The Big Lie

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When things get hard, how do you talk to yourself? I'm wrapping up son, VP of Fitness Programming and Head instructor at Palatown, and this week on my new podcast, Project Swagger. I'm sharing my strategies for how to build better self-talk. It's time to work on befriending yourself.

Follow Project Swagger, wherever you get your podcasts. Megan Rpino here. This week on a touch more, we've got something for everyone. We're talking about the US women, Olympians, taking home more medals than the men.

The US women's National Team roster heading into the Shea Beliefs Cup, and the latest on the WMBA CVA negotiations. Check out the latest episode of a touch more wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. This episode contains language that may not be suitable for everyone. Well, let's just jump right in and let's just start with you introducing yourself.

Oh, God. And it's not a trick quite as like a very simple. There's what's for a name. You just started off for the hardest question. This is Gavin Bane, but for years he went by another name.

It all started in 1998 on his first day of college in Dundee, Scotland.

When he met another student named Billy Boyd. I was running late, I was skateboarding in, and I saw this guy standing outside. The campus just non-challantly. I mean, I'm Russian. This probably sums up both of our personalities.

“I'm Russian, and I think he messed this up already.”

You know? And he's just standing there. He's got like a bag of jeans on. Here, corn rolled. A hand-scent t-shirt. I don't know why he's wearing that.

But he's just got his headphones on. And I can just, I can just get past him and stop. And I'm like, hey, if I got the time wrong, why aren't you inside? And he's got Nirvana. I can hear that that's blasting.

He's got it so loud. And he looks at me and he's like, what do you want? He's so offended that I've interrupted Nirvana. And then I can rush off in and I'm like, oh man.

First person, I mean, it looks really cool.

And I've just like made an enemy out of the first person. But then I get lost. I go out in the wrong class.

“After a while, he managed to find the right classroom.”

He was 45 minutes late. And the only seat left was next to the guy he'd met out front. And when we were in close range, he was looking at my bag. And I was looking at his bag. And I had rage against the machine.

He said, "Presale, we're time-clined badges on my backpack." And he had the same, but he had corn. And he had some other metal bands mixed in with Tribe Cold Quest. So it was like, together, we covered the entire gamut of the coolest bands in the world at the time. And he had lent biscuit.

So yeah, we just kind of cracked it off. We started to talk in quotes from kind of rap films. From the early '90s. Yeah, we were just straight in with a flow. And by a lunchtime, we were freestyling.

Quite late at first. And then by the end of lunchtime, we performed our first gig in a way. Everyone was kind of gathered around us. And we were rappers. And on the way home, I turned to him and said, "Hey, do you want to be a rap group?"

And he was like, "Absolutely." And that was it. We were a rap group. They practiced all the time, competing with each other, to make up the smartest and funniest lyrics they could on the spot.

So we created a game called Porcupine. And that was a way for us to battle each other. But then also through each other words. And then we'd just start freestyling off the word. And why did you call it Porcupine?

Because some people think that's a hard word to rhyme with. But when someone's a hard word like Porcupine, it can make the game funnier. But also we would use it as that would be the last word to try beat the other person with. You couldn't win the game unless you ended with something to do with a Porcupine. They started performing gigs in bars near their college and done D.

And their friend Oscar joined the group. Gavin says their main influence was, quote, "The best white rapper we could think of."

M&M released his major label debut album, The Slim Shady LP in 1999,

not long after Gavin and Billy had met.

“One reviewer wrote that his lyrics are so clever that he makes murder sound funny.”

One night, Gavin Billy and Oscar stayed out very late, and ended up going back to Gavin's room. Oscar got on the computer. I mean, the internet was kind of early days, so he just randomly found this thing. It was on a website called undergroundhatpop.com.

And it was just this kind of flyer. This poster for "Are you the next Eminem?" And as soon as we saw it, we thought, "Yeah, of course we are." A record label was holding open auditions in London. Gavin Billy and Oscar took a 13-hour bus ride there,

playing Porcupine most of the way.

But when they finally got to the audition,

the line to get in went around the block twice. It was quite apparent, there's just no way we're going to get in, because there's far too many people here.

“And so what we decided to do was to go and ask if we could battle people for other spot.”

So we're not knowing hip-hop. Once you get challenged to battle, you can't say no. And if you say no, you essentially step aside and let us just take your spot. So at first and more people would say yes, and then we started battling. And eventually after you beat like 10, 15, 20 people,

the sees part, you know. And by the time we got to the front, there was so many people behind us, kind of written for us, like, "Oh my God, these guys actually are like Eminem."

So the feeling I'd say is that these three Scotch kids are just going to walk this.

And so our confidence is so high. Well, as soon as we get in and we're going past these dance studios, and it starts to become very commercialized. And we start to feel like, you know, so we're kind of shrinking as we got closer and closer and closer. When they got to the audition room, they handed the sound guide their CD.

Gavin remembers there were exes on the floor for them to stand on.

“And in front of a table with three English talent scouts from the record label,”

A&Rs sitting behind it. And then we said to press play and the guy presses play, but you hasn't turned the volume up. So by the time the beat comes in, it's already half way into the song. So we're like, "No, no, please put it back to the start."

And now we're just like shaking because it's all going wrong. And so then we start to rap. And as soon as we start to rap, you know, you're a hyper-aware. The situation you're so focused on everything you're looking around to rim. And when you're a rapper, you're constantly making eye contact with people.

Because you feed off their response. And the three of these A&Rs were just kind of looking at each other at the side of their eyes and kind of trying to stop themselves from laughing. And in about 30 seconds and 30-40 seconds into my rap verse, they just kind of put their hand up to the so-and-guide and said,

"Hey, cool cool cool, that's enough." And then they just were kind of like laughing. And one of them said, "Is this a joke?" You know, the Dave put you up to this. And we said, "No, this is seriously," they said.

"This is a cool comedy act, but not quite what we're looking for. You know, Scotland is growing's keeper-welly. It's brave heart. It's Sean Connery. You know, it's junk, ginger people, and skirts. Scotland is not rap. We can't sell that."

Gavin says they all went straight to a pub after that. And while they were there, they decided to go and try to see someone else before they left London. I just thought they don't get it, but so then let's go. Let's go somewhere to someone who gets it. And there was a guy called Dave Loeb who ran wordplay

and the biggest hip-hop magazine in Europe hip-hop connection. So I thought, "Let's go and see Dave Loeb and we'll ask him." You know, so we go there. It's kind of like this secure, you got to get past a security gate. So we wait for ages. Eventually a guy can bring in records, comes up the road.

He goes in. We see him. We get to their office. Belly's trying to flirt with the lady on reception. To buy his time, you get in until he walks past. And eventually he walks past and we're like, "Dave, you know." And we kind of like, just don't want to leave.

We're like, "Look, it's taken a lot to get here. We're not leaving until you give us like five minutes." So eventually we go into his office. And we're like, "Here's our songs. Let's know what you think." And he's like, "Alright, you know."

And he plays the first beat. And he's like, "Oh, God, yeah."

“And you can see, he really loves the beat.”

And then as soon as one of us starts rapping, he's like, "Nah. It skips to the next one." And then the same thing. He's like, "Love's the beat." And then skips to the next one. As soon as vocals come in.

And the third one, he loves the beat again. As soon as we start rapping. Pills the CD out. And he said, "Don't make me say it." And I said, "No, say it."

And he's like, "You fucking sound like the rapping proclaimers." And the proclaimers are great.

They're amazing Scottish group.

They sing that classic song. I will walk 500 miles. And they're Scottish heritage. But he's meaning it. And they're a bit of a joke.

You know, like, no rapper would ever listen to that. You know? Gavin says that he and Billy didn't say a word to each other. For the whole 13-hour bus ride back home. I kind of was really just trying not to cry.

And a part of me was like, "They are right, though." You know, I saw that if your job was in marketing at the time and hip-hop was all about your credibility, what you've gone through, you know, like, what street you come from, you know?

Like the branding of rap in America was so powerful. And Britain didn't quite have that yet. And Scotland definitely didn't have that. You know, so they were right. They can't sell it. So I understood that.

But then that left me with the predicament of,

while then we can never do this.

When Gavin got back home, he started spending more and more time alone. And he wasn't sleeping well. And then one night he was watching TV and a movie came on. I filmed that at scene loads from the A.E.

called The Secret of My Success. And there's a scene where Michael J. Fox is character. He's trying to get this job, but that he's a little small-time boy and he's trying to make it in the New York City.

And he's just getting turned down everywhere. You know, it's because he doesn't fit. He doesn't fit in their world. And he goes into this one office to get changed, because he's not wearing the right thing.

And he's trying to go to this meeting that he's got. And then this office, the phone rings, and he picks it up. And the person says is that, you know, so and so. And he goes, yeah.

And he starts to just pretend he is. And he gets so empowered that he can be that person.

“And I think like, well, why don't we just become someone else?”

If being Scottish was the problem, then they become Americans. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join criminal plus.

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Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Gavin Bane started recording himself,

“wrapping his lyrics with an American accent,”

just to see what it sounded like.

So the first few times solber that I tried to record myself

in the American accent, it didn't sound good, it sounded fake. The way the tongue moves isn't the same is when you switch to another accent. So I was struggling with that,

and then I was thinking too much when I was sober, so then I took certain operas with certain donors to get knocked myself off the centre, so I could stop being hypocritical about myself and alone myself to flow.

And it sounded so good. It sounded real. It sounded like this kid is from California and he sounds like M&M. I liked the song so much

that I took it to a party.

My friend Brian was throwing this big party, and he used to draw like really cool parties, so he'd have DJs and everyone who was in a hip-hop in the area would be there. So I go into the party and I gave our DJ at the time,

Skinny, I gave him the CD and I was like, "I'll play this as a new American rapper. I just heard play this," and he played it right after an M&M song. And everyone was dancing, and loving the M&M track, and then he played that song.

And nobody, like no one batted a night.

“There were like, is this the new M&M track or something?”

They just started with M&M, or they thought it was an American rapper? And so I'm watching the room and I look at Billy, and he looks over to me, because he knows they're my lyrics, and he's just like mainblown.

He's like, "Oh my God, it sounds real." And then Gavin told Billy about his idea to pretend to be Americans. Gavin says that Billy said, "No." But he did want to see what it sounded like,

and he experimented with recording some of their songs in an American accent. A few weeks later, their friend Brian, who had thrown the party, where Gavin played the song, died in an accident.

Gavin and Billy drove to the funeral together. On the way there, they listened to the radio, and then one of their songs came on, with them rapping in American accents.

“Gavin says, "The each thought they were playing a trick”

on each other." But when they got to the funeral, Brian's brother told them that before Brian died, he'd entered the song into a national radio competition, as a surprise, and that it had won.

We've been every single rock band, every single folk act, every pop act. We won it, and the song was getting airplay,

and Billy finally kind of turned around

and said, "Okay, let's do this for Brian." And so, we were on our way. Someone from Sony had heard the song on the radio, and had gotten in touch to see if they could meet with Gavin and Billy in person in London in two weeks.

So we had two weeks to prevent the accident, and so we made this agreement that we would speak to each other all the time in American accent. Everything we did, we did in American accent. We would have sex in American accents.

We what? Which our girlfriends that was really fucking annoying. And that's us being really bad. I'm surprised they stayed with you. I'm surprised as well.

But you only, did you know anything about Americans besides the movies? I mean, what did you think of me? We were, yeah, no, we were like, we just grown up watching American movies.

We loved American stand-up comedy. And we just took a whole bunch of different characters and we mashed them together. Gavin says they wanted to study interviews with American rap stars and skaters.

But all they could really get their hands on in time was a DVD of friends and a few American movies. Gavin started watching back to the future over and over again until they could say Michael J. Fox's lines along with him. They also watched a lot of Goodwill Hunting

and studied Matt Damon's character. Billy studied Matthew Perry's character in friends. Chandler. They watched as many episodes as they could. Gavin says they paused it whenever Chandler said something funny

and then tried to repeat it. They came up with new names for their American personas.

and Billy Boyd became syllable.

“They called their group, syllable and brains.”

They decided they would be from California. They picked a city called Hemet where Billy actually had family. Billy bleached his hair. Gavin tried out a trucker hat.

They both started wearing more colorful clothes. At the end of the two weeks, they got back on the 13-hour bus ride to London. The first place they went was Sony Records to meet with Dougie Bruce.

The scout would heard their song on the radio. And as soon as he sits down he's like, "I ate Boyd, you know, he's got this broad glass waging accent." The first person, the first A&R that interviews us, is Scottish.

We're screwed at that point. Because when someone's Scottish is speaking to someone's Scottish, you start to kind of like, you join, you know? And so we were talking, and we were both saying that very difficult

not to say Scottish words. And then eventually he said something.

“He said I and Bill went straight back with I can,”

which is I know in Scotland.

And two Americans would never know to say I can.

It's in the way that Bill said it. And as soon as we said that he looked straight at Billy and he looked at me and it was like, he knows. You know, so we felt like everything that we were saying, he was like, "Where are you Boyd's actually from?"

And the way he said actually was like, he knows this is, you know, we're done here basically. And when we left that, outside of the Sony building, I grabbed Bill and I said,

"This isn't going to work for half-assed." Like we need to be in all in, like 24/7. We need to become the characters if this is going to work. Let's just be the craziest version of who we want to be. Turn it all up to 11.

Let's just go, you know. And so as soon as we went to do a show that night, we kick in the door, you know, we start stomping around, like we own the place. We did this crazy stage show, chasing each other around,

revolting on the front row. And then when we came off stage, this guy came up to us and he was like, "Where are you guys from?" Now, earlier in the morning when

Dougie Briss asked us, "Where are you guys from?" We both answered at the same time, because we hadn't even got our story in line. We were just so excited that we didn't even, you know, run through what our story is.

So in the morning, I said, "Huntington and Belly said, "Hem it." It night with Chris Rock at Island Records. Belly says, "Huntington and I say "Hem it at the same time." And this guy is just looking at us like, "Cool."

And he didn't care. And he was like, "Right, here's my, here's my card." He's like his card to us. And he's like, "Come and see me on Monday morning." When you say you were like banging and stomping,

is that something you thought like Americans did? Like they just kind of take the room? Yeah. Yeah. If you grow up watching rap music videos,

we just basically became like our favorite rappers

and those videos, you know? But then in person with people,

“we would switch to characters from like friends, you know?”

And so we'd play a Belly play a version of Joy and now I'd play a version of Ross or Chandler. Because those are likeable characters, you know? So we know that when we're around people, don't be banging around.

And also those characters are actually closer to our personalities. I mean, it really feels like two opposite ends of the spectrum to be M&M on stage and Chandler off the stage. I don't really know about those two.

Mel Hold. You know, every artist I've ever met has been one person on stage in off stage. I can play a different person. I'd seen loads of interviews

with members of Slipna and members of Corn and all these kind of dangerous kind of rock bands but actually they were like real sweet hearts when the masks were off, you know? Gavin says that on Monday morning

after going over their story again, he and Billy went to Island Records to meet with Chris. The scout who'd given them his card at their show. Know that we're American, he was selling himself to us.

So it was a big change, you know? And so he was like, "Tell me everything about your guys." And that's a different question from where you from or what do you do, or you know, because

you kind of feel like you're being examined. So Bella and I just started telling a story like, look, we're from this, this,

And that, you know, we met each other at the San Diego bands to because we had known a lot about that tour specifically because the bands that played, we were really interested that we had the DVD about it. So we actually knew some things that happened

and we knew there was a battle rap competition that happened in the parking lot and that, so then we kind of incorporated that. And I said that, yeah, we met at the San Diego Water and then we moved to Huntington Beach,

slept on the beach under the beach. You know, like, this is just like

“versions of Chili Peppers songs now coming out, you know?”

And then we got this job in this skate store and then, you know, we became a rap group, became over here, ran it money, and now you're going to give us a record do, and let the fun continue.

And the way it just floored off the tongue has cut in each other off, it was like we were a rap in. Gavin says Chris seemed to believe the story completely. Gavin remembers that even told them it was beautiful. And he was like, you've got to do that thing

that you did the other night.

You know, because basically we had this thing.

If anyone heckled us from our audience, we would just like pick that person out and then we would, you know, just tear into that person with freestyles. So we called all the A&Rs

and then the main kind of open area. And he was like, all right, do that thing, no. Go, and he was basically telling us to go around the room, just wrapping into everyone. And I was like, oh my God, you know?

So like, this is it. And so we just started doing it, you know? Look at this guy in the fake Adidas. Look at his beard. Who does he think he is Jesus?

“You know, and just move on to the next person.”

And eventually we get to Chris, everyone's like fallen around laughing. We get to Chris and we start making fat jokes and Chris quite fat. And Chris was not laughing at us.

[laughter] He started to look furious. That the joke can no been turned on him. But it's all of his staff. Or it in tears laughing.

And then he, they realized he wasn't laughing and he all stopped. And then he just burst out laughing. And we knew that we've got it. Then we just felt like, "God, this is easy."

But Gavin says they couldn't just sign with the record company.

First they needed a lawyer and a manager.

Chris got them a meeting with one of the biggest music managers in London. A man named Jonathan Schallett. This guy is the Simon Coe, like the nice version of Simon Coe.

So he just got straight to the point and he's like, "What do you want?" And at this point we had no money. We had no money left. So as soon as he said, "What do you need?"

I don't know why I said it. Maybe it was like a lane in another movie. But I said, "We don't go to bed." And then American accent. We don't get a bed for anything less than 70k.

And Belly looked at me like, "What the Holy Crap, you know?" But Jonathan Schallett said, "Okay." And all of a sudden we had 70% of them. For a couple of days after that we kept going to the bank machine to see if the money was in.

And every day that it wasn't in, we felt like, "Yeah, okay." That says it's not really real. And then the day that the money was in,

we didn't both never seen that in that money

in our bank accounts.

“And I think that changed something a little bit”

because my head started to be like, "Hmm." "Whoa, is this a crime?" And then Belly was like, "Whoa. Is this our money?"

You know? That didn't stop us from immediately going out and getting bloat or drunk and having the best week of our lives getting hammered every single day.

Jonathan Schallett's office helped get them set up in a big apartment and arranged for them to play at showcases around London trying to see what kinds of offers came in. And it worked.

After about three months they made a deal with Sony. They went into the office to sign the contract. Gavin remembers it was in a big board room with staff there to help them celebrate.

There was champagne. And people kept coming up to them to ask them about the stories they'd heard about them. A big part of the story

was that we became very close friends with the 12 and M&M. Which is quite a stretch. But when you're kind of improvising and acting, the whole point is the same as freestyle

is to make little links and then let them grow and let them grow. So on that day, we're in Sony and this girl comes up and she's like, "No way,

you guys are from Huntington Beach." And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." She's like, "That's where I'm from."

And she's like, "I heard you worked in a skate store.

What's one?" And I'm like, "Oh no." And I say, "Slam City Skates." And she's like, "No way.

“I work at Slam State Work there as well."”

And I'm like, "Oh my God, no." And I'm just dying and saying, "So I'm smiling." I'm like, "No way." It's cool, but I'm dying because I'm starting to sweat. I'm looking around for Belle.

I need help here. By this time, Gavin and Billy had developed a system for whenever anybody started asking questions about their lives in America. They called it "lead and recover."

So the lead recover system is that one listens and one answers. And so if I'm answering and bells listening and I start to start or make a mistake, Belle jumps in and either takes the person who's asking questions

and takes them on a different direction

or if it's getting real bad, can just throw a hand grenade in or do something to kind of distract so that they forget whether they were asking. But then on this day, people are pulling Belle this way

and we're not together. So we're not in your shot of each other. So I'm like, "I can feel the breathing, my breathing start to you kind of like, you're about to tell that I'm worried here."

And I'm holding on for a dear life. And then Belle turns and looks and sees my face and he knows. And so Belle knocks, I'm a rire carry, poster frame with a record in it,

off the wall and it cracks. And then everyone turns and I sneak out of the room and go to the toilet, went to the toilet, vomited, kind of washed my face. But by the time I went back in,

Belle had just got everyone going again and she kind of forgot that laying a question in. Gavin says they sign the contract as syllable and brains for 50,000 pounds up front and 300,000 more when they released more material

and they're album. Did you have a plan? Did you say, "Okay, we'll go for this long or we'll make this much money and then we'll tell people who we really are?"

“I remember in Dundee in Scotland saying,”

"Look, that's what we do. We go down, we get a record deal. We blow up overnight, get a number one record, obviously. As soon as I hear someone singing my words back to me, I'm good.

I can walk from it. And then we go on Jonathan Ross's TV show, because Jonathan Ross is like the king of late night TV here. And so we'll go on Jonathan Ross's show and then we'll just go, you know what, Jonathan?

We're not American.

We've never been to America.

We're Scottish. And then we'd make a point to be like, we always had talent. Why did we need to do this? Not long after they signed the contract,

Gavin and Billy got an appearance on the UK version of one of MTV's most popular shows. Total requests live. I'll see you guys together.

A syllable in brights. Ross, Ross, Ross, Ross, Ross. Shut up. Nice coming on, guys. Guys are great.

Shut up. Look up, boys. You guys are spanking new music. Spanking. How would you describe your sound?

Spanking. What's spanking with you? Spanking with you. Spanking with you. Or comedy, humor.

New. Well, you did a performance for us.

“To try and drag this back from the edge of the sphere.”

Your mum's is what it was called. It wasn't called my mom. It's just your mum's. My mum's in general. Don't bring my mum into it.

Not on my own show. Let's take a look at it. It's very entertaining. And then, on live TV, the hosts asked them another question.

So, were you guys from? When it's hard on? Really? We're interrupted by aliens. Remember kids.

We travel around the source. Gavin says that when he got home that night, he googled syllable in brains to see what people were saying about them. And there was this website and he's forums

that were like, what's Gavin building? All these people who knew as in our life were online going, "Wait, I know what's going on." One comment read, "I'd a fight with Gavin Bain in a chip shop once.

Wasn't an America, though. This was done, D. Your man's a scot." Gavin says he and Billy got cold into Sony's offices the next day.

But when they got there, nobody said anything about them being from Scotland. Instead, Gavin says,

And that there was even some interest

in them hosting their own show." They started working on show ideas

“and going to meetings with TV producers.”

Gavin says Sony decided to wait to release syllable in brains for a single until something happened with the TV show. And in the meantime, syllable in brains was touring

as much as they could. There was a lot of drinking every single night. We can up the next morning having two hours of not drinking and then back on it. And Bill and I at this point

we're starting to do backflip soft drum risers. We kept trying to uprested showing it was kind of getting dangerous. By the end of the tour, they were exhausted.

Gavin says he went to bed as soon as they got home at 6am. And we've got like, "I think I sleep for one hour, and then my phone goes at 7am.

And it's one of the managers

at Jonathan Shouts Office. And he goes, "I've got good news and bad news for you." The bad news is, you're not coming off tour.

The good news is,

“you're going on tour with your best friends.”

And I think, who's our best friends? And I'm like, "Who?" He's like,

"M&M in D12." And so I'm like, "I'm just like, "Oh my god, no."

Like, "How are we going to pull this off?" We'll be right back. This is advertiser content brought to you by Stonyfield Organic.

Our cows, them going out to pasture. They love it. They're so excited to go out. Every day,

they wait raided. The door ain't in fact. We milk them, and we just open up the lane. We and let them just go right out to pasture.

I'm Ron and Miller Goodrich, and I'm a dairy farmer in Cabot Vermont. Our farm is Molly Brook Farm. We're an organic dairy farm, and we are a supplier to Stonyfield.

Molly Brook Farm has been in my husband's family since 1835. We started our organic transition in 2015. We had 53 acres of corn ground, and of course, we had to use herbicides and pesticides,

and the soil was dead. Really, for all intents purposes, we stopped growing corn, and stopped using herbicides and pesticides,

and we seeded that down to perennial grasses. After that, we began to see biodiversity and that soil again. To be organic certified, our cows need to be a pasture

at least 120 days. I think the organic practices really benefit our animals. You know, having good feed,

good water, a nice light area. That's what's important to us,

“and that's what's important to Stonyfield.”

Visit Stonyfield.com to find Stonyfield organic yogurt near you. Hey, Kara Swisher here. I want to let you know that Vox Media is returning to South

by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcast. Join us from March 13 through the 15th for live tapings of today's flamed. Tephi talks,

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It's all part of the Vox Media podcast stage of South by Southwest, presented by Odo. Visit voxmedia.com/SXSW3 and get your special discount

on your innovation badge. That's voxmedia.com/SXSW2 register. Really, you should register.

We sell out, and we hope to see you there. A couple of hours after Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, heard they'd be going on tour with M&M, and his group D12,

a tour bus picked them up

to take them to the first venue.

They were excited, but Gavin says they also spent the whole ride trying to figure out what to do. You know, anyone sees us for five minutes around them,

they're going to see unfamiliarity. Like, this will be over, as soon as we walk out in front of them, this will be over.

So it was just like, let's just see how it goes. Maybe we can hide, maybe we can stay away from them. And so that we hold on to that,

we think, all right, we'll just hide from them. We will not be in the same place therein.

we walk right in. There's D12, what's it? It's sound checking. And we're like,

shit. And then we turn to go,

but all of the loadings happening,

so we can't get past the loadin. The other side, all of our management team is there. Next to them, is a camera crew who are there

for MTV, filming D12, and M&M over on this promoter. So there's nowhere to go.

“So the clock was just taking in my head,”

like taking their sign check in, purple pills. And we know when the song ends, and it's just a countdown to like them walking past us.

And so we're being better, like looking at each other, not saying a word, but we're having a crazy conversation with our eyes.

And as soon as the song finishes, I look at bone, and we kind of look, yeah, fuck it, let's go. And then we just stomped on the stage,

like we all in the place, we're like, what up? You know, it looks like high five in them.

I high five bizarre, and I'm like holding him. I'm like kind of wrapped my hands into his kind of belly and back, so that he can't pull away from me.

So it looks like he's hugging me tightly, and I'm like, you know, and I think from a distance, it probably just looked like this was

a warm embrace from friends. But up close, we could see their faces where like they were going through who are these guys again?

But Gavin says they just went with it. They high five again, and agreed to meet up after the show.

Gavin and Billy had never performed

on such a large stage in front of such a huge audience. Almost 5,000 people. Gavin says he'd never swatted so much

“as he did when they went on stage that night,”

and that once they got going, he never wanted it to end. They ended the set with a song. They hoped to become their hit single, called Losers.

The crowd went wild for them. It was everything they dreamed of. And then after the show, Gavin and Billy's lawyer pulled them aside. And he was like,

"You're Gavin and you're a belly, and I know it all." Gavin and Billy's lawyer had been asking them for their American passports for months and months.

They always told him they couldn't find them and that they'd get them to him later. And then he saw the post on the hip hop form after their appearance on MTV, saying that they were actually Gavin and Billy

from Scotland, not syllable and brains from California. And so he was really angry and he was like, "You need to come with me.

We need to speak to the label. I'm going to pull you off the tour. We'll go to the label. We'll talk it through." And we were just like,

"Get lost." And you're like, "What are you smoking?" "We're just making out these completely crazy." But then he says this thing to his very,

“I think he got Bill on this when he was like, "Look,”

you didn't need to do this. You're so good. Why are you doing this?" And I just laughed and Bill walked into the changing room.

And Eminem was about to come down the hallway with the whole camera crew from MTV and Tim or lawyer was like, "Okay, so your best friends with this guy?" Okay, let me ask him quick.

And he was going to stop Eminem and ask him. And I was trying to call his bluff. And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, ask him." And then he got closer and closer and closer. And I just like freaked out.

And I just like ran in the dressing room, which Tim said, "You're right." And yeah. So that was very, that was very close. But Tim didn't go to the label

and we didn't get caught. It just went on and on and on.

Billion Gavin kept touring and playing pack shows.

And their MySpace page started filling up with messages from fans. They got an endorsement deal with a soda company. Gavin had developed a stomach ulcer. And it just...

It was getting so big, you know, to the point where within two years this is two years and now we haven't released the record. We've got all this stuff going for us and we haven't released the record.

The amount of money that's been spent on this point is over a million. Gavin was barely talking to his family. He says it took him out of character. His girlfriend, in Dundee, had broken up with him

after a visit during which he'd mostly spoken in an American accent. And he and Billy were drifting apart. Billy was going back to Scotland more often to visit his girlfriend

and then he found out she was pregnant. Gavin says everything changed after that.

So basically we have this big fate.

And it's one of those fate

“you can't come back from when I'm afraid.”

So essentially the grip was over. We didn't get caught. And the fact that the grip was over was kind of a bit of a blessing because there was a clause in the contract

that if the band breaks up before the record comes out, then you don't have to pay the money back. And so we essentially got away with not having to pay that money back.

I mean, how did you announce it to the fans? We kind of just didn't. We just kind of went away. We weren't quiet.

Billy went back to Scotland

and eventually got a job on an oil rig. Gavin stayed in London and tried to make it work without Billy. But Sony stopped taking Gavin's calls.

“He says it was hard to give up his American persona.”

He worked odd jobs. For a while, he worked for an American skate shoe company. He spoke in an American accent when he applied and they thought he was American. And then a couple of years after syllable and brains split up,

Gavin heard that one of his closest friends from childhood had cancer. And he decided to put on a show. And then do it as a comeback show and make that money and then give out a gift even the money for his treatment.

But right before Gavin was about to go on stage, he heard that his friend had died. And so when I walked out on stage, I kind of just looked out and my band were playing the intro of the song

and I was missing keys to go into the first lyrics and I tried to go into the lyrics I was just crying. And so I stopped the music and I turned to the crowd and I said, "I'm not brains.

I'm Gavin."

And I've never been to America.

And so we got through that show.

“I came off, but I just went to the dressing room”

and kind of couldn't really deal with everyone wanting to ask more questions. So I head in there until everyone was gone and asked not to cut the back. And when I snuck out of the back,

there was about 200 kids. And I thought they wanted more answers. What happened, you know? And I just kind of started to apologize and then they started to wrap my lyrics back to me.

They cared only about the lyrics. Billion Gavin didn't speak for years. But in 2012, they briefly got back together to record and finally release a syllable and brains album.

They called it dirty rotten scoundrels. Gavin went on to have his own music career. He's working on an album right now. So yeah, I'm just having a lot of fun. And you're doing it all now in a Scottish accent.

Yeah, or whatever accent hits me. (upbeat music) Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer.

Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie's a Gico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed in engineered by Veronica Seminetti. Julia and Alexander makes original illustrations

for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at This is Criminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at This is Criminal.com/Newsletter. Gavin Bain has written a book about syllable and brains. It's called California Schemen.

A movie about their story with the same title is coming out this year. We hope you'll join our membership program, Criminal Plus. Now on Patreon. It's the very best way to support our work.

You can listen to Criminal This is Love and Febery's Ministry without any ads. Plus you'll get bonus episodes behind the scenes photos and videos and you'll be able to talk directly with us and other criminal listeners.

Learn more and sign up at patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at This is Criminal and Instagram and TikTok at Criminal_podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Okay, Nikola, Chris Fraude.

What brings us more?

Moments, I check this cut.

Oh, huh? How long has it been?

Bring them 150 € more a year.

Yeah, right, but how do you know what? Why?

Why do you show your performance live?

That's just the story for all of you. I've asked you.

“Twenty-four-seven and unbeamable German,”

that's just the one who understands us. Steuernily? Say! With this story, now you can try it.