[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
-[ Laughs ] That's fantastic. Fred Armisen. Questlove.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-So here's how this works. I'm gonna start a --
sing a short made-up song, and you're gonna give me
a critical interpretation of the lyrics to my songs.
Sound good? -Okay. Yes.
Here we go. [ Clears throat ]
♪ Boy meets girl ♪
♪ They fall in love ♪
♪ They buy a house ♪
♪ Then they buy a horse ♪
♪ And that's when things get tricky ♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
-That is -- That's beautiful. So house and horse, right?
We're all thinking, "Wow, wow. House, horse."
Why did he put those lyrics in? Why those words?
You think, "Oh, it's because they're H words."
No, it's not as simple as that.
[ Laughter ]
Because to some people a house is a horse.
Do you know what I mean? There are people who --
-Like "The Revenant" or something?
-Something like that. -Yeah.
-But think of the word "horse." -Hm.
-I think what you're saying is --
Think of it as, you know, an acronym -- HORSE.
You know, the beginning? So it'd be like...
Hey. Over. Really?!
So. Everybody.
So...
You thought I meant,
"Hey, over, really? So...everybody."
-Everybody. So that's --
You know, when you say that when you're in front
of your house?
[ Laughter ]
It's that kind of thing. -That's 100% correct.
-Yes. Yeah. -That's correct. That is good.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Would you like to try? You do a song.
And I'll try to see if I have the same talent
that you have. -Okay. Here we go.
-I'll try to interpret the lyrics.
-Check, check. This is not part of the song.
Check. Check-check-check.
-Is it really not part of the song?
-Two, two. Two, two.
Two-two-two-two.
[ Laughter ]
♪ There were 23 cousins ♪
♪ 23 cousins ♪
♪ And all of them had a crew cut ♪
♪ A crew cut ♪
♪ And the daisies, they fall like rain ♪
♪ Like grain ♪
[ Laughter ]
Yeah. -Wow. Wow.
[ Cheers and applause ] -Thank you.
-I do know this.
This is what I think you mean by this.
It was a family reunion. -Yeah.
-And one of the younger cousins...
-Yeah.
-...started his own haircutting business like a Supercuts.
-This is great. Yes?
-And they said, "Well, what --
[Southern accent] What styles can you do, Jasper?"
And I know you didn't get up to those lyrics yet,
but that's -- And he said,
"Oh, I can do a crew cut, I guess."
-Yeah. Yeah.
-And they go, "Well, show it to me."
And he did it.
It was so cool that the second cousin came up.
Yeah.
-He said, "What styles can you do, Jasper?"
He's like, "I can do crew cut."
And he did it. -Uh-huh.
-And it was so cool. -Yeah.
-Then a third cousin... [ Bell dings ]
Thank you. -That's exactly right.
-If it was raining, it'd be not cool.
I got the first half of the song. I got the first half.
-You got it so right. You have a real talent for this.
-No, I got the -- Let me try.
Because I didn't get it as good as you did.
Let me try one more. If I can do one more?
If I hear a duck quack, that means we can.
[ Duck quacks ] -Yes!
-Perfect. Alright. Good.
So I'll do one more song, and then -- Here we go.
♪ There's a little boy who threw a coin in the fountain ♪
♪ There's a little boy, and he lives on the mountain ♪
♪ There's a little boy, he says he likes counting ♪
♪ One, two, three, four, five ♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Wow.
I know what this is. -You do? Yeah.
-Is the little boy Warren Beatty?
Is it? Okay. -Yeah.
-So -- -Yeah, you got --
You see where I'm already. -Yeah.
-And I'm seeing the coin round.
That's like a film canister. Those are his films.
So he's getting the films. And the fountain.
The fountain. In LA, that's, like, a street there.
So he's in Hollywood.
He's giving it to the studios.
Ahh. He wants it transferred to DVD.
He wants his films transferred to DVD.
Am I -- I don't know if I'm right.
-Yes, you're definitely right! 100% correct!
You have an unbelievable talent.
Unbelievable talent.
-But I've been working on accents.
I'm an expert at accents.
And I've been working on the United States in general.
So I've been doing the southern states, you know,
like Alabama and Louisiana and Texas.
And I can do any city.
I could do any region anywhere in the South now.
So if you name a part of the South, I can do it.
-Oh, my gosh. Well, do -- do Louisiana.
I'd love to hear that.
-[Louisiana accent] Louisiana's her--
That's more here.
Louisiana. It's kinda rounded. It's got a kinda round --
There's something kind of regal about it. Louisiana.
Where else?
-Let me switch it up for you. Arkansas.
[Arkansan accent] Arkansas.
That's got kind of a more percussive --
Arkansas is kind of --
There's -- It pulls back after the consonant.
So -- Arkansas. Arkansas.
[ Cheers and applause ] It's a very --
Very percussive.
-Not even based on... -Yeah.
-No. -Expert.
To the town. To the town.
-Not based on anything.
-To a part of the town. -To a part of the town.
[Tennesseean accent] Now, Tennessee's got --
They're thinkin'.
Tennessee's got a thought -- They're thinkin' about it.
They're thinkin' about it. They're thinkin'.
-Stop saying they're thinkin'.
They're thinkin' about it.
"Louisiana's rounder."
"Tennessee, they're thinkin'."
"Louisiana." "Tennessee. They're thinkin'."
-These are all -- These are amazing.
-Yeah. Thank you very much.
Here's what we're gonna do. -Okay.
-This is something I'd like to try.
-Alright. This is what I'm talking about.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-So, what I want to do is
I want to give examples of strumming styles.
But this is going to be, like, strumming styles of punk
and alternative music from 1970 to 2000.
This is a sort of truncated version of, like,
how people played the guitar.
So we'll start with 1970,
and there were fewer, like, solos and stuff like that.
It was a little more rh--
They had more, like, rhythm to it and percussion.
So like, something like Velvet Underground was kind of like...
♪ Going down the boulevard with the flower ♪
[ Laughter and applause ]
That kind of thing, right?
[ Laughter ]
-Boulevard.
-So then like -- So then like mid-'70s,
there was stuff like the Ramones and stuff at CBGB's,
very driving like...
♪ I just want to watch TV ♪
♪ My baby's giving me a lobotomy ♪
[ Both singing gibberish ]
That kind of thing. -Yeah.
-But then in ---
-Going down the boulevard with a flower.
[ Laughter ]
-And then in England, like 1977, same kind of thing,
but, like, a little more angular and sort of like...
♪ Don't go to the ambulance ♪
♪ Don't go to the ambulance, don't go to the ambulance ♪
♪ -Don't run on ♪ Yeah, love that.
-Yeah, that kind of thing. -Yeah.
[ Cheers and applause ] -Thank you.
Then like 1980, like post-punk,
they sort of, like, didn't do chords that much.
It was a little bit more like...
♪ I am a neon light ♪
[ Laughter ]
-Wow. [ Cheers and applause ]
♪ I am a neon light ♪
♪ I am the neon light ♪
Yeah, that's great. Love that.
-Then early '80s, there was like
a sort of like country music feel to, like, punk.
It was kind of like...
[ Singing indistinctly ]
Yeah, that kind of thing. [ Cheers and applause ]
And then there was like a sort of mid-'80s, late '80s,
like Sonic Youth would do this thing where, like, the chords
would be a little discordant.
So it'd be like...
♪♪
♪ Candlelight ♪
♪ On a boot ♪
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[ Cheers and applause ] Wow. That's exactly right. Yeah.
I remember that.
-And then do you remember the early '90s,
like a little ska thing happening?
And very playful, kind of like...
-Yep.
♪ -Your mom and dad were the best you ever had ♪
[ Both singing gibberish ]
-Yeah, yeah.
-That kind of thing. [ Cheers and applause ]
And then Seattle, Pacific Northwest, you know,
they did a lot of octaves, like...
Kind of like half time, like...
♪♪
♪ Yeah ♪
[ Laughter ]
♪ Yeah ♪ [ Laughter ]
-Yeah, yeah, exactly.
-Then like, Sleater-Kinney would be, like, more single notes.
♪ Don't go so slow ♪
♪ Out of control ♪
-Yeah, that's right. Love that.
-And then like 2000, things got very melodic,
a lot of clear chords, you know.
Like crooning, a lot of, like, happy singing.
You know, like...
♪ Come out with me again ♪
♪ I'd like to take you to the stratosphere ♪
Yeah, you know?
[ Both singing indistinctly ]
Kind of like Strokes kind of. -Yeah, yeah, love that.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-I've been working on some impressions of accents
through the decades.
-Let's go back to 1900s. -So, 1900s --
[Stiffly] "The manufacturer and the farmer."
People thought it was British,
but it's actually very Dutch and German.
[Stiffly] "The manufacturer and the farmer."
In the '20s, they start getting very aware of the microphone,
and then it sort of opens up in the '30s.
"Quiet now. Quiet now. Quiet."
[Nasally] "And then the '50s, the '50s, it starts
to flatten out a little bit.
The '50s -- The '50s -- It starts --
I liked to -- On a Friday night,
I like to read a book on a Friday night.
There's the '50s."
The '60s diverges a little bit,
where there's an official sort of, "In the news are..."
And then -- And then the sort of people
in interviews looked like they were in shock.
Everyone was sort of like, "Yeah. Wow."
[ Laughter ]
We want the universe to know...
A spiritual awakening. [ Laughter ]
And then the '70s, it was kind of a whisper.
[Softly] "The '70s has a whisper to it.
The '70s -- There's a sort of confusion.
There's a whisper."
And then, the '90s is very kind of laid ba-- wow.
The '90s. Laid back.
Yay. Very sarcastic and ironic.
Wow.
And then, the 2000s, you start to hear the vocal fry.
The guys are in a meeting, and they can --
You can sort of hear that throughout when they're talking
on a conference call. You can hear --
[ Laughter ]
That's it. -Oh, my gosh.
That is absolutely...
-So, the first impression I'm going to do
is an Instagram drummer.
Like, for some reason on my feed, I get these videos
of drummers who like to do close-ups of their kit.
And there's a lot of, like,
gimmicks and stuff on their drums.
So, every time -- so, Instagram's a little bit like...
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Nice.
-When I was a teenager, I think like a lot of -- I'm just going
to do, like, drumming through different ages.
And I think teenagers tend to, like, lean in on fills instead
of the beat, like the regular beat.
So I used to play kind of like barely doing a beat, like...
That was, like, teenage drumming.
Yeah. [ Cheers and applause ]
You know, like, really struggling with it.
Then in my 20s, I was in this band,
and we played really frenetic, fast music.
And I just feel like I was just out to prove that I could play
quickly with a lot of changes, like...
That kind of thing. Like just really, really busy.
That's, like, you know, in my 20s.
And then in my 30s, less toms, less fills,
but, like, lots of cymbals to make up for it, so like...
[ Cheers and applause ] Then -- Thanks.
Then in my 40s, no cymbals, high hat very closed,
and, like, really leaning in on the kick drum, so like...
This is like 40s.
That's like 40s drumming.
[ Cheers and applause ] Yeah, thanks.
And so now in my 50s -- and this is the truth.
This is, like, the groove I most like to play.
This is the volume I like.
I'm most comfortable doing this.
[ Laughter ]
And -- [ Cheers and applause ]
Thanks. It's really --
I love that -- I love that feel.
So, I think with that trajectory, as I, you know, go
into my 60s and 70s, I think my drumming style
is going to be this.
[ Laughter and applause ]
♪♪
-Fred Armisen, everybody. -Thank you.