98th episode with Skid Row Studios owner Jeremy Hansen

People have powerful feelings about the traffic in Los Angeles. It says something that local officials warned motorists about a temporary roadwork closure on the 405 last year by calling it Carmageddon. Angelenos took the hint, and this weekend they're expected to steer clear of the latest 405 closure, named, of course, Carmageddon 2. That's how it is in L.A., a snarl of overstuffed freeways and commuters who keep their cool, except when they don't. KPCC's Stephen Cuevas has this profile of a punk rocker whose music expresses the insanity of L.A. traffic while extolling the virtues of public transit. Couple of things you need to know about Eddie Solis. He lives in L.A., loves the band Kiss, and does not own a car. Being someone who's from L.A., born and raised, and, you know, having a few cars in my past, I saw the city much differently through a different perspective through the eyes of a bus rider. Come on, just all the way to the back. Look at the shirt. Line 18, Wilshire, Western Station. Just steps from the front door of his home, across the street from a tortilla factory in L.A.'s Boyle Heights neighborhood, Solis catches a bus that connects him with the city's subway, and the commuter train he catches to his day job at an indie record label in Hollywood. It just opened me up to, like, little neighborhoods, galleries, clubs, bars, just everything. Just seeing what's out there, little pockets of the city. Solis' journeys aboard L.A. buses and subway cars informs a lot of the material on The New Los Angeles Part One, Through the Eyes of a Bus Rider, the latest release by the singer-guitarist band It's Casual. The New Los Angeles No one has learned much In Solis' vision of a new Los Angeles, people abandon their cars, climb aboard public transit, and rediscover their communities. One song extols the virtues of the L.A. County Metropolitan Transit Agency's E-ZPass, and the urban underbelly it introduces to the rider. And that's like a nod and homage to, you know, the people who know, but you can even go cheaper and really beat the system and really steer away from spending money on gas and oil profits and all that. Solis' music Solis' music Solis' music Solis' music Solis' music Solis' music Solis' music Solis' music It's not for me to witness racial tension, for me to witness illegal aliens. It's not to paint a negative picture, it's just my perspective of what is seen. Off the bus and back on the street, we make our way past a jazz saxophonist playing for pocket change, and down a long escalator to catch a train. So, where are we now? We're at the Red Line Station. The Pershing Square Station in downtown L.A. And what's our destination? We're going to go downstairs another tier, and in about five minutes we're going to get on the Red Line going northbound. Okay, let's go. Let's go. The Metro Red Line snakes from North Hollywood to downtown Los Angeles. It's the train that inspired It's Casual's signature tune and spawned a viral internet video. It was partly filmed late at night on a moving train as it hurtles from station to station. Solis thrashes away on his guitar and barks the lyrics. Which celebrate the Red Line and call out the congested freeways that coil around Los Angeles. This is a Metro Red Line train to North Hollywood. The 210, 605, the freeways are not so nice. The I-5, the 210, the freeways are not so nice. The thread that comes out of the record that ties everyone together is just like, be alive, don't be a victim of having a car. The 210, 605, the freeways are not so nice. The I-5, the 210, the freeways are not so nice. The Red Line. The Red Line. An MTA spokesman said he couldn't comment on Eddie Solis' furious pro-Metro message, but the Red Line video was a hit at the offices of Move LA. Eddie's done a good job. Thank you, Eddie. Thank you, Eddie. The public transportation advocacy group headed by former Santa Monica mayor Denny Zane, he liked the juxtaposition of Solis blissfully riding LA public transit in one scene with scenes of the band raging against those notorious freeway jams. Eddie is all frantic when he talks about highways and so mellow when he's like grooving on a skateboard and on the bus and on the Red Line. There's a metaphor for the transformation, you know, from the, you know, my God, I just got to get out of this. traffic to, hey, this is cool. I can mellow out. Or you can blast the tune like too many people as you claw your way across Los Angeles, a car, bus or skateboard. There's too many people. I want them to go away. Even though I think they're so afraid. Too many people could also be a motto for its casualness. Over the years, the band whittled itself down to a power duo of Solis and a rotating cast of drummers. So you may think the burly bearded punk rocker just can't get along with freeways, with people or his native LA. Not true. I love it. I love everything about it. I've traveled throughout the US many times and I could never look forward enough to coming back. The weather, the different cultures, the landscape. I was just like, you know what? Now I know why everyone moves to LA. So we'll bring the love and the volume during a Red Line mini tour next month. It's casual will play a different venue within walking distance of several Red Line Metro stops from Union Station to West Hollywood. For the California Report, I'm Stephen Quevas. I was my driver last night. I was my driver last night. I was my driver last night. I was my driver last night. I was my driver last night. This woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, The 405 The freeways Are not so nice The 605 The 101 The 101 The 101 The 80 The 210 The 605 The 101 The 405 The 80 The freeways Are not so nice The red lights The red lights The red lights The red lights The red lights The red lights The red lights The red lights Welcome to the 98th episode of Los Angeles Nista. I am your host and producer, Eddie Solis, and it's an honor to have, as an in-studio guest, the owner of Skid Row Studios, Jeremy Hansen. Thank you very much, Eddie. Well, it's a pleasure. Long overdue, and... I wanted to let you know that, you know, I want to thank you for installing me into the equation here, first of all, as far as allowing my show to take place, and tomorrow will be the 100th episode with the bassists from AFI and Ozzy. That's... It's amazing that you're up to 100 episodes because it doesn't seem like it was too long ago that you started doing your show here, and you're up to 100, and that's great, man. And thank you so much for all the great, great content that you've put out there. Thank you. You know, there's a huge backstory to this beautiful, high-tech studio in the middle of downtown Los Angeles here. You know, before we get into the actual installment of skidrowstudios.com, were you always a radio buff? Or is it more about computers? I've always been into radio, actually. Specifically talk radio. Art Bell and those types of things. Oh, really? Yeah, you know, like, coast to coast. Very unconventional. Yeah, and that guy, you know, he could fill three hours a night of just some great content, interesting things, and then, you know, when I got to L.A., there was the big KFI. KFI is a huge talk radio station here in Los Angeles. So I kind of really got deep into it once I discovered KFI. Wow. Now, I gotta ask you, are you a Howard Stern fan? You know, I'll be totally honest about this. I respect Howard Stern as a broadcaster. I'm not so much into his show in terms of, you know, people are real fanatical and they love that show and they know every character and listen to every single show. And even know the episodes by heart. Like, more or less, like, what took place on each episode. Yeah, and that's great. You know, he's a force that has changed broadcasting forever. But, you know, I'm not, personally, I'm not huge into his show specifically. Right. Okay, so, when did skidroadstudios.com Although, I have to mention, I am gonna meet Melrose Larry Green tonight in Cabo Wabo in Hollywood and Highland. You're gonna go meet him? Yeah, I'm gonna meet that guy. Really? Is there a show in the works? No, no, it's not that. One of the bands that's playing that I'm friends with is friends with him. So, I just thought that'd be cool to meet that guy. That is so cool. Yeah, yeah. So, that should be fun. Yeah, that's absolutely fun. Okay, so, let me know about when your first vision took place to do Skid Row Studios. Well, to really do Skid Row was about three years ago in my apartment. I had an apartment over on 7th and Main here in downtown Los Angeles, or 7th and Spring, and I had an upstairs area. And, a little history on that, I've always been into CB radios and geeky shit like that. Like ham radios and stuff? Yeah, I never had the motivation to actually get my ham license. So, I just stayed on what they call the chicken band and fucked with people on CB radios. Talked to drivers and everything? Yeah, you know, and I just kept going further and further and further, you know, getting huge amplifiers and breaking every FCC regulation you could on that band. And, I met a guy up north near Santa Maria, near Wine Country in Central Coast, who was into the CB radio thing, but built a radio studio that he basically connected to a CB radio. So, he had the console and the broadcast mics and this huge setup. And I thought, wow, that's really cool. And, I want to mimic this type of environment, you know, radio environment, with real broadcast equipment. And, you know, I'm just going to do it on the internet because you can do whatever you want on the internet right now. So, really, the vision was is to build a radio studio and put that on the internet. Not just, you know, a mic and a laptop. You know, not just a, I don't like even using the term podcast because... Same here. Yeah. Because I think podcast has this connotation that you're, you know, like in your garage. And that's fine. I'm not saying you can't produce great content like that, but I really wanted the radio environment. Right, right. I mean, it's funny you say that because I think a lot of people like to use that as a, that term, podcast out of laziness. Yeah. Because it's the norm. And I always, when I'm using, when I'm prepping guests for the show, I always tell them, like through direct emails and texts and conversation after they confirm to come on, it's like, it's a radio studio. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's the equivalent of a station, but we're not on FM or AM. It's not a podcast. Yeah. You know, and I've been on tour and in bands where we've gone on to FM radio across the country, active radio format, and this is nicer than half of them. Wow. Thanks. Seriously. That's great. And, you know, when I had Rusko in here last Monday. Yeah. Now, I'm not sure if you heard the whole, you know, interview, but he said, wow, this is nicer than the BBC. Wow. He said that. That's pretty amazing. And this is a very successful dubstep DJ who basically his demand in record sales and ticket sales is like, you know, right now, I would say like, you know, the cult or Slipknot, like he plays the same venues. He's, you know, I mean, it's, you know, this is someone who's out there and relevant like right now. That's, that's pretty amazing. And he says that because, you know, the BBC, when I read all my radio industry magazines, the BBC is, is kind of the standard for broadcasting and in Europe and things like that. So that's a huge statement. Yeah. He was, I mean, you should listen to that. He was really, really, really, you know, clear about that. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, anyways, how long were you in your apartment doing it? We were doing it in my apartment for about six months. And, um, you know, um, in the beginning, it was just myself and a friend, uh, kind of messing around, you know, um, I got some cheap mixer, you know, I started real small and some real basic equipment, you know, when I get into something, there's always these different levels, you know, you get in on that first level where, oh, okay, I can do this with this. And then you learn about how the big boys are doing it. And then, you know, you try to move in that direction. So there's always these different levels and different phases of kind of getting to that point where you feel really good about what you're doing. So we started small and it was me and my friend just getting drunk in my apartment and just, you know, just goofing off really. That's all it was. But that was the framework, the skeleton for what's now. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, I, and anybody that listens to Skid Row is going to know that I'm not on the mic very often. I'm more of a behind the scenes guy. Right. So, so, you know, those, those very beginnings were just me putting myself in the position that you're in as a host to try to figure out what, what can I do to build this and make this better? My job as I see it is to remove as many barriers as possible for the hosts. Now, yeah, now you've done a great job of that. Let me ask you from someone in your perspective, when it comes to the internet and the control of the government, can you tell me the reality from what you know and have collected the knowledge and let it resonate and done the research, where are we now with controlled content on the internet? Well, there's two, two different things. There's one thing to be able to monitor the information on the internet, which we know is happening right now every single day. Everyone's watching everyone. Everybody's watching every, everyone. The concept of privacy is completely gone. That's a fact. Yeah. I mean, it's with the Edward Snowden case. I mean, he, there wouldn't have been that type of reaction if it was just some, some dudes making it up. You know, this is real. People are monitoring everything we do from cell phones to email to anything that goes on the internet. It's trackable. And without getting too geeky on it, it's actually not that hard. If you're in the right place on the internet, you can gather all this data because everything you do passes through a limited number of spots, you know, major hubs on the internet that control that information. So the government wants to find something out. They're like, we just go here and here and we'll find out. Yeah, pretty much. That simple. Pretty much. Now, there's a difference between being able to monitor and being able to control. To actually be able to control it. And what I'm saying is, the example is, if you put some naked picture of someone on the internet, they can't really stop you from doing that, but they can find out that you did it. And then try to take it away. So, it would take a lot of work to be able to say, Control everything. To control everything. To actually put the things in place to stop certain types of traffic. You need algorithms that would be able to recognize certain kinds of traffic. You would need somebody to be able to monitor what we're doing in this station and determine whether they want to block it or not. And that's actually a lot harder than you might think. It's not impossible, and as computers get faster and machine learning algorithms and things like that get smarter, that could be a reality. But as we stand right now, it's pretty difficult to censor. So, when you hear people in Congress proposing these censorship laws on the internet, I kind of chuckle because it's a bunch of old men that don't really understand technology just throwing these things out there. So, yeah, as it stands right now, it's going to be really hard to control the internet. But they're going to monitor the shit out of you right now. Wow. Now, as far as the technology standpoint, you've put a lot of time and work and money into the studio. Things have changed drastically in a year. You've made a conscious decision to commit. Do you think that technology, technology is just unraveling daily? I mean, is that, I mean, is this, are things, is the competition going to get more fierce? Well, it's interesting because when I started to get into this, you know, I wanted to use a lot of my knowledge from the computer industry. That's my career. That's kind of what has given me the ability to get places and do things was working in the computer industry. And as I'm getting, getting into this, I'm seeing a lot of parallels of using some things that I learned throughout my career and applying them to this creative outlet. And, you know, not to toot my own horn, but I mean, I've been in other radio studios and even other internet stations and it's not that they can't or they don't know how or they're too stupid. It's just that they don't, they haven't put together the idea of connecting the two yet and utilizing it in different ways. Being able to do things like track your listeners in real time, use metrics to kind of determine like how you should, you know, advertise and things like that. And I think we have the framework here to do that. It's just that other places, I don't think they've just made that connection yet. So people are learning all the time and it's just a matter of time till everybody catches on. I think one of the biggest barriers to internet, radio at the moment is just having that simplicity of turning it on in your car. And that's changing. And I think that's going to be really the next big technology step that's going to legitimize what we're doing here because people want to be able to just turn it on in their cars and listen. Wow, wow. So from your knowledge and again, the information you've collected, the car manufacturers are installing the internet radio. Yes. And there's more of that happening, right? That's happening more and more. There's actually, there's entire conferences in the broadcast world dedicated to this next big step of internet radio in the car. Right. And there's some implementations out there, newer cars, you can find it, but I don't think they've nailed it yet in terms of, you know, AM FM is so simple. You want to listen to this station, you turn to, you know, 97.1, whatever it is. Internet needs to be that way. And there's also so much on the internet. So it's kind of... It's a bigger... There's so much. There's so much content. There's so much content. Like just thousands and thousands. How many internet radio stations do you think exists in the US? Well, I mean, it depends on what you consider an internet radio station because I think what terrestrial radio is doing is some people are being very proactive about it and smart about it because they know that this is going to be the standard in the future. So you have clear channel communications coming out with things like iHeart Radio. Which basically takes every single one of their terrestrial stations across the United States and puts it on the internet. So do you consider that an internet radio station? Or are you talking just people that are purely on the internet? Right. So there's a huge, huge difference. Yeah. It's like copying their existing content on a regular band and saying, oh, it's available here. Yeah. But, you know, the other side of that coin, though, is that I think that the interesting content, on the internet, is the stuff that's no longer on regular radio. Regular radio now is hard to even listen to. I mean, in terms of music stations and things like that. I mean, it's just the same thing every day. So I think the power of these internet stations that are internet only and kind of controlling their own content is that they're coming up with things that have been lost on terrestrial radio. Right. As far as... the industry, the radio industry goes, do you think that more vendors, more facilitators that own content will be looking to place existing content, whether it's old or new, into new internet channels? Maybe they don't want to get involved with the infrastructure, but they're like someone who owns the rights. Like maybe, you know, a, you know, an executor, an administrator, of a state that, you know, owns the rights to a catalog of stations. Do you think that there's going to be more people trying to install and license their content to internet radio stations? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think... I really think that what's going to end up happening is that business, as we know it in terms of radio, a lot of lessons to be learned there and a lot of positive things that come out of it in terms of terrestrial radio, licensing, making sure that artists get paid for things, like all those things that radio tries to do is going to just carry over into the internet. So... It'll be a blanket kind of formula. Yeah, and I really think that terrestrial is just... It's just kind of going to slowly fade away. And I don't think... I think that that doesn't mean that those businesses that own those terrestrial stations have to die. They just have to die. They just have to... Reinvent. Reinvent and get up to speed with the way things are going. So how many shows do we have here on Skid Row now? I think we have 20 shows right now. Somewhere around 20. Do you think there'll be a day where we have 40? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I would love to fill a 24-hour schedule. You want to do that. Yeah, I think... And maybe if it's not a 24-hour schedule, I mean, this is all yet to be seen, but maybe other studios, you know, so we can truly have that plural on our studios. You know, right now, this is the home base, but I consider this just the beginning. I really would love to see studios in every major city. You know, that's kind of long-term vision, but I think we could do it. And I think the beauty of that is that you... start to get the regional flair like you do on your show with Los Angeles. There's so many other cities that could have that same kind of idea. You can do the regional, but still attract the local art and everything beautiful about that city, you know? Really dig from the inside and bring it all to the surface. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's a great mission statement. With that, I want to thank you for being a part of the 98th episode. Thank you so much, Eddie. You're doing a great job and keep doing it, man. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm on the phone line So here we go Get a good design Go for a bump Let it get me beneath Make some video in the street I'm in the middle of Tokyo You're yet to find the time So here we go Get a good design Go for a bump I'm on the phone line Go for a bump Get a good design So here we go Let's get up and try to tell Going through the night I'm on the way to Island Park I'm on the phone line So here we go Get a good design Go for a bump I'm on the phone line