How do you know when to clap? Rob Ryan is an artist, a poet, a Northern Soul aficionado, and a totally human being. He's also one of my best mates. I loved this conversation that lists and lurches from why punk was dead before it was dead, getting late night buses to Wigan for soul all-nighters, why scarcity isn't a good thing, why the thing that keeps him going is the thought that there is something else out there that he hasn't seen or heard yet. This appetite and drive is about curiosity. It runs through Rob like "BLACKPOOL" through a stick of rock. He embraces "never quite knowing what he is doing" in terms of the media he is using, as do I. He says he has "kind of made it work". I think that's an understatement. One of the most humble and nicest people I know.