Word In Your Ear

Things we've been talking about this week include the great NME mis-selling scandal of the 90s, the grisly details of MC Hammer's 1998 bankruptcy, and the days when you could see Neil Young and have enough change to buy a bag of chips on the way home. Also: Pugwash drop in to talk about getting fan mail from Jeff Lynne and play a song from their new album, and we discuss an amazing documentary called Dreams Of A Life.

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Latitude and Reading/Leeds promoter Melvin Benn remembers his first event - an anti-Thatcher gig in ’79 - while elsewhere there’s the unadulterated chaos of Axl Rose and girlfriend at Reading (the festival he helped save from bankruptcy), memories of Nirvana, the time he and Michael Eavis defended Worthy Farm against anarchists with petrol bombs, and the revelation that promoters can “play God” with the weather conditions.

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Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Fraser Lewry debate whether there really is such a thing as a ropey Beatles record, the best food they've ever had at a gig, and the ethics of flying in samples during live performances. Plus Mike Doughty, talking about his career and his extraordinary memoir The Book Of Drugs.

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The UK’s premier crime-thriller writer Mark Billingham enters the pod and subjects his obsessions to forensic enquiry - among them The Smiths, Genesis, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. There’s some sound advice – "if you get caught shoplifting, at least nick something fashionable". There’s his four minutes dancing onstage with Elvis Costello and the time Morrissey let him to use some Smiths lyrics in one of his novels. And the fatwa from furious Phil Collins supporters.

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We talk about great unexpected shows. David Hepworth goes to see Randy Newman and finds himself sitting behind some people who are clinically incapable of resisting the temptation to talk. Plus Green Gartside and Rhodri Marsden of Scritti Politti drop in to sing a couple of songs and talk about buying old Little Feat albums in the 70s.

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The wildly prolific songwriter – and leader of The Soft Boys, Egyptians, Venus 3 and, currently, The Floating Palace collective – tackles life’s big issues. Such as why The Beatles were doomed as solo projects, the magic twin poles of the Syd Barrett lyric method, and the rigours of playing an entire set of David Bowie classics. Plus some riveting stuff on the ‘78 gig circuit and the Battle Of The Somme.

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Nige Tassell comes up from Somerset and (fatally) brings us something to drink. Before it takes effect we cover the following stuff: David Hepworth wonders why the best venues for rock and roll are always the ones built long before rock and roll was ever thought of. We ask when did school choirs start singing Adele songs and is this entirely a good idea? We have a quick chat and a song from Band Of Skulls, and Nige shares some of his most treasured old cassettes with us.

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On February 27th Eliza Carthy plays the pub across the road in one of our Word In Your Ear series of live shows. In this special shortcast she tells David Hepworth what kind of music was playing in the house when she was growing up, how she had a thing for Rick Astley and how her boyfriend made her give her Barbies away to the charity shop. Bastard. A few tickets for the show, which features Eliza plus full five piece band, supported by Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo plus Left With Pictures, are still available.

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This podcast has lots in it: Mark Ellen taking a blunt instrument to his phone, the debt Madonna’s half-time Superbowl show owed to Elizabeth Taylor’s quiet entrance into Rome in the movie Cleopatra, the feminizing of pop, the people who’ve made more than one great album, how we know Lady Gaga isn’t a real blonde and the likelihood of a movement like punk getting swallowed up by Facebook. Plus a visit from Dodgy to talk up their new record Stand Upright In A Cool Place, Fraser’s recipe for a warming soup and the cat on the pitch at Anfield. Should be enough to get you home through the snow.

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This podcast features interviews with two fascinating guests: Nick Coleman talks to David Hepworth about his excellent new book The Train in The Night, which touches on all kinds of things: why boys feel the need to define themselves by their tastes, what it’s like listening to a Nazareth album with your dad, how the brain eventually rewires itself to make up for the information it’s missing and the fact that people like us actually have far more records in our heads than even the biggest jukeboxes. We’ve also been visited by Yolanda Quartey, the sensational singer with Bristol’s Phantom Limb, whose new album The Pines is out now and who will be featured in the CD with the next issue. She brought with her a couple of live recordings made especially for the Word podcast.

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