Word In Your Ear

Things given a grilling this week in hot pursuit of revelation and entertainment …

.. would YOU pay £45 to see Ian Brown and some backing tracks?

… the life of the late Joe Bussard, collector of 25,000 78s “who partied like it was 1929”. Joe thought real jazz ended in 1933 and the last great country record was Jimmy Murphy’s I’m Looking For A Mustard Patch. We love this man.

... career-shrinking band names.

… Chunkz, Pieface and the Beast: new adventures in stadium-filling entertainment.

… is Nuggets the most famous and influential compilation ever released?

… best albums of cover versions – among them Moondog Matinee, the Seeger Sessions, Irish Heartbeat, McCartney’s Back In The USSR, Pin-Ups, These Foolish Things.

… Paul Scholes meets Gary Neville.

… rock stars separated by a single letter.

… and more songs about seagulls and chips.  

A short film about Joe Bussard here …

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OPhtR09p6zM&feature=share&utm_source=EKLEiJECCKjOmKnC5IiRIQ

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/arts/a-loving-obsession-with-oldtime-jazz.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Desperate Man Blues …

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375702/

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In powerful pursuit of amusement and distraction we aim the piercing supertrouper of scrutiny this week in the direction of …

… why Ry Cooder MUST write a memoir.

… records that sounded like nothing you’d ever heard before, eg the Message by Grandmaster Flash and Donna Summer’s I Feel Love.  

... nighttime footage of the State Funeral rehearsal.

… why ‘Delhi Crime’ on TV makes the Wire’s Baltimore look like Stoke Poges.

… dinner with the “fantastically indiscreet” Tony King.

… why Hilary Mantel was such a phenomenal writer – and an extract that demonstrates it.

… the return of the Stackwaddy game: James Brown/Frank Zappa track or advertising slogan?

… Beefheart selling Aldous Huxley a vacuum cleaner.

Plus … birthday patron Ed Newman beams in from his shift at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary with thoughts about Ravel’s Bolero, Dylan and Beatles podcasts and an inspired music book idea with a medical twist that someone must – MUST! – publish!

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The Eiffel Tower dimmed its lights, the radio played “music for a solemn occasion” and this week’s pod is a reflection about the woman who’s been Queen all our lives (and we’re old enough to remember the national anthem being played in cinemas), why she looked so heroically bored, her diplomatic approach to clapping, whether she viewed life “through binoculars held the wrong way round” and how hard it will be – and how long it will take - to adjust to a world without her. And the wonderful tale of Dave’s personal wave.

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Among the thoughts, theories and assorted old hokey in the firing line this week you will happily find …

… rock biopics someone ought to be making

… memories of Drummie Zeb and Aswad at Nottingham Boat Club

… the time British Forces radio turned down Whitney Houston

… the “awful fat man that spoilt Lady Di’s memorial for everyone”

… the slight return of the Stackwaddy game - Prince’s pseudonyms!

… Louis Armstrong at Batley Variety Club

… Pete Drummond’s hilariously goofy intro to Tim Buckley’s Dream Letter live album

... Townes Van Zandt reissued on 8-track: bizarre technology twist or inspired-but-fictional PR stunt?

... ‘70s festivals that made the tent-torching Reading of 2022 look like a picnic

… why even Pitbull, U2 and Usher are playing residencies in Las Vegas

… the extraordinary early life Anni-Frid of Abba

… movies under construction – Martin Scorsese and the Grateful Dead, Sam Taylor-Johnson and Amy Winehouse

... and a birthday encounter with cornerstone Word In Your Ear supporter Jelltex.  

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, ad-free and with full visuals... alongside a whole host of brilliant and exclusive extra content, benefits and rewards!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Welcome to this week’s pod in which various white-hot topics are brought in for questioning, among them …

… Whatever happened to Dando Shaft?

… Alastair Sim, Terry-Thomas and flowsy saxophones in The Belles of St Trinian’s

… Does it matter if music-making acts are fictitious or that rappers are artificial and produced by computer graphics and AI?

… how many people were in Keith Tippett’s Centipede (the clue’s in the name)?

… Titus Groan and Demon Fuzz

… is there anything the lily-livered music business is prepared to defend?

… puddings delivered by Deliveroo

… Jann Wenner and the caviar spoons

… the ‘greening’ of Reading Festival

… and what kind of sane world allows pop music at hotel breakfasts?

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In bold and vigorous pursuit of entertainment we steer via the following topics …

… Thora Hird with a rifle.

… acts who wrote rejected songs for Bond movies.

… the legend of Van Duren.

… hilariously awful revelations about the private plane use of Taylor Swift, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg etc on @CelebJets.  

… is pop music now largely about an old thing re-discovered?

… the late Judith Durham of the Seekers and other great ‘stirring’ voices of our time.

… a record we haven’t played for 44 years.

… Beyoncé and her re-written lyric (and can it really need 25 people to write a song?).

… exploding gas cylinders, toppled lighting towers, mass arson and looting, State troopers … the new Netflix three-part doc ‘Trainwreck: Woodstock 99’, the gripping – genuinely shocking – chronicle of one of the lowest points in entertainment history.

… and BJ Cole in an ale shop.

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Our weekly stroll through the sunlit uplands of rock and roll visits the following topics …

… Bob Dylan’s worst lyrics

… musicians in movies, actors who made albums (Judi Dench?) and the slight return of the Stackwaddy game

… why Hole in The Ground is the greatest comedy record ever made, plus the staggering versatility of Bernard Cribbins

… the contents of the basket at the beginning of Two-Way Stretch

… the incomparable comic genius of Clive James

… the achingly self-conscious Barack Obama summer reading and playlist. Kendrick Lamar? Bad Bunny & Bomba Estéreo? You sure?

… the night at the Railway Tavern in 1964 that Pete Townshend accidently invented “auto-destruction”

… and live consumption of fruity summer ale from the Ink Spot micropub in Newbiggin by the Sea (thanks to Simon and Ange).

‘Hole In The Ground’ by Bernard Cribbins …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-JVnlB7Onk

The Ink Spot microbrewery …

https://www.theinkspot49.co.uk/

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While Mark Ellen is away in his French chateau, David Hepworth goes off on one about Bruce Springsteen tours and why you can't use "dynamic pricing" in the world of live music and why the concert-going audience can always be divided into the bringer and the brung.

Plus Alex Gold explains why he chose to go to southern Italy in the middle of an unprecedented heat wave with not one but two pairs of Doc Martens while also throwing light on the eternal mystery of why young men will put up with discomfort and privation on a medieval scale as long as they're in a band.

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In which we paddle our conversational canoe through the rock and roll backwaters, stopping off this week at …

… the closure of Word magazine ten years ago and what we miss – and don’t miss - about it.

… who in their right mind in this day and age would possibly want to be famous?

… Bruce Findlay, the country’s only famous record store owner.

… the energetic sexual activities of Dave Davies in his new memoir and the uniquely mid-‘60s British concept of ‘kinkiness’.

… Dave Grohl reaches ‘the Meldrew Point’ – as old as Richard Wilson when he first played Victor Meldrew (who was a year older than Wilfred Brambell when he played Paul’s grandad).

.. the documentary someone should make about the Rubettes.

… Manny Charlton of Nazareth RIP and the bizarre pop fact that one of their biggest hits was a Joni Mitchell cover.

… handcuffed men in court for stealing rare Eagles artefacts.

… whether the legendarily awful Be Here Now album deserves a gentler appraisal 25 years later. Don’t forget it starts with “a minute of helicopter noise and morse code”.

… and birthday patron Allan Williams’ collection of Hipgnosis album sleeves – paging Picnic, Helloe’en and Music From Free Creek!

You can buy Dave Davies’ memoir Living On A Thin Line here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Thin-Line-Dave-Davies/dp/1472289773

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world... and with full visuals!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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High in the conversational mix this week …

 … the return the Stackwaddy game! - do Ben & Jerry’s do a Bohemian Raspberry? Are there really Apple Music genres called Pillow Talk and Countrypolitan?

… Errol Flynn and his dachshund water-skiing. 

… James Caan’s opening scene in Misery.

… is Nick Kyrgios the first ‘rap’ tennis star?

… why ‘Indie’ doesn’t tolerate non-conformity (or success) – plus Razorlight and other bands who let you down.

… bizarre combinations of celebrities we’ve bumped into at the BBC – eg Ronnie Corbett and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

.. the vital importance of communal suffering at rock festivals.

… and can you get your money’s worth from a £1.5m one-off original Bob Dylan musical ‘artwork’?

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Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.