Your Brother Should Know

With 134 authorized albums and counting, Frank Zappa's discography is the most intimidating in rock history. A curious agnostic quizzes a die-hard Zappa head on the essential albums, eras, sounds and stylistic changes, and asks the most pressing question of all, does humour really belong in music? 

A summer special from YBSK, a podcast uniting two long-lost brothers who never shared a childhood, so are sharing the albums that shaped them today.

As the second season of Your Brother Should Know draws to a close, our two long-lost brothers look back on the formative albums they discussed and dissected, to answer the immortal question: does your brother really need to know them? And more importantly, do you?

Without realising that Rob might just have heard of the super-influential soul-funk-pop icon, Dave pitches Rob one of Stevie Wonder’s many finest moments. In our final episode of season two, we stretch the YBSK concept to breaking point, and celebrate one of the greatest albums ever. But the big question, is this Stevie’s finest hour, and what should you listen to next?

***NOT AI art***

Cover image a real, big and magnificent painting by Maddy Butcher @maddybutcher 

James Murphy, cynical genius or twisted narcissist? Maybe a bit of both on the basis of LCD Soundsystem's majestic second LP, an album as shiny as it is reflective.

In a Your Brother Should Know first, we publish an interview from Rob’s limited library of encounters with music’s great, good and mediocre. In the first category, we can safely file Midge Ure: guitarist, singer, songwriter, Live Aid founder, member of Thin Lizzy, Visage, and much more in between. Find out from the man himself what it's like to be simultaneously Brilliant (Ultravox, 2012) and Fragile (solo album 2014), where he stands on Scottish independence, and why he turned down the chance to be a Sex Pistol. If you’re really interested, then wind back to Rob and Dave’s companion episode on the classic Ultravox album Vienna, and find out just how much they got wrong about Midge’s life.

This is as far back down his personal musical memory lane that Dave can go. The enigma that is Ultravox –  a proper band with an engaging thirst for all things shiny and electronic? Or second rate rockers, papering over the cracks with third rate synthology? Dave thinks they remain full of Western Promise, but will Rob find they were Passing Strangers to talent, leaving him in a Sleepwalk? And who is Mr X anyway?

Bon Jovi’s These Days was the first album Rob ever fell in love with, and three decades later he’s convinced that this grunge-influenced left turn would be hailed as a masterpiece today had it been made by any other band. 

Which is why, ahead of These Days’ 30th anniversary, Rob insisted his long-lost brother needed to hear it. Will the prog-loving poodle rock-adverse Dave fall for Bon Jovi’s uncharacteristically angsty, mid-90s masterpiece, or laugh it back to the footnotes of given-up glam metal lore? 

Also, how much of this album was really down to MIA guitarist Richie Sambora, and what’s the deal with Jon Bon Jovi’s beleaguered voice today?

Notes and references

Rob’s largely positive 2011 live review: https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/255317/Review-Bon-Jovi-at-Hard-Rock-Calling

Rob’s not very positive 2015 review:

Rob shitting on Burning Bridges:

Rob on seeing the band for a fifth time:

He finally went there. After 13 episodes doing everything he could to tangentially turn the conversation to prog rock, Dave forced his younger brother to actually listen to some. Rob did not come to the party without preconceptions – namely that 70s prog is the least sexy music in the world, listened to only by celibate Chemistry teachers in Middle England. Did Jethro Tull’s sprawling, tongue-in-cheek single-song opus change his mind? And, most importantly, who the hell is Biggles?

To celebrate a decade of You're Dead being in the world, we unpack the frenetic fusion and genre-bleeding majesty of FlyLo's afterlife-inspired masterwork.

Opium, abuse, prostitution, depression, addiction, gonorrhoea ... and plenty of pop ditties? The intrepid brothers attempt to unravel the conflicted muses (and deep Jacques Brel obsession) of Scott Walker's best-selling outing.