Billy Bragg – 40 years, 2,700 gigs and what he learnt from Taylor Swift
‘Billy Bragg: A People’s History’ is just out, a new and wholly original kind of memoir written by himself, friends, collaborators and fans, and packed with old snapshots, concert bills, reviews and ephemera. It’s very good indeed. He looks back here with us at … … meeting Taylor Swift – “and we both knew who the other was!” … a total of 2,700 gigs – “not counting prisons, In-Stores, Port-A-Stacks and picket lines” … old blokes trying to take selfies … finding old diaries in his archives and sensing how the memory plays tricks … songs that get you out of trouble on stage … bootlegging albums on his reel-to-reel, aged 12, complete with noises off - eg “Bridge Over Troubled Water plus a voice telling me Reach For The Sky was on telly!” … a word-perfect recitation of Mr Tambourine Man … listening to the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll when the rest of the school was Glam Rock … buying Ronnie Lane’s amp, “like returning home with a religious relic” … “the power of music”: meeting someone who’d heard him on the radio beyond the Iron Curtain … anxiety about American border control: “I was advised to get a new phone. As if that’ll make any difference. I’m Billy Bragg, political songwriter!” … lost off-grid in Salt Lake City in the days before internet … “Music can’t change the world but it gives you the ability to think it can be changed” …plus Ian McLagan, Desmond Dekker, Ry Cooder, Jam b-sides and Motown Chartbusters Vol 3. Order Billy Bragg: A People’s History here: https://burningshed.com/billy-bragg_a-peoples-history_book https://www.billybragg.co.uk/product/billy-bragg-a-peoples-history-an-oral-history-in-the-words-of-people-who-have-been-moved-by-his-music/Help us to keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Mark Kermode tells us stories about music in movies
The Graduate, Trainspotting, Jaws, Star Wars, Citizen Kane – films you can’t picture without thinking of the music. Mark Kermode has been gripped by the marriage of movie and soundtrack since Dougal and the Blue Cat (aged 6) and, with Jenny Nelson, has just published ‘Surround Sound: the Stories of Movie Music’. We talk to him here about… … Scorsese, Cameron Crowe, Sofia Coppola, Edgar Wright: the new generation “who grew up with a headful of not just music, but records” … how John Williams is “the last Whistle Test composer”: two bars of ET, Jaws or Star Wars and you instantly know the film … how “silent cinema was never silent” and his band the Dodge Brothers playing live soundtracks … Butch Cassidy, Easy Rider, Blackboard Jungle … pioneers of the music video … the genius of American Graffiti: “Lucas wanted it so marinated in music the town would sound like a pickle jar” … how scores are recorded and edited and what happens when a director tells an orchestra he’s changed his mind … “by the time each Lord of the Rings soundtrack reached New Zealand, Peter Jackson had re-cut the film” … Forbidden Planet in 1956, the days when electronic scores weren’t real music … Martha Reeves, Jonathan Richman and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver … Tarantino’s kitsch use of “his own scratchy vinyl” and why Jonny Greenwood‘s There Will Be Blood is unique and exceptional … plus the “atonal squonking” of the Exorcist and the greatest soundtrack of all time. Order ‘Surround Sound: the Stories of Movie Music’ here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/mark-kermodes-surround-sound/mark-kermode/9781447230564Help us to keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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40:41
How many bands can you name every member of?
This week’s news put through the wringer and hung out to dry. On the line you’ll find … … Taylor Swift and Ophelia and other things pop videos turned into tourist attractions … the appeal of D’Angelo’s Voodoo: “he made albums with no disdain for the listener” …. David Hepworth and “the single most exciting thing that ever happened to me in my entire life” … bands whose story means more than their music … Nick Drake, Hendrix, Portishead, Nirvana: why three albums is the perfect back catalogue … when Morrissey was just “Steve from Stretford” and Bowie “some bloke in Beckenham” … Elvis Costello, the Nashville Rooms and how Mark escaped being “killed to bits” … is there a better sign of obsession than being able to name all a band’s members? … Your challenge: listen to the Dead’s Dark Star for the first time. Discuss! … esoteric tracks played by mobile coffee vans … “Gor Blimey, hello Mrs Jones. How’s old Bert’s lumbago?” … plus JJ Cale, Canned Heat, Cameron Crowe and Fred Neil’s The Dolphins.Help us to keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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The Zombies’ Colin Blunstone – a psychedelic showpiece then ‘washed up’ aged 21
The Zombies formed before the Stones and had huge hits with She’s Not There and Time Of The Season. Their baroque masterpiece Odessey and Oracle now gets ranked beside Revolver and Pet Sounds. Colin Blunstone has a solo tour in 2026 and looks back here in his wood-panelled den at the first shows he played, the people he met and being No 1 in America aged 19. This too … … when your career starts at 16 “and you think it’s over at 21” … seeing the Beatles at Luton Odeon and the Stones at Studio 51 Leicester Square “sitting on stools playing acoustic R&B” … winning the talent contest that got them a record deal and a worldwide hit with “the third song Rod ever wrote” … playing Murray the K’s Christmas Show when No 1 in America with “all our heroes” - the Shirelles, Patti LaBelle and Ben E King … his father’s warning when he wanted to go to Art School … the misspelling of Odessey And Oracle and its rushed recording at Abbey Road – “in mono when everyone wanted stereo!” … “only Kenny Everett and Penny Valentine liked it”: the album’s afterlife, “now ranked alongside Revolver and Pet Sounds” … how he still hits “my suicidal top notes” and the old trick of pointing the mic at the audience if you don’t want to sing them … life in an insurance office when the Zombies split and “the three writers had made all the money” … and Al Kooper, Denny Laine, Russ Ballard, Rod Argent and the time Mike Hurst inexplicably relaunched him as ‘Neil MacArthur’. Order tickets for the Believe In Miracles Tour here: https://www.colinblunstone.net/Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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36:59
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36:59
Led Zeppelin’s fight for attention and how they fudged their backstory
This lavish, beautifully designed collection of late ‘60s news stories, reviews and press clippings sheds new light on the band’s roots and ascent from the days when the Kidderminster Shuttle would spell their name wrong and print their parents’ address. Richard Morton Jack, author and compiler of ‘Led Zeppelin: The Only Way To Fly’, looks back here at …. … the fact that there was already a group called ‘Lead Zeppelin’ in 1967 … the way Page has fudged early details of his and the band’s career … why 1968 was Last Chance Saloon for Plant, Jones and Bonham … the second British Invasion and why America was so ready for them … “the Hindenburg was only 30 years earlier. Imagine using the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster on a cover now!” … their claim that critics always hated them in the face of massive evidence to the contrary … Plant’s publicity stunts before he joined the band – Harold Macmillan, Legalise Pot, the Noise Abatement Society … … the ‘60s Birmingham scene v the London scene… their eternal grievance about the press sparked by the “Ground Zero” moment of Rolling Stone’s 1968 review … the venues they played - the Toby Jug in Tolworth, Pirate World, an aqua theater, an ice rink in Vegas … and the bands they shared bills with - Frosty Moses, Kimla Taz, the Ladybirds. Order a copy of Led Zeppelin: The Only Way To Fly here: https://lansdownebooks.com/Help us to keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience. Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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