TRANSCRIPT Bullseye with Jesse Thorn: Fab 5 Freddy

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Jesse Thorn: Hey everybody, Jesse here. We got a great interview with Fab 5 Freddy coming up. But before we do that, I have something cool that I want to talk to you about.

So, basically, I need your help. This is the deal. The MaxFunDrive is around the corner, the 2026 MaxFunDrive. And the staff of Bullseye came up with this idea, which is: we are used to Bullseye being me interviewing famous people in a studio. But what if we sent me out into the world to interview not-famous people? And to spice it up a little bit, they were like, “What if we sent Jesse into the world to interview not-famous people at a ridiculous event?” So, we looked at what ridiculous events are going on in Southern California between now and the MaxFunDrive, and we came up with three choices that will let us bring a microphone and stuff. And you get to decide which of those three you send me to.

These are your choices: the Renaissance Fair, a Lego convention, or the Paper and Stationary Trade Show. Honestly, all three of them sound like a lot of fun to me, but also… a little weird and embarrassing. So, the Renaissance Fair, Lego convention, Paper and Stationary Trade Show. Those are your three choices. We need you to vote, ’cause we need to know which one you want me to have to go to. Go to bit.ly/sendjesseto—all lowercase. So, that’s bit dot L-Y slash S-E-N-D-J-E-S-S-E-T-O and vote there! We’ll also have links on the Bullseye pages on Instagram and TikTok. So, you can find them there. They’ll be in the show description, whatever. And cast the vote now, because some of these things are like right around the corner. So, bit.ly/sendjesseto. Make a vote. Send me packing.

Transition: Gentle, trilling music with a steady drumbeat plays under the dialogue.

Promo: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

Music: “Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team—a fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jesse speaks, then fades out.

Jesse Thorn: It is Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. So, a quick preface before we get into my next interview—a preface that is about hip-hop. There is this idea—it became popular in the early 1990s—that hip-hop is composed of elements. There’s the MC, the rapper rapping. I mean, that is the sort of essential element of rap music. There is the DJ. Uh, the DJ, we could extend that into the producer, the person who makes the beat. But certainly, at the dawn of hip-hop the essential element of the genre was somebody on the wheels of steel extending disco breaks. There’s the breaker break dancing—the form of dance that emerged in the beginning of hip-hop. Some people include beatboxing as an element. And then there is graffiti. Street art.

It seems normal to count that as part of hip-hop. But think about it this way: how many other types of pop music have their own visual art movement? So, when we talk about hip-hop as a culture, we generally talk about all those things as a sort of grouping. Maybe you throw in fashion or something as well. But those are the core things. And you could make a good case that nobody in the field has worked harder to bring those disciplines together than my next guest, Fab 5 Freddy.

Freddy was born in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. His godfather was a close friend of his dad’s from school—the jazz drummer, Max Roach. And in the early days of hip-hop, when DJ Kool Herc was throwing the first hip-hop parties in the Bronx, Freddy was a teenager. He was taking the train uptown and getting his feet wet in the scene. Not long after that, he got into graffiti writing. And not long after that he started taking the train downtown too. Down there, the parties were different. He’d run into Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Debbie Harry of Blondie. In fact, when Blondie decided to cut their first ever rap record—the first rap record that a lot of people heard—she gave a shout out to Fab 5 Freddy.

 

Music: “Rapture” from the album Autoamerican by Blondie.

Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody’s fly

DJ spinning, I said, “My, my”

(Music fades out.)

 

Jesse Thorn: Fab 5 Freddy was the person who brought graffiti into the world of fine art. He was the first host of Yo! MTV Raps and directed many of hip-hop’s first great music videos. He remains one of the culture’s great raconteurs. He tells the story of his life in a new memoir called Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture. I’m thrilled to get to talk with a genuine legend. Let’s get right into it.

Transition: Bright, chiming synth with a playful beat.

Jesse Thorn: Fab 5 Freddy, welcome to Bullseye. So happy to have you on the show. So nice to meet you.

Fab 5 Freddy: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Good to be on Bullseye with you guys. What’s going on?

Jesse Thorn: Fred, I think people have ideas about what Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn where you grew up, Bed-Stuy, is like or was like. Can you tell me what it was like for you when you were a kid in the ‘60s and early ‘70s?

Fab 5 Freddy: Sure. Basically, home. A predominantly brownstone community, actually. In fact, it may be the largest brownstone community in the city of New York, but it was just home for me growing up. Nice working-to-middle class, kind of Black families primarily. You know.

Jesse Thorn: One of the things you write about in your book is that there were folks in the neighborhood who owned their house. There were folks in the neighborhood who rented their house.

Fab 5 Freddy: Correct.

Jesse Thorn: And that was the class difference in the neighborhood was who had to rent.

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah, to a degree. I mean— But you know, it’s funny for me. Because being that— I remember when I was a little boy and older kids would say, “Oh, his father is the landlord.”

And I’d be like, “What!?” I didn’t know. They would say it so much, almost as if that was something—“Well, why does my dad have to be the landlord?” (Chuckling.) You later learned that most people were renting and a few people, they were homeowners or whatever. So, it was somewhat differentiated when you have a huge community full of these basically one family homes that sometimes got converted into multiple units or something like that. So, yeah, somewhat the defining characteristic of the economic base of the community. (Chuckles.)

Jesse Thorn: You had folks coming in and out of your house, right? Even your bedroom moved around.

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah, it did. And we had a pretty lively household, thinking back. My dad had quite a bit of friends, we had family in the house, so it was a pretty lively scene. And particularly for my dad, he was like a beacon. So, a lot of people came. Guys that were into the stuff he was into would gather in the basement of our house, which was sort of like his man-cave hangout. And they would— It was a lot going on at the time. You know, I’m a kid playing with GI Joe. I used to always like to think. But a lot was happening at that time. Upheavals, people challenging the system and fighting for change, civil rights, anti-war. A lot of that stuff was going on. They were very concerned and on top of a lot of that stuff.

Jesse Thorn: Your folks were an accountant and a nurse. Your father was an accountant?

Fab 5 Freddy: Yes, he was. Yeah. My dad was an accountant. My mom was a nurse. But I guess—you know, I had other friends I would meet later whose parents were like similar. But my dad was very kind of open-minded, cannabis-using, jazz-listening. So, it was kind of a bit kind of happening. They were very kind of intellectual, but also very hip and tapped in and plugged into the stuff that was going on. So, a lot of that kind of rubbed off on me.

Jesse Thorn: Did you look up to the jazz guys that were in your dad’s life? Your dad had been childhood best friends with Max Roach, who’s your godfather. Did you think they were the coolest?

Fab 5 Freddy: You know, I knew it was a big thing. It wasn’t my— It grew to be more important to me, once again, along with—similar to my awareness of the serious things that went on as I was a kid—as I grew older. You know, Max was like family, essentially. And I knew he was very important. But you know, we were so close. He was at the house often. He’d have stories. I’d hear his music all the time. But as I grew to understand jazz—more and more understand it— It was very complex, if you will, as a young kid to be able to decipher these instrumental wizards. And one of the things that fascinated me really early on was how my dad and his friends could detect—or you know, they would know who an individual musician was just by the way he played. I thought that was like unbelievable until you listen enough, and I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s Monk. Oh, that’s Max.”

Jesse Thorn: We’ve got even more to get into from my conversation with Fab 5 Freddy. Keep it locked. It’s Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

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Transition: Thumpy synth with a syncopated beat.

Jesse Thorn: Welcome back to Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My guest is Fab 5 Freddy. He’s a street and gallery artist, the former host of Yo! MTV Raps, and a legendary pioneer of hip-hop culture. Earlier this year, he published his memoir. It’s called Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture.

Is graffiti your first memories of hip-hop culture?

Fab 5 Freddy: You know, it’s interesting. Because I guess in my book, I really break down the way what we know of as hip-hop culture came to be. And I had a hand in that, because it wasn’t necessarily considered a part of hip-hop culture in the beginning. It was just— I like to describe early graffiti in New York as just an adolescent teenage activity. It wasn’t like every kid doing it was trying to be an artist. It was just a thing that was the thing to do among New York teenagers for a good period. This actually starts in the ‘60s and really goes crazy in the ‘70s into the ‘80s, if you will—this New York graffiti, particularly the really wild, colorful murals that developed by the time they did develop.

So, yeah. It wasn’t— It was something I was just into as an adolescent New Yorker, like thousands of other kids were. But—

Jesse Thorn: Do you remember the first tag that you recognized? Like, the first time you saw somebody up somewhere that you had seen somewhere else?

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah, it was a combination of things. So, the A train was the local train that ran into my neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I began to see the names of these guys, like Frank207, SJK171, Turok. And I was just like, “What the hell is going on with these names and these numbers?” You’d only see it on the A train, ’cause that was the local train. Then at the same time, there were guys that began to write their names on the walls in Brooklyn, which was a Brooklyn thing with a kind of a flamboyant style of writing. And I guess I got curious about this.

And I guess one day I kind of took the A train to the last stop up to Northern Manhattan, which is basically called Washington Heights. And it goes up into the 200s—like, the 200th Street, if you will. And when I went up there, I got off the train and walked around, and I saw all these guys’ names that I had seen on the A train a lot in the train station and on the walls. And I knew, “Oh, these guys live around here.” And I think that was also when I figured out what the numbers represented: the streets that these guys lived on. So, Frank207 lived on 207th Street. SJK170, 170st. These were all the guys in Washington Heights.

And actually, the kid that actually got graffiti going in that era, if you will, that really sparked it all off was a Greek kid named Taki183. And the story is he was a messenger in New York City in the late ‘60s, and wherever he had to go and do liver packages, he would just tag his name up with a marker. It wasn’t so much spray paint, but he really covered a lot of ground. And his name was just everywhere. And that incited other kids to join in.

Jesse Thorn: I mean, the thing about riding on trains is that trains travel, right? So, a wall stays put; a train brings you everywhere.

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah. Yes. And so, as graffiti grew from what Taki started, it went to trains; it was buses; it was walls. Literally, New York City was largely covered, top to bottom, inside out. It just became this thing that was so fascinating in retrospect, how pervasive it was. I mean, it was insane how that grew and became that. And I really think it’s ’cause a lot of us were kids in the ‘60s and had seen the protests and all the counterculture stuff that was going on, challenging the system and all of those things that made the ‘60s—and a lot of the ‘70s—that same thing.

Jesse Thorn: What was the first thing that you wrote?

Fab 5 Freddy: Oh, well, I had a name. I had a couple of different names when I was trying it out in Brooklyn. I wanted to have a name with a number. I tried Showdown177. I just thought those numbers looked cool together. Once again, I’m in Brooklyn. There’s no numbered streets in Bed-Stuy. And then I had—another name was Bull, like the animal, 99. And that kind of caught on because buddies of mine all took— It was a crew of us. So, then it was Herb99, he wrote the same number. We were both like 99. And then there was another kid, Jake77. So, the double-digit number thing became popular among a lot of our crew. (Laughs.)

And that was primarily wall writing. But then, just tagging your name up on popular corners and the wall or whatever. But then when I went to high school, there was a train yard around the high school I went to. And I got some paint outta shop class, slipped under the fence, and tagged up a train. I didn’t even realize it was a train that was gonna run through my neighborhood in Brooklyn—through the Bushwick/Williamsburg area, that elevated train. And my friends saw it and lost their mind. They went like, “Yo!”

And I was like, “What are you talking about?!”

It was insane. It was like I just appeared on some TV show or whatever. It was just a weird thing that got a lot of people going. They had questions. ‘Cause you have to have other graffiti friends that are— There was like a network of people that shared information about how and where to actually make this happen.

Jesse Thorn: How old are we talking about when you first got up on the side of that elevated train?

Fab 5 Freddy: I was in high school, so 14/15. Around there, like young teen. Which is— It’s interesting because most of graffiti, it was a teenage—like I said, adolescent, teenage activity. By the time you hit 17/18, now you gotta start, “Hey, now. College. Are you going to—?” You know, you’re grimy, you’re dirty all the time. You have paint on your hands; chicks don’t want you. And it’s like, “Wait.” So, a lot of guys would transition outta graph when they hit those late teens, touching early 20s. ‘Cause you gotta shift now into figuring out what you’re gonna really do in life.

Jesse Thorn: What was the first big, whole car paint—you know, bubble-letter characters; like the thing that people imagine when someone says, “Oh, New York City Subway car covered in graffiti”—that you remember seeing as a kid or a teenager?

Fab 5 Freddy: Well, once again, it was a progression of it. You would see smaller pieces—what we call window down, which are pieces done from the window down, which are smaller pieces. But still, they can be—

Jesse Thorn: Still talking about six-eight feet wide. Ten feet wide, sometimes.

Fab 5 Freddy: Completely. Yeah. The car’s about 20 feet long, about seven or eight feet high. And so, then you’ve got windows. So, a window down pretty much meant that the pieces from— Like, “I did a so-and-such piece. It was window down,” guys would say. Or you’d do a whole car, which means you covered the whole car. You’ve seen it develop to a point, and there were things that stood out. Being I’m in Brooklyn, the heavy stuff was really going on in Manhattan. So, you would hear about things. We would go to watch trains. There were places where you would go. Like, one popular station was Grand Concourse on 149th Street where guys would gather there just to look at trains. It was a very popular train station, and graph guys went to hang out, meet each other, and watch trains. This is once again all stuff that went on back then.

But I remember one particular train this kid, Flint707 did, which I believe it was the first really accurate, three-dimensional— And it was like—it wasn’t a complete top-to-bottom, but it was a big, giant Flint707 that dominated like the center of the car in really big letters. But the drop shadow was perfect. So, it was like nobody had figured out like, “How do you get this done and do it right?” Some people had attempted just making the name bigger, but then it was like, “I’m gonna make it bigger, but I’m gonna get this so it really has this three-dimensional thing.”

And everybody was talking about, “Oh, you gotta see this,” and whatever.

Jesse Thorn: I have a particular question for you, which is this: The graffiti world obviously was a multicultural one to some extent, but it was—

Fab 5 Freddy: Correct. Very.

Jesse Thorn: —a largely Black and Latino world. How did you feel about going to talk to a bunch of White people?

Fab 5 Freddy: You know, no problem whatsoever. As long as if they were open to have conversations. And that was key for me becoming a part of the underground new wave scene, the creative scene in New York at that time—which was largely White. But people were very progressive and very open to these ideas. So, that was unique at the time, very special at the time. And I had a sense that it would be that, looking at what these new wave and punk rock bands were doing and talking about, it was some really wild go against the grain stuff. And I felt like they might lend an ear to these things I talked about. And that panned out. So, those were all—the purse supporters and stuff, they were all White. But they were all like counterculture to the max and not down with like mainstream haters, if you will.

They were very progressive and open and saw it— And somewhat outcasted in the way that a person of color might be as well, because they chose to wear their hair in a mohawk or to have crazy looking clothes before that was anywhere near fashion. You know? So, people came and lived in parts of New York City where it was about being different and doing different (censor beep) and not being uptight about somebody being gay or somebody being another ethnicity. You know what I’m saying? That was the comradery, and that drew a lot of people together back then. When you got into the mix, you realized, “Oh!” Yeah, there might be some people that were just (censor beep) or whatever, no matter what color. You know, that goes without saying. But for the most part, it was a community of people that were just open to cool stuff. And the hunch I had turned out to be correct. And that’s how we got things moving and got things rolling.

Jesse Thorn: I heard you on The Breakfast Club talking about Andy Warhol, who was your friend when you were a young man, and talking about how you didn’t even realize he was gay. You kind of thought of him as somebody that didn’t date. And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking about the way that the sort of fundamental queerness of that world—that downtown world at that time—connected to dance clubs and the art world was kind of part of what made it a welcoming environment for you—even as a straight guy—as a person of color in this weird place. That there were people who were there because they chose it to be a safe place for weirdos, including queer people of color who had come there because they needed safety for their queerness.

And that suffused the world that you were in. I mean, you write in the book about being out at clubs that were mostly gay.

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah. Paradise Garage and stuff like that. Yeah. (Laughs.)

Jesse Thorn: Yeah. And the world of disco, which was deeply in conversation with hip-hop—you know, the idea of extending records was like the central inside of hip-hop, just like it was the central inside of disco.

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jesse Thorn: You know, it was a very queer world.

Fab 5 Freddy: It was. It was a very queer world. And once again, I detail in the book how I learned— You know, coming up in the in Bed-Stuy, guys were very homophobic, but a lot of it also was connected to, “Listen, we’re probably gonna end up in jail at some point.” And one of the nightmare stories you’d hear about in jail was people wanting to rape and sexual assault. And guys that were really good with fighting would—you’d have to know how to fight, because if you lose, these— A lot of it was probably bull(censor beep), but a lot of it was obviously true. So, that was a thing that was very pervasive among ghetto, heterosexual teens as you grew up.

But as I decided to make moves to not be—you know, to go to the Garage the first time, and you didn’t have this kind of nonsense image that these guys are gonna come and attack you or stuff like that. I was like, “What do you mean?” So, I quickly learned to adjust and let people do their thing. And the fun thing about the Garage, which was a very gay club and one of the pioneering clubs in the whole what became disco—even EDM—so much grew out of what went on at that club. And then, once again, Andy was very pioneering in terms of looking at people’s counterculture lifestyles or whatever and putting a frame around them in ways that society was nowhere near ready to, at that time.

These things are now normal. We have like mainstream TV shows. Although, now under this political climate, there’s different people that—you know, transgender people are sometimes being attacked and stuff. But Andy did so much to kind of bring—literally—those kind of things out of the closet, so to speak. Which is pretty remarkable when you look back at all of that.

Jesse Thorn: We’re gonna take a break. We’ll be back soon with even more from Fab 5 Freddy, stay with us. It’s Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

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Transition: Thumpy synth with light vocalizations.

Jesse Thorn: It is Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My guest is Fab 5 Freddy. He’s a pioneer of hip-hop culture and a renowned street artist. He’s got a new book out. It’s a memoir. It’s called Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture. You can get it from your local bookstore. Now, let’s get back into our conversation.

We’ve talked a lot without talking about music. And Brooklyn, where you grew up, was not the center of hip-hop music at the very beginning. So, how did you learn about what initially DJs and then later DJs and MCs were doing in other parts of New York City as they sort of trickled to Brooklyn?

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah, so I guess as a young teen, I would go to— The local disco DJs would play in the parks in the summer at block parties, which you typically have on weekends in the urban communities. And hot DJs, these names became— And then they would oftentimes advertise their parties on this radio station I listened to a lot as a kid, WBLS on the Frankie Crocker Show. So, I was aware of this, but I wasn’t really deeply in the mix. But the mobile disco DJ was a huge thing in the city that then leads to this rap thing developing, which was kind of like an alternative way to— You know, it was a very interesting dynamic that then hip-hop is kind of a spinoff, if you will, of what the disco scene had been for quite a while.

Kool Herc definitely set that off in the Bronx. But yeah, man. Going to these park jams in Brooklyn and Bed-Stuy and other parts of Brooklyn is how you first got to feel the energy of— Like, just the idea of a DJ with two turntables and the music never stopped—like, I’d go back to when that was like the hugest thing ever. ‘Cause typically, most people had a thing where they’d put several 45s on a thing—on a record player, and the automatic mechanism would drop a record down. The arm would come, play the record; the arm would pick up, drop another record down. It was like that’s how you listened to music until this two-turntable thing and the DJ can mix it. So, I was aware of how revolutionary and innovative that was as a kid just going to these park jams, and my ears were tuned to the hottest music.

And then I began to hear something different that the DJs put on that really caught my attention. And I first went up to one of these guys and asked, “Yo, what is that?”

And he was like, “Oh, this is the uptown sound.”

I was like, “What is that?! Man, I gotta find what this uptown sound is, man. I wanna know more!”

Jesse Thorn: When did you start to think about these different cultural elements that were just like stuff people in New York City around your age were up to? I’m talking about the music, the writing, the dance, beatboxing, rapping. When did you start to think of those as being a group of things that stuck together?

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah. Well, I had seen an article in one of my dad’s publications or whatever. And I didn’t know for many years who had written this, but I found out it was Albert Murray, who was this kind of, uh… like a thought leader in the Black community, from the Black arts movement, whatever. I need to get some more Albert Murray stuff to really dive in. But anyway, in an essay, he had said that for a culture to be complete, it should have a music, a visual art, and a form of dance. And this is as I’m now making this connection between this graffiti painting and like pop art—or following that, which had just happened really in the ‘60s, pop art. And how this graffiti thing, as graffiti writers were making their names brighter, bigger, more colorful, adding cartoon characters; we were clearly looking at similar stuff.

And it basically was like, okay, well there’s this music; there’s this visual art and this type of dance. And I just said, “Well, if we could showcase these things and make this argument that this is that culture that you really don’t know about that’s been going on right under your nose.”

Jesse Thorn: I mean, your whole career has been going around with this stuff that you’re so passionate about, pulling these pieces together, pulling people together, and turning them into a story through any form that you can get your hands on—whether it’s Wild Style or Yo! MTV Raps or gallery work or whatever you can reach.

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that has been a part of it, if you will. I mean, I guess it’s somewhat kind of selfish. ‘Cause like I said, I wanted to prop up a space so that I could be a painter. And then I did. You know, just me and the canvas creating. I mean, it took off. I mean, it was crazy—in some cases, beyond expectation. Like, I had these ideas, we wanted to get this stuff moving, do all these things that I wanted to do. But it was like—well, I felt like if we get this out there, some people would connect with it. I didn’t know a very prestigious Italian art dealer was gonna be the one that said, “Yes, I agree with this. We’re gonna give you guys a show at our gallery in Rome.”

I was like, “Okaaay!” (Laughs.)

Which was way beyond expectation and stuff like that. And so, there’s been a lot of really great benefits along this journey, if you will, that have been quite surprising but had definitely worked to put fuel on the fire at critical points and to bring other people to the table. It’s just really amazing that some of these things were able to come together in the way they did.

Jesse Thorn: You’ve been telling your own story since you were a teenager. Like, that’s part of what you’ve done all along, right? You are finding ways to communicate your own story and the world that you’re in. But now you have written a book about your life. And I wondered what surprised you when you looked at it from this perspective?

Fab 5 Freddy: Oh boy! (Laughs.) I’ll tell you. What surprises me—it’s incredible, especially to lean into it—was how much (censor beep) was going on back then!

(Jesse laughs.)

I cannot believe how much was happening! Like, from ‘80 to ‘83/‘84, it’s amazing! I’m like, “Man, listen.” And literally, you don’t miss the water ‘til the well runs dry. So, things change and I’m aware of that. But New York at that time, man—like, the different cultural, music, the various things going on— You can go to three or four different clubs every night and an afterhours spot. An amazing world that— You know, and it had its ups and downs. It was grimy. People were like throwing their fists in the air, fighting for a better chance at it all. But the fun and the excitement and just people’s openness to just check out new things and dance to new rhythms was so phenomenal and so amazing.

And it’s shocking that it’s completely different now. Which is just—you go, “Wow, man. It was such an incredible ride.” And I’m so happy that I got to put a lot of this down on the page! Because like, in working on it and then getting all the dates right in the timeline, I’m like, “Wait a minute. Dude, this is crazy!” (Laughs.) You know. But it was so much fun, and it was such a blast then to see that we’re still living in the afterglow or the residual effects of all this. The fact that rap is still—even though rap just evolves and goes through, it’s still one of the most listened to musics—it’s really incredible that this stuff got so big and pervasive! (Chuckling.) You know, it’s like—

Jesse Thorn: Freddy, I cannot imagine a better ambassador for fun and wildness and the enjoyment of creation than you and this book.

Fab 5 Freddy: (Giggles.) Oh, man. Thank you. Thank you.

Jesse Thorn: So, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.

Fab 5 Freddy: Yeah, thanks for having these great questions. And it was great to be here with you guys, and this is so dope. Everybody’s Fly! If you fly, you better get that book, baby.

Jesse Thorn: Fab 5 Freddy. His memoir is called Everybody’s Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture. You can get it at your local bookstore or at Bookshop.org.

Transition: Bright, chiming synth.

Jesse Thorn: That’s the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye, recorded at Maximum Fun World headquarters in the historic Jewelry District of downtown Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Marathon was this past weekend. Passed right near our office. Congratulations to everyone who ran that. Although, eh, there’s a part of me that feels like you ran too far.

Our show is produced by speaking into microphones. Our senior producer is Kevin Ferguson. Our producers are Jesus Ambrosio and Richard Robey. Our production fellow at Maximum Fun, Hannah Moroz. Our video producer is Daniel Speer. We get booking help on Bullseye from Mara Davis. Our interstitial music comes from our friend Dan Wally, the DJ! Also known as DJ W. You can find his music at DJWsounds.bandcamp.com. Our theme music written and recorded by The Go! Team. It’s called “Huddle Formation”. Thanks to The Go! Team. Thanks to their label, Memphis Industries, for providing it.

Special thanks this week to Eric and Michelle Stohlberg at Digital One in Portland, Oregon for recording our interview with Chuck Klosterman. Special shout out to our friend Jacob Derwin at Technica House in New York City for running the board during our interview with Fab 5 Freddy. I got to visit Jacob at Technica House this past week when I was visiting New York City. Always nice to see him in real life.

You can follow Bullseye on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. In fact, I suggest to you that you should follow Bullseye on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube! It’s not just an option; it’s a thing I encourage you to do.

I think that’s about it. Just remember, all great radio hosts have a signature sign-off.

Promo: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

(Music fades out.)

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