Join Jim Bricker and I to discuss the mission of our new show Ten From Then and the story behind it.

Broadcast 17 August 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:02 NZ Net Radio – Ten From Then

1:06 Malcolm McLaren – Double Dutch

2:23 NZ Net Radio – Ten From Then

3:27 U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday

Today on Musical Musings: Five of the Best, I’m joined by the endlessly knowledgeable Leon from Adelaide (South Australia) to take on one of the most influential bands Britain has ever produced: Depeche Mode. Their story begins in Basildon, Essex, at the turn of the 1980s, where a group of school friends — Vince Clarke, Martin Gore and Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher — started making music, before a young Dave Gahan, overheard singing Bowie’s “Heroes,” completed the line-up. Named after a French fashion magazine (Dépêche mode — roughly “fashion dispatch”), they began as bright synth-pop upstarts and grew, album by album, into the dark, sensual, stadium-filling pioneers of electronic music we know today — a band who took the humble synthesizer and made it sound like sin and salvation at once.

Because Leon wanted the full sweep, this episode carries a little extra history — right back to how a single OMD B-side first set Vince Clarke on the path to synthesizers. His five picks are really five different Depeche Modes: “Photographic,” from the 1981 Vince Clarke-penned debut Speak & Spell (and the band’s very first recording); “My Secret Garden” from 1982’s A Broken Frame, the moment Martin Gore took over the songwriting and Leon’s favourite Depeche Mode song of all; the imperial “Behind the Wheel” from 1987’s Music for the Masses, the album version with that irresistible bassline; “Precious” from 2005’s Playing the Angel, a tender letter Martin wrote to his children during his divorce; and “People Are Good” from 2023’s Memento Mori, the band’s first record as a duo after the loss of Fletch. From synth-pop debut to elegiac farewell — forty-plus years in five songs. Tune in and let Leon be your guide.

12 August 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:00 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Depeche Mode

1:04 Depeche Mode – Photographic

2:30 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Depeche Mode

3:34 Depeche Mode – My Secret Garden

4:56 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Depeche Mode

6:00 Depeche Mode – Behind the Wheel

7:24 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Depeche Mode

8:28 Depeche Mode – Precious

9:53 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Depeche Mode

10:57 Depeche Mode – People Are Good

12:21 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Depeche Mode

Today on Musical Musings we do something gloriously different. Rather than one band and five songs, my guest Jarrett McCall arrives with an alphabet. Jarrett recently took on a challenge organized by @metaphoralaura on X — the hashtag was #USAtoZ — to run through American bands letter by letter, A to Z, and this episode is his pick of the ones he chose, every one of them, by his own happy insistence, drawn from the 1970s. He’s titled it USA A-Z (Missing Some!), and the “missing some” is the whole charm of it: we get C, D, F, H, J, L, P, R, S, V and W, and cheerfully skip the other fifteen letters. What that leaves is less a greatest-hits run than an accidental map of a whole decade — in the space of an hour Jarrett’s alphabet sweeps up power-pop, Akron art-rock, Miami Latin disco, arena rock, P-Funk, Detroit folk, New York synth-punk, California hard rock, Alabama soul-rock and lush LA vocal-group pop.

We travel in order down his list, and it’s a wonderful whiplash of a journey: Cheap Trick’s teen anthem “Surrender” gives way to DEVO’s Brian Eno-produced “Gut Feeling,” then Foxy’s Miami groove “Hot Number,” Jefferson Starship’s “Jane,” Parliament’s “Ride On” from their love letter to Washington D.C., and the astonishing “Sugar Man” by Rodriguez — the Detroit songwriter who was a superstar in South Africa and Australia without ever knowing it, as the film Searching for Sugar Man later told the world. From there it’s the confrontational electronics of Suicide’s “Keep Your Dreams,” Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” (a song Eddie wrote as a punk parody), and Wet Willie’s loose Southern strut “Weekend.” Then comes Jarrett’s cheeky twist for the final two, filed not by band name but by album title: the Beach Boys land under H for Holland, the record they famously flew to the Netherlands to make, and the 5th Dimension close us out under L for Living Together, Growing Together. Eleven letters, one decade, and just about every sound America made in the seventies. Tune in and let Jarrett take you through the alphabet — gaps and all.

Hopefully in a few weeks we’ll be back with Volume 2 – the missing letters!

Broadcast 10 August 2026

Songs in this episode:

4:00 Cheap Trick – Surrender

7:34 DEVO – Gut Feeling (Slap Your Mammy) [2009 Remaster]

9:57 Foxy – Hot Number

13:44 Jefferson Starship – Jane

16:31 Parliament – Ride On

19:11 Rodriguez – Sugar Man

22:15 suicide – Keep Your Dreams

25:18 Van Halen – Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love

28:02 Wet Willie – Weekend

31:45 The Beach Boys – Leaving This Town

37:54 The 5th Dimension – Ashes To Ashes

For this edition, Ken Cheshire champions a band whose ridiculous name (lifted from a Monty Python sketch Eric Idle designed to be “so silly nobody would ever use it”) has always undersold the quiet brilliance underneath. High-school friends from Santa Barbara — Glen Phillips, Todd Nichols, Dean Dinning and Randy Guss — they made warm, jangly, thoughtful alt-rock that could land a knockout blow by playing softly, with two platinum albums in Fear and Dulcinea.

What makes Ken’s five so satisfying is that they quietly tell the band’s whole story: the gorgeous hit “Walk on the Ocean,” the platinum peak of “Crowing,” a genuine rarity in “Are We Afraid,” the pre-hiatus “Whatever I Fear,” and the fan-funded 2013 comeback “Is There Anyone Out There.” Breakthrough, peak, rarity, farewell and return — a fan’s love letter in five songs.

Broadcast 5 August 2026

Songs in this episode:

9:11 Toad The Wet Sprocket – Walk On the Ocean

15:54 Toad The Wet Sprocket – Crowing

23:14 Toad The Wet Sprocket – Are We Afraid

28:58 Toad The Wet Sprocket – Whatever I Fear

38:07 Toad The Wet Sprocket – Is There Anyone Out There

47:17 Toad The Wet Sprocket – Jam (Acoustic)

Today on Musical Musings: Five of the Best, I'm joined by the erudite Armando Venditti (of the Youtube channel The Music Den) to dig into one of Canada's most distinctive and criminally under-celebrated rock bands: The Tea Party. Formed in Windsor, Ontario around 1990, the trio of Jeff Martin, Stuart Chatwood and Jeff Burrows built a sound they cheekily christened "Moroccan roll" — hard rock and blues shot through with sitars, ouds, hurdy-gurdies and Middle Eastern textures, all wrapped around Jeff Martin's brooding, Jim Morrison-esque baritone. They were huge in Canada and Australia, drew constant comparisons to The Doors and Led Zeppelin, and made records that felt like they'd been dug out of some candlelit alchemist's library.

Armando's five trace nearly three decades of that journey. We start with the bluesy early single "The River" from 1993's major-label debut Splendor Solis (named, fittingly, after a famous 16th-century alchemical manuscript), then move into the band's world-music masterpiece with "Sister Awake" from The Edges of Twilight — a song so intricate it reportedly used 58 recording tracks synched across three tape machines. From there we take in a deep cut, "The Badger," the electronic reinvention of 1997's Transmission with "Emerald," and a leap all the way to 2021 for "The Beautiful." It's a smart, generous introduction to a band that always aimed higher than the radio ever asked them to. Tune in and let Armando make the case.

Originally broadcast 3 August 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:03 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Tea Party

1:07 The Tea Party – The River

2:28 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Tea Party

3:32 The Tea Party – Sister Awake

4:55 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Tea Party

5:59 The Tea Party – The Beautiful

7:22 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Tea Party

8:26 The Tea Party – The Badger

9:49 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Tea Party

10:53 The Tea Party – Emerald

12:11 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Tea Party

Power pop is the genre that never quite got its moment — and somehow that’s the whole point. It’s a sound built on the Beatles’ Revolver-era jangle and the Who’s coiled aggression, then handed down through a lineage of bands who wrote perfect three-minute songs and watched them sail straight past the charts. This week’s show traces that line from the source: “And Your Bird Can Sing” and “Pictures Of Lily” set the template in the mid-60s, and the Flamin’ Groovies’ “Shake Some Action” and Big Star’s “In The Street” carried it into the 70s, where commercial indifference became something close to a badge of honour.

What’s remarkable is how the vindication keeps arriving late. Big Star sold almost nothing in 1972 and ended up soundtracking a hit sitcom two decades on. The Speedies were Brooklyn schoolkids whose “You Need Pop” found a second life in a printer commercial. Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque was voted album of the year over Nevermind, a decision that looked eccentric at the time and looks rather braver now. And the thread runs unbroken to the present — the Lemon Twigs and Weezer are working the same seam as Todd Rundgren, Dwight Twilley and the Raspberries did fifty years ago, with a similar disregard for whether anyone’s paying attention.

Broadcast 31 July 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:02 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Power Pop Perfection Vol 2

0:08 The Beatles – And Your Bird Can Sing

1:20 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Power Pop Perfection Vol 2

2:15 The Who – Pictures Of Lily

3:19 Big Star – In The Street

4:23 Teenage Fanclub – Star Sign

5:27 The Heats – I Hope You're Wrong

6:31 The Goods – Summer's Almost Gone

7:35 Tweeds – I Need That Record

8:39 The Speedies – You Need Pop

9:58 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Power Pop Perfection Vol 2

10:47 Shoes – Boys Don't Lie

11:51 Pete Yorn – Idyllwild

12:55 King Tuff – Stairway To Nowhere

13:59 Weezer, Wednesday – We Might as Well Be Strangers (ft. Wednesday)

15:03 Flamin' Groovies – Shake Some Action

16:23 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Power Pop Perfection Vol 2

17:06 Todd Rundgren – Couldn't I Just Tell You

18:10 Dwight Twilley Band – I'm On Fire

19:14 Smug Brothers – Interior Magnets

20:18 Material Issue – Valerie Loves Me

21:22 The Raspberries – I Saw The Light

Blame friend-of-the-station Jim Bricker. He got in touch the other day, asked “how awesome was 1971?”, and wouldn’t let it go — and the more we dug, the more the question answered itself. So we’ve built a special around it: two hours (all right, a little more) making the case that 1971 might just be the greatest year popular music ever had. Jim chose the tracks – and I added a few bonus tracks at the end. The idea isn’t ours alone. Music writer David Hepworth wrote a whole book on it, 1971 — Never a Dull Moment, arguing this was the year the album grew up and everyone seemed to make the record of their lives all at once. Then there was the excellent Apple TV series. We’ll put his argument to you — and, because we’re fair-minded, we’ll also hand you the case against, from the folks who reckon he’s simply picked the year he happened to turn twenty-one.

Mostly, though, we’ll just play you the evidence, because it’s overwhelming. One year gave us Tapestry and Blue and What’s Going On; the Beatles scattering into brilliant, bickering solo careers; Marvin Gaye and Sly Stone holding a mirror up to the times; prog stretching its legs, glam pulling on its feathers, and Led Zeppelin recording drums in a stairwell. There’s Bowie reinventing himself, Joni Mitchell breaking your heart in a folk song, and a closing run that lands, inevitably, on Imagine. Pour something, settle in, and decide for yourself. Was it really the best of them all? Tune in — and tell us we’re wrong.

Broadcast 29 July 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:00 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

1:04 The Who – Baba O'Riley

2:22 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

3:26 David Bowie – Changes

4:43 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

5:47 Marvin Gaye – Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

7:08 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

8:12 Sly & The Family Stone – Family Affair

9:32 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

10:34 Carole King – It's Too Late

11:58 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

12:54 Joni Mitchell – Little Green

14:18 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

15:07 Rod Stewart – (Find A) Reason To Believe

16:25 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

17:26 Yes – Roundabout

18:45 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

19:41 Led Zeppelin – When the Levee Breaks

20:59 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

21:54 Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney – Too Many People

23:16 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

24:05 John Lennon – Jealous Guy

25:25 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

26:14 Badfinger – Day After Day

27:35 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

28:06 Harry Nilsson – Without You

29:31 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

30:35 Genesis – The Musical Box (2007 Stereo Mix)

31:59 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

33:03 America – A Horse with No Name

34:28 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

35:11 The Rolling Stones – Wild Horses

36:36 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

37:40 The Beach Boys – Surf's Up

39:01 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

39:44 T. Rex – Get It On

41:10 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix How Awesome Was 1971

41:53 Janis Joplin – Me & Bobby McGee

We were delighted to be joined by Kelly and Dave from the highly recommended It’s The Groove podcast for this show.

We put Kool & the Gang on trial this week, and it turns out sixty years of music doesn’t sort itself into neat halves quite as easily as we’d hoped. Kelly came for the 70s with “Hollywood Swinging” and “Summer Madness”. Dave came for the 80s with “Celebration” and “Fresh”. Both of them arrived with more evidence than they needed, which is always the sign of a good guest.

The 70s case turned out to be an argument about what a band is. Seven musicians from Jersey City, no lead singer, the horn section doing the heavy lifting and everyone shouting the hook together — a genuine collective, and one that could still play jazz when it wanted to. “Summer Madness” was the moment that argument really bit. Strip away the chants and the party and you’re left with a synthesiser solo and a lot of space, and it holds up beautifully.

The 80s case was about how a band adapts to survive. Yes, they hired Eumir Deodato. Yes, they hired a frontman in J.T. Taylor after fourteen years without one. But Dave’s point stood up: a band staring at the end of its career made a deliberate choice to survive, and what came out the other side was “Celebration” — a song that ended up soundtracking half the celebrations on earth – Dave tells the story behind its inspiration.

Where it got genuinely difficult was “Ladies’ Night” — released in 1979, made entirely with the 80s formula. Neither side would let go of it and I’m not sure we ever settled it.

What I keep coming back to is that the argument was never really about decades. Ronald Bell wrote across both eras; what changed was who was in the producer’s chair and who was standing at the front. Whether a band that hires its way out of trouble is still the same band is a question that outlasts this show by some distance.

Thanks to Dave and Kelly. Sixty years, two bands, one name — and Robert “Kool” Bell still out there with the bass.

Broadcast 27 July 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:00 NZ Net Radio – VS Kool and The Gang 70s vs 80s

1:04 Kool & The Gang – Hollywood Swinging

2:22 NZ Net Radio – VS Kool and The Gang 70s vs 80s

3:26 Kool & The Gang – Celebration

4:47 NZ Net Radio – VS Kool and The Gang 70s vs 80s

5:51 Kool & The Gang – Summer Madness

7:15 NZ Net Radio – VS Kool and The Gang 70s vs 80s

8:19 Kool & The Gang – Fresh

9:40 NZ Net Radio – VS Kool and The Gang 70s vs 80s

10:44 Kool & The Gang – Misled

Today’s In the Mix stays close to home. New Zealand isn’t a country anyone associates with prog rock — no stadium tours, no Mellotron-stacked arena shows — but for a brief window in the early-to-mid 1970s, a handful of bands here were chasing the same ambitions as Yes, Genesis and King Crimson, usually on a fraction of the budget and often with only one Mellotron between the lot of them (allegedly). Most of these records sold in the hundreds, not thousands, when they came out. Decades on, original pressings of albums like Think’s We’ll Give You a Buzz or Ragnarok’s self-titled debut change hands for hundreds of dollars among collectors — a strange kind of vindication for records nobody bought the first time round.

This set runs roughly chronological, from Tom Thumb’s 1970 Ludgate Hill — arguably the record that started all this — through to Farmyard, Living Force, and the rest of the class of ‘76-‘77, right as punk and disco were making this kind of thing thoroughly unfashionable. It’s not a complete history — there’s no room tonight for Dragon’s early symphonic material, or The Cleves, or a dozen others worth a whole episode of their own — but it’s a decent cross-section of just how seriously a small scene, a long way from anywhere, took the whole prog project. We close out back in 1970 with Farmyard.

Recommended further reading from Audioculture:

Prog Rock in NZ: a short history

Ten Moments in New Zealand prog

Broadcast 24 July 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:02 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Prog Rock Friday - Kiwi Edition

1:06 Tom Thumb – Ludgate Hill

2:10 Lutha – Sun Song (Anaximander Rambling)

3:28 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Prog Rock Friday - Kiwi Edition

4:32 Split Enz – Walking Down a Road

5:36 Ragnarok – Five New Years

6:51 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Prog Rock Friday - Kiwi Edition

7:55 Think – Our Children (Think About)

8:59 Schtung – Au Revoir

10:17 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Prog Rock Friday - Kiwi Edition

11:21 AIRLORD – Earthborn Pilgrim

12:25 Living Force – Matter Monster

13:40 NZ Net Radio – In the Mix: Prog Rock Friday - Kiwi Edition

14:44 Farmyard – Which Way Confusion (Part 2)

We were pleased to be joined by Sughosh Varadarajan to talk about five of his favourite tracks from Al Stewart. Note unfortunately we have a short audio dropout in the last discussion.

Not many songwriters can claim to have invented their own genre — but Al Stewart arguably did exactly that. Born Alastair Ian Stewart in Greenock, Scotland in 1945 and raised in Bournemouth on the English south coast, Stewart came up through the 1960s London folk club scene before carving out a unique niche combining folk-rock with meticulously researched historical storytelling. He called it, simply, his way of writing songs. Everyone else eventually called it historical folk rock.

In this episode, guest Sughosh brings his five favourite Al Stewart tracks — and it’s a selection that traces the full arc of Stewart’s classic period, from the austere epic folk of Past, Present and Future in 1973 through to a blazing live performance at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles in 1981.

It’s a remarkable body of work from an artist who shared a London flat with a young Paul Simon, bought his first guitar from a pre-Police Andy Summers, and took guitar lessons from King Crimson’s Robert Fripp — and who somehow turned all of that eclectic brilliance into music that remains genuinely, enduringly beautiful.

You can find a discussion with Sughosh about Al Stewart’s music on The Music Den YouTube channel:

Attack of the Killer ‘B’ Sides: Al Stewart : Past, Present & Future

Broadcast 22 July 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:00 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Al Stewart

1:04 Al Stewart – Roads to Moscow

2:26 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Al Stewart

3:30 Al Stewart – Sirens of Titan

4:49 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Al Stewart

5:53 Al Stewart – Year of the Cat

7:10 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Al Stewart

8:14 Al Stewart – The Palace of Versailles

9:31 NZ Net Radio – Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Al Stewart

10:35 Al Stewart – Nostradamus (Live 1981)