Podcasts about anglophiles

In this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, host Jonathan Thomas speaks with Mary Valentine, founder of Mary Valentine Tours, about her journey from academia to leading boutique tours across Britain. Mary shares her passion for British culture, her experiences with the Women's Institute, and the unique insights she offers to fellow Anglophiles. The conversation covers her recent tour in Northern England and Scotland, the importance of experiential travel, and how to handle unexpected challenges on the road. Mary emphasizes the beauty of the British countryside and the warmth of its people, providing listeners with a deeper understanding of what makes her tours special. In this conversation, Mary Valentine shares her insights on British travel, emphasizing the importance of cultural connections and local experiences. She discusses the balance between showcasing traditional and modern aspects of Britain, the unique elements of her tours, and the challenges of planning and leading them. Mary also reflects on her personal experiences and aspirations for future tours, highlighting the beauty and complexity of British culture. Links Mary Valentine Tours Website Calendar Girls Film Women's Institute History (Anglotopia) How the Women's Institute Began (Anglotopia) The WI Official Website Takeaways Mary Valentine turned her passion for Britain into a business. She emphasizes experiential travel over traditional tourist attractions. Her background in sociology informs her approach to tours. The Women's Institute plays a significant role in her story. Mary's first trip to Britain at 44 changed her life. She has led tours since 2007, focusing on small groups. Recent tours included unique experiences in Northern England and Scotland. Travel insurance is crucial for tour participants. Building relationships with local contacts enhances the tour experience. Cultural exchanges in British villages create memorable moments. Advocating for a surrogate hometown enhances cultural immersion. British towns maintain rich civic and cultural lives. Local communities actively support their cultural institutions. Traveling to Britain offers a unique blend of tradition and modernity. Experiencing local life can lead to unexpected connections. Planning tours involves complex logistics and relationships. Unique experiences set tours apart from others. Marketing is a significant challenge for tour operators. Scouting trips are essential for successful tour planning. The beauty of places like Wales and the Isle of Skye continues to surprise travelers. Soundbites "I can't compete with Rick Steves." "I fell in love with Sherlock Holmes." "Buy travel insurance." "The NHS was so helpful and great." "Make friends with your driver." "Pick a town or a village." "Every village has an arts club." "I just called them up." "Attitudes to architecture change." "I can share a tidbit of information." "Do something nobody else does." Chapters 00:00 Exploring the Passion for British Culture 05:38 From Academia to Tour Guiding: A Journey Begins 11:01 The First Trip: A Life-Changing Experience 12:39 Recent Tour Insights: Northern England and Scotland 17:58 Handling Emergencies on Tour 21:21 Cultural Experiences: The Heart of British Villages 28:59 Cultural Connections in British Travel 30:10 Experiencing Local Life in the Cotswolds 32:19 Balancing Tradition and Modernity in Britain 35:03 Hidden Gems of British Culture 38:17 Planning Unique Tours: Behind the Scenes 49:05 Challenges of Leading Tours 52:56 Future Aspirations and New Destinations YouTube Version

With two of the three bartenders hanging around near or above the arctic circle this week, this is an official Northern Exposure episode of 3WHH, with Lucretia, instead of channeling her usual Barry Corbin disposition, actually has some nice things to say about many of her usual targets, including KJP, Dread Coward Roberts, and even Ka-tan-ji! Something in the Alaska air must be affecting her!John Yoo offers his usual expert opinions (not meant sarcastically) about the entirely unexpected trifecta at the Supreme Court this week, which we all agree augurs something important not only for the big cases remaining this term, but also for the judicial epoch in which we current find ourselves. We also quickly dispatch with the Trump-Musk breakup, and briefly introduce a new segment, "What's Wrong with John Yoo?", since he insulted both Steve and Lucretia several weeks ago by referring to both as "political theorists." Them's is fightin' words; he might as well have called them Anglophiles or something worse.Finally, AI outdid itself this week, and an Norse-style epic poem that amazing described your three whisky bartenders with surprising accuracy:First came the Bold One, with thunderous laugh,Whose tongue split the silence like Odin's own staff.He spoke of Islay, of smoke and peat's sting,A connoisseur forged in the cask of a king.Then came the Wise One, in cloak of soft tone,With tasting notes ancient as Midgard's old stone.She sipped and she pondered, then spake with deep grace:“This dram bears the oak and the wind from some place.”The third was the Trickster, sharp-witted and sly,Who'd jest at the gods as the crows passed him by.With metaphors wild and a glint in his eye,He'd toast to Valhalla, then laugh till he cried.

In 1878, noted British comic opera legends W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan used their pens to create the timeless operetta “HMS Pinafore,” a work with numerous songs that have stood the test of time and are still beloved by … British people, Aaron Sorkin fans, Anglophiles and Victorian era time travelers stuck in our modern era. Sir Joseph's song in Pinafore gives us a great jumping off point for our thesis this week, as he sings about his ascension from from “office boy at an attorney's firm” to “Ruler of the Queen's Navy,” an odd career arch given that he has never been to sea before nor ever been on a ship of any kind, though he finds himself cast upon the most difficult ship of them all to navigate - the LeaderShip. (Yeah, we know, roundabout way to get to the metaphor … the writing staff is going through it this week, so … show grace, people). This week, our boys Sid and Keith will touch on a seldom-approached topic of leadership - the costs therein. Examining intentions, working within opportunities given, understanding reality versus unreality … well, let us just say that with this week's episode, you'll certainly be in a better place to govern your Leadership than the aforementioned late 1800s era fictional First Lord of the Admiralty. So, tune in and turn up this week's episode of The Overlap Podcast - you don't want to miss this voyage.  

We are thrilled that John Stewart is back on The Daily Show. We consider the pilgrimage to Ozzy's last shows in England and it turns out The Beatles and Monty Python made us both Anglophiles. Canadians are awesome too and we talk about how Rush kept Neal Peart's condition secret for his last years. There are some new additions to the Baseball Hall of Fame and we look at one of them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anglophiles abroad love the British sense of humour – but what does that actually mean? In a recent review for the paper, Jonathan Coe takes a scalpel to the satire boom and its aftermath to find out what, if anything, sets British comedy apart. He joins Malin for a serious chat about comedy and its double-edged role in the UK's political life.Further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/coecomedySubscribe to Close Readings:In Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join our pilgrimage to the Holy Land.Why do we go on pilgrimage? For an educational vacation? To get in touch with the past? To walk barefoot to a shrine or encounter a saint? To ask for a miracle? And why, if Christians are going to go on pilgrimage anywhere, do they go on pilgrimage to England?Yes, it's a magical land of meat pies, forests, fairies, and saints with a distinctly British flavor. How do our expectations of England, especially for Anglophiles, meet an answer in the actual place? To go on a pilgrimage is about expectation. In the middle ages, when pilgrims would come from all over Europe to the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, they would kneel inside a cool cavity carved out of the brilliantly-decorated stone, to get as close to Edward's bones as they could. Before leaving they'd chip off a tiny bit of mosaic. We go on pilgrimage to stand somewhere in the broken and colorful light of Christian history, and to take away souvenirs, be they answered prayers or vintage prayer books. And we certainly bring expectations.Today's episode is a story about expectations and souvenirs – the hoped for, and the found – on an English pilgrimage with a diverse set of American Anglicans. Anglophiles beware. You may get more than you bargained for.Join our pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Anglophiles, Japanese tea ceremony enthusiasts, and everyone who loves tea should listen to Kathea Bryan and her take on the tea party. Are there rules? Is anything too gauche to do? Can there be coffee for those who prefer it to tea? Listen and find out. It's on Tip of the Tongue. Get full access to Tip of the Tongue at tipofthetongue.substack.com/subscribe

Forget your political compass and Myers-Briggs tests, what's your favorite Napoleonic Wars Coalition War? If you're a Sixth Coalitioner, this episode is your episode. Scott and I were joined by veteran podcaster and barbecue enjoyer Joe McGregor to talk through Johnny Horton's 1959 The Battle of New Orleans. An in-depth discussion of the War of 1812, the eponymous battle, and it's later results follows.Anglophiles might want to sit this one out, this episode leans heavily American Exceptionalistic, Old Hickory would be proud. Break out your bacon and beans, load your 1795 Springfield and Remember the Eighth! Link to the song: https://youtu.be/50_iRIcxsz0 Follow Joe's history podcast Battle Rattle: http://battlerattlepodcast.com/ (available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts) Find Joe on his socials: Twitter: @josephmcgregor Instagram: @ministersofsmoke (for great BBQ recommendations). @jmcgregor (for photography and great burger recommendations) Follow Scott and Sean on Twitter: Scott - @dotgiff Sean - @hashtagheybro Think you've got a good song we should do a show on? Send us a DM on Twitter or an email: historyinmusicpodcast@gmail.com

Dylan and Connor bring you a cheeky installment of our TWIN TALKS. Fresh from their trip abroad to London, the lads give a full breakdown of their holiday highlights. They relate to study abroad girlies after returning to the states, pointing out key differences between the US and GB. West End theatre-going is covered: Cabaret, & Juliet, The Burnt City, Mother Goose, and 2:22: A Ghost Story. They share favorite moments and memories from spending time with their new friends, meeting Joel Harper-Jackson (and his love Lloyd Daniels), seeing Cheryl Cole onstage, traveling to Windsor, exploring the London sights, and the amazing food sampled. The Anglophiles were in heaven (as well as gay club Heaven). Grammy Awards insights are also popped onto the end of our London diary recap! Part 2 of this chat will be available this week by subscribing to DRAMA+, which also includes more bonus episodes, Instagram Close Friends content, and more!Follow DRAMA. on Twitter & Instagram & TiktokFollow Connor MacDowell on Twitter & InstagramFollow Dylan MacDowell on Twitter & InstagramEdited by Dylan

  "Presence is power." What if I told you that the solution to your quandaries about life, love, work, finding calm, anything of value and importance already resided within you? While initially this may seem impossible, in actuality, when we dig down deep to the core of our motivations, our hopes and even our fears, the answers rest in being able to hold ourselves in the Present moment consciously on a regular and consistent basis. Now this may seem elementary, even a simpleton answer, but today, I want to share with you why indeed it is true. And how exciting to know that what we have been seeking (and not finding) outside of ourselves has been within our power all along. ~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #350 Read the Show Notes - https://thesimplyluxuriouslife.com/podcast350 The Simple Sophisticate is someone who prefers quality over quantity, sensible living over mindless consumption, personal style instead of trendy fashions, has an insatiable curiosity for life's endless questions and a desire to live a truly fulfilling life rather than being led around by the nose. Inspired by her lifestyle blog The Simply Luxurious Life, Shannon Ables (the original Simple Sophisticate) shares with listeners tips on how to live a refined life on an everyday income. From achieving your goals, preparing a memorable meal, creating a capsule wardrobe, traveling the world (Francophiles and Anglophiles tune in as France and Britain is a favorite destination), and living life to the fullest without breaking the bank, living well is really quite simple. ~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate: iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio | YouTube | Spotify | Amazon Music

Author Connie Berry is on the podcast this week to discuss a new book in her Kate Hamilton mystery series, The Shadow of Memory, about an American antiques dealer who uncovers a dark secret buried in Victorian England.

Brooke fills us in on the succession of the Royals since the passing of Queen Elizabeth Recorded Tuesday September 13, 2022 with Tim Hattrick, Ben Campbell and Brooke Hoover

Anglophiles rejoice! All of this week's old time radio mysteries star performers from across the pond. Herbert Marshall is secret agent Ken Thurston in an exciting adventure of The Man Called X. Thurston is on the hunt for a missing atomic scientist in this episode that originally aired on NBC on November 3, 1950. Then, Rex Harrison is a debonair gumshoe in "When They Track Down the Human Game" from The Private Files of Rex Saunders (originally aired on NBC on August 1, 1951). Finally, an all-British cast dramatizes a case from the Scotland Yard files in "The Case of the Fatal Bath" from Whitehall 1212 (originally aired on NBC on April 13, 1952).

Episode one hundred and fifty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the last of our four-part mini-series on LA sunshine pop and folk-rock in summer 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Baby, Now That I've Found You" by the Foundations. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Turtles songs in the episode. There's relatively little information available about the Turtles compared to other bands of their era, and so apart from the sources on the general LA scene referenced in all these podcasts, the information here comes from a small number of sources. This DVD is a decent short documentary on the band's career. Howard Kaylan's autobiography, Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, Etc.,  is a fun read, if inevitably biased towards his own viewpoint. Jim Pons' Hard Core Love: Sex, Football, and Rock and Roll in the Kingdom of God is much less fun, being as it is largely organised around how his life led up to his latter-day religious beliefs, but is the only other book I'm aware of with a substantial amount of coverage of the Turtles. There are many compilations of the Turtles' material available, of which All The Singles is by far and away the best. The box set of all their albums with bonus tracks is now out of print on CD, but can still be bought as MP3s. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've spent a lot of time recently in the LA of summer 1967, at the point where the sunshine pop sound that was created when the surf harmonies of the Beach Boys collided with folk rock was at its apex, right before fashions changed and tight sunny pop songs with harmonies from LA became yesterday's news, and extended blues-rock improvisations from San Francisco became the latest in thing. This episode is the last part of this four-episode sequence, and is going to be shorter than those others. In many ways this one is a bridge between this sequence and next episode, where we travel back to London, because we're saying goodbye for a while to the LA scene, and when we do return to LA it will be, for the most part, to look at music that's a lot less sunshine and a lot more shadow. So this is a brief fade-out while we sing ba-ba-ba, a three-minute pop-song of an episode, a last bit of sunshine pop before we return to longer, more complicated, stories  in two weeks' time, at which point the sun will firmly set. Like many musicians associated with LA, Howard Kaylan was born elsewhere and migrated there as a child, and he seems to have regarded his move from upstate New York to LA as essentially a move to Disneyland itself. That impression can only have been made stronger by the fact that soon after his family moved there he got his first childhood girlfriend -- who happened to be a Mouseketeer on the TV. And TV was how young Howard filtered most of his perceptions -- particularly TV comedy. By the age of fourteen he was the president of the Soupy Sales Fan Club, and he was also obsessed with the works of Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, and the great satirist and parodist Stan Freberg: [Excerpt: Stan Freberg, "St. George and the Dragonet"] Second only to his love of comedy, though, was his love of music, and it was on the trip from New York to LA that he saw a show that would eventually change his life. Along the way, his family had gone to Las Vegas, and while there they had seen Louis Prima and Keeley Smith do their nightclub act. Prima is someone I would have liked to do a full podcast episode on when I was covering the fifties, and who I did do a Patreon bonus episode on. He's now probably best known for doing the voice of King Louis in the Jungle Book: [Excerpt: Louis Prima, "I Wanna Be Like You (the Monkey Song)"] But he was also a jump blues musician who made some very good records in a similar style to Louis Jordan, like "Jump, Jive, an' Wail" [Excerpt: Louis Prima, "Jump, Jive, an' Wail"] But like Jordan, Prima dealt at least as much in comedy as in music -- usually comedy involving stereotypes about his Italian-American ethnic origins. At the time young Howard Kaylan saw him, he was working a double act with his then-wife Keeley Smith. The act would consist of Smith trying to sing a song straight, while Prima would clown around, interject, and act like a fool, as Smith grew more and more exasperated, and would eventually start contemptuously mocking Prima. [Excerpt: Louis Prima and Keeley Smith, "Embraceable You/I've Got It Bad and That Ain't Good"] This is of course a fairly standard double-act format, as anyone who has suffered through an episode of The Little and Large Show will be all too painfully aware, but Prima and Smith did it better than most, and to young Howard Kaylan, this was the greatest entertainment imaginable. But while comedy was the closest thing to Kaylan's heart, music was a close second. He was a regular listener to Art Laboe's radio show, and in a brief period as a teenage shoplifter he obtained records like Ray Charles' album Genius + Soul = Jazz: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "One Mint Julep"] and the single "Tossin' and Turnin'" by Bobby Lewis: [Excerpt: Bobby Lewis, "Tossin' and Turnin'"] "Tossin' and Turnin'" made a deep impression on Kaylan, because of the saxophone solo, which was actually a saxophone duet. On the record, baritone sax player Frank Henry played a solo, and it was doubled by the great tenor sax player King Curtis, who was just playing a mouthpiece rather than a full instrument, making a high-pitched squeaking sound: [Excerpt: Bobby Lewis, "Tossin' and Turnin'"] Curtis was of course also responsible for another great saxophone part a couple of years earlier, on a record that Kaylan loved because it combined comedy and rock and roll, "Yakety Yak": [Excerpt: The Coasters, "Yakety Yak"] Those two saxophone parts inspired Kaylan to become a rock and roller. He was already learning the clarinet and playing part time in an amateur Dixieland band, and it was easy enough to switch to saxophone, which has the same fingering. Within a matter of weeks of starting to play sax, he was invited to join a band called the Nightriders, who consisted of Chuck Portz on bass, Al Nichol on guitar, and Glen Wilson on drums. The Nightriders became locally popular, and would perform sets largely made up of Johnny and the Hurricanes and Ventures material. While he was becoming a budding King Curtis, Kaylan was still a schoolkid, and one of the classes he found most enjoyable was choir class. There was another kid in choir who Kaylan got on with, and one day that kid, Mark Volman came up to him, and had a conversation that Kaylan would recollect decades later in his autobiography: “So I hear you're in a rock 'n' roll band.” “Yep.” “Um, do you think I could join it?” “Well, what do you do?” “Nothing.” “Nothing?” “Nope.” “Sounds good to me. I'll ask Al.” Volman initially became the group's roadie and occasional tambourine player, and would also get on stage to sing a bit during their very occasional vocal numbers, but was mostly "in the band" in name only at first -- he didn't get a share of the group's money, but he was allowed to say he was in the group because that meant that his friends would come to the Nightriders' shows, and he was popular among the surfing crowd. Eventually, Volman's father started to complain that his son wasn't getting any money from being in the band, while the rest of the group were, and they explained to him that Volman was just carrying the instruments while they were all playing them. Volman's father said "if Mark plays an instrument, will you give him equal shares?" and they said that that was fair, so Volman got an alto sax to play along with Kaylan's tenor. Volman had also been taking clarinet lessons, and the two soon became a tight horn section for the group, which went through a few lineup changes and soon settled on a lineup of Volman and Kaylan on saxes, Nichol on lead guitar, Jim Tucker on rhythm guitar, Portz on bass, and Don Murray on drums. That new lineup became known as the Crossfires, presumably after the Johnny and the Hurricanes song of the same name: [Excerpt: Johnny and the Hurricanes, "Crossfire"] Volman and Kaylan worked out choreographed dance steps to do while playing their saxes, and the group even developed a group of obsessive fans who called themselves the Chunky Club, named after one of the group's originals: [Excerpt: The Crossfires, "Chunky"] At this point the group were pretty much only playing instrumentals, though they would do occasional vocals on R&B songs like "Money" or their version of Don and Dewey's "Justine", songs which required more enthusiasm than vocal ability. But their first single, released on a tiny label, was another surf instrumental, a song called "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde": [Excerpt: The Crossfires, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde"] The group became popular enough locally that they became the house band at the Revelaire Club in Redondo Beach. There as well as playing their own sets, they would also be the backing band for any touring acts that came through without their own band, quickly gaining the kind of performing ability that comes from having to learn a new artist's entire repertoire in a few days and be able to perform it with them live with little or no rehearsal. They backed artists like the Coasters, the Drifters, Bobby Vee, the Rivingtons, and dozens of other major acts, and as part of that Volman and Kaylan would, on songs that required backing vocals, sing harmonies rather than playing saxophone. And that harmony-singing ability became important when the British Invasion happened, and suddenly people didn't want to hear surf instrumentals, but vocals along the lines of the new British groups. The Crossfires' next attempt at a single was another original, this one an attempt at sounding like one of their favourite new British groups, the Kinks: [Excerpt: The Crossfires, "One Potato, Two Potato"] This change to vocals necessitated a change in the group dynamic. Volman and Kaylan ditched the saxophones, and discovered that between them they made one great frontman. The two have never been excessively close on a personal level, but both have always known that the other has qualities they needed. Frank Zappa would later rather dismissively say "I regard Howard as a fine singer, and Mark as a great tambourine player and fat person", and it's definitely true that Kaylan is one of the truly great vocalists to come out of the LA scene in this period, while Volman is merely a good harmony singer, not anything particularly special -- though he *is* a good harmony singer -- but it undersells Volman's contribution. There's a reason the two men performed together for nearly sixty years. Kaylan is a great singer, but also by nature rather reserved, and he always looked uncomfortable on stage, as well as, frankly, not exactly looking like a rock star (Kaylan describes himself not inaccurately as looking like a potato several times in his autobiography). Volman, on the other hand, is a merely good singer, but he has a naturally outgoing personality, and while he's also not the most conventionally good-looking of people he has a *memorable* appearance in a way that Kaylan doesn't. Volman could do all the normal frontman stuff, the stuff that makes a show an actual show -- the jokes, the dancing, the between-song patter, the getting the crowd going, while Kaylan could concentrate on the singing. They started doing a variation on the routine that had so enthralled Howard Kaylan when he'd seen Louis Prima and Keeley Smith do it as a child. Kaylan would stand more or less stock still, looking rather awkward, but singing like an angel, while Volman would dance around, clown, act the fool, and generally do everything he could to disrupt the performance -- short of actually disrupting it in reality. It worked, and Volman became one of that small but illustrious group of people -- the band member who makes the least contribution to the sound of the music but the biggest contribution to the feel of the band itself, and without whom they wouldn't be the same. After "One Potato, Two Potato" was a flop, the Crossfires were signed to their third label. This label, White Whale, was just starting out, and the Crossfires were to become their only real hit act. Or rather, the Turtles were. The owners of White Whale knew that they didn't have much promotional budget and that their label was not a known quantity -- it was a tiny label with no track record. But they thought of a way they could turn that to their advantage. Everyone knew that the Beatles, before Capitol had picked up their contracts, had had their records released on a bunch of obscure labels like Swan and Tollie. People *might* look for records on tiny independent labels if they thought it might be another British act who were unknown in the US but could be as good as the Beatles. So they chose a name for the group that they thought sounded as English as possible -- an animal name that started with "the", and ended in "les", just like the Beatles. The group, all teenagers at the time, were desperate enough that they agreed to change their name, and from that point on they became the Turtles. In order to try and jump on as many bandwagons as possible, the label wanted to position them as a folk-rock band, so their first single under the Turtles name was a cover of a Bob Dylan song, from Another Side of Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "It Ain't Me Babe"] That song's hit potential had already been seen by Johnny Cash, who'd had a country hit with it a few months before. But the Turtles took the song in a different direction, inspired by Kaylan's *other* great influence, along with Prima and Smith. Kaylan was a big fan of the Zombies, one of the more interesting of the British Invasion groups, and particularly of their singer Colin Blunstone. Kaylan imitated Blunstone on the group's hit single, "She's Not There", on which Blunstone sang in a breathy, hushed, voice on the verses: [Excerpt: The Zombies, "She's Not There"] before the song went into a more stomping chorus on which Blunstone sang in a fuller voice: [Excerpt: The Zombies, "She's Not There"] Kaylan did this on the Turtles' version of "It Ain't Me Babe", starting off with a quiet verse: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "It Ain't Me Babe"] Before, like the Zombies, going into a foursquare, more uptempo, louder chorus: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "It Ain't Me Babe"] The single became a national top ten hit, and even sort of got the approval of Bob Dylan. On the group's first national tour, Dylan was at one club show, which they ended with "It Ain't Me Babe", and after the show the group were introduced to the great songwriter, who was somewhat the worse for wear. Dylan said “Hey, that was a great song you just played, man. That should be your single", and then passed out into his food. With the group's first single becoming a top ten hit, Volman and Kaylan got themselves a house in Laurel Canyon, which was not yet the rock star Mecca it was soon to become, but which was starting to get a few interesting residents. They would soon count Henry Diltz of the Modern Folk Quartet, Danny Hutton, and Frank Zappa among their neighbours. Soon Richie Furay would move in with them, and the house would be used by the future members of the Buffalo Springfield as their rehearsal space. The Turtles were rapidly becoming part of the in crowd. But they needed a follow-up single, and so Bones Howe, who was producing their records, brought in P.F. Sloan to play them a few of his new songs. They liked "Eve of Destruction" enough to earmark it as a possible album track, but they didn't think they would do it justice, and so it was passed on to Barry McGuire. But Sloan did have something for them -- a pseudo-protest song called "Let Me Be" that was very clearly patterned after their version of "It Ain't Me Babe", and which was just rebellious enough to make them seem a little bit daring, but which was far more teenage angst than political manifesto: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Let Me Be"] That did relatively well, making the top thirty -- well enough for the group to rush out an album which was padded out with some sloppy cover versions of other Dylan songs, a version of "Eve of Destruction", and a few originals written by Kaylan. But the group weren't happy with the idea of being protest singers. They were a bunch of young men who were more motivated by having a good time than by politics, and they didn't think that it made sense for them to be posing as angry politicised rebels. Not only that, but there was a significant drop-off between "It Ain't Me Babe" and "Let Me Be". They needed to do better. They got the clue for their new direction while they were in New York. There they saw their friends in the Mothers of Invention playing their legendary residency at the Garrick Theatre, but they also saw a new band, the Lovin' Spoonful, who were playing music that was clearly related to the music the Turtles were doing -- full of harmonies and melody, and inspired by folk music -- but with no sense of rebelliousness at all. They called it "Good Time Music": [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Good Time Music"] As soon as they got back to LA, they told Bones Howe and the executives at White Whale that they weren't going to be a folk-rock group any more, they were going to be "good time music", just like the Lovin' Spoonful. They were expecting some resistance, but they were told that that was fine, and that PF Sloan had some good time music songs too. "You Baby" made the top twenty: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Baby"] The Turtles were important enough in the hierarchy of LA stars that Kaylan and Tucker were even invited by David Crosby to meet the Beatles at Derek Taylor's house when they were in LA on their last tour -- this may be the same day that the Beatles met Brian and Carl Wilson, as I talked about in the episode on "All You Need is Love", though Howard Kaylan describes this as being a party and that sounded like more of an intimate gathering. If it was that day, there was nearly a third Beach Boy there. The Turtles knew David Marks, the Beach Boys' former rhythm guitarist, because they'd played a lot in Inglewood where he'd grown up, and Marks asked if he could tag along with Kaylan and Tucker to meet the Beatles. They agreed, and drove up to the house, and actually saw George Harrison through the window, but that was as close as they got to the Beatles that day. There was a heavy police presence around the house because it was known that the Beatles were there, and one of the police officers asked them to drive back and park somewhere else and walk up, because there had been complaints from neighbours about the number of cars around. They were about to do just that, when Marks started yelling obscenities and making pig noises at the police, so they were all arrested, and the police claimed to find a single cannabis seed in the car. Charges were dropped, but now Kaylan was on the police's radar, and so he moved out of the Laurel Canyon home to avoid bringing police attention to Buffalo Springfield, so that Neil Young and Bruce Palmer wouldn't get deported. But generally the group were doing well. But there was a problem. And that problem was their record label. They rushed out another album to cash in on the success of "You Baby", one that was done so quickly that it had "Let Me Be" on it again, just as the previous album had, and which included a version of the old standard "All My Trials", with the songwriting credited to the two owners of White Whale records. And they pumped out a lot of singles. A LOT of singles, ranging from a song written for them by new songwriter Warren Zevon, to cover versions of Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year" and the old standard "We'll Meet Again". Of the five singles after "You Baby", the one that charted highest was a song actually written by a couple of the band members. But for some reason a song with verses in 5/4 time and choruses in 6/4 with lyrics like "killing the living and living to kill, the grim reaper of love thrives on pain" didn't appeal to the group's good-time music pop audience and only reached number eighty-one: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Grim Reaper of Love"] The group started falling apart. Don Murray became convinced that  the rest of the band were conspiring against him and wanted him out, so he walked out of the group in the middle of a rehearsal for a TV show. They got Joel Larson of the Grass Roots -- the group who had a number of hits with Sloan and Barri songs -- to sub for a few gigs before getting in a permanent replacement, Johnny Barbata, who came to them on the recommendation of Gene Clark, and who was one of the best drummers on the scene -- someone who was not only a great drummer but a great showman, who would twirl his drumsticks between his fingers with every beat, and who would regularly engage in drum battles with Buddy Rich. By the time they hit their fifth flop single in a row, they lost their bass player as well -- Chuck Portz decided he was going to quit music and become a fisherman instead. They replaced him with Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet. Then they very nearly lost their singers. Volman and Kaylan both got their draft notices at the same time, and it seemed likely they would end up having to go and fight in the Vietnam war. Kaylan was distraught, but his mother told him "Speak to your cousin Herb". Cousin Herb was Herb Cohen, the manager of the Mothers of Invention and numerous other LA acts, including the Modern Folk Quartet, and Kaylan only vaguely knew him at this time, but he agreed to meet up with them, and told them “Stop worrying! I got Zappa out, I got Tim Buckley out, and I'll get you out.” Cohen told Volman and Kaylan to not wash for a week before their induction, to take every drug of every different kind they could find right before going in, to deliberately disobey every order, to fail the logic tests, and to sexually proposition the male officers dealing with the induction. They followed his orders to the letter, and got marked as 4-F, unfit for service. They still needed a hit though, and eventually they found something by going back to their good-time music idea. It was a song from the Koppelman-Rubin publishing company -- the same company that did the Lovin Spoonful's management and production. The song in question was by Alan Gordon and Gary Bonner, two former members of a group called the Magicians, who had had a minor success with a single called "An Invitation to Cry": [Excerpt: The Magicians, "An Invitation to Cry"] The Magicians had split up, and Bonner and Gordon were trying to make a go of things as professional songwriters, but had had little success to this point. The song on the demo had been passed over by everyone, and the demo was not at all impressive, just a scratchy acetate with Bonner singing off-key and playing acoustic rhythm guitar and Gordon slapping his knees to provide rhythm, but the group heard something in it. They played the song live for months, refining the arrangement, before taking it into the studio. There are arguments to this day as to who deserves the credit for the sound on "Happy Together" -- Chip Douglas apparently did the bulk of the arrangement work while they were on tour, but the group's new producer, Joe Wissert, a former staff engineer for Cameo-Parkway, also claimed credit for much of it. Either way, "Happy Together" is a small masterpiece of dynamics. The song is structured much like the songs that had made the Turtles' name, with the old Zombies idea of the soft verse and much louder chorus: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together"] But the track is really made by the tiny details of the arrangement, the way instruments and vocal parts come in and out as the track builds up, dies down, and builds again. If you listen to the isolated tracks, there are fantastic touches like the juxtaposition of the bassoon and oboe (which I think is played on a mellotron): [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together", isolated tracks] And a similar level of care and attention was put into the vocal arrangement by Douglas, with some parts just Kaylan singing solo, other parts having Volman double him, and of course the famous "bah bah bah" massed vocals: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together", isolated vocals] At the end of the track, thinking he was probably going to do another take, Kaylan decided to fool around and sing "How is the weather?", which Bonner and Gordon had jokingly done on the demo. But the group loved it, and insisted that was the take they were going to use: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together"] "Happy Together" knocked "Penny Lane" by the Beatles off the number one spot in the US, but by that point the group had already had another lineup change. The Monkees had decided they wanted to make records without the hit factory that had been overseeing them, and had asked Chip Douglas if he wanted to produce their first recordings as a self-contained band. Given that the Monkees were the biggest thing in the American music industry at the time, Douglas had agreed, and so the group needed their third bass player in a year. The one they went for was Jim Pons. Pons had seen the Beatles play at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964, and decided he wanted to become a pop star. The next day he'd been in a car crash, which had paid out enough insurance money that he was able to buy two guitars, a bass, drums, and amps, and use them to start his own band. That band was originally called The Rockwells, but quickly changed their name to the Leaves, and became a regular fixture at Ciro's on Sunset Strip, first as customers, then after beating Love in the auditions, as the new resident band when the Byrds left. For a while the Leaves had occasionally had guest vocals from a singer called Richard Marin, but Pons eventually decided to get rid of him, because, as he put it "I wanted us to look like The Beatles. There were no Mexicans in The Beatles". He is at pains in his autobiography to assure us that he's not a bigot, and that Marin understood. I'm sure he did. Marin went on to be better known as Cheech Marin of Cheech and Chong. The Leaves were signed by Pat Boone to his production company, and through that company they got signed to Mira Records. Their first single, produced by Nik Venet, had been a version of "Love Minus Zero (No Limit)", a song by Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Love Minus Zero (No Limit)"] That had become a local hit, though not a national one, and the Leaves had become one of the biggest bands on the Sunset Strip scene, hanging out with all the other bands. They had become friendly with the Doors before the Doors got a record deal, and Pat Boone had even asked for an introduction, as he was thinking of signing them, but unfortunately when he met Jim Morrison, Morrison had drunk a lot of vodka, and given that Morrison was an obnoxious drunk Boone had second thoughts, and so the world missed out on the chance of a collaboration between the Doors and Pat Boone. Their second single was "Hey Joe" -- as was their third and fourth, as we discussed in that episode: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe"] Their third version of "Hey Joe" had become a top forty hit, but they didn't have a follow-up, and their second album, All The Good That's Happening, while it's a good album, sold poorly. Various band members quit or fell out, and when Johnny Barbata knocked on Jim Pons' door it was an easy decision to quit and join a band that had a current number one hit. When Pons joined, the group had already recorded the Happy Together album. That album included the follow-up to "Happy Together", another Bonner and Gordon song, "She'd Rather Be With Me": [Excerpt: The Turtles, "She'd Rather Be With Me"] None of the group were tremendously impressed with that song, but it did very well, becoming the group's second-biggest hit in the US, reaching number three, and actually becoming a bigger hit than "Happy Together" in parts of Europe. Before "Happy Together" the group hadn't really made much impact outside the US. In the UK, their early singles had been released by Pye, the smallish label that had the Kinks and Donovan, but which didn't have much promotional budget, and they'd sunk without trace. For "You Baby" they'd switched to Immediate, the indie label that Andrew Oldham had set up, and it had done a little better but still not charted. But from "Happy Together" they were on Decca, a much bigger label, and "Happy Together" had made number twelve in the charts in the UK, and "She'd Rather Be With Me" reached number four. So the new lineup of the group went on a UK tour. As soon as they got to the hotel, they found they had a message from Graham Nash of the Hollies, saying he would like to meet up with them. They all went round to Nash's house, and found Donovan was also there, and Nash played them a tape he'd just been given of Sgt Pepper, which wouldn't come out for a few more days. At this point they were living every dream a bunch of Anglophile American musicians could possibly have. Jim Tucker mentioned that he would love to meet the Beatles, and Nash suggested they do just that. On their way out the door, Donovan said to them, "beware of Lennon". It was when they got to the Speakeasy club that the first faux-pas of the evening happened. Nash introduced them to Justin Hayward and John Lodge of the Moody Blues, and Volman said how much he loved their record "Go Now": [Excerpt: The Moody Blues, "Go Now"] The problem was that Hayward and Lodge had joined the group after that record had come out, to replace its lead singer Denny Laine. Oh well, they were still going to meet the Beatles, right? They got to the table where John, Paul, and Ringo were sat, at a tense moment -- Paul was having a row with Jane Asher, who stormed out just as the Turtles were getting there. But at first, everything seemed to go well. The Beatles all expressed their admiration for "Happy Together" and sang the "ba ba ba" parts at them, and Paul and Kaylan bonded over their shared love for "Justine" by Don and Dewey, a song which the Crossfires had performed in their club sets, and started singing it together: [Excerpt: Don and Dewey, "Justine"] But John Lennon was often a mean drunk, and he noticed that Jim Tucker seemed to be the weak link in the group, and soon started bullying him, mocking his clothes, his name, and everything he said. This devastated Tucker, who had idolised Lennon up to that point, and blurted out "I'm sorry I ever met you", to which Lennon just responded "You never did, son, you never did". The group walked out, hurt and confused -- and according to Kaylan in his autobiography, Tucker was so demoralised by Lennon's abuse that he quit music forever shortly afterwards, though Tucker says that this wasn't the reason he quit. From their return to LA on, the Turtles would be down to just a five-piece band. After leaving the club, the group went off in different directions, but then Kaylan (and this is according to Kaylan's autobiography, there are no other sources for this) was approached by Brian Jones, asking for his autograph because he loved the Turtles so much. Jones introduced Kaylan to the friend he was with, Jimi Hendrix, and they went out for dinner, but Jones soon disappeared with a girl he'd met. and left Kaylan and Hendrix alone. They were drinking a lot -- more than Kaylan was used to -- and he was tired, and the omelette that Hendrix had ordered for Kaylan was creamier than he was expecting... and Kaylan capped what had been a night full of unimaginable highs and lows by vomiting all over Jimi Hendrix's expensive red velvet suit. Rather amazingly after all this, the Moody Blues, the Beatles, and Hendrix, all showed up to the Turtles' London gig and apparently enjoyed it. After "She'd Rather Be With Me", the next single to be released wasn't really a proper single, it was a theme song they'd been asked to record for a dire sex comedy titled "Guide for the Married Man", and is mostly notable for being composed by John Williams, the man who would later go on to compose the music for Star Wars. That didn't chart, but the group followed it with two more top twenty hits written by Bonner and Gordon, "You Know What I Mean" and "She's My Girl". But then the group decided that Bonner and Gordon weren't giving them their best material, and started turning down their submissions, like a song called "Celebrity Ball" which they thought had no commercial potential, at least until the song was picked up by their friends Three Dog Night, retitled "Celebrate", and made the top twenty: [Excerpt: Three Dog Night, "Celebrate"] Instead, the group decided to start recording more of their own material. They were worried that in the fast-changing rock world bands that did other songwriters' material were losing credibility. But "Sound Asleep", their first effort in this new plan, only made number forty-seven on the charts. Clearly they needed a different plan. They called in their old bass player Chip Douglas, who was now an experienced hitmaker as a producer. He called in *his* friend Harry Nilsson, who wrote "The Story of Rock & Roll" for the group, but that didn't do much better, only making number forty-eight. But the group persevered, starting work on a new album produced by Douglas, The Turtles Present The Battle of the Bands, the conceit of which was that every track would be presented as being by a different band. So there were tracks by  Chief Kamanawanalea and his Royal Macadamia Nuts,  Fats Mallard and the Bluegrass Fireball, The Atomic Enchilada, and so on, all done in the styles suggested by those band names. There was even a track by "The Cross Fires": [Excerpt: The Cross Fires, "Surfer Dan"] It was the first time the group had conceived of an album as a piece, and nine of the twelve tracks were originals by the band -- there was a track written by their friend Bill Martin, and the opening track, by "The US Teens Featuring Raoul", was co-written by Chip Douglas and Harry Nilsson. But for the most part the songs were written by the band members themselves, and jointly credited to all of them. This was the democratic decision, but one that Howard Kaylan would later regret, because of the song for which the band name was just "Howie, Mark, Johnny, Jim & Al". Where all the other songs were parodies of other types of music, that one was, as the name suggests, a parody of the Turtles themselves. It was written by Kaylan in disgust at the record label, who kept pestering the group to "give us another 'Happy Together'". Kaylan got more and more angry at this badgering, and eventually thought "OK, you want another 'Happy Together'? I'll give you another 'Happy Together'" and in a few minutes wrote a song that was intended as an utterly vicious parody of that kind of song, with lyrics that nobody could possibly take seriously, and with music that was just mocking the whole structure of "Happy Together" specifically. He played it to the rest of the group, expecting them to fall about laughing, but instead they all insisted it was the group's next single. "Elenore" went to number six on the charts, becoming their biggest hit since "She'd Rather Be With Me": [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Elenore"] And because everything was credited to the group, Kaylan's songwriting royalties were split five ways. For the follow-up, they chose the one actual cover version on the album. "You Showed Me" is a song that Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark had written together in the very early days of the Byrds, and they'd recorded it as a jangly folk-rock tune in 1964: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "You Showed Me"] They'd never released that track, but Gene Clark had performed it solo after leaving the Byrds, and Douglas had been in Clark's band at the time, and liked the song. He played it for the Turtles, but when he played it for them the only instrument he had to hand was a pump organ with one of its bellows broken. Because of this, he had to play it slowly, and while he kept insisting that the song needed to be faster, the group were equally insistent that what he was playing them was the big ballad hit they wanted, and they recorded it at that tempo. "You Showed Me" became the Turtles' final top ten hit: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Showed Me"] But once again there were problems in the group. Johnny Barbata was the greatest drummer any of them had ever played with, but he didn't fit as a personality -- he didn't like hanging round with the rest of them when not on stage, and while there were no hard feelings, it was clear he could get a gig with pretty much anyone and didn't need to play with a group he wasn't entirely happy in. By mutual agreement, he left to go and play with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and was replaced by John Seiter from Spanky and Our Gang -- a good drummer, but not the best of the best like Barbata had been. On top of this, there were a whole host of legal problems to deal with. The Turtles were the only big act on White Whale records, though White Whale did put out some other records. For example, they'd released the single "Desdemona" by John's Children in the US: [Excerpt: John's Children, "Desdemona"] The group, being the Anglophiles they were, had loved that record, and were also among the very small number of Americans to like the music made by John's Children's guitarist's new folk duo, Tyrannosaurus Rex: [Excerpt: Tyrannosaurus Rex, "Debora"] When Tyrannosaurus Rex supported the Turtles, indeed, Volman and Kaylan became very close to Marc Bolan, and told him that the next time they were in England they'd have to get together, maybe even record together. That would happen not that many years later, with results we'll be getting to in... episode 201, by my current calculations. But John's Children hadn't had a hit, and indeed nobody on White Whale other than the Turtles had. So White Whale desperately wanted to stop the Turtles having any independence, and to make sure they continued to be their hit factory. They worked with the group's roadie, Dave Krambeck, to undermine the group's faith in their manager, Bill Utley, who supported the group in their desire for independence. Soon, Krambeck and White Whale had ousted Utley, and Krambeck had paid Utley fifty thousand dollars for their management contract, with the promise of another two hundred thousand later. That fifty thousand dollars had been taken by Krambeck as an advance against the Turtles' royalties, so they were really buying themselves out. Except that Krambeck then sold the management contract on to a New York management firm, without telling the group. He then embezzled as much of the group's ready cash as he could and ran off to Mexico, without paying Utley his two hundred thousand dollars. The Turtles were out of money, and they were being sued by Utley because he hadn't had the money he should have had, and by the big New York firm, because  since the Turtles hadn't known they were now legally their managers they were in breach of contract. They needed money quickly, and so they signed with another big management company, this one co-owned by Bill Cosby, in the belief that Cosby's star power might be able to get them some better bookings. It did -- one of the group's first gigs after signing with the new company was at the White House. It turned out they were Tricia Nixon's favourite group, and so they and the Temptations were booked at her request for a White House party. The group at first refused to play for a President they rightly thought of as a monster, but their managers insisted. That destroyed their reputation among the cool antiestablishment youth, of course, but it did start getting them well-paid corporate gigs. Right up until the point where Kaylan became sick at his own hypocrisy at playing these events, drank too much of the complimentary champagne at an event for the president of US Steel, went into a drunken rant about how sick the audience made him, and then about how his bandmates were a bunch of sellouts, threw his mic into a swimming pool, and quit while still on stage. He was out of the band for two months, during which time they worked on new material without him, before they made up and decided to work on a new album. This new album, though, was going to be more democratic. As well as being all original material, they weren't having any of this nonsense about the lead singer singing lead. This time, whoever wrote the song was going to sing lead, so Kaylan only ended up singing lead on six of the twelve songs on what turned out to be their final album, Turtle Soup. They wanted a truly great producer for the new album, and they all made lists of who they might call. The lists included a few big names like George Martin and Phil Spector, but one name kept turning up -- Ray Davies. As we'll hear in the next episode, the Kinks had been making some astonishing music since "You Really Got Me", but most of it had not been heard in the US. But the Turtles all loved the Kinks' 1968 album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which they considered the best album ever made: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Animal Farm"] They got in touch with Davies, and he agreed to produce the album -- the first time he did any serious outside production work -- and eventually they were able to persuade White Whale, who had no idea who he was, to allow him to produce it. The resulting album is by far the group's strongest album-length work, though there were problems -- Davies' original mix of the album was dominated by the orchestral parts written by Wrecking Crew musician Ray Pohlman, while the group thought that their own instruments should be more audible, since they were trying to prove that they were a proper band. They remixed it themselves, annoying Davies, though reissues since the eighties have reverted to a mix closer to Davies' intentions. Some of the music, like Pons' "Dance This Dance With Me", perhaps has the group trying a little *too* hard to sound like the Kinks: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Dance This Dance With Me"] But on the other hand, Kaylan's "You Don't Have to Walk in the Rain" is the group's last great pop single, and has one of the best lines of any single from the sixties -- "I look at your face, I love you anyway": [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Don't Have to Walk in the Rain"] But the album produced no hits, and the group were getting more and more problems from their label. White Whale tried to get Volman and Kaylan to go to Memphis without the other band members to record with Chips Moman, but they refused -- the Turtles were a band, and they were proud of not having session players play their parts on the records. Instead, they started work with Jerry Yester producing on a new album, to be called Shell Shock. They did, though bow to pressure and record a terrible country track called "Who Would Ever Think That I Would Marry Margaret" backed by session players, at White Whale's insistence, but managed to persuade the label not to release it. They audited White Whale and discovered that in the first six months of 1969 alone -- a period where they hadn't sold that many records -- they'd been underpaid by a staggering six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They sued the label for several million, and in retaliation, the label locked them out of the recording studio, locking their equipment in there. They basically begged White Whale to let them record one last great single, one last throw of the dice. Jim Pons had, for years, known a keyboard player named Bob Harris, and had recently got to know Harris' wife, Judee Sill. Sill had a troubled life -- she was a heroin addict, and had at times turned to streetwalking to earn money, and had spent time in prison for armed robbery -- but she was also an astonishing songwriter, whose music was as inspired by Bach as by any pop or folk composer. Sill had been signed to Blimp, the Turtles' new production and publishing company, and Pons was co-producing some tracks on her first album, with Graham Nash producing others. Pons thought one song from that album, "Lady-O", would be perfect for the Turtles: [Excerpt: Judee Sill, "Lady-O"] (music continues under) The Turtles stuck closely to Sill's vision of the song. So closely that you haven't noticed that before I started talking, we'd already switched from Sill's record to the Turtles' version. [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Lady-O"] That track, with Sill on guitar backing Kaylan, Volman, and Nichol's vocals, was the last Turtles single to be released while the band were together. Despite “Lady O” being as gorgeous a melody as has ever been produced in the rock world, it sank without trace, as did a single from the Shell Shock sessions released under a pseudonym, The Dedications. White Whale followed that up, to the group's disgust, with "Who Would Ever Think That I Would Marry Margaret?", and then started putting out whatever they had in the vaults, trying to get the last few pennies, even releasing their 1965 album track version of "Eve of Destruction" as if it were a new single. The band were even more disgusted when they discovered that, thanks to the flurry of suits and countersuits, they not only could no longer perform as the Turtles, but White Whale were laying legal claim to their own names. They couldn't perform under those names -- Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman, and the rest were the intellectual property of White Whale, according to the lawyers. The group split up, and Kaylan and Volman did some session work, including singing on a demo for a couple of new songwriters: [Excerpt: Steely Dan, "Everyone's Gone to the Movies"] When that demo got the songwriters a contract, one of them actually phoned up to see if Kaylan wanted a permanent job in their new band, but they didn't want Volman as well, so Kaylan refused, and Steely Dan had to do without him. Volman and Kaylan were despondent, washed-up, has-been ex-rock stars. But when they went to see a gig by their old friend Frank Zappa, it turned out that he was looking for exactly that. Of course, they couldn't use their own names, but the story of the Phlorescent Leech and Eddie is a story for another time...

This week, guest and friend of the show, Maureen, returns to listen to Nayan's and Dan's feedback for Ghosts (UK), available on HBOMax, and Ghosts (US), available on Paramount Plus. The watch order presented is UK: Season 1, Episode 1; and Season 3, Episode 7; and US: Season 1, Episodes 13 and 16; Extra Credit for Episode 8. Watch, listen, rate, and subscribe please! Also, if you have a show or movie you want us to watch or just something you want us to randomly mention on air, leave us a voicemail on our Anchor page. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/watchokplease/message

The ladies return to the ever-changing world of online streaming for a catch-up on the state of the industry, how to determine what streamers you need to watch the shows you love, what programs live where, and more.     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I'll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast which will have this short intro. These are short, ten- to twenty-minute bonus podcasts which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode -- there are well over a hundred of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com/andrewhickey and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or ten dollars a year to get access to all those bonus episodes, plus new ones as they appear. Click below for the transcript Transcript Today's backer-only episode is an extra-long one -- it runs about as long as some of the shorter main episodes -- but it also might end up containing material that gets repeated in the main podcast at some point, because a lot of British rock and pop music gets called, often very incorrectly, music-hall, and so the subject of the music halls is one that may well have to be explained in a future episode. But today we're going to look at one of the very few pop hits of the sixties that is incontrovertibly based in the music-hall tradition -- Herman's Hermits singing "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am": [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am"] The term "music hall" is one that has been widely misused over the years. People talk about it as being a genre of music, when it's anything but. Rather, the music hall -- which is the British equivalent of the American vaudeville -- was the most popular form of entertainment, first under that name and then under the name "variety", for more than a century, only losing its popularity when TV and rock-and-roll between them destroyed the market for it. Even then, TV variety shows rooted in the music hall continued, explicitly until the 1980s, with The Good Old Days, and implicitly until the mid-1990s. As you might imagine, for a form of entertainment that lasted over a hundred years, there's no such thing as "music-hall music" as a singular thing, any more than there exists a "radio music" or a "television music". Many music-hall acts were non-musical performers -- comedians, magicians, acrobats, and so forth -- but among those who did perform music, there were all sorts of different styles included, from folk song to light opera, to ragtime, and especially minstrel songs -- the songs of Stephen Foster were among the very first transatlantic hits. We obviously don't have any records from the first few decades of the music hall, but we do have sheet music, and we know that the first big British hit song was "Champagne Charlie", originally performed by George Leybourne, and here performed by Derek B Scott, a professor of critical musicology at the university of Leeds: [Excerpt: Derek B. Scott, "Champagne Charlie"] If you've ever heard the phrase "the Devil has all the best tunes", that song is why. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, set new lyrics to it and made it into a hymn, and when asked why, he replied "Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?" The phrase had been used earlier, but it was Booth who popularised it. "Champagne Charlie" also has rather morbid associations, because it was sung by the crowd at the last public execution in Britain, so it often gets used in horror and mystery films set in Victorian London, so chances are if you recognised the song it's because you've heard it in a film about Jack the Ripper or Jekyll and Hyde. But the music hall, like all popular entertainment, demanded a whole stream of new material. The British Tin Pan Alley publishers and songwriters who wrote much of the early British rock and roll we've looked at started out in music hall, and almost every British popular song up until the rise of jazz, and most after that until the fifties, was performed in the music halls. We do have recordings from the later part of the music-hall era, of course, and they show what a wide variety of music was performed there, from pitch-black comedy songs like "Murders", by George Grossmith, the son of the co-writer of Diary of a Nobody: [Excerpt: George Grossmith, "Murders"] To sing-along numbers like "Waiting at the Church" by Vesta Victoria: [Excerpt: Vesta Victoria, "Waiting at the Church"] And one of the most-recorded music-hall performers, Harry Champion, a London performer who sang very wordy songs, at a fast tempo, usually with a hornpipe rhythm and often about food, like "A Little Bit of Cucumber" or his most famous song "Boiled Beef and Carrots": [Excerpt: Harry Champion, "Boiled Beef and Carrots"] But one that wasn't about food, and was taken a bit slower than his normal patter style, was "I'm Henry the VIII I Am": [Excerpt: Harry Champion, "I'm Henry VIII, I Am"] (Incidentally, the song as written on the sheet music has "Henery" rather than "Henry", and most people sing it "Enery", but the actual record by Champion uses "Henry" on the label, as does the Hermits' version, so that's what I'm going with). Fifty years after Champion, the song was recorded by Joe Brown. We've talked about Brown before in the main podcast, but for those of you who don't remember, he's one of the best British rock and roll musicians of the fifties, and still performing today, and he has a real love of pre-war pop songs, and he would perform them regularly with his band, the Bruvvers. Those of you who've heard the Beatles performing "Sheikh of Araby" on their Decca audition, they're copying Brown's version of that song -- George Harrison was a big fan of Brown. Brown's version of "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am" gave it a rock and roll beat, and dropped the verse, leaving only the refrain: [Excerpt: Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am"] Enter Herman's Hermits, four years later. In 1964, Herman's Hermits, a beat group from Manchester led by singer Peter Noone, had signed with Mickie Most and had a UK number one with "I'm Into Something Good", a Goffin and King song originally written for Earl-Jean of the Cookies: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Into Something Good"] That would be their only UK number one, though they'd have several more top ten hits over here. It only made number thirteen in the US, but their second US single (not released as a single over here), "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat", went to number two in the States. From that point on, the group's career would diverge enormously between the US and the UK -- half their US hits were never released as singles in the UK, and vice versa. Several records, like their cover version of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World", were released in both countries, but in general they went in two very different directions. In the UK they tended to release fairly normal beat-group records like "No Milk Today", written by Graham Gouldman, who was also writing hits for the Yardbirds and the Hollies: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "No Milk Today"] That only charted in the US when it was later released as a B-side. Meanwhile, in the US, they pursued a very different strategy. Since the "British Invasion" was a thing, and so many British bands were doing well in the States partly because of the sheer novelty of them being British, Herman's Hermits based their career on appealing to American Anglophiles. This next statement might be a little controversial, even offensive to some listeners, so I apologise, but it's the truth. There is a large contingent of people in America who genuinely believe that they love Britain and British things, but who have no actual idea what British culture is actually like. They like a version of Britain that has been constructed entirely from pop-culture aimed at an American market, and have a staggeringly skewed vision of what Britain is actually like, one that is at best misguided and at worst made up of extremely offensive stereotypes. People who think they know all about the UK because they've spent a week going round a handful of tourist traps in central London and they've watched every David Tennant episode of Doctor Who. (Please note that I am not, here, engaging in reflex anti-Americanism, as so many British people do on this topic, because I know very well that there is an equally wrong kind of British person who worships a fictional America which has nothing to do with the real country -- as any American who has come over to the UK and seen cans of hot dog sausages in brine with "American style" and an American flag on the label will shudderingly attest. Fetishising of a country not one's own exists in every culture, and about every culture, whether it's American weebs who think they know about Japan or British Communists who were insistent that the Soviet Union under Stalin was a utopia). For their US-only singles, most of which were massive hits, Herman's Hermits played directly to that audience. The group's first single in this style was "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter", written by the actor Trevor Peacock, now best known for playing Jim in The Vicar of Dibley, but at the time best known as a songwriter for groups like the Vernons Girls and  for writing linking material for Six-Five Special and Oh Boy! That song was written for a TV play and originally performed by the actor Tom Courtenay: [Excerpt: Tom Courtenay, "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter"] The Hermits copied Courtenay's record closely, down to Noone imitating Courtenay's vocals: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter"] That became their first US number one, and the group went all-in on appealing to that particular market. Noone started singing, not in the pseudo-American style that, say, Mick Jagger sings in (and early-sixties Jagger is a perfect example of the British equivalent of those American Anglophiles, loving but not understanding Black America), and not in his own Manchester accent, but in a faked Cockney accent, doing what is essentially a bad impersonation of Anthony Newley. (Davy Jones, who like Noone was a Mancunian who had started his career in the Manchester-set soap opera Coronation Street, was also doing the same thing at the time, in his performances as the Artful Dodger in the Broadway version of Oliver! -- we'll talk more about Jones in future episodes of the main podcast, but he, like Noone, was someone who was taking aim at this market.) Noone's faked accent varied a lot, sometimes from syllable to syllable, and on records like "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" and the Hermits' version of the old George Formby song "Leaning on a Lamp Post" he sounds far more Northern than on other songs -- fitting into a continuum of Lancashire novelty performers that stretched at least from Formby's father, George Formby senior, all the way to Frank Sidebottom. But on the Hermits' version of "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am", Noone is definitely trying to sound as London as he can, and he and the group copy Joe Brown's arrangement: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am"] That also became an American number one, and Herman's Hermits had truly found their niche. They spent the next three years making an odd mixture of catchy pop songs by writers like Graham Gouldman or PF Sloan, which became UK hits, and the very different type of music typified by "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am". Eventually, though, musical styles changed, and the group stopped having hits in either country. Peter Noone left the group in 1971, and they made some unsuccessful records without him before going on to the nostalgia circuit. Noone's solo career started relatively successfully, with a version of David Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things", backed by Bowie and the Spiders From Mars: [Excerpt: Peter Noone, "Oh! You Pretty Things"] That made the top twenty in the UK, but Noone had no further solo success. These days, there are two touring versions of Herman's Hermits -- in the US, Noone has toured as "Herman's Hermits featuring Peter Noone", with no other original members, since the 1980s. Drummer Barry Whitwham and lead guitarist Derek Leckenby kept the group going in the rest of the world until Leckenby's death in 1994 -- since then Whitwham has toured as Herman's Hermits without any other original members. Herman's Hermits may not have the respect that some of their peers had, but they had incredible commercial success at their height, made some catchy pop records, and became the first English group to realise there was a specific audience of Anglophiles in the US that they could market to. Without that, much of the subsequent history of music might have been very different.

"When it comes to jet lag, there ain't — I report from the window seat of a bustling café in Montreal, hence this paraphrasing of Leonard Cohen — no cure." —Mark VanHoenacker, a Boeing 787 pilot for British Airways and the author of Imagine A City: A Pilot's Journey Across the Urban World  The first time I flew abroad from Oregon to Europe (in my case France), concerns about jet lag were far from my mind; in fact, because I had so many other questions to answer and unknowns dancing in my mind, I didn't think about. I was 20 and planning to study abroad during my junior summer of college in Angers, France. I saved up for the $800 round-trip economy-class ticket (2000) by working three part-time jobs, took the necessary prerequisite courses, conferenced with my professor de Français, and along with not knowing I would need an adapter and converter to at the very least blow-out my hair and curled it, I also didn't think to investigate what jet lag was. Being the first member of my immediate family to travel abroad to Europe, I was figuring it all out for the first time on my own, and jet lag was never a word that popped up in conversations. Fast forward to 2012 and my second trip to France that included England as well. Thankfully I had a close friend who having lived in England for a time and thus traveled back and forth from the west coast to England often, had a few suggestions for combatting jet lag. Nothing worked superbly, but none of the advice hindered my thorough enjoyment of visiting London for the first time, and then returning to Paris. Jet lag persisted, but if it meant I would be able to be in the two countries I loved, it didn't matter a bit. Each trip following the two shared above, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, I have gradually tried to tweak, adjust and determine what works best to mitigate jet lag's effects, and while I have come to the same conclusion as the British Airways pilot above, as he too shares in his recent article in The Financial Times, there are ways to lessen the discomfort and the prolonged effects. But first, it is important to note what jet lag is — any time you travel quickly across two or more time zones and is caused when rapid travel throws off our circadian rhythm - the biological clock that helps control when we wake and fall asleep (source)  The more readers I hear from and fellow travelers I meet, the more I realize that where you are traveling from (home departure city), thus the amount of time difference you are undergoing, makes a difference, and so I decided to write specifically from my experience as a traveler from the west coast of the United States venturing to Western Europe where most of my excursions take me. With that said, as many readers/listeners of TSLL blog/The Simple Sophisticate podcast are Francophiles and/or Anglophiles and our destinations are the same even if our departure city is different, it is my hope that some of the tips shared today may be applicable when tailored to your flying itinerary. ~Note to readers: More details are discussed in the audio version of this episode than are shared below, so be sure to tune in. 1.Depart in the early afternoon When scheduling past trips, excluding my most recent trip in 2022, I selected early morning flights to give myself more time at my desired destination. As well, often earlier flights in the day were a bit less expensive (I have not noticed this to be the case as of late, but in the past). However, when taking the most direct flight possible, leaving in the afternoon on the west coast has the arrival time in France or England in the early evening the following day which lends itself well to having a nice meal before exhaustedly going to sleep in a comfortable bed. As well, leaving in the afternoon gives you time to gradually begin the day, go through your regular routines, partake in a healthy 30-minute or hour-long exercise routine, and generally, prepare to sit for a very long time. When I am able to exercise and not feel rushed, the rest of the day and any unknowns that pop up are easier to navigate, and I can more easily relax since my body has had the opportunity to fully move, stretch and receive what it needs. 2. Arrive in the late evening in Europe If leaving in the early afternoon is not an option, at least try to schedule your arrival time in Europe in the early evening for the reasons shared above. Whether you were able to catch some sleep on the plane or not, your mind as well as your body is tired and after being fed well in your destination city, wants to stretch out and relax. Rather than fight trying to stay awake until night arrives should you arrive in the morning or early afternoon, when you arrive in the evening, you don't have to fight your body and just let it do what it yearns for. 3. The fewer connecting flights the better If at all possible, scheduling-wise and/or budget-wise, choose a direct flight, or the closest thing to it (I have to take a short hop from Redmond to an international airport, typically Seattle, Portland or San Fran, and then my international flight departs to Europe from there). Not only do you save time, but it is less stressful, thus it doesn't exhaust your mind unnecessarily which is already going to be confused when you arrive due to the time change. Mind exhaustion on top of jet lag prolongs your ability to adjust, and the shorter the hop, the less stress incurred. The many farms seen in the countryside in Normandy. 4. Try to sleep on the flight Even if for only a few hours, do your best to find a way to experience real sleep. Real sleep where the hours invisibly whisk by and you wake up feeling somewhat, if not quite a bit, rested and energized. In my experience, the fewer hours I am able to sleep on the trip, the harder/longer jet lag is to recover from on that particular end of the trip. 5. Invest in Business Class if/when possible In episode #329 I shared my experience flying Business Class on British Airways during my recent trip in April 2022 to Britain and France. Needless to say, even if it takes a bit longer to save up for each subsequent trip abroad in order to fly in such comfort, I will do it. It is worth it, largely because of the reduction of stress and my ability to sleep well. And as I shared in #4 above, when you sleep well during the flight, you reduce (not eliminate) jet lag. My flight to Europe in Business Class provided more than 4 hours of sleep, and while I did feel the effects of jet lagged for about two days upon arrival, this was far better than it has been in the past. No doubt my excitement being back in Paris helped to overcome some of the feeling, but as I assessed what else may have contributed to an easing of this expected feeling of exhaustion, confusion, malaise and inability to sleep naturally, the one primary variable that was different was the flight I chose and the amount of sleep and quality of sleep I received. My seat in Business Class on British Airways, bedding products from The White Company 6. Hydrate as much as possible while flying While toasting with sparkling wine as the journey begins is tempting and certainly something I enjoy doing as well, refrain from too much alcohol as it dehydrates you. Instead, seek out as much water as you can, and even the multiple bathroom-runs are good for you as it gets you up and out of your seat which is an activity that sets your circadian rhythm. The more you can do to set your circadian rhythm to knowing when it needs to be awake and when it needs to rest (the reason why airlines dim the cabin light uniformly for everyone and set the meals as they do), the more quickly your mind will be able to settle into the new sleep schedule. 7. Take a hot bath before bed Whether at your travel destination or when you arrive home, just before you want to go to bed, take a hot bath as this helps to relax the body and interestingly enough, drop the body temperature which helps you fall asleep. A deep soak of a bath at The Savoy while staying in London. Take the tour of our stay in this detailed post. 8. Begin to simulate, ever so slightly and gradually, the new time zone before you leave While a subtle shift at home may not seem beneficial, for me, this is actually quite possible as I like to go to bed early, and an excuse to go to bed one hour sooner, wake up one hour earlier is not a detriment. Of course, this will depend on your work and home schedule, but if you can, it may reduce jet lag a bit so it won't last as long when you arrive. 9. Be gentle and patient with yourself, gradually shift into the new time schedule Our brains are wonderful tools, but it takes time to change them, and that includes its sleep schedule. When our sleep schedule becomes disrupted, our mind is confused as to what it is supposed to do, so be gentle and patient with it. When I returned home this past April, it took about 7-10 days to get over my jet lag. Finding myself falling asleep on the sofa at 5pm with eyelids I could not bribe to stay open at any cost, I let myself fall asleep, and pushed myself to stay awake an hour later each night until I was finally back to my regular bedtime routine. With all of that said . . . 10. Understand there are many jet lag remedies, but honor what works for you I won't list the suggestions I have received over the years I haven't found helpful for me, or the beliefs from other travelers about what is most difficult (direction of flight) because what is true for them is true for them. However, sharing what has worked and why I have discovered it does work, had I been able to understand these truths, is something I would have loved to have known earlier in my travels but likely could not have known. Knowing that I needed to, for want of a better phrase, 'feel my way' through jet lag to figure out what happens and how I respond to it gave me the tools to figure out how to reduce its effects that most negatively affected me. Self-awareness not only helps you live a life you love living in a general over-arching way; it also affords you helpful insights in how to work well with jet lag to best fit your needs to ensure the best trip and experience possible. For example, as an HSP, sleep is especially important, whereas for non-HSPs being able to function well on 5-7 hours of sleep may be no problem. Not so in my case, so now that I know the value of sleep for my well-being, I invest in ensuring I receive a good night of sleep when I travel as I want to enjoy my trip as much as possible, and that includes on the flight. When we have the fortunate opportunity to travel abroad and cross many time zones, the price of jet lag is a small price to expense, but being aware of how it affects our minds and physical well-being is helpful so that we don't blame our mental lag on the destination but rather our mind's gradual settling in to the new time zone we have taken it to. Wishing you many wonderful trips and stamps in your passport! Bon Voyage! Petit Plaisir ~Herbed Salmon ~click here for the full recipe. ~Top image: arriving in London, looking out over Kensington, Royal Albert Hall

Our annual summer preview runs down the must-watch series and movies arriving in the next few months that are of particular interest to Anglophiles, including new seasons of Endeavour and Grantchester, upcoming historical drama Becoming Elizabeth, the return of crime drama We Hunt Together, and lots more.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thursday Traffic / Gun debate Twitter // Jesus 18 lost years / Spelling Bee / Good Spellers // Spelling Bee / Yellowstone Woman Gored / Mario Kart Ride / Water Wasters Crackdown // Queens Platinum Jubilee / Anglofiles

Welcome to Episode #20 of the Last Call Trivia Podcast! Join us as we kick off the game with a round of general knowledge questions. Next, we're heading to the final frontier for a round of Space Trivia!Round OneWe're starting things off with a Weights & Measures Trivia question that was made for all of the Anglophiles out there. Next up, a Common Bonds Trivia question challenges the Trivia Team to identify which name is shared by both one of the books of the Bible and a popular reggae album.The round concludes with a Sports Trivia question about one of the earliest modern Olympic Games.Bonus QuestionToday's Bonus Question is a follow-up to the Sports question from the first round.Round TwoGrab some astronaut ice cream and put on those moon boots because it's time for today's theme round of Space Trivia!Round Two starts with an Astronomy Trivia question that tests the Team's knowledge about the planets of our solar system.Next up we have a Places Trivia question about the home of several elegantly named “seas.”Round Two concludes with a Government Trivia question about the origins of NASA.Final QuestionIt's time to wrap up the game with a multi-part Final Question. The category for today's final is Video Games, and it's all about best-sellers.

durée : 00:54:23 - Very Good Trip - par : Michka Assayas - Ce soir, dans Very Good Trip, comme toujours, ce sera très particulier. Nous allons faire une parenthèse française et lyrique. Vous vous demandez bien ce que ça va être. Eh bien, patience.

Welcome to Episode #12 of the Last Call Trivia Podcast! As always, our show kicks off with three general knowledge Trivia questions in Round One to get the ball rolling. In Round Two, our Trivia Team gets to try their hand at a round of questions all about genericized trademarks. Round OneToday's show starts off with a Books Trivia question about a multinational conglomerate publishing company that was founded in 2013. Next up, we have an Anatomy Trivia question…or is it a spelling Trivia question? Either way, our Trivia Team brainstorms through a handful of the 206 bones in the human body in search of the correct answer.Round One concludes with a Movies Trivia question about a heated debate between Ben Affleck and the director of Armageddon. Bonus QuestionToday's Bonus Question is a follow-up to the Armageddon question in Round One. So if you're a big fan of the movie listen up…or maybe don't. Because in today's Bonus Question, we're talking about the number of scientific inaccuracies in the film as called out by NASA themselves. Spoiler alert: it's a lot.Round TwoAs usual, Round Two of the game is themed after a particular topic, and today we're talkin' about Genericized Trademarks Trivia. P.S., the common bond between zippers, aspirin, and popsicles is that they're all genericized trademarks themselves! Round Two starts with a Tools Trivia question. One member of the Trivia Team is able to draw on their experience from theater set design to help brainstorm some potential answers.Next up, we have a Products Trivia question which is a fittingly general category for the theme of genericized trademarks.Round Two wraps up with a Language Trivia question that allows our Trivia Team full of Anglophiles to put their knowledge of British slang to good use. Final QuestionIt's time to finish up the game strong with a multi-part Final Question in the category of Companies. Who's ready to show off their business acumen??In today's Final Question, the Trivia Team is asked to name the country where four specific companies were founded. While the Team is able to breeze through most of them, one particular company throws them through a loop. Listen in to see if you can reason your way to the right answer!

In the final Rantcast of the year 2021, Lewis ponders the unfathomable contradictions and conundrums evident in the pluralistic American society. How can a group of people who can't seem to get anything done on time still manage to shop themselves into Yuletide oblivion and get all the Christmas gifts under the tree in time to perpetuate the myth of Santa Claus (or Father Christmas for the Anglophiles)? How can a civic body that would rather go to the dentist than actually vote get their knickers so in a twist about the right to vote? And have we so lost our minds as a country that nothing seems amiss when animated bears sell us toilet paper and a live, costumed emu hawks insurance? Maybe we can all agree that no one is waiting for Sunday night, especially when it involves the Washington Football Team getting trampled by actual Cowboys. With the assaults of insanity from all sides in politics, the media, and the marketplace, Lewis has an important message as we transition to 2022: don't let them get you crazy. You're not crazy, they are. Happy New Year! The live rants come from the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston, NY on February 22, 2020. Submit rants to Lewis https://www.lewisblack.com/live Check out Lewis' Grammy-nominated special, Thanks For Risking Your Life https://tlbrecords.lnk.to/LewisWE Subscribe to Lewis Black's Rantcast Apple – https://bit.ly/rantcast Spotify – https://spoti.fi/3oNaPFh Google – https://bit.ly/37Zb35u Amazon – https://amzn.to/37bg8Za Follow Lewis Website – http://www.lewisblack.com Instagram – http://www.instagram.com/thelewisblack Twitter – https://twitter.com/thelewisblack Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/thelewisblack Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/OfficialLewisBlack New episodes arrive every Wednesday via The Laugh Button For advertising opportunities email: advertise@thelaughbutton.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bergamot? Fallopian tubes?  Snooker? Believe it or not, we are talking about bread this week! Chocolate loaves abound in the signature, and a German Dampfnudel technical leaves Allison asking ' Why?' Noah's ark in bread. A plaited maiden in bread. And, a mythical masculine showstopper spawns this week's star baker. Connect with us:https://soggybottomgirls.comFollow us on social media:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soggybottomgirlsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/soggybottomgirls/

The ladies dive into the world of streaming service HBO Max - what it is exactly, what you can watch on it, how it differs from standard HBO, and whether it's necessary for Anglophiles.

The citizens of Great Britain are known for a great many contributions to world culture--their delicious cuisine, their penchant for colonization, and of course, being total sexual freaks. This week, the guys take it outside to explore the very British tradition of "dogging," the performance of public sex. Anglophiles be warned: this episode may give you a whole new image when you think of bangers and mash!

You can stop cleaning your groceries now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention affirmed this week what scientists have known for months: COVID-19 is spread primarily through the air, and everyone can tone it down with the wipes and disinfecting sprays. But what could individuals and businesses have been doing while the CDC waited to let us know? Kimberly Adams and Meghan McCarty Carino talk about it, along with the latest disturbing testimony in Derek Chauvin’s trial. But we’re not all hollowed out today. We’ll also chat about LeVar Burton, “Jeopardy!” and anime for Anglophiles. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Chauvin trial: Breathing experts pinpoints moment when ‘the light goes out of his body’” from MPR News “Expert: ‘That’s the moment the life goes out of his body:’ Derek Chauvin kept knee on neck for 3½ minutes after George Floyd drew last breath” from the Star Tribune “‘Awful but Lawful’” by Charles M. Blow in The New York Times “Has the Era of Overzealous Cleaning Finally Come to an End?” from The New York Times “‘Reading Rainbow’s’ LeVar Burton wants to host ‘Jeopardy!’ — and fans have created a petition to get him there” from CBS News “Top 10 Anime Set in England” from Honey’s Anime, plus this listener rec

You can stop cleaning your groceries now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention affirmed this week what scientists have known for months: COVID-19 is spread primarily through the air, and everyone can tone it down with the wipes and disinfecting sprays. But what could individuals and businesses have been doing while the CDC waited to let us know? Kimberly Adams and Meghan McCarty Carino talk about it, along with the latest disturbing testimony in Derek Chauvin’s trial. But we’re not all hollowed out today. We’ll also chat about LeVar Burton, “Jeopardy!” and anime for Anglophiles. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Chauvin trial: Breathing experts pinpoints moment when ‘the light goes out of his body’” from MPR News “Expert: ‘That’s the moment the life goes out of his body:’ Derek Chauvin kept knee on neck for 3½ minutes after George Floyd drew last breath” from the Star Tribune “‘Awful but Lawful’” by Charles M. Blow in The New York Times “Has the Era of Overzealous Cleaning Finally Come to an End?” from The New York Times “‘Reading Rainbow’s’ LeVar Burton wants to host ‘Jeopardy!’ — and fans have created a petition to get him there” from CBS News “Top 10 Anime Set in England” from Honey’s Anime, plus this listener rec

Debra and Adam welcome back The Oddman Out to tell us about all the different three letter organizations that are controlling "global" policy. Debra had to leave early but the conversation continued. The Pilgrim Society, Anglophiles, and The Royal Family are all discussed before the show ends. Find all of the Oddman's links at https://linktr.ee/Theoddmanout ******************************************************** Email: debragetsredpilled@protonmail.com ******************************************************** Twitter: @debragetspilled ******************************************************** Value For Value: Please support the show with a donation that equals the value that you are getting from it. Subscribe, rate, review and recommend us to your family and friends. ******************************************************** Paypal:https://paypal.me/debrawantsmoney?locale.x=en_US ******************************************************** Venmo: @adam-alamano ******************************************************** CashApp: @$ALLSKREWEDUP ******************************************************** CRYPTO ACCEPTED!!!!! ******************************************************** Freedom Cells: www.freedomcells.org

This show features your Hosts Sam Ratcliffe & Ian Herrington and Engineer Ian Herrington... Again. With special guest...Ben Stone. The British Corner Shop! We do an unboxing of their famous Brit Kits, that are perfect for any gift around the entire world!British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

BLIMEY (to quote yesterday's crossword), today's work is an ode to Anglophiles, with several answers that mean one thing on this side of the pond, and another thing on the other. For example ...17A, Travelled by subway?, WENTDOWNTHETUBE, 27A, "Would you call the elevator for me?", CANIGETALIFT, and 48A, "Hand me a flashlight", PASSTHETORCH. A few weeks ago we had a crossword with a distinctly Canadian theme, so expect Australia/India/South Africa/Other commonwealth country to pop up in the not too distant future.

This show features your Hosts Sam Ratcliffe & Ian Herrington and Engineer Travis Flesher. With special guest...Eve Dawes. The British Corner Shop! We do an unboxing of their famous Brit Kits, that are perfect for any gift around the entire world!British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

This show features your Hosts Sam Ratcliffe & Ian Herrington and Engineer Travis Flesher. With special guest...Alison Ward. The British Corner Shop! We do an unboxing of their famous Brit Kits, that are perfect for any gift around the entire world!British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

This show features your Hosts Sam Ratcliffe & Ian Herrington and Engineer Travis Flesher. With special guest... Simon Phillips, actor and producer of the film Stealing Chaplin. The British Corner Shop! We do an unboxing of their famous Brit Kits, that are perfect for any gift around the entire world!British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

This show features your Hosts Sam Ratcliffe & Ian Herrington and Engineer Travis Flesher. With special guest... Darren Hayman the in-house Immigration Lawyer. The British Corner Shop! We do an unboxing of their famous Brit Kits, that are perfect for any gift around the entire world! We have a special appearance from Eve Dawes, showing us some Working out!British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

Orlando City finished the regular season this past week with a pair of home contests. Overall, the Lions played well in both but Wednesday’s match against the Columbus Crew took an awful turn just after halftime when Nani was sent off — erroneously according to the unanimous decision of the Independent Review Panel — with a red card in the 52nd minute. That turned out to not matter because Mauricio Pereyra and Benji Michel called game. Sunday’s Decision Day match was going quite well until the 88th minute when the ceiling caved in, leaving Orlando with its first home loss of 2020 and stuck a serious doubt dagger into the Lions as they head into their first ever postseason. Dave Rohe and I break down both games and all of the important talking points. We discuss the ridiculous red card shown to Nani, the Lions’ problems defending late, the loss of Pedro Gallese and Sebas Mendez for the team’s first playoff game, the schedule for that game, and pick our Man of the Match for each of the two contests. The Concacaf Champions League is coming to Exploria Stadium in December, as the international tournament will go into its own bubble, playing behind closed doors. We also talk about Alex Morgan’s long-awaited first game back from her extended maternity leave, and the Orlando Pride’s protected and unprotected players for Thursday’s NWSL Expansion Draft. Our mailbag wants us to change allegiances in the EPL this week. We don’t wanna! If there’s anything — and we do mean anything —you want us to address on our next show, just ask by tweeting it to us at @TheManeLand with the hashtag #AskTMLPC. There’s no match to preview this week as the Lions are off until Nov. 21, when New York City FC comes to town for the Lions’ first MLS playoff game. How appropriate is it that Orlando’s first ever MLS opponent is also the team’s first postseason opponent? Pretty, pretty, pretty appropriate! That’s all for this week. Stay safe and enjoy the show! Here’s how show No. 222 went down: 0:15 - The Lions split their two games this week but Dave and I are unanimous with both of our Man of the Match selections. 51:12 - Pride/NWSL news, a mailbag for Anglophiles, some ranting and raving about MLS vs. the FIFA international window. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This show features your Hosts Sam Ratcliffe & Ian Herrington and Engineer Travis Flesher. With special guest... The British Corner Shop! We do an unboxing of their famous Brit Kits, that are perfect for any gift around the entire world! We have a special appearance from Eve Dawes, showing us some cooking skills!British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

This show features your Hosts Sam Ratcliffe & Ian Herrington and Engineer Travis Flesher. With special guest... Ali Ward and Eve Dawes. Get ready to get confused because nothing is as it seems.... OOoooOOoooooooohhh BOO! Happy Halloween!British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

This show features your Hosts Host Sam Ratcliffe and Guest co-hgost Alison Ward! (and a remote with Ian Herrington from Orlando, Florida) and Engineer Travis Flesher. With special guest... Ian Russell talking about his recent Grammy Awards for Voice Work!Escapology Location: 2797 S Maryland Pkwy, Las Vegas, NV 89109-5032British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

This show features your Hosts Ian Herrington and Co-Host Sam Ratcliffe and Engineer Travis Flesher. With special guest... Las Vegas Headliner and Virtual Host Jeff Civillico!! Special Interview by Alison Ward with Simon Millington the Owner of Escapology!Escapology Location: 2797 S Maryland Pkwy, Las Vegas, NV 89109-5032British Corner Shop Affiliate Code: https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/?casrc=spilltea-Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!

Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!Codfather Address: 2895 N Green Valley Pkwy, Henderson, NV 89014This show features your Hosts Ian Herrington and Co-Host Sam Ratcliffe, with a guest appearance from Glynn Bramhall and Mary Wilson. LIVE from the Fish n' Chips shop 'Codfather"

Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!This show features your Hosts Ian Herrington and Co-Host Sam Ratcliffe, with a guest appearance from Phil Soussan the Rocker Bassist who has been everwhere and done it all!

Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!This show features your Hosts Ian Herrington and Co-Host Sam Ratcliffe, with a guest appearance from Claire Jane Vranian & a new segment Host Alison Ward!

Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!This show features your Hosts Ian Herrington and Co-Host Sam Ratcliffe, with a guest appearance from Travis Flesher, the engineer of the podcast!

Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!This show features your Hosts Ian Herrington and Co-Host Sam Ratcliffe with the whole cast of past guests and special performances from those who helped up throughout our year! Here is to another year of Spill The Tea!

Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!This show features your Hosts Ian Herrington and Co-Host Sam Ratcliffe, with guest appearances from Mrs. England,, Eve Dawes and Steven Thomas, owner of The Thomas Group @ Love Local Real Estate.

Spill The Tea is the social media show and podcast for British Expats, those thinking about becoming an Expat and Anglophiles that simply love everything British.Each week we have guests from the world of entertainment, live performances, informative features and great chat about what it is to be an expat, what we miss, what we don't, and an update of what's going on back in the U.K... With the exception of Brexit!This show features your Hosts Ian Herrington and Co-Host Sam Ratcliffe, with guest appearances from Patrick Littlejon the famous Sourdough bread winner and Mandy & Dave, wonderful performers starting a new show on the Spill The Tea Facebook Page.

This week, we take a small jump across the pond to talk about fans of those dashing Brits: Anglophiles! Who are Anglophiles? Is it just Americans who are Anglophiles? What is the appeal? Stay tuned for a smashing good time! Everyone's a fan! Find more like this: [fanthropological.com](http://fanthropological.com) Find us on social media Twitter: [@thenickscast](http://twitter.com/thenickscast) Instagram: [@thenickscast](http://instagram.com/thenickscast) Facebook: [fb.com/thenickscast](http://fb.com/thenickscast) Youtube: [youtube.com/thenickscast](http://youtube.com/thenickscast) Email us about fandoms you want to hear about: [nick@thenickscast.com](mailto:nick@thenickscast.com) Play-by-play 00:00 - Cold Open 00:08 - Theme Song 00:31 - Introduction 02:06 - Who are Anglophiles? 04:50 - Trivia 09:28 - Why are people Anglophiles? 52:03 - Fans of the week 55:17 - Spotlight: [Watchtower Restaurant KW](http://www.watchtowerrestaurant.com/) and the [Nickscast Youtube](http://youtube.com/thenickscast) 59:12 - Goodbye! 1:00:25 - Outtakes Citations ["What is an Anglophile? - ANGLOPHILES UNITED"](http://www.anglophilesunited.com/what-is-an-anglophile.html) ["Lost in the Pond: Why Are There So Many American Anglophiles? - Anglotopia.net"](http://www.anglotopia.net/anglophilia/lost-in-the-pond-why-are-there-so-many-american-anglophiles/) ["10 Reasons Why This US Dude Loves the English | The Huffington Post"](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/norm-schriever/10-reasons-why-this-us-guy-loves-the-english_b_3737122.html) ["Why America's Anglophiles Are Missing the Point of the Royal Wedding - TIME"](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2068118,00.html) ["Is the UK an introvert's paradise? - The Student Room"](https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1605906) ["Separated by a Common Language: accent attitudes"](https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.ca/2011/06/accent-attitudes.html) ["Anglophilia: Anglophile Problems That We Have to Accept - Anglotopia.net"](http://www.anglotopia.net/anglophilia/anglophilia-anglophile-problems-that-we-have-to-accept/) ["Wikipedia - Anglophile"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglophile) ["Anglophones United"](http://www.anglophilesunited.com/) ["25 Signs You're an Anglophile"](https://www.buzzfeed.com/keelyflaherty/signs-youre-an-anglophile?utm_term=.plKnNk0Rn#.hf3veZQDv) ["Lost in the Pond: Why Are There so Many American Anglophiles"](http://www.anglotopia.net/anglophilia/lost-in-the-pond-why-are-there-so-many-american-anglophiles/) ["Confessions of an Anglophile"](http://landlopers.com/2011/02/09/confessions-anglophile) ["Reddit - Brits of Reddit, How Long Would an Anglophile Last in the UK"](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3azxzm/brits_of_reddit_how_long_would_an_anglophile_last/) ["Reddit - What Do You Think of Anglophiles"](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/28p7r1/what_do_you_think_of_anglophiles/) ["Reddit - What Are Your Thoughts on Anglophilia and Anglophiles"](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/4h30hq/what_are_your_thoughts_on_anglophilia_and/) ["Wikipedia - Paris Syndrome"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome) ["Anglicon 2017 ― Christmas in Whoville"](http://anglicon.com/) ["TV Tropes - Foreign Culture Fetish"](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForeignCultureFetish) ["Know your meme - Anglophiles"](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/anglophile) ["Professor Elemental's "I'm British""](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkF_XpA5P48) ["Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer's "Straight Out of Surrey""](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7J7vXCf5w) ["Lost in the Pond: Why are there so many American Anglophiles"](http://www.anglotopia.net/anglophilia/lost-in-the-pond-why-are-there-so-many-american-anglophiles/) ["Why Anglophilia"](https://americananglophile.wordpress.com/why-anglophilia/) ["The Mystery of Stephen Harper's Anglophilia"](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2012/09/27/the_mystery_of_stephe

In our final podcast for the year of 2014 we finish our first year of podcasting with part 1 of a two part podcast. Part One: We discuss the Doctor Who and Big Finish news from December till early January.  We look at the Doctor Who, UNIT and Derrick Sherwin unhappiness, as Liam relates his Whoverville Interview and the DWM interview (DWM #479, p. 54-60). Then a quick discussion of The British Film Institute survey of the Best Sci-Fi characters of all-time, and the DW related names.  We then finish off with some of the new Big Finish announcement regarding future releases. Once we get to the reviews, we look at the 2014 releases for Big Finish: The Rani Elite (MR #194), An Ordinary Life (EA. #1.4), The Highest Science (Novel Adaption #2), Blake's 7 Fortuitas (2.2), Survivors Audio Book, The Judgement of Sherlock Holmes (Box Set 4).  We then finish off with Doctor Who TV series Christmas Special "Last Christmas." During our discussion we rant, complain, and have an odd discussion regarding what Anglophiles do to Brits in their American neighborhood.  References to the Inbetweeners 2 movie, Misfits, and other fun stuff are intertwined in this joyous romp of a podcast   Contact us: Twitter: @alhambrapodcas Email: alhambraaudio@gmail.com