KEN PLUME: Speaking of fandom, Fred Hembeck wanted me to make sure that I said hello to you.
KENNY: I love Fred Hembeck. I just was reading his thing that he did in that Stan Lee Meets Spider-Man thing. He has like a little two page spread. What did he say?
KEN PLUME: He writes a weekly column for our site…
KENNY: Wow. See, I’m still not cyber-guy.
KEN PLUME: We got Paul Dini, we got Fred Hembeck…
KENNY: Wow, I gotta come on. Because when… no, Hembeck… I probably love Hembeck more than he would ever suspect.
KEN PLUME: Well he is a massive Spongebob fan.
KENNY: Even as a kid, a younger teenager, I always liked his Dateline @#$% and stuff that he did. I love that stuff. I thought it was so great. Then when The Spongebob Movie came out and they put out the soundtrack, they needed a couple extra filler tracks and Andy and I had just begun work on what would become the Best Day Ever album, but Hillenburg heard our songs, they needed a couple of songs to pad out the soundtrack album, and he said how about “Best Day Ever” and Patrick’s “Under My Rock.” So they kind of cherry picked those songs and put them on the movie soundtrack. And then “Best Day Ever” wound up on the closing credits of The Spongebob Movie. Which was never intended. They were kind of works-in-progress at the time, but they just needed filler for the soundtrack album. Hembeck, on his column – and somebody steered me to it – just raved about those two songs. Just said, “Wow, these are great,” and he’s a Beach Boys freak, and he said, “I pulled over the car and I looked at the CD booklet. And I’m like, ‘Who is responsible for these songs? Why is this so perfect?’ And I saw Tom Kenny, the voice of Spongebob, wrote the songs, and Andy Paley who’s done Brian Wilson’s best post-Beach Boys work,” and it was just amazing to read somebody that connected all the dots in a way that nobody ever had. Nobody at Nickelodeon gave a shit. Nobody at Paramount gave a crap about those two songs, or probably never even listened to them. And Hembeck just got everything and really listened and connected the dots and knew what we were trying to pay homage to. It’s funny, I’ve always hoped that I’d run into him at Comic-Con, but then Mark Evanier tells me that he doesn’t fly.
KEN PLUME: Yeah. He lives in upstate New York and doesn’t fly.
KENNY: And I’ve always been a little shy to just… and I’m not a big e-mailer anyway…
KEN PLUME: I’ll give you his phone number.
KENNY: Would that just be weird?
KEN PLUME: I will tell you this – he sent in his column last week, and this is part of his email he sent me. “We bought the new Elton CD yesterday, and two Spongebobs. I didn’t know about the Yellow Album compilation until I saw it next to the new one.”
KENNY: Wow. Well, the Yellow Album, to me, that’s like the kind of epitome of the Spongebob that Nick Records had been doing, which is there just wasn’t enough of Spongebob and the other characters.
KEN PLUME: Right.
KENNY: It was music from the show and stuff but it’s like – kids like the characters. Is there any way that we can amp up the amount of character stuff? That’s what sells Spongebob to kids. They just like the characters and want to hang out with the characters.
KEN PLUME: Well Fred is a massive, massive fan.
KENNY: So he bought The Best Day Ever?
KEN PLUME: Yes.
KENNY: I was gonna send it to him. I think it’ll blow his mind because he’s probably somebody that if he opens the CD book and looks at the players, he’ll know who played on Pet Sounds and stuff because he’s a giant Brian Wilson fan…
KEN PLUME: I got the advance a week before street, so he had me read off everyone who played on the album.
KENNY: Did he know them?
KEN PLUME: Yes he did.
KENNY: That’s awesome. That’s super awesome.
KEN PLUME: He even got Peter Sanderson… you know who Peter Sanderson is, right?
KENNY: Yes.
KEN PLUME: He got Peter Sanderson hooked on Spongebob.
KENNY: Wow! Wow, that’s so cool. That’s so great. Tell him… and I had Evanier convey it back in 2004 when he said those nice things about the soundtrack album. What I liked is that he loved those songs – like, those songs jump out at him and he knew what they were. “Why do I like these two songs better?” And I think it’s just somebody who shared, like, a mindset with him. So yeah, please tell him that I was gonna send him a free copy anyway. His review to me means more than USA Today.
KEN PLUME: I’m going to tell him exactly that.
KENNY: You will? Okay, cool.
KEN PLUME: I can give you his contact details, no problem.
KENNY: What’s he like? Then I’m like, “What if he’s not like a real talkative guy and then you call him up and he’s like, ‘yes, and?'”
KEN PLUME: No, he is. He’d probably be more stunned than anything, but he would get right into it. In fact he would probably love to talk…
KENNY: I’ve been wanting to call him for two years. I’ve been wanting to e-mail him or write him a letter or something for two years because he was the first person who was enthusiastic about what we were doing. It was one of the things that got our mental ball rolling for, “Wow, maybe it’d be cool to do a whole album of this shit.”
KEN PLUME: Are you a Scrooge McDuck fan?
KENNY: Yeah, I love it. I’m a big Barks guy, and I love those books…
KEN PLUME: Then there’s something we should probably chat about in the near future, a special project…
KENNY: I’ve just been reading the Don Rosa compilation.
KEN PLUME: Did you pick up the Carl Barks Greatest DuckTales Stories trade paperbacks?
KENNY: Yes, the two volume… Yeah, I bought them for my kid.
KEN PLUME: (laughing) You’ll probably see my name on the bottom of the second one’s credit page, because that was my idea…. I’m a huge Scrooge fan, as well…
KENNY: Wow! Well, you know what’s funny? Those comic books are like Kinks records, you know what I mean? I bought them in 800 different formats and it’s like, “Do I really need the ‘Terries & The Fermies’ again?” But, you know, it’s just like, it’s just cool to have it all in one place where you can find it.
KEN PLUME: I would love if someone could actually decide that Scrooge is a good character to bring back to the screen.
KENNY: Yeah.
KEN PLUME: You also mentioned you were working on a Spongebob holiday CD…
KENNY: We’re working on it. We have to pitch them. We did a great, total full-on Phil Spector sounding Spongebob song called “Don’t Be A Jerk It’s Christmas,” and it’s pretty funny. So I think they’ll do it. But that’s so great about Hembeck. Yeah, you gotta tell him. He was the first and only person who gave a shit about our two songs on that. Everybody talked about The Flaming Lips and Wilco, and no reviewers even mentioned our songs when they’d review the album and then…
KEN PLUME: It was like, “Oh yeah, two character songs…”
KENNY: Then Hembeck did a review that only talked about our songs, and again it was like that Earth-2, Comic-Con universe where it’s like, “Great!” And he was so perceptive about where we were stealing our shit from, that it was great. But so positive.
KEN PLUME: I’m sure he’d be thrilled at the chance to talk to you. He’d probably talk production with you the whole time.
KENNY: Production? Cool! Well, you know that’s Paley’s side of the street. One reason we were able to do it the way we did it was that he plays 100 instruments well. So he’s our drummer and guitar player sometimes, and bass player sometimes, and xylophone player sometimes.
KEN PLUME: Like those old school producers. Look at George Martin…
KENNY: He was like that. And he knows that stuff inside out and knows how to make a record in that way. I think you wind up with a record that does have a little more organic-like feel to it, like a little more bite and a little more realness… is that a word?
KEN PLUME: Realocity.
KENNY: Realocity. Is there anything else you need to know for the interview thing?
KEN PLUME: Nope. I hope it hasn’t been too painful for you…
KENNY: Are you crazy? Talking about comics and records and stuff? It’s been great! One of the best things about this record is that Hillenburg loved it so much that he gave me a Thimble Theater Popeye daily from 1937…
KEN PLUME: Really?
KENNY: Which is, like, my totally most coveted object on planet Earth my whole life is that I wanted a Segar Popeye daily, but I always felt too decadent spending my kids’ college money on a Popeye drawing.
KEN PLUME: Oh, come on! The kids can go to a state school.
KENNY: Yeah, exactly, fuck ’em. So yeah, he just gave me that on Sunday. He’s like, “I know you worked your ass off on this album and I love it. It’s the only Spongebob record that Nickelodeon’s put out that I actually listen to, and hang on….” He goes in the other room, comes back with the Segar… because he knows I’m a Popeye fanatic.
KEN PLUME: That’s one of those things that, if I ever had money, I would start getting into buying…
KENNY: I started crying. Well, you know, even when you do have a little bit of money, it’s hard to just… especially when you have kids and stuff, it’s like, “Okay, so now I could afford this thing without going broke, but do I really…” I guess I got a lot of blue collar Catholic guilt or whatever. “Do I really deserve it? Should I really be giving myself such a lavish thing?” And Hillenburg knows I’m that way, so he just like went out and got it. You know what’s great? You’ll love this… He bought it off of eBay, and it was from Frank Frazetta’s collection. Frank is selling off, or his family is selling off, a lot of his stuff. I guess his health isn’t the greatest or whatever. So this was from Franks Frazetta’s collection. And Frank Frazetta, I guess found out through the correspondence, who it was gonna be for, so with the Popeye daily, I get a note on “Support Our Troops,” like, American flag stationary with “Mr. Frank Frazetta” printed on the bottom of it, a handwritten note that says, “Tom, this has been in my collection for a lot of years. Take good care of it. Frank Frazetta.”
KEN PLUME: Are you framing that to put next to it?
KENNY: Yeah, that’s going in the same frame. And plus he’s a total right wing guy, he’s a total, like, “Reagan was the best president we ever had. Those hippies ruined everything” kind of a guy.
KEN PLUME: From his artwork I can imagine no less.
KENNY: Yeah, exactly. I think I read a big thing in the Comic-Con book, he was just like, just super… he’s a right wing 50s guy.
KEN PLUME: It’s like talking to John Milius. You kinda know going in…
KENNY: He’s a 50s guy who resented the 60s, like Jack Webb. “Why does Joe Friday hate hippies so much?” Frank Frazetta’s like that.
KEN PLUME: Crikey, I can’t imagine owning a Thimble Theater strip. I’m happy owning a Ludwig Von Drake cel, so I can imagine…
KENNY: Yeah, that’s my object of… that’s like my dream object. I did finally buy a Dick Tracy daily this year at Comic-Con.
KEN PLUME: You know they’re re-releasing the collections of Thimble theater this year.
KENNY: Yes. I have the 80s ones, and of course I’m again, like DuckTales, I’m going to want to buy the fucking thing over again. The one thing I’m not doing is buying those new EC collections. I’ve got all the Wes Cochrane ones. I’ve been buying them since I was a paperboy in Syracuse. I would save my money to buy up the big slipcase EC collections. I’m not frickin’ starting again with these color ones.
KEN PLUME: I just spent 1500 dollars on eBay to get the Carl Barks library.
KENNY: How many of those are there?
KEN PLUME: 10 sets of 3, so 30 books.
KENNY: So it’s 10 sets. Are they numbered one through ten?
KEN PLUME: Yes.
KENNY: ‘Cause I’ve got… it’s one of those things I bought some of them back when they came out, and then I didn’t have much… I didn’t have any money back then, so I missed some, and then I moved a couple of times, so I think I’ve got maybe half of them, but it’s not the whole oeuvre is it?
KEN PLUME: Oh yeah, it’s every single Barks story ever printed.
KENNY: Even the ones that are kinda semi… even if there’s like negro humor and stuff in them?
KEN PLUME: All of that’s in there. Every single bit. Including the stuff that he only did artwork for and not scripting.
KENNY: Wow. So there’s 10 of those.
KEN PLUME: Yeah, 10 sets.
KENNY: Okay. I gotta find out which ones I have and do it. Those are like deep in storage… Alright, well I’m off to my dinner. and I’m going to try to get to Mulholland in 30 minutes. But thanks – it was really a fun interview. Thanks so much for talking to me. You made it easy.
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