Nutritious items on the rock and roll tasting menu this week include …   … the curious life of Tom Verlaine, his grocery cart and his 50,000 books.     … was March 9 1984 the worst week ever for the British album charts?   … what all great records have in common.   … Yesterday’s news today! ‘Soundies’ at the cinema and the Scopitone colour video jukebox.   … why A Hard Day’s Night was the greatest advert for the magical qualities of the Beatles and the scene that was the blueprint for the pop promotional clip.   … comforting acts with a narrow range – JJ Cale, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, U2 (“like getting into your parents’ car after a school trip”). And what made JJ Cale’s recordings so mesmerising.      … did Johnny Marr ever play a guitar solo?   … “I work in advertising but tell my mother I play piano in a brothel”.   … the link between JJ Cale’s Call Me The Breeze and Family Affair by Sly & the Family Stone.   Mentioned in despatches … Cab Calloway and the Hondells, The Hoodoo Gurus, the Style Council, Jimmy Reed and the Inkspots.   Tom Verlaine’s 50,000 books … https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/march/at-the-tom-verlaine-book-sale?utm_medium=email&utm;_campaign=20240306blog&utm;_content=20240306blog+CID_6b4a1bd19ed9ca733f5ffca04056ca8b&utm;_source=LRB%20email&utm;_term=Read%20more
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How the Beatles invented pop video and acts we love who always sound the same

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&nbsp;Word In Your Ear evenings&nbsp;in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.&nbsp;
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. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Music

Music Interviews

Music Commentary

Music History

We’ve followed Paul Carrack for 50 years, a big hit single – How Long – when he was with Ace, 19 albums, countless sessions (the Smiths, Eagles and Pretenders among them) and a touring band member with Squeeze, Roxy Music, Roger Waters and Nick Lowe. He once put out an album called ‘I Know That Name’ as for so many people he’s still under the radar. His newsagent assumes he’s called “Mike” as he was the singer in Mike & the Mechanics. He's touring the UK in the autumn and looks back here at …   … seeing the Beatles, Chuck Berry, the Stones, Dylan and the Shadows at Sheffield Town Hall. And Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band at Mojos promoted by Pete Stringfellow.   … playing Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg clubs in the early ‘70s.   … his time with earnest prog adventurers Warm Dust – “please don’t look them up”.   … the value of having your own label in the world of streaming.   … when Elvis Costello got him to sing the vocal on Tempted by Squeeze.   … supporting Fleetwood Mac and Free.   … playing Ray Charles, Nat King Cole and Sinatra tunes with a big band.   … how it feels to be “dropped like a stone” by Radio Two when you no longer fit the demographic.   … the real meaning of the song How Long and what he has in common with Troy McClure of the Simpsons.   Paul Carrack tour dates here … https://paulcarrack.net/
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Carrack has seen it all – beat, soul, prog, pub rock, pop & the perfect ‘slow burn’ career.

Nige Tassell used to go to school in full donkey-jacket-and-woolly-hat ensemble to express his boundless devotion to Dexys Midnight Runners. Forty years later he set out to find and interview everyone who’d ever been a member. For some, their time in the ranks was a joyful, career-launching delight. Others felt it was like a slightly chilly and controlling cult. They all took a while to recover and they all had extraordinary stories to tell in his latest book ‘Searching For Dexys Midnight Runners’. Here’s a flavour of what gets discussed …   … ‘No drugs or alcohol! No smiling! No eye contact with the audience!’ and other unsettling Dexys mantras.   … examples of Kevin Rowland ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory’.   … the many ways the band made themselves deliberately different’.   … the event supporting Bowie that got their power cut onstage in Paris and had them thrown off the tour.   ... the heavy-handed recruitment of Helen O’Hara.   … Geno Washington and other strands of the Dexys DNA.   … the ad they took in the NME that soured their relationship with the music press.   … and how Rowland’s approach today remains resolutely unchanged.     Order Nige’s book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Searching-Dexys-Midnight-Runners-Tassell/dp/178512059X
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nige Tassell was so obsessed with Dexys he’s tracked down all 24 ex-members

Missing being on tour and exasperated by internal disputes, Nick Mason set out to tour small-scale venues with his band Saucerful Of Secrets in 2018. They’re mid-way through another world tour (Gary Kemp’s the main singer and one of the guitarists). He doesn’t miss the stadium circuit where “you need a golf cart to get from one side of the stage to the other” and they play only the early psychedelic Floyd material, from their first singles up to (but not including) the Dark Side of the Moon, which audiences are less inclined to want to be note-perfect versions of the records. And he talks mid-set about the origins of the songs and his memories of Syd Barrett and life at the time. This podcast looks back at the first live shows he saw and played himself and how Saucerful of Secrets came about. Which includes …   … Tommy Steele at the Hackney Empire – “I came straight from school in short trousers with my satchel”.   … seeing the Rolling Stones on a ‘63 package tour.     … performing Beatles songs at parties in Cuban heels and Oliver Goldsmith shades.   … playing the International Times launch party at the Roundhouse in ‘66 on the back of a cart.   …. early gigs at the Countdown Club, Regent Street Poly and the Albert Hall (with Alan Price and Peter & Gordon).   … the difference between Saucerful of Secrets and the stadium circuit – and the time Roger Waters played with them in New York.   … and the ‘60s demos of unreleased Floyd songs they’re hoping to add to the set.   Saucerful of Secrets tour dates here … https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kjkhMKXv4wPaR2XVbZ6h3WVMJ4ivesVn/view?usp=drivesdk    Buy tickets here … https://myticket.co.uk/artists/nick-mason-saucerful-of-secrets   Nick’s re-released solo albums here … https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uwB_CYLuszOUNqsfeiWQH3nXd2TxGVf7/view
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why Nick Mason’s “cottage industry” band plays just early Pink Floyd

We were at the Curzon Mayfair on May 7 for the premier of the rebooted Let It Be in all its burnished finery and came away with a ton of things to unravel, among them …   … what we never knew when the film came out 54 years ago.   .. seeing it in the shadow of Peter Jackson’s Get Back.   … how the edit was overtaken by events and the tangled reasons it turned out the way it did.   … why Lindsay-Hogg’s amphitheatre concept would never have worked.   … the divine symbolism of the Beatles v the police.   … why it’s a perfect social document of late-’60s London.   … the band’s three-film film contract.   … was the world really as distraught about their break-up as the 21st Century assumes?   … herringbone coats, red plastic macs, hairy black jackets: why someone should open a Beatles ‘69 clothes emporium.   Plus … the noble philosophies of the late Steve Albini expressed in a letter to Nirvana in November 1992.   … and what happens when rock stars don’t leave wills: Exhibit A - Steve Marriott.   Read Steve Albini’s letter to Nirvana here: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvana
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let It Be revisited, the wisdom of Steve Albini and a woeful tale about Steve Marriott

We stuck a few coins in this week’s Wurlitzer and these were the tunes that got played …   … when records became all about sound not songs.   … Fonzworth Bentley, Puff Daddy’s butler, the man who held an umbrella over him on the beach at Cannes.   … what Henry Kissinger, Martha Stewart and Leonardo DiCaprio kept very quiet about.   … Manchester’s Co-Op, a tale of unprecedented hopelessness.   … what’s the definition of a song? And can you steal a record?   … the magical skill of Aston Barrett on I Shot The Sheriff and James Jamerson on You Can’t Hurry Love.   … ‘Duane Eddy Does Bob Dylan’ and its ingenious sleeve.   … does anybody still want pop posters?   … “I'd watch Jeremy Clarkson boil an egg.”   … Moneybagg Yo & DaBaby, Cigarettes After Sex and other acts playing the O2 and Wembley Arena we’ve ever heard of.     … the ultimate autograph.   … and New Whirl Odor, Road To Rouen, Sax And Violins, Lead Me Not Into Penn Station and other tortuous album titles.
Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How the Beatles invented pop video and acts we love who always sound the same

Download our free app to listen on your phone