Teenage Wasteland

Paddy Hanna joins Teenage Wasteland to talk Thin Lizzy, growing up in Castleknock, childhood horror films and finding his way into music through friendship, Radiohead and an Elvis Costello-inspired guitar. From the wild days of Grand Pocket Orchestra to his solo work, we trace a musical life shaped by curiosity and perseverance. At its heart is his beautiful new album, Paddy Hanna’s Bacharach Show Volume One, out November 20 via Strange Brew. Plus - sharing a stage with Burt Bacharach, and why Tom Waits’ 'Flower’s Grave' is his favourite song of all time.

In this episode of Teenage Wasteland, 'Blue Jay Way' becomes a road into the curious mythology of Los Angeles. From The Beatles and Pink Floyd to Death Grips, Frank Black and the Pixies, Mike Davis’s City of Quartz, David Lynch and Naomi Watts, Chinatown and William Mulholland - we follow a single Hollywood Hills address outward into music, movies, water, power and the city itself - and ask how one Beatles song can contain so much of Los Angeles.

Darren Morrissey and Greg Marshall left Dublin for London with two acoustic guitars, a pile of songs and not much of a plan. What followed was busking, chance encounters, beautiful two-part harmonies, two albums, years on the road - and then, after a final show in Mumbai in 2019, silence.

Now Morrissey & Marshall are back.

In this episode of Teenage Wasteland, we trace the story from their early days in Dublin and the move to London, through being discovered by John Reynolds, recording And So It Began and We Rise, and the strange chemistry that happens when two voices lock together.

Bonnie Bloomgarden of Death Valley Girls joins Teenage Wasteland to talk teenage Los Angeles, ska, discovering Black Sabbath, tracing Sabbath back through blues and jazz, moving to New York, recording with Tommy Ramone, returning to LA, losing her home in the fires, and the hopeful new album Welcome to Earth.

Manchester guitarist Aziz Ibrahim traces his journey from playing pub gigs at twelve to Simply Red, Asia, Hot Chocolate and replacing John Squire in The Stone Roses. He talks Buddy Holly, Bollywood, desi guitar, Ian Brown, Lahore to Longsight, and why originality, for him, is the purest form of imperfection.

Comedian, actor and Hardy Buck, Owen Colgan, takes us through an eclectic Teenage Wasteland from Buck Owens to Pussycat Dolls, Alanis Morissette to Audioslave and from growing up in Bohola , County Mayo to moving to Galway City and meeting the rest of the Hardy Buck crew.

In this episode of Teenage Wasteland, musician Shane Kennedy sits at the heart of a journey through the extraordinary history of 'Dink’s Song'.

From its early twentieth-century origins beside the Brazos River to versions by Pete Seeger, Odetta, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley and others, the episode explores how a traditional song changes as it passes from singer to singer.

Also Shane discusses how he approached the song, what he changed, and what it means to inherit something this old - before performing his version in full.

Dink’s Song’ performed by Shane Kennedy. Recordingused with permission; recording rights cleared for this programme.Research Sources and Further Reading

Books, Archives and Research

John A. Lomax, “Self-Pity in Folk-Songs,” The Nation,1917.

John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, American Ballads and FolkSongs, Macmillan, 1934.
John A. Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter,Macmillan, 1947.
Francis Lee Utley, “The Genesis and Revival of ‘Dink’s Song’,”1966.
Nolan Porterfield, Last Cavalier: The Life and Times ofJohn A. Lomax, 1867–1948, University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Elijah Wald, Josh White: Society Blues, University ofMassachusetts Press, 2000.

Hamilton Darby Perry, Libby Holman: Body and Soul,Little, Brown, 1983.

American Folklife Center, Library of Congress — John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax collections.

Smithsonian Folkways — archival recordings, liner notes anddiscographical material relating to Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, Dave Van Ronk and the American folk revival.

The Traditional Ballad Index — entries for “Dink’s Song” and“Careless Love.”

Selected Recordings

Libby Holman with Josh White, 'Fare Thee Well', 1942.

Cisco Houston, 'Dink’s Song', 1954.

Harry Belafonte, 'Fare Thee Well', 1958.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, 'Dink’s Song', 1958.

Pete Seeger, 'Dink’s Song', 1959.

Dave Van Ronk, 'Dink’s Song', 1961.

Bob Dylan, 'Dink’s Song', recorded 1961; released on TheBootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home, 2005.

Odetta, 'If I Had Wings', 1962.

The Big 3, featuring Cass Elliot, 'Nora’s Dove (Dink’sSong)', 1963.

Joni Mitchell, 'Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)', c. 1963;released on Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 1, 2020.

The Simon Sisters, 'Dink’s Blues', 1960s.

Fred Neil, 'Faretheewell (Fred’s Tune)', 1960s.

Jeff Buckley, 'Dink’s Song', recorded live at Sin-é,1993.

Roger McGuinn with Pete Seeger and Josh White Jr., 'Dink’sSong', 2001.

Frank Black, 'Fare Thee Well', 2006.

Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford, 'Fare Thee Well (Dink’sSong)', Inside Llewyn Davis, 2013.

Waylon Jennings, 'Dink’s Blues', posthumously released2025.

Shane Kennedy, 'Dink’s Song', Ireland, 2026.

Film and Television

Cloak and Dagger, dir. Fritz Lang, 1946 —Lilli Palmer performs part of “Dink’s Song.”

Cheyenne, “Fury at Rio Hondo,” 1956 —Peggy Castle performs the song.

Inside Llewyn Davis, dirs.Joel and Ethan Coen, 2013 — features multiple interpretations of “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song).”

In May 1990, a young David Holmes brought Orbital to Belfast Art College. After the show, Paul Hartnoll handed him a cassette of unfinished demos. Holmes and his friends played one track obsessively while driving around Belfast. It had no title.

That track became 'Belfast'

This episode traces Sugar Sweet, Space Base 4, the arrival of rave culture in Belfast, the Hartnoll brothers before Orbital, 'Chime', the lost cassette and the road to the Green Album.

Research Sources & Further Reading

Conversation with Gareth McConnell

Stuart Bailie, Trouble Songs: Music and Conflict in Northern Ireland, Bloomfield Press, 2018.

Stuart Bailie, 'The Ideal Holmes Exhibition'. Hot Press.

Richard Fitzpatrick, 'Culture That Made Me: David Holmes on Orbital, Sinéad O’Connor and La Dolce Vita', Irish Examiner, 17 June 2024.

Paul Hartnoll, 'Belfast and the Other One', Starting Again, 6 September 2015.

Dray Morgan, 'The Tale Behind Orbital and Their Track ‘Belfast’, District Magazine, 7 June 2024.

'Aural Alchemy: A Brief History of Clubbing in Belfast', Technology Stole My Vinyl, 13 June 2014.

Orbital, Green Album, official Orbital discography.

'How Orbital Created the Blissful Masterpiece ‘Belfast’', 909originals, 7 January 2021.

Stuart Aitken, 'Mistletoe and Chime: The Story of Orbital’s Acid House', The Guardian, 16 December 2013.

'Orbital’s Paul and Phil Hartnoll Look Back', The Guardian, 10 February 2024.

Teenage Wasteland — a podcast about the best music in the world.

Teenage Wasteland enters a new chapter with From the Blaskets to the Bronx - a researched audio documentary centred on the extraordinary Mícheál Ó Gaoithín and the strange routes by which stories, sounds and memories survive.

From the oral tradition of the Blaskets to Kool Herc’s breakbeats, Endtroducing…..and the making of Ryan’s Daughter, this is a story about fragments being carried forward and made new.

Research Sources and Further Reading

The Blaskets, Oral Tradition and Folklore

Paul Hockings and Mark McCarty, The Village — filmed in Dún Chaoin in 1967 and released in 1968.

National Folklore Collection, UCD, and Dúchas.ie.

Mícheál Ó Gaoithín, A Pity Youth Does Not Last: Reminiscences of the Last of the Great Blasket Island’s Poets and Storytellers, translated by Tim Enright.

Robin Flower, The Western Island, or the Great Blasket.

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, Twenty Years A-Growing, translated by Moya Llewelyn Davies and George Thomson.

James Stewart, comp., Boccaccio in the Blaskets.

Bo Almqvist, “The Mysterious Mícheál Ó Gaoithín, Boccaccio and the Blasket Tradition: Reflections Occasioned by James Stewart’s Boccaccio in the Blaskets,” Béaloideas 58, 1990, pp. 75–140.

The Irish Folklore Commission and the work of Seán Ó Súilleabháin.

An Claidheamh Soluis, the Gaelic League newspaper.

Hip-Hop, Technology and Cultural Memory

Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.

Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.

Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music.

Nelson George, Hip Hop America.

Archival interviews and material concerning Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and the Universal Zulu Nation.

DJ Shadow and Sampling

Conversation with The Expert.

DJ Shadow, Endtroducing….. (1996).

Doug Pray, dir., Scratch (2001).

Eliot Wilder, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….., 33⅓ series.

Mark Richardson, “DJ Shadow on the Music That Made Him,” Pitchfork, 2020.

David Lean, Film and Adaptation

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago.

Kevin Brownlow, David Lean: A Biography.

Paul Benedict Rowan, Making Ryan’s Daughter: The Myths, Madness and Mastery.

Specific Steven Spielberg interviews discussing David Lean and Lawrence of Arabia.

Filmmaker Paul Duane looks back on growing up in Cashel, the books, music and cinema that shaped him, and the barely existent Irish film industry he entered in the 1980s. He talks about finding his way as a director and also discusses The Pogues, the flamboyant English artist Sebastian Horsley and the genius of Martin Scorsese.