On My Radar: Jams x Bash

What’s the most creative advertising idea you’ve seen recently?

Jams: I really dug the album rollout for Tyler The Creator's Call Me If You Get Lost album. It was pitch perfect character development and storytelling. It was all an impressive extension of a great album. The new Apple AirPods commercial, directed by Megaforce [below], is super-dope. Nike's Feel It To Believe out of home campaign for the Invincible 3 was really, really fun. The animation work is just fantastic. It reminds me of a Tex Avery cartoon but it's a shoe. I'm really stoked about the creative that Tremaine Emory is doing for his Denim Tears brand. It’s beautiful work. Whenever I need some inspiration I rewatch the Ikea Lamp commercial, directed by Spike Jonze. It's probably my favourite spot of all time and reminds me why I wanted to make commercials in the first place.

Bash: The other day I saw a Mini Cooper with billowing eyelashes. I know this isn’t a recent idea but it made me smile, so it counts. 

What website(s) do you use most regularly?

Bash: Broadway World, because I can’t figure out how to turn the notifications off and don’t know how it found me in the first place. AI has surely kickstarted our (re)enslavement with those damned notifications… but I love a bit of theatre, so once every 300 interruptions it has something for me. 

Jams: If it's not doing research for a job, it's probably Sterogum or Hodinkee. A buddy just turned me on to The New Commute. It's a music curation site with great vibes. 

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought?

Bash: A light projector for my daughter. It came with dinosaurs, stars and sea creatures. She still flips out if I leave the room at bedtime, so we watch them together. But if anyone wants to buy me that new Apple Watch, I’d love to use it for my triathlon in September. 

Jams: I got a new Theragun. Perfect recovery tool after a long day on set.

What product could you not live without?

Jams: My watch. I love and collect mechanical watches. I'm naked without one. 

Bash: Jams gives me stuff (hats, compasses, moisturisers) so I just use that until it literally falls apart or empties out… these items could be mistaken for such a thing. I lose damn near everything, instantly, so I don’t have an attachment to any single item. Intermittently through the day I will blurt out “KEYS, WALLET, CELLPHONE” which always gets a look on set. Every quarter I have my wallet handed back to me by some strange New Yorker, which invigorates my compassion for humanity. Thank you, New York.

What’s the best film you’ve seen over the last year?

Jams: Last year I really loved Decision To Leave, EO, Down with the King and Top Gun Maverick. Recently, I saw Air and thought it was fantastic. 

Bash: I loved so many of the films this past year. Like Jams, Decision to Leave was among my favourites. There’s a scene in a fish market that is just masterful.

What film do you think everyone should have seen?

Jams: Punch Drunk Love; it's such a perfect movie about being imperfect.  

Bash: A Richard Curtis film. Pick one. Explore the light, because darkness is coming, always. I just got this answer from a headline in a notification.

What’s your preferred social media platform?

Bash: IG BABY!! Because I have a timer on it that kicks me off, just before I get sucked into a scrolling abyss. I follow a lot of crafts people, painters, and illustrators so it’s always been something of a catalogue for me. There’s also some ignorant stuff on there that never fails to brighten one's day. 

Jams: Instagram. It’s the one that's in that goldilocks zone for me.

What’s your favourite TV show?

Jams: I watch a lot of TV. Two of my current favourites are Andor and Shrinking. I spent a good part of last year writing a TV show with my writing partner and that really inspired me to look back at the TV that shaped my view of comedy growing up. I went back and watched the entire run of both Martin and Frasier, which are very very different shows but some of the best TV comedy writing of all time. I just finished re-watching a Rob Lowe sitcom from 2015 called The Grinder, the comedy on that show is so specific, biting and hilarious. No one watched it at the time and it only got one season, but it's really brilliant. 

Bash: Atlanta. It’s great.

What’s your favourite podcast?

Bash: My Momma Told Me, with Langston Kerman and David Gborie, is funny as hell. Since I’ve become a father I don’t want to go anywhere, ever. That’s right, I like to be in the house. So, when I do have to go out, while en route to wherever, I listen to this for a mood shift and it works every time. 

Jams: Monocle's The Stack. I'm a big print magazine junkie. It's a podcast about all things printed media. I also love Wrist Check, which is a dope watch collecting show, and I recently finished The Secret History Of Hollywood's series on Hitchcock's entire filmography. It's incredibly nerdy and detailed but I really dug every second of it. 

What show/exhibition has most inspired you recently?

Bash: Regeneration: Black Cinema from 1898-1971, at the Academy Museum. 

Jams: This artist named King Rello has a gallery in Chicago called Cherry Mountain Arts. It's a dope space in River West that features Rello's art but also works by other Black artists. I picked up a few pieces when I was there and have them hanging in my office. I'm also hugely inspired by Kayla Mahaffey. She had a show in LA a few years ago that I think about daily.

If you could only listen to one music artist from now on, who would it be?

Jams: I don't think I could. That's an impossible question. But if I have to choose it would probably be late 90s rap, or maybe Neptune's pop music from the early naughts, or the Nu-disco/indie rock stuff coming out of NY in the mid-00's. It's really an impossible choice. 

Bash: Ray Charles. If it has to be one artist, I still want to access my full range of feeling. From tears to the biggest joy, on the keys, sax, or singing, Ray has all of it for me.