Cecil: Cause there’s like, when you’re reporting stuff second hand on, which this show is, you kind of have the choice every time you see words in quotes, to like is it impersonation of that character? Or is it Cecil, are you trying to sound like the character themself or are you trying to sound like, what that narrator’s personification of that character is. And usually the easiest way is just to be like, “and then they said a whole bunch of stuff”. Much like a newscaster.

Symphony: You’re not doing an impersonation, you’re just..

Cecil: Exactly.

Symphony: ..reporting on what they said.

Cecil: Exactly. And I would just kind of feel it out in this very like one foot in front of the other, episode by episode kind of way. And then later on, I was like oh man, have we heard from Big Rico? Does Big Rico have a voice or a sound and I’m sure there have been like, characters that sounded one way and then, maybe 20 episodes later they say like one sentence and you’re like, that’s totally not right, there must be like a million of those. Or at least there is in my mind.

Meg: So when you were doing your relisten tonight, was there anything that jumped out at you that struck you as weird or interesting or like, any feels about listening to the show?

Cecil: OK so the first thing that I noticed from the very beginning is, sort of the entity of Night Vale Presents. And I was like oh man, it was like Jeffrey came on and they were talking about the Tingle podcast and, Conversations with me you know Dylan and, I was like oh man. Because of course it makes absolute sense but in my mind I was like, some of those early intros especially with Joseph where he’s like, I was like are we going to get to (Dash) convention?

Symphony: Yes.. [laughter]

Cecil: You know it’s not that early on, but I was like oh man, those are as much of a time capsule, almost more than the show itself of like how far..

Symphony: The announcements, yeah.

Cecil: ..how long ago this was. When we were just like..

Meg: Those are gone now.

Cecil: They’re like all of them are gone?

Meg: They’re a gone.

Cecil: Hey, I mean..

Symphony: Yeah it’s just like thanks..

Meg: (--).

Symphony: ..it’s like thanks for loving us, donate if you can, like whatever you get special content, right?

Cecil: I hope somebody has a copy of them somewhere.

Meg: I think they do exist somewhere.

Cecil: See, that’s all I wanna know.

Meg: Because of the advent of dynamic insertion, which sounds really dirty but really…

Symphony: That sounds nasty!

Meg: ..it just allows you to move stuff around. So a while back, I re-recorded all the credits and proverbs and made...

Symphony: Get out of here, no you didn’t!

Meg: Yeah.

Cecil: What?

Meg: Yeah and…

Symphony: Meg?!!

Meg: And then they chop up what I say at the end of this show and like, there’s different versions of it, so I do like a different version and that gets like edited around, to be like when I talk about the mailing or I talk about merchandise or I talk about live shows, that stuff kinda moves around.

Cecil: Wow.

Symphony: Get out! OK and then that goes into every episode just in case somebody’s listening now for the first time, to the first episode like they get the current stuff?

Meg: Yeah they get the current stuff so they get, what we’re talking about now and if you listen to the pilot now and download the pilot now you’ll get, I don’t remember if it was Joseph or Jeffrey they do, they talk about live shows or something.

Hal: It’s Jeffrey.

Symphony: Yeah I heard Joseph talking about donating to get, and you can get special content and all that stuff. Oh, that’s so interesting!

Cecil: All that special content.

Symphony: Technology!

Meg: Yeah, so they can move all that stuff around, they can change it. It’s good cause you don’t wanna, like if someone’s listening to episode 70 and they wanna come see a live show, they don’t wanna hear about a live show that happened a year and a half ago, they wanna (--) the stuff going on…

Cecil: Come see The Investigators!

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: [laughs]

Hal: I do slightly feel betrayed, in a heavy way. Just like, I wanna hear those old, cause that’s what I remember when I first listened to it.

Symphony: Hal wants the classics! [laughter]

Hal: It was always Joseph coming in, saying there is no Joseph Fink and like here’s..

Cecil: Yeah, we’re all Joseph Fink..

Hal: Here’s how you can support the show, we are all Joseph Fink.

Symphony: That was always really fun to record.

Meg: Let me make some phone calls, let me see if I can get those recordings for us to work off of. Let me see, so we don’t have to work off the new ones.

Cecil: And if Good Morning Night Vale, if Good Morning Night Vale is truly a retrospective show, I feel like you should go through an episode later like pull out some choice ones, and play them for the listeners of like (--).

Meg: Good idea, thanks for the content idea, that’s a good one.

Hal: Yeah! And then we can submit it to the Smithsonian along with that Snowball mic, as part of the Night Vale exhibit.

Meg: Which is…

Cecil: When there’s a Night Vale exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, and they have all the artifacts and all the deer paintings, and the laminate for Big Rico’s Pizza that I stole from San Diego Comic Con, stuff like that. [laughter]

Cecil: There’ll be little listening booths for all the children.

Hal: I actually volunteered to live for three months.

Cecil: Oh really? [laughs]

Hal: Yeah just like in a tank, like it’s a David Blaine thing but I will have a bed, so that’s the difference. [laughter]

Cecil: Oh my god.

Hal: And a (potty) with a (--) so I can (--).

Cecil: The artist is present. And it is Steve Carlsberg.

Hal: I mean you press a button to deliver a low level electric shock, it’s fine, I can deal with it. [laughter]

Cecil: You get like food pellets.

Symphony: I know, that’s what I was thinking, I was like food pellets.

Cecil: And Carlsberg beer.

Symphony: Yeah, it’s Carlsberg.

Hal: If I can solve the puzzle.

Symphony: Isn’t that like not even full alcohol beer?

Cecil: Oh, is that a low alcohol beer?

Symphony: Is it? Or is it just terrible tasting? [laughter] Who knows?

Meg: I dunno if I’ve ever had one.

Symphony: A Carlsberg? We should do that this tour. If you buy us a Carlsberg beer, oh wait, no one will hear this but…

Hal: Symphony will drink it. [laughter]

Symphony: [laughs hysterically]

Meg: This episode premieres June 7.

Hal: If you see one of us..

Symphony: Nevermind, cut it! Cut it, (-) cut it!

Cecil: I think according to Wikipedia I think Carlsberg is a normal beer.

Symphony: OK. Did you look it up?

Cecil: Yeah I did.

Meg: Are you multi-tasking with technology?

Cecil: I’m trying to multi-task but it’s really hard.

Symphony: Look at you and your science.

Hal: Look at you.

Symphony: Speaking of science…

Meg: Is it…

Cecil: Dark magic.

Meg: Is it a Dutch beer?

Hal: Probably.

Cecil: Denmark.

Meg: Is Carlsberg Dutch, oh Denmark.

Cecil: Denmark.

Meg: It’s a Danish beer.

Symphony: Who knows with those people?

Meg: Those people who are our fans, who listen to us, who love to go see… [laughter] Hey, we love you Copenhagen!

Cecil: Oh my god, right?

Symphony: Literally no one is hating on Denmark, like ever, so they can take it.

Cecil: Oh my god, there’s a special place in my heart for Copenhagen.

Symphony: I wanna go there so bad.

Cecil: I had such a splendidly shitty time both times I went. But it was like, fireworks of shit. The best crazy, travel stories that in the moment you’re like this is the longest day of my life. However..

Symphony: Is that when they lost your luggage?

Meg: It really was.

Cecil: But I know future me is gonna eat up every moment of it. And it’s all because of Copenhagen. Copen-hahgen.

Meg: Yeah.

Symphony: Do you say hay-gen or hah-gen?

Meg: I say Copen-haygen. I guess you can say both, I’ve heard both.

Symphony: Are both correct or is it just like willy-nilly?

Cecil: My guess is it’s Copen-hahgen for people who live there, Copen-haygen with an American accent? I dunno.

Symphony: Maybe.

Cecil: That’s my guess.

Symphony: Sammy Hey-gar. No. Sammy Hah-gar.

Cecil: Sammy Hah-gar. [laughter]

Meg: Hey-gen-Dasz. Hah-gen-Dasz.

[They’re basically just saying Häagen-Dazs in various ways and something about Chicago, I dunno how to transcribe it]

Symphony: It’s funny because I live here.

Hal: This is topical.

Meg: Well, this conversation has been…

Symphony: Next!

Meg: …a joy. Cecil, thank you so much for joining us on the first ever Good Morning Night Vale, it’s so great to hear from you.

Cecil: Thank you for having me. Yeah, it’s super weird to be talking to you all in a professional capacity with like, listeners listening in. Just FYI.

Meg: It’s like they’re backstage with us.

Cecil: I know.

Meg: Except we’re wearing clothes. Well, I’m wearing clothes, I don’t know about, I can’t speak for anyone else on this call.

Cecil: I’m wearing clothes, for once.

Symphony: Kinda.

Cecil: Kind of. [laughs] State of undress.

Symphony: A crop top is clothes. I’m wearing a crop top and leggings, is that, that’s clothes?

Hal: And I’m covered in body paint, so I’m good.

Symphony: [laughs]

Cecil: Oo! I’ll say, I’m wearing a full suit from the waist up and nothing from the waist down.

Meg: Perfect.

Hal: Business on top, party on the bottom.

Symphony: [laughs] Yes!

Meg: Alright, cool. Well thanks, Ceec!

Cecil: Party on.

Meg: Thanks. Bye!

Cecil: Bye!

Hal: Bye!

Meg: Thank you so much for joining us on our first ever episode of Good Morning Night Vale. Next week, we’re gonna talk about the episode 2, “Glow Cloud”, and we’ll be joined by special guest Joseph Fink, the creator and writer of Welcome to Night Vale and my personal husband.

Symphony: Amongst other things. [laughs]

Hal: You’ll hear us next time.

Meg: You’ll hear us next time. Thank you so much. Good morning, Night Vale, good morning.

Symphony: Good morning. Byeee!

Today’s adverb: Zestfully. I zestfully zested an orange, because I am flamboyant and I care deeply about really hammering in those notes of citrus in my flavor profile.

#welcome to night vale #night vale presents #good morning night vale #meg bashwiner #symphony sanders #hal lublin #cool cool cool #long post

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