Audio:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearinghouses around the world. And now welcome, Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Every year on the second Sunday of February, millions of football fans gather with family and friends to take in this Super Bowl. And while my New England Patriots surely won't be hosting the Lombardi Trophy at Super Bowl 58 at Allegiance Stadium in Las Vegas on February 11th, I, like everyone watching, will be glued to my seat from start to finish, taking in every big play and every shift in momentum. And while a large portion of those attending watch parties will be, like me, intensely absorbing each moment, other viewers are going to be tuning in to catch Usher's Halftime Show or for the comedy and creativity embedded in the big production commercial spots that air during each TV timeout.
This Sunday, we might see ads from some favorite brands like Coca-Cola, that's NYSE ticker symbol KO; Ford, ticker symbol F; and McDonald's, ticker symbol MCD. Or we might see some entertaining campaigns specifically from our friends at Anheuser-Busch, that's NYSE ticker symbol BUD, or Bud, like we have with Budweiser's Clydesdale's or Bud Lights 2015 Up For Whatever campaign.
But what goes into making one of those million-dollar Superbowl spots? How do these companies blend the sounds that we hear, the ones that really pique our interest and mesh them with the visual product that we see on our screens? Well, a few folks know the intricacies of creating those sounds better than our guest today, Paul Blair, professionally known as DJ White Shadow. Paul partnered with Anheuser-Busch in 2015 for Bud Light's Up For Whatever campaign, appearing in a cameo in their life-sized Pac-Man commercial, as well as composing the music for the ad. His long history DJing has seen him collaborate with superstars including Lady Gaga, Pitbull, Austin Mahone, and many others. He's been nominated for multiple Grammys, and in 2020, won the award for best compilation soundtrack for visual media. On today's episode, we're going to dive deep into Paul's background, his passion for music, and how he got his start on the other side of the world. We're also going to discuss the present-day music industry and the challenges of surviving and thriving in the profession. All that and more coming up right after this.
Audio:
Connecting the opportunity is just part of the hustle. Opportunity is using data to create a competitive advantage. It's raising capital to help companies change the world. It's making complicated Financial concepts seem simple. Opportunity is making the dream of homeownership a reality. Writing new rules and redefining the game. And driving the world forward to a greener energy future. Opportunity is setting a goal, and charting a course to get there. Sometimes, the only thing standing between you and opportunity is someone who can make the connection. At ICE. We connect people to opportunity.
Josh King:
Welcome back Inside the ICE House. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. Our guest today, Paul Blair, professionally known as DJ White Shadow is a Grammy-winning DJ and has worked with artists like Lady Gaga and brands like Anheuser-Busch. As we are thinking about how to raise the curtain on the Super Bowl this week, my colleague, Chris Edmonds, president of ICE Fixed Income & Data Services, and the star in his own right of Inside the ICE House, episode number 308, suggested we talk to his good friend Paul Blair. Just so happens that Paul finds himself across the country from his usual lair, sitting across from me today here at the New York Stock Exchange. Paul, thanks so much for coming in this week.
Paul Blair:
Thanks for having me. This is great.
Josh King:
What was it like watching the opening bell?
Paul Blair:
It was exciting. It's pretty crazy to stand in a room that has that much history, and be a small little tick on the big floor. It was really cool to watch.
Josh King:
I mean, it might not be a Super Bowl Halftime Show, but it's pretty special. But if you were taking a producer's eye to it, are there any things that you'd change about what you saw?
Paul Blair:
No, no. It was very well run, very well put together. I saw two guys try to get out of the pen a minute early, and got reprimanded and put back in the pen, so that was the level of excitement. It was great. Thank you for having me. It was really special to watch that, it's definitely an experience.
Josh King:
So today may mark your initial visit to the New York Stock Exchange. It's certainly not your first visit to New York City. You've DJed at venues, including the Gold Bar, Marquee, and even one at the H&M in Times Square. Other cities known for their club scene, but what stands out about The City That Never Sleeps from its music perspective?
Paul Blair:
Oh man, New York is a pretty innovative place, worldwide. There's a lot of cities. London does a really good job of clubs. Tokyo does a good job of clubs. Paris does a good job of clubs. But New York is the taker of the cake. They always have wild, exciting, innovative ideas about how to put a drink down and listen to music. It's very, very exciting here.
Josh King:
So part of the through line of our conversation is I'm not one of those guys who wants to take a drink and source out that kind of music, but let's say you know every person running every door in town, and you could go anywhere, for the uninitiated, for the people who say, "What does DJ White Shadow do when he is in New York?" Let's say you could have any night, you and Lisa, what would you do?
Paul Blair:
I guess that changes over the years, right? I mean, when I was 25, I'd have a much different answer for you than I do now. I mean, when I was a kid, you wanted to go to the craziest place you could possibly go, so it was like whatever the club was that was the biggest spot. We were just talking about it the other day. I used to play at, it's a place called 10 June. It's now shuttered, but it was such a crazy club. The Box, there's wild stuff in New York that people like yourself would probably be like, "Hey, get me out of here." The Box is intentionally crazy, right? I mean, you have to go to see it, but there's things that are definitely-
Josh King:
People in Fight Club shouldn't talk about Fight Club.
Paul Blair:
Yeah, definitely X-rated things happening at The Box. And never dull moment. You know what I mean? When you think that you're being entertained by a club, the box will show you that there's a new level that you could probably go to experience.
Josh King:
Well, let's go from The Box and X-rated to Wall Street and maybe PG or G-rated. We've become somewhat used to the idea of titans of finance moonlighting behind the turntable, and I'm talking about the CEO of Goldman Sachs, NYSE ticker symbol GS, our good friend here at the NYSE, David Solomon. I want to hear a quick cut of DJ D-Sol's take on Fleetwood Max's Don't Stop.
Audio:
(Singing).
Josh King:
First, your quick take on the talent of DJ D-Sol?
Paul Blair:
You gut it off right before I was about to blow up, man. It was about to go crazy, and we got cut off. Did he produce that?
Josh King:
You can find that on his YouTube channel under DJ D-Sol.
Paul Blair:
Oh, really? No way. Yeah. No, I have never heard it. Yeah, I mean, it's decent, man. That's all right. Yeah, it's pretty good.
Josh King:
Decent, all right, pretty good. For the listener's ears, what they just heard, if they've listened to the classic Fleetwood Mac Rumors album, you could hear Don't Stop in one way. You've heard it a different way there. What's actually going on?
Paul Blair:
So I mean, listen, it's about ... How do you explain this? Wherever you're presenting the music depends on how good it is or not. I could go in and play the original Fleetwood Mac, and it might make a better impression than that. DJing is not about picking ... I can't give you 10 songs and make you a good DJ that are the best songs in the world. You could walk in here and play a party, and people would be like, "What are you playing right now?" The secret sauce of DJing is knowing what kind of music to play for what kind of people are standing in front of you at that particular time. You know what I mean? So it's about plugging the round peg into the round hole. So that's a great presentation of that song. If that's the kind of DJ that you are, then, you know what I mean? Then it's great.
Josh King:
What we've just heard, is it hard to achieve those effects? How do you do that?
Paul Blair:
I mean, everybody's process is different, but from my point of view, where I'm sitting, my guess is he got the acapella or the parts of the song, and then he just redid the chords and redid the drums, and he's presenting an older song that probably he loves into a newer format so that he could play that for people that might have not heard the original, and-
Josh King:
Is there a place for Wall Street's CEO overseeing the dance floor?
Paul Blair:
Man, there's a place for everybody overseeing the dance floor. I say all the time that everybody's a DJ somehow, at some level. If you're sitting in the passenger seat of the car, driving with your wife, and you ask her for the aux, you become the DJ at that particular moment. So it's not ... Everything to scale. I mean, a lot of my friends that are CEOs of companies are not necessarily raised in the arts. DJing is one of the easiest points of entry into what is the music business. They sell more DJ equipment at Guitar Center than they do guitars. So kids from 8 to 80, it's a good way to say, "Hey man, you want to get started on learning about this? Here's the equipment." You already know music. Everybody knows music, right? We're human beings. So it's like, "Here's a cool way to get started."
Josh King:
We're talking to you around the holiday season. If you are giving that set of DJ equipment to a young person for a holiday gift, what are the first tentative steps that a person takes to DJ?
Paul Blair:
Well, I mean, you got to love music, right? I mean, you got to love music and have ... Well, anything that you want to do. If you want to be a surfer, you want to fly kites, whatever you want to do, you have to have the passion for what it is. You have to actually want to do it. So sometimes, I think people get into like, "Oh, my kid wants to be a DJ." It might be like a flash in the pan thing, but I've seen a lot of kids, a lot of adults that are really really into music. It's really having the intuition of what people like, loving music and being able to count to 16 is really the basic requirements. If you can count and tap your foot to a beat, you have a pretty good start down the runway.
Josh King:
So you and I just heard the first couple notes of Don't Stop. Let's talk about you, Paul, because I want to know, first, how did you get the moniker DJ White Shadow? I hear the name and my thoughts automatically go back to the classic CBS series starring Ken Howard that aired from 1978 to '81. Were you a fan growing up of the high school basketball drama set at the fictional Carver High school in South Central?
Paul Blair:
Yeah. So that show was a little bit before my time, but when I was young, 17, 18, whatever it was, when I was kind of getting out into the universe playing records at clubs, I was 99% of the time the only white guy that was in the entire club. And back then, the DJ was an afterthought.
We're in an era right now where DJs are marquee artists that have entire careers. People know they walked down the street. Oh my gosh, "You're Steve Aoki. Oh my gosh, you're Tiesto." When I started DJing in the mid-nineties, the DJ was in a box in the corner of the club. The last afterthought of space that you couldn't put a body in to drink was like the closet that the DJ would stand in. So being a very lanky rubber-bandy Q-tip looking white guy at this club, people would often do double takes. They'd walk past me and be like, "What's that guy in the DJ booth?" And so my friend, longtime friend, Kevin Brown, who was the promoter for the event that I first started out in, was a basketball guy, and he started calling me White Shadow because I was the little guy in the corner that ... Whatever. And it just stuck. Everybody thought it was funny, and so that's how ... And I just kept it all these years, yeah. But it's because of the basketball show though.
Josh King:
Because of Ken Howard's show. So you go from South Central to Ohio in our little meander that we're going to take, Paul, because you are raised in the Midwest. You grew up in Ohio, Michigan, part of a family with a history of farming. Your dad, while he was raised on a farm, made a living working the line at the General Motors, that's ticker symbol GM, in their Lordstown plant in Youngstown. I want to hear a quick clip.
Audio:
General Motors has bought up the 1100 acre farm right where Ellsworth Bailey Road crosses the Ohio Turnpike.
It all started in 1964, that's when General Motors bought acres of cornfield and broke ground on a brand new production facility in Lordstown. Two years later, those cornfields had been transformed into a state-of-the-art assembly line, the first Impala rolled off the line on April 28th, 1966.
Josh King:
What was your memories like as your dad was working at the Lordstown plant, and was music part of your upbringing?
Paul Blair:
I remember very specifically when I knew that I wanted to get in music, and it was like second grade. And it wasn't from some ... My youngest uncle, my dad's one of six, so my youngest uncle is only a couple years older than me. So he would give me his tapes, and I would get music from my uncle Jeff. And I don't know how I got the first tape I got, but it was from a DJ in New York named Mr. Magic. It was called Mr. Magic's Rap Attack, and it had a bunch of rap music on it. It was the first time I ever heard rap music, and it was like Houdini and Run DMC, who by the way, was on the floor today at the opening bell, DMC was at the opening bell. I almost had a panic attack when he walked in this morning.
Josh King:
[inaudible 00:16:12].
Paul Blair:
Yeah, I was standing in the lobby, and DMC walked in, and I had a moment where I was like, "Oh my God, what's going on right now?"
Josh King:
See? You never know who walks in the door of the New York Stock Exchange. That's the beauty of this show.
Paul Blair:
It's crazy. He was my hero when I was a kid. The whole Run DMC were like the gods of hip-hop when I was a kid. So anyway, yeah, the first tape I ever got, he was on it, and just walked in here today, which has to be a sign. Also, I saw that the S&P was the highest it's been in 2023, so-
Josh King:
Yeah, we're having a good year.
Paul Blair:
... you guys are welcome for that as well, for today. But anyway, so I got this tape, and we were literally on a farm. I mean, second grade, I got the tape. Third grade, my dad told me how to kill a chicken and take it to my grandma's house. We were on a farm. So kind of in a vacuum or like a void or whatever you call it. I was learning about music through this hip-hop thing, and I guess it was the first spark of like, "Hey, this is where this came from." And I would read the thing and try and find the next song and try and find the next song. And I was just obsessed with it. I didn't ask for toys when I was a kid. I asked for records when I was a kid, and I remember getting my first piece of Vinyl, it was New Edition album, and I was super stoked about the vinyl. And then just through my whole life, it just stuck.
Josh King:
Do you still have that vinyl? I do. I go to Paul Blair's house. Do I see a lot of vinyl, a lot of eight track, a lot of cassette? What do you keep from the old days?
Paul Blair:
I still have about 50,000 records, which is a lot of records. They're in various forms of being displayed, but a lot of them are still in boxes. But I mean, I've been collecting records since I was short as all get out, so it's like-
Josh King:
Is the New Edition the most ... What's the most cherished one?
Paul Blair:
I have a picture disc of thriller signed by Mike Jackson, signed by Michael Jackson, which is probably a good one to ... I have a lot of signed records over the years, people that I ... Before, like the trading floor, before we went digital-
Josh King:
Trading slip.
Paul Blair:
No. Yeah, we used to carry records. I mean, I used to carry lots and lots and lots of records, and people would come into the club or you'd be somewhere, and I know somebody was going to be somewhere, and I'd put a couple of records in my bag, and take them with a pen, like a fan, and be like, "Hey man, will you sign this for me?" And, yeah.
Josh King:
You know, there's so many stories of people in multiple generations in the manufacturing sector, in the Midwest and also in farming in the Midwest, Field of Dreams certainly one story that brings all that home. Was there any thought of staying in the Midwest, pursuing a career either in the automotive industry or perhaps farming like your grandparents? GM sold Lordstown in 2019 to Lordstown Motors. And last year, Foxconn purchased it to manufacture the Fisker Pear there. But did you say, "I'm going to get out of here."?
Paul Blair:
No, I mean, honestly, first of all, I love cars. I love cars. My dad put up healthy respect for-
Josh King:
As does Edmonds with his McLaren.
Paul Blair:
I love automotive things just in general. It's going to the auction, like the Mecum Auction or whatever is probably my Field of Dreams. I love watching the old cars, and how much they care about them and how much they care of them. I just think it's a super cool passion. And I think my dad had that at the beginning before. He raced motorcycles, built motorcycles. My grandpa and my uncles told me some pretty crazy stories about how he souped up cars and all that.
So I think for my dad, God bless my father, I love him very much, he had a pretty narrow field of vision about what it takes to make it in the world. And so, he really wanted me to be an engineer and join. This is how people excel in my profession. And as a father, you tell your kids what you know and how to kind of guide him into being the best adult that they possibly can be. And so my dad's vision was work, work, work, work, work as hard as you can, which a lot of that translated into what I ended up doing and what I wanted to do. But unfortunately, I didn't go the way of the engineer for my dad. Unfortunately, for my dad, I didn't end up doing that.
Josh King:
Staying on your dad for a second. So many of his generation served in Vietnam as an engineer working on helicopters, and I'm thinking the great book by Hal Moore and Joe Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young, about the Battle of Ia Drang Valley in 1965, where the Bell UH-1D helicopter played such a pivotal role. Was your dad recruited for his skills at GM, or did he leverage what the army taught him for his civilian career once he got out.
Paul Blair:
B. I don't think he had plans of working at GM before he got back. It was just like, as well as I do, in that time, you could earn quite a living through the automotive industry. You didn't need to be a college graduate. You didn't need to have a ton of credentials. You could go in and earn $40 an hour. I mean, Detroit was the most vibrant middle-class city in America for a number of years because of the automotive industry. And I mean, it spanned out through all the way north to Flint and all the way down to Texas. They were building cars all over the US. But in the Midwest there, it was a pretty normal thing to get a job at one of the automotive places because you could make a decent living.
Josh King:
So your dad says, "Work, work, work, engineering, engineering, engineering." You're very close to your two boys. Do you say, "Music, music, music."? How do you translate the intergenerational direction that ...
Paul Blair:
No, this is an ongoing process, right? We're kind of building the plane while we're flying it because they're 17 now. And so, they're getting into that space, where they're trying to figure out what they want to do for the rest of their life. So the one thing that I do with them that my dad didn't do with me, because my dad was like, "These video games are never going to last," and, "Skateboarding is stupid. Why would you do that?" And so, I try and be as understanding as I can about things that I'm not indoctrinated in, where it's like, "All right, if you guys are not going to go outside and play till the street lights come on, like we used to, then I want to understand what's going on with what you're doing."
So I have a Clash of Clans account and played Fortnite more than I've wanted to, but just kind of being able to bond with them on their level, which was something that my dad wasn't super capable of, just because that was a different time. You know what I mean? He had to paint his shoes to go to church in the morning. He gave us a much better life than he had growing up. And really, that's just what my aim is, in trying. Someone told me very recently that a good measure of success is if your kids want to hang out with you when they're adults. And that's been my kind of torch, whatever, going through parenthood, trying to be a good dad.
Josh King:
Speaking of things that you're not indoctrinated in, you mentioned that you were the first in your family to go to college. You chose to study international business at Western Michigan. Why was that the chosen field of study, and were there ways in which it connected with your passion for music, as you were out in Western Michigan, deciding what to do?
Paul Blair:
So Right, you got a couple ... Back to my dad. My dad was very much-
Paul Blair:
... Back to my dad. My dad was very much, "You're going to go to college and you're going to pay for it, and you're going to graduate with this degree. That's how it's going to work."
Josh King:
How many siblings were there?
Paul Blair:
I have one brother and two sisters. I'm the oldest.
Josh King:
Did they all get that same lecture from dad?
Paul Blair:
It softens. [inaudible 00:24:20].
Josh King:
First one gets the hardest.
Paul Blair:
Yeah. And honestly, I was probably the biggest jerk out of all. I was the one that was painting my fingernails in high school, and dyeing my hair purple and wearing break dancing jackets and stuff, going haywire. So, I think I blazed the trail of acceptance for the next couple of kids down the road. Anyway, I went to school because I thought it's what I had to do, and I did it.
When I was in high school, I took Japanese for four years. I had a passion for Japanese culture when I was younger, and I really wanted to learn about Japan and my dad wanted me to do business. At the time in Detroit, there was a lot of high schools that offered Japanese because of the competitiveness in the automotive industry, it was a language that they wanted people to learn in the public schools.
Because in the mid-nineties, Japanese companies coming in, creating maybe a better product than the American product. So yeah, trying to figure out how to stay competitive in that market. And I think that education for high schoolers was a step towards it. So, a lot of kids that I knew that grew up where I grew up didn't have Japanese in their high school. We did in Detroit.
So, I took Japanese for four years. I went to college, started enrolling in Japanese again, and I ended up getting accepted for a program that took you to Japan for a year. So, I actually spent my freshman year of college in Japan.
Josh King:
Takamatsu
Paul Blair:
Yeah. In Takamatsu. Sakaide was the actual name of the city right next to the Seto Ohashi bridge, between the two different islands. But when I went, I took international business because I thought that it was what I had to do. When I was finished with that, I was doing what I wanted to do, and that's where we're at now.
Josh King:
I mean, doing what you wanted to do, you got your first regular DJ-ing gig in Takamatsu. How does a college student from the Midwest find themselves on stage on the other side of the world? What did that feel like? I mean, you were there for international business and now you're on stage.
Paul Blair:
Yeah. Somebody said... Maybe it was James Brown, I don't know, "You use what you got to get what you want." It was like I walked into a bar... In Japan you can drink when you're 18. I had just turned 18 in Japan. You probably drink when you're 15 in Japan. I don't know. I don't think they care too much. But I waited until I was 18, and we were going around, looking at stuff and wandering into bars. I don't know if this is still a true stat, but there's a bar for every six people in Japan. They have a very robust after work drinking culture, and it's part of the businessman thing to go out and share co*cktails every day after work. It's pretty wild.
Josh King:
Part of the job.
Paul Blair:
Yeah. Anyway, we would go around and walked into this bar and they had a bunch of vinyl at the bar. I met the owner. I was like, "This is cool." I was like, "I'm a DJ." Which was a half-truth, I had bought a couple turntables and was in my basem*nt doing whatever I was doing in high school, and maybe playing some records for my buddies. But I said, "I would love to come in and DJ for you."
And I think because I'm 6'4" and do not look Japanese at all, that it became more about look at the circus clown over here playing records. And so, they let me do it and it worked. I went, and between classes I would draw flyers and take them to the copy machine when nobody was looking and print out 100 copies and go put them on poles all around like, "Come see this guy." And it worked. So, I just got to keep doing it. They let me do it every week.
Josh King:
Japanese music includes this wide array of distinct genres, both modern and traditional. You have a sound dating back to the time of the Samurai, as well as more recent forms like J-pop. What kind of influence on your work did the music of Japan had?
Paul Blair:
That's what's crazy about that time is... I love Japanese music. I love all music. Different genres and different places of music are my bread and butter. I like to listen to something from everywhere to learn about stuff. And so, the short story of that is that at that particular time, American music was more popular in Japan than Japanese music. There wasn't really a J-pop thing happening yet. So, most people in Japan were trying to do American music. Does that make sense?
Josh King:
Yeah.
Paul Blair:
I remember going to some shows that were Japanese shows and it was off center because they hadn't quite figured out where they fit in the world stage of popular music. But I also saw some of the craziest shows I've ever seen from American artists in Japan during that time. I saw the Beastie Boys with 200 people where MCA they gave me a guitar string. I saw James Brown and TLC in this big thing in a castle.
This is another thing, in Japan, because people are very kind and non-confrontational, if you act like you're supposed to be there, they just assume that you're supposed to be there. So again, as a 6'4" dude at this concert, I just was walking wherever I felt like walking. I was all by myself and I just walked backstage.
I have pictures of James Brown's backside from behind the stage in Japan when I was 19 because I just walked there and took pictures of him, and they just assumed that I was supposed to be there because the rest of the crew looked like me. You know what I mean? I didn't have credentials, nothing. Once I figured that out, I saw B.B King. Every single time I could go watch a show in Japan, I was like, if I can get this close to James Brown with nobody telling me-
Josh King:
I'm with the band.
Paul Blair:
Yeah, exactly. So, I saw so many crazy American shows in Japan just by being able to finesse my way into the back of the stage. Yeah.
Josh King:
It's not quite that, but some of my appreciation of Americans hitting it big in Japan go back to this long-form magazine piece I think I read on Bobby Valentine's experience as a manager and player in Japan, and baseball. He went from being average, above average, in the United States to-
Paul Blair:
Superstar.
Josh King:
An icon and superstar in Japan. Did you have a sense this 6'5" frame and DJ White Shadow and what you were building? How did you go from, "Yeah. I can get in and look at B.B King and James Brown from behind." To, "I'm starting to develop a real business and persona and reputation on my own"?
Paul Blair:
That took me probably a couple of years into college because you have self-doubt, right? You have doubts in your head. I was able to do it there and begin the manifestation of the longer-term process because nobody was scrutinizing me. Do you know what I mean? Until I got into college and was able to level up and try it on the home turf, it wasn't like a thing there. But Japan is a country of that type of mentality. They love superstars, they love people that are different.
There's a saying in Japan, it translates roughly to English, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. And so, it's very hom*ogenous, but they're accepting of people that stand out. It's a different kind of mentality and workflow over there to become a standout person. I mean, I can see how... Baseball's huge in Japan, first of all.
So, a baseball player from the states that goes over there and hits a bunch of home runs is huge. But a baseball player from there that comes here to play for the Yankees and goes back is even bigger. Do you know what I mean? It was a unique culture and a unique experience to start the Petri dish of growing this career.
Josh King:
So, how does this Petri dish begin to blossom once it gets back to home turf, as you call it? I mean, you're balancing the creativity that you're developing, also the business side of your brand.
Paul Blair:
The first thing I did when I came back is I switched schools. Everybody that I knew that went to high school went to one college, and then I switched to go to another college because I wanted to be by myself and learn by myself because I had just been by myself for a year, and I just felt better at it. I bought a set of turntables, real turntables. When you're on college campus back then, there'd be 55 people trying to give you the highest rate credit card that you could possibly stick in your hands. 500 bucks and 27.5%, whatever it is.
And so, I was taking every credit card that I possibly could so I could go buy these turntables that were expensive. This is probably the highest purchase I'd ever made in my life up to this point. So, you're buying a turntable for $1000, you need two of those, and then a mixer or whatever. I sat them on my coffee table in my dorm and I left my dorm door open, and I just practiced all the time, which is probably a jerk thing to do now in retrospect.
But there was a couple guys that lived in the hall that were pledging a fraternity, I was pledging a fraternity. I was playing parties when they figured out I could actually DJ and they didn't want to pay the other guy 100 bucks, they'd be like, "Come and play this thing for free, or else you get thrown out of the fraternity." Or whatever. It was the motivation at that time.
But the real jump off point came when a Michigan winter struck, and the guys across the hall from me were Alpha Phi Alphas, and they lost their DJ. Couldn't make it across the state from Detroit to Kalamazoo because of the weather. So they're like, "We got this party tonight. You got to play it." And I was like, "Okay, I'll come and play it." And so, I went into the party and played it. And like I said, I was 18 years old and I stood by the back door in case something went haywire and I could get out faster than whatever.
And after the party was over, they were like, "You're doing all of our parties from here on out." And then, the next six months from then, I was doing every party for every historically Black fraternity and every white fraternity on the whole campus. So then, we started... This is actually a crazy story, but the second year of my college career, I was a social chair. And I put together the Alpha Phi Alphas and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. It was the first time a historically Black fraternity and a historically white fraternity were brother fraternities. It was the first time on college campus.
And so, we shared our sister's sororities and did whatever and had these giant parties that were totally insane, and it was the first time that it happened on college. So, they actually made me an honorary member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity when I graduated. I did the whole entire homecoming. It was pretty crazy. I had a really good college experience. And through that figuring out who you are and what you want to do, and meeting people, that's when I started seeing the idea of this could be a business.
And it really cemented when I graduated, I took my first job and I realized that I was making more money on a Thursday or Friday night than I would make for an entire year doing the job that I was-
Josh King:
What was the first job?
Paul Blair:
I changed to go into education. So, I was teaching high school. I was teaching Japanese and creative writing at a high school. And I love teaching, I love kids, I love the idea of mentoring people and being able to share that experience. And so, it was actually tough for me because I was like, "I want to do this. But also, if I don't take strike at this iron right now, I might never get another chance."
So, much to my dad's chagrin, I quit being an engineering student to be a teacher, which I'm sure he wasn't super stoked about. And then, after I was a teacher for a year, I quit that to go out and play records, which didn't quite register with him.
Josh King:
And yet thus, the legend of DJ White Shadow begins to be born in Michigan. After the break, Paul Blair, DJ White Shadow and I are going to discuss how his career progressed and how the music industry as a whole has evolved in the years since. And that's all coming up right after this break.
Josh King:
And now, a word from Stellantis, NYSC ticker, STLA.
Audio:
Their grandfather once crashed an auto show by driving through a plate glass window on purpose. Their father was the most awarded SUV ever, and their crazy uncle raced sports cars and won. And while the blood of their relatives still runs true, none of them can do what these can. Introducing the next generation of Jeep Grand Cherokee, available in two row, three row, and 4xe. The legacy lives on.
Josh King:
Welcome back. Remember to subscribe to Inside the ICE House podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. And rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. Before the break, Paul Blair and I were discussing his origin story, his start as a DJ, and the influence of Japanese culture in his career, and how he had his big breakout moment bringing the fraternities together.
Paul, you released three EPs of your own between 2011 and 2013. When you create your own albums, where do you draw your inspiration from? Do you think back to a specific moment or memory and find the sound that you want for each of those pieces?
Paul Blair:
For me, those albums, those projects were more like artwork than it was, "Hey, look at me." Kind of thing. I'm very people adverse. I have a lot of social anxiety. And so, back to what I was saying earlier, when you're starting to DJ, when I was starting, I was in my own little box. I was at the party, I was in control of the party, I might've been the most important person at the party, but nobody knew I was there and I didn't have to talk to anybody. That was the appeal of DJ-ing for me a lot at the beginning. Stand in your own little box. You don't have to deal with a lot of people.
As a producer, it's almost the same thing, right? I'd rather write songs and make things for other people to go out and do than myself. This particular set of records was just like an afterthought for the things that I was making for what I would call public consumption for another project. Every morning I'd get up at six o'clock in the morning, have a cup of coffee, and just make tracks from six to noon. That was what I did for maybe five years in a row straight where it's just like my brain's fresh, I'm going to just come up with a cool idea, library the ideas. Anything that you do, I don't care what it is, repetition is the best-
Josh King:
Get your 10,000 hours in.
Paul Blair:
Yeah. I mean, if you're Jordan, you're going to sit there and practice shooting, shooting and shooting. Steph Curry, shooting, shooting, shooting. It's muscle memory. Creativity works like that too. The more you do it, the more access you have to the realms of your brain that allow you to create. So if somebody says right now, "Paul, jump off this thing and go make this record." That's not where my head's at. But when you practice every day and you put yourself in that mind state, it's easier to create.
So in that process of creation, I was making things that were maybe technically throwaways, but that I thought were cool enough to be presented as a piece of art. And so a friend of mine, Peter, who now runs... He ran Nas' company, Mass Appeal. Mass Appeal bought this record label called Decon. Peter was like, "This is really cool stuff. Let me put it out." I was like, "Well, I got to do something with it."
And so, then I started contextualizing it and putting it into different volumes, if you will. And I learned how to edit videos on the program that I was using to... My digital audio workstation is Ableton. So, I was editing all these crazy videos and I just wanted to be like, "Hey, I make this, but I also make this. And this is really weird and it's not going to get played on Ryan Seacrest like this stuff, but you should listen to it because it's messed up."
That's basically what those were. And I think that's a big part of being an artist, right? You don't have to put yourself in a box all the time. You can try other stuff. If you let people know that it's other stuff and don't confuse them with saying, "This is all the same stuff." Because that was distinctly different stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. Did I answer that question?
Josh King:
Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, we were talking before the break about running into DMC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. One of the things that we did last week, here at the New York Stock Exchange, was celebrating Time naming Taylor Swift as person of the year with a bell ringing. And sitting in the seat the you're sitting, we did a podcast with the CEO of Times, Jess Sibley. First of all, Paul, your reaction to the first ever selection of an artist and an entertainer, and Taylor specifically, as the person who most influenced the world during the prior 12 months.
Paul Blair:
Yeah. I mean, how crazy is that? Her tour was just insane. People were rabid, and I think-
Josh King:
Did you get to see any of the shows?
Paul Blair:
I didn't. Back up to what I just said about being completely socially... Whatever. Concerts are not my favorite place to go to all the time. But I did see clips and everything from it. She opens with one of the... The music that plays before the show starts, one of my songs that I wrote is in that selection of music that she picked for it, which I'm very grateful for. I get a lot of clips, people send me clips from whatever. Blah, blah, blah. And I have so many friends that went to see the show, and I know it's incredibly awesome.
They did so many cool things for people. I'm sure you heard about how they donated money to every talent that they went to and the drivers all got bonuses. In the music business, it's very rare to watch people take care of each other. So, whether she was on the cover of time or not, I mean, to me, it's very special that she took that much care of other human beings during such a moment of success. It's not something you see a lot in the music industry when people are doing really well, that they spread that wealth and joy to others.
Josh King:
And again, whether it's some of the music that gets played before she comes out, which includes some of your cuts, or the way that whole show runs, 60, 70, 80,000 people at a time, though, the people who exit those stadiums are truly affected and bring a lot of love and joy to the rest of the world because they've been in that comfortable loving situation for the prior three or four hours.
Paul Blair:
She's a beast. I mean, she's at the apex of apexes as a writer, as a performer, storyteller and a businesswoman. She's crazy. I was blissfully unaware of what the Times Square, Central Park area looked like at Christmas when we were coming out here. And so, we were going around for something in the Pedicabs, whatever you call those things that are decorated like Christmas, whatever, were either playing Christmas music or Taylor Swift.
And I think it was a better [inaudible 00:44:39] Taylor Swift than it was the Christmas music. There was people dancing on the street listening to Shake It Off with their kids on their shoulders. It's a crazy moment. In this business, you get very few super, super superstars. It's the same since the beginning. There's very few Elton John's and Freddie Mercury's and George Michael's and Michael Jackson's. And I think Taylor Swift is one of those people forever and ever and ever now. So, congratulations on the magazine. But also, what a great job as a writer and a businesswoman. She's crushing it.
Josh King:
This business gives you very few super, super superstars. But in your case, you've collaborated with another female artist who transcends more than just music, and that's Lady Gaga. I want to get into that relationship a little bit. You've done a lot of work with her over the years and have produced songs and albums that have both been nominated for and won Grammy's. How did you first meet Lady Gaga, and how did the relationship grow from there?
Paul Blair:
I was DJ-ing at a club in Los Angeles. Later on in my career, I found out, through working, that if you were from LA, you were making triple the amount of money than you were from Chicago. So I'm playing in Chicago, and a guy from LA shows up that, respectfully, wasn't as good as I was, but was getting paid three times the amount. And so, I was like, "Why is this guy getting paid so much when I got to come in before and after, and clean up the mess?"
And it's just because at that time, Adam Goldstein, DJ AM, which is one of the most incredible DJs in the history of all DJing, was setting a path, a trend of where we are today. A DJ who's also a celebrity, somebody that you're actually looking at going to see as a DJ. So, a lot of these LA guys were like remoras in the ocean, off the shark eating the pieces that he was destroying as a trailblazer.
So, People magazine would write a story, "DJ X was at X club, and Britney Spears was there." And then, somebody in the Midwest was like, "Oh, my god. DJ X must be a great DJ because he was DJ-ing at this club and Britney Spears was there." So I was like, "If that's the component, I'm just going to go to LA and DJ."
So, I told everybody I moved. I never left Chicago, I just told everybody I moved to LA, and I went to LA from Monday till Thursday when I wasn't working whatever but there were clubs going on. And I would play in LA. And I just started charging people in Chicago LA rates for what I was doing. I made myself less scarce. I'm sure there's a market term for this scarcity, makes it more desirable.
Josh King:
Get new business cards printed.
Paul Blair:
Just was like, "Hey, man, I moved to LA. And here, I'm playing this club and this club and this club." And then, my rates went up. But through that, I started a Sunday night at a club called Hyde. Hyde was like an 80 person club. It was like three of these rooms. It was a tiny little place, and I went against the grain, I started playing stuff that nobody else in LA was playing. And so, at the time, it was a lot of mashup stuff. Like I said, AM was leading the charge and playing AC/DC with some-
Paul Blair:
I was leading the charge playing ACDC with some current rap song or whatever. I went back to playing house music, the stuff that I originally started doing. Old school hip hop and house music. And none of that was happening in LA. It was happening a little bit in Chicago, a little bit in the Midwest, but not in LA.
I started this Sunday night and through the Sunday night at Hyde, people just started coming that were dancers. Like Beyonce's Dancers and Katy Perry's dancers. And then this little club turned into a disco line. You know what I mean? People were in there really dancing and really having fun, which with the mashup stuff, it began the like, "Hey, let's sit around and buy a bottle and look at each other," phase of clubbing.
I had this dance club with 80 to a hundred people in it, and it became this hot commodity. The next thing I know, this Sunday night, Tom Cruise is there, and David Beckham's there, and all these crazy people are there and these dancers, and it's this wild spot. And when you have--
Josh King:
In a room with a hundred people?
Paul Blair:
When you have a room of a hundred people, you can really pick the hundred people that you want in the club. Right? You don't have to fill the club with people that you don't want in the club. So there was a hundred people inside and there was 300 people outside. You know what I mean? Waiting in the parking lot.
The guys were just like, "You come in. Miley Cyrus, you come in." You know what I mean? "You guys come in." So there was months before I would do the Sunday night, I would know, "Hey, this is going to be Victoria Beckham's like crew is coming in this night." You know what I mean?
And then we'd play records and everybody would dance. And then at two o'clock, because it was kind of off the radar, everything else in LA closed, they would stay open. We'd shut the doors and Victoria Beckham and her friends would stay in the club. Anyway, Matt Williams, who's now, well, he just left as the chief creative at Givenchy, was Gaga's creative director when she was 18, 19, very young.
And he came in, he was like, "What are you playing?" Because he hadn't heard this kind of stuff before. And I was like, "Well, it's this and this." He's like, "will you make me a tape?" And I said, "Sure."
I made a mix for him, sent it to him. I had no idea who he was. He didn't walk up and say, "I'm Matt Williams and Lady Gaga's creative director." He just said, "This is cool. I love it. Make me a tape." I made him a tape and he called me back a day later and he was like, "This is crazy. I have something that I want to talk to you about, but give me a little bit." And I was like, "Okay, cool." When you're DJing some guy almost every night, 10 times a night, "Hey man, I'm so-and-so and I want you to do this." And 98% of it falls through. So you're just used to doing stuff and something not happening.
Anyway, three months later, he calls me and says, "Listen, I'm working on Lady Gaga's tour. She's going on tour with Kanye West, they're pairing her with Kanye West. And they're going to do a stadium tour together." Because neither one of them were big enough at the time to support that thing. And then Kanye did what he did to Taylor Swift, and she was rising up high enough that they were like, "We're going to get rid of Kanye and we're going to give her her own thing."
Then she ended up doing her first big arena tour by herself, and I did all the music in between the interludes for her. And they were like, "We already paid somebody to do this, but yours is better, so we can't pay you, but if something comes up, we'll call you first." And that happens a lot in the music business too. So I said, "Okay, cool, that's fine."
And then, I don't know, two, three months after that, Matt called me back and he was like, "She's working on a new album. She's going to start writing for a new album. Send me some tracks." I stayed up for three weeks straight. I slept on the floor in my studio. I was every day from the time I woke up to the time I woke up again to the time I woke up again, on the floor, ordering in. Everybody that I knew that I could call to collaborate on something, a drummer or a bass player, whoever I could call that I always had in my quiver of arrows. And just made as many tracks as I possibly could. I sent those tracks off in two weeks, and two of them ended up being on the Born This Way album.
Josh King:
I want to get right back to Gaga and Born This Way and your quiver of arrows. But first I have to digress back to your 100 person room, three times the size of this place, in which you are working. And you have people like David and Victoria and their gang in for a night. Help me understand a little bit how the economics work. I mean, they're looking for a great night. You're also looking to get paid. And you've only got a hundred customers. How does the money flow in a situation like that?
Paul Blair:
This is a two part answer. One, when you're playing records, you're not really paying attention to that too much. It's the owner of the bars' thing. But when that a hundred person room comes up, people are buying bottles. Club business is something that I've never experienced as a consumer. I've always experienced it from sitting behind the turntables. So it seems a little silly to me a lot of the times.
People will spend 10, 20, $30,000 just to sit at a place that they want to be in. And let me tell you the Victoria Beckham story real quick. It's pretty solid. She and her friends hung out at the club, I played forever. Four o'clock in the morning comes around, she was like, "I need you to make me an iPod." We still had iPods at this time. "I need an iPod of all this music you just played." I said, "Cool, I'm going to make it." You remember the little flash iPods that had a little screen on them with the album cover work?
Josh King:
Still have the
Paul Blair:
I went in and put all the songs that I played that night into one of those iPods, but I changed the album artwork to my face on every single song. And so I wrote my name and my face on every single album artwork, and I sent it to her assistant and never heard anything back. It was just like, "Okay, thanks. Great, blah, blah."
It was about three and a half years later, I'm in Claridge's in London, we're on tour. And I'm in Claridge's, and we're standing there waiting at the desk for whatever, blah, blah. And all of a sudden somebody comes up from behind me and hugs me from behind and was like, "Oh my God, I still have your iPod. I remember blah blah, but what are you doing here?"
There's very few moments in life where you can have more questions asked about what you do or how you do it. Normally, I'm walking around looking pretty loose, and I don't look like I should know Victoria Beckham, I guess. I'm standing in the lobby there, and she was like, "That's my favorite iPod. I still listen to it. I can't believe that, blah, blah, blah. What are you doing?"
We were also on tour with Gaga, so they ended up coming to the show. And when she left and I was standing by myself in Claridge's, I had never had so many people come up and ask me like, "Oh my God, how do you know Victoria Beckham?" It's like being in Chicago and having dinner with Michael Jordan. You know what I mean? She's the biggest thing that could possibly happen in that way. So I had to answer a lot of questions. But just from putting my dumb-looking mug on every picture of the album, she knew who I was three years later. She probably would've never recognized me if I didn't do that, but it's pretty funny.
Josh King:
That's amazing. I'm so glad we digressed. I mean, where we were in our conversation is you were talking about all that work over the sleepless nights, over those weeks. And calling in the quiver with your friends to think about material that you'd give to Lady Gaga and her team. Born This Way was nominated for Album of the Year in the 54th annual Grammy Awards in 2012. And Art Pop, which was released in 2023. I want to hear a quick clip from the 2012 show, which has so far 40 million views on YouTube.
Audio:
My momma told me when I was young we're all born superstars. She rolled my hair and put my lipstick on in the glass of her boudoir.
"There's nothing wrong with loving who you are," she said, "'Cause He made you perfect, babe. So hold your head up, girl, and you'll go far. Listen to me when I say."
I'm beautiful in my way because God makes no mistakes. I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way. Don't hide yourself in regret, just love yourself, and you're set. I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way.
Josh King:
I was born this way, Paul. So you get all your material and you show up in the studio with her. What then becomes the creative process after that?
Paul Blair:
It's a different color horse. Every single time you're dealing with whatever. Every song's got its own story, and every song's got its own origin and follow through to when the baby's born and sent out into the universe. They all kind of have a different process. It's crazy to even hear that now. We made that in New York. We did that in New York. We did it right over here in NoHo on Third and Broadway or whatever. Is that a street thing?
Josh King:
Yeah.
Paul Blair:
Germano Studios, right. We lived here for six months and I worked on that album and that song so many times. Clarence Clemons came in and played the sax on something. And it was pretty magical time because she had finished that first record that had just gone haywire and really wanted to tell a story that made a difference.
And Born This Way to me, when I hear that I get a little misty about things. We weren't in a time where people were aware yet. And there's a song on the radio for 11 weeks at number one with the message that the world needed to hear. But I think since then we've progressed a lot. But to have a song saying, "It's okay if you're trans," at that particular time is pretty powerful moment. So that song, even when we were dealing with it was, I knew it was special. I have 120 different versions of that song.
Josh King:
She comes into the room with a notebook with those lyrics talking about that message. You come in the room with your ability to manufacture sound?
Paul Blair:
Yeah.
Josh King:
How do you mesh those two things together?
Paul Blair:
I think it's just a lot of trust. There's not a formulaic approach to it per se. It's like a ballet dance. If I throw you in the air, you better be there to catch me after I am in the air. And so there's a lot of working hand in hand and understanding and fighting and trusting each other. Hugging and fighting, you know what I mean? A lot of back and forth and just saying, "Here's my opinion. Here's your opinion. Here's their opinion. How do we put all these in there and come up with something that is going to achieve the goal?"
If I could tell you and we could write it down, then we wouldn't be sitting here right now. We'd be out there selling it and it'd be lucrative. But the roundabout answer is that it's a true partnership. And I'm a tool in her toolbox.
She's got a vision, she's got an idea, and I can say, "Hey, today I'm going to be the screwdriver and trust you to be the screwdriver. You're going to be able to do this job with the screwdriver today, but today you don't need a screwdriver. You need a hammer, and we're going to work at that." So it's about building that rapport and that kind of back and forth.
Josh King:
Talking about things that are lucrative from Born This Way to A Star is Born. You also worked with Lady Gaga on that 2018 film. Here's a quick clip from, "Is That All Right?" from the film which you produced with her also credited Mark Nyland, Nick Monzo, Luca Nelson and Aaron Rattieri.
Paul Blair:
Right, Rattieri.
Josh King:
Let's hear it.
Audio:
Family dinners and family trees teaching the kids to say thank you and please. Knowing if we stay together, that things will be right. I want you to look right in my eyes. To tell me you love me, to be by my side. I want you at the end of my life, want to see your face when I fall with grace and the moment I die. Is that all right? Is that all right? Is that all right?
Josh King:
Lady Gaga, "Is That All Right?" I think of the first line of that little clip that we played, "Teaching the kids to say thank you, and please." I mean, it's something that we work with as parents all the time. You're talking about you and your two boys. I think about my boy and my girl. What's the creative process on a song like that? Mostly that voice and that piano.
Paul Blair:
This one started a lot different. This came the first day that we were in the studio. I was a set of ideas that I kind of had penciled out. And Lucas Nelson, who's Willie Nelson's youngest son, and I were close. And we were off on our own in another room with a semi-circle of Nick Monson, Aaron and Mark Nyland. And we were sitting there and Lucas was sitting at the piano, and I was sitting at the piano. And Lucas is a incredible talent and songwriter. To be honest with you, there's a fair amount of whiskey involved in that evening. Fair amount. Which I think comes through a little bit in there.
We were talking about this thing that I had written down, and Lucas came up with something. And then it kind of got batted back and forth, and we were talking about love and life and situations that we had been through and the way that I felt about this one particular situation that I was going through at the time.
It just poured out. So that song and another song from the album called, "Look What I Found," were both written in a span of three hours. And she was in another room at the time. We were just on one, and they came out and then she came in and then she was like, "Oh my God, I want to change this, this, and this, and let's put these in the pile over here." And we wrote another 50 songs after that over the next two years. But those two stuck. I don't know how the first three hours of the first session, two of the songs stuck, and then we did another two years worth and only got five more that got on the record. But it was a special evening. That happens sometimes.
Josh King:
I don't know how much whiskey was consumed in those first three hours, but how were you able to hold it together while she was making her changes on the next two?
Paul Blair:
Oh, the changes come months and months through. You know what I mean?
Josh King:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul Blair:
Those songs weren't done. Like they're done when you hear them now, it's like an idea that you kind of spit out at the beginning and then she's able to come in and hone them. That happens a lot too. I'll come and I'll have a track and she'll write something to it. Or she'll have a 90% completed song that we end up putting something different to, and then it goes back down to 30 and then comes back up to a hundred and it goes back down to 50.
It's again, it's an ongoing process. When I say that the first night that we wrote those things, we didn't have the whole song done and we didn't have a whole thing. But those ideas for those pieces were done both within a three-hour span on the first night, which is pretty crazy.
Josh King:
Paul, besides box office success, a result of the film was you winning the Grammy in 2020 for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. Here's Lady Gaga, when she won the Oscar for Best original song at the 91st Oscars on ABC. That's NY circa symbol D-I-S in 2019.
Audio:
Thank you for believing in us. Thank you so much. If you're at home and you're sitting on your couch and you are watching this right now, all I have to say is that this is hard work. I've worked hard for a long time, and it's not about winning. But what it's about is not giving up. If you have a dream fight for it, there's a discipline for passion. And it's not about how many times you get rejected, but you fall down or you're beaten up. It's about how many times you stand up and are brave and you keep on going. Thank you.
Josh King:
Paul. As Gaga said, it's hard work. Of everything that you've accomplished. Where does both the nomination and then subsequently winning the Grammy stand among your successes?
Paul Blair:
First of all, it's very nice to be recognized in any way, shape or form. Small, medium or large. And obviously, that's the largest way that a musician can get recognized. I come from a place of extreme gratitude to all the people that found the music appealing enough and important enough to give it that award. It was pretty rad. I mean, it was awesome.
But I think trying to echo the sentiment that she had there at the Oscars is, I get to make music every day. I get to be creative every day. Today is a great day. I'm sitting here talking to you at the New York Stock Exchange. That's insane, right? So what I mean by that is, if you think every day that it's really nice to be able to afford to go to Blue Bottle and buy a coffee for an exorbitant amount of money, whatever they charge at the local place, things become a little clearer when they happen.
It's not just that. I had a young lady tell me that that was her song at her wedding, and I would say that was equal. That was equally important as getting an award from someone else. It's like anytime you have a chance, if it's in business and you create a product that changes people's lives, if you're a teacher and you get a chance to guide a young person to having a successful future, there's literally micro wins throughout life all the time. And it's not about just the big ones, it's about understanding and recognizing the small ones. I think when you do that, life gets a little easier and any kind of job gets a little easier.
The music business is a particularly harsh business. I would say to anybody, if you can find a person who's made it through the music business, it's probably a good hire for your company because they've experienced everything. You know what I mean? It's like not getting paid. I still have people that owe me money from 2012, you know what I mean? And it's standard. It's not unusual to have to deal with this kind of stuff. The whole business is predicated on people that are not creative, monetizing people that are creative. And the creative people, more often than not, have zero idea how to monetize their creativity. So what that lends to is the equivalent of taking a steak and throwing it in the middle of a pack of wolves. Things get torn apart. And if you are the steak, if you're left with a morsel after it's finished, you're very lucky.
And that happens on a daily basis. Surviving the music business is a huge accomplishment. And I think what she's trying to get out in that particular talk there is, it's true. It's so nice to be on a stage with the people that you respect and that you look up to and that you admire. But at the end of the day, just being able to get up after you get knocked over is really the accomplishment. Because you get knocked over again and again, and again, and again and again. The beauty of it is, at the end of the day, my kids, and maybe your kids or anyone's kids can go back and access that piece of art for the rest of time.
I'm lucky enough to have made something that people are going to be able to access for as long as people care about music. I don't even know how much money I made off of any of that stuff, actually, probably not enough. You know what I mean? But it is what it is because I don't know if there's amount that I could spend to do that either, do you know what I'm saying? It becomes an invaluable exchange that is non-quantifiable as far as a monetary thing goes.
Josh King:
As we begin to wrap up, Paul, we've talked a lot in our conversation about the business of music, but you've also been active in providing the music of business. On Friday, just a couple of days ago, I hosted Michael Dukaris, the CEO of AB InBev, that's Enway's ticker symbol BUD to ring the closing bell to celebrate Michelob ULTRA's partnership with CONMEBOL, the South American Football Confederation. You partnered in 2015 with AB to work on its, "Up for whatever," Super Bowl campaign. Specifically the music for the life size Pac-Man commercial, and even had a cameo in it. I want to hear a short clip of the mix that you created for that ad.
Josh King:
Just listening to it, Paul brings me back-
Paul Blair:
It's cool.
Josh King:
... to my childhood playing Pac-Man at the local arcade. What's that process like to create, working with AB and Pac-Man and its rights holder, Namco, to both create the music for this commercial scene by millions at the Super Bowl that year?
Paul Blair:
Yeah. I mean, listen, I feel very fortunate to have done that too, because like you and like so many other people, Pac-Man was such a big part of my childhood. You know? And they don't let people do that. Namco holds that music very close to the chest. So Energy BBDO was the company that was representing Anheuser-Busch as far as their marketing campaigns went. So somebody from Energy called me and said... Just to predate that, I had done the music for seven different Super Bowl commercials over the years. Seven years in a row, I had done music for a commercial in the Super Bowl.
So they had called me and said, "Do you want to do this?" And I was like, "Yeah. I want to do it. What are we talking about here?" And I thought it was going to be... A lot of times when you get into a committee situation and people have such robust feelings about their product, like somebody like Pac-Man, and you're talking about some pretty major guys that have a product they want to protect and represent correctly. So I'm walking into it thinking like this is about to be a nightmare. And they were like, "This is what we want you to do. Here's the pieces to it. Have at it." And I mean, that... And they said, "This is it." And I was like, "What? What are you talking about?" And they were like, "Yeah, that's it. That's what we want." And so-
Josh King:
A shortened committee process.
Paul Blair:
Yeah. No, it's the most insane thing that's ever... It's the closest... It's the hole in one. You know what I mean? It's a once in a lifetime. I have one shot, went in, no more talking about it, and then it was just like, "Okay, will you help us set up this, this, and this?" And that's how I ended up being the DJ in the commercial as well, because we sat there and did the whole day. That was a two or three day process, the DJ part of it, to actually play the music when it was happening. It was all happening live.
So I was actually DJing the commercial. They ended up cutting in the music after for the show, I mean for the TV, but I was doing that. So the commercial premise, and we don't have to go over the whole thing, but a guy walks into a bar, say, "Hey, let's have some fun. Here's this giant quarter." Walk around the street, and they had an entire two-city block in downtown LA masked off like it was a construction site. Put the quarter in, lights go off, and all of a sudden he's standing inside of a Pac-Man machine, and I got to start playing music. So he's running. It's actually all happening. They got cranes. It was a monster, monster production.
So yeah, I was able to do that for four or five different people because he wasn't the only one that got to do it. There were other people that got to do it too. So yeah, it was a full two days of quarter dropping and Pac-Man running and all kinds of excitement.
Josh King:
I began this conversation talking about Usher at Super Bowl LVIII, Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas. And we are now, as we're sitting here talking, probably eight, nine weeks out. Between picking the playlist, designing the staging, doing the lighting, thinking about all the elements of production, what kind of team does Usher need to pull this off?
Paul Blair:
So strangely enough, from the music end, one of my guys that I signed beginning of his career is actually doing all the music with Lil Jon for the show. And Usher, I just went to see Usher. Lisa and I went to see Usher for his last show that he did in Vegas. He's an incredible performer, and it's so great that he's getting this moment because he deserves it tremendously. He's got so many good songs that people kind of...
The music business is very fickle. So things kind of ride the roller coaster up and down. But Usher has... I mean, Super Bowl is arguably one of the largest live performance kind of things for the whole year. Right? People know what it is, they look forward to it. You got a high bar to be set. And he's got a lot of work ahead of him. That's a big show to do. So I'm sure every artist has their own kind of prep for it. I was there to see a little bit of the prep when different artists have done it. But yeah, everybody's got a different thing. But it is a huge, huge, huge production. It's a lot of moving parts.
Josh King:
We began our conversation talking about cassettes and vinyl. The advent. Paul, of new technologies has changed how younger generations are going to listen to and interact with their favorite music. Have apps like TikTok that focus mostly on shorter segments of songs impacted how you and other artists create the work that you do?
Paul Blair:
It's tough. It's a different business than it used to be. It's a different creative process. It's a different... It's baseball and cricket. You know? You just got a bat and a ball, but it might be a little bit different set of rules. And it's a pendulum swing, right? Things go one way and then they go back the other way.
And as an artist or as a producer, as a writer, you have to stay in your lane. You can't chase the rabbit everywhere the rabbit goes. So you wait for the pendulum to come back. And when the pendulum picks up people on the outskirts of where your center is, some of those will come back to center and some of them won't. But if you try to chase it out to the edge, it just never works. So for me, a lot of music now is based on mathematics for commerce. I don't believe that art and commerce should exist in the same conversation. Art that makes money is fine. Art that doesn't make money is also fine. They're both art. You keep making art. Eventually, if you stay consistent and you stay dedicated long enough, it will eventually generate commerce. Right?
But right now, this particular time for me is weird because nobody's... From a commerce standpoint, it's all over the place. The Songwriters Association is going after Spotify. Spotify is trying to make it not Napster. Music was free, completely free a decade ago. Right? People were freaking out. Right? And now you have companies that have come in and said, "Okay, well, it's not free anymore, but you have to have 30 billion streams to make $100,000," which is better than not making $100,000. Right? Those numbers aren't accurate, by the way, but-
Josh King:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you get your Spotify check. You know?
Paul Blair:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the Spotify check, think of how many times you would've had to have listened to your Van Halen album to add up to 30,000 plays, right? 30,000 plays. 30,000 plays doesn't even make you a dollar.
Josh King:
Wow.
Paul Blair:
Right? You know what I mean? So back in the '80s or the '90s, even up into the mid 2000s, an album was 12 bucks. You know what I mean? And that was a lot of money to go around. And people didn't think it was a lot of money back then, but now it seems like a crazy amount of money because of the amount of money you have to actually do to stream. And also back then, two or three people might've written a song. Now 50 people write a song. So it's a lot different from the standpoint of not just creativity, but also how you earn a living, which is cool for if you're just getting into it.
If you're just getting into it, that's the starting point. And that's where you know where things are at. If you were working in 1980, you had a helicopter. Now you might have a Honda Civic. You know? So it's a little bit different. But again, creation for creation's sake has not changed. It's just the way that it's kind of put out there.
I'm going to give you one example and then we can move on. But there's an artist that I know that had a huge success, had made a song, went on a TikTok video, blew up, song was everywhere. Every label was like, "Okay, let's get this next song going." And back then, if you would've had a song in the '90s, you would've got developed, people would've told you what to do, what to wear, who to talk to, how to do it, and they would've invested a lot of money in your future success because you've had some amount of success, whether it's on the Sunset Strip or it's in Kansas City, or CBGB or wherever it was. Right? Now it's like, "Okay, make us another one."
And his first song that was big had a half a billion plays. 500 million plays. His next song had 20,000 because nobody cared about the artist. They just care about the song. So you're dealing with a different kind of strategy when it comes to making music, which for me, I want to make a whole album. I want to be able to tell where you're from, where you're at, where you're going, what your thought is, what your vision is. For me, that's where I come from. I want to pick up that whole album and know that track 1 is this, and track 3 is this, and track 4 is this. And I want to hear the piece of art that goes between.
So it's a little bit different for me. I'm not as active as I used to be just because it's kind of chasing the rabbit around. But I had the opportunity to make a number of songs for an artist that's coming out with an album this year, and that was a rewarding experience. I had two songs come out over Thanksgiving that were kind of one-offs for some artists that I believe in. And I'm lucky. I'm very fortunate. I get the chance to dabble and pick and choose what I want to do. And so it's still rewarding. It's just I take a different approach to it than I used to.
Josh King:
Where you're from, where you're at, where you're going, and what you just said about the creation of albums, like... And I'm not a musical person, but I'm driving in the car with my son, and he loves a few Simon & Garfunkel songs. I said, "Let's listen to the Sounds of Silence album from the first cut to the last, Toby, and not jump into the two songs that you like. Let's hear how Paul and Art were trying to think about it back when they put it together in the studio and their publisher decided this is how these tracks are going to go on this piece of vinyl."
Paul Blair:
Yeah. Yeah. And it's gotten... I want to say it's gotten a lot colder now. And it's not... People are trained. Right? Human beings are trained into liking things, right? It's like anytime you're promoting or presenting a product, the reason why you're choosing one over the other is because of some sort of marketing or an introduction or storytelling about the product. And so for me, that's the way I grew up on music, and that's kind of way I want to approach making music, which doesn't occur as often as it used to. Very rarely actually.
So I just pick my spots when I can pick them. And if I see something that I like, I'll do it. But generally, I'm not in there trying to throw as many darts at the wall as I possibly can just to see where one sticks. I don't want to go in and try something that I think might work for you. I actually want to know where you come from. I want to know what you're about, why you're doing this, not just because somebody made a song about spaghetti last week and it went haywire in TikTok, so I got to make a song about spaghetti this week. Right?
But at the same token, when the Wednesday Adams Wednesday series came out, there was a song by The Cramps that the music supervisor picked for the movie. And some kid on TikTok took a Lady Gaga song that we wrote 12 years ago and put it on a TikTok video to the exact dance, and that song went insane. Kids discovered an album cut song from an album 12 years ago, and it was on the radio, it got re-released as a single 12 years after that album came out. And I was like, "That's crazy." So with anything, there's positives and negatives to whatever.
My kids know who Simon & Garfunkel are not because I went and said, "Listen to Simon Garfunkel," because somebody on TikTok... I can play Don't Stop Believing by Journey as a DJ to 18-year-old kids, and they know what it is. And that's pretty insane. So there's pluses and minuses to all of it. A lot of the minuses for me are in the creative process. But the pluses come when it's the discovery stuff. Right?
And the lack of curators. We have no curators anymore. The algorithm curates things. It's not like you turn on your local radio station anymore and a trusted guy who says, "This is Parliament-Funkadelic. You should listen to this. It's weird, but it's the first time you're going to hear anything like it. But you should listen to this." But you trust him because he told you about X, Y, and Z before, and you liked all those things. Right? The human element is kind of missing from it. But you know what? It'll come back. Eventually it will come back.
Josh King:
I don't know how-
Paul Blair:
I promise it'll come back.
Josh King:
You take an artificial intelligence engine and you have that engine, and just everything that Paul Blair, DJ White Shadow has ever put out. How concerned are you that that engine could spit out something vaguely reminiscent of your kind of artwork, and we wouldn't need either that person at the radio station whose trust I have, or this true artist that I'm sitting across the table from, let the computer make it?
Paul Blair:
So this is where I think people go wrong and it's exactly where we're at right now. Technology's never stopped. Right? The musicians union went on strike for two years the first time a DJ played a recorded record on the radio. Every musician in the United States in America went on strike for two years. That didn't stop musicians from making money. Musicians are still making money. So technology's never going to stop.
Phil Collins used the 808 drum machine on In the Air Tonight, which is arguably one of his biggest songs, and he's a drummer. He didn't say, "I'm not going to mess with this drum machine." He adopted the technology and he made the best out of what he could do with it.
So now we have this big AI discussion. Right? I want to know how to use it to make my job easier and make what I make better, right? Because everybody's going to get it. I'm not going to sit there and say, "Well, this is terrible garbage. Everybody should ignore this. And we're never going to... It's never going to be the same." It might not be the same. It's going to be different. Life gets different every single second, right?
10 years ago, I just said I was carrying around crates of records. Now I carry around a computer. It doesn't make me any worse DJ. It probably makes me a better DJ. But when that happened, everybody's like, "Well, this is garbage. You can't be a real DJ if you don't carry around records." So I'm going to be a better songwriter with AI. I want to invest in every single AI music thing that I could possibly put my hands on. I want to learn about it. I want to use it. I want to make stuff for it. I want to teach it myself so that other people can use what I have in my head to make what they're going to make. Right?
My end goal isn't saying, "Oh, I'm so great at what I do and if you want to use me, use me." Use the computer, man. Take everything I've done, put it in the computer. Call me and I'll give you my opinion afterwards or double down on it and make something twice as good, because now I got a computer helping me with all the dumb stuff that I don't want to do. You know?
So technology and music are hand-in-hand things. Right? They're hand-in-hand. I don't know if I'd even be a producer if I didn't have a computer because I learned on a computer. The guy who learned on a board and a tape probably thinks I'm a total idiot, right? Like, they would, "This guy sucks because..." You know? Whatever. I made music with technology. You know what I mean? The guy who's playing the electric guitar who's... You know? "The poo-poo on this DJ stuff with these computers and all this hullabaloo." Dude, you're using an electric guitar. It's technology. You're tapping on pedals that are made with technology. It's technology.
You're going through a TV screen to people. You're not playing an acoustic guitar that you strung up yourself and made in your dad's barn to five people at a blues club in Mississippi in 1900. You know what I mean? So you got to love it, you got to embrace it, and you got to learn about it so that it can make you a better person, just like everything else.
Josh King:
Love it, embrace it, and learn about it. It's great to probably leave the conversation off there, but I want to do something as we exit that we don't usually do, Paul. But if we were going to pick one Paul Blair, DJ White Shadow piece for folks to listen to, what would it be and what should their ears be attuned to as they stop listening to me and pick up when the music starts?
Paul Blair:
I guess if I was going to pick one that was kind of like an emotional thing that I was just trying new stuff on, it would be a song called The Clock Is Ticking. It's not a popular song. It's not something that came out on the radio or that made a bunch of money, but it's something that I put a lot of work into. And it's a cool sound that doesn't really fit in a lot of places. It's emotional. Yeah, I'd cut a video to it using some old Google Glass footage that I thought was cool. It's kind of dark. It's kind of wacky.
Josh King:
Where were you when you made it? What was it like?
Paul Blair:
I was sitting in my house. I was literally by myself in my house, just with my headphones on making stuff. And it popped up. I just was like, "Oh, this is cool. I never used this." And then I just turned it into a complete... It's like finding an old ball of clay in your workshop and being able to craft it into a little coffee cup that you think is cool. You know? It's something I never thought I would put anywhere or do anything with. But after I started working with the video, it made more sense contextually, and I think it's a cool-
Josh King:
And what does The Clock Is Ticking mean?
Paul Blair:
So it's instrumental. It's like a whole instrumental process. And I think the video adds the context to it. So it's about life and death and taking the right path, I guess. You only have so much time on your hands and you should be respectful of it. Use it in the right way. So that's a good song.
Josh King:
Taking the right path, using your time to best advantage. That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Paul Blair, professionally known as DJ White Shadow. If you like what you heard, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show or to hear a certain kind of guest on this show like Chris Edmonds did when he suggested I should talk to Paul Blair, make sure you leave a review or email us @icehouseatice.com or tweet at us @ICEHousePodcast.
Our show is produced by Lance Glynn with production assistance, editing, and engineering from Ken Abel, just back from paternity leave. Congratulations Ken. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. And here is DJ White Shadow.
(Music).
