My own experience at the podcast
Nestled inside a corner office of a huge empty cold warehouse, was where the laughs were had and where the podcast currently lived. I was fortunate to be invited out to this podcast on a whim on a Monday night and took up the spontaneous opportunity. They go by La Clika Podcast, which consists of childhood friends who wanted to do a podcast. At first, it was based on their life experiences, and music was a strong staple in those stories. Even though the topic of life experiences filtered out from the podcast, the music stayed as their main discussions. La Clika welcomed me to their table and I was warmly offered a chilled tall can and a spot with a mic and headset placement. In the beginning, I was just observant. A little too shy to say anything because I didn’t think I would have anything to offer music wise to the recording. Rick, the producer of the show, sat at the head of the table with his sound board and equipment, doing checks before starting. I sat in-between two other podcasters who also had drinks and were just shooting the shit and joking around, waiting on Rick to start.
They were all catching up and I was mostly a wallflower but they kindly included me into their conversations to feel welcomed, which I definitely did after a while. I come to find out some of them grew up with the local punk scene from back in the day and all had impressive stories about shows they attended and shows they did. One of the podcasters leaned over to me to ask what I thought so far of the podcast group and without hesitation replied “I feel like I am hanging out with my cousins”. It was a sweet feeling to have with a group of complete strangers. The guests they interviewed that night were from the hip-hop scene and the whole session was a compete flow of information of upcoming music, jokes, and introspective questions about the present state of music, what the future might hold for the hip-hop scene and what they were currently working on musically.
Once the mics were cut, everyone started getting up and moved out to the wide space of the warehouse where they were talking about their plans for 2020 for the space. I was able to have a tour of the location and hear these group of friends bounce ideas off each other in rapid sequence. By this point, I was already half-way done smoking a cigarette, chatting it up with some guy with a Pomeranian that happened to be the daughter of that one other pom that was featured in some Hollywood dog movie. I honestly don’t remember so much towards the end because, well, I was already pretty buzzed and my indication of that was that cigarette because I actually don’t smoke.
La Clika made my first podcast experience feel welcoming, but as well, made me feel informed with music and kind of at home too. The brews, the jokes, the discussions, and the company made my uneventful day special and honestly, what could have been a better experience than that on a Monday night?