Navigating Utah’s Legal Landscape with Kurt London + Boston’s Debut Album & Rock Trivia

Jared Correia (00:00:00):
Hello everybody. We’ve got a show that promises to be at least mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. I’m your host, Jared Correia. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. Let me tell you, this episode is going to rock literally. For the monologue, I’ve got another perfect album for you. In the interview, we’ve got the biggest fan of The Rock, the actor and professional wrestler, Kurt London, the lawyer of London Harker Injury Law. And in the counter program, we tee Kurt up for the rock trivia. Now, let’s enter the arena of Arena Rock.

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Before we get to our newest perfect album, let’s recap our current collection In Chronological Order. Paul McCartney’s Ram, 1971. The Who, Who’s Next? 1971. Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown, 1974. Billy Joel’s Street Life Serenade, 1974. Billy Joel’s Innocent Man, 1983. Paul Simon’s Graceland, 1986. Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever in 1988. Michael Penn’s March, 1989. That was the last one we did. Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne from 1993. Snoop Dogg’s Doggy Style from 1993. Sheryl Crow’s The Globe Sessions, 1998. Cole plays Viva Lavita or Death and All His Friends 2008 and Taylor Swift’s Folklore, bringing us to the 2020s. Where do we go from here? How about my own backyard? Let’s talk about a band from the Boston area that was originally called Mother’s Milk, but whose name was changed to Boston before the release of its debut album. Also called Boston. Hell yeah, that’s a lot of Boston pa.

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How do you like them apples?

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I still think the Who’s Next also a perfect album for me. It’s probably the greatest rock album ever, but danged if Boston’s debut album isn’t number two with a bullet. Though there’s a greater variety of songs on Who’s Next, Boston, the album just fucking rips appropriately like the latest Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Netflix movie. This album is less than 40 minutes long and only has eight songs of just two types. One’s with searing electric guitars and organs and one with searing electric guitars and organs with prominent acoustic guitars also. The sound is fucking crisp on this album. It’s like the record was designed in a lab, which I guess it kind of was. Now, the vibes surrounding the band Boston at this time are immaculate. This is the most mid – 70s looking group ever. Take a look at some images on Google. Butterfly collars.

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They’re popping. Drummer Siphasian has the greatest white masro in recorded history. Brad Delp’s perm has its own atmosphere. Tom Schultz is out there looking like Rick Ocasio’s creepier brother. Actually, no one looks that bad. I take it back. I own a copy of an original pressing of the Boston album in part because it has some of the best cover art that has ever been done. There’s really no album artwork like it. There are UFOs in space, excuse me, UAPs that look like overturned guitarists with blue flames that are either powering the ships or being used as tractor beams, I can’t tell, shooting out from the sound tolls. It’s just an iconic album cover. So much so that Boston, the group, used the imagery repeatedly on later records. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I guess. But it’s also kind of appropriate because listening to this album with your headphones on or driving in your car with the windows rolled down on a summer day in the mid 1970s must have felt like an alien experience.

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The music on this album is of a different nature and production quality than anything else you’ll hear from this era. And while it is about the music, and I’ll get there, trust me, I need to talk to you about how Boston the album was made first.

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There are a whole host of reasons why Boston’s debut album is not only a perfect album, but maybe the greatest first album ever made. It’s still the second bestselling debut ever after Guns N’ Roses appetite for destruction and also a pretty good album. Tom Schultz, the multi-instrumentalist and band leader was pretty much Boston in kind of the same way that Adam Young is Owl City. Well, almost. Schultz did everything but sing, which was left out to Brad Delp, the band’s lead singer who carries significant vocal range. The rest of the band was something of a revolving door until they locked in after the first album hit. Schultz had essentially been working at Boston’s debut album since the late 1960s when he was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT for the homies, writing music. In fact, the bones of the Boston album were largely finished, including whole songs by 1973, essentially three years before the album’s proper release when Schultz created a demo tape to circulate to record executives.

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In fact, when CBS under the epic records banner eventually bid on signing Boston, there was concern that Schultz was just some dude in his basement producing music and that maybe there was no band at all. Of course, that was kind of the situation. Spite attempts by CBS executives to get the band into a studio on the West Coast with the company’s handpicked producers that never fully materialized. Record executive John Boylan ran interference for Schultz, such that Schultz was basically able to actually record the entire album in his watertown, Massachusetts basement, playing pretty much all the instruments and double tracking Delt’s vocals, which were recorded elsewhere. That level of precision without the interference from label engineers and producers likely the main reason why the Boston sound was so different. Even so, despite the fact that Tom Schultz produced like Brian Wilson, Boston became a very successful live band selling out major arenas as a headliner.

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But the original Boston album was like a comet with a long tail. Schultz was such a perfectionist that he felt rushed in producing Boston’s next album, Don’t Look Back, which was released in 1978. Nonetheless, it was pretty well received also. Also, Schultz and Delp were not into touring, which would lead to additional revenue and which record executives would feel was necessary to support new records. So Schultz actually placed a band on hiatus in 1980, only four years after their smash hit debut. And after that, both album releases and tours became very sporadic. Despite that fact, to the extent that FM radio still exists, pretty much every song on the Boston album is in regular rotation and the record has sold almost 20 million copies to date. The group also still has some 12 million monthly listeners for Spotify. Not bad for a band and a record that is even older than me.

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So it’s probably about time to talk about the music. Every track on this album is a fucking triumph. Every song just goes so hard. You don’t even have any time to catch your breath. It definitely sounds like some dude in Watertown was slaving over these cuts for like a decade before releasing them to the general public. This is some pressure makes diamond kind of shit. This is the progressive rock album that still rocks. It’s kind of like in the spirit of the Alan Parsons project, but without all the water gogs, just guitars, drums and organs. Tom Schultz was out to make the perfect pop rock album and the numbers as well as the judgment of history pretty much says that he succeeded. Let’s go through the tracks in detail as a perfectionist like Schulz would want us to do, I think. This is an album full of great songs, but foreplay/long time is far and away the best track in my opinion.

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This is a two part song with a lengthy intro that is almost eight minutes long, my kind of track. It’s the reason why there were only three songs on side one of the original LP with the other five getting pushed aside two. When it was released as a single for the radio, one of only three original singles off this album, though you’ve heard every song from this album on the radio, I would conjecture. It was cut down to about three minutes and the intro was locked off. But that doesn’t do this track justice. It has everything you want out of a mid 1970s rock song. The intro is called Foreplay, which is just a tremendous pun. You see there’s the music part, then there’s the part about the fucking or the part before the fucking technically. Just great stuff. The intro sounds a lot like yes with sweeping organs and some drum support.

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It’s pretty similar to roundabout, which would make sense because that song came out in 1972 when Schultz was already actively working on this album and producing the demo tracks. It’s just got a harder edge and sounds more like a rock song, even in the intro portion, which takes up the first two minutes and 25 seconds or thereabouts. After that, you get into the main track Long Time, which is perhaps another sexual pun. It’s been a long time. I don’t know. And it is very much on at that point. They retain some elements to the organ, which are now in the background, but this portion of the track kicks off with a whaling guitar solo and then Dubs vocals come back in as the drums enter the picture. Just amazing. Amazing shit. Then for the hell of it, we’re also adding some acoustic guitars and the iconic hand clapping, just a buffet of musical elements generating a rock symphony.

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This is kind of an elevated road song where the singer is sort of like, it’s time for me to move on. But what separates it is that the instrumentation is just crazy. In the liner notes for this track, it actually says that Schultz plays the guitar and offers top secret space pedal effects. I did not make that up. Again, this is like music from a spacecraft being gifted to the human race or maybe the opposite. Perhaps this is something we can give to the aliens. Maybe the guitar solo at 5:30 is what the space effects part is referring to. It gets so fucking loud, you can hardly hear it. It’s like that scene in Back to the Future where Huey Lewis tells Marty McFly his band just too darn loud. A few months back, my son and I were driving back from a basketball tournament and he played the same album eight times in a row in the car.

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And I was like, “Little bro, if we don’t listen to something else, I’m going to smash my head into the steering wheel.” So taking a break from some drill rap, which I don’t dislike, I put the full length version of this song on. He was like, “What’s foreplay?” And I was like, “Nevermind about that right now.” He was incredulous during that intro, which I figured he wouldn’t like. But when the guitars kicked in, he really started listening and actually continued to listen without complaint or comment for the rest of the track, which is a rare thing. And when I had finished, I said, “Well, his response was that it was pretty fucking good. Now that staying power for a song that came out almost 40 years before he was born, then we immediately returned to his album, though it was a nice respite in between for an old man.

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Let Me Take You Home Tonight is a song that ends the album. And although it rocks pretty hard, it’s the closest thing to a true ballad on this album, in my opinion. Though other tracks are certainly in that range. That’s what the first half is. This song is a little different than the rest of the songs on this album. In part, I think because it was the only track that was not written by Schultz. This is a Brad Delp composition. This one is spiritually aligned with foreplay as it’s about the character trying to take a lady home for the evening, presumably not a lady of the evening. This is effectively the late night version of Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band, which was a song that also came out this year in 1976. There were a lot of signs about fucking in 1976. Starland vocal band, a one-hit wonder, beat Boston out for best new artists at the Grammys in 1977 as it turned out.

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Fun fact for you. This song clocks in at about four minutes and 46 seconds and up through most of the first three and a half minutes, it sounds like it wants to ramp up in intensity with electric guitars peaking here and there throughout. But things really start to kick off at the three and a half minute mark where this converts to a straight rock song. The drums really pick up and the guitars start to kick in. This is very similar to the stuff Chicago was doing in the ’70s too, where the speed and intensity start to go crazy at the tail end of a track. Let Me Tae You Home Tonight is a lot like Feeling Stronger Every Day, which is maybe the best Chicago song. But Let Me Take Yo Home Tonight is the best song, second best song in fact, just on this album.What a record.

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Rock and roll band wasn’t even a single from the album. And I kind of got off of it for a little while there because I felt it was overplayed on the radio. And that’s just a testament to the quality of this album, that a non-single track would end up being overplayed on the radio. That’s crazy. This song is fucking all business and it may be the most famous track on the album. It’s kind of got this hippie thesis of the crowd waiting on the band to come out on stage to deliver love in music, but then bashes you over the head with some savage guitar work. I love how they piped the crowd noise into this track and the introductory guitar part is amazingly grimy. Delp gets to explore his vocal range quite a bit in this song as well. People around here love this song in part because it makes specific New England references.

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Dancing in the streets of Hyannis. That’s in Cape Cod. Playing for a week in Rhode Island. If Boston makes enthemic rock songs, this is its best anthem. This song is about playing music, man, and how awesome it is would people actually listen to and apreciate your shit. Then of course, Detectional Rock Band actually gets signed by a record label and you know how that goes. If you want to know more about how that goes, listen to Success Story, which is a who song about the aftermath. This is just a tight workman-like rock song. Smoking is another great song about rock bands playing rock and roll music that gets right into it and just barrels down the tracks like a freight train. This is probably my favorite type of song of all the types of songs. Now, I mentioned that the songs on the Boston album are not really as diverse as some of the things that you see the who doing.

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But I have to give credit to the lengthy organ solo in this song, which is very similar to what Traffic might have done. That’s sort of back to the prog rock, hard rock thing they do regularly on this album. Those two things are just bouncing off of each other. This song probably features the best interplay in that vein. But then we’re back to the guitars and the drums and the outro. This is like a progressive rock sandwich where there’s progressive rock in the middle and then it’s a standard rock song at the front and in the back. But when it’s really cooking, there’s a little linear skinner in here too. Even the theme of this track gives you a little bit of a southern rock feel. Now those four songs are my top four songs on the album because they’re the hardest rocking. Sorry, I just like dudes shredding on guitars.

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But while the remainder of the songs from the record are in something of a lower key, they’re still excellent. After all, this is a perfect album. More than a feeling is the lead track on the album and the first single. The only single that came out in 1976, which is the year the album was released. This was meant to be the centerpiece of the record and was the introduction for most people at that time to the band. It’s super duper catchy. As a song about a man who is reminiscing over his old favorite song and the girl he lost. Yes, as you might have anticipated, both Alicia More Than Feelings. This one’s a nostalgia fest, people. And the lyric, I see my Maryanne Walking Away is pretty much imprinted on music fans’ brains. Although the songs are pretty different, Schultz’s inspiration for this song was The Left Bank’s Walk Away Renee, which is itself an amazing tune and from which he borrows some chord progressions in fact.

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And it’s true that some of the Boston stuff does sound like an updated version of the British invasion rock bands like The Kings. Although this is an electric guitar heavy track, especially in Parse, Schulz, the master of hand claps and rock songs, deploys those again to great efect. The outro on this song is practically a festival, which is something Boston achieved regularly on this album. In its latest collection of the 500 greatest songs of all time, Rolling Stone Magazine bumped more than the feeling from number 500 to number 212. Hitch A Ride comes in next on my listing of album tracks. This is a hitchhiking song, which is something no one does anymore because it can be a very good way to get fucking murdered. There’s a lot of James Gang influence on this album. That was Joe Walsh’s band Before the Eagles as that was one of Schultz’s favorite bands at the time.

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And this song is sort of reminiscent of certain of the traveling songs and the James Gang albums like Dreaming in the Country. At about the 1:30 mark here, there’s some unique interplay between the organs and the drums, which is excellent. So all kinds of little moments like that on this record. Then the singing ends abruptly at about the 2:30 mark. After that, hand claps, they’re back and we’re into another suite with dueling guitars soloing that plays out this track. This is the section that really elevates this song. The guitar parts at the end are just brilliant. Perhaps appropriately, this song’s about riding in the car. And this is another album track that you can and should listen to at a significant volume with your windows rolled down and the sunroof or moon roof open. If your neighbors are cool, they won’t even care. Peace of mind was the third and last single off the record and is another song that is frequently played on classic rock radio, which now also includes Nirvana inexplicably.

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This is a song about how much working for the man sucks and is about Schultz’s experience being employed by Polaroid in Massachusetts. Remember Polaroid’s cameras or the film? Delp also worked in a factory in Danvers, which is a town that borders my own where he was making heating coils. The man thing was a much better gig as it turns out. Now I’m not as into the intro part of this song as I am in the bag for other songs on this album, but right about in the middle of this song, it really starts to move and the guitars get real heavy. There are some very catchy hooks here. Interestingly, Delp described this song as an example of how Schultz was able to combine Beach Boys harmonies and Led Zeppelin guitar. It’s no big deal. Although many critics viewed the lyrics as sort of trite, Schultz has the ability to create earworms that are forever memorable, like the segment that goes People Living in Competition.

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All I want is to have my peace of mind. Don’t we all? And as was almost every Boston song on this album, there’s an absolutely sick guitar solo in the middle. It’s kind of staggering to me that this is my seventh favorite song on this album, which only has eight tracks. And I can probably listen to this tune 10 times in a row without getting tired of it. Something About You is my least favorite song on the album. It doesn’t push the record out of perfect album status of course, but I do feel like it’s not as good as the others. Kind of a significant downgrade from the rest. It kind of sounds like the theme song for a television show about the 1970s. Though Big Stars track that got used for that ’70s show was pretty good too. But even so, after a little bit of a weird intro, this sounds like someone’s singing underwater, kind of like something Duran Duran would do.

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So maybe it’s ahead of its time. I don’t know. It’s got one of those classic Boston guitar riffs that make you go, all right now. Then the chorus is catchy and it’s like, oh, I don’t want to like this song, but I do. This song may also represent the best use of bass guitar on the album. And even though this is the worst song on the album, in my opinion, it was also played on classic rock radio ad nauseum. While Boston is mostly about soaring guitars, the song is also maybe Delp’s best vocal performance on the album. Now, one of the things about covering albums that came out in the mid 1970s, this year represents the 50th anniversary of this record by the way. It said all the original band members of Boston have passed away. Safer, Tom Schultz, the driving force behind the band.

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Sadly, Brad Delp committed suicide in 2007 after suffering from depression for many years. Of course, Boston’s music will live on, especially its spectacular debut album. Probably the best first album in history.

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I watched the movie Project Hail Mary this weekend, which was actually quite good. And there’s a scene where Ryan Gosling’s character looks over at some golden plaques on the wall of his spaceship, which are meant to evoke the Voyager Golden record created by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan for a NASA probe, which was a record made of actual gold so it was durable. It was meant to be played by aliens if they discovered it to give them a sense of what life is like on earth. Sadly, Carl and his team committed the broad and crazy oversight of not including a Boston track on that record when the album had just come out. But imagine being an alien, listening to this record in the vast expanse and utter quiet of space when those guitars kick in for a long time. That’ll blow your hair back if they have hair.

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Now let’s talk with Kurt London of London Harker Injury Law about the alien world of personal injury law where the money comes in after the results and where the competition is otherworldly. Buckle up bitches. Well, I’ve effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because this is a podcast. So I’m simply going to pick my nose and hope no one notices. I won’t do that. That’s gross. I would never do that. Not even in private. Don’t worry. We do have a guest. It’s Kurt London, the managing partner at London Harker Entry Law. Kurt, welcome to the show. How are you?

Kurt London (00:23:40):
I did. I’m doing well. How are you?

Jared Correia (00:23:43):
No one asked me that. I’m doing great. Thank you. I think you’re the first… I

Kurt London (00:23:48):
Was unprepared. There’s like a silence here coming down. No one’s ever asked me.

Jared Correia (00:23:53):
Tears of a clown, Kurt. Yes. Can you just confirm for the audience that this is the first time we’ve ever met or spoken in life?

Kurt London (00:24:02):
This is the first time we’ve ever spoken. I was

Jared Correia (00:24:04):
Like, I’m going to feel like a real asshole if that’s not true. But you were at Filevine Lex Summit last year and so was I, but we missed each other.

Kurt London (00:24:15):
Yeah. And my office is really close to where that was located. So we had a chance, but like ships in the night.

Jared Correia (00:24:23):
Not anymore. And I’ll see you probably next year. Okay. So I was talking to someone I know who went to Filevine last year and he talked with you. I think he was hanging out at your house for a little bit. And when I texted him and said I was going to have you on the show, this is when he texted me back. He has probably the biggest calf I have ever seen on a man. He definitely does not skip leg day. Can you confirm or deny? This is an actual text.

Kurt London (00:24:54):
If only I got this many compliments about my legs from females. It’s literally only males.

Jared Correia (00:25:01):
It’s like,

Kurt London (00:25:01):
Look at that guy’s

Jared Correia (00:25:02):
Calves.

Kurt London (00:25:03):
Yeah. I was in the airport a couple months ago going to a legal conference and someone came up to me, a man, and literally wanted to talk to me about my calves. I’m like, sorry, you what? He’s like, your calves. I’m like, oh, okay.

Jared Correia (00:25:18):
They’re sick.

Kurt London (00:25:20):
Yeah. But here’s the dirty secret. I actually almost never do leg day. I was just bored with those calves. Really? Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:25:27):
Just naturally baller calves. I’m impressed. I was going

Kurt London (00:25:30):
To ask him what your

Jared Correia (00:25:30):
Secret was, but apparently you’re born with it.

Kurt London (00:25:33):
Well, I’ve heard that short guys get nice calves because we’re always reaching for stuff on the top shelves. I mean, I’m not that short. I’m like five nine.

Jared Correia (00:25:44):
That’s not that short. That’s not even short. I mean, look at this. We got the total package here. Tall guy with great calves. Come on ladies.

Kurt London (00:25:53):
Come on. Yeah. Right? Every five years or so, I feel bad about skipping leg days so then I’ll do leg day and then I never do it again.

Jared Correia (00:26:01):
All right. Here’s the trick. Do leg day every five years. Got it.

Kurt London (00:26:05):
Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:26:06):
So we were talking about Filevine Lex Summit. Your personal injury attorney, we’ll get more into that in a second, but there are so many personal injury conferences now. It’s staggering. Do you go over them? How do you decide which ones to pick?

Kurt London (00:26:23):
So I literally have a list on my phone that I’ve made because I’ve done so much research because some of them are just like a money grab. They just want to get money and it’s pretty clear. And they’ll use the personal injury attorneys as the bait to get a bunch of vendors to come because the vendors will pay real good money to be around injury attorneys. But I try to go to like a half dozen a year and I try to rotate. And if it’s a bad one, I’ll never go back. But there’s probably 15, 20 on my list. There’s a lot.

Jared Correia (00:26:54):
Which ones do you like the best? We don’t have to talk about the shitty ones, but what one, if somebody’s like, “Well, we could. We could.”

Kurt London (00:27:02):
Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:27:04):
What are your favorites if people are like, “Ah, I want to get my roster filled out.

Kurt London (00:27:08):
” The National Trial Lawyers ones are pretty good, but those also kind of rotate. So one year they’ll be really good. The next year they’ll be mediocre. I went to the TBI med legal one a few years ago and it was fantastic. I went last year and it was subpar. So I didn’t go this year, but I heard this year was fantastic. Great Legal Marketing, which is Brian Glass and Ben Glasses. That one’s pretty good. It’s smaller. So you probably have like 200 attorneys there. PIMCOM – Intimate

Jared Correia (00:27:35):
Gathering of PI

Kurt London (00:27:36):
Attributes. Yeah. PIMCOM’s nice. That one’s in Scottsdale because it’s put on by a vendor and they don’t let other vendors in. Yep, exactly. So there’s no pitches and stuff. It’s just there to learn. They do have vendors in the hallway. That’s

Jared Correia (00:27:53):
Cool.

Kurt London (00:27:54):
Those are the ones that I go to multiple years in a row. PIMCOM and GLM. There are other ones I kind of rotate.

Jared Correia (00:27:58):
What makes a good conference for you? Is it like the speakers, the subject matter, the swag, the food?

Kurt London (00:28:08):
I’ll do anything for you and Penn.

Jared Correia (00:28:11):
I have so many branded thermoses. It’s

Kurt London (00:28:14):
Ridiculous. Yeah. That’s the new thing, right? For me, it’s the networking. And then I still want to learn. So I don’t want to go in there for a pitch slap. When I go to learn about AI, it’s not to hear about your product. It’s to learn how it works, not, “Oh my gosh, we can increase your settlements by so much. I don’t really care. I want to learn about it. ”

Jared Correia (00:28:37):
Pitch slap. I like that. That’s really good. So I know you have a really interesting story about why you started the practice. Let’s hold off on that for a second because you seem to… So I’m judging here, but you seem like a dude who decided to be a lawyer early on. Tell me if I’m wrong about that.

Kurt London (00:29:00):
Oh yeah. Super early.

Jared Correia (00:29:02):
Kindergarten?

Kurt London (00:29:04):
Yes, actually five. So yeah, kindergarten.

Jared Correia (00:29:06):
Really? So you were like, can I walk you back in history? You watched a few good men and you were like, Daniel Caffey, that’s my guy.

Kurt London (00:29:14):
Yeah. I was the game changer right there. No, my journey was a little different. I mean, my dad was a judge, so I was inundated with the law from day one.

Jared Correia (00:29:23):
How was that having a dad as a judge? Is it weird? Is it cool?

Kurt London (00:29:29):
It probably sounds a lot cooler than it is. It’s having undercover cops come to your house at two in the morning for warrants to be signed. The cops know you and your dad personally. So when you’re out doing shenanigans when you’re 16 and the cops see you, they might not pull you over, but they’ll call your dad and say, “Hey, I saw your son doing X, Y, and Z.” So I’ll walk in, “Officer so – and-so saw you driving illegally on this street.” I’m like, “Oh gosh, Judas.”

Jared Correia (00:29:57):
So it could be good or bad is what you’re telling me.

Kurt London (00:29:59):
Yeah. I Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:30:02):
So it sounds like that was not a negative experience for you because you were like, “Yeah, I want to do this early. I’m going to do it. ” And here you are, you own your own law

Kurt London (00:30:11):
Firm.

Jared Correia (00:30:12):
Congratulations. Well,

Kurt London (00:30:13):
Thanks.

Jared Correia (00:30:15):
I just saw something on LinkedIn that you posted in terms of why you started the personal injury law firm, but just for the benefit of our listeners and viewers, do you want to run through the story?

Kurt London (00:30:26):
Yeah, sure. So I was always kind of interested in personal injury because you are defending or sticking up for the victim against this gigantic corporation or the system. But while I was in prepping for law school, so the year before law school, I took off to work as a paralegal. I got in a pretty bad motorcycle accident. So Utah doesn’t have a bike law or motorcycle helmet law. So I was riding with no helmet and I was wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt and I had a really big bike. It was a Honda VTX 1800, which is like an 800 pound bike. And I was – I

Jared Correia (00:31:04):
Know nothing about motorcycles, but that is large.

Kurt London (00:31:07):
It’s a chunky bike. Yeah. Very chunky. It was like one of those things where I wanted to get the biggest motorcycle I could find kind of thing. And I was going to the gym, which is like three blocks from my house and on my way home. Yes. Not leg day. Arm day actually. But I was coming home and as I was coming home, there was a girl that was late for her shift at the Pizza Pie Cafe, shot out from an underground parking garage without looking. And she turned left right in front of me. She saw me as she was executing her turn, which is great, but the bad thing is she stopped in the middle of the road. So she was blocking both lanes. And I had a split second decision. I can either T-bone her, probably flip over the bike, break my neck, or I can slam on my brakes, lay down my bike and probably lose my leg.

(00:31:57):
So laid down my bike. We slid for about 20 feet or so. I lost consciousness. Geez. I woke up and I was looking up and she was looking out her driver window down at me, just looking at me. The first words out of my mouth is, “You told my bike.” I was so pissed.

Jared Correia (00:32:15):
I feel like that’s how you know you’re a real biker. You’re like, “How’s the bike?”

Kurt London (00:32:19):
I was so mad because I know every biker knows when you lay down your bike, your bike’s likely totaled. So that was my first thought was like, “You just totaled it. ” But I was an idiot. I didn’t have insurance. Luckily she did. I didn’t hire an attorney because the insurance adjuster told me the attorney was going to steal all the money.

Jared Correia (00:32:36):
The insurance adjuster always got your back.

Kurt London (00:32:39):
Always. Always. When I was the idiot too, I was calling the adjuster like, “I’m injured. Send me to a doctor,” thinking they’d actually help me. Wow, that sucks. Found a chiropractor on Google. Yeah. Chiropractor took advantage of me, billed up $15,000 of treatment. I settled my case. He got paid in full and I got a thousand bucks. Come to find out my back was busted, so I needed back surgery.

Jared Correia (00:33:04):
So

Kurt London (00:33:04):
That was fun.

Jared Correia (00:33:06):
How old were you when this happened?

Kurt London (00:33:08):
It was after undergrad. So I was probably I think 25 or so.

Jared Correia (00:33:14):
Wow. 25. I mean, what experience of life does anybody have at that? So you were like, “I did everything wrong that I could do wrong so now I’m going to help everybody else,” is the idea.

Kurt London (00:33:25):
Yeah. Literally, if you made a checklist of what you’re supposed to do, I literally did not do any of those things. It was like from day one, didn’t do a thing right.

Jared Correia (00:33:34):
But I mean, I’m sure that goes over really well with your clients who are like, you’ve got a personal story that you can tell them.

Kurt London (00:33:40):
Yeah. Well, during our consultation, I’m like, “Don’t be me. Here’s what I did wrong. You’re going to do everything right now. Do not do what I did.”

Jared Correia (00:33:48):
I went through it for you. Now

Kurt London (00:33:50):
Do

Jared Correia (00:33:50):
You still ride or?

Kurt London (00:33:52):
No, I have my gear still, some of my gear. I’ve wanted to get a bike again, but every time I do, I sign up a client who happened to lose a leg in a motorcycle accident or passed away.

Jared Correia (00:34:06):
Yeah. Now you’re in the minivan, right? Are you in the minivan stage of life yet? Is that right? A little bit safer.

Kurt London (00:34:12):
Not a minivan. I refuse to ride a minivan, but we got a big Tahoe. That’s what we have for the family car is a big Tahoe.

Jared Correia (00:34:18):
I’m the same way. I’m like, no minivan. I can’t go there, but I’ll buy a big ass SUV. Yeah, I’m good

Kurt London (00:34:24):
With that. Oh, for sure.

Jared Correia (00:34:25):
Minivans

Kurt London (00:34:26):
Are so practical, but they just don’t look cool.

Jared Correia (00:34:28):
Oh man, they look awful. I’d rather have a station wagon. So the other thing that’s interesting is I believe you grew up in and around Salt Lake City, right? And you’ve been kicking around in Salt Lake City for your entire life, right?

Kurt London (00:34:41):
Well, no, I actually grew up in California so I’m a transfer.

Jared Correia (00:34:44):
I grew up in California. Okay. So you went to BYU undergrad and BYU Law School. So basically where in California? Did you grow up?

Kurt London (00:34:55):
Orange County, Southern California.

Jared Correia (00:34:56):
Oh yeh. So you moved from the OC to Salt Lake City. Little bit different, right?

Kurt London (00:35:01):
The other OC, yeah.

Jared Correia (00:35:04):
But then you’re like, “I’m going to stay here. This is cool.”

Kurt London (00:35:07):
So

Jared Correia (00:35:07):
Is this one of these situations where you met somebody and settled down or was it just like, “I love Salt Lake City. It’s my jam

Kurt London (00:35:14):
Or both? Once you move to Utah, you never leave Utah. So the cost of living’s pretty reasonable. Wages are fairly high. I mean, the views are spectacular. Yes, I

Jared Correia (00:35:23):
Can attest to that.

Kurt London (00:35:25):
It also didn’t hurt that I married a girl from Utah and girls from Utah never want to leave Utah. So once that happens, you’re stuck no matter what.

Jared Correia (00:35:35):
It’s hard to find that second drink in Utah. I found the first one they’re okay with, but the second shot, not so much.

Kurt London (00:35:43):
Our liquor laws. Yeah. Our liquor laws. It’s like you have to plan ahead because our state liquor stores too are government runs. So that’s always fun to close on holidays. Oh,

Jared Correia (00:35:54):
I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, you got to plan ahead.

Kurt London (00:35:58):
If you drink, you have to be a planner.

Jared Correia (00:36:02):
Yes. And if you drink, you can only plan for so long.

Kurt London (00:36:07):
Yeah,

Jared Correia (00:36:07):
Exactly. What’s the legal scene like out there in Salt Lake City? You find the attorneys to be innovative, interesting? What kind of practice areas are popping? What’s it like?

Kurt London (00:36:17):
Oh, we have a really weird mix because we are like a good old boy state still where everything’s kind of the 1950s culturally. But then we also have like Silicon Slopes, which is all AI companies like Filevine.

Jared Correia (00:36:29):
Right. And you got big companies out there with huge sales divisions like Podium and the

Kurt London (00:36:34):
Sales folks

Jared Correia (00:36:34):
Crazy.

Kurt London (00:36:36):
Exactly. So it’s kind of a weird mix and the attorneys are also a weird mix as well. So personal injury in and of itself, I don’t know a lot of attorneys who have implemented AI or made the switch yet. Really? Probably because a lot of the companies are here and they just pitch us all the time.

Jared Correia (00:36:54):
Yeah.

Kurt London (00:36:54):
They’re like,

Jared Correia (00:36:55):
Okay, enough. You know what?

Kurt London (00:36:57):
I’m not

Jared Correia (00:36:57):
Going to use that just to

Kurt London (00:36:58):
Strike you. Exactly. But we do have massive law firms that have come into town since COVID that are really tech driven. So it’s a really weird mix right now.

Jared Correia (00:37:08):
I feel like the city’s really grown of recent vintage and especially since COVID.

Kurt London (00:37:15):
Yep.

Jared Correia (00:37:17):
Okay. So one thing about Utah that I find interesting is you’ve got this ABS kind of regulatory sandbox with the Supreme Court and that is being sunset next year. Do you have thoughts on that? What happened there? We’re doing the ABS thing. We’re not doing the ABS thing. Oh my gosh.

Kurt London (00:37:34):
Do we have thoughts?

Jared Correia (00:37:36):
I’ll clear out. You just explained the studio

Kurt London (00:37:38):
Space. Yeah, too many. Yeah. How much time do we have here? The Supreme Court kind of railroaded that through the Utah Supreme Court and the personal injury attorneys tried to have meetings with them to discuss our concerns because their issue was access to justice, which is fair, but that only impacts usually like bankruptcy, family law, landlord tenant, not personal injury. And when you add that much money and reduce those rules to personal injury, it’s like gasoline on the fire. And we tried to warn them what would happen. And all the corruption that we warned them about is what exactly happened. So after like two years, the Supreme Court clamped down really hard on the sandbox and now it’s basically shut. So there’s only probably 15, 20 law firms in the actual sandbox right now.

Jared Correia (00:38:33):
So once it sunsets, what happens to those law firms? Do you know? Are they out of business?

Kurt London (00:38:39):
That’s always been the question. I don’t know. I have no idea. The issue’s always been regulation. So you add these rules that allow non-attorneys to practice law, but they can’t be regulated because the bar has no authority over them. The Supreme Court has no regulatory mechanism. So it’s like –

Jared Correia (00:38:55):
That’s so

Kurt London (00:38:56):
Interesting. They can keep practicing because no one has been regulating them in the first place.

Jared Correia (00:39:02):
So what happened basically was unscrupulous law firms come in, they’re like, “It’s on now. We can do literally whatever we want. ” And then I never though of Salt Lakes Wild Times like that, but here we are and now shut

Kurt London (00:39:14):
Down. They try to be edgy with the tech stuff. So it’s like that was one of their projects. And it didn’t help that some of the players pushing this also had financial interests waiting for them after it passed.

Jared Correia (00:39:30):
I’m sure. Yeah. Private equity is known to be on the up and up as you know. Yeah. Yep. All right. Let’s move back to your firm for a second. Correct me if I’m wrong on any of this stuff, but I think you’ve been around for a few years at this point.

Kurt London (00:39:46):
Yeah. We’re hitting our third year here in September.

Jared Correia (00:39:49):
So you had worked for other firms previously and then you decided to open your own law firm with a partner. What goes into a decision like that? That’s a big step.

Kurt London (00:39:58):
For me, it was actually pretty easy. I felt like I’d hit a glass ceiling. I was the highest earner or producer in my law firm. My philosophy on running a case is very different where I felt like we need to litigate if we need to litigate. A lot of firms don’t want to litigate. They just want to settle and take their pennies today.

Jared Correia (00:40:17):
Yeah. Right.

Kurt London (00:40:18):
That was not my philosophy. So it was really an easy decision. It was just finding the partner and the financial situation to make that happen because with personal injury, you need a runway. You sign up a case today, you’re not going to get paid for six months on the small case a year, two years. Utah’s got a four year statute. Some cases it’s five, six years.

Jared Correia (00:40:40):
And if you go on a trial and you’re a trial

Kurt London (00:40:42):
Firm,

Jared Correia (00:40:42):
Then it’s even longer. Yeah.

Kurt London (00:40:44):
Exactly. And I knew that leaving my old firm, I wouldn’t be able to take any cases with me, even my own personal referrals. So I was going to be starting out with zero. So it was a situation where I need to find a partner that we had the right philosophy and the right financial situation to be able to start off with a big runway.

Jared Correia (00:41:05):
So how’d you pick the partner then? Because that’s a big question. It is not easy to launch a business with another human who has a say in what you’re doing. Seriously.

Kurt London (00:41:16):
Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:41:18):
I mean, it all sounds good in the abstract, but then when you get into it, you’re like, “What is this ahole’s problem?” So how did you make that decision? How do you vet somebody?

Kurt London (00:41:27):
Yeah. So I had the pleasure, I guess, of vetting and being vetted by my partner for over a decade. So I’ve known Bronson, my partner since law school. And we have been in communication and talking with each other since that time. And it was like a year or two before we opened our law firm. Our questions and discussions were getting deeper on how to run a law firm, philosophies on different situations. So really we had vetted it just right. And the nice thing is Bronson loves the backend business stuff, balancing our IOLTA account, doing payroll. I hate that stuff. I just want to sue the insurance companies. And he hates that stuff. So I literally run the law firm. I do all the legal stuff. I make sure we’re litigating and suing people and he makes sure we’re getting our business license renewed every year and the payroll’s being paid.

(00:42:20):
So he hates what I do. I hate what he does. So it’s a perfect symbiotic relationship.

Jared Correia (00:42:25):
Let me ask you, this may be more of a Bronson question. We’ll see. But you’ve grown the business fairly successfully in the few years it’s been open. I mean, you got a decent number of attorneys working for you and staff. So I found that one of the issues with law firms I talk to is the talent acquisition piece of it. Finding good lawyers, good paralegals is really hard. Did you find that to be the case as well? And then how do you overcome that?

Kurt London (00:42:51):
So we haven’t really run into that because of my networking. I network a ton and we always kind of have a pool of attorneys or paralegals that we are keeping a warm relationship for when we have the right time to onboard them.

Jared Correia (00:43:05):
It’s a smart way to do it.

Kurt London (00:43:08):
So when we’re ready to hire, we basically already have people we already know, like, and trust. We also have an interesting interviewing process where we do three interviews. My first interview is with myself and my head paralegal. The next interview is just with the team members. So it’s the paralegals, you’re in a room of 10 other people. And then the last one is with my partner, Bronson. And what we’re looking for is a personality match because most things can be taught and learned, but really work sucks as it is. Working in a law firm, I don’t care how awesome your law firm is, it still sucks. You have to be paid to be here, right? No one wants to work. Exactly. But I don’t want the workplace to suck. Right, exactly. So if you hate your coworkers and there’s drama, it’s just way worse. So we try to be really specific on who we hire to bring on for that purpose.

Jared Correia (00:43:58):
Let’s bring it back to the starting of the law firm because I think people are probably listening to this watching this. They’re like, “How can I be more like her? Luscious calves, tall, handsome law firm owner.”

Kurt London (00:44:10):
Lots of protein. And

Jared Correia (00:44:13):
So I think some people I talk to are like, “I want to do a PI firm.” And even if you’ve worked for somebody before, it’s a big difference when the rubber meets the road and now you got to manage your own finances. How do you map out the runway? Do you tell people like, “Hey, look into a line of credit. Maybe you throw some credit cards on here. Do you have a spouse that could help you as you get ramped up?” Because the cashflow fluctuates a lot and then you got to really map it out in terms of projections years out, which is not going to happen if you’re starting an estate planning firm. So do you have any thoughts on that?

Kurt London (00:44:49):
Yeah, actually a lot. So that is something that most attorneys don’t even think about when they open a personal injury firm, but you need to have at least like six to 12 months of funds stashed away. If you’re going to keep it lean and just operate on your own, you need to have at least six to 12 months to pay your bills. Because if you don’t, you’re going to start feeling presure to do unethical things to get money coming in and you don’t want to be in that situation. Taking bad cases.

Jared Correia (00:45:15):
Yeah.

Kurt London (00:45:16):
Yep. Settling cases too early. Also having a line of credit is good, but I would caution against that because it is a slippery slope. Once you start drawing on it, if you don’t have money coming in, it’s hard to kind of reverse it. So just staying lean, staying mean for the first year or two. And then once you start having the payroll coming in, then you can start expanding and working on that. But six to 12 months of income at least stashed away somewhere.

Jared Correia (00:45:42):
So when you guys started the firm, are you mapping that on a spreadsheet? Is that how you’re running things? Like let’s figure this out. What do we got for money?

Kurt London (00:45:52):
That’s what I have Bronson for so he can worry about that. Great. Yeah, exactly.

Jared Correia (00:45:57):
Another shout out to Bronson.

Kurt London (00:46:00):
So our situation’s a little different. Bronson’s got his own law firm in California. This is his second law firm. His other law firm’s been open for 10 years.

Jared Correia (00:46:08):
Good

Kurt London (00:46:09):
Play by

Jared Correia (00:46:09):
You. Well done, sir.

Kurt London (00:46:10):
So I wasn’t too worried because our deal was I run the law firm, I build it, I grow it, and he funds payroll basically until we’re up and running.

Jared Correia (00:46:19):
Oh man. I’ve always wanted a benefactor, like in great expectations when Magwish comes out of the brush. He’s like, “Hey, here’s a ton of money. I’m still waiting. Let’s do the AI stuff because if I don’t talk about AI, Sam Altman’s going to have my legs broke.” So what are your thoughts in general? So you said adoption is not heavy out where you are. Why do you think that is? What do lawyers need to be able to jump in on this and should they?

Kurt London (00:46:50):
What I need is to stop seeing all the news articles about attorneys getting fired and being sanctioned and losing their license. That’s probably what I need to see.

Jared Correia (00:46:58):
Yeah, that is a thing for sure. That’s

Kurt London (00:47:01):
A little bar. I think it’s just that, the hesitancy with… I feel like we’re in a dot-com bubble right now. Everyone’s rushing before they verify. We use a little bit of AI. We use a lot of call summaries and transcriptions to save us time on making case notes. I have tried to vet some demand companies. So in personal injury, you can upload all of your case basically, right? Police reports, photos, medical records, it’ll make a demand for you. And the work product was awful. Oh,

Jared Correia (00:47:36):
Interesting.

Kurt London (00:47:36):
I haven’t found

Jared Correia (00:47:37):
You like yet.

Kurt London (00:47:38):
No. I used cases that I’d already finished. We litigated them, settled them. So I knew them backwards and forwards. And they were flagging stuff as preexisting injuries and these huge red flags that didn’t exist. It was all made up. And that was less than a year ago. So since then we haven’t tried again yet.

Jared Correia (00:47:57):
So you’re dipping your toe in, which I don’t think is a bad way to do it. And obviously if you’re outsourcing build me my demand letter, that’s such a huge portion of what a personal injury attorney does. I’d be careful about that too.

Kurt London (00:48:13):
Yeah. And it’s scary. I’m the one who has to litigate and negotiate these cases. I should know it anyways. So why would I want to outsource that? It doesn’t make sense to me.

Jared Correia (00:48:24):
I got one more question for you. Out in Utah right now, trying to build a big data center. There’s been a lot of hubbub about that.

Kurt London (00:48:31):
Oh gosh.

Jared Correia (00:48:32):
How do you feel about the environmental impacts of this? Because look, I would like a new chocolate chip cookie recipe just as much as the next guy, but I would like the water table to be where it is currently.

Kurt London (00:48:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Luckily we’re all getting checks from China to actually protest Kevin O’Leary’s data center. So that really offsets any environmental impact that

Jared Correia (00:48:54):
We’re

Kurt London (00:48:55):
Worried about here. Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, what people don’t realize is that Utah is in a catastrophic drought. Our snow pack comes from the Salt Lake. So the water from the Salt Lake evaporates into the clouds. It goes and snows on the mountains. And that’s literally our drinking water. We drink water from those rivers. We have no Salt Lake. It’s going to be 100% dried up in about two to three years. So if you fly into Salt Lake, you will see it’s mostly dried up. We just had our first arsenic dust storm a few weeks ago. That sounds bad. In the lake bed has arsenic in it. And now that it’s exposed, it’s just blowing right over the population and they have no idea how it’s going to impact our health. So the fact that they now want to ad the world’s largest data center on top of that is like a huge…

(00:49:50):
I think everyone’s fed up with it now. We’re at the stage where they’re talking about rationing, drinking water and not being able to make it until next winter, let alone adding a data center.

Jared Correia (00:50:02):
It’s crazy. You got assholes out there like Jeff Bezos. Well, it’s the AI drinking water. I’ll pick the AI. Ridiculous. Come on.

Kurt London (00:50:11):
Seriously. Come on man. And we’ve already been arguing over our water because most of our water is used for agriculture, not even human consumption. So it’s like just add a data center on top of that.

Jared Correia (00:50:21):
Right. And it’s not just Utah. Western states in general are having trouble mentioning this water issue. But boy, that was uplifting. Let’s just end here and do the last segment. All right. Kevin O’Leary.

Kurt London (00:50:36):
If you have water, feel free to ship it to us. We’ll take bottled. Not very picky. We’ll take

Jared Correia (00:50:41):
It off. Ship some water, curse way. Kevin O’Leary, you can eat a dick. All rigt, we’ll be back for our last segment. All right everybody, welcome back. It’s The Counter Program. It’s a podcast within a podcast. This is a conversational space where we can address usually unrelated topics that I want to explore at a greater depth with my guest. Expect no rhyme and very little reason. Kurt, welcome back. How you doing?

Kurt London (00:51:09):
Thank you for having me. I’m doing great. How are you, Jared?

Jared Correia (00:51:12):
I’m fired up. You asked me how I was doing again. I’m so confused. Okay. When I put your name into Google, the AI overview produced the following result. Kurt London, a prominent personal injury attorney based in Utah is known for his highly public admiration of Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He frequently mentions his appreciation for The Rock on social media and legal discussion podcasts. We’re getting very meta here. Is that true? Do you love The

Kurt London (00:51:40):
Rock? Wait, did it actually pop up on that? Is that what it said?

Jared Correia (00:51:44):
Well, I did Curt London plus The Rock. Do that search and you’ll see it. That may or may not be true. Wow, that is disturbing. Sorry. Can

Kurt London (00:51:55):
You

Jared Correia (00:51:55):
Show that again? Oh, what else you got here?

Kurt London (00:51:58):
Oh, we got a ton. This is his head.

Jared Correia (00:52:00):
Dwayne Johnson is not in your basement right now, is he?

Kurt London (00:52:04):
The funny thing is, so he himself is not, but we may or may not have a four foot granite appearing statue of Dwayne Johnson that we use as a relic or a shrine – That’s amazing. In our legal practice. So yes, he is in our basement. I was going to do a full size one, but I though it was weird. If you go down to the basin, it’s dark and there’s like a six and a half foot silhouette there with his arms out.

Jared Correia (00:52:33):
All right. You have the head, you have the statue. What was that other thing you had? Is that hairspray? Rock

Kurt London (00:52:39):
Hairspray? No, this is a religious candle to light for our shrine.

Jared Correia (00:52:48):
I got it now. Wait a sec. Oh, you got more? Okay. Keep it coming. I’m

Kurt London (00:52:50):
Going to wheel around.

Jared Correia (00:52:51):
No, this is great.

Kurt London (00:52:52):
This is perfect.

Jared Correia (00:52:53):
I’ll describe for the audio audience.

Kurt London (00:52:55):
Our family photo here.

Jared Correia (00:52:58):
This is you, your wife, your two kids and Dwayne. Uncle Dwayne, Uncle Rock. What do you call him?

Kurt London (00:53:07):
It’s a problem, really.

Jared Correia (00:53:10):
What is it about The Rock?

Kurt London (00:53:12):
I don’t know. It’s an epiphany because he’s not that great of an actor. But you better believe any movie that man makes, I will be there to watch it and I just can’t stop. I don’t know what it is. Well,

Jared Correia (00:53:25):
I was going to say, is he all that

Kurt London (00:53:26):
Different

Jared Correia (00:53:27):
From Schwarzenegger? He’s a better actor than Steven Segal. Let’s not get crazy.

Kurt London (00:53:33):
Oh,

Jared Correia (00:53:34):
For

Kurt London (00:53:34):
Sure.

Jared Correia (00:53:35):
I think The Rock could crush it now for justice.

Kurt London (00:53:38):
Oh yeah, 100%. I

Jared Correia (00:53:40):
Love it. So I will tell the people now that this is why I wanted to have you on the show because I thought the rock stuff was hilarious when I saw you on LinkedIn. So this is great because what we’re actually going to do is a trivia segment and you should crush this. It’s called The Rock Trivia.

Kurt London (00:53:56):
Oh gosh. I probably actually don’t know as much as I should.

Jared Correia (00:54:01):
We’ll explore studio space a little bit. I got six questions for you. I’ll read a question. I will give you multiple choice.

Kurt London (00:54:07):
Oh no.

Jared Correia (00:54:08):
Which of these common igneus rocks typically has the lowest melting temperature range under dry laboratory conditions?

Kurt London (00:54:17):
The question’s about real rocks.

Jared Correia (00:54:21):
Not all of

Kurt London (00:54:21):
Them. Okay. Take me back to third grade here in geography, geology. Let’s go. Let’s do it. All right.

Jared Correia (00:54:29):
The lowest melting temperature range under laboratory conditions. Is it granite, basal or paradotite? Two of those rocks I’ve never heard of until today. You got a one in three chance, just fire away.

Kurt London (00:54:45):
I have to say paradotite because that’s oddly specific for a question like this.

Jared Correia (00:54:49):
Good guess. It’s actually granite.

Kurt London (00:54:51):
Granite too

Jared Correia (00:54:53):
Obvious. Granite melts at 1,215 degrees Celsius. Seems like it’s really high. All right. You ready for the next one? We’re channeling Dwayne Johnson.

Kurt London (00:55:02):
Probably

Jared Correia (00:55:02):
Not

Kurt London (00:55:02):
Anymore.

Jared Correia (00:55:05):
What would Dwayne Johnson do in this situation? Question two. Which rock band took out a Christmas ad in 1964 wishing a happy Christmas to starving hairdressers?

Kurt London (00:55:23):
Listen. Oh

Jared Correia (00:55:24):
My

Kurt London (00:55:24):
Gosh.

Jared Correia (00:55:25):
Okay. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or the who? Happy Christmas to the starving hairdressers out there. We can work this through maybe a little bit. Maybe. We got the British invasion. We got a lot of long haired bands.

Kurt London (00:55:42):
Yeah. That’s what I was trying to think. Who’s got the most luscious locks in that group? I don’t know, maybe the who?

Jared Correia (00:55:49):
Good guess. The Rolling Stones. So listen to this. The Rolling Stones mocked British hairdressers when they publicly complained that the group’s signature long hair was ruining their business. Imagine if you were wandering around. Imagine if you were wandering around London in 1964, Neru jacket on. Mick Jagger’s like, damn, look at that guy’s calves. All right. I got to… Yeah,

Kurt London (00:56:18):
I wouldn’t be able to wear skinny jeans back then like they all were.

Jared Correia (00:56:22):
This one I think could work. Number three, which famous actor turned down Nicholas Cage’s role in the 1988 action film? Oh, 1996 action film, The Rock, because he felt that the script was unfinished. Who had Nicholas Cage’s role in the rock? Was it Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Bruce Willis? You might not believe the answer. It’s wild.

Kurt London (00:56:56):
Oh no. I want to say A then. Oh,

Jared Correia (00:56:59):
Close. Arnold.

Kurt London (00:57:01):
Oh, I was going to go Bruce Willis. So either way, I was going to be wrong.

Jared Correia (00:57:04):
Oh, all right. Hey, I think we got three more of these. Stay the course. Oh gosh. Do you like The Rock? Is that one of the action movies on your list?

Kurt London (00:57:16):
I mean, it’s a solid choice. Yeah. It’s good.

Jared Correia (00:57:19):
I couldn’t imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger taking on the Nick Cage role.

Kurt London (00:57:25):
No.

Jared Correia (00:57:25):
With the accent? It’s kind of crazy. I think he was a scientist in that movie or something.

Kurt London (00:57:30):
Yeah, it wouldn’t feel right.

Jared Correia (00:57:33):
Do you have a favorite Schwarzenegger movie?

Kurt London (00:57:37):
Oh, I mean, Predator’s always a good one.

Jared Correia (00:57:40):
Predator, good choice. Let’s do favorite Arnold, favorite Stallone, and then favorite rock movie. Let’s do it right now. Stallone is next. Oh, gosh. Over the top. Cobra?

Kurt London (00:57:54):
I don’t even know on Stallone. I never even though about… I’m

Jared Correia (00:58:00):
Just firing off Stallone movies.

Kurt London (00:58:02):
I’m just neutral on that one.

Jared Correia (00:58:05):
How about The Rock? What’s your favorite rock movie?

Kurt London (00:58:08):
I really like Black Adam and I know it got so much shade. Really? But I though it was pretty solid.

Jared Correia (00:58:14):
Interesting. Okay. I’ll

Kurt London (00:58:16):
Have to

Jared Correia (00:58:16):
Check that out. I’ve never seen it.

Kurt London (00:58:18):
Yeah. It’s good. I liked it.

Jared Correia (00:58:21):
All right. I got three more questions for you.

Kurt London (00:58:23):
Or Fast and Furious 28 is always good too.

Jared Correia (00:58:28):
Is he still in the Fast &

Kurt London (00:58:29):
Furious

Jared Correia (00:58:30):
Movies? I thought he was

Kurt London (00:58:32):
Beefing with

Jared Correia (00:58:32):
Vint Diesel. He

Kurt London (00:58:34):
Was beefing because they were going to offer him a spinoff and it was going to cut out the other actors. So that’s what the beef started.

Jared Correia (00:58:43):
So you’ve been able to replace the Vint Diesel head now. It’s back in the office because they’re not beefing anymore. This is good. I’m so glad everything’s working

Kurt London (00:58:52):
Out. Yeah, exactly. I got three

Jared Correia (00:58:54):
More good ones for you. Which 2003 musical comedy film features Jack Black as a fraudulent substitute teacher who turns his students into a rock band?

Kurt London (00:59:11):
Man, it’s really 2003. That came out that long ago.

Jared Correia (00:59:16):
Isn’t that crazy?

Kurt London (00:59:18):
I feel really old now. Yeah, it’s School of Rock.

Jared Correia (00:59:20):
School of Rock. What a great movie by the way.

Kurt London (00:59:23):
Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:59:24):
Gosh. I think

Kurt London (00:59:26):
You took the rest of the day off.

Jared Correia (00:59:29):
That’s awful. I feel like that’s a movie I watch with my kids and I’m like, “Oh, look at the lead guitarist. He’s 54 now.” All right. I had a very cruel question about asteroids, but I’m going to skip that one. We’re probably

Kurt London (00:59:44):
Going to run. Nothing about asteroids or rocks.

Jared Correia (00:59:48):
I mean, we really commit to the bit here at the show, so you got to give

Kurt London (00:59:51):
Us

Jared Correia (00:59:51):
That.

Kurt London (00:59:52):
All in.

Jared Correia (00:59:54):
Last question. In the original the Flintstones universe, not sure if you’re a Flintstones guy. Oh, I should Flintstones when I was a kid. What bizarre alien-like creature has the power to manifest anything Fred desires, but only if Fred snaps his fingers and says the magic words, gazoo skidoo. Is it the great gazoo? The superb skidoo or orco? Great gazoo? Superb skidoo or orco. Who is the little alien guy in the Flintstones?

Kurt London (01:00:25):
I think this is before my time. I don’t even remember watching Flintstones.

Jared Correia (01:00:28):
It was like the 50s, if we’re being honest. It was before my

Kurt London (01:00:32):
Time

Jared Correia (01:00:32):
As well.

Kurt London (01:00:32):
Okay. Wait, do you – Don’t feel

Jared Correia (01:00:35):
Bad.

Kurt London (01:00:35):
Do you know this answer before you looked

Jared Correia (01:00:37):
It up? I did. Yes, I did. I

Kurt London (01:00:39):
Watched

Jared Correia (01:00:39):
A lot of TV as a kid. My parents didn’t love me.

Kurt London (01:00:42):
Oh, that got depressing real quick.

Jared Correia (01:00:47):
We took a

Kurt London (01:00:47):
Dark

Jared Correia (01:00:48):
Turn again at the

Kurt London (01:00:48):
End of

Jared Correia (01:00:49):
The interview for the second time in

Kurt London (01:00:50):
Iraq. Exactly. Another silent tear comes down. I’m going to say A. I’m just going to guess and say A.

Jared Correia (01:00:58):
Yes. The great zoo. Look him up online. Got one

Kurt London (01:01:03):
Right. Got one right.

Jared Correia (01:01:04):
No, you got two right. You got two right. You school rock. Okay.

Kurt London (01:01:07):
So before – If it wasn’t obvious that I was typing it in Google to look up the answer, I would’ve done that.

Jared Correia (01:01:11):
Were you? Well, I appreciate the fact that no one does on the show. Everybody plays it straight. So all in, I misled you. We though we were going down Dwayne Johnson trivia, but we just did rock trivia. And you get two out of five, which is 400. You hit 400 as a professional baseball player, you’re in the hall of fame.

Kurt London (01:01:32):
Yeah. That’s a good way to put

Jared Correia (01:01:34):
It. Kurt, thank you. You are also a Hall of Fame guest on Legal Late Night. Thank you for coming on. We appreciate it.

Kurt London (01:01:42):
Well, thanks, Jared. Thanks for having me.

Jared Correia (01:01:44):
Thanks to our guest today, Kurt London, who is the managing partner of London Harker Injury Law. To learn more about Kurt and London Harker, visit londonharker.com. That’s L-O-N-D-O-N-H-A-R-K-E-R.com. Londonharker.com. It’s what The Rock would want you to do. Now, because I’ll always be a ’90s kid who was always up for a Ducktails marathon, produced true passion as burning CDs for anyone who would listen. I’m now just doing the modern version of that, which is creating Spotify playlists for every podcast episode that I record where the songs are tangentially related to an episode topic. For this week’s playlist, I put together a collection of songs from Boston Rock Bands. It’s brought to you by Dunkin. Get your vanilla nut taps right here. Well, Dunkin didn’t actually sponsor us. Sad story. The least they could do is send me over one of those sweet tracksuits. Join us next time when I’ll probably be wearing a Dunkin Donuts tracksuit and probably not.

(01:02:48):
I