Podcast appearances and mentions of Brian Eno

In this episode, we are joined by therapist Jonathan McIntosh to explore the growing fear of flying, especially in light of recent aviation incidents that have sparked renewed anxiety among travelers. McIntosh, a seasoned psychotherapist, breaks down the root causes of flight anxiety—ranging from specific phobias to trauma responses and heightened awareness from news coverage. He offers practical tools grounded in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), including mindfulness techniques, breathing exercises, supportive apps, and calming music like Brian Eno's Music for Airports. Recognizing that anxiety looks different for everyone, McIntosh highlights the importance of individualized care and offers listeners actionable strategies to navigate their fear and fly with more confidence.

Bands Across America: North Carolina Ben Folds Five – The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999) & James Taylor – JT (1977)Our summer musical road trip rolls into North Carolina, a state rich in musical heritage and home to artists who have shaped the sound of jazz, folk, hip-hop, and alt-rock. This week, we spotlight two albums from North Carolina natives who brought their unique voices to the world stage: Ben Folds Five and James Taylor. We dive into their creative ambition, emotional resonance, and the ways their music reflects the diversity of the Tar Heel State.What's Inside:- Ben Folds Five's Ambitious Song Cycle: Explore the intricate, theatrical world of The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, a piano-driven alt-pop album that blends chamber pop, jazz, and biting wit. We break down the album's narrative arc, standout tracks, and how Ben Folds Five stretched the boundaries of 90s indie rock.- James Taylor's Soft Rock Mastery: Take a drive through JT, the platinum-selling album that cemented Taylor's legacy as the king of 70s soft rock. From the joyful “Your Smiling Face” to the soulful “Handy Man,” we discuss how Taylor's Chapel Hill roots and California influences combine for a timeless, laid-back classic.- Our Takes: We break down each album's vibe, killer tracks, production quirks, and replay value—plus, which one best captures North Carolina's musical spirit.- Deep Questions: Don gets philosophical about North Carolina's cultural legacyDiggin':- Ian Noe – Between The Country (2019): Kentucky-born singer-songwriter delivers a haunting, Appalachian folk masterpiece full of vivid storytelling and empathy.- Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes – Live at the Greek (25th Anniversary Reissue, 2025): A newly expanded, remastered set capturing the explosive collaboration between Page and the Crowes—now with more tracks and Crowes originals.- Royel Otis – Hickey (2025): Sydney indie-pop duo returns with jangly guitars and dreamy melodies exploring the chaos of youth and romance.- Nation of Language – Dance Called Memory (2025): Brooklyn synthpop trio's introspective fourth album blends post-punk, minimal wave, and a human touch inspired by Brian Eno.Podcast Shout-Out:Getting Down & Wordy Dive into the origins and musical connections of words and phrases with Hannah and Russell. From “beef” to “TGIF,” this podcast explores the language of music with wit and curiosity. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.Join the Conversation!What's your favorite North Carolina album? What are you spinning lately? Let us know on Instagram, Facebook, BlueSky, and Threads @albumnerds, or email us at podcast@albumnerds.com.Thanks for listening—see you on the road! Next stop: Southern California

   ---- 1 - Blonde Redhead- The Shadow Of The Guest - Rest Of Her Life (Choir Version) Feat. Brooklyn Youth Chorus 2 - Blonde Redhead - The Shadow Of The Guest - Via Savona (Choir Version) Feat. Brooklyn Youth Chorus 3 - Lucrecia Dalt - A Danger to Ourselves - Divina 4 - Caroline - Caroline 2 - When I Get Home 5 - Sontag Shogun x Lau Nau - Païväkahvit - They Came in Through the Front Door (Fadi Tabbal Rework) 6 - Tan Cologne - (...) - n Resin (Trentemøller Rework) 7 - Shabason, Krgovich, Tenniscoats - Wao - Our Detour 8 - Thom Yorke - Smoke (OST) - Dialing In 9 - Holly Herndon - Eternal Re-Imagined 10 - Lyra Pramuk - Hymnal - Meridian 11 - Cameron Winter - Heavy Metal - $0 12 - José Afonso - Como Se Fora Seu Filho - Eu Dizia 13 - The Czars - The Ugly People vs the Beautiful People - Drug ---- 14 - John Cale - Fear - Buffalo Ballet 15 - Alice Phoebe Lou - … - Old Shadows 16 - Hand Habits - Blue Reminder - Dead Rat 17 - Adrian Crowley - Measure Of Joy - Lost At Last 18 - Mac DeMarco - Guitar - Home 19 - Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill - We've All Time To Sleep 20 - Malva - Poros - Pausa Para Esclarecimentos 21 - Malva - Poros - Ninho 22 - Delaney Bailey - Chet Baker Re:Imagined - While My Lady Sleeps 23 - Tiny Ruins - Some Were Meant For Sea - Running Through The Night 24 - Meg Baird - Dear Companion - Riverhouse in Tinicum 25 - Brian Eno, Beatie Wolfe - Luminal - Shhh 26 - Tim Bernardes - Prudência/Praga - Praga 27 - Ohtis - Without Blemish/Bob - Bob (feat. Lillie West) 28 - Bill Callahan - Rough Travel For A Rare Thing - Rock Bottom Riser 29 - Steve Gunn - Music for Writers - Slow Singers On The Hill 30 - P.G. Six - The Well of Memory (2025 Expanded Edition) - A Song Is But A Song

Liner Notes In this episode, you will be able to: Uncover the innovative recording techniques utilized in David Bowie's Lodger album. Explore the fascinating musical evolution of David Bowie and its impact on his diverse discography. Delve into the profound influence of Brian Eno on David Bowie's experimental and boundary-pushing music. Discover the unique recording methods that revolutionized rock music production. Understand the significant impact of world music on Western artists, including David Bowie's artistic journey. The key moments in this episode are: 00:00:01 - Unconventional Sound of "Lodger"  00:07:13 - Bowie's Musical Evolution  00:11:23 - Eno's Influence on "Lodger"  00:14:39 - Bowie's Anti-Brand Statement  00:16:18 - Musical Experimentation  00:17:28 - Interpreting Roles  00:19:35 - Theme of Wanderlust  00:23:16 - Diverse Fan Reactions  00:31:45 - Purposeful Unbalance  00:32:24 - Audio Troubles  00:33:32 - Embracing Accidents  00:35:24 - Unintended Uses of Toilet Paper  00:39:32 - Collaborating with Brian Eno  00:47:28 - Fantastic Voyage  00:48:44 - Analyzing Bowie's Final Episode  00:49:25 - Finding Comfort in Shared Experiences  00:50:40 - The Weight of Global Issues  00:51:52 - Coping with Shared Burdens  01:04:06 - The complexity of the lyrics  01:05:09 - Reversed chord structure in the song  01:07:18 - Cultural appropriation and mockery  01:11:26 - Analyzing the song's haiku-like lines  01:18:39 - Identity theft experience  01:21:32 - Honest Communication  01:22:04 - Data Security Concerns  01:22:50 - Empathetic Customer Service  01:23:33 - Resilience and Moving Forward  01:34:56 - Analyzing Music  01:38:08 - The chilling performance of the song  01:40:25 - The disturbing nature of the song  01:44:55 - Tonal shift and tension  01:49:29 - Bowie's forecast and transition  01:54:24 - The significance of the album  01:54:36 - Bowie's Refusal to Explain Himself  01:55:11 - Questions to Ponder While Re-listening to Lodger  01:56:35 - Reflection on Lodger and Bowie's Artistry  01:58:23 - Anticipation for Scary Monsters  02:01:59 - Closing Thoughts and Miscellaneous Tips  This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Our guest today is Jeff Lipton, a mastering engineer from Boston, Massachusetts, USA.Jeff has worked with Agnostic Front, Arcade Fire, Click 5, Throwing Muses, Superchunk, The Magnetic Fields, and Andrew Bird.We talk about process/quality control, getting started in the Boston music scene, Fort Apache, working with Stephin Merritt, how it used to be with A&R historically, video chats for mastering sessions, never figuring out a work/life balance, working in and educating clients about spatial audio, and Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies.This episode's music is brought to you by Valories from Nashville, Tennessee. For more information on Valories, head to instagram: @itsvaloriesFor more information about Jeff:Check out: https://www.peerlessmastering.comAnd Instagram: @peerlessmastering

The 678th of a series of weekly radio programmes created by :zoviet*france: First broadcast 5 July 2025 by Resonance 104.4 FM and CJMP 90.1 FM Thanks to the artists included here for their fine work. track list 00 Suzanne Hardy - Intro 01 Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch - [untitled – 'Twin Peaks ▪︎ Season Two Music and More' track 0a] 02 .Zigo - Oumalito1 03 Astma - IgE13 04 Matt Davignon - Shimmer 04 Ausgesuchtestenohren - Scream Evolution [extract] 05 Skotógen - Arrival Heights 07 Cosey Fanni Tutti - Sonance 08 Soundoferror - Hightower (Studio) 09 Öjskog - f o / r 10 BRB>Voicecoil - Reclaim Pt 3 11 Julie Berry / SE Trains - stb_ced 12 Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe - Big Empty Country – III ++ Suzanne Hardy - Outro

Musician William Doyle joins us this week to share his personal Beatles. The result was a wonderfully rambling epic chat about Ram, recreating Beatles songs for Music A-level, and the band's influence on William's early music.The extended version for subscribers also features conversation about William's work with Brian Eno, as well as a discussion of John Lennon's solo track from Imagine, Oh My Love, in this week's Pick a Song.Subscribe on Apple podcasts or Patreon now: http://patreon.com/personalbeatles.Links of note:Turnstile Made for Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrK_HDYSIvcJack White Guessing Beatles Songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8GeoZ97GLsWilliam's latest album, Springs Eternal: https://williamdoyle.bandcamp.com/album/springs-eternal Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hawkwind You'd Better Believe It 7:07 Hall Of The Mountain Grill 1974 Deep Space Destructors Nymphaea Tetragona (Forever Floating) 5:49 Voyage to Innerspace 2023 Embryo Radio Marrakesh – Orient Express 9:35 Steig aus 1972 Farmacia Flor 2:29 PCT 17 – Ellas 2025 The Teardrop Phase The Shimmering in C Major 2:16 single 2025 Brian Eno […]

It's not really square, and it's not really a garden, and I don't know who Madison is. But this week, our hosts FiG and Knob are joined by special guest Dew Roller to talk head to New York City. It's September 22nd, 1993, and the Grateful Dead are playing Madison Square Garden. Along the way, discussions abound about Tiny Tim, the history of Dark Star, and what makes a good sit-in.  Watch FiG and Dew Roller appear on the Unmixed and Unmastered podcast about Brian Eno's ambient series: https://youtu.be/a1eSmPLmbds?si=Jmls1rOkJBonvgv_ Help on the Way >  Slipknot! >  Franklin's Tower > New Minglewood Blues Ramble on Rose When I Paint My Masterpiece Bird Song * Easy Answers * Lazy River Road * Estimated Prophet * > Dark Star * > Drums * > Space * > Wharf Rat * > Throwing Stones ** > Turn on Your Love Light ** I Fought the Law * with David Murray ** also with James Cotton

For the 20th anniversary of the debut Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album, we take a detailed look at how it was made. After Alec Ounsworth began recording demos of the songs he was writing, he connected with musicians he met while attending Connecticut College. The band was officially formed in 2004 and included Ounsworth, Lee Sargent, Tyler Sargent, Sean Greenhalgh and Robbie Guertin. As the rest of the band relocated to New York, Ounsworth remained in his hometown of Philadelphia and commuted for rehearsals and shows. They started recording an EP that they were intending to shop around to labels. While continuing to work on new songs, the EP evolved into a full-length album that they recorded in spurts when they could get studio time. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Self-Titled) was eventually self-released in 2005. In this episode, Ounsworth describes his songwriting process for the album and how his demos grew into the full band arrangements. He lays out his vision for the album and how he was hyper focused on adding overdubs, interludes and song segues to create a more impactful listening experience. By releasing and distributing the album themselves, he describes the value he put on being independent at that time. In addition, he talks about the discomfort he felt when the band started gaining a lot of attention, partially due to a Pitchfork review of the album. From being labeled “blog rock,” to developing his unconventional vocal style, to writing about romantic relationships and the prospect of success, to taking inspiration from artists like Brian Eno, Tom Waits, Wire, The Magnetic Fields and David Bowie, to the value of doing it yourself and remaining independent, we'll hear the stories of how the record came together.

This week we're diving headfirst into the gloriously pretentious world of No Wave - the three-year New York art scene that somehow managed to influence everything that followed. Chris has somehow convinced Mark and our resident Italian punk professor Ferro to explore how a bunch of art school dropouts in a financially bankrupt New York accidentally created one of music's most important movements. We start with New York City in 1978: a proper shithole where you'd genuinely risk your life getting a taxi to Brooklyn, Times Square was basically a war zone, and the city had literally gone bankrupt. Perfect conditions, as it turns out, for a load of bohemian kids to move in, pay bugger all rent, and start making the most deliberately difficult music imaginable. Enter Brian Eno, who's meant to be in New York producing Talking Heads like a normal person, but instead wanders into some art space gig and discovers bands like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, Mars, and The Contortions doing something completely mental. Being Brian Eno, he obviously decides to document the whole thing, creating the legendary "No New York" compilation that basically put the entire movement on the map. We get properly stuck into the key figures: Lydia Lunch being an absolute force of nature in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance slapping music critics (literally - he assaulted Robert Christgau), and the various weirdos who decided that what punk really needed was to be even more antagonistic to its audience. Ferro brings his encyclopaedic knowledge of the European connections, particularly the parallels between New York's urban decay and Berlin's post-war experimental scene. We explore how Einstürzende Neubauten were literally destroying studio floors with sledgehammers whilst Throbbing Gristle were essentially inventing industrial music in their Yorkshire squat. The conversation sprawls magnificently through Swans' absolutely punishing early albums, the way Sonic Youth emerged from this scene, and how bands like Bush Tetras and Rat at Rat R kept the torch burning. We also dive into some proper tangents about Madonna apparently being in an art punk band with future Swans members (mental) and how this whole movement influenced everything from the Load Records noise rock scene to modern post-metal. This is part two of our anti-rock trilogy. Last week we tackled the prehistory from musique concrète to Captain Beefheart, and next week we'll finally get to US Maple and try to explain why anyone would voluntarily subject themselves to their particular brand of musical torture. Highlights 00:00 Introduction to No Wave and Brian Eno's Influence 00:33 Welcome to the Podcast 01:04 Recap of Previous Episode 02:14 The Rise of No Wave in Late 1970s New York 02:46 Sociological Context of 1970s New York 02:59 Key Figures and Bands in No Wave 03:43 The No New York Compilation Album 07:59 Brian Eno's Role and Impact 11:02 Musical Influence and Legacy of No Wave 20:04 James Chance and The Contortions 22:44 Sonic Youth and Swans: Post No Wave Evolution 25:51 The Influence of Swans on Post-Metal 27:25 Exploring Lesser-Known Bands: Rat at Rat R and Bush Tetras 28:48 The Impact of Foetus and Throbbing Gristle 35:13 Berlin's No Wave Movement and Einstürzende Neubauten 41:08 The Legacy of No Wave in Chicago and Beyond 45:03 Anti-Rock Bands and Their Influence 48:38 Concluding Thoughts and Teasers for Next Episode

Lutz Graf-Ulbrich, der sich Lüül nennt, hatte ein Ticket gekauft, um zu Nico nach Ibiza zu fliegen. In der Flughalle in Berlin-Tegel, wo er sich erst vor kurzem von ihr verabschiedet hatte, springt ihm die Schlagzeile der BZ ins Auge: „Nico. Hitzetod des Stars aus Berlin enthüllt das verschwiegene Liebesdrama um Alain Delon“. Er wusste schon, dass sie gestorben war, und wusste auch, dass sich die Boulevardpresse auf alles stürzte, was man über Promis in ihrem Umfeld schreiben konnte: über Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Brian Eno, Jackson Browne, Marianne Faithfull, John Cale – und Alain Delon. Lüül erzählt von seiner ungewöhnlichen Liebe zu Christa Päffgen, die sich Nico nannte, berichtet von ihrer Todessehnsucht, von ihrem Verhältnis zur deutschen Heimat und würdigt sie als Ausnahmekünstlerin, die immer noch vergöttert wird.

Kate Molleson meets Gavin Bryars, the celebrated and much-loved composer whose kaleidoscopic career defies categorisation. As an inveterate collaborator, Bryars has worked alongside figures as diverse as Brian Eno, Tom Waites, the Hilliard Ensemble, Mainz Opera and Faroese singer-songwriter, Eivør Pálsdottír. He has collected a lifetime's-worth of amazing stories along the way, and Kate invites Gavin to share some of the many surprising twists and turns in his journey from experimental outsider to concert hall favourite.Music Featured: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet The Stopping Train Crookesmoor The Sinking of the Titanic My First Homage White's SS Medea: Prelude to Act 5 Les Fiançailles On Photography String Quartet No 2 Glorious Hill Cadman Requiem Epilogue from Wonderlawn Adnan Songbook: Song IV Epilogue from ‘G' Biped Morte à spento quel sol ch' abagliar suolmi (Second Book of Madrigals) Double Bass Concerto "Farewell to St. Petersburg" A Man in a Room, Gambling (2, ‘3 Card Trick') The Fifth Century, (VI, His Omnipresence Is Our Field Of Joys) Ciascun ke fede sente (Lauda 37) Tróndur í Gøtu (V, Shall I Abandon) A Native HillPresented by Kate Molleson Produced by Chris Taylor for BBC Audio Wales & WestFor full track listings, including artist and recording details, and to listen to the pieces featured in full (for 30 days after broadcast) head to the series page for Gavin Bryars https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002djt7 And you can delve into the A-Z of all the composers we've featured on Composer of the Week here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3cjHdZlXwL7W41XGB77X3S0/composers-a-to-z

Kirk answers a bunch of listener questions on topics like bluegrass guitar, the music of Blue Prince, good apps for training theory skills, Robert Fripp's "Frippertronics," a mysterious sound on a Gene Clark song, different types of music notation, and the legacy of the blues. All that, and a trio of terrific singer/songwriters stops by the studio to help answer a question about lyrics.Come see Triple Click Live! Friday, July 11 at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, OR. Tickets HereKirk has new music for sale on Bandcamp: Music For Podcasting and his original score for Arydia: The Paths We Dare TreadThanks to The Wailin' Jennys for coming on the show! Stay tuned for a full-length interview episode this summer, and go see them live if you can. They are amazing.FEATURED/DISCUSSED:“White Trash Wedding” by The Chicks from Home, 2002A live performance of “White Trash Wedding”“Simon's Theme” by Trigg & Gusset from the Blue Prince original soundtrack, 2025Kirk's recent essay about Blue Prince and musicTwo good free music sites: musictheory.net and muted.io“What Am I Here For” by Jade Bird from Something American - EP, 2017“Across The Sea” by The Wailin' Jennys from Bright Morning Stars, 2011“Lady of the North” by Gene Clark from No Other, 1974The terrific Wonder of Stevie podcastTantacrul's tremendous video about the history of music notation“Hammond Song” by The Roaches, 1979Chords of Orion video explaining and re-creating Frippertronics“The Heavenly Music Corporation II” by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno from No Pussyfooting, 1973“St. James Infirmary” rec. Joseph “King” Oliver, 1930“Cross Road Blues” rec. Robert Johnson, ~193x“Down Hearted Blues” rec. Bessie Smith, 1929Two versions of "Wedding Song" by Anaïs Mitchell from Hadestown, 2018Kirk's essay about musical creation and “The Spark”OUTRO SOLO: Rob Reich, prolific bay area multi-instrumentalist, died unexpectedly a few weeks ago at the age of 47. It's an unfathomable loss. Rob recorded an outro solo for Strong Songs back in its very first year, so we're including it in this episode as a tribute to him and his generous musical spirit. Read more about Rob here.----LINKS-----

Jonathan Gould's latest book is "Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock" (Meridian Books 2025). Gould has previously written books about The Beatles and Otis Redding -- his shorter works appear in The New Yorker. Gould is a New York City native; he attended ballgames at The Polo Grounds as a child and is a Mets fan.Jonathan Gould's Website -  https://www.jonathangouldauthor.com/You can support Hooks & Runs by purchasing books, including those featured in this episode (if any were), through our store at Bookshop.org. Here's the link. https://bookshop.org/shop/hooksandruns Hooks & Runs - https://hooksandruns.buzzsprout.comEmail: hooksandruns@protonmail.com Craig on Bluesky (@craigest.bsky.social)Rex (Krazy Karl's Music Emporium) on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/people/Krazy-Karlz-Music-Emporium/100063801500293/ Hosts Emeriti:Andrew Eckhoff on Tik TokEric on FacebookMusic: "Warrior of Light" by ikolics (via Premium Beat)     This podcast and this episode are copyright Craig Estlinbaum, 2025.    

Nuria Zapata es una compositora y música peruana cuyo proyecto se llama La Zorra Zapata. Bajo ese nombre cuenta con 3 álbumes de estudio: el primero que es homónimo, "Acantilados" y "Quema o Ilumina" el cual salió en el 2024. Mucho de lo que hace en el estudio y en vivo es usando un loop station, con una voz súper dulce, y canciones que tienen mucha firmeza aunque sean delicadas, etéreas. En este episodio hablamos mucho de Fiona Apple y Brian Eno, pero también le leímos las cartas de los espíritus animales y descubrimos mucho sobre esta nueva fase de su vida y carrera en la que ha decidido mudarse a México. Se puso mágico el episodio,  de hecho tan mágico como su cambio de profesión del mundo de los libros al de la música... y todo por una operación de rodilla.  Sigue a Nuria Zapata y todas las noticias sobre su música: https://www.instagram.com/lazorrazapata/?hl=en Info Sobre Mezclas Abruptas: En el DJ booth y en este podcast Susana Medina selecciona temas de manera minuciosa y los pone sobre la mesa abruptamente. En este podcast aprenderás de pizza, perros, música, salud mental, ilustración, alpinismo y una serie de nuevas obsesiones y fascinaciones que en algún momento te servirán de algo. @mezclasabruptas  https://www.instagram.com/mezclasabruptas/ https://twitter.com/mezclasabruptas  https://www.tiktok.com/@mezclasabruptas  YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MezclasAbruptas @suzyain https://www.instagram.com/suzyrain  https://twitter.com/suzyrain  https://www.tiktok.com/@suzyrain  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, 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/ Erratum For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries' Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin's What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank's Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young's Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries' Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson's own autobiography Beeswing.  Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd's autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell's The Islander.  And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport's music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the Searchers, and applying those sounds to material by contemporary singer-songwriters. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had come up through folk clubs, and their songs were called folk music because of that, but they weren’t what folk music had meant up to that point — songs that had been collected after being handed down through the folk process, changed by each individual singer, with no single identifiable author. They were authored songs by very idiosyncratic writers. But over their last few albums, Fairport Convention had done one or two tracks per album that weren’t like that, that were instead recordings of traditional folk songs, but arranged with rock instrumentation. They were not necessarily the first band to try traditional folk music with electric instruments — around the same time that Fairport started experimenting with the idea, so did an Irish band named Sweeney’s Men, who brought in a young electric guitarist named Henry McCullough briefly. But they do seem to have been the first to have fully embraced the idea. They had done so to an extent with “A Sailor’s Life” on Unhalfbricking, but now they were going to go much further: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves” (from about 4:30)] There had been some doubt as to whether Fairport Convention would even continue to exist — by the time Unhalfbricking, their second album of the year, was released, they had been through the terrible car accident that had killed Martin Lamble, the band’s drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson’s girlfriend. Most of the rest of the band had been seriously injured, and they had made a conscious decision not to discuss the future of the band until they were all out of hospital. Ashley Hutchings was hospitalised the longest, and Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, and Sandy Denny, the other three surviving members of the band, flew over to LA with their producer and manager, Joe Boyd, to recuperate there and get to know the American music scene. When they came back, the group all met up in the flat belonging to Denny’s boyfriend Trevor Lucas, and decided that they were going to continue the band. They made a few decisions then — they needed a new drummer, and as well as a drummer they wanted to get in Dave Swarbrick. Swarbrick had played violin on several tracks on Unhalfbricking as a session player, and they had all been thrilled to work with him. Swarbrick was one of the most experienced musicians on the British folk circuit. He had started out in the fifties playing guitar with Beryl Marriott’s Ceilidh Band before switching to fiddle, and in 1963, long before Fairport had formed, he had already appeared on TV with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by Ian Campbell, the father of Ali and Robin Campbell, later of UB40: [Excerpt: The Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Shanten Bells (medley on Hullaballoo!)”] He’d sung with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: [Excerpt: A.L. Lloyd, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” ] And he’d formed his hugely successful duo with Martin Carthy, releasing records like “Byker Hill” which are often considered among the best British folk music of all time: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, “Byker Hill”] By the time Fairport had invited him to play on Unhalfbricking, Swarbrick had already performed on twenty albums as a core band member, plus dozens more EPs, singles, and odd tracks on compilations. They had no reason to think they could actually get him to join their band. But they had three advantages. The first was that Swarbrick was sick of the traditional folk scene at the time, saying later “I didn’t like seven-eighths of the people involved in it, and it was extremely opportune to leave. I was suddenly presented with the possibilities of exploring the dramatic content of the songs to the full.” The second was that he was hugely excited to be playing with Richard Thompson, who was one of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, and Martin Carthy remembers him raving about Thompson after their initial sessions. (Carthy himself was and is no slouch on the guitar of course, and there was even talk of getting him to join the band at this point, though they decided against it — much to the relief of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, who is a perfectly fine player himself but didn’t want to be outclassed by *two* of the best guitarists in Britain at the same time). And the third was that Joe Boyd told him that Fairport were doing so well — they had a single just about to hit the charts with “Si Tu Dois Partir” — that he would only have to play a dozen gigs with Fairport in order to retire. As it turned out, Swarbrick would play with the group for a decade, and would never retire — I saw him on his last tour in 2015, only eight months before he died. The drummer the group picked was also a far more experienced musician than any of the rest, though in a very different genre. Dave Mattacks had no knowledge at all of the kind of music they played, having previously been a player in dance bands. When asked by Hutchings if he wanted to join the band, Mattacks’ response was “I don’t know anything about the music. I don’t understand it… I can’t tell one tune from another, they all sound the same… but if you want me to join the group, fine, because I really like it. I’m enjoying myself musically.” Mattacks brought a new level of professionalism to the band, thanks to his different background. Nicol said of him later “He was dilligent, clean, used to taking three white shirts to a gig… The application he could bring to his playing was amazing. With us, you only played well when you were feeling well.” This distinction applied to his playing as well. Nicol would later describe the difference between Mattacks’ drumming and Lamble’s by saying “Martin’s strength was as an imaginative drummer. DM came in with a strongly developed sense of rhythm, through keeping a big band of drunken saxophone players in order. A great time-keeper.” With this new line-up and a new sense of purpose, the group did as many of their contemporaries were doing and “got their heads together in the country”. Joe Boyd rented the group a mansion, Farley House, in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and they stayed there together for three months. At the start, the group seem to have thought that they were going to make another record like Unhalfbricking, with some originals, some songs by American songwriters, and a few traditional songs. Even after their stay in Farley Chamberlayne, in fact, they recorded a few of the American songs they’d rehearsed at the start of the process, Richard Farina’s “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” and Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Ballad of Easy Rider”] Indeed, the whole idea of “getting our heads together in the country” (as the cliche quickly became in the late sixties as half of the bands in Britain went through much the same kind of process as Fairport were doing — but usually for reasons more to do with drug burnout or trend following than recovering from serious life-changing trauma) seems to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and the Band getting together in Big Pink. But very quickly they decided to follow the lead of Ashley Hutchings, who had had something of a Damascene conversion to the cause of traditional English folk music. They were listening mostly to Music From Big Pink by the Band, and to the first album by Sweeney’s Men: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] And they decided that they were going to make something that was as English as those records were North American and Irish (though in the event there were also a few Scottish songs included on the record). Hutchings in particular was becoming something of a scholar of traditional music, regularly visiting Cecil Sharp House and having long conversations with A.L. Lloyd, discovering versions of different traditional songs he’d never encountered before. This was both amusing and bemusing Sandy Denny, who had joined a rock group in part to get away from traditional music; but she was comfortable singing the material, and knew a lot of it and could make a lot of suggestions herself. Swarbrick obviously knew the repertoire intimately, and Nicol was amenable, while Mattacks was utterly clueless about the folk tradition at this point but knew this was the music he wanted to make. Thompson knew very little about traditional music, and of all the band members except Denny he was the one who has shown the least interest in the genre in his subsequent career — but as we heard at the beginning, showing the least interest in the genre is a relative thing, and while Thompson was not hugely familiar with the genre, he *was* able to work with it, and was also more than capable of writing songs that fit in with the genre. Of the eleven songs on the album, which was titled Liege and Lief (which means, roughly, Lord and Loyalty), there were no cover versions of singer-songwriters. Eight were traditional songs, and three were originals, all written in the style of traditional songs. The album opened with “Come All Ye”, an introduction written by Denny and Hutchings (the only time the two would ever write together): [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Come All Ye”] The other two originals were songs where Thompson had written new lyrics to traditional melodies. On “Crazy Man Michael”, Swarbrick had said to Thompson that the tune to which he had set his new words was weaker than the lyrics, to which Thompson had replied that if Swarbrick felt that way he should feel free to write a new melody. He did, and it became the first of the small number of Thompson/Swarbrick collaborations: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Crazy Man Michael”] Thompson and Swarbrick would become a brief songwriting team, but as much as anything else it was down to proximity — the two respected each other as musicians, but never got on very well. In 1981 Swarbrick would say “Richard and I never got on in the early days of FC… we thought we did, but we never did. We composed some bloody good songs together, but it was purely on a basis of “you write that and I’ll write this, and we’ll put it together.” But we never sat down and had real good chats.” The third original on the album, and by far the most affecting, is another song where Thompson put lyrics to a traditional tune. In this case he thought he was putting the lyrics to the tune of “Willie O'Winsbury”, but he was basing it on a recording by Sweeney’s Men. The problem was that Sweeney’s Men had accidentally sung the lyrics of “Willie O'Winsbury'” to the tune of a totally different song, “Fause Foodrage”: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “Willie O’Winsbury”] Thompson took that melody, and set to it lyrics about loss and separation. Thompson has never been one to discuss the meanings of his lyrics in any great detail, and in the case of this one has said “I really don't know what it means. This song came out of a dream, and I pretty much wrote it as I dreamt it (it was the sixties), and didn't spend very long analyzing it. So interpret as you wish – or replace with your own lines.” But in the context of the traffic accident that had killed his tailor girlfriend and a bandmate, and injured most of his other bandmates, the lyrics about lonely travellers, the winding road, bruised and beaten sons, saying goodbye, and never cutting cloth, seem fairly self-explanatory: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Farewell, Farewell”] The rest of the album, though, was taken up by traditional tunes. There was a long medley of four different fiddle reels; a version of “Reynardine” (a song about a seductive man — or is he a fox? Or perhaps both — which had been recorded by Swarbrick and Carthy on their most recent album); a 19th century song about a deserter saved from the firing squad by Prince Albert; and a long take on “Tam Lin”, one of the most famous pieces in the Scottish folk music canon, a song that has been adapted in different ways by everyone from the experimental noise band Current 93 to the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah to the comics writer Grant Morrison: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Tam Lin”] And “Matty Groves”, a song about a man killing his cheating wife and her lover, which actually has a surprisingly similar story to that of “1921” from another great concept album from that year, the Who’s Tommy. “Matty Groves” became an excuse for long solos and shows of instrumental virtuosity: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves”] The album was recorded in September 1969, after their return from their break in the country and a triumphal performance at the Royal Festival Hall, headlining over fellow Witchseason artists John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. It became a classic of the traditional folk genre — arguably *the* classic of the traditional folk genre. In 2007 BBC Radio 2’s Folk Music Awards gave it an award for most influential folk album of all time, and while such things are hard to measure, I doubt there’s anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of British folk and folk-rock music who would not at least consider that a reasonable claim. But once again, by the time the album came out in November, the band had changed lineups yet again. There was a fundamental split in the band – on one side were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, whose stance was, roughly, that Liege and Lief was a great experiment and a fun thing to do once, but really the band had two first-rate songwriters in themselves, and that they should be concentrating on their own new material, not doing these old songs, good as they were. They wanted to take the form of the traditional songs and use that form for new material — they wanted to make British folk-rock, but with the emphasis on the rock side of things. Hutchings, on the other hand, was equally sure that he wanted to make traditional music and go further down the rabbit hole of antiquity. With the zeal of the convert he had gone in a couple of years from being the leader of a band who were labelled “the British Jefferson Airplane” to becoming a serious scholar of traditional folk music. Denny was tired of touring, as well — she wanted to spend more time at home with Trevor Lucas, who was sleeping with other women when she was away and making her insecure. When the time came for the group to go on a tour of Denmark, Denny decided she couldn’t make it, and Hutchings was jubilant — he decided he was going to get A.L. Lloyd into the band in her place and become a *real* folk group. Then Denny reconsidered, and Hutchings was crushed. He realised that while he had always been the leader, he wasn’t going to be able to lead the band any further in the traditionalist direction, and quit the group — but not before he was delegated by the other band members to fire Denny. Until the publication of Richard Thompson’s autobiography in 2022, every book on the group or its members said that Denny quit the band again, which was presumably a polite fiction that the band agreed, but according to Thompson “Before we flew home, we decided to fire Sandy. I don't remember who asked her to leave – it was probably Ashley, who usually did the dirty work. She was reportedly shocked that we would take that step. She may have been fragile beneath the confident facade, but she still knew her worth.” Thompson goes on to explain that the reasons for kicking her out were that “I suppose we felt that in her mind she had already left” and that “We were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, though there wasn't a name for it back then.” They had considered inviting Trevor Lucas to join the band to make Denny more comfortable, but came to the (probably correct) conclusion that while he was someone they got on well with personally, he would be another big ego in a band that already had several, and that being around Denny and Lucas’ volatile relationship would, in Thompson’s phrasing, “have not always given one a feeling of peace and stability.” Hutchings originally decided he was going to join Sweeney’s Men, but that group were falling apart, and their first rehearsal with Hutchings would also be their last as a group, with only Hutchings and guitarist and mandolin player Terry Woods left in the band. They added Woods’ wife Gay, and another couple, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and formed a group called Steeleye Span, a name given them by Martin Carthy. That group, like Fairport, went to “get their heads together in the country” for three months and recorded an album of electric versions of traditional songs, Hark the Village Wait, on which Mattacks and another drummer, Gerry Conway, guested as Steeleye Span didn’t at the time have their own drummer: [Excerpt: Steeleye Span, “Blackleg Miner”] Steeleye Span would go on to have a moderately successful chart career in the seventies, but by that time most of the original lineup, including Hutchings, had left — Hutchings stayed with them for a few albums, then went on to form the first of a series of bands, all called the Albion Band or variations on that name, which continue to this day. And this is something that needs to be pointed out at this point — it is impossible to follow every single individual in this narrative as they move between bands. There is enough material in the history of the British folk-rock scene that someone could do a 500 Songs-style podcast just on that, and every time someone left Fairport, or Steeleye Span, or the Albion Band, or Matthews’ Southern Comfort, or any of the other bands we have mentioned or will mention, they would go off and form another band which would then fission, and some of its members would often join one of those other bands. There was a point in the mid-1970s where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport Convention while Fairport Convention had none. So just in order to keep the narrative anything like wieldy, I’m going to keep the narrative concentrated on the two figures from Fairport — Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson — whose work outside the group has had the most influence on the wider world of rock music more broadly, and only deal with the other members when, as they often did, their careers intersected with those two. That doesn’t mean the other members are not themselves hugely important musicians, just that their importance has been primarily to the folk side of the folk-rock genre, and so somewhat outside the scope of this podcast. While Hutchings decided to form a band that would allow him to go deeper and deeper into traditional folk music, Sandy Denny’s next venture was rather different. For a long time she had been writing far more songs than she had ever played for her bandmates, like “Nothing More”, a song that many have suggested is about Thompson: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Nothing More”] When Joe Boyd heard that Denny was leaving Fairport Convention, he was at first elated. Fairport’s records were being distributed by A&M in the US at that point, but Island Records was in the process of opening up a new US subsidiary which would then release all future Fairport product — *but*, as far as A&M were concerned, Sandy Denny *was* Fairport Convention. They were only interested in her. Boyd, on the other hand, loved Denny’s work intensely, but from his point of view *Richard Thompson* was Fairport Convention. If he could get Denny signed directly to A&M as a solo artist before Island started its US operations, Witchseason could get a huge advance on her first solo record, while Fairport could continue making records for Island — he’d have two lucrative acts, on different labels. Boyd went over and spoke to A&M and got an agreement in principle that they would give Denny a forty-thousand-dollar advance on her first solo album — twice what they were paying for Fairport albums. The problem was that Denny didn’t want to be a solo act. She wanted to be the lead singer of a band. She gave many reasons for this — the one she gave to many journalists was that she had seen a Judy Collins show and been impressed, but noticed that Collins’ band were definitely a “backing group”, and as she put it “But that's all they were – a backing group. I suddenly thought, If you're playing together on a stage you might as well be TOGETHER.” Most other people in her life, though, say that the main reason for her wanting to be in a band was her desire to be with her boyfriend, Trevor Lucas. Partly this was due to a genuine desire to spend more time with someone with whom she was very much in love, partly it was a fear that he would cheat on her if she was away from him for long periods of time, and part of it seems to have been Lucas’ dislike of being *too* overshadowed by his talented girlfriend — he didn’t mind acknowledging that she was a major talent, but he wanted to be thought of as at least a minor one. So instead of going solo, Denny formed Fotheringay, named after the song she had written for Fairport. This new band consisted at first of Denny on vocals and occasional piano, Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Lucas’ old Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway on drums. For a lead guitarist, they asked Richard Thompson who the best guitarist in Britain was, and he told them Albert Lee. Lee in turn brought in bass player Pat Donaldson, but this lineup of the band barely survived a fortnight. Lee *was* arguably the best guitarist in Britain, certainly a reasonable candidate if you could ever have a singular best (as indeed was Thompson himself), but he was the best *country* guitarist in Britain, and his style simply didn’t fit with Fotheringay’s folk-influenced songs. He was replaced by American guitarist Jerry Donahue, who was not anything like as proficient as Lee, but who was still very good, and fit the band’s style much better. The new group rehearsed together for a few weeks, did a quick tour, and then went into the recording studio to record their debut, self-titled, album. Joe Boyd produced the album, but admitted himself that he only paid attention to those songs he considered worthwhile — the album contained one song by Lucas, “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, and two cover versions of American singer-songwriter material with Lucas singing lead. But everyone knew that the songs that actually *mattered* were Sandy Denny’s, and Boyd was far more interested in them, particularly the songs “The Sea” and “The Pond and the Stream”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “The Pond and the Stream”] Fotheringay almost immediately hit financial problems, though. While other Witchseason acts were used to touring on the cheap, all packed together in the back of a Transit van with inexpensive equipment, Trevor Lucas had ambitions of being a rock star and wanted to put together a touring production to match, with expensive transport and equipment, including a speaker system that got nicknamed “Stonehenge” — but at the same time, Denny was unhappy being on the road, and didn’t play many gigs. As well as the band itself, the Fotheringay album also featured backing vocals from a couple of other people, including Denny’s friend Linda Peters. Peters was another singer from the folk clubs, and a good one, though less well-known than Denny — at this point she had only released a couple of singles, and those singles seemed to have been as much as anything else released as a novelty. The first of those, a version of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” had been released as by “Paul McNeill and Linda Peters”: [Excerpt: Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”] But their second single, a version of John D. Loudermilk’s “You’re Taking My Bag”, was released on the tiny Page One label, owned by Larry Page, and was released under the name “Paul and Linda”, clearly with the intent of confusing particularly gullible members of the record-buying public into thinking this was the McCartneys: [Excerpt: Paul and Linda, “You’re Taking My Bag”] Peters was though more financially successful than almost anyone else in this story, as she was making a great deal of money as a session singer. She actually did another session involving most of Fotheringay around this time. Witchseason had a number of excellent songwriters on its roster, and had had some success getting covers by people like Judy Collins, but Joe Boyd thought that they might possibly do better at getting cover versions if they were performed in less idiosyncratic arrangements. Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway went into the studio to record backing tracks, and vocals were added by Peters and another session singer, who according to some sources also provided piano. They cut songs by Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “You Get Brighter”] Ed Carter, formerly of The New Nadir but by this time firmly ensconced in the Beach Boys’ touring band where he would remain for the next quarter-century: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “I Don’t Mind”] John and Beverly Martyn, and Nick Drake: [Excerpt: Elton John, “Saturday Sun”] There are different lineups of musicians credited for those sessions in different sources, but I tend to believe that it’s mostly Fotheringay for the simple reason that Donahue says it was him, Donaldson and Conway who talked Lucas and Denny into the mistake that destroyed Fotheringay because of these sessions. Fotheringay were in financial trouble already, spending far more money than they were bringing in, but their album made the top twenty and they were getting respect both from critics and from the public — in September, Sandy Denny was voted best British female singer by the readers of Melody Maker in their annual poll, which led to shocked headlines in the tabloids about how this “unknown” could have beaten such big names as Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. Only a couple of weeks after that, they were due to headline at the Albert Hall. It should have been a triumph. But Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway had asked that singing pianist to be their support act. As Donahue said later “That was a terrible miscast. It was our fault. He asked if [he] could do it. Actually Pat, Gerry and I had to talk Sandy and Trevor into [it]… We'd done these demos and the way he was playing – he was a wonderful piano player – he was sensitive enough. We knew very little about his stage-show. We thought he'd be a really good opener for us.” Unfortunately, Elton John was rather *too* good. As Donahue continued “we had no idea what he had in mind, that he was going to do the most incredible rock & roll show ever. He pretty much blew us off the stage before we even got on the stage.” To make matters worse, Fotheringay’s set, which was mostly comprised of new material, was underrehearsed and sloppy, and from that point on no matter what they did people were counting the hours until the band split up. They struggled along for a while though, and started working on a second record, with Boyd again producing, though as Boyd later said “I probably shouldn't have been producing the record. My lack of respect for the group was clear, and couldn't have helped the atmosphere. We'd put out a record that had sold disappointingly, A&M was unhappy. Sandy's tracks on the first record are among the best things she ever did – the rest of it, who cares? And the artwork, Trevor's sister, was terrible. It would have been one thing if I'd been unhappy with it and it sold, and the group was working all the time, making money, but that wasn't the case … I knew what Sandy was capable of, and it was very upsetting to me.” The record would not be released for thirty-eight years: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Wild Mountain Thyme”] Witchseason was going badly into debt. Given all the fissioning of bands that we’ve already been talking about, Boyd had been stretched thin — he produced sixteen albums in 1970, and almost all of them lost money for the company. And he was getting more and more disillusioned with the people he was producing. He loved Beverly Martyn’s work, but had little time for her abusive husband John, who was dominating her recording and life more and more and would soon become a solo artist while making her stay at home (and stealing her ideas without giving her songwriting credit). The Incredible String Band were great, but they had recently converted to Scientology, which Boyd found annoying, and while he was working with all sorts of exciting artists like Vashti Bunyan and Nico, he was finding himself less and less important to the artists he mentored. Fairport Convention were a good example of this. After Denny and Hutchings had left the group, they’d decided to carry on as an electric folk group, performing an equal mix of originals by the Swarbrick and Thompson songwriting team and arrangements of traditional songs. The group were now far enough away from the “British Jefferson Airplane” label that they decided they didn’t need a female vocalist — and more realistically, while they’d been able to replace Judy Dyble, nobody was going to replace Sandy Denny. Though it’s rather surprising when one considers Thompson’s subsequent career that nobody seems to have thought of bringing in Denny’s friend Linda Peters, who was dating Joe Boyd at the time (as Denny had been before she met Lucas) as Denny’s replacement. Instead, they decided that Swarbrick and Thompson were going to share the vocals between them. They did, though, need a bass player to replace Hutchings. Swarbrick wanted to bring in Dave Pegg, with whom he had played in the Ian Campbell Folk Group, but the other band members initially thought the idea was a bad one. At the time, while they respected Swarbrick as a musician, they didn’t think he fully understood rock and roll yet, and they thought the idea of getting in a folkie who had played double bass rather than an electric rock bassist ridiculous. But they auditioned him to mollify Swarbrick, and found that he was exactly what they needed. As Joe Boyd later said “All those bass lines were great, Ashley invented them all, but he never could play them that well. He thought of them, but he was technically not a terrific bass player. He was a very inventive, melodic, bass player, but not a very powerful one technically. But having had the part explained to him once, Pegg was playing it better than Ashley had ever played it… In some rock bands, I think, ultimately, the bands that sound great, you can generally trace it to the bass player… it was at that point they became a great band, when they had Pegg.” The new lineup of Fairport decided to move in together, and found a former pub called the Angel, into which all the band members moved, along with their partners and children (Thompson was the only one who was single at this point) and their roadies. The group lived together quite happily, and one gets the impression that this was the period when they were most comfortable with each other, even though by this point they were a disparate group with disparate tastes, in music as in everything else. Several people have said that the only music all the band members could agree they liked at this point was the first two albums by The Band. With the departure of Hutchings from the band, Swarbrick and Thompson, as the strongest personalities and soloists, became in effect the joint leaders of the group, and they became collaborators as songwriters, trying to write new songs that were inspired by traditional music. Thompson described the process as “let’s take one line of this reel and slow it down and move it up a minor third and see what that does to it; let’s take one line of this ballad and make a whole song out of it. Chopping up the tradition to find new things to do… like a collage.” Generally speaking, Swarbrick and Thompson would sit by the fire and Swarbrick would play a melody he’d been working on, the two would work on it for a while, and Thompson would then go away and write the lyrics. This is how the two came up with songs like the nine-minute “Sloth”, a highlight of the next album, Full House, and one that would remain in Fairport’s live set for much of their career: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth”] “Sloth” was titled that way because Thompson and Swarbrick were working on two tunes, a slow one and a fast one, and they jokingly named them “Sloth” and “Fasth”, but the latter got renamed to “Walk Awhile”, while “Sloth” kept its working title. But by this point, Boyd and Thompson were having a lot of conflict in the studio. Boyd was never the most technical of producers — he was one of those producers whose job is to gently guide the artists in the studio and create a space for the music to flourish, rather than the Joe Meek type with an intimate technical knowledge of the studio — and as the artists he was working with gained confidence in their own work they felt they had less and less need of him. During the making of the Full House album, Thompson and Boyd, according to Boyd, clashed on everything — every time Boyd thought Thompson had done a good solo, Thompson would say to erase it and let him have another go, while every time Boyd thought Thompson could do better, Thompson would say that was the take to keep. One of their biggest clashes was over Thompson’s song “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”, which was originally intended for release on the album, and is included in current reissues of it: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”] Thompson had written that song inspired by what he thought was the unjust treatment of Alex Bramham, the driver in Fairport’s fatal car crash, by the courts — Bramham had been given a prison sentence of a few months for dangerous driving, while the group members thought he had not been at fault. Boyd thought it was one of the best things recorded for the album, but Thompson wasn’t happy with his vocal — there was one note at the top of the melody that he couldn’t quite hit — and insisted it be kept off the record, even though that meant it would be a shorter album than normal. He did this at such a late stage that early copies of the album actually had the title printed on the sleeve, but then blacked out. He now says in his autobiography “I could have persevered, double-tracked the voice, warmed up for longer – anything. It was a good track, and the record was lacking without it. When the album was re-released, the track was restored with a more confident vocal, and it has stayed there ever since.” During the sessions for Full House the group also recorded one non-album single, Thompson and Swarbrick’s “Now Be Thankful”: [Excerpt, Fairport Convention, “Now Be Thankful”] The B-side to that was a medley of two traditional tunes plus a Swarbrick original, but was given the deliberately ridiculous title “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”] The B. McKenzie in the title was a reference to the comic-strip character Barry McKenzie, a stereotype drunk Australian created for Private Eye magazine by the comedian Barry Humphries (later to become better known for his Dame Edna Everage character) but the title was chosen for one reason only — to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the song with the longest title. Which they did, though they were later displaced by the industrial band Test Dept, and their song “Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes and Is Constantly Perfected Under the Immaculate Guidance of the Great, Honourable, Generous and Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is the Blue Sky in the Hearts of All Nations. Our People Pay Homage and Bow in Deep Respect and Gratitude to Her. The Milk of Human Kindness”. Full House got excellent reviews in the music press, with Rolling Stone saying “The music shows that England has finally gotten her own equivalent to The Band… By calling Fairport an English equivalent of the Band, I meant that they have soaked up enough of the tradition of their countryfolk that it begins to show all over, while they maintain their roots in rock.” Off the back of this, the group went on their first US tour, culminating in a series of shows at the Troubadour in LA, on the same bill as Rick Nelson, which were recorded and later released as a live album: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth (live)”] The Troubadour was one of the hippest venues at the time, and over their residency there the group got seen by many celebrities, some of whom joined them on stage. The first was Linda Ronstadt, who initially demurred, saying she didn’t know any of their songs. On being told they knew all of hers, she joined in with a rendition of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”. Thompson was later asked to join Ronstadt’s backing band, who would go on to become the Eagles, but he said later of this offer “I would have hated it. I’d have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans — they always seem miserable. And if you see them now, they still look miserable on stage — like they don’t want to be there and they don’t like each other.” The group were also joined on stage at the Troubadour on one memorable night by some former bandmates of Pegg’s. Before joining the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Pegg had played around the Birmingham beat scene, and had been in bands with John Bonham and Robert Plant, who turned up to the Troubadour with their Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page (reports differ on whether the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, also came along). They all got up on stage together and jammed on songs like “Hey Joe”, “Louie Louie”, and various old Elvis tunes. The show was recorded, and the tapes are apparently still in the possession of Joe Boyd, who has said he refuses to release them in case he is murdered by the ghost of Peter Grant. According to Thompson, that night ended in a three-way drinking contest between Pegg, Bonham, and Janis Joplin, and it’s testament to how strong the drinking culture is around Fairport and the British folk scene in general that Pegg outdrank both of them. According to Thompson, Bonham was found naked by a swimming pool two days later, having missed two gigs. For all their hard rock image, Led Zeppelin were admirers of a lot of the British folk and folk-rock scene, and a few months later Sandy Denny would become the only outside vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin record when she duetted with Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” on the group’s fourth album: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “The Battle of Evermore”] Denny would never actually get paid for her appearance on one of the best-selling albums of all time. That was, incidentally, not the only session that Denny was involved in around this time — she also sang on the soundtrack to a soft porn film titled Swedish Fly Girls, whose soundtrack was produced by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow?”] Shortly after Fairport’s trip to America, Joe Boyd decided he was giving up on Witchseason. The company was now losing money, and he was finding himself having to produce work for more and more acts as the various bands fissioned. The only ones he really cared about were Richard Thompson, who he was finding it more and more difficult to work with, Nick Drake, who wanted to do his next album with just an acoustic guitar anyway, Sandy Denny, who he felt was wasting her talents in Fotheringay, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who was more distant since his conversion to Scientology. Boyd did make some attempts to keep the company going. On a trip to Sweden, he negotiated an agreement with the manager and publisher of a Swedish band whose songs he’d found intriguing, the Hep Stars. Boyd was going to publish their songs in the UK, and in return that publisher, Stig Anderson, would get the rights to Witchseason’s catalogue in Scandinavia — a straight swap, with no money changing hands. But before Boyd could get round to signing the paperwork, he got a better offer from Mo Ostin of Warners — Ostin wanted Boyd to come over to LA and head up Warners’ new film music department. Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to LA with his fiancee Linda Peters, spending the next few years working on music for films like Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, as well as making his own documentary about Jimi Hendrix, and thus missed out on getting the UK publishing rights for ABBA, and all the income that would have brought him, for no money. And it was that decision that led to the breakup of Fotheringay. Just before Christmas 1970, Fotheringay were having a difficult session, recording the track “John the Gun”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “John the Gun”] Boyd got frustrated and kicked everyone out of the session, and went for a meal and several drinks with Denny. He kept insisting that she should dump the band and just go solo, and then something happened that the two of them would always describe differently. She asked him if he would continue to produce her records if she went solo, and he said he would. According to Boyd’s recollection of the events, he meant that he would fly back from California at some point to produce her records. According to Denny, he told her that if she went solo he would stay in Britain and not take the job in LA. This miscommunication was only discovered after Denny told the rest of Fotheringay after the Christmas break that she was splitting the band. Jerry Donahue has described that as the worst moment of his life, and Denny felt very guilty about breaking up a band with some of her closest friends in — and then when Boyd went over to the US anyway she felt a profound betrayal. Two days before Fotheringay’s final concert, in January 1971, Sandy Denny signed a solo deal with Island records, but her first solo album would not end up produced by Joe Boyd. Instead, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens was co-produced by Denny, John Wood — the engineer who had worked with Boyd on pretty much everything he’d produced, and Richard Thompson, who had just quit Fairport Convention, though he continued living with them at the Angel, at least until a truck crashed into the building in February 1971, destroying its entire front wall and forcing them to relocate. The songs chosen for The North Star Grassman and the Ravens reflected the kind of choices Denny would make on her future albums, and her eclectic taste in music. There was, of course, the obligatory Dylan cover, and the traditional folk ballad “Blackwaterside”, but there was also a cover version of Brenda Lee’s “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”] Most of the album, though, was made up of originals about various people in Denny’s life, like “Next Time Around”, about her ex-boyfriend Jackson C Frank: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Next Time Around”] The album made the top forty in the UK — Denny’s only solo album to do so — and led to her once again winning the “best female singer” award in Melody Maker’s readers’ poll that year — the male singer award was won by Rod Stewart. Both Stewart and Denny appeared the next year on the London Symphony Orchestra’s all-star version of The Who’s Tommy, which had originally been intended as a vehicle for Stewart before Roger Daltrey got involved. Stewart’s role was reduced to a single song, “Pinball Wizard”, while Denny sang on “It’s a Boy”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “It’s a Boy”] While Fotheringay had split up, all the band members play on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Guitarists Donahue and Lucas only play on a couple of the tracks, with Richard Thompson playing most of the guitar on the record. But Fotheringay’s rhythm section of Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway play on almost every track. Another musician on the album, Ian Whiteman, would possibly have a profound effect on the future direction of Richard Thompson’s career and life. Whiteman was the former keyboard player for the mod band The Action, having joined them just before they became the blues-rock band Mighty Baby. But Mighty Baby had split up when all of the band except the lead singer had converted to Islam. Richard Thompson was on his own spiritual journey at this point, and became a Sufi – the same branch of Islam as Whiteman – soon after the session, though Thompson has said that his conversion was independent of Whiteman’s. The two did become very close and work together a lot in the mid-seventies though. Thompson had supposedly left Fairport because he was writing material that wasn’t suited to the band, but he spent more than a year after quitting the group working on sessions rather than doing anything with his own material, and these sessions tended to involve the same core group of musicians. One of the more unusual was a folk-rock supergroup called The Bunch, put together by Trevor Lucas. Richard Branson had recently bought a recording studio, and wanted a band to test it out before opening it up for commercial customers, so with this free studio time Lucas decided to record a set of fifties rock and roll covers. He gathered together Thompson, Denny, Whiteman, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway, pianist Tony Cox, the horn section that would later form the core of the Average White Band, and Linda Peters, who had now split up with Joe Boyd and returned to the UK, and who had started dating Thompson. They recorded an album of covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Otis and others: [Excerpt: The Bunch, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The early seventies was a hugely productive time for this group of musicians, as they all continued playing on each other’s projects. One notable album was No Roses by Shirley Collins, which featured Thompson, Mattacks, Whiteman, Simon Nicol, Lal and Mike Waterson, and Ashley Hutchings, who was at that point married to Collins, as well as some more unusual musicians like the free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill: [Excerpt: Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, “Claudy Banks”] Collins was at the time the most respected female singer in British traditional music, and already had a substantial career including a series of important records made with her sister Dolly, work with guitarists like Davey Graham, and time spent in the 1950s collecting folk songs in the Southern US with her then partner Alan Lomax – according to Collins she did much of the actual work, but Lomax only mentioned her in a single sentence in his book on this work. Some of the same group of musicians went on to work on an album of traditional Morris dancing tunes, titled Morris On, credited to “Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield”, with Collins singing lead on two tracks: [Excerpt: Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield with Shirley Collins, “The Willow Tree”] Thompson thought that that album was the best of the various side projects he was involved in at the time, comparing it favourably to Rock On, which he thought was rather slight, saying later “Conceptually, Fairport, Ashley and myself and Sandy were developing a more fragile style of music that nobody else was particularly interested in, a British Folk Rock idea that had a logical development to it, although we all presented it our own way. Morris On was rather more true to what we were doing. Rock On was rather a retro step. I'm not sure it was lasting enough as a record but Sandy did sing really well on the Buddy Holly songs.” Hutchings used the musicians on No Roses and Morris On as the basis for his band the Albion Band, which continues to this day. Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks both quit Fairport to join the Albion Band, though Mattacks soon returned. Nicol would not return to Fairport for several years, though, and for a long period in the mid-seventies Fairport Convention had no original members. Unfortunately, while Collins was involved in the Albion Band early on, she and Hutchings ended up divorcing, and the stress from the divorce led to Collins developing spasmodic dysphonia, a stress-related illness which makes it impossible for the sufferer to sing. She did eventually regain her vocal ability, but between 1978 and 2016 she was unable to perform at all, and lost decades of her career. Richard Thompson occasionally performed with the Albion Band early on, but he was getting stretched a little thin with all these sessions. Linda Peters said later of him “When I came back from America, he was working in Sandy’s band, and doing sessions by the score. Always with Pat Donaldson and Dave Mattacks. Richard would turn up with his guitar, one day he went along to do a session with one of those folkie lady singers — and there were Pat and DM. They all cracked. Richard smashed his amp and said “Right! No more sessions!” In 1972 he got round to releasing his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, which featured guest appearances by Linda Peters and Sandy Denny among others: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”] Unfortunately, while that album has later become regarded as one of the classics of its genre, at the time it was absolutely slated by the music press. The review in Melody Maker, for example, read in part “Some of Richard Thompson’s ideas sound great – which is really the saving grace of this album, because most of the music doesn’t. The tragedy is that Thompson’s “British rock music” is such an unconvincing concoction… Even the songs that do integrate rock and traditional styles of electric guitar rhythms and accordion and fiddle decoration – and also include explicit, meaningful lyrics are marred by bottle-up vocals, uninspiring guitar phrases and a general lack of conviction in performance.” Henry the Human Fly was released in the US by Warners, who had a reciprocal licensing deal with Island (and for whom Joe Boyd was working at the time, which may have had something to do with that) but according to Thompson it became the lowest-selling record that Warners ever put out (though I’ve also seen that claim made about Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, another album that has later been rediscovered). Thompson was hugely depressed by this reaction, and blamed his own singing. Happily, though, by this point he and Linda had become a couple — they would marry in 1972 — and they started playing folk clubs as a duo, or sometimes in a trio with Simon Nicol. Thompson was also playing with Sandy Denny’s backing band at this point, and played on every track on her second solo album, Sandy. This album was meant to be her big commercial breakthrough, with a glamorous cover photo by David Bailey, and with a more American sound, including steel guitar by Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose overdubs were supervised in LA by Joe Boyd): [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”] The album was given a big marketing push by Island, and “Listen, Listen” was made single of the week on the Radio 1 Breakfast show: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Listen, Listen”] But it did even worse than the previous album, sending her into something of a depression. Linda Thompson (as the former Linda Peters now was) said of this period “After the Sandy album, it got her down that her popularity didn't suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and that was the start of her really fretting about the way her career was going. Things only escalated after that. People like me or Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson would think, ‘What are you on about? This is folk music.'” After Sandy’s release, Denny realised she could no longer afford to tour with a band, and so went back to performing just acoustically or on piano. The only new music to be released by either of these ex-members of Fairport Convention in 1973 was, oddly, on an album by the band they were no longer members of. After Thompson had left Fairport, the group had managed to release two whole albums with the same lineup — Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks. But then Nicol and Mattacks had both quit the band to join the Albion Band with their former bandmate Ashley Hutchings, leading to a situation where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport plus their longtime drummer while Fairport Convention itself had no original members and was down to just Swarbrick and Pegg. Needing to fulfil their contracts, they then recruited three former members of Fotheringay — Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, Donahue on lead guitar, and Conway on drums. Conway was only a session player at the time, and Mattacks soon returned to the band, but Lucas and Donahue became full-time members. This new lineup of Fairport Convention released two albums in 1973, widely regarded as the group’s most inconsistent records, and on the title track of the first, “Rosie”, Richard Thompson guested on guitar, with Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Rosie”] Neither Sandy Denny nor Richard Thompson released a record themselves in 1973, but in neither case was this through the artists’ choice. The record industry was changing in the early 1970s, as we’ll see in later episodes, and was less inclined to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of art. Island Records prided itself on being a home for great artists, but it was still a business, and needed to make money. We’ll talk about the OPEC oil crisis and its effect on the music industry much more when the podcast gets to 1973, but in brief, the production of oil by the US peaked in 1970 and started to decrease, leading to them importing more and more oil from the Middle East. As a result of this, oil prices rose slowly between 1971 and 1973, then very quickly towards the end of 1973 as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. As vinyl is made of oil, suddenly producing records became much more expensive, and in this period a lot of labels decided not to release already-completed albums, until what they hoped would be a brief period of shortages passed. Both Denny and Thompson recorded albums at this point that got put to one side by Island. In the case of Thompson, it was the first album by Richard and Linda as a duo, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Today, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and as one of the two masterpieces that bookended Richard and Linda’s career as a duo and their marriage. But when they recorded the album, full of Richard’s dark songs, it was the opposite of commercial. Even a song that’s more or less a boy-girl song, like “Has He Got a Friend for Me?” has lyrics like “He wouldn’t notice me passing by/I could be in the gutter, or dangling down from a tree” [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “Has He got a Friend For Me?”] While something like “The Calvary Cross” is oblique and haunted, and seems to cast a pall over the entire album: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “The Calvary Cross”] The album itself had been cheap to make — it had been recorded in only a week, with Thompson bringing in musicians he knew well and had worked with a lot previously to cut the tracks as-live in only a handful of takes — but Island didn’t think it was worth releasing. The record stayed on the shelf for nearly a year after recording, until Island got a new head of A&R, Richard Williams. Williams said of the album’s release “Muff Winwood had been doing A&R, but he was more interested in production… I had a conversation with Muff as soon as I got there, and he said there are a few hangovers, some outstanding problems. And one of them was Richard Thompson. He said there’s this album we gave him the money to make — which was I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight — and nobody’s very interested in it. Henry the Human Fly had been a bit of a commercial disappointment, and although Island was altruistic and independent and known for only recording good stuff, success was important… Either a record had to do well or somebody had to believe in it a lot. And it seemed as if neither of those things were true at that point of Richard.” Williams, though, was hugely impressed when he listened to the album. He compared Richard Thompson’s guitar playing to John Coltrane’s sax, and called Thompson “the folk poet of the rainy streets”, but also said “Linda brightened it, made it more commercial. and I thought that “Bright Lights” itself seemed a really commercial song.” The rest of the management at Island got caught up in Williams’ enthusiasm, and even decided to release the title track as a single: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Neither single nor album charted — indeed it would not be until 1991 that Richard Thompson would make a record that made the top forty in the UK — but the album got enough critical respect that Richard and Linda released two albums the year after. The first of these, Hokey Pokey, is a much more upbeat record than their previous one — Richard Thompson has called it “quite a music-hall influenced record” and cited the influence of George Formby and Harry Lauder. For once, the claim of music hall influence is audible in the music. Usually when a British musician is claimed to have a music ha

Do The Talking Heads, the quinessential art school band of the East Village scene of the 1970's, still matter? Very much so. At least according to the band's biographer, Jonathan Gould, who believes that The Talking Heads remain "the archetype of what we now think of as the alternative rock group" - a band prioritizing aesthetic evolution over commercial success. Born from New York's affordable cultural moment when rent cost $275 and abandoned industrial spaces fostered creativity, Talking Heads, Gould argues in Burning the House Down, emerged as agnostic questioners of rock conventions. They rejected "rock hair, rock lights, and singing like a black man," creating minimalist performances under stark white lighting. Their 1984 film "Stop Making Sense" appears utterly modern today, Gould says, suggesting their systematic deconstruction of musical expectations continues influencing artists four decades later. Five Key Takeaways 1. The Agnostic Approach Talking Heads were "agnostic about everything" - not just religion, but romantic love, rock conventions, and musical preconceptions. This systematic questioning of accepted norms became their defining creative principle.2. Class and Ambition Shaped Their Art Unlike working-class rock predecessors, they were privileged art school graduates who grew up expecting to "be something." This background fostered artistic ambition over simple commercial success, making them prototypes of the alternative rock ethos.3. New York's Economic Crisis Created Cultural Opportunity The city's 1970s near-bankruptcy made it affordable ($275/month rent) for young artists. The exodus of residents and businesses left vast industrial spaces available, enabling an unprecedented downtown cultural scene.4. Minimalism as Rebellion Their aesthetic rebellion involved subtraction, not addition - "no rock hair, no rock lights, no long guitar solos." Working with Brian Eno, they removed rather than added tracks, creating space through restraint.5. Timeless Modernity "Stop Making Sense" appears contemporary today because they focused on modernity rather than trends. Their systematic rejection of rock clichés created work that transcends its 1980s origins, explaining their continued influence on alternative music.Jonathan Gould is a writer and a former professional musician. Born and raised in New York City, he began playing drums in high school and became serious about it while attending Cornell University, which led him to move to Boston in 1975 to study with the eminent jazz drummer Alan Dawson. He went on to spend many years working in bands and recording studios in Boston, Woodstock, and New York City before turning his full attention to writing about music in the early 1990s under the mentorship of the retired New Yorker editor William Shawn. In addition to his playing and writing about music, Jonathan also raised a family, served in local politics, and took an active role in the life of the upstate New York community where he lived for twenty-five years. He currently divides his time between Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Livingston, NY.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Tonight's edition features new music from Joshua, Rival Consoles, James Balckshaw, Data Rebel, Hior Chronik, Brian Eno, and much more!

Rudolf Stingel talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Stingel was born in 1956 in Merano, South Tyrol, Italy, and lives in New York. He explores myriad ways of making paintings and extending the idea of what painting might be. With both a love of his medium and skepticism about the possibility of creating something new from such a time-honoured discipline, Rudolf explores a range of forms of painting, from abstraction to photorealism. He emerged in the 1980s, a period in which painting was condemned to obsolescence by some prominent critics, but he met this dismissal with a tangible sense of liberation, pushing painting beyond its traditional formats and contexts into the realms of sculpture and installation, while also engaging with historical genres and with key figures and objects in art history. The result is a body of work that is simultaneously weighty in the seriousness with which it questions painting and fleet-footed in the way that it relentlessly shifts, doubles-back and invents. Stingel reflects on his constant irreverence for convention, his attempts to “crank up the volume” in his groups of paintings and installation, the subtle strain of autobiography through his work. He discusses the early influence of Pablo Picasso, the enduring impact of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the energy given to him by close friendships with artists including Urs Fischer and Maurizio Cattelan. He talks about the impact of films by Marguerite Duras and the music of Brian Eno. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including those about the art he would like to live with and the rituals of studio life.Rudolf Stingel: Vineyard Paintings, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, until 20 September; Les yeux dans les yeux: portraits from the Pinault Collection, Couvent des Jacobins, Rennes, France, until 14 September Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SUMMER...officially arrives in the Northern Hemisphere the third week in June. Also known as the Summer Solstice, it's the longest day and shortest night of the year. For fans of the ambient guitar, it's an event worth celebrating. The cold and dark of winter is forgotten; the bright promise of spring has come and gone; now, fair skies, gentle breezes, sweet melodies, and the warm harmonies of early summer invite us to melt...into the season of the sun. Instrumental music for the guitar continues to evolve, and whether the genre is traditional acoustic, 20th century electric, or 21st century electronic, the slow pace and spatial sound images of the ambient guitar bring us new dimensions in atmospheric music. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, another seasonal journey for ambient guitar, on a program called "SIX STRING SUMMER." Music is by SOULFOOD & BILLY McLAUGHLIN, TOM CAUFIELD, MIKHAIL MEDVEDEV, ASCHE & SPENCER, STEVE SMITH, CHUCK JOHNSON, ERRANT SPACE, MATT BORGHI, CLIVE WRIGHT, ROBERT FRIPP & BRIAN ENO. [ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

To spur my songwriting juices, I got this deck of "Oblique Strategies" cards, created by Brian Eno, designed to prompt creativity. Here are a few examples. INSIDE / OUTSIDE (Oblique Strategy: “THINK - Inside the work, outside the work”)Inside - outside: it's hard to reconcileInside is terrified, though outside may beguileIf I stay inside I just might hide from tribulations and the trialOf outside's obligations to display the latest style.Inside is a cozy place, my home made out of bricksOutside is an endless space, with hucksters full of tricksWho wait around each corner to deliver blows and kicksOr, subtler art to break your heart no medicine can fixINSIDE - IT'S WARMOUTSIDE MAY DO ME HARMOUTSIDE - IT'S COLDINSIDE I'M GROWING OLD.It might agoraphobia, this reluctance that I feelOr, maybe something nobler, some grace for me to healIt might be something sinister, a cage of the mind too realBut, whatever the urge I need to emerge a person who can feel.Inside - outside: sings out of harmonyA discordant strain of grief and painAn obvious forgeryTurn on the light, step into the nightAnd accept what's meant to beWherever you go, at least you'll knowWhat it feels like to be free.REVERSE (O.S.: Reverse)I'm stuck in reverse, and way round the bacKThe brakes are all worn and the axle is cracked,The steering is worthless, it's totally whackedI'm headed for trouble and everything's black (and everything's black)I'm up to my elbow in sulfurous muckAnd as far as all I know I'm dead out of luckBut, if it's not too late I'll sell you my truckLet fate steer the crate, and earn Satan a buckReverse ain't the worst           If you face it with graceIt's like running in placeOr, a pie in the face         Reverse is just relative                 A black hole in spaceIt ain't something you need to erase.      Perhaps I've been looking at my problem all wrongMaybe Reverse is the point of my songIt could be “ass backwards” will make me last longAnd, what doesn't kill me might build me up strong.FOOL'S GOLD(O.S.: what are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate.)HAVE A DESIRE TO CREATE, BUT NOT A SINGLE IDEAWOULDN'T IT BE REALLY GREAT TO PULL AN “AVE MARIA”?I'LL PRAY TO THE GOD OF ART TO ASSIST ME AND OPEN MY HEARTOR AT LEAST TO MAKE A STARTTOWARDS SOMETHING TRUTHFUL, SOMETHING BOLD, SOMETHING HONESTTHAT'S NOT FOOL'S GOLD.IT'S NOT MY FINEST HOURBUT I WON'T LET MYSELF BE SOURI STILL HAVE HOPE FOR SUCCESSAND THOUGH I SPEAK TO AUDIENCE OF ONEWE'RE STILL HAVING FUNSO FORWARD! AND DAMN ALL THE REST!I SHOULDN'T COMPLAIN IF THERE'S NOTHING TO GAINBY YEARS OF WASTED TOILTHE UNIVERSE HAS MADE IT PLAINWHY BURN REGRETFUL OIL?I'LL PRAY TO THE GOD OF ART TO ASSIST ME AND OPEN MY HEARTOR AT LEAST TO MAKE A STARTTOWARDS SOMETHING TRUTHFUL, SOMETHING BOLD, SOMETHING HONESTTHAT'S NOT FOOL'S GOLD.

Bob Baxley is a design leader who has shaped products used by billions at Apple, Pinterest, Yahoo, and ThoughtSpot. During his eight years at Apple, he led design for the online store and the App Store, and witnessed the iPhone's transformative launch while working under Steve Jobs. A student of history turned software craftsman, Bob discovered his calling after exploring photography, filmmaking, and music, ultimately recognizing software as the most powerful creative medium of our time. Bob champions the moral obligation designers have to reduce frustration in people's daily digital interactions.What you'll learn:• Why design should report to engineering, not product• The “Beatles principle”—why the best products come from teams of 4 to 6, not 40 to 60• How to create design tenets vs. principles (with real examples)• The counterintuitive reason to delay drawing or prototyping as long as possible• Why software is fundamentally a medium, like film or music (not just a tool)• Why Bob “bounced off the culture” at Pinterest, and lessons from failure• The lunar landing story that teaches us about championing radical ideas• How to evaluate if a company truly values design before joining• The moral obligation of software makers to build great products—This entire episode is brought to you by Stripe—helping companies of all sizes grow revenue.—Where to find Bob Baxley:• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baxley/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbaxley/• Website: http://www.bobbaxley.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Bob Baxley(03:52) Apple's lasting culture(06:15) Navigating unique company cultures(13:19) Finding a company that truly values your role(15:46) What is design?(17:17) How to help founders understand the value of design(23:08) How to align product managers and designers(26:31) Design reporting to engineering(30:54) Integrating engineers early in the design process(33:43) The maker mindset(35:14) Challenging the assumption that design is time-intensive(38:04) Design tenets vs. design principles(45:25) The moral obligation of great design(51:48) Understanding software as a medium(01:01:20) Reducing ambiguity for product teams(01:07:04) Giving designers space for creativity(01:08:48) The "primal mark" concept(01:12:05) AI prototyping tools: benefits and risks(01:17:00) AI as a life coach(01:21:22) Life lessons from the Apollo program(01:28:24) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Steve Jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs• Walt Disney: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/• X: https://x.com/• Uber: https://www.uber.com/• Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/• Slack: https://slack.com/• Ed Catmull on X: https://x.com/edcatmull• John Lasseter on X: https://x.com/johnlasseter5• Apple patented a pizza box, for pizzas: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/16/15646154/apple-pizza-box-patent-come-on• Humane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Inc.• Jony Ive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive• Tony Fadell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyfadell/• Hiroki Asai on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiroki-asai-a44137110/• Tim Cook on X: https://x.com/tim_cook• ThoughtSpot: https://www.thoughtspot.com/• Ben Silbermann on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silbermann/• Ajeet Singh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajeetsinghmann/• Honeywell: https://www.honeywell.com• IDEO: https://www.ideo.com/• Nutanix: https://www.nutanix.com/• Lego: https://www.lego.com/• Leica: https://leica-camera.com/• Porsche: https://www.porsche.com/• Patagonia: https://www.patagonia.com• Brian Eno's website: https://www.brian-eno.net/• Scenius: why creatives are stronger together: https://thecreativelife.net/scenius/• The Beatles website: https://www.thebeatles.com/• Disneyland: https://disneyland.disney.go.com/destinations/disneyland/• Tomorrowland: https://disneyland.disney.go.com/destinations/disneyland/tomorrowland/• Unconventional product lessons from Binance, N26, Google, more | Mayur Kamat (CPO at N26, ex-Binance Head of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/unorthodox-product-lessons-from-n26-and-more• Larry Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page• Sergey Brin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin• Design Principles: https://principles.design/• Tableau: https://www.tableau.com/• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Target self-checkout: https://corporate.target.com/press/fact-sheet/2024/03/checkout-improvements• Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch• eBay: https://www.ebay.com/• Williams Sonoma: https://www.williams-sonoma.com/• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/• Monument to a Dead Child | Raw Data: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/monument-to-a-dead-child/id1042137974• Toast: https://pos.toasttab.com/• The Primal Mark: How the Beginning Shapes the End in the Development of Creative Ideas: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/primal-mark-how-beginning-shapes-end-development-creative-ideas• The Plant: https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/The_Plant• Microsoft CPO: If you aren't prototyping with AI you're doing it wrong | Aparna Chennapragada: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/microsoft-cpo-on-ai• How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? | Jerry Colonna (CEO of Reboot, executive coach, former VC): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/jerry-colonna• Joff Redfern on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mejoff/• John C. Houbolt: https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/langley/john-c-houbolt/• The Apollo program: https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/• Archive clip: JFK at Rice University, Sept. 12, 1962—“We choose to go to the moon”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXqlziZV63k• Alan Shepard: https://www.nasa.gov/former-astronaut-alan-shepard/• Blue Origin: https://www.blueorigin.com/• Yuri Gagarin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin• Wernher von Braun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun• Yuri Kondratyuk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Kondratyuk• John Houbolt's memo: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/text-of-john-houbolts-letter-proposing-lunar-orbit-rendezvous-for-apollo• Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance/umc.cmc.1srk2goyh2q2zdxcx605w8vtx• Lawrence of Arabia on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabia-Peter-OToole/dp/B0088OINTU• Leica M6: https://leica-camera.com/en-US/photography/cameras/m/m6• Habitica: https://habitica.com/static/home• Andor on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-faba988a-a9f5-45f2-a074-0775a7d6f67a• Edward Tufte quote: https://quotefancy.com/quote/1449650/Edward-Tufte-Good-design-is-clear-thinking-made-visible-bad-design-is-stupidity-made• Ansel Adams quote: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ansel_adams_106035• It Takes a Village to Determine the Origins of an African Proverb: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/07/30/487925796/it-takes-a-village-to-determine-the-origins-of-an-african-proverb• Henry Modisett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrymodisett/• Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/• Golden State Warriors: https://www.nba.com/warriors/• Steph Curry: https://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/3975/stephen-curry—Recommended books:• From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism: https://www.amazon.com/Counterculture-Cyberculture-Stewart-Network-Utopianism/dp/0226817423• Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less: https://www.amazon.com/Hare-Brain-Tortoise-Mind-Intelligence/dp/0060955414• The Elements of Typographic Style: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881791326• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values: https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0060589469• Time and the Art of Living: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Art-Living-Robert-Grudin/dp/0062503553/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

This week Anamaria Sayre continues to scour her part of the internet for great new tracks that will impress Felix Contreras, while he continues to explore Latinos who sing country music.Featured artists and songs: • Alleh & Yorghaki, "me late"• Alleh & Yorghaki, "capaz (merengueton)"• Louie TheSinger, "Quicker Way To Jesus"• pablopablo, "Dónde Estás!"• Bruce Springsteen, "Adelita" • Bruce Springsteen, "Sinaloa Cowboys" • Belafonte Sensacional, "Llamas Rexio"• Belafonte Sensacional, "Todavía DF"• David Byrne and Brian Eno, "Mea Culpa"• Juana (feat. ELENI), "La Paloma"Credits Audio for this episode of Alt.Latino was edited and mixed by Simon Rentner. Editorial support from Hazel Cills. Our project manager is Grace Chung. NPR Music's executive producer is Suraya Mohamed. Our VP of Music and Visuals is Keith Jenkins.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This week Anamaria Sayre continues to scour her part of the internet for great new tracks that will impress Felix Contreras, while he continues to explore Latinos who sing country music.Featured artists and songs: • Alleh & Yorghaki, "me late"• Alleh & Yorghaki, "capaz (merengueton)"• Louie TheSinger, "Quicker Way To Jesus"• pablopablo, "Dónde Estás!"• Bruce Springsteen, "Adelita" • Bruce Springsteen, "Sinaloa Cowboys" • Belafonte Sensacional, "Llamas Rexio"• Belafonte Sensacional, "Todavía DF"• David Byrne and Brian Eno, "Mea Culpa"• Juana (feat. ELENI), "La Paloma"Credits Audio for this episode of Alt.Latino was edited and mixed by Simon Rentner. Editorial support from Hazel Cills. Our project manager is Grace Chung. NPR Music's executive producer is Suraya Mohamed. Our VP of Music and Visuals is Keith Jenkins.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we complete our series within a series on walking simulators, this time with The Stanley Parable. We talk about the multiple paths, the humor, the zany meta of it all, and then turn to our takeaways. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Sections played: All of The Stanley Parable Issues covered: preconceptions, focusing on different things, a good capper, a career of meta, goals for different walking simulators, recognizing the player, having the opportunity to ignore the narrator, talking about the broom closet, following directions, some of the Ultra Deluxe, the jump button, the skip button, not making something so new that it's unrecognizable but making it fresh, interactive theater and cinema, always going the opposite direction from the way the designer wants you to go, the structures which bind our lives, constraints generating interesting experiences, extreme focus and constraints, the impact of voice work, playing with constraints, playing against expectations, being in conversation with the player, is subverting expectations a genre mechanic?, recognizable human spaces, communicating through a shared humanity, a comparison with an alien space. Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Davey Wreden, William Pugh, Galactic Cafe, Crows Crows Crows, Kevan Brightley, Severance, Firewatch, The Beginner's Guide, UFO 50, Hideo Kojima, Wanderstop, Crows Crows Crows, Gone Home, Dear Esther, Portal, Mousetrap, Agatha Christie, Bandersnatch, Brian Eno, Clue, Memento, Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, Outer Wilds, BioStats, Adventure, Chris Hecker, Rogue, Rogue Legacy 2, Animal Farm (obliquely), SNES, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.  Next time: TBA! Twitch Discord DevGameClub@gmail.com

In this comprehensive conversation, ELPHNT shares his journey from traditional musician to innovative music educator and tool creator. We explore his minimalist approach to production, the importance of finding your creative process, and how he's built a sustainable online business around his passion for music.From his practical advice on organization, performance, and overcoming creative blocks, this episode provides valuable insights for producers at any stage of their journey.Support ProducerHeadIf you value ProducerHead and want to support the show, consider a premium subscription (just $6 per month, even less on an annual basis). For less than a plug-in, you can directly support and grow the show while keeping the core content free for everyone.Meet ELPHNTTom Glendenning, known professionally as ELPHNT, is a London-based music producer, educator, and software developer originally from South Africa. He is best known for creating innovative tools and educational content for Ableton Live users, building a successful online business around music production education while maintaining his own artistic practice.ELPHNT represents the modern producer-educator archetype, combining deep technical knowledge with practical teaching methods and a minimalist creative philosophy.Special Offer to Support ELPHNT and ProducerHeadWe hooked up with ELPHNT to get 25% off any of his Ableton Live packs. On top of that, any purchase will automatically include his GEN pack, for free.If you're interested you can take advantage of this at: elphnt.io/producerhead No code needed. Just use the link, choose your pack, and you'll see the discount applied automatically.What We ExploredThroughout the episode we discuss:• The importance of having a conscious philosophy for making music • Balancing technical and artistic sides of production ("open mode" vs "closed mode") • Creating custom tools to overcome creative blocks (his version of Brian Eno's oblique cards) • The value of organization and workflow optimization in Ableton Live • Learning by doing vs. theoretical knowledge in music production • Overcoming performance anxiety and the reality of "soul crusher" gigs • Building an online business around music without losing authenticity • The balance between consumption and production in learning • Why practice and experience are the only paths to real masteryThree Game-Changing Takeaways1. Less Is More PhilosophyFocus on going deeper with fewer elements rather than adding more sounds - spend time crafting the tonal characteristics and textures of individual elements.2. Practice Over TheoryThere are no shortcuts to mastery. You can watch thousands of tutorials, but real learning only comes through repeated hands-on practice and experimentation.3. Build for Yourself FirstWhether creating music or business tools, start with solving your own problems and needs - authenticity and personal connection will naturally resonate with others.

In the music business, Brian Eno is a name to conjure with. He's been the producer of tremendous hits by U2, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Coldplay, and many other top artists. But he's also a conceptualist, nicknamed Professor Eno in the British music press, and a foundational figure in ambient music—a genre whose very name Eno coined. Amanda Petrusich speaks with Eno about his two new albums that just came out, “Luminal” and “Lateral,” and his new book, “What Art Does.” “One of the realizations I had when I was writing this book is that really the only product of art is feelings,”  Eno says. “Its main point is to make your feelings change—is to give you feelings that you perhaps didn't have before or did have before and want to have again or want to experiment with. So it seems very simplistic to say, ‘Oh, it's all about feelings.' But actually I think it is. Feelings are overlooked by all of those people who think bright children shouldn't do art.”

For this episode we're joined – all the way from Brooklyn – by acclaimed author and sometime drummer Jonathan Gould. The native New Yorker recalls his early musical epiphanies, his introduction to the drums and his studying under famed jazz drummer Alan Dawson in mid-'70s Boston. He also reminisces about his years in Woodstock, N.Y., and his association with The Band's Richard Manuel. Our very personable guest explains his conversion to writing about music and the long gestation of his epic Beatles book Can't Buy Me Love (2007). From there we jump to 2017's equally praised Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life, an excuse not just to talk about The Big O but to hear clips from audio interviews with Stax Records/Booker T. & the M.G.'s legends Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper. Finally, we get to the subjects of his latest enormo-tome Burning Down the House: Talking Heads. Jonathan talks about his experience of writing the book, the band's unique brilliance and internal frictions, and their complicated relationship with producer/"collaborator" Brian Eno. After we've paid our respects to beloved EMAP Metro writer-publisher Barry McIlheney and to fomrer McCoy/Johnny and Edgar Winter sideman/All-American Boy Rick(y) Derringer, Jasper talks us out with his thoughts on pop's most misunderstood songs.

Lucy Lumen is a Photographer, writer and YouTuber based in Australia. Like a number of recent guests, she shoots a great deal of film of her client and personal work. She's got a really healthy attitude to gear, working closely with her husband to get the right tools for the job and her healthy approach to gear means she doesn't obsess. What I do like is that she focuses her attention on the ideas and thinking of creative power houses like Brian Eno and Rick Ruben and shares that with the audience she's found.More about this show:A camera is just a tool but spend enough time with photographers and you'll see them go misty eyed when they talk about their first camera or a small fast prime that they had in their youth. Prime Lenses is a series of interviews with photographers talking about their photography by way of three lenses that mean a lot to them. These can be interchangeable, attached to a camera, integrated into a gadget, I'm interested in the sometimes complex relationship we have with the tools we choose, why they can mean so much and how they make us feel.

It's been almost 50 years since 1978, when the influential English recording artist and producer BRIAN ENO—in a historic bit of cultural appropriation—took the name “ambient” for an emerging genre of atmospheric contemporary music, and started an independent record label to publish it. The approach had been evolving since the early 20th century in artistic and experimental music circles, including impressionism, avant garde, electronic, psycho-acoustic soundscapes, new age, and minimalism. If there was a common element in these diverse genres, it was an emphasis on tone, texture, atmosphere, and spatial sound images, over traditional musical theory and structure. The genre was unusually open to influences from slow, quiet music from other cultures and historical eras, where it found hypnotic repetitions, psychoactive fractal patterns, modal drones, and consonant harmony. In time, modern listeners also came to appreciate the therapeutic power of ambient music to manage stress, enhance concentration, and support meditative and spiritual experience. Today, a new generation of dedicated ambient composers are creating new music of great subtlety and power. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, therapeutic ambient for unpredictable times, on a program called "RESTORATION." Music is by DAVID HELPLING & ERIC "THE" TAYLOR, MICHAEL STEARNS & CHRISTIAN HALTEN, ISHQ, MATTHEW STEWART, ANDREW HEATH, and STEVE ROACH. [ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

For the 45th anniversary of The Feelies' classic debut album, Crazy Rhythms, we take a detailed look at how it was made. After the band formed as The Outkids in Haledon, New Jersey in 1976, Glenn Mercer, Bill Million and Dave Weckerman started playing with brothers Keith Clayton and Vinnie DeNunzio. They changed their name to The Feelies as they started playing gigs around New York City. At an audition night at CBGBs, they connected with sound engineer Mark Abel, who introduced them to manager Terry Ork. They began to get booked regularly and receive some press just as DeNunzio decided to leave the band. After placing an ad for a new drummer, they brought in Anton Fier, who had just relocated to New York from Clevenland. Weckerman also left around this time so the band lineup was solidified as a four piece. Rough Trade offered to release their debut single, which came out in 1979. For their debut album, they wanted to find a label that would allow them to produce. After signing with Stiff Records, they began recording at Vanguard Studios with Mark Abel co-producing. Crazy Rhythms was eventually released in 1980. In this episode, Glenn Mercer and Bill Million recall connecting as teenagers in suburban New Jersey over a shared love of the Stooges. Mercer describes arranging their songs around the drums and percussion parts, while bringing a nervous energy and quirkiness to his vocals and lyrics. Million talks about how their early experiences with recording helped them realize the necessity of producing themselves and how they waited for the right record deal that would give them a proper recording budget. They describe their joy of discovery in the studio and their process for coming up with spontaneous parts as they were eager to treat the studio as an instrument. From finding the right clean guitar sound to standing out in the New York punk scene to embracing the suburbs to the 1950s-inspired look of the band to taking inspiration from contemporaries like Jonathan Richman, Brian Eno, Mo Tucker, and Steve Reich to percussion played with random objects to making music on their own terms for nearly 50 years, we'll hear the stories of how the record came together.

Dylan Jones – writer, former editor of i-D, Arena and GQ - was 15 in 1975 and dressed like Henry McCullough of Wings (“a lot of denim and silk scarves”), a time he thinks had enormous influence on the following five decades. There are many highlights in his latest book ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot', a lot of them discussed here with David and Mark, including … … the lasting impact of the cover of Patti Smith's Horses. … the “frightening” Millie Jackson, 50 years ahead of her time. … why Blood On The Tracks was the first middle-aged rock album.  … the information black-out and the value of the ‘70s rock press - particularly Street Life – for such experimental music. … how the sarcasm of Steely Dan still feels contemporary – “Donald Trump is a figure they could have made up 50 years ago”. … the three key rhythms of the ‘70s – Fela Kuti's afro-beat, James Brown's funk and Klaus Dinger's Neu!-beat. … the reason Donna Summer's Love To Love You Baby is 17 minutes long. … how Brian Eno's accident led to the birth of ambient music.  … “writing about pop music allows you to write about anything”. … how the sophistication and intellect of the mid-‘70s was pilloried in Punk's Year Zero. … the Quiet Storm genre - aka “foreplay music” – from Sade to Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. ... the unrecognised power of the female record-buyer and the sexism of the rock press. … and the greatest record of 1975! Pre-order ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot' here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/1975-World-Forgot-Dylan-Jones/dp/1408721988Help us to keep the conversation going by joining our worldwide Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dylan Jones – writer, former editor of i-D, Arena and GQ - was 15 in 1975 and dressed like Jimmy McCulloch of Wings (“a lot of denim and silk scarves”), a time he thinks had enormous influence on the following five decades. There are many highlights in his latest book ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot', a lot of them discussed here with David and Mark, including … … the lasting impact of the cover of Patti Smith's Horses. … the “frightening” Millie Jackson, 50 years ahead of her time. … why Blood On The Tracks was the first middle-aged rock album.  … the information black-out and the value of the ‘70s rock press - particularly Street Life – for such experimental music. … how the sarcasm of Steely Dan still feels contemporary – “Donald Trump is a figure they could have made up 50 years ago”. … the three key rhythms of the ‘70s – Fela Kuti's afro-beat, James Brown's funk and Klaus Dinger's Neu!-beat. … the reason Donna Summer's Love To Love You Baby is 17 minutes long. … how Brian Eno's accident led to the birth of ambient music.  … “writing about pop music allows you to write about anything”. … how the sophistication and intellect of the mid-‘70s was pilloried in Punk's Year Zero. … the Quiet Storm genre - aka “foreplay music” – from Sade to Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. ... the unrecognised power of the female record-buyer and the sexism of the rock press. … and the greatest record of 1975! Pre-order ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot' here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/1975-World-Forgot-Dylan-Jones/dp/1408721988Help us to keep the conversation going by joining our worldwide Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dylan Jones – writer, former editor of i-D, Arena and GQ - was 15 in 1975 and dressed like Jimmy McCulloch of Wings (“a lot of denim and silk scarves”), a time he thinks had enormous influence on the following five decades. There are many highlights in his latest book ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot', a lot of them discussed here with David and Mark, including … … the lasting impact of the cover of Patti Smith's Horses. … the “frightening” Millie Jackson, 50 years ahead of her time. … why Blood On The Tracks was the first middle-aged rock album.  … the information black-out and the value of the ‘70s rock press - particularly Street Life – for such experimental music. … how the sarcasm of Steely Dan still feels contemporary – “Donald Trump is a figure they could have made up 50 years ago”. … the three key rhythms of the ‘70s – Fela Kuti's afro-beat, James Brown's funk and Klaus Dinger's Neu!-beat. … the reason Donna Summer's Love To Love You Baby is 17 minutes long. … how Brian Eno's accident led to the birth of ambient music.  … “writing about pop music allows you to write about anything”. … how the sophistication and intellect of the mid-‘70s was pilloried in Punk's Year Zero. … the Quiet Storm genre - aka “foreplay music” – from Sade to Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. ... the unrecognised power of the female record-buyer and the sexism of the rock press. … and the greatest record of 1975! Pre-order ‘1975: The Year The World Forgot' here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/1975-World-Forgot-Dylan-Jones/dp/1408721988Help us to keep the conversation going by joining our worldwide Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we have an extra special episode for all you folks, dolts and bolts (of lightning, shine on you crazy diamonds). That's right-- Maypril continues with yet more May (the April of the heart): Jessica Lea Mayprilfield-- and spoiler alert we are Jessica Lea Maypilled.Also up for discussion: Common must use common sense and stop acting and return to making hit albums, Brian Eno came up with the Windows background with the hill in it, and the president's ass has been stolen (wet pants). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Woof. The anti-abortion cretins really brought their fuckery to the yard this week. The BS popped off from the Lone Star State all the way to the UK, so Lizz and Moji are back to lay it all out for you with some incredible guests, and dish on the week's good, bad, and mostly bad abortion stories! You know—the usual. Your Buzzkills will break down the tragic FIVE MONTH criminalization of a Texan woman's miscarriage, the motives of last week's attack at the Palm Springs IVF clinic, and learn that the enemy of our enemy is not our friend! It seems that the “anti-natalists” pulled a seat up to the cruel kids table… tune in to figure out whatever the fuck “anti-natalist” means. GUEST ROLL CALL!Joining the pod this week is one of our absolute favorites, Executive Director of the Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation Kwajelyn Jackson, to discuss getting justice for Adriana Smith, the pregnant woman forced onto life support to carry out her pregnancy. PLUS, launching from one horrifying topic to another, Moji and Lizz break down the scary grift of maternity homes with best-selling author Grady Hendrix about his new incredible new horror novel Witchcraft for Wayward Girls — proving once again that misogyny is the scariest monster.  Scared? Got Questions about the continued assault on your reproductive rights? THE FBK LINES ARE OPEN! Just call or text (201) 574-7402, leave your questions or concerns, and Lizz and Moji will pick a few to address on the pod! Times are heavy, but knowledge is power, y'all. We gotchu.  OPERATION SAVE ABORTION: You can still join the 10,000+ womb warriors fighting the patriarchy by listening to our OpSave pod series and Mifepristone Panel by clicking HERE for episodes, your toolkit, marching orders, and more. HOSTS:Lizz Winstead IG: @LizzWinstead Bluesky: @LizzWinstead.bsky.socialMoji Alawode-El IG: @Mojilocks Bluesky: @Mojilocks.bsky.social SPECIAL GUESTS:Kwajelyn J. Jackson IG: @superkwa / @feministcenterGrady Hendrix IG: @gradyhendrix GUEST LINKS:Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation WebsiteDONATE: Feminist Center for Reproductive LiberationPregnancy Justice WebsitePass the Reproductive Freedom ActSUPPORT ADRIANA SMITH: Family's GoFundMeGrady Hendrix WebsiteGrady's New Novel: “Witchcraft for Wayward Girls”Ann Fessler Book: “The Girls Who Went Away”Rickie Solinger Bookl: “Wake Up Little Susie” NEWS DUMP:US House Passes Trump's ‘Big, Beautiful' Tax and Spending Bill5 Calls: Call Your Senators to Vote Against "One Big Beautiful BillIn the UK, Police Are Being Trained to Find Abortion-Related Evidence in Women's PhonesFlorida Ruling Challenges Judicial Waivers for Abortion, Harms YouthCharlottesville Federal Court Hears Abortion Pill Access CaseInvestigators Comb Through Writings of Palm Springs Fertility Clinic Bombing SuspectWoman Released From Jail in Texas After Serving Five Months for a MiscarriageAdriana Smith and the Legal Horror of Reproductive Servitude in the USUS State Regulation of Decisions for Pregnant Women Without Decisional Capacity EPISODE LINKS:TICKETS: Genital Panic 5/30 in Minneapolis ADOPT-A-CLINIC: Hope Clinic Wishlist (Illinois)DONATE: Hope Clinic (Illinois)Kentucky Health Justice Network Website IG: @KYHealthJusticeDONATE: Kentucky Health Justice Network6 DEGREES: Andie Macdowell at Cannes BUY AAF MERCH!Operation Save AbortionSIGN: Repeal the Comstock ActEMAIL your abobo questions to The Feminist BuzzkillsAAF's Abortion-Themed Rage Playlist FOLLOW US:Listen to us ~ FBK PodcastInstagram ~ @AbortionFrontBluesky ~ @AbortionFrontTikTok ~ @AbortionFrontFacebook ~ @AbortionFrontYouTube ~ @AbortionAccessFrontTALK TO THE CHARLEY BOT FOR ABOBO OPTIONS & RESOURCES HERE!PATREON HERE! Support our work, get exclusive merch and more! DONATE TO AAF HERE!ACTIVIST CALENDAR HERE!VOLUNTEER WITH US HERE!ADOPT-A-CLINIC HERE!EXPOSE FAKE CLINICS HERE!GET ABOBO PILLS FROM PLAN C PILLS HERE! When BS is poppin', we pop off!

A mini pan flute orchestra, the Alexander Technique, and an exotica Hitchcock-esque documentary. Victoria Mordoch (Floreana) "Floreana is the solo project from Los Angeles musician Victoria Mordoch. Her debut EP Floreana I weaves together elements of exotica, ambient and downtempo jazz. Having grown up in a musical family Mordoch was always musically inclined which led her to over a long decade career as a session bass/guitar/synth player in LA and eventually earning her a spot as a bassist in Taylor Swift's touring band. Quickly disillusioned by the pop music apparatus, Mordoch began exploring her own sound and experimenting with recording. The inspiration for Floreana one struck Mordoch while watching the documentary "When Satan Came To Eden," following a failed utopian settlement in the Galapagos, with the name Floreana coming from the island the events took place on. Fascinated by the story of a doomed attempt at paradise, and surrounded by an array of music equipment, Victoria began creating. She worked mostly alone at home, meditating on these ideas and channeling them into the music. “I'd always make sure the connection to the feeling was first and let everything unfold from there without getting in the way…even the tracks were written in the order they appear on the record.” Floreana One, is the first installment of a three-part series, captures tones reminiscent of early Kraftwerk and Brian Eno, exploring themes of isolation and idealism through tape-saturated woodwinds, hazy synthesizers, and vintage drum machines. Features appearances from her father- David Mordoch, John Carroll Kirby, Nico Georis, Shags Chamberlain, and Daryl Johns." Excerpt from https://floreanala.bandcamp.com Floreana: Bandcamp: https://floreanala.bandcamp.com/album/floreana-one Instagram: @floreana___ The Vineyard: Instagram: @thevineyardpodcast Website: https://www.thevineyardpodcast.com Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSn17dSz8kST_j_EH00O4MQ/videos

TWO HUNDRED EPISODES? We don't believe it either, but believe this: We cover everything from Sunderfolk to Deliver at All Costs, Fortnite's AI Darth Vader mess, plagiarism in Marathon, Switch 2 launch coverage, the Summer Game Fest vibe, and plenty more on this week's show. CHAPTERS (00:00:00) NOTE: Some timecodes may be inaccurate for versions other than the ad-free Patreon version due to dynamic ad insertions. Please use caution if skipping around to avoid spoilers. Thanks for listening. (00:00:10) Intro (00:02:02) How do we make jury duty easier and better? (00:07:25) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S]  |  Apr 24, 2025 (00:21:31) Hollow Knight  |  [Linux, PC (Microsoft Windows)]  |  Feb 24, 2017 (00:24:05) Sunderfolk  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch]  |  Apr 23, 2025 (00:31:47) First Break (00:31:51) Deliver At All Costs  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S]  |  May 22, 2025 (00:41:53) Mars Attracts (Early Access) |  [PC (Microsoft Windows)]  |  2025 (00:43:47) Assassin's Creed Shadows  |  [Mac, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S]  |  Mar 20, 2025 (00:46:08) Revenge of the Savage Planet  |  [Xbox Series X|S, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5]  |  May 08, 2025 (00:47:55) Fortnite: Chapter 6 - Mini Season 1: Galactic Battle  |  [iOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Microsoft Windows), Android]  |  May 02, 2025 (00:50:52) Darth Vader wants to talk to you about your Fortnite performance (01:15:22) Doom: The Dark Ages  |  [PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S]  |  May 15, 2025 (01:16:51) Second Break (01:16:56) Unlicensed artwork found in Marathon (01:27:53) Switch 2 availability updates and more (01:41:15) Jade Raymond has left PlayStation's Haven Studios (01:46:34) SNK CEO steps down (01:51:15) Microsoft issues a statement regarding its contracts with Israel (01:54:51) Brian Eno also issues a statement (01:59:39) What's the 'vibe' going into Summer Game Fest? (02:04:05) Emails (02:14:25) Nextlander Content Updates (02:16:18) Go check out The Watchcast (02:17:42) Wrapping up and thanks (02:19:12) Mysterious Benefactor Shoutouts (02:22:16) See ya!

Caomh McGillion joins me to talk more about captivating filmmaker Michael Mann. This time, we highlight some of our favorite moments from his small-screen narc shows to his big-scale movies.   Which key sequence in one of his '90s masterpieces has music play a pivotal role in beginning the sequence?   Which scenes have some neat editing and gaffing choices?    And which ones leave us wanting more of these rich characters and their gritty underworld backstory?   Feel the heat around the corner, get your body armor & roll out in the copters with us!      SONG USED: "Force Marker" by Brian Eno & "God Moving Over The Face of the Waters - End Credits (Film Version) " by Moby (from the HEAT original soundtrack)                   MAIN LINKS:  LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/JURSPodcast Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/JackedUpReviewShow/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2452329545040913 Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackedUpReview  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacked_up_podcast/        SHOW LINKS: YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCIyMawFPgvOpOUhKcQo4eQQ   iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-jacked-up-review-show-59422651/   Podbean: https://jackedupreviewshow.podbean.com   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Eg8w0DNympD6SQXSj1X3M   Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jacked-up-review-show-podcast/id1494236218   RadioPublic: https://radiopublic.com/the-jacked-up-review-show-We4VjE   Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1494236218/the-jacked-up-review-show-podcast   Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9hNDYyOTdjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz   Anchor:  https://anchor.fm/s/a46297c/podcast/rss   PocketCasts: https://pca.st/0ncd5qp4   CastBox:  https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Jacked-Up-Review-Show-Podcast-id2591222   Discord:  https://discord.com/channels/796154005914779678/796154006358851586         #MovieReview #FilmTwitter #PodFamily #PodcastersOfInstagram #Movies #Film #Cinema #Music #Reviews #Retrospect #Podcasts #MutantFam #MutantFamily #actionmystery #bmovies #scifihorror #truecrime #historydramas #warmovies #podcastcollabs #hottakes #edgy #cultmovies #nsfw #HorrorFam #badass     

In this episode we welcome the great Paul Gambaccini into RBP's world and ask him about his 50+ years as one of Britain's best-loved broadcasters. "The Great Gambo" tells us about his early radio days at Dartmouth College's WDCR station and explains how he slipped his foot in the door at Rolling Stone in 1970. He then recounts his first meeting with "underground deejay" John Peel (plus his BBC producer John Walters) while still an Oxford postgraduate fleeing Richard Nixon's America, We ask our guest about his famous Stone interviews with Elton John (and Bernie Taupin) and Paul McCartney, then hear about his Radio 1 debut in 1974. Paul discusses his sexuality, his winding up on the Beeb's "Christmas tree" list, and his nightmare year of being witch-hunted without evidence by the sleuths of Operation Yewtree. After offering his thoughts on the constitutional crisis in his homeland, our guest expresses his approval of Beyoncé ahead of her "Cowboy Carter" tour's London leg in June. We listen to clips from a 2003 audio interview with "Queen Bey" by The Observer Music Monthly's Simon Garfield. After Mark quotes from newly-added interviews with Elvis Presley (1969) and Roxy Music's (Brian) Eno (1973), Jasper talks us out with his thoughts on pieces about the Roots (2005) and Beyoncé's sister Solange (2007). Many thanks to special guest Paul Gambaccini. Hear his radio shows on the air, including the Paul Gambaccini Collection on BBC Radio 2. Pieces discussed: Paul Gambaccini's writer's page on RBP, The Rolling Stone Interview: Elton John, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé audio, Elvis the Husband talks about Elvis the Pelvis, The Strange World of Roxy Music, The Roots: Growing Underground, Romanthony: A Prince Among Men and Why Solange Matters.

Today's Song of the Day is “Suddenly” from Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe's album Luminal, out June 6.

We talk to Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors, Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks, Decisive Pink) about her new solo abum Ready For Heaven, as well as: capitalism, collaboration, edibles, the music industry, previous bands, Brian Eno's songwriting class, binaural beats, and more!Follow Bonefish on Patreon!

In this episode of Working Class Audio, Matt welcomes producer, engineer, mixer, drummer, and composer Emre Ramazanoglu who has worked on projects for Brian Eno, David Bowie, Noel Gallagher Nova Twins and many more. ATMOS for Brian Eno Ziggy Stardust. & Ken Scott Playing on Pillows Mimicking Reverb Fashion Shows Session Drumming Giving a Shit ATMOS Success Apple Issues Dolby Curve Know Your Worth Family Balance ADHD Emre's Site Emre's Band Guest: (Current Guest) Host/Engineer/Producer: Matt Boudreau WCA Theme Music: Cliff Truesdell The Voice: Chuck Smith In This Episode, We Discuss:Links and Show Notes:Matt's Rant: Embrace the UnpredictableCredits:

Descubre la fascinante historia de la Sinfónica de Portsmouth, una orquesta formada por músicos que jamás habían tocado sus instrumentos antes de unirse al grupo. En 1974 lograron lo imposible: agotar entradas en el prestigioso Royal Albert Hall de Londres con una interpretación musicalmente catastrófica pero conceptualmente revolucionaria. De la mano de figuras como Brian Eno y Michael Nyman, este experimento contracultural desafió todos los cánones del elitismo musical y se convirtió en un fenómeno cultural que duró una década, hasta que irónicamente, aprendieron a tocar bien. Una historia real de rebeldía artística que te hará replantearte qué significa realmente hacer música. Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Kraftwerk. Eurythmics. Gianna Nanini. Viele Musikgrößen bauten auf seine unkonventionelle Kreativität und kamen in sein Bauernhof-Tonstudio in Wolperath: Konrad "Conny" Plank, geboren am 3.5.1940. Von Martina Meißner.

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by Andrew Stuttaford. Andrew needs little introduction as the editor of NR's Capital Matters. Find him online right here at National Review or at @AStuttaford on Twitter/X.Andrew's Music Pick: Brian EnoHere he comes, the boy who tried to vanish to the future or the past. Yes, it's time for Political Beats to celebrate one of the most influential musicians in the history of modern recorded sound -- a man who, ironically enough, is at pains to characterize himself as a non-musician. Children of the Eighties and Nineties may primarily understand Brian Eno as the producer who took U2 to megastardom, but his work as a producer is properly only a footnote to his work as a songwriter and (most importantly of all) a conceptualist. Eno first achieved fame with Roxy Music as their "noise man," providing outrageous sounds alongside "treatments" -- electronic reprocessing -- of the rest of the group's instruments. But Roxy Music was ultimately pianist/vocalist Bryan Ferry's baby, and so Eno soon struck out on his own, for a solo career that would bring him into collaboration with some of the best and most innovative musicians of the Seventies as he put out a sequence of four "lyrical" albums which bent the definition of "popular music" well past its breaking point and into the avant-garde. At the same time, Eno was creating an entirely new genre of recorded sound: so-called "ambient" music, written and recorded in such a way as to (per his maxim) "reward your attention without demanding it."This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg in a career that also includes brilliant songwriting collaborations with Robert Fripp, David Bowie, and Talking Heads among others. All of this and much more are discussed on a episode Political Beats has been waiting to do for eight years: Brian Eno played an enormous role in inventing the sonic world we still live in, and also made some of the most unexpectedly profound and beautiful music while doing so. We are lucky to be joined by NR's own Andrew Stuttaford for this episode, who lends particular credibility to the discussion as a fan from all the way back in 1972, during the Roxy years. Enjoy stepping into another (green) world.

Big! Cosmic! Moody! Droney! Zoom! Donations, Merchandise, Newsletter, more: https://www.groovelectric.com Podrunner: Workout Music mixes: https://www.podrunner.com PLAYLIST 01. Brian Eno, Fred again.. - Secret 02. Off Night, Lannakise - Deeps Down (Lopezhouse Rework) 03. Circulation - Satellite 04. Agma - Matutum 05. Lopezhouse, Angela - Crosses and Angels (Lopezhouse Dark Angel Remix) 06. Milo Sky, Victor Guedez - Arabia 07. Kayinda - TNT 08. Zeitreich - Marimba 09. Accidental Mellody - I'm Not Scared (John Rowe Remix1) 10. DaZM - Kyo (Extended Mix) 11. Moshic - Love Made Me Do It (Guy J Remix) 12. Stan Kolev, Matan Caspi - Adinkra (Cosmonaut Remix) 13. Boubouteq - Blindans 14. Durante - Reprieve 15. Amtrac - Everyone == Please support these artists == Music copyright the respective artists. All other material c2006, 2025 by Steve Boyett. For personal use only. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized copying editing, exhibition, sale, rental, exchange, public performance, or broadcast of this audio is prohibited. No part of Groovelectric or its website and associated content may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.

L is for Ligtnin' (and) Licks. Ladies Love Loud Losers, listen...In the early 1970s, legendary collaborator and self-proclaimed non-musician Brian Eno famously designed a deck of 115 cards containing elliptical imperatives to spark in the user creative connections unobtainable through regular modes of work. He called his creation "Oblique Strategies." For the past six decades, artists the world over in every artistic medium have used Eno's strategy while attempting to overcome a lull in creative output. In 2025, lazy, lackluster yet somehow still award-winning* hobby podcasters and self-proclaimed Lightnin' Lickers Jay and Deon found themselves uninspired when contemplating the potential theme of their upcoming forty-third episode. Together, they decided... to default back to the alphabet. Because they have a reasonably solid grasp of the alphabet and how it works. They had previously utilized the letters A thru K, so naturally, they went with L.Sonic contributors featured in Lightnin' Licks Radio's forty-third episode include: Beastie Boys, National Public Radio, James Todd Smith, Ol' Burger Beats, Prince Paul, De La Soul, Gravediggaz, Method Man, John Ussery. Brothers Johnson, G.I. Joe's Rescue From Adventure Team Headquarters, Ninth Wonder, Earth, Wind, and Fire. Jay Dilla, Black Milk, Ronnie Laws, Inner Circle, Donny Trump, Childish Gambino, Marly Marl, Mary Jane Girls, Bert and Ernie, Greg Nice, Miss Lauren Hill, Cyprus Hill, The Light Men Plus One, Bubbha Thomas, Ornette Coleman. Tim Reid as Venus Flytrap, Kenny Loggins, L.A. Witch, Living Colour, Malcolm X, Arlo Guthrie, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, Public Enemy, Le Bucherettes. At the Drive-in, Terry Genderbender, Bosnian Rainbows. Land of Talk, Canada, Tim Robinson, US Representative Tom Emmer, The Lovely Bad Things, Linn County, The Mighty Loop, Fur and Skin Trading Company. The Pool, Public Image Limited, Morphine, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Hindu Love Gods, Adrian Youngue, La Luz, The Lime Spiders, Hoodoo Gurus, and, the Clockers (theme song).Our favorite selections from the L section in our collections mixtape: (1A) Lime Spiders - Ignormy (2A) Lightmen Plus One - Ashie (3A) L.A. Witch - Sexorexia (4A) Land of Talk - Yuppy Flu (5A) Loop - Head on (1B) Living Colour - Open Letter to a Landlord (2B) Le Bucherettes - Demon Stuck in Your Eye (3B) Linn County - Fever Shot (4B) Lovely Bad Things - Slug Boy (5B) La Luz - In the CountryShop locally for your music. We attend church at Electric Kitsch. We drink Blue Chair Bay flavored rums (without endorsement or appreciation from Kenny Chesney.) We are pro-Canada, but not anti-American. It's very messed up we even feel the need to type that last sentence.

Today we check our bags, get patted down, and head to the terminal to discuss perhaps the most iconic album ambient album of all time, Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Originally dismissed by critics, Airports is now recognized as a genre-defining masterpiece. There's also some Coachella/festival chatter and as usual some bonefish recs.Bonefish Patreon