In one of the more odd collaborative moments in Modest Mouse’s career, Big Boi (of OutKast fame) tweeted back in 2011: “Been camped out in the Lab with Modest Mouse all week, workin on the new mouse LP, coolest cats ever. Long Live The Funk” (via Twitter). The rumors swirling around Big Boi’s part in the new Modest Mouse album — which would become “Strangers to Ourselves” — were numerous. Was he going to rap or just produce? Or both? 

Even leading up to 2014, Stereogum asked about the supposed collaboration again, and Big Boi responded, “We’ve got these songs they’ve been sitting on forever. I saw [lead singer Isaac Brock] a couple months ago and they’re working on some additions to what we did. I don’t know. It’s a crazy camp over there. It’s coming.” But it never did. The 2015 album came, and none of the Big Boi tracks made it onto the album. 

Everyone has heard of the Black Panthers, which were founded in 1966 and led by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, according to History. However not everyone knows that they had a counterpart made of non-Blacks and white people called the White Panthers. The group was started in Detroit by Leni and John Sinclair, Lawrence “Pun” Plamondon (a Native American activist) and the band, MC5. The Sinclairs heard that the Black Panthers didn’t allow white people into the group, so Seale said they “should start their own organization if they want to help …” (via The Guardian). Leni Sinclair went on to say that the group’s main goals were “fighting for a clean planet and the freeing of political prisoners … rock ‘n’ roll, dope, sex in the streets and the abolishing of capitalism.”

Buzzfeed interviewed Kris Adair, Isaac Brock’s mother, about a story her son likes to tell of his mother being a member of the White Panthers. However Adair set the story straight: “I left home when I was 17 years old and through a friend I was given a safe place to live by a White Panther collective. They were not happy to have an underage liability on their hands, but luckily for me they were not willing to put me on the street either. I learned how to advocate on behalf of our elderly neighbors whose homes were threatened by developers.”

In a Newsweek article in 2015, Isaac Brock was asked what led to “Strangers To Ourselves” taking eight years to release. Brock responded by talking about the various producers they went through, the recording process, the touring, and eventually their struggles finding a place to record. “Our six-month lease was done, and rather than just have a makeshift studio that was going to work, we actually … built one — which, you know, a lot of time and resources, personal time and money, went into doing [that].”

Brock went into more detail to Relix about what building their own studio entailed: “We were thinking really bare bones — rent a warehouse, put mattresses against the wall to deaden it, stacks of used books around the engineer …” Brock clarified that the warehouse they had leased ended up being the warehouse they bought “because I’d dumped so much money into building an actual studio.” The studio was eventually dubbed Ice Cream Party Studios. 

While the band was recording “The Moon & Antarctica”, Isaac Brock was living above Clava Studios in Chicago and had come home from the bar, drunk, and decided to smoke a cigarette before he went into his apartment. There was a gang of local kids outside, and he decided to talk to them. He recalls in an interview with The AV Club that one kid punched him out of nowhere, and the remainder of the 14 kids started throwing bottles at him and insulting him. Yet no other punches landed, but Brock walked away with a broken jaw. 

Of course, with the crazy stories he tells about his childhood, family, the Phoenix Lights, and more, this all could be another unverifiable story. However, The AV Club knew about the incident, so perhaps this is one of too-odd-to-be-fiction situations where the truth actually fits into the mystique of Brock, himself. 

In August 2016, Isaac Brock collided with a city of Portland vehicle after falling asleep at the wheel but was not charged with a crime at the time (via Billboard). However, he would eventually be sued by city employee Cassidy Kane for physical damages, including “herniated disks in her spine and … other tissue and muscle damage that continues to cause her pain and numbness in her extremities.” The report went on to say that she “will need steroid injections and may need surgery.” She sued Brock for $865,000.

Rolling Stone went on to report that Brock was checked for signs of intoxication or drug use, but neither were able to be confirmed. He got a ticket for “careless driving” that came with a $435 fine. According to Kane’s attorney, “the case settled for an undisclosed sum.”

Between 2003 and 2007, “The O.C.” was a popular teen soap opera and, since 2007, its cult status has only become more magnified. Jim Tankersley declared, in a dialogue with Mike Konczal and Dylan Matthews in The Washington Post, that the show was “the most culturally important television show of the 2000s …” They go on to discuss the show’s prescient comprehension of economic and class analysis. Yet the show’s witting (or unwitting) portrayal of class struggle wasn’t the only thing it was known for. It also became a showcase for some of the great bands of the 2000s through its soundtracks and the band appearances on the show itself. 

Not too surprising, then, that after Modest Mouse’s rise to the mainstream in 2004, they would find not only their music on the show’s soundtrack but themselves playing on the show itself. On season two, episode seven, they appeared on the show’s in-world club, The Bait Shop, and played “The View” from “Good News For People Who Love Bad News” and “Paper Thin Walls” from “The Moon & Antarctica.” “Their music served as the backdrop for Seth’s failed attempt at being a ‘bad boy’ in an effort to impress Alex” (via Screen Rant).