Bret McKenzie now mainly works on movie soundtracks, the Simpsons, Minecraft and the Muppets among them, which brings the pure delight of hearing his songs sung by Lady Gaga, Benedict Cumberbatch, Miss Piggy and Tony Bennett. He talks here about his early life in Wellington (ballet teacher Mum, racehorse trainer Dad), narrative comedy, songwriting heroes and his new album Freak Out City, and unravels New Zealand’s double-edged sense of humour. Along with …

… how Randy Newman pitches songs for soundtracks

… “the test of a good song works is if it works with just one instrument”

… lyrics he loved growing up like 16 Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford – ‘Some people say a man is made out of mud/ A poor man's made out of muscle and blood’

… Morrissey’s wounded reaction to his sausage-firing Quilloughby on the Simpsons ‘Panic On The Streets Of Springfield’

... solving the “fun puzzles” of a song brief and writing for “donkeys who have a dream”

… the ingenious humour of John Prine, Harry Nilsson and Leonard Cohen

… the moment in his live shows where he asks the audience for a story and creates a song around it – “one woman suggested ‘falling out of love’ with her husband standing right beside her”

... playing the local girls schools aged 15 as the drummer in a James Brown funk band

… reworking rejected songs – “which was hard with one from Paddington with its multiple rhymes for marmalade and Peru”

… Flight Of The Conchords lampooning the acts they loved (Bowie, Pet Shop Boys) and playing the O2 – “pretending to be a stadium band and the audience pretending to be a stadium audience”

… live on-stage application of the John Lennon “pomegranate” lyric-solving technique

… “Play like a used car salesman! I need a Steely Dan solo here!” Recording with LA session legends like Leland Sklar.

Order Bret’s ‘Freak Out City’ album here: https://music.subpop.com/bretmckenzie_freakoutcity

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Tour dates and tickets …

https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/bret-mckenzie-tickets/artist/5380913

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Justin Currie recorded and toured with Del Amitri and solo for 30 years and his travelogue The Tremolo Diaries perfectly captures the rhythm of life on the road. He talks to us here about combative crowds, the curious bubble you occupy and a recent shock diagnosis that’s forced some adjustments. This includes …

… hard-won rules for life on tour: “Never leave the boat, stay in the bubble, never interact with real life, always maintain low-level adrenaline.”

… seeing Dr Feelgood in ’77 “who passed the punk rock smell test”.

… choreographed abuse from rugby club members; a Liberal Party benefit with his Beefheart-like school band; following rock antagonists Jackyl at Woodstock 2; being pelted with toilet rolls at an ice hockey stadium in Minneapolis.

… the tensions between the Glasgow acts from the Gorbals and the “influx of enormous middle-class twats like us”.  

… bands who look exactly like they sound.

… Edwyn Collins as style icon – fringe, corduroy, plaid – and how it took courage to walk round Glasgow dressed like that in the early ‘80s, “a scary place full of pitch battles and hooligans”.  

… the loss of the pop tribes when pop music was subsumed into the entertainment business.  

… Michael Stipe’s advice about life on the road and how that changes when you’re over 40.

… “if an audience doesn’t like you, the smaller that audience, the worse it is”.  

… and his medical diagnosis in 2022 “and my negotiations with the disease”.

Order the Tremolo Diaries here: https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Tremolo-Diaries/Justin-Currie/9781917923002

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Just when you thought it was safe to listen to a weekly rock and roll podcast …

… how Black Sabbath discovered the dark side

… why Elvis went onstage with a pistol in both boots

… rock stars out of their comfort zone

… five perfect things about Jaws we’d never taken onboard

… Ozzy Osbourne, the bungled burglary and the fingerless gloves

… Tony Iommi’s accident and how limitations are always strengths

… beautiful men in military jackets and “an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon"

… was Presley’s Americanness the most appealing thing about him?

… rock stars managed by their wives

… “everything was derived from American R&B and then we were plunged into this medieval graveyard. How could that possibly be entertainment?”

… Syd Barrett outtakes? Rare Nina Simone? Richly competitive tape-making in music magazine offices

… Colonel Tom Parker’s ‘Honesty’ game – “think of the number I’m thinking of and I’ll pay you if you’re right!”

… and birthday guest David Cook on how meeting musicians changes your view of their music.

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Cally Colomon looks after the legacy of Nick Drake, who died in 1974 but attracts new teenage admirers all the time. Here he talks to David Hepworth about just some of what that involves, including:

…chancers getting in touch with a bogus live recording when they’ve got a tax bill to pay

… film producers wishing to superimpose their image of Nick Drake on everybody else’s

…spending months in the archives finding out exactly what is on every tape

…listening to people who claim they know exactly what happened on a Tuesday sixty years ago

…sorting out the real material from the bogus to put together a set which expands our understanding of the 1969 recording

…responding to people who think all this work should somehow be available for free.

The Making of Five Leaves Left: https://NickDrake.lnk.to/TMOFLL

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Suzi Quatro’s been onstage from the age of 14 as the bassist in the all-girl showband the Pleasure Seekers and the rock act Cradle. And then moved to England in 1971 when signed by Mickie Most. This podcast is a testament to the power of self-belief – she’s got more front than Woolworths! - and the two things her father told her. She’s just started another world tour and talks to us here about …

… how British “island humour” took a while to get used to.

… two deals in a week: “Elektra wanted the second Janis Joplin. Mickie Most wanted the first Suzi Quatro.”

… seeing Elvis on Ed Sullivan aged five and thinking “that’s what I want to do”. And how his comeback changed the clothes she wore.

… why playing a disastrous Sgt Pepper set at a ‘60s festival was a fork in the road.

… knowing she had “the X-Factor, the charisma button”.

… hard times in Crouch End while waiting for a hit and how Chinn & Chapman turned her sound in three-minute singles.

… supporting Slade and Thin Lizzy – and being supported by Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult.

… wise advice her father gave her.

… playing Leather Tuscadero in Happy Days and reunions with Henry Winkler.

… Michael Aspel wandering on from the wings for ‘This Is Your Life’ at the Palladium.

Order tickets here: http://www.suziquatro.com/

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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A rain-splashed, dub-filled, cash-scattering foray into this week’s news and events which happily lands upon …

… meeting Maddy Prior – a Prior engagement? – and the time Steeleye Span showered their audience with £8,000.

… hearing Nick Drake’s demos on a narrowboat in the pitch dark a few hundred feet below London.

… Steve Miller’s cancelled tour, absurdly blamed on the weather.  

… who’s older, Lulu or the King? Kim Wilde or William Hague? Neil Tennant or Andy Fraser of Free?

… Bob Marley at the Lyceum in 1975 – the confidence of their pace, the heft of their sound, what the audience wore. And David’s backing vocal on No Woman No Cry.

… the ugliest group in history – “they make Crabby Appleton look like the Walker Brothers”.

… an imagined duet by Rick Astley and David Cameron.

… is Bob Dylan the Tommy Cooper of rock and roll?

… David Ackles and the curse of “the greatest album ever made”.

… the Coldplay ‘Kiss-cam’ clip – “either they’re having an affair or just very shy”.

… the crackle of crime at ‘70s gigs.

 … how someone could have seen the opening night of Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush and – 50 years later - Bob Marley at the Lyceum.

… why aren’t there still fanzines with names like Ptolemaic Terrascope?

… and birthday guest Gianluca Tramontagna claims Bob Dylan is neither sage, seer or prophet but an immensely comic “song and dance man”.

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Picked up in the great singer-songwriter sweep of the late 60s and signed to Elektra Records, David Ackles made four albums which went over the heads of the record-buying public, attracted over-the-top reviews and earned the undying devotion of fans like Elvis Costello and Elton John. Now Mark Brend’s book brings together an appreciation of his work with an account of his career before and after the three period when he was going to be the next big thing, taking in…

….the night he found himself supporting his biggest fan Elton John at the Troubadour in Los Angeles

….his year in Berkshire planning and recording “American Gothic”, an album about his distant homeland

…how two different record companies took him to their hearts but had no earthly clue how to promote him

…why it is that rock fans who boast of their eclectic tastes can’t deal with anything which sounds like musical theatre

…will he ever join the pantheon in which we have installed Nick Drake, Judee Sill and the other late musicians we are pleased to call a “lost genius”?

Buy Down River: In Search of David Ackles: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Down-River-Search-David-Ackles/dp/1916829228

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Our patent fact-from-fiction separator goes into overdrive this week though sometimes, as Robert Wyatt observed, Ruth is stranger than Richard. High in the mix …

… FOMO (Fear Of Missing Oasis), Gen Z’s love of queuing and has there ever been a greater outpouring of joy at a band reunion?

…what’s the greatest musical city?

… Kevin Rowland – cheat, burglar, arsonist, menswear salesman – and his capacity for self-sabotage.

… the harder to get tickets, the more people feel compelled to go.

… Kylie Minogue is a year older than Jacob Rees-Mogg!

… the best album to come out of New Orleans.

… memoirs you can read as either comedy or tragedy.

… Ed Sheeran turns Ipswich pink.

… the Salt Path saga and the pursuit of profit over truth.

… Mirrors In The Smoke, Dust On The Wind, Echoes Through the Pines: spot the AI-generated song title!

… the Beatles’ Tree in Chiswick: let’s keep local landmarks a secret!

… John Otway’s 5,300 gigs: the hardest working man in showbiz.

… and birthday guest Patrick Butler and cities with the greatest legacy – Liverpool, Birmingham, Nashville, New York, Chicago, New Orleans?

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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John Otway – self-billed as “Rock And Roll’s Greatest Failure” - has played 5,260 gigs in 53 years, a record possibly only beaten by BB King. There are more this autumn of course. He simply can’t stop. “People buying me drinks and telling me what a good bloke I am? Why would you stop?” We talk to him here about the art of shambling stagecraft and a life lived almost permanently on the road, which involves …

... a burning desire to perform from the age of nine.

… “Don’t think before opening your mouth!”

… the rhythm of life when you play two gigs a week for five decades. And the value of ‘Micro-stardom’ - “I’m at the bar when they walk in”.  

… seeing the Move, Free and Mott the Hoople in Aylesbury.

… how people always noticed him – not least because “I was idiot-dancing by the bass speakers”.

... his first performance, a massively overwrought version of Peter Sarstedt’s Where Do You Go To My Lovely.

… best-selling Otway merch - “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better! It’s Nearly Rock And Roll But I Like It!” etc.

… “You have to capture an audience in the first 20 seconds.”

... why playing the same size venues every night doesn’t challenge you.

… a recent three-month ‘trial retirement’.

… when he estimates he’ll play his 6,000th gig.

… and his planned and bank-breaking 2026 World Tour.

John Otway tour dates here: https://www.johnotway.com/gigs.html

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Peter Hook, bold pioneer of the high, clambering, tune-filled bassline, is touring this autumn with Peter Hook & the Light. We talk to him in Prestatyn - about to deejay at mate’s birthday - about the first gigs he ever saw and played, heavy-handed club owners, tough crowds on dance floors, the world audience for his two old bands and few key moments of a long life onstage, which involves …

… why you should never read your reviews.

… how Ian Curtis was precisely the opposite of how people imagined him.

... why deejaying is “the loneliest job in the world” and three tunes to play when it all goes wrong - “and I don’t play Blue Monday for obvious reasons”.

… seeing the Nolans at Salford Rugby Club, aged 15.

… his bell bottoms, clogs and Heavy Metal phase.

… seeing Led Zeppelin and the Sex Pistols the same week – “the Pistols were so bad they were relatable. I thought I could do that!”

… Stiff Kittens’ first gig: “a third-rate punk band aping all the others”.

… how DJs need to be “belligerent” and why people find them hard to love – and the book he’s writing, ‘How Not To Be A DJ’.

… how Ian Curtis’s vision of an international Joy Division following has finally been realised – “and with three generations in the crowd”.

… radiogram-wrecking early adventures in bass guitar.

… and the reasons he wanted to leave New Order and the thrill of maintaining their legacy.

Peter Hook & The Light tickets here: https://peterhookandthelight.live/

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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