Rob Dew Guest Appearance and Austin Elite Culture
Rob Dew joins the program from the Texas Hill Country to discuss media deconstruction and upcoming "October surprises." The conversation covers the elitism of Austin, Texas, and the logistical frustrations of the Austin City Limits (ACL) music festival. A comparison is drawn between the spiritual atmosphere of local drum circles and the drug-heavy culture of Burning Man.
rob dew· austin· hill country· acl festival· burning man· fredericksburg
00:00 We are creative people. Adam Curry. It's Sunday, October 4th, 2026. This is your award-winning Kipo Nation Media Assassination Episode 1909. This is No Agenda. That's right. It's Sunday, everybody, coming to you from the heart of the Texas Hill Country here in Fredericksburg, Texas. Another multi-hour media deconstruction lined up for you. Oh, man, we're looking for an October surprise now, aren't we? Coming up within just 90 seconds, he's back once again. The one and only Mr. Rob Dew, Sir Ducefer, ladies, gentlemen, and trolls of Keep My
00:45 Sir Witnessing the Arrival of a Mere Man. You are witnessing an event. A man whose reputation arrived five minutes before he did. Standing before you with no need for further introduction.
01:55 Sir Rob Dew has entered the building. Hi, everybody. Yeah, you got to hit us with a lisp. Hello. I'm here. Oh, my goodness. Was that Melo D? No, that was Sir John. He came in all of a sudden. Oh, goodness. Yeah, it's like the Suno V6 or whatever. And it's interesting. It's interesting. You know, the AI is going to take over, definitely, but I'm doing my best to try and hold them off as much as possible. No, please. Just wave the flag already, man. Use it. Use it or lose it. I'm telling you. Yeah, everyone's on. Well, you know, there's some interesting stuff about AI and music and what it could do.
02:40 Yeah, and what you're in, you're in the studio, right? You're recording stuff now? I'm recording stuff. We've been recording for the past month. Did some more recording yesterday. We're at this thing in New Orleans, and one of the bunch of lawyers doing presentations. Wait, wait, wait. What are you doing with what are you doing with a bunch of lawyers in New Orleans? That sounds bad. Well, that's how presidents get killed. Exactly. Oh, yeah. Absolutely right. But what happened was they're saying, well, we don't know. There's no precedent set yet. So say you make an AI song and you're making money off of it. At some point, these companies can go, hey, you owe us money. You made it with our system. We own your song, actually.
03:21 We're just going to take it. So they said that hasn't happened yet, but that could happen. So that's something to look out for if you are making money with this music. That could be an end around for because lawyers love to find money in certain places. If anyone comes for your stuff, man, you just call the suits and boots and you get Constitutional Lawyer Rob on the case. You'll be okay. Well, I'm not worried about my stuff. Definitely not worried about my, but there are people that I know that do this a lot. And we had a guy with us who all of his songs are AI that he's made and he sings to with them. He does the singing, but all the instrumentation is AI. And he didn't seem worried about it.
04:00 Well, from what I understand, the Suno deal is, you know, all these labels came after them and they said, okay, well, we'll make it like this because, you know, apparently they have technology. They can detect exactly where certain pieces of sound came from. I don't know if it's composition, but there's got to be some recorded sound, obviously. And so they have some way of calculating which of the publishing companies owns what. And so Suno had to cut this deal with him so that you cannot, you can no longer download songs. You can only download them once or twice if you pay an extra amount per month.
04:42 But what I'm seeing, because a while back, and I forget what the reason was, but John and I were talking like, oh, I'll put No Agenda back on Spotify. And so put it back on Spotify and every other episode gets taken down. And it's always like music violation, music violation. And they have, you know, I'm sure they're robots. are just looking for any music and just, let's better be safe than sorry. But it's always for end of show mixes. Right. And right. Yeah, exactly. So today it won't be. Oh, if you follow my protocol, I have two into show mixes that I recorded myself. Oh, boy. I didn't even see them in your EOS. Yeah. And it had to do with a trip I took.
05:24 I took a one-night little trip with a friend, a friend of mine, who's in the band. And he was leading a drum circle. And he's like, hey, you want to come? And he's like, I have an extra ticket. And I said, sure. Is it a drum circle where you smoke weed and sit in a circle and hit the drums? Is that basically the drum circle? That is one version of a drum circle. There wasn't a lot of weed being passed around at this. That's a bogus drum circle. That one's no good. You should get your money back. Well, you know, I didn't have to pay anything, but it was called Medicine for the People. And it's sort of like a gathering. It's a very hippie gathering. And I'm thinking there's going to be weed everywhere. And these people like to mix weed with tobacco. That's their smoke it, man.
06:09 That's it. Right. It's a European thing. Yeah. Because when I was in Switzerland, that's how they smoked it. Yeah, it's called a spliff. That's exactly right. And so he was, this guy actually started the drum circle for this group. He kind of led it for years and now it's huge. And so he's still there. And I brought my little, I have a gourd drum, which is basically a hollowed out gourd. And so it's very lightweight. Most of these drums that people carry around, you know, you have to have a wagon and pull these things because they're so damn big and heavy. But I have my little gourd drum and I'm just, but I saw, but on my way to the drum circle, there's this tent and I hear this beautiful flute music playing.
06:49 I'm like, oh, what's this? I go in there and everybody's laying down like meditating. And this dude's playing flute and he's got sound bowls. His girlfriend or wife, I guess is his wife, is this basically doing the sound bowl. This is a satanic circle, is what I'm hearing. No, I don't, you know what? I never heard people talk about God so much. Oh, really? Oh, okay. I'm serious. I'm serious. It was a lot of praise the Lord, praise Jesus. I never, and I was surprised at how many times I'd heard it. I actually started taking a mental note. By like the fourth time, I'm like, this is getting interesting. Wow. Didn't think, but I think the hippie kind of culture is a little more, they're a little more God-based than like your typical raving culture if you were to go to like a raving ceremony.
07:33 You mean Burning Man, yes. Yeah, if you were to go to Burning Man, there's not a lot of God talk there. I think they kick out the God people if they start talking too much. No God on the plya. Exactly. Exactly. Only dust and whatever drugs you can find. Mud. And mud. Yeah. Well, speaking of mud, we got ACL this weekend, and it's a mud ball. Oh, my God. Tina said to me, said, you could not pay me to go there. We've been, I think, we went together twice, I think. And even then, it was like, you know, when you see teenage girls just fall flat on their face, be a blackout drunk. It's like, I'm too old for that, man. I don't understand how they could get that drunk because you got to wait 45 minutes to get a beer.
08:18 You got to wait 45 minutes to get to the bathroom. So I don't know how you even watch music at these things. Unless you have the, what is the, it's such an elitist thing, like the golden pass. You pay $1,200 and then you get the special. It's basically to get access to a bar. Right. And then you get some seats up front. I think it's become Austin is elite. Oh, big time. Let's face it. Austin's. That's why I live in Driftwood. Yeah, exactly. You got to get out. Get out of Austin. So I'm looking at your clip list and, man, I can just tell you put together a no-agenda list of clips. I mean, I am loving what, of course, rules are. I don't listen to anything beforehand. But since you had such a grand entrance, you threw off your dressing gown.
