Hey Folks,
Come spend an evening on the couch with MLE and Mr. E (me) and listen as we talk about making our new album “Don’t I Know You From Somewhere?” (available here). You can listen to our conversation and read along. We tell the story of how we make an album and the friends that help us. Push play now.
MLE: Here we go. It’s January 20th, 2026, 7:51 p.m., and we are in Hollywood, Florida.
MisterE: On the couch.
MLE: On the couch in the Land of Entertainment.
MisterE: Where many of these songs started.
MLE: Yeah. So this is us talking about, “Don’t I Know You From Somewhere,” the newest Mr. Entertainment & The Pookiesmackers record, instead of writing about it, because why not?
MisterE: Seemed cool. Like the idea. And it came out December 21st, 2025.
MLE: Winter Solstice. Make Music Day. Is it something else? The 21st? No. It’s close to Christmas.
MisterE: Roberto Clemente’s number.
MLE: There you go. Roberto Clemente’s number.
MisterE: 21.
MLE: All right. Age at which you can drink. Here.
MisterE: And get a gun. But they’re trying to change that.
MLE: Wait. Isn’t it gun 18?
MisterE: They’re trying to change it back.
MLE: Oh. Okay. Well, anyway.
MisterE: Roberto Clemente.
MLE: All right. So, I guess we’re going to go track by track and talk about this record, and the songs, and how it got made. Yeah. So, the first track is called “Booty Shaker,” and it’s also called the TV Party Theme, because it was in 2025 that you started resurrecting TV Party, or was it before that?
MisterE: No, we had four shows in 2025. We had a residency at the vintage in Hollywood.
Yeah. And I don’t think that at the first one we played it, but by the second one this had become the TV Party theme. TV Party was a cable access show in New York City, with a great Glenn O’Brien and a cast of characters that we do sort of like a musical of now. They played less music, talked more bullshit, and who talks more bullshit than our band? We play more music and talk less bullshit than the TV Party.
MLE: And we kind of incorporated, you know, a cover song, a different cover song each time, that would be linked to someone who recently died. So, we did the New York Dolls song, right?
MisterE: And then we finally did “Caca Disco.”
MLE: And we did Blondie, we did “Call Me.” So, yeah, so that’s just the, I guess it became the theme for the residency.
MisterE: It’s an instrumental, which is perfect for themes. And there was a couple songs on this record, and this was one where I tried to have a new style of playing, where I didn’t really play a proper chord through the song, and I just moved up and down the neck. So it has this cool somewhere between like the Minutemen and Jeff Beck “Blow by Blow.”
MLE: Yeah. And then with some kind of Miami bass drumming, like a little bit Miami bass, a little bit just like kind of, I guess, drum & bass like “Amen Break” kind of thing in there, too.
MisterE: And then during the recording, where we recorded some of this record with Ferny at The Shack North, who’s always a wonder to record with. There was this really crazy Moog part that we put in there that ended up being a ghost lyric because this is an instrumental, that… here comes the tea.!
MLE: Here comes the morphine. Yeah, but maybe that can be open to interpretation by people. Don’t want to give away what the ghost lyric is, but if you are a, you know, if you’re of the same type of mind we are, you might hear it. Alright. What’s the next song?
MisterE: I couldn’t get high.
MLE: Damn, that sucks.
MisterE: It does. That’s what this song’s about. Yeah. It’s the depression of you try, but you can’t get high.
MLE: So, what are you pointing at?
MisterE: You.
MLE: Me. Oh, well, this has been a song we’ve covered in various iterations for a long time, right? This is a Fugs song. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s a crowd pleaser, I guess, because it’s just, people, it’s funny. It’s a funny song, but I guess, you know, Fuggs songs are pretty funny in general.
MisterE: It’s a great introduction to some of the Dada that comes out of the band for sure with the lyrics to it. And for some reason, their version was like, you know, a clanky, wobbly band, which we are that, but somehow we polished it up and kind of made it a Byrds song a little bit with the 12th spring in there that Mahoney played. And it’s really great. I’m so happy to have a Fugs song.
MLE: Yeah. And it’s the people who know it, which a couple people have told me, they’re like, oh, shit, the Fugs. And it’s like, “wait, you know the Fugs?” So, that’s cool.
MisterE: And another odd part is by the time that we started doing it with this band, Nikki was playing “Goo Goo Muck” on bass. And she did that bass line. And in a different key this would be “Couldn’t Get High.” So whenever we play it live, people think we’re going to play The Cramps.
MLE: Yeah. Oh, I didn’t even know that. I mean, I guess it makes sense now that I think about it.
MisterE: So it’s kind of awesome, which, you know, there’s only 12 notes made.
MLE: Now I think we should do like a medley, even though it’s in a different key, we could still throw like Cramps lyrics in there.
MisterE: Or we could, you know, just modulate up to their thing and then make it that. All right, next is the Lions, which came from an EP that we had made a seven-inch four-song EP that was recorded both in the same places and had a very similar sound and all these songs, you know, were pretty much other than even the other cover on here, we only been doing recently. “I Couldn’t Get High” is something that MLE and I have messed around with for maybe even eight years or something. But these songs were all sort of written in the last couple of years. And when we were putting the record together…
MLE: Well, because at first we weren’t going to do vinyl. So we were just like, we’ll do a cassette, we’ll do all the new songs. Then we decided to do vinyl and it was like, well, if we’re doing vinyl, we should put more songs on it. So that’s how we basically incorporated three, right? Three of the four songs from the last EP into this, which, yeah, fuck it.
MisterE: And two, you know, it works together well, so that even made it cooler. And those three songs, Nikki plays guitar on all of them.
MLE: Yeah. And doesn’t Vullo play bass on on two of them?
MisterE: On this one, “The Lions” and on “Midnight Turns Straight Into Noon,” and I play bass on “It’s 3AM,” but those are later. This sort of an awesome rock song. We made a great video with it. And if you want to hear the fourth song on that EP, it’s part of the video of this song.
MLE: Well, the EP’s up too on Bandcamp, if you want to hear it in its own context.
MisterE: I think we can move on. Okay. “Invite Me To Your Funeral.” This one has been really great playing live because it’s not exactly us, you know,
MLE: It’s like The Cure and Bauhaus…
MisterE: And Nick Cave. Yeah. You know.
MLE: And I think people are kind of confused when we play it. Like, especially because we’ll play it kind of early in the set too. Or that’s what we’ve been doing since we started playing it live. And it’s like people are like, okay, they just did a thing called ”Booty Shaker” and “I Couldn’t Get High” or whatever, and now they’re playing a fucking dark, boomy funeral procession song.
MisterE: Right. And the inspiration is politicians out there that I may disagree with due to them trying to eliminate people and not do the right thing. So this was easier than saying, “I’d like you dead.” You know, “Invite me to your funeral. I’ll gladly attend. I will buy your casket for the good of all men.” So. And then it just goes from there. It’s really cool. It wasn’t exactly a song. It was also pretty a minimalistic way of writing this one too, the low E-string guitar thing. But it’s also the same thing going but with chords when I’m singing. Love the song, seems to like knock people out when they play it. Ferny in the studio was like, “Oh my god. None of these songs sound the same. It doesn’t even sound like the same band,” which is something that I’ve always been about anyways. And, and I think MLE plays on that song those drum sticks with the fuzzy things on the end?
MLE: The mallets. You know, yeah. And I guess when we were recording it, Omar didn’t want me to, but I had to just because of the logistics of all the things. Like I couldn’t do one stick, one mallet or whatever. And I think it turned out fine. It doesn’t sound like blown out or weird or anything. I just, you know, was good about not bashing the snare with it. Um, oh, and Ferny plays the nylon string guitar on that. So that really turns it into something that’s more, that’s why I kind of feel like it’s more like a funeral procession at that point because there’s something about the tone of that guitar that I just see people walking through the desert with a coffin or something. I don’t know. It just, it gives, it gives that kind of feel, I guess.
MisterE: And that all just happened because we were mixing the song down and Ferny’s got all this equipment around there and plopped it in. We did mention Omar, all these songs started off over at his place. We’ll just call it that.
MLE: Yeah. And we recorded the basic tracks to tape, for the EP too. So it’s like everything was the same process.
MisterE: And through I think a modern analog board that was a replica of a vintage board. I think so. Mahoney always says we made records with equipment, back to the last few records, the ones we did with Spam too, that would be just as good as any 70s studio at the time, which I think comes across somewhat in it. Anyone who’s listening to the record so far says it sounds great.
MLE: Yeah. That’s the feedback that I’ve gotten from some people like, this sounds like it’s from the 70s. And not in that like, you know… some bands are really trying to be like, “we want to sound like everything, like the songs, and this and the references and everything is 70s.” It’s not that. It’s just so, I don’t know though. It’s very direct. It’s not polished studio wizardry. It’s rock and roll with, you know, decent equipment.
MisterE: I never understood when they said “the tubes are warm” or this, that, and the other. Other than when I hear a record like that, whatever that means. That’s how they made those records.
MLE: You know, well, you have to put them in your butt to warm them up first. So it’s a process. And also, you have to find an engineer willing to do that. So it’s the guy who will put the tubes up his butt to warm them first. So shout out to Ferny. We already kind of touched on, well, we mentioned “Midnight Turned Straight Into Noon” because that’s on the EP is also on here. And it’s about Tom Verlaine, which he keeps coming back into our lives like, you know, this whole thing and then Patti Smith’s memoir. She talks about him a lot. And then the recent New York Times thing because his partner is archiving all of the stuff that he had.
MisterE: Which goes into the New York public library.
MLE: Yeah, which is funny because when I was seeing that Lou Reed or John Cage and then it’s… Tom Verlaine. And it’s kind of almost like an outlier because I guess he was so private and so just out of the limelight that I didn’t realize he had so much, like enough to create an archive in a library. So that’s fucking cool.
MisterE: Yeah, it’s awesome. And the song sort of stems from a text the day died and we just bumped a few things back and forth. And some of it was very lyrical. So that started the process. But the reality was this is the first song I ever really wrote with the William Burroughs “cut up” type of thing. My lyrics are usually, you know, just flow out of me and they’re like a Dr. Suess story that I’ve made into rock roll.
MLE: I thought you were gonna say “And they flow out of me, They’re just like diarrhea.” But hey!
MisterE: But this one I went and looked into you know different authors that had inspired them. And I cut and pasted some of the poetry and you know, out of some of those books. And then I kind of twisted around some Television lyrics in there.
MLE: Hence the title of the song too.
MisterE: Right. Yeah. And again, great response when we play it live. I think it was early on with Nikki playing guitar. And she really nailed this, you know, even though Television could be fast and complicated and stuff with their guitar licks, there was also this simplicity thing that I think she nailed.
MLE: I do too. And even the tone is pretty good. Yeah. And I don’t think that was even intentional necessarily. But that repeating line is so… Television does have a lot of repetition in it. And that really mimics that.
MisterE: And sometimes with the guitar sound it is like like you know gets under your skin a little bit or you know it’s this very trebley. And it works well. And it’s sort of meditative. It’s loud, which is a bit disturbing, but I think that’s important. It’s just great. And I totally love the “Debbie, Jane and the ghost of DeeDee we’re howlin’ at the Midnight Moon.”
MLE: The Marquee Moon.
MisterE: Yeah. That’s just awesome. Great song. I mean I’m not bragging, but everyone seems to like it and it’s cool.
MLE: All right, what’s next?
MisterE: “Zeppelin, Faeries And All Of That Shit.”
MLE: Okay. Well, you got to say why you came up with that.
MisterE: I’m home alone a lot and my poor wife has to come home afterwards. And I’ve decided that I want to make a folk psychedelic record like The Fairport Convention. And so she just turned to me and said “You mean like Zeppelin, faeries and all of that shit?” And I’m like “that’s going to be a song one day.” And that one, another one that just was pretty much an easy write. I decided it’s not exactly only in one note, but it’s basically just a run on the D chord.
MLE: Yeah. Steve loves to hang on that D.
MisterE: Yeah… And like a mix of two things going on. There’s a walk down in it. But really it’s I’m in the D position the whole time.
MLE: Well, and also when I heard it before there were drums or before it was completely done, I was like, well…
MisterE: And “Zeppelin” was in the title.
MLE: And because “Zeppelin” was in the title, I was like, well, this needs to just, the drums have to be like a shuffle, right? Kind of like a Bonham shuffle, but it goes… I hold it a little bit longer. It’s not like that exact pattern.
MisterE: Because when it comes to the D you hold it longer…
MLE: I hold the D right there. It’s kind of like a Bonham shuffle. It’s like all the shuffles together. I’m doing Purdie, Bonham, Porcaro. It’s a shuffle orgy. But not really getting fancy with fills or anything. Because the rest of the song is like that too. There’s no solos that jump out. There’s no whatever. So everyone’s kind of like keeping it even throughout the song.
MisterE: It’s definitely like a drone.
MLE: Yeah, it’s like, it’s very, it’s very drony. So it’s like psych-drone in that sense. And then Ferny plays the bass clarinet on it, right?
MisterE: And Mahoney played the Moog on it. Yeah. And the lines in that are really… they work off each other well. And as much as I play the same thing repetitively, Nikki plays the same thing repetitively. And it’s pretty long. And it’s always one of those songs that she came up with this simple but complex or complicated way of playing these notes that she’s just like, “Man, that song hurts my hand every time we play.” But as we were having it mixed by Ferny, this is the first song that he had finished on this recording of these songs. The second set of songs after the EP that we recorded that he sent back to me. And he said, “Hey, I made one edit to the song. And if you don’t like it, you know, don’t worry. I’ll put it back.” He was kind of apologetic. And like the song does the same thing through the whole thing. And he has a dropout at the beginning of the last verse.
MLE: And it’s awesome.
MisterE: Yeah, man. If anything is 70s, you know, analog sounding thing, this just is like tits.
MLE: I mean, just he pulls the D out and you know, you just have this wide open space.
MisterE: And I think it’s just bass in the clarinet actually.
MLE: Yeah, and the drums come out too, which is great because once the drums, I mean, the drums are just kind of like, they don’t stop, you know, it’s very like, you know, continuous, like a carousel.
MisterE: It’s kind of theatrical. Yeah. It’s awesome.
