Podcasts about Gimme Some Truth

Tax Day might be over, but smart financial planning never stops!

Are market fluctuations stressing you out? You're not alone. In this episode of Gimme Some Truth, financial advisors, Nate Condon and Andrew Klein, discuss how to manage fear during uncertain markets, drawing on lessons from the past and offering clear strategies for the present.

Are you making costly tax mistakes without even knowing it? In this episode of Gimme Some Truth, tax pros from WC Tax Services reveal common personal and business tax errors—from filing misconceptions to missed deductions, backdoor Roth mishaps, and LLC misclassifications. Learn how to protect your wallet, avoid IRS penalties, and streamline your tax filing strategy.

Explore the world of bonds with Mitch and Evan in this episode of Gimme Some Truth. Learn the key differences between bonds and stocks, how yield curves influence the market, and what recent market trends mean for investors. Discover how interest rates impact bond prices, the risks and rewards of long-term Treasuries, and practical strategies to navigate today's fixed-income market.

In this episode of Gimme Some Truth, hosts Nate Condon and Clint Walkner sit down with special guest Ryan Smith from Guild Mortgage to discuss the challenges of buying a home in 2025. With rising interest rates, low housing inventory, and a competitive market, homebuyers need to be strategic to secure the best deals.What You'll Learn:✅ How rising mortgage rates impact home affordability✅ The housing supply shortage and its effect on buyers✅ Smart mortgage strategies to win in a competitive market✅ Creative financing options to improve your loan approval chances✅ The importance of pre-approval and how to strengthen your offer

In this episode of Need to Know, Ross Coulthart and Bryce Zabel discuss the latest developments in the UAP conversation, particularly the lack of action from the new U.S. administration despite previous campaign promises. They highlight the role of key figures like John Ratcliffe, the new CIA director, and Marco Rubio, the new Secretary of State, both of whom have previously acknowledged the reality of unexplained aerial phenomena. The conversation also delves into Elon Musk's recent claims that he would know about secret UAP programs if they existed—claims that Ross and Bryce find naive, given the compartmentalized nature of classified government projects. The episode also explores the broader implications of disclosure, touching on government secrecy, potential geopolitical ramifications, and the upcoming documentary The Age of Disclosure, which promises to feature high-level insiders speaking out about UAPs. Additionally, the hosts discuss Richard Dolan's new book on USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects) and the historical significance of cases like Kecksburg and the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. The ongoing mystery of military drone incursions and their potential ties to UAP phenomena is another major talking point, with Ross expressing frustration over media and government responses. They close by considering the possibility that foreign powers like Russia or China might take the lead on disclosure, potentially forcing the U.S. to respond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bulletin talks about tradwives and theobros, Trump and Ukraine, and Eric Adams in New York City. Find us on Youtube. This week we discuss the downfall of the popular online tradwife “Patriarchy Hannah” with Nicole Martin. Then, we talk about President Trump's Truth Social post about Ukraine. Finally, we cover the federal prosecutors who've resigned following appeals to dismiss the NYC mayor Eric Adams's corruption case. GO DEEPER WITH THE BULLETIN: Join the conversation at our Substack. Find us on YouTube. Mark your calendars for our next Tuesday Night Live on March 11 Rate and review the show in your podcast app of choice. ABOUT THE BULLETIN: The Bulletin is a weekly (and sometimes more!) current events show from Christianity Today hosted and moderated by Clarissa Moll, with senior commentary from Russell Moore (Christianity Today's editor in chief) and Mike Cosper (director, CT Media). Each week, the show explores current events and breaking news and shares a Christian perspective on issues that are shaping our world. We also offer special one-on-one conversations with writers, artists, and thought leaders whose impact on the world brings important significance to a Christian worldview, like Bono, Sharon McMahon, Harrison Scott Key, Frank Bruni, and more. “The Bulletin” is a production of Christianity Today Producer: Clarissa Moll Associate Producer: Leslie Thompson Editing and Mix: TJ Hester Music: Dan Phelps Executive Producers: Erik Petrik and Mike Cosper Senior Producer: Matt Stevens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

n this episode of Gimme Some Truth, financial advisor, Alicia Vande Ven, CFP® and estate planning attorney, Notesong Srisopark-Thompson, break down the key differences between wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations. Learn why probate is best avoided, when to transition from a will to a trust, and the importance of funding your trust properly. We also explore how financial planners and estate attorneys collaborate to protect your legacy.Whether you're just starting or revisiting your estate plan, this episode offers valuable tips to secure your family's future. Don't miss it!Featured Guest:Notesong Srisopark-Thompson Senior Associate at Laffey, Sebranek, Auby & Ristau, S.C. https://www.lsar.law/notesong-thompson Topics Covered:Wills vs. Trusts: What's the difference?Why beneficiary designations override your will.Probate court explained and how to avoid it.When to upgrade your estate plan with a trust.Cost considerations for estate planning.Introduction: Alicia and Notesong introduce the continuation of their estate planning discussion. (00:00:05)Key Differences: Will, Trust, and Beneficiary Designation: Explanation of how these estate planning tools differ and their specific purposes. (00:00:35)Understanding Probate and Why to Avoid It: Discussion on what probate is and its implications for estate planning. (00:01:37)The Role of a Will in Estate Planning: Explanation of the importance of wills and their limitations. (00:03:11)Trusts as a Tool to Avoid Probate: Introduction to revocable living trusts and their benefits. (00:03:41)When to Transition from a Will to a Trust: Identifying life stages or financial circumstances when creating a trust is advisable. (00:07:53)The Importance of Funding a Trust: Explanation of why updating account beneficiaries and funding a trust is crucial. (00:12:06)Beneficiary Designations vs. Wills: How beneficiary designations on accounts override wills. (00:04:12)Cost Implications of Estate Planning: Discussion on the financial impact of working with an estate planning attorney versus the potential costs of not planning. (00:08:55)The Collaborative Role of Financial Planners and Estate Attorneys: How financial planners and attorneys work together to ensure seamless estate and financial planning. (00:14:11)

Learn the fundamentals of estate planning in this informative episode of Gimme Some Truth, featuring guest estate planning attorney, Notesong Srisopark-Thompson. Discover why creating a will or trust is essential for protecting your family and assets. This episode addresses common challenges, including overcoming the cost barrier, choosing guardians, and aligning your estate plan with financial goals. Whether you're starting out or updating existing documents, this episode provides actionable advice to help you plan for the future with confidence. Perfect for families, parents, and anyone seeking clarity on estate planning! Featured Guest: Notesong Srisopark-Thompson Senior Associate at Laffey, Sebranek, Auby & Ristau, S.C. https://www.lsar.law/notesong-thompson Introduction to Estate Planning: Hosts introduce the episode and guest estate planning attorney. (00:00:05) Why Estate Planning Matters: Discussion on the importance of having a will and how it impacts your family. (00:00:36) Barriers to Creating an Estate Plan: Common reasons people avoid estate planning, including cost and emotional discomfort. (00:03:44) Consequences of Not Having a Will: How the state decides for you if no legally binding will exists. (00:04:47) Estate Planning for Parents: Why guardianship and financial management are critical for families with children. (00:06:20) Trusts and Financial Safeguards: The role of trusts in protecting assets and ensuring proper financial management. (00:06:51) Deciding Key Roles in an Estate Plan: How to choose guardians and financial decision-makers. (00:07:53) Updating Your Estate Plan: The importance of reviewing and revising your estate documents as life changes. (00:10:58) Pitfalls of Online Will Services: Limitations of online templates and why working with an attorney is beneficial. (00:14:09) Coordinating Estate and Financial Planning: How financial and estate planning work together to protect your legacy. (00:19:23)

Discover the latest 2025 financial market trends, AI breakthroughs, and tax policy changes that could shape your investments. This episode of Gimme Some Truth covers Deep Seek AI's impact on tech stocks, market overvaluation risks, S&P 500 concentration issues, and upcoming tax reforms. Learn how to navigate potential market corrections, portfolio diversification strategies, and political uncertainties that may influence global trade and economic stability. Stay ahead of market trends and make informed financial decisions in 2025!

Join us in this episode of Gimme Some Truth as we welcome Ian Beardsley to the Walkner Condon Financial Advisors team! Ian shares his inspiring journey from public accounting to financial advising, highlighting his passion for helping individuals and families. Discover how his global experiences, corporate expertise, and collaborative approach are making a difference in the world of financial planning. Don't miss this engaging introduction to one of our newest team members!

This episode of Gimme Some Truth is an introduction into a series exploring how people can reframe conversations about money to focus on goals, purpose, and empowerment. Financial advisors Polly Price and Alicia Vande Ven, CFP® address societal taboos, financial education gaps, and the importance of shifting discussions from numbers to achieving life goals like retirement, education, and travel. Gain insights on asking better financial questions and building confidence in managing money. #WomenAndFinance #FinancialEmpowerment #MoneyWithPurpose #FinancialConfidence #MoneyManagement

In this episode of Gimme Some Truth, we explore essential retirement planning strategies specifically designed for employees of the University of Wisconsin (UW) System and the State of Wisconsin. Discover how to maximize your 403(b) and 457(b) plans, understand the benefits of the state pension system, and make the most of your investment options with providers like TIAA and Fidelity. Check out our blog for additional insights: Our Guide to the UW System Supplemental Retirement Program - https://walknercondon.com/blog/our-guidance-on-the-uw-system-supplemental-retirement-program/ We break down: * Key Differences Between 403(b) and 457(b) Plans: Learn which plan fits your retirement goals, including tax benefits and early withdrawal options. * Maximizing Contributions: Find out how UW and state employees can contribute to multiple retirement accounts, potentially doubling tax-advantaged savings for households. * Investment Choices with TIAA and Fidelity: Explore the advantages of these standardized plans, including low-cost options and diversified portfolios. * Catch-Up Provisions and Early Access: Understand how catch-up contributions and penalty-free withdrawals in 457(b) plans can benefit high-income earners and those nearing retirement. Whether you're early in your career, nearing retirement, or managing dual incomes in a household, this guide will help you understand your retirement planning options. Make the most of the powerful benefits available to UW System and State of Wisconsin employees to secure a financially stable future. Watch now to start planning for a better retirement! #RetirementPlanning #WisconsinEmployees #UWSystem #StateOfWisconsin #403b #457b #TIAA #Fidelity #FinancialPlanning #TaxBenefits

This episode of Gimme Some Truth for Expats dives into wealth taxes and their implications for expats living abroad. Discover how wealth taxes differ from income taxes, explore policies in countries like France, Spain, and Portugal, and learn how offshore assets are taxed. We also cover strategies for navigating international tax systems effectively. A must-watch for expats managing finances across borders. #WealthTaxes #Expats #InternationalTaxes #OffshoreAssets #TaxPlanning #GlobalFinance

With remote work on the rise, many digital nomads and international families split their time across countries, navigating complex tax laws and residency rules. In this episode of Gimme Some Truth, we explore common tax pitfalls of global living, why the "183-day rule" might not provide full protection, and essential insights for those balancing lives across borders. Tune in to learn how to plan effectively, reduce tax surprises, and make the most of a cross-border lifestyle.

In this episode of Gimme Some Truth, Syl, Keith and Stan discuss the importance of international allocation in portfolios. Despite years of US outperformance, international markets remain a pillar of a well diversified allocation, in both equity and fixed income. In this discussion, we share insight and look at index data to help investors with their own international allocation decisions.

Featuring new music from global roots label Putumayo, and many others. A small segment of songs of mermaids and sirens. Songs of Truth and of Reconciliation, too. Plus concert previews galore and a few surprises along the way!

In this installment of Gimme Some Truth, Keith, Stan and Syl discuss how residing abroad can effect one of the most common decisions US investors make - rolling over their employer-sponsored retirement plan (401k, 403b, TSPP) to an IRA. While this decision is frequently presented as a "no brainer" for Americans in the US, the various tax treaties the US has with foreign countries frequently render this decision more complicated for Americans residing or thinking about residing abroad as certain countries will tax different types of plans differently.

We've made it near the end of the first leg of the Dark Matter tour! With the last stop in Seattle happening as this episode airs, we thought it would obviously be appropriate to cover a show that took place in Pearl Jam's hometown. Since we've covered many of the well known Seattle shows in past episodes (check out the archive to listen, lots of good ones!) we're turning to a benefit show from 2001 in which the band didn't go out and tour on. The Groundwork Benefit was put together to help the Food and Agriculture Organization to solve world hunger. This night featured acts like Alanis Morrisette and R.E.M. as the headliners alongside Pearl Jam. It's only a 10-song set, and since it's still in the shadow of Binaural, the album has a heavy presence at this show. No Ten or Vs. songs were played, but we do get an early version of a Riot Act song over a year before the album release. We'll talk about John Lennon song Gimme Some Truth and how Ed initially wanted to play that during the Tribute To Heroes performance after 9/11, but it became a staple of Pearl Jam's touring circuit during the Iraq War. But the song that's going to resonate the most is a rare closing set performance of Long Road. It's a ten minute version that features Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, the nephew of Nusrat who recorded a version of Long Road with Ed for the Dead Man Walking soundtrack. One of the most heartfelt versions of Long Road that you'll ever hear. Along with that, we'll talk about Ed making a guest appearance during R.E.M.'s set to sing People Have The Power and It's The End Of The World As We Know It, and also a little bit of the Athens alternative legends teasing Better Man. Javier joins in for this one, and we'll spend a lot of time talking about our upcoming trip to see the band in Seattle! Just to note, in this episode I may have made some small but rare mistakes regarding facts that I do apologize for. We'll also mention the audio from the YouTube video mixing the guitars really low, but the bootleg that we play in the episode sounds completely normal. A lot of 4am bedtimes in the last month, I'm sure you all understand! Visit the Concertpedia for all of our post-show recap write ups - http://liveon4legs.com Contact the Show - liveon4legspodcast@gmail.com Donate to the Show and listen to all of the reaction episodes from this tour - http://patreon.com/liveon4legs

Clint and Nate talk about their traditions surrounding the holidays and family. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/walkner-condon/message

Nate and Clint run through the list of financial topics to get on top of before the end of the year. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/walkner-condon/message

Keith and Stan talk about the updates to the situation surrounding NHR policies in Portugal. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/walkner-condon-expats/message

Clint and Keith chat about the disconnect between Consumer Sentiments negative trends and the actual market data that shows an upswing. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/walkner-condon/message

The holiday season is upon us, and so is the stress of what to get for the loved ones in our lives. You could purchase the latest toy or technology. But what if you want to step outside of the proverbial gift box and do something for your kids or grandkids that will last longer than the newest version of the iPhone? That's where this episode of Gimme Some Truth comes in. Nate and Mitch gather in our somewhat festive studio to discuss financially-minded gift options that have the potential to keep on giving – contributions to accounts like a 529 savings plan, 401k, or Roth IRA for your younger generations of loved ones. And while it's a holiday-minded topic, as Nate reminds us, these types of gifts don't have to be given just during the holidays. Questions about this topic or other things you'd like us to cover in future episodes? Send us an email at podcast@walknercondon.com. LINKS Investor.gov Compound Interest Calculator: https://bit.ly/3Wr8LUi Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2LTfuwc_6t4 Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

Episode 248: In New York City on the 8th of December, 1980, the world was rocked by the murder of influential rock and roll icon, artist, sometimes controversial activist and dad John Lennon. After an evening recording session at the Record Plant, John Lennon and his wife, artist Yoko Ono returned to their Central Park West apartment building, The Dakota. As John and Yoko approached the entrance to the building, they passed a man for whom, only hours earlier, Lennon had signed an autograph. The man, Mark David Chapman, 25, watched the couple walk by and then pulled a .38 special from his coat and unloaded on John Lennon, shooting him in the back four times. The deadly hollow point bullets tore through the former Beatle, mortally wounding him. He was pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital later. When police arrived, they found Chapman patiently reading his book, Catcher in the Rye.  Sources: JOHN LENNON. GIMME SOME TRUTH. The Beatles This Is: The Beatles | Spotify Playlist This is: John Lennon | Spotify Playlist John Lennon's “bigger than Jesus” quote | Slate 23 December 1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono meet Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau | The Beatles Bible The Catcher in the Rye | Summary, Analysis, Reception, & Facts | Britannica Two Marks — Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon — Crime Library BBC NEWS | Entertainment | John Lennon killer ‘wanted fame' BBC ON THIS DAY | 8 | 1980: John Lennon shot dead Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How old is your financial advisor? For many, the image that first comes to mind of a financial advisor is an older man. And there's data to back that up. Around 40% of financial advisors are set to retire in the next 10 years, which will ultimately shake up the advising landscape. In this episode of Gimme Some Truth, we gathered our three youngest advisors at Walkner Condon – Alicia Vande Ven, Candidate for CFP® Certification, M.S.; Mitch DeWitt, CFP®, MBA; and Polly Price – to discuss the future of advising, a future they'll be a part of. Alica, Mitch, and Polly each draw on statistics they gathered related to the theme of the episode, opening up the floor to cover what that means for clients of financial advisors, the implications for the businesses of those retiring advisors, and more. Questions about this topic or other things you'd like us to cover in future episodes? LINKS 40% of Advisory Assets to Transition in Next 10 Years: http://bit.ly/3Ey1GKq Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sPPjGnw-k7s Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

In this brand-new episode of Gimme Some Truth, we delve into a topic we haven't covered previously on the podcast – Commercial Real Estate. MLG Capital real estate analyst Jorgio Hopkins – a Madison native and UW-Madison grad – sits down with Walkner Condon's Jonathon Jordan, CFP, CEPA, and Nate Condon to cover the basics of this potential investing avenue. They go over the essentials of the sector, how broader investing themes like COVID-19 & interest rates have impacted commercial real estate, and how potential investors can access these types of investments. Questions about this topic or other topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes? Send us an email at podcast@walknercondon.com. LINKS Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

In this first episode of Gimme Some Truth, we discover the true timeline for when Ringo Starr quit The Beatles and holidayed in Sardinia!

How did the markets fare in the third quarter? What trends are unfolding this year? And what's on the horizon for the rest of the year? Nate Condon and Clint Walkner unearth the answers to those questions (and more) in this bonus episode of Gimme Some Truth, our Q3 market recap. Armed with data from JPMorgan's Guide to the Markets, Clint & Nate explore the drivers of inflation, U.S. market outperformance, bonds, and more. Questions related to this podcast or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes of Gimme Some Truth? Send an email to podcast@walknercondon.com. LINKS JPMorgan: Guide to the Markets Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

We take a break from our regularly scheduled expat investing programming to dive into a rapidly approaching international event that may be of interest to our audience of Americans abroad – the 2022 World Cup. While financial advisors Stan Farmer, CFP®, J.D., and Keith Poniewaz, Ph.D., have quite the knowledge of soccer, with a particular focus on the U.S. Men's National Team, we wanted to bring in an outside guest with an even greater breadth of expertise on the subject. Enter Jake Landau of the It's Called Soccer YouTube channel. Coincidentally enough, Jake is an American who recently returned to the United States after living abroad. So between his international living experience and love of soccer, he fits right in with our team. In this episode, Stan and Keith get the lowdown from Jake on the USMNT ahead of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, break down Group B (the group the U.S. is in), make predictions, and more. To check out Jake's channel or to find our resources dedicated to investing and financial planning for U.S. expats, check out the link section below. Feedback on this episode or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes of Gimme Some Truth for Expats? Let us know by sending an email to podcast@walknercondon.com. LINKS It's Called Soccer - YouTube Channel Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's U.S. Expat YouTube Channel Educational Materials for Expats Contact Us Meet with a U.S. Expat Financial Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon-expats/message

So here is the deal, these last few episodes I think I got a little too irreverent, maybe pushed the envelope a little bit, I got a little bit crazy. Please forgive me, I'm only human. But it does beg the question if you have a soul, a pulse or any moral fiber you have to wonder at times where are we headed, where are the political chess masters taking us as a society, and how can the average man or woman take in political information on the left and the right and not want to completely check out across the board? I shake my head at Mitch McConnell, as much as I scratch my head looking at Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in haute couture in the pages of GQ. As our friend Tony Soprano once pontificated , “whatever happened to the strong silent types.”

SUMMARY After the new year, John approaches the Beatles with a new outlook and a new idea for the future. The trial separation, John predicts, “will either be a death or a Rebirth.” And John has made his choice! Episode Three delves into John's hopes and fears for the fate of Lennon/McCartney in 1970, and then ties in some pertinent quotes from 1980 which show how he processed and framed the breakup in later years and the philosophical outlook he ultimately achieved.  And of course we continue the unfolding drama of the standoff between the estranged partners in Phase Two of the Trial Separation.   SOURCES Scene and Heard, BBC (Feb 6, 1970) “A Hard Day's Write” by Steve Turner (October 1994) Audio snippet Interview w/ David Sheff (1980) “Living Together” St. Regis Interview, Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld (1971) “It's Difficult to Believe John and Paul Have Fallen Out” by Mike Hennessey, Record Mirror (March 13, 1971) Scene and Heard, BBC (Feb 6, 1970) Interview w/ Roy Shipston Disc and Music Echo (Feb 28, 1970) Many Years from Now by Barry Miles (1997) “All We Are Saying,”by David Sheff (1980) Interview snippet about Jealousy (audio) (1971) Gimme Some Truth (2000) by Andrew Solt John Lennon's #IMAGINE50 Listening Party on Twitter Playboy Interview with Paul and Linda McCartney: Interviewed by Joan Goodman Article ©1984 Playboy Press Man on the Run by Tom Doyle (2013)   PLAYLIST Instant Karma JOHN LENNON (1970) Eleanor Rigby, Julia (Transition) THE BEATLES (2006) Lovely Linda PAUL MCCARTNEY (1970) Valentine Day PAUL MCCARTNEY (1970) The Long and Winding Road THE BEATLES (1970) You Know My Name THE BEATLES (1970)

As obvious as it sounds, one of the keys to U.S. expat status is the process itself of expatriation. Living as an American abroad is one thing, carrying its own set of financial and investing hurdles and complications. But truly renouncing your U.S. citizenship brings about its own set of obstacles. In this episode of Gimme Some Truth for Expats, our team of U.S. expat financial advisors – Stan Farmer, CFP®, J.D.; Syl Michelin, CFA; and Keith Poniewaz, Ph.D. – delve into the subject of expatriation, the first of what is sure to be multiple episodes on this subject (because there's a lot of ground to cover). Speaking of cover, this edition is primarily dedicated to going over what it means to be a covered expat, and the boxes you would have to check to reach covered expat status. There's enough there to warrant an entire episode, so while our trio briefly touches on how covered expat status may impact your financial situation, we'll go more in-depth on that specific subject in an upcoming episode. Questions about covered expat status? Or questions about your particular situation? Send us a message at podcast@walknercondon.com, and we may feature them on an upcoming episode – in addition to answering whatever your question might be. LINKS Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's U.S. Expat YouTube Channel Educational Materials for Expats Contact Us Meet with a U.S. Expat Financial Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon-expats/message

This was an episode that first appeared on the Gimme Some Truth feed, but we felt the topic was just as important to U.S. expats and Americans living abroad. After all, the currency markets obviously carry international implications. And as Syl points out, the strength of the dollar means it's a great time to be an American traveling abroad (as long as you can get there in a somewhat inexpensive fashion). Syl Michelin, a Chartered Financial Analyst and U.S. expat financial advisor, sits down with Nate Condon – one of the founding partners of Walkner Condon – to dissect what's happening with the U.S. dollar. Together, they raise the question – what does a strong dollar mean for the markets? As part of that discussion, they dive into why the dollar is so important on the international stage and conjecture about whether the strength of the dollar is due to the dollar itself, or the underperformance of the other main currencies. Questions about this topic? Send an email to podcast@walknercondon.com or check out the links section below. LINKS Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's U.S. Expat YouTube Channel Educational Materials for Expats Contact Us Speak to One of Our Financial Advisors --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon-expats/message

There's a new face – and voice – here at Walkner Condon. In this installment of Gimme Some Truth, we get to know Alicia Vande Ven, the newest fee-only financial advisor on our team that works with clients locally in the Madison area (and around the country). Alicia has quite the background – from working in Human Resources at Epic Systems in Madison, owning a homemade candle business, becoming a financial advisor, and being the parents of three kids. And outside of work, as she likes to put it, she enjoys being outdoors just as much as being indoors. Find out more about what makes her a self-proclaimed geek with a tan, what one of her favorite parts of financial planning is (hint: death and [blank]), and what drove her to go down the path of becoming an advisor. LINKS Alicia's Bio Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

While many of the people who come to us are contemplating retiring or living outside the U.S. for an extended period of time, there's an entirely different group of Americans abroad in our tech-based, post-COVID era – the digital nomad. Our team of U.S. expat financial advisors focused on Bermuda's lucrative, and rather inexpensive, digital nomad visa program on a previous episode of Gimme Some Truth for Expats. This time, we're zooming out to discuss digital nomad life from an introductory financial perspective. How should you consider where to go? What will the financial and investing complexities be once you live there? And will you need a belt? Or will you need suspenders? Or will you need both a belt AND suspenders? Our team – Syl Michelin, Stan Farmer and Keith Poniewaz – touch on those topics and the belt and suspenders analogy in this edition of Gimme Some Truth for Expats. Questions about your specific situation as a digital nomad or something you'd like us to go further in-depth about regarding digital nomad life? Send us an email at podcast@walknercondon.com or check out the links below. LINKS Bermuda's Digital Nomad Visa with Glenn Jones, CEO of Bermuda Tourism Authority Top 5 Countries for U.S. Expats in 2022 Walkner Condon's U.S. Expat YouTube Channel Educational Materials for Expats Contact Us --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon-expats/message

Like many episodes of Gimme Some Truth, this one on liability was developed from lots of advanced legwork, methodically sculpted until it reached its culmination at the time of recording. Well, that's not quite true. Clint Walkner – one of the founding partners of Walkner Condon – shared a personal anecdote about his own liability coverage a few minutes before the scheduled recording, and it snowballed from there. But, nonetheless, it's an important subject, with an actionable ending for you, the listener, from Clint. So, what would happen if your home burned down tomorrow? If you're a household employer, what if your nanny took a tumble down the stairs of your deck and broke their leg? While these are just hypothetical, there is a chance that these situations – or a version of them – could happen. And the last thing you want is to be left holding the proverbial bag when your coverage isn't sufficient. And in light of recent events – in particular, the increase in home values as well as home renovations during COVID – there's a chance the coverage you started with might not be enough. What's next? Give this episode a listen for your call to action from Clint, and then let us know if you completed the homework assignment. Questions, comments, or anything else you'd like us to cover on this topic? Don't hesitate to reach out to us via email at podcast@walknercondon.com. LINKS Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

A long time ago – March 2021 to be exact – we brought a special guest, Glenn Jones of the Bermuda Tourism Authority, onto Gimme Some Truth to discuss an expat topic beginning to pick up steam – Digital Nomad Visas. As we progress into the third year with COVID still part of our lives, many workers are still working remotely full-time. In some cases, full-time remote work has become the standard (unless you're Elon Musk & Tesla). So with work-from-anywhere work still very much in the mix, we thought it would be worthwhile to drop this episode from the archives and bring it to this feed for the first time. (This episode originally aired before we had our very own expat podcast). Financial advisors Keith Poniewaz, Ph.D., and Stan Farmer, CFP®, J.D., virtually escape the Wisconsin winter for an episode, welcoming Bermuda Tourism Authority interim CEO Glenn Jones onto the podcast to dive into the topic of Digital Nomad Visas. COVID-19 has helped bring to light the numerous opportunities for Americans looking to work remotely for extended periods, while tourist hot spots like Bermuda have simultaneously sought to expand their offerings in new ways to combat the impact of the pandemic. The show covers the basics of Bermuda's program, including how to apply and qualifications that need to be met, Bermuda's strong response to the pandemic, tax implications of a visa, and more. Have questions about this or other expat topics? Send us a message podcast@walknercondon.com. LINKS Walkner Condon's U.S. Expat YouTube Channel Educational Materials for Expats Speak to One of Our Financial Advisors Contact Us --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon-expats/message

Catherine's talk with filmmaker Michael Shaw (Living in the Time of Dying) on the challenges in accepting the unacceptable. Recorded on May 22, 2022 in Byron Bay, Australia.

In this episode:Diane and Danny address the latest mass murder in TexasDiane impersonates Chris Meloni and talks about her habit on set that drove him crazyDiane and Danny talk about the latest newsDanny reads viewer comments from the Youtube Hear Say channel.Diane names the alligator after a listenerFollow Us: YoutubeDiane: Instagram | TwitterDanny: Twitter | InstagramCaroline: Twitter | Instagram | WebsiteWestbury: Instagram | Twitter | Website

In Episode 90 ("Compilation Compilation") we discussed all the different compilations for each Beatle, including all the John Lennon collections up until 2016 (we didn't have Gimme Some Truth yet). We mentioned 1975's Shaved Fish, but didn't give it much thought since it left out all of John's later music. This episode digs deep into the only "greatest hits" album released in Lennon's lifetime. How did John do choosing his best-of?   Complete episodes can be found at https://ivegotabeatlespodcast.podbean.com. Email: ivegotabeatlespodcast@hotmail.com Twitter: @ivegotabeatles Facebook: I've Got A Beatles Podcast Our video venture: "Song Album Career!" https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClqNdoDpQxpj6QMNDmXYYog

Thinking of starting your own independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) Firm? Or maybe mulling a move from one of the big wirehouses to an RIA? A few years back (circa 2019), the co-founders of Walkner Condon Financial Advisors – Nate Condon and Clint Walkner – sat down on Gimme Some Truth to discuss their journey from the Broker-Dealer world to the independent RIA space. Now, it's been 10 years since Nate and Clint first opened the doors to their financial planning firm. Plenty has happened in the last few years alone, much less the last 10. In this bonus episode of GST, Nate and Clint circle back on that first conversation from a few years ago, discussing some of the more recent challenges faced as founding partners of an RIA. This conversation – one of several episodes to come over the next few months about starting an RIA – centers around the idea of staffing and firm culture. As Nate and Clint discuss, hiring the right staff and retaining them has continued to be a challenge throughout the life of Walkner Condon, particularly when it comes to support and administrative personnel. They discuss staffing as it relates to the adage, "It's not how much you can grow; it's how small can you stay," and being lean on staff on purpose. They also dive into molding the firm's culture, including the now-trademarked phrase Comfortably Unique™, how the firm goes above and beyond just the name, and the challenges of having seven equity partners. Questions about starting an RIA? Or ideas about other facets of this subject you'd like us to cover in future episodes of this mini-series? Let us know by using the link section below or by sending an email to podcast@walknercondon.com. LINKS Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

We've covered Exchange-Traded Funds – commonly referred to as ETFs – in myriad ways on Gimme Some Truth previous to this episode. But we've never truly dedicated an episode to ETFs. So this is us doing exactly that, zooming out to go over the basics of ETFs, their history, how they compare with mutual funds, and more. Mitch DeWitt, MBA, and Jonathon Jordan, CEPA – two of the three Certified Financial Planner™ professionals in the Walkner Condon office – sit down to cover an introductory look at ETFs, including how Mitch is, in fact, slightly older than the first established ETF, SPDRs (Ticker: SPY), but too young to understand the wonders of listening to Poison on cassette with a Walkman – unlike Jonathon. A key part of the conversation involves contrasting ETFs with mutual funds, where Jonathon brings to the fore a great analogy involving piloting. And the subject of investing in ETFs vs. individual stocks also surfaces the idea of time in the market vs. trying to time the market, a common theme with how 2022 has gone so far in the markets, especially lately. Jonathon references the figure that if you missed out on the 10 best days in the market since 1930, your overall return would be 28%. And if you had stayed the course through the good days and bad, your return would be more than 17,000% (and that's not a typo). Questions, comments or anything else? Don't hesitate to reach out to us via email at podcast@walknercondon.com. LINKS Jim Collins: Good to Great CNBC: Missing Out on the Top 10 Days in S&P Every Decade Since 1930 Investopedia: A Brief History of ETFs Investopedia: ETF Guide Watch on YouTube Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

With all the negative news lately, it can feel like a daunting, uphill climb to find the positive pieces of information on a day-to-day basis. So instead of discussing inflation, the financial impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, or any of the other myriad topics in the news cycle, we decided to shake things up on this edition of Gimme Some Truth and talk about – well, nothing. More specifically, Nate and Clint (along with our mostly trusty producer, Dan) cover the development of this very podcast from its early days to future hopes of venturing into the video – or maybe metaverse – realm, the worst Batman, how Culvers is the Kwik Trip of fast food, MEATER® Sticks, the longest-lasting plant in our office, and more. Hopefully, you can find something enjoyable in this episode. And for those who stick around all the way until the end, there might be something special to reward your dedication to Gimme Some Truth. For those looking for financial and investing topics to dive into, we have you covered in the links below, with our 2022 Investing & Market Outlook Guide, article on market corrections, and most recent podcast on ESG investing. LINKS 2022 Investment & Market Outlook Guide Market Correction: What it is and Why Market Corrections Matter Exploring ESG Investing - Podcast (Spotify) Exploring ESG Investing - Podcast (YouTube) Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

There are many year-end memes floating around the internet – those who frequent social media know what we're talking about – referencing how painstakingly long, yet shockingly short, 2021 has felt (seriously, the stuck boat was this year?). But, like it or not, 2022 is bearing down on us. And reflecting on the last 12 months, and looking ahead with anticipation, or dread, to the next 12 months, is a natural part of this yearly territory in which we currently find ourselves. So as cliché as New Year's resolutions might be (new year, new me!), they're not going anywhere, unlike the folks who commit to going to the gym for the first week of the New Year before giving up (sounds like a certain Gimme Some Truth podcast editor). We figured we'd lean right into the New Year's resolution talk, re-framing them and applying them to our financial lives. Mitch DeWitt, CFP®, MBA, and Jonathon Jordan, CFP®, CEPA, discuss their approaches to New Year's resolutions, financial resolutions and goals you may want to think about in 2022, and more. For good measure, Mitch and Jonathon also put their 2022 resolutions out into the universe (so we can hold them accountable at the end of 2022). What are your 2022 goals/resolutions? Let us know in the episode Q&A on Spotify, send us a voice message, or drop us an email. If you need help with your financial goals for the new year, don't hesitate to reach out. LINKS Walkner Condon's YouTube Channel Contact Us Meet with an Advisor --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

Episode one hundred and thirty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is a special long episode, running almost ninety minutes, looking at "My Generation" by the Who. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "The Name Game" by Shirley Ellis. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I mispronounce the Herman's Hermits track "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" as "Can You Hear My Heartbeat". I say "Rebel Without a Cause" when I mean "The Wild One". Brando was not in "Rebel Without a Cause". Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist of the music excerpted here. This mix does not include the Dixon of Dock Green theme, as I was unable to find a full version of that theme anywhere (though a version with Jack Warner singing, titled "An Ordinary Copper" is often labelled as it) and what you hear in this episode is the only fragment I could get a clean copy of. The best compilation of the Who's music is Maximum A's & B's, a three-disc set containing the A and B sides of every single they released. The super-deluxe five-CD version of the My Generation album appears to be out of print as a CD, but can be purchased digitally. I referred to a lot of books for this episode, including: Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which I don't necessarily recommend reading, but which is certainly an influential book. Revolt Into Style: The Pop Arts by George Melly which I *do* recommend reading if you have any interest at all in British pop culture of the fifties and sixties. Jim Marshall: The Father of Loud by Rich Maloof gave me all the biographical details about Marshall. The Who Before the Who by Doug Sandom, a rather thin book of reminiscences by the group's first drummer. The Ox by Paul Rees, an authorised biography of John Entwistle based on notes for his never-completed autobiography. Who I Am, the autobiography of Pete Townshend, is one of the better rock autobiographies. A Band With Built-In Hate by Peter Stanfield is an examination of the group in the context of pop-art and Mod. And Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere by Andy Neill and Matt Kent is a day-by-day listing of the group's activities up to 1978. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript In 1991, William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book called Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. That book was predicated on a simple idea -- that there are patterns in American history, and that those patterns can be predicted in their rough outline. Not in the fine details, but broadly -- those of you currently watching the TV series Foundation, or familiar with Isaac Asimov's original novels, will have the idea already, because Strauss and Howe claimed to have invented a formula which worked as well as Asimov's fictional Psychohistory. Their claim was that, broadly speaking, generations can be thought to have a dominant personality type, influenced by the events that took place while they were growing up, which in turn are influenced by the personality types of the older generations. Because of this, Strauss and Howe claimed, American society had settled into a semi-stable pattern, where events repeat on a roughly eighty-eight-year cycle, driven by the behaviours of different personality types at different stages of their lives. You have four types of generation, which cycle -- the Adaptive, Idealist, Reactive, and Civic types. At any given time, one of these will be the elder statespeople, one will be the middle-aged people in positions of power, one will be the young rising people doing most of the work, and one will be the kids still growing up. You can predict what will happen, in broad outline, by how each of those generation types will react to challenges, and what position they will be in when those challenges arise. The idea is that major events change your personality, and also how you react to future events, and that how, say, Pearl Harbor affected someone will have been different for a kid hearing about the attack on the radio, an adult at the age to be drafted, and an adult who was too old to fight. The thesis of this book has, rather oddly, entered mainstream thought so completely that its ideas are taken as basic assumptions now by much of the popular discourse, even though on reading it the authors are so vague that pretty much anything can be taken as confirmation of their hypotheses, in much the same way that newspaper horoscopes always seem like they could apply to almost everyone's life. And sometimes, of course, they're just way off. For example they make the prediction that in 2020 there would be a massive crisis that would last several years, which would lead to a massive sense of community, in which "America will be implacably resolved to do what needs doing and fix what needs fixing", and in which the main task of those aged forty to sixty at that point would be to restrain those in leadership positions in the sixty-to-eighty age group from making irrational, impetuous, decisions which might lead to apocalypse. The crisis would likely end in triumph, but there was also a chance it might end in "moral fatigue, vast human tragedy, and a weak and vengeful sense of victory". I'm sure that none of my listeners can think of any events in 2020 that match this particular pattern. Despite its lack of rigour, Strauss and Howe's basic idea is now part of most people's intellectual toolkit, even if we don't necessarily think of them as the source for it. Indeed, even though they only talk about America in their book, their generational concept gets applied willy-nilly to much of the Western world. And likewise, for the most part we tend to think of the generations, whether American or otherwise, using the names they used. For the generations who were alive at the time they were writing, they used five main names, three of which we still use. Those born between 1901 and 1924 they term the "GI Generation", though those are now usually termed the "Greatest Generation". Those born between 1924 and 1942 were the "Silent Generation", those born 1943 through 1960 were the Boomers, and those born between 1982 and 2003 they labelled Millennials. Those born between 1961 and 1981 they labelled "thirteeners", because they were the unlucky thirteenth generation to be born in America since the declaration of independence. But that name didn't catch on. Instead, the name that people use to describe that generation is "Generation X", named after a late-seventies punk band led by Billy Idol: [Excerpt: Generation X, "Your Generation"] That band were short-lived, but they were in constant dialogue with the pop culture of ten to fifteen years earlier, Idol's own childhood. As well as that song, "Your Generation", which is obviously referring to the song this week's episode is about, they also recorded versions of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth", of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over", and an original song called "Ready Steady Go", about being in love with Cathy McGowan, the presenter of that show. And even their name was a reference, because Generation X were named after a book published in 1964, about not the generation we call Generation X, but about the Baby Boomers, and specifically about a series of fights on beaches across the South Coast of England between what at that point amounted to two gangs. These were fights between the old guard, the Rockers -- people who represented the recent past who wouldn't go away, what Americans would call "greasers", people who modelled themselves on Marlon Brando in Rebel Without A Cause, and who thought music had peaked with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran -- and a newer, younger, hipper, group of people, who represented the new, the modern -- the Mods: [Excerpt: The Who, "My Generation"] Jim Marshall, if he'd been American, would have been considered one of the Greatest Generation, but his upbringing was not typical of that, or of any, generation. When he was five, he was diagnosed as having skeletal tuberculosis, which had made his bones weak and easily broken. To protect them, he spent the next seven years of his life, from age five until twelve, in hospital in a full-body cast. The only opportunity he got to move during those years was for a few minutes every three months, when the cast would be cut off and reapplied to account for his growth during that time. Unsurprisingly, once he was finally out of the cast, he discovered he loved moving -- a lot. He dropped out of school aged thirteen -- most people at the time left school at aged fourteen anyway, and since he'd missed all his schooling to that point it didn't seem worth his while carrying on -- and took on multiple jobs, working sixty hours a week or more. But the job he made most money at was as an entertainer. He started out as a tap-dancer, taking advantage of his new mobility, but then his song-and-dance man routine became steadily more song and less dance, as people started to notice his vocal resemblance to Bing Crosby. He was working six nights a week as a singer, but when World War II broke out, the drummer in the seven-piece band he was working with was drafted -- Marshall wouldn't ever be drafted because of his history of illness. The other members of the band knew that as a dancer he had a good sense of rhythm, and so they made a suggestion -- if Jim took over the drums, they could split the money six ways rather than seven. Marshall agreed, but he discovered there was a problem. The drum kit was always positioned at the back of the stage, behind the PA, and he couldn't hear the other musicians clearly. This is actually OK for a drummer -- you're keeping time, and the rest of the band are following you, so as long as you can *sort of* hear them everyone can stay together. But a singer needs to be able to hear everything clearly, in order to stay on key. And this was in the days before monitor speakers, so the only option available was to just have a louder PA system. And since one wasn't available, Marshall just had to build one himself. And that's how Jim Marshall started building amplifiers. Marshall eventually gave up playing the drums, and retired to run a music shop. There's a story about Marshall's last gig as a drummer, which isn't in the biography of Marshall I read for this episode, but is told in other places by the son of the bandleader at that gig. Apparently Marshall had a very fraught relationship with his father, who was among other things a semi-professional boxer, and at that gig Marshall senior turned up and started heckling his son from the audience. Eventually the younger Marshall jumped off the stage and started hitting his dad, winning the fight, but he decided he wasn't going to perform in public any more. The band leader for that show was Clifford Townshend, a clarinet player and saxophonist whose main gig was as part of the Squadronaires, a band that had originally been formed during World War II by RAF servicemen to entertain other troops. Townshend, who had been a member of Oswald Moseley's fascist Blackshirts in the thirties but later had a change of heart, was a second-generation woodwind player -- his father had been a semi-professional flute player. As well as working with the Squadronaires, Townshend also put out one record under his own name in 1956, a version of "Unchained Melody" credited to "Cliff Townsend and his singing saxophone": [Excerpt: Cliff Townshend and his Singing Saxophone, "Unchained Melody"] Cliff's wife often performed with him -- she was a professional singer who had  actually lied about her age in order to join up with the Air Force and sing with the group -- but they had a tempestuous marriage, and split up multiple times. As a result of this, and the travelling lifestyle of musicians, there were periods where their son Peter was sent to live with his grandmother, who was seriously abusive, traumatising the young boy in ways that would affect him for the rest of his life. When Pete Townshend was growing up, he wasn't particularly influenced by music, in part because it was his dad's job rather than a hobby, and his parents had very few records in the house. He did, though, take up the harmonica and learn to play the theme tune to Dixon of Dock Green: [Excerpt: Tommy Reilly, "Dixon of Dock Green Theme"] His first exposure to rock and roll wasn't through Elvis or Little Richard, but rather through Ray Ellington. Ellington was a British jazz singer and drummer, heavily influenced by Louis Jordan, who provided regular musical performances on the Goon Show throughout the fifties, and on one episode had performed "That Rock 'n' Rollin' Man": [Excerpt: Ray Ellington, "That Rock 'N' Rollin' Man"] Young Pete's assessment of that, as he remembered it later, was "I thought it some kind of hybrid jazz: swing music with stupid lyrics. But it felt youthful and rebellious, like The Goon Show itself." But he got hooked on rock and roll when his father took him and a friend to see a film: [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, "Rock Around the Clock"] According to Townshend's autobiography, "I asked Dad what he thought of the music. He said he thought it had some swing, and anything that had swing was OK. For me it was more than just OK. After seeing Rock Around the Clock with Bill Haley, nothing would ever be quite the same." Young Pete would soon go and see Bill Haley live – his first rock and roll gig. But the older Townshend would soon revise his opinion of rock and roll, because it soon marked the end of the kind of music that had allowed him to earn his living -- though he still managed to get regular work, playing a clarinet was suddenly far less lucrative than it had been. Pete decided that he wanted to play the saxophone, like his dad, but soon he switched first to guitar and then to banjo. His first guitar was bought for him by his abusive grandmother, and three of the strings snapped almost immediately, so he carried on playing with just three strings for a while. He got very little encouragement from his parents, and didn't really improve for a couple of years. But then the trad jazz boom happened, and Townshend teamed up with a friend of his who played the trumpet and French horn. He had initially bonded with John Entwistle over their shared sense of humour -- both kids loved Mad magazine and would make tape recordings together of themselves doing comedy routines inspired by the Goon show and Hancock's Half Hour -- but Entwistle was also a very accomplished musician, who could play multiple instruments. Entwistle had formed a trad band called the Confederates, and Townshend joined them on banjo and guitar, but they didn't stay together for long. Both boys, though, would join a variety of other bands, both together and separately. As the trad boom faded and rock and roll regained its dominance among British youth, there was little place for Entwistle's trumpet in the music that was popular among teenagers, and at first Entwistle decided to try making his trumpet sound more like a saxophone, using a helmet as a mute to try to get it to sound like the sax on "Ramrod" by Duane Eddy: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Ramrod"] Eddy soon became Entwistle's hero. We've talked about him before a couple of times, briefly, but not in depth, but Duane Eddy had a style that was totally different from most guitar heroes. Instead of playing mostly on the treble strings of the guitar, playing high twiddly parts, Eddy played low notes on the bass strings of his guitar, giving him the style that he summed up in album titles like "The Twang's the Thang" and "Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel". After a couple of years of having hits with this sound, produced by Lee Hazelwood and Lester Sill, Eddy also started playing another instrument, the instrument variously known as the six-string bass, the baritone guitar, or the Danelectro bass (after the company that manufactured the most popular model).  The baritone guitar has six strings, like a normal guitar, but it's tuned lower than a standard guitar -- usually a fourth lower, though different players have different preferences. The Danelectro became very popular in recording studios in the early sixties, because it helped solve a big problem in recording bass tones. You can hear more about this in the episodes of Cocaine and Rhinestones I recommended last week, but basically double basses were very, very difficult to record in the 1950s, and you'd often end up just getting a thudding, muddy, sound from them, which is one reason why when you listen to a lot of early rockabilly the bass is doing nothing very interesting, just playing root notes -- you couldn't easily get much clarity on the instrument at all. Conversely, with electric basses, with the primitive amps of the time, you didn't get anything like the full sound that you'd get from a double bass, but you *did* get a clear sound that would cut through on a cheap radio in a way that the sound of a double bass wouldn't. So the solution was obvious -- you have an electric instrument *and* a double bass play the same part. Use the double bass for the big dull throbbing sound, but use the electric one to give the sound some shape and cut-through. If you're doing that, you mostly want the trebly part of the electric instrument's tone, so you play it with a pick rather than fingers, and it makes sense to use a Danelectro rather than a standard bass guitar, as the Danelectro is more trebly than a normal bass. This combination, of Danelectro and double bass, appears to have been invented by Owen Bradley, and you can hear it for example on this record by Patsy Cline, with Bob Moore on double bass and Harold Bradley on baritone guitar: [Excerpt: Patsy Cline, "Crazy"] This sound, known as "tic-tac bass", was soon picked up by a lot of producers, and it became the standard way of getting a bass sound in both Nashville and LA. It's all over the Beach Boys' best records, and many of Jack Nitzsche's arrangements, and many of the other records the Wrecking Crew played on, and it's on most of the stuff the Nashville A-Team played on from the late fifties through mid-sixties, records by people like Elvis, Roy Orbison, Arthur Alexander, and the Everly Brothers. Lee Hazelwood was one of the first producers to pick up on this sound -- indeed, Duane Eddy has said several times that Hazelwood invented the sound before Owen Bradley did, though I think Bradley did it first -- and many of Eddy's records featured that bass sound, and eventually Eddy started playing a baritone guitar himself, as a lead instrument, playing it on records like "Because They're Young": [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Because They're Young"] Duane Eddy was John Entwistle's idol, and Entwistle learned Eddy's whole repertoire on trumpet, playing the saxophone parts. But then, realising that the guitar was always louder than the trumpet in the bands he was in, he realised that if he wanted to be heard, he should probably switch to guitar himself. And it made sense that a bass would be easier to play than a regular guitar -- if you only have four strings, there's more space between them, so playing is easier. So he started playing the bass, trying to sound as much like Eddy as he could. He had no problem picking up the instrument -- he was already a multi-instrumentalist -- but he did have a problem actually getting hold of one, as all the electric bass guitars available in the UK at the time were prohibitively expensive. Eventually he made one himself, with the help of someone in a local music shop, and that served for a time, though he would soon trade up to more professional instruments, eventually amassing the biggest collection of basses in the world. One day, Entwistle was approached on the street by an acquaintance, Roger Daltrey, who said to him "I hear you play bass" -- Entwistle was, at the time, carrying his bass. Daltrey was at this time a guitarist -- like Entwistle, he'd built his own instrument -- and he was the leader of a band called Del Angelo and his Detours. Daltrey wasn't Del Angelo, the lead singer -- that was a man called Colin Dawson who by all accounts sounded a little like Cliff Richard -- but he was the bandleader, hired and fired the members, and was in charge of their setlists. Daltrey lured Entwistle away from the band he was in with Townshend by telling him that the Detours were getting proper paid gigs, though they weren't getting many at the time. Unfortunately, one of the group's other guitarists, the member who owned the best amp, died in an accident not long after Entwistle joined the band. However, the amp was left in the group's possession, and Entwistle used it to lure Pete Townshend into the group by telling him he could use it -- and not telling him that he'd be sharing the amp with Daltrey. Townshend would later talk about his audition for the Detours -- as he was walking up the street towards Daltrey's house, he saw a stunningly beautiful woman walking away from the house crying. She saw his guitar case and said "Are you going to Roger's?" "Yes." "Well you can tell him, it's that bloody guitar or me". Townshend relayed the message, and Daltrey responded "Sod her. Come in." The audition was a formality, with the main questions being whether Townshend could play two parts of the regular repertoire for a working band at that time -- "Hava Nagila", and the Shadows' "Man of Mystery": [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Man of Mystery"] Townshend could play both of those, and so he was in. The group would mostly play chart hits by groups like the Shadows, but as trad jazz hadn't completely died out yet they would also do breakout sessions playing trad jazz, with Townshend on banjo, Entwistle on trumpet and Daltrey on trombone. From the start, there was a temperamental mismatch between the group's two guitarists. Daltrey was thoroughly working-class, culturally conservative,  had dropped out of school to go to work at a sheet metal factory, and saw himself as a no-nonsense plain-speaking man. Townshend was from a relatively well-off upper-middle-class family, was for a brief time a member of the Communist Party, and was by this point studying at art school, where he was hugely impressed by a lecture from Gustav Metzger titled “Auto-Destructive Art, Auto-Creative Art: The Struggle For The Machine Arts Of The Future”, about Metzger's creation of artworks which destroyed themselves. Townshend was at art school during a period when the whole idea of what an art school was for was in flux, something that's typified by a story Townshend tells about two of his early lectures. At the first, the lecturer came in and told the class to all draw a straight line. They all did, and then the lecturer told off anyone who had drawn anything that was anything other than six inches long, perfectly straight, without a ruler, going north-south, with a 3B pencil, saying that anything else at all was self-indulgence of the kind that needed to be drummed out of them if they wanted to get work as commercial artists. Then in another lecture, a different lecturer came in and asked them all to draw a straight line. They all drew perfectly straight, six-inch, north-south lines in 3B pencil, as the first lecturer had taught them. The new lecturer started yelling at them, then brought in someone else to yell at them as well, and then cut his hand open with a knife and dragged it across a piece of paper, smearing a rough line with his own blood, and screamed "THAT'S a line!" Townshend's sympathies lay very much with the second lecturer. Another big influence on Townshend at this point was a jazz double-bass player, Malcolm Cecil. Cecil would later go on to become a pioneer in electronic music as half of TONTO's Expanding Head Band, and we'll be looking at his work in more detail in a future episode, but at this point he was a fixture on the UK jazz scene. He'd been a member of Blues Incorporated, and had also played with modern jazz players like Dick Morrissey: [Excerpt: Dick Morrissey, "Jellyroll"] But Townshend was particularly impressed with a performance in which Cecil demonstrated unorthodox ways to play the double-bass, including playing so hard he broke the strings, and using a saw as a bow, sawing through the strings and damaging the body of the instrument. But these influences, for the moment, didn't affect the Detours, who were still doing the Cliff and the Shadows routine. Eventually Colin Dawson quit the group, and Daltrey took over the lead vocal role for the Detours, who settled into a lineup of Daltrey, Townshend, Entwistle, and drummer Doug Sandom, who was much older than the rest of the group -- he was born in 1930, while Daltrey and Entwistle were born in 1944 and Townshend in 1945. For a while, Daltrey continued playing guitar as well as singing, but his hands were often damaged by his work at the sheet-metal factory, making guitar painful for him. Then the group got a support slot with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, who at this point were a four-piece band, with Kidd singing backed by bass, drums, and Mick Green playing one guitar on which he played both rhythm and lead parts: [Excerpt: Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, "Doctor Feel Good"] Green was at the time considered possibly the best guitarist in Britain, and the sound the Pirates were able to get with only one guitar convinced the Detours that they would be OK if Daltrey switched to just singing, so the group changed to what is now known as a "power trio" format. Townshend was a huge admirer of Steve Cropper, another guitarist who played both rhythm and lead, and started trying to adopt parts of Cropper's style, playing mostly chords, while Entwistle went for a much more fluid bass style than most, essentially turning the bass into another lead instrument, patterning his playing after Duane Eddy's work. By this time, Townshend was starting to push against Daltrey's leadership a little, especially when it came to repertoire. Townshend had a couple of American friends at art school who had been deported after being caught smoking dope, and had left their records with Townshend for safe-keeping. As a result, Townshend had become a devotee of blues and R&B music, especially the jazzier stuff like Ray Charles, Mose Allison, and Booker T and the MGs. He also admired guitar-based blues records like those by Howlin' Wolf or Jimmy Reed. Townshend kept pushing for this music to be incorporated into the group's sets, but Daltrey would push back, insisting as the leader that they should play the chart hits that everyone else played, rather than what he saw as Townshend's art-school nonsense. Townshend insisted, and eventually won -- within a short while the group had become a pure R&B group, and Daltrey was soon a convert, and became the biggest advocate of that style in the band. But there was a problem with only having one guitar, and that was volume. In particular, Townshend didn't want to be able to hear hecklers. There were gangsters in some of the audiences who would shout requests for particular songs, and you had to play them or else, even if they were completely unsuitable for the rest of the audience's tastes. But if you were playing so loud you couldn't hear the shouting, you had an excuse. Both Entwistle and Townshend had started buying amplifiers from Jim Marshall, who had opened up a music shop after quitting drums -- Townshend actually bought his first one from a shop assistant in Marshall's shop, John McLaughlin, who would later himself become a well-known guitarist. Entwistle, wanting to be heard over Townshend, had bought a cabinet with four twelve-inch speakers in it. Townshend, wanting to be heard over Entwistle, had bought *two* of these cabinets, and stacked them, one on top of the other, against Marshall's protestations -- Marshall said that they would vibrate so much that the top one might fall over and injure someone. Townshend didn't listen, and the Marshall stack was born. This ultra-amplification also led Townshend to change his guitar style further. He was increasingly reliant on distortion and feedback, rather than on traditional instrumental skills. Now, there are basically two kinds of chords that are used in most Western music. There are major chords, which consist of the first, third, and fifth note of the scale, and these are the basic chords that everyone starts with. So you can strum between G major and F major: [demonstrates G and F chords] There's also minor chords, where you flatten the third note, which sound a little sadder than major chords, so playing G minor and F minor: [demonstrates Gm and Fm chords] There are of course other kinds of chord -- basically any collection of notes counts as a chord, and can work musically in some context. But major and minor chords are the basic harmonic building blocks of most pop music. But when you're using a lot of distortion and feedback, you create a lot of extra harmonics -- extra notes that your instrument makes along with the ones you're playing. And for mathematical reasons I won't go into here because this is already a very long episode, the harmonics generated by playing the first and fifth notes sound fine together, but the harmonics from a third or minor third don't go along with them at all. The solution to this problem is to play what are known as "power chords", which are just the root and fifth notes, with no third at all, and which sound ambiguous as to whether they're major or minor. Townshend started to build his technique around these chords, playing for the most part on the bottom three strings of his guitar, which sounds like this: [demonstrates G5 and F5 chords] Townshend wasn't the first person to use power chords -- they're used on a lot of the Howlin' Wolf records he liked, and before Townshend would become famous the Kinks had used them on "You Really Got Me" -- but he was one of the first British guitarists to make them a major part of his personal style. Around this time, the Detours were starting to become seriously popular, and Townshend was starting to get exhausted by the constant demands on his time from being in the band and going to art school. He talked about this with one of his lecturers, who asked how much Townshend was earning from the band. When Townshend told him he was making thirty pounds a week, the lecturer was shocked, and said that was more than *he* was earning. Townshend should probably just quit art school, because it wasn't like he was going to make more money from anything he could learn there. Around this time, two things changed the group's image. The first was that they played a support slot for the Rolling Stones in December 1963. Townshend saw Keith Richards swinging his arm over his head and then bringing it down on the guitar, to loosen up his muscles, and he thought that looked fantastic, and started copying it -- from very early on, Townshend wanted to have a physical presence on stage that would be all about his body, to distract from his face, as he was embarrassed about the size of his nose. They played a second support slot for the Stones a few weeks later, and not wanting to look like he was copying Richards, Townshend didn't do that move, but then he noticed that Richards didn't do it either. He asked about it after the gig, and Richards didn't know what he was talking about -- "Swing me what?" -- so Townshend took that as a green light to make that move, which became known as the windmill, his own. The second thing was when in February 1964 a group appeared on Thank Your Lucky Stars: [Excerpt: Johnny Devlin and the Detours, "Sometimes"] Johnny Devlin and the Detours had had national media exposure, which meant that Daltrey, Townshend, Entwistle, and Sandom had to change the name of their group. They eventually settled on "The Who", It was around this time that the group got their first serious management, a man named Helmut Gorden, who owned a doorknob factory. Gorden had no management experience, but he did offer the group a regular salary, and pay for new equipment for them. However, when he tried to sign the group to a proper contract, as most of them were still under twenty-one he needed their parents to countersign for them. Townshend's parents, being experienced in the music industry, refused to sign, and so the group continued under Gorden's management without a contract. Gorden, not having management experience, didn't have any contacts in the music industry. But his barber did. Gorden enthused about his group to Jack Marks, the barber, and Marks in turn told some of his other clients about this group he'd been hearing about. Tony Hatch wasn't interested, as he already had a guitar group with the Searchers, but Chris Parmenter at Fontana Records was, and an audition was arranged. At the audition, among other numbers, they played Bo Diddley's "Here 'Tis": [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Here 'Tis"] Unfortunately for Doug, he didn't play well on that song, and Townshend started berating him. Doug also knew that Parmenter had reservations about him, because he was so much older than the rest of the band -- he was thirty-four at the time, while the rest of the group were only just turning twenty -- and he was also the least keen of the group on the R&B material they were playing. He'd been warned by Entwistle, his closest friend in the group, that Daltrey and Townshend were thinking of dropping him, and so he decided to jump before he was pushed, walking out of the audition. He agreed to come back for a handful more gigs that were already booked in, but that was the end of his time in the band, and of his time in the music industry -- though oddly not of his friendship with the group. Unlike other famous examples of an early member not fitting in and being forced out before a band becomes big, Sandom remained friends with the other members, and Townshend wrote the foreword to his autobiography, calling him a mentor figure, while Daltrey apparently insisted that Sandom phone him for a chat every Sunday, at the same time every week, until Sandom's death in 2019 at the age of eighty-nine. The group tried a few other drummers, including someone who Jim Marshall had been giving drum lessons to, Mitch Mitchell, before settling on the drummer for another group that played the same circuit, the Beachcombers, who played mostly Shadows material, plus the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean songs that their drummer, Keith Moon, loved. Moon and Entwistle soon became a formidable rhythm section, and despite having been turned down by Fontana, they were clearly going places. But they needed an image -- and one was provided for them by Pete Meaden. Meaden was another person who got his hair cut by Jack Marks, and he had had  little bit of music business experience, having worked for Andrew Oldham, the Rolling Stones' manager, for a while before going on to manage a group called the Moments, whose career highlight was recording a soundalike cover version of "You Really Got Me" for an American budget label: [Excerpt: The Moments, "You Really Got Me"] The Moments never had any big success, but Meaden's nose for talent was not wrong, as their teenage lead singer, Steve Marriott, later went on to much better things. Pete Meaden was taken on as Helmut Gorden's assistant, but from this point on the group decided to regard him as their de facto manager, and as more than just a manager. To Townshend in particular he was a guru figure, and he shaped the group to appeal to the Mods. Now, we've not talked much about the Mods previously, and what little has been said has been a bit contradictory. That's because the Mods were a tiny subculture at this point -- or to be more precise, they were three subcultures. The original mods had come along in the late 1950s, at a time when there was a division among jazz fans between fans of traditional New Orleans jazz -- "trad" -- and modern jazz. The mods were modernists, hence the name, but for the most part they weren't as interested in music as in clothes. They were a small group of young working-class men, almost all gay, who dressed flamboyantly and dandyishly, and who saw themselves, their clothing, and their bodies as works of art. In the late fifties, Britain was going through something of an economic boom, and this was the first time that working-class men *could* buy nice clothes. These working-class dandies would have to visit tailors to get specially modified clothes made, but they could just about afford to do so. The mod image was at first something that belonged to a very, very, small clique of people. But then John Stephens opened his first shop. This was the first era when short runs of factory-produced clothing became possible, and Stephens, a stylish young man, opened a shop on Carnaby Street, then a relatively cheap place to open a shop. He painted the outside yellow, played loud pop music, and attracted a young crowd. Stephens was selling factory-made clothes that still looked unique -- short runs of odd-coloured jeans, three-button jackets, and other men's fashion. Soon Carnaby Street became the hub for men's fashion in London, thanks largely to Stephens. At one point Stephens owned fifteen different shops, nine of them on Carnaby Street itself, and Stephens' shops appealed to the kind of people that the Kinks would satirise in their early 1966 hit single "Dedicated Follower of Fashion": [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Dedicated Follower of Fashion"] Many of those who visited Stephens' shops were the larger, second, generation of mods. I'm going to quote here from George Melly's Revolt Into Style, the first book to properly analyse British pop culture of the fifties and sixties, by someone who was there: "As the ‘mod' thing spread it lost its purity. For the next generation of Mods, those who picked up the ‘mod' thing around 1963, clothes, while still their central preoccupation, weren't enough. They needed music (Rhythm and Blues), transport (scooters) and drugs (pep pills). What's more they needed fashion ready-made. They hadn't the time or the fanaticism to invent their own styles, and this is where Carnaby Street came in." Melly goes on to talk about how these new Mods were viewed with distaste by the older Mods, who left the scene. The choice of music for these new Mods was as much due to geographic proximity as anything else. Carnaby Street is just round the corner from Wardour Street, and Wardour Street is where the two clubs that between them were the twin poles of the London R&B scenes, the Marquee and the Flamingo, were both located. So it made sense that the young people frequenting John Stephens' boutiques on Carnaby Street were the same people who made up the audiences -- and the bands -- at those clubs. But by 1964, even these second-generation Mods were in a minority compared to a new, third generation, and here I'm going to quote Melly again: "But the Carnaby Street Mods were not the final stage in the history of this particular movement. The word was taken over finally by a new and more violent sector, the urban working class at the gang-forming age, and this became quite sinister. The gang stage rejected the wilder flights of Carnaby Street in favour of extreme sartorial neatness. Everything about them was neat, pretty and creepy: dark glasses, Nero hair-cuts, Chelsea boots, polo-necked sweaters worn under skinny V-necked pullovers, gleaming scooters and transistors. Even their offensive weapons were pretty—tiny hammers and screwdrivers. En masse they looked like a pack of weasels." I would urge anyone who's interested in British social history to read Melly's book in full -- it's well worth it. These third-stage Mods soon made up the bulk of the movement, and they were the ones who, in summer 1964, got into the gang fights that were breathlessly reported in all the tabloid newspapers. Pete Meaden was a Mod, and as far as I can tell he was a leading-edge second-stage Mod, though as with all these things who was in what generation of Mods is a bit blurry. Meaden had a whole idea of Mod-as-lifestyle and Mod-as-philosophy, which worked well with the group's R&B leanings, and with Townshend's art-school-inspired fascination with the aesthetics of Pop Art. Meaden got the group a residency at the Railway Hotel, a favourite Mod hangout, and he also changed their name -- The Who didn't sound Mod enough. In Mod circles at the time there was a hierarchy, with the coolest people, the Faces, at the top, below them a slightly larger group of people known as Numbers, and below them the mass of generic people known as Tickets. Meaden saw himself as the band's Svengali, so he was obviously the Face, so the group had to be Numbers -- so they became The High Numbers. Meaden got the group a one-off single deal, to record two songs he had allegedly written, both of which had lyrics geared specifically for the Mods. The A-side was "Zoot Suit": [Excerpt: The High Numbers, "Zoot Suit"] This had a melody that was stolen wholesale from "Misery" by the Dynamics: [Excerpt: The Dynamics, "Misery"] The B-side, meanwhile, was titled "I'm the Face": [Excerpt: The High Numbers, "I'm the Face"] Which anyone with any interest at all in blues music will recognise immediately as being "Got Love if You Want It" by Slim Harpo: [Excerpt: Slim Harpo, "Got Love if You Want it"] Unfortunately for the High Numbers, that single didn't have much success. Mod was a local phenomenon, which never took off outside London and its suburbs, and so the songs didn't have much appeal in the rest of the country -- while within London, Mod fashions were moving so quickly that by the time the record came out, all its up-to-the-minute references were desperately outdated. But while the record didn't have much success, the group were getting a big live following among the Mods, and their awareness of rapidly shifting trends in that subculture paid off for them in terms of stagecraft. To quote Townshend: "What the Mods taught us was how to lead by following. I mean, you'd look at the dance floor and see some bloke stop during the dance of the week and for some reason feel like doing some silly sort of step. And you'd notice some of the blokes around him looking out of the corners of their eyes and thinking 'is this the latest?' And on their own, without acknowledging the first fellow, a few of 'em would start dancing that way. And we'd be watching. By the time they looked up on the stage again, we'd be doing that dance and they'd think the original guy had been imitating us. And next week they'd come back and look to us for dances". And then Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp came into the Railway Hotel. Kit Lambert was the son of Constant Lambert, the founding music director of the Royal Ballet, who the economist John Maynard Keynes described as the most brilliant man he'd ever met. Constant Lambert was possibly Britain's foremost composer of the pre-war era, and one of the first people from the serious music establishment to recognise the potential of jazz and blues music. His most famous composition, "The Rio Grande", written in 1927 about a fictitious South American river, is often compared with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue: [Excerpt: Constant Lambert, "The Rio Grande"] Kit Lambert was thus brought up in an atmosphere of great privilege, both financially and intellectually, with his godfather being the composer Sir William Walton while his godmother was the prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, with whom his father was having an affair. As a result of the problems between his parents, Lambert spent much of his childhood living with his grandmother. After studying history at Oxford and doing his national service, Lambert had spent a few months studying film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris, where he went because Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Renais taught there -- or at least so he would later say, though there's no evidence I can find that Godard actually taught there, so either he went there under a mistaken impression or he lied about it later to make himself sound more interesting. However, he'd got bored with his studies after only a few months, and decided that he knew enough to just make a film himself, and he planned his first documentary. In early 1961, despite having little film experience, he joined two friends from university, Richard Mason and John Hemming, in an attempt to make a documentary film tracing the source of the Iriri, a river in South America that was at that point the longest unnavigated river in the world. Unfortunately, the expedition was as disastrous as it's possible for such an expedition to be. In May 1961 they landed in the Amazon basin and headed off on their expedition to find the source of the Iriri, with the help of five local porters and three people sent along by the Brazillian government to map the new areas they were to discover. Unfortunately, by September, not only had they not found the source of the Iriri, they'd actually not managed to find the Iriri itself, four and a half months apparently not being a long enough time to find an eight-hundred-and-ten-mile-long river. And then Mason made his way into history in the worst possible way, by becoming the last, to date, British person to be murdered by an uncontacted indigenous tribe, the Panará, who shot him with eight poison arrows and then bludgeoned his skull. A little over a decade later the Panará made contact with the wider world after nearly being wiped out by disease. They remembered killing Mason and said that they'd been scared by the swishing noise his jeans had made, as they'd never encountered anyone who wore clothes before. Before they made contact, the Panará were also known as the Kreen-Akrore, a name given them by the Kayapó people, meaning "round-cut head", a reference to the way they styled their hair, brushed forward and trimmed over the forehead in a way that was remarkably similar to some of the Mod styles. Before they made contact, Paul McCartney would in 1970 record an instrumental, "Kreen Akrore", after being inspired by a documentary called The Tribe That Hides From Man. McCartney's instrumental includes sound effects, including McCartney firing a bow and arrow, though apparently the bow-string snapped during the recording: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, "Kreen Akrore"] For a while, Lambert was under suspicion for the murder, though the Daily Express, which had sponsored the expedition, persuaded Brazillian police to drop the charges. While he was in Rio waiting for the legal case to be sorted, Lambert developed what one book on the Who describes as "a serious anal infection". Astonishingly, this experience did not put Lambert off from the film industry, though he wouldn't try to make another film of his own for a couple of years. Instead, he went to work at Shepperton Studios, where he was an uncredited second AD on many films, including From Russia With Love and The L-Shaped Room. Another second AD working on many of the same films was Chris Stamp, the brother of the actor Terence Stamp, who was just starting out in his own career. Stamp and Lambert became close friends, despite -- or because of -- their differences. Lambert was bisexual, and preferred men to women, Stamp was straight. Lambert was the godson of a knight and a dame, Stamp was a working-class East End Cockney. Lambert was a film-school dropout full of ideas and grand ambitions, but unsure how best to put those ideas into practice, Stamp was a practical, hands-on, man. The two complemented each other perfectly, and became flatmates and collaborators. After seeing A Hard Day's Night, they decided that they were going to make their own pop film -- a documentary, inspired by the French nouvelle vague school of cinema, which would chart a pop band from playing lowly clubs to being massive pop stars. Now all they needed was to find a band that were playing lowly clubs but could become massive stars. And they found that band at the Railway Hotel, when they saw the High Numbers. Stamp and Lambert started making their film, and completed part of it, which can be found on YouTube: [Excerpt: The High Numbers, "Oo Poo Pa Doo"] The surviving part of the film is actually very, very, well done for people who'd never directed a film before, and I have no doubt that if they'd completed the film, to be titled High Numbers, it would be regarded as one of the classic depictions of early-sixties London club life, to be classed along with The Small World of Sammy Lee and Expresso Bongo. What's even more astonishing, though, is how *modern* the group look. Most footage of guitar bands of this period looks very dated, not just in the fashions, but in everything -- the attitude of the performers, their body language, the way they hold their instruments. The best performances are still thrilling, but you can tell when they were filmed. On the other hand, the High Numbers look ungainly and awkward, like the lads of no more than twenty that they are -- but in a way that was actually shocking to me when I first saw this footage. Because they look *exactly* like every guitar band I played on the same bill as during my own attempts at being in bands between 2000 and about 2005. If it weren't for the fact that they have such recognisable faces, if you'd told me this was footage of some band I played on the same bill with at the Star and Garter or Night and Day Cafe in 2003, I'd believe it unquestioningly. But while Lambert and Stamp started out making a film, they soon pivoted and decided that they could go into management. Of course, the High Numbers did already have management -- Pete Meaden and Helmut Gorden -- but after consulting with the Beatles' lawyer, David Jacobs, Lambert and Stamp found out that Gorden's contract with the band was invalid, and so when Gorden got back from a holiday, he found himself usurped. Meaden was a bit more difficult to get rid of, even though he had less claim on the group than Gorden -- he was officially their publicist, not their manager, and his only deal was with Gorden, even though the group considered him their manager. While Meaden didn't have a contractual claim though, he did have one argument in his favour, which is that he had a large friend named Phil the Greek, who had a big knife. When this claim was put to Lambert and Stamp, they agreed that this was a very good point indeed, one that they hadn't considered, and agreed to pay Meaden off with two hundred and fifty pounds. This would not be the last big expense that Stamp and Lambert would have as the managers of the Who, as the group were now renamed. Their agreement with the group had the two managers taking forty percent of the group's earnings, while the four band members would split the other sixty percent between themselves -- an arrangement which should theoretically have had the managers coming out ahead. But they also agreed to pay the group's expenses. And that was to prove very costly indeed. Shortly after they started managing the group, at a gig at the Railway Hotel, which had low ceilings, Townshend lifted his guitar up a bit higher than he'd intended, and broke the headstock. Townshend had a spare guitar with him, so this was OK, and he also remembered Gustav Metzger and his ideas of auto-destructive art, and Malcolm Cecil sawing through his bass strings and damaging his bass, and decided that it was better for him to look like he'd meant to do that than to look like an idiot who'd accidentally broken his guitar, so he repeated the motion, smashing his guitar to bits, before carrying on the show with his spare. The next week, the crowd were excited, expecting the same thing again, but Townshend hadn't brought a spare guitar with him. So as not to disappoint them, Keith Moon destroyed his drum kit instead. This destruction was annoying to Entwistle, who saw musical instruments as something close to sacred, and it also annoyed the group's managers at first, because musical instruments are expensive. But they soon saw the value this brought to the band's shows, and reluctantly agreed to keep buying them new instruments. So for the first couple of years, Lambert and Stamp lost money on the group. They funded this partly through Lambert's savings, partly through Stamp continuing to do film work, and partly from investors in their company, one of whom was Russ Conway, the easy-listening piano player who'd had hits like "Side Saddle": [Excerpt: Russ Conway, "Side Saddle"] Conway's connections actually got the group another audition for a record label, Decca (although Conway himself recorded for EMI), but the group were turned down. The managers were told that they would have been signed, but they didn't have any original material. So Pete Townshend was given the task of writing some original material. By this time Townshend's musical world was expanding far beyond the R&B that the group were performing on stage, and he talks in his autobiography about the music he was listening to while he was trying to write his early songs. There was "Green Onions", which he'd been listening to for years in his attempt to emulate Steve Cropper's guitar style, but there was also The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and two tracks he names in particular, "Devil's Jump" by John Lee Hooker: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "Devil's Jump"] And "Better Get Hit in Your Soul" by Charles Mingus: [Excerpt: Charles Mingus, "Better Get Hit In Your Soul"] He was also listening to what he described as "a record that changed my life as a composer", a recording of baroque music that included sections of Purcell's Gordian Knot Untied: [Excerpt: Purcell, Chaconne from Gordian Knot Untied] Townshend had a notebook in which he listed the records he wanted to obtain, and he reproduces that list in his autobiography -- "‘Marvin Gaye, 1-2-3, Mingus Revisited, Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Smith Organ Grinder's Swing, In Crowd, Nina in Concert [Nina Simone], Charlie Christian, Billie Holiday, Ella, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk Around Midnight and Brilliant Corners.'" He was also listening to a lot of Stockhausen and Charlie Parker, and to the Everly Brothers -- who by this point were almost the only artist that all four members of the Who agreed were any good, because Daltrey was now fully committed to the R&B music he'd originally dismissed, and disliked what he thought was the pretentiousness of the music Townshend was listening to, while Keith Moon was primarily a fan of the Beach Boys. But everyone could agree that the Everlys, with their sensitive interpretations, exquisite harmonies, and Bo Diddley-inflected guitars, were great, and so the group added several songs from the Everlys' 1965 albums Rock N Soul and Beat N Soul to their set, like "Man With Money": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Man With Money"] Despite Daltrey's objections to diluting the purity of the group's R&B sound, Townshend brought all these influences into his songwriting. The first song he wrote to see release was not actually recorded by the Who, but a song he co-wrote for a minor beat group called the Naturals, who released it as a B-side: [Excerpt: The Naturals, "It Was You"] But shortly after this, the group got their first big break, thanks to Lambert's personal assistant, Anya Butler. Butler was friends with Shel Talmy's wife, and got Talmy to listen to the group. Townshend in particular was eager to work with Talmy, as he was a big fan of the Kinks, who were just becoming big, and who Talmy produced. Talmy signed the group to a production deal, and then signed a deal to license their records to Decca in America -- which Lambert and Stamp didn't realise wasn't the same label as British Decca. Decca in turn sublicensed the group's recordings to their British subsidiary Brunswick, which meant that the group got a minuscule royalty for sales in Britain, as their recordings were being sold through three corporate layers all taking their cut. This didn't matter to them at first, though, and they went into the studio excited to cut their first record as The Who. As was typical at the time, Talmy brought in a few session players to help out. Clem Cattini turned out not to be needed, and left quickly, but Jimmy Page stuck around -- not to play on the A-side, which Townshend said was "so simple even I could play it", but the B-side, a version of the old blues standard "Bald-Headed Woman", which Talmy had copyrighted in his own name and had already had the Kinks record: [Excerpt: The Who, "Bald-Headed Woman"] Apparently the only reason that Page played on that is that Page wouldn't let Townshend use his fuzzbox. As well as Page and Cattini, Talmy also brought in some backing vocalists. These were the Ivy League, a writing and production collective consisting at this point of John Carter and Ken Lewis, both of whom had previously been in a band with Page, and Perry Ford. The Ivy League were huge hit-makers in the mid-sixties, though most people don't recognise their name. Carter and Lewis had just written "Can You Hear My Heartbeat" for Herman's Hermits: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "Can You Hear My Heartbeat?"] And, along with a couple of other singers who joined the group, the Ivy League would go on to sing backing vocals on hits by Sandie Shaw, Tom Jones and others. Together and separately the members of the Ivy League were also responsible for writing, producing, and singing on "Let's Go to San Francisco" by the Flowerpot Men, "Winchester Cathedral" by the New Vaudeville Band, "Beach Baby" by First Class, and more, as well as their big hit under their own name, "Tossing and Turning": [Excerpt: The Ivy League, "Tossing and Turning"] Though my favourite of their tracks is their baroque pop masterpiece "My World Fell Down": [Excerpt: The Ivy League, "My World Fell Down"] As you can tell, the Ivy League were masters of the Beach Boys sound that Moon, and to a lesser extent Townshend, loved. That backing vocal sound was combined with a hard-driving riff inspired by the Kinks' early hits like "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night", and with lyrics that explored inarticulacy, a major theme of Townshend's lyrics: [Excerpt: The Who, "I Can't Explain"] "I Can't Explain" made the top ten, thanks in part to a publicity stunt that Lambert came up with. The group had been booked on to Ready, Steady, Go!, and the floor manager of the show mentioned to Lambert that they were having difficulty getting an audience for that week's show -- they were short about a hundred and fifty people, and they needed young, energetic, dancers. Lambert suggested that the best place to find young, energetic, dancers, was at the Marquee on a Tuesday night -- which just happened to be the night of the Who's regular residency at the club. Come the day of filming, the Ready, Steady, Go! audience was full of the Who's most hardcore fans, all of whom had been told by Lambert to throw scarves at the band when they started playing. It was one of the most memorable performances on the show. But even though the record was a big hit, Daltrey was unhappy. The man who'd started out as guitarist in a Shadows cover band and who'd strenuously objected to the group's inclusion of R&B material now had the zeal of a convert. He didn't want to be doing this "soft commercial pop", or Townshend's art-school nonsense. He wanted to be an R&B singer, playing hard music for working-class men like him. Two decisions were taken to mollify the lead singer. The first was that when they went into the studio to record their first album, it was all soul and R&B apart from one original. The album was going to consist of three James Brown covers, three Motown covers, Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man", and a cover of Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Louie Louie" sequel "Louie Come Home", retitled "Lubie". All of this was material that Daltrey was very comfortable with. Also, Daltrey was given some input into the second single, which would be the only song credited to Daltrey and Townshend, and Daltrey's only songwriting contribution to a Who A-side. Townshend had come up with the title "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" while listening to Charlie Parker, and had written the song based on that title, but Daltrey was allowed to rewrite the lyrics and make suggestions as to the arrangement. That record also made the top ten: [Excerpt: The Who, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere"] But Daltrey would soon become even more disillusioned. The album they'd recorded was shelved, though some tracks were later used for what became the My Generation album, and Kit Lambert told the Melody Maker “The Who are having serious doubts about the state of R&B. Now the LP material will consist of hard pop. They've finished with ‘Smokestack Lightning'!” That wasn't the only thing they were finished with -- Townshend and Moon were tired of their band's leader, and also just didn't think he was a particularly good singer -- and weren't shy about saying so, even to the press. Entwistle, a natural peacemaker, didn't feel as strongly, but there was a definite split forming in the band. Things came to a head on a European tour. Daltrey was sick of this pop nonsense, he was sick of the arty ideas of Townshend, and he was also sick of the other members' drug use. Daltrey didn't indulge himself, but the other band members had been using drugs long before they became successful, and they were all using uppers, which offended Daltrey greatly. He flushed Keith Moon's pill stash down the toilet, and screamed at his band mates that they were a bunch of junkies, then physically attacked Moon. All three of the other band members agreed -- Daltrey was out of the band. They were going to continue as a trio. But after a couple of days, Daltrey was back in the group. This was mostly because Daltrey had come crawling back to them, apologising -- he was in a very bad place at the time, having left his wife and kid, and was actually living in the back of the group's tour van. But it was also because Lambert and Stamp persuaded the group they needed Daltrey, at least for the moment, because he'd sung lead on their latest single, and that single was starting to rise up the charts. "My Generation" had had a long and torturous journey from conception to realisation. Musically it originally had been inspired by Mose Allison's "Young Man's Blues": [Excerpt: Mose Allison, "Young Man's Blues"] Townshend had taken that musical mood and tied it to a lyric that was inspired by a trilogy of TV plays, The Generations, by the socialist playwright David Mercer, whose plays were mostly about family disagreements that involved politics and class, as in the case of the first of those plays, where two upwardly-mobile young brothers of very different political views go back to visit their working-class family when their mother is on her deathbed, and are confronted by the differences they have with each other, and with the uneducated father who sacrificed to give them a better life than he had: [Excerpt: Where the Difference Begins] Townshend's original demo for the song was very much in the style of Mose Allison, as the excerpt of it that's been made available on various deluxe reissues of the album shows: [Excerpt: Pete Townshend, "My Generation (demo)"] But Lambert had not been hugely impressed by that demo. Stamp had suggested that Townshend try a heavier guitar riff, which he did, and then Lambert had added the further suggestion that the music would be improved by a few key changes -- Townshend was at first unsure about this, because he already thought he was a bit too influenced by the Kinks, and he regarded Ray Davies as, in his words, "the master of modulation", but eventually he agreed, and decided that the key changes did improve the song. Stamp made one final suggestion after hearing the next demo version of the song. A while earlier, the Who had been one of the many British groups, like the Yardbirds and the Animals, who had backed Sonny Boy Williamson II on his UK tour. Williamson had occasionally done a little bit of a stutter in some of his performances, and Daltrey had picked up on that and started doing it. Townshend had in turn imitated Daltrey's mannerism a couple of times on the demo, and Stamp thought that was something that could be accentuated. Townshend agreed, and reworked the song, inspired by John Lee Hooker's "Stuttering Blues": [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "Stuttering Blues"] The stuttering made all the difference, and it worked on three levels. It reinforced the themes of inarticulacy that run throughout the Who's early work -- their first single, after all, had been called "I Can't Explain", and Townshend talks movingly in his autobiography about talking to teenage fans who felt that "I Can't Explain" had said for them the things they couldn't say th

As we approach August and the start of college, many incoming freshmen are putting a lot of thought into what their major – or majors – might be. Some have known for years what they want their degree to be, while others may take several more years, and several declarations of majors, to settle on the one they feel is right. In this episode of Gimme Some Truth, we revisit a topic that we've covered previously on the podcast to view it from a different angle, the perspective of a parent with college-aged children. Walkner Condon's Jonathon Jordan, who graduated from James Madison University with a degree in biotechnology, compares his own experience with how he's experienced the big degree decision from a different vantage point. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/walkner-condon/message

Jason Leopold was dubbed “the FOIA Terrorist” by the Bush Administration, and the name stuck because Jason appropriated it! He utilizes FOIA better and more effectively than anyone else in the news business. I had scheduled Jason to join us today because it had been a while since we'd spoken, and was pleasantly surprised to awaken this morning to a new scoop from Jason and his FOIA prowess.

Episode 042 welcomes JACKSON WHALAN, emcee/producer based in the Berkshire mountains of Mass. We met in NorCal about 5 years ago, and he released his latest full-length LP From the Woods in Jan 2021; Whalan's got a huge collab on the way with the legendary Blastmaster himself, KRS-ONE. Jackson also helped inspire me to start this podcast when we did a live onstage Q&A in Nevada City, CA back in 2017.  @4:00 - Welcome Back LETT & 'Mr. Yancey' live in Denver  @10:00 - Jackson Whalan intro, @15:00 JW interview  / @1hr 50min S.N.A.G. by Jackson Whalan  Our 90-min conversation touches on JW's colorful journey, from humble rural environs to the NYC underground, ashram across the world to a pot farm in Grass Valley, Cali. Other rabbit holes: being white in hip-hop, surviving as an independent artist, using social media to your promotional advantage, and a discussion that unpacks our respective brushes with the law. We finish up with an exciting career development involving the great KRS-ONE.  About Jackson Whalan: On the western edge of Massachusetts, there were very few examples of hip-hop artists from his rural hometown, but the music made its way into his life when he found CDs that belonged his older brother. When Jackson discovered the power of hip-hop, he was waking up to issues of race, class, politics, human rights and climate change. His music soon became the vehicle for addressing injustices and inspiring people. In 2012, college studies took Jackson to India and an eco-village, Auroville. In the U.S., he studied turntablism at The New School with DJ Rob Swift; he graduated in 2013 with a B.A. in music. Jackson began releasing and performing under his own name in 2014, with the release of “S.N.A.G. (Sensitive New Age Guy)”. Other releases followed: Raptivism (2015), “Cradle” (feat. Qwill), 2016, and Souled Out EP (2016). Jackson opened for Moon Hooch for over 50 dates during 2016-17.  Jackson is an accomplished hip-hop/electronic producer as well, an Ableton educator, and makes himself available to other independent artists in a variety of professional, marketing, collaborative and artistic capacities.  In 2019-2020, Jackson released singles and instrumentals every month for a full year, working closely with his co-producer and keyboardist Ian Evans. Tracks include “G.T.F.O.H.” (feat. Myka 9), “BIG FVCTS”, “The Long Game”, and a cover of John Lennon's “Gimme Some Truth”. Latest LP From the Woods dropped Jan. 2021. KRS-ONE collaboration is on deck, as you hear at the end of our convo. STREAM From the Woods HERE Vibe Junkie JAMZ Roy Hargrove feat. D'Angelo "Bullshit" (2006) The Violinaires "The Upper Way" (1972) music played: Jay-Z "Open Letter"  -- Jackson Whalan "From the Woods" BIG FVCTS" "Cuz I'm Dope" "Music is the Drug" "SNAG"  -- & Soulquarians + Femi Kuti + Macy Gray "Water No Get Enemy"   Please support Upful LIFE brand new PATREON ! https://www.patreon.com/upfullife   EMAIL the SHOW! B.Getz@UpfulLIFE.com   LARGE UP to our sponsors: Path to Panacea &  Herb An' Music: The Healing of the Nations   PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW on iTunes! Listen on Spotify!  Theme Song: Mazel Tov by CALVIN VALENTINE