French Exit's Album Is an Amazing Simpsons Reference

The way the story goes, a band who was nameless for their first two shows stood on stage and asked the audience what they should call their band. Someone shouted out, “Fall Out Boy!,” a reference to Radioactive Man’s sidekick on The Simpsons. And thus, the band Fall Out Boy as we know them today was born. The problem is, it’s an incredibly obvious reference and a lame thing to call a band. So when the LA-based band French Exit had to title their new album, they didn’t make the same mistake.

The name of their new album is Guts & Black Stuff, a wonderfully subtle reference to a classic season eight episode where Lisa asks Nelson how he feels and what’s inside him, to which Nelson responds, “Guts… and black stuff… and about 50 Slim Jims." So when French Exit mailed me a copy of Guts & Black Stuff, they also included… you guessed it, 50 Slim Jims. Obviously, I had to talk to them. Here’s an interview I did with guitarist/singer Bobb Lange.

French Exit's LP, exactly as it arrived in the mail.

Noisey: First of all, this idea with the Slim Jims was genius. How’d you come up with this?
Bobb Lange: I can’t take credit for that one. Our other guitar player Anthony had somehow seen that you host a Simpsons trivia night?

I do, but I will edit this out later so I don’t sound like a giant nerd. [Note to self: Dan, edit this out before posting so you don’t sound like a giant nerd.]
Well, he was working hard on Facebook or something and came across that and he immediately thought it would be a hilarious idea. He’s not much of a Simpsons fan but I told him about the reference for the album title and he just took it and ran with it. I thought it would be funny and he somehow found a ton of Slim Jims and sent them off.

Yeah, thank you. I’ve been eating one a day. I don’t know if that’s healthy or not, but I’ll let you know in 47 days.
Hopefully it doesn’t kill you. I think that’d be a bad thing for our band to get off on the wrong foot with the music community.

So you’re the Simpsons fan in the group, then?
Yeah, essentially. Everyone in the band loves the show. I think I’m the only one who’s gone as far overboard with it as I have. I’m the one who keeps trying to sneak in Simpsons references into all of our song titles and album titles. And then months later, after it’s already been printed and we can’t change it, then I’ll tell the band, “Oh by the way, this is a Simpsons reference.”

French Exit, with their dog, Flipsy, on their way to the Knoxville World's Fair.

How did you sell them on this name for the album?
I just mentioned that because the album is so ridiculously depressing, when you read the lyrics as they’re written out, that it seems like the most emo title I could possibly think of. The angst and turmoil that we’re singing about on these ridiculously poppy songs, it seemed to fit it.

Yeah, when taken out of context, Guts & Black Stuff seems really dark and macabre.
Exactly. But then when you factor in that it’s a reference an animated comedy, that sort of played well against the fact that we’re singing about these ridiculously dark things with poppy melodies. I thought it was a good representation if you got the reference.

Can you, off the top of your head, name the episode it appears on?
Ah. I’m really bad with the episode names because I just recently started getting into the DVDs.

It’s “Lisa’s Date with Density.”
Oh god, that’s such a good title. I didn’t even think to look at the names of the episodes. I watch them just over the air. At least here in LA, in syndication, there are three episodes a night on two different channels, even. I’ve only recently bought the first ten seasons of DVDs just because I got sick of having to watch the newer episodes.

So you still watch the show?
I do. I just this past month canceled my cable as part of my New Year’s resolution to watch less TV. But I had been watching it religiously, even last season when they’ve started to really get questionable. I refuse to give up on the show. Me and my girlfriend were just talking about this. When we were looking back at season five for example, we were looking back at a disc, and the disc had six episodes on it and every single episode was a classic. It really put into perspective that in the course of six weeks, there was a classic Simpsons episode on TV every week. We got so spoiled with it being phenomenal for as many seasons as it was, which is really unprecedented, that now once in a while there are good episodes that sort of sneak in but we’re just finally catching up with the ratio of bad episodes to good ones.

Yeah, there are probably as many bad episodes as there are good ones at this point.
Yeah.

But I totally agree, seasons four through six are just all killer, no filler.
Yeah. And it took me for forever to find season eight on DVD and that one is just phenomenal too.

What’s your favorite episode?
"You Only Move Twice." I really like the X-Files crossover one. I was super into The X-Files when I was a kid so that was a natural marriage of joy for me. “Bart Gets an Elephant.” “Itchy and Scratchyland.” “Grampa Vs. Sexual Inadequacy.”

That’s an interesting choice.
Yeah, I can pretty much quote that one verbatim. [laughs]

In that case, I have a trivia question for you from that episode.
[laughs] OK.

In that episode, Grampa says that he has sold his sex tonic in what three towns?
Wow… Lake Flaccid.

That’s one.
Um, I know there’s one of them like Mount Seldom.

That’s another.
Frigid Falls?

Goddamn, three for three. I am impressed. I now wholeheartedly endorse your record.
[laughs]

So tell me about the record. How much of this album was influenced by the Simpsons? I’m hoping 100% of it.
At least in my part, 100% of it. It’s not so much that the songs themselves are inspired but just, in the same way in the Renaissance, people said that their artwork was inspired by Jesus, it’s the same sort of thing. The general tone of the work.

So are there any other Simpsons references I should look for?
There was an unintentional reference on our part with an EP we just put out which we didn’t catch until months later. We put out a split with this band from Cleveland called Signals Midwest. It had the artwork done by this guy and he came up with this treatment that he told our label friends who were putting it out. Since they’re from the midwest, he wanted to have a factory with smokestacks. And since we’re from California, he wanted there to be a beach and sandcastles or something. And that sounded really cool. And then when we got it, it was this really poorly drawn cartoony-looking cover. But by that point, it was too late since we were all ready to press it. So we weren’t gonna change it on such short notice.

Fast forward like six or seven months, I’m watching an episode where Homer’s watching TV in the middle of the night and he comes across the World Series of Sandcastle Building, live from Daytona Beach, Florida. And it shows our exact seven-inch cover on the television screen. And the crappy factory in the background is just a dig at Daytona Beach Florida, apparently. That was an unintentional Simpsons reference.

I thought you were gonna say that it was the same cover as Bleeding Gums Murphy’s album…
Sax on the Beach.

Dan Ozzi is an editor at Noisey, even though everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact. Follow him on the internet, which they have on computers now - @danozzi