Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1. Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of tho ...
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Emeritus Professor Roly Sussex walks you through the linguistic mindfield, explaining the weird and wonderful aspects of English and many other languages.
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Bonjour! This week, Roly Sussex discusses the significance and evolution of the French language.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Best album sleeves, what’s ruined singing and pop as ‘empowerment porn’
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42:19
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Once again the ping-pong ball of conversation is batted across the rock and roll net and these are the scores on the doors … … how to wreck the national anthem. … cover versions that are better than the original. … the genius of Bob Newhart - "nutty Walt", Abraham Lincoln and that gag about country music. … virtue signalling in rock magazines. … wh…
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Who is Lawrence and why did Will Hodgkinson write a whole book about him?
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38:42
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There’s something romantic about glorious failure and Will nails it perfectly in ‘Street Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence’. Over 40 years plagued by bad luck and self-sabotage with Felt, Denim and Mozart Estate, Lawrence has pursued fame and success while refusing to do what’s required to achieve them. Will spent 12 months wandering the street…
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Backstage at Live Aid, the first Knebworth and bands that don’t get on
52:54
52:54
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Employing controversial VAR technology, we re-examine various events on the rock and roll pitch and suggest a new perspective. Those key moments include … … the “bucolic frolic” at Knebworth 50 years ago as seen from 100 yards away just past the burger van and featuring Tim Buckley, Alex Harvey, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Van Morrison, the Doobie Br…
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How Joni Mitchell joined the boys’ club and why we don’t need a comeback – by Ann Powers
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46:21
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Broadcaster and music writer Ann Powers lives in Nashville and grew up listening to Kate Bush and Blondie. The siren call of Blue sparked a life-long and deep-rooted devotion and her new book Travelling: On The Path Of Joni Mitchell takes a different tack from the standard biographies, mapping the context of the songs, the forces that drove her, th…
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We've hit the nail on the head! This week, Roly Sussex discusses the significance of metaphors in everyday language.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Twist And Shout? Spiral Scratch? Corey duBrowa celebrates the best and rarest EPs ever made
38:51
38:51
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The first EPs appeared in the late ‘40s and ‘50s (Frank Sinatra, Elvis) hitting a magical sweet spot between the album and the single and they’ve cast a spell ever since, an exotic reminder that record labels are part of the packaged goods business. Music writer Corey duBrowa stumbled across one by Oingo Boingo in the original Licorice Pizza store …
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The rock and roll ballot-box is stuffed with votes and the exit polls suggest how this week’s debate might play out. Along these lines … … is there still such a thing as British music? … John Lennon as a lavatory attendant. … Pink Floyd’s miming lessons. .. how Neil Finn cheered up the All Blacks. … the staggering difference in the UK album charts …
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Dylan Jones – Clegg’s women, Hague’s pints and “the wiring behind celebrity culture”
37:34
37:34
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We’ve known Dylan since the days he was editing i-D, Arena and GQ and he’s been a regular on our podcasts talking about his books on Live Aid, the ‘80s, David Bowie and Wichita Lineman. And he’s finally written his memoir, These Foolish Things, full of insights and stories about glam rock, punk, the Blitz, four decades of the magazine world and the…
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A Word in Your Ear: Manners and Politeness
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23:43
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Please & Thank You! This week, Roly Sussex discusses how manners and gratitude are expressed differently around the world.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Happy accidents, whooping at gigs and why the album review star system doesn’t work anymore
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49:32
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In which we hoof a few balls round the rock and roll pitch and try to stick some in the net. Extracts from the live match commentary include …. … “Whipping Post!” “Paint it black, you devil!”: when did the audience become part of the show? … the special, unrepeatable thing about Bill Evans At The Village Vanguard. … GambleGate and the most we’ve ev…
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A Word in Your Ear: Grandparents and 'Cold Turkey'
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18:34
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Marmee? Gram? Gramps? Papa? This week, Roly Sussex discusses the words we use for our older relatives.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Pop football chants, Reg ‘Reg’ Snipton sings Joni Mitchell & the tale of John Lennon’s watch
51:39
51:39
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The two-man tandem of curiosity wobbles its way down the rock and roll cyclepath pausing here to admire the view … … “We’re captive on the carousel of TIME-AH!!”: tuneless Northern club singer Reg “Reg” Snipton performs Ver Greats. … is going to gigs alone becoming a thing? ... why Phil Oakey was a better musician than any of ELP. … Seven Nation Ar…
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Only Clare Grogan knows how it feels to burst onstage from a giant birthday cake
38:36
38:36
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Clare Grogan, a regular on our podcasts and rarely off the cover when we were at Smash Hits, is on tour again with Altered Images and playing festivals in the summer – indeed her fabulous description of the bus ferrying her, Midge Ure, Nik Kershaw, Kim Wilde and Living in A Box to the stage at Rewind sounds like an old Smash Hits cartoon come to li…
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A Word in Your Ear: Written vs Spoken Languages
28:44
28:44
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Are all written languages spoken? And are all spoken languages written?By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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The wit and charisma of Kate Bush by Graeme Thomson: going too far makes you what you are
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Graeme is an old friend of the podcast. We’ve talked to him in the past about his books on Phil Lynott and John Martyn. ‘Under The Ivy: the Life And Music of Kate Bush’ first appeared in 2010, and was revised in 2015 after her Before the Dawn concerts and it’s now been updated again as, despite no new music or public appearances, her worldwide repu…
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For the love of Françoise Hardy, Ben Sidran and the TV comedy Twenty Twelve
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41:18
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Among the logs tossed on the conversational bonfire this week to combat mid-June’s British winter you’ll find … … ‘I Managed Van Morrison’ and other films screaming to be made. … how it feels to watch someone play from the best seat in the house. … Françoise Hardy, her unsmiling photos and legions of besotted male admirers (ie us and everyone else)…
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Stewart Lee knows the rigours of ‘animal costume work’ and why great comedy is about shock
48:50
48:50
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Stewart Lee – beloved writer, columnist and stand-up - was on the podcast in 2022 talking about the first records he bought, immensely funny and fascinating, and we’ve been praying for an excuse to get him back since. And it’s here! - he’s on tour again and his ‘Basic Lee’ show is on Sky/Now TV on July 20. This covers his first memories of live ent…
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A Word in Your Ear: Pub Names and Bar Chat
24:09
24:09
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From The Churchill Arms to Ye Old Fighting Cocks, there's a whole "alien" language associated with pub talk.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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How Springsteen went “six deep”, fictional rock hacks and who’s more conservative than Liam Gallagher?
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46:24
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You’ll always find us in the kitchen at parties, near the hoppy summer ale and sausage rolls and, and this week discussing … … he hasn't changed his look or sound for 30 years: is there a more conservative concept than Liam Gallagher? And how he became the one-man Oasis. … the eye-watering sum Kevin Hart made from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. … …
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Jon Savage - Dusty’s wig, Bowie’s bombshell and how gay pop culture changed music
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34:04
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“I thought Dave Davies of the Kinks was a girl. When I discovered he was a boy, that’s when I got interested.” Jon’s an old friend of the podcast and the author of some highly regarded and influential books about pop and its repercussions, ‘England’s Dreaming’ and ‘1966: the Year The Decade Exploded’ among them. His latest is ‘The Secret Public: Ho…
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“Abba’s success is more about us than them”: Giles Smith looks back at a 50-year love affair
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37:38
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Giles was 12 when he watched Abba win Eurovision in 1974 and was instantly besotted – and thus required to spend the next 20 years wrestling with The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. His thunderingly funny, fond and illuminating book – My My!: Abba Through The Years – traces their story, looks at the snobbery and critical mauling they endured and…
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the Architect of Mod: how Peter Meaden restyled and launched the Who - by Steve Turner
39:49
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Peter Meaden was a key figure in the Mod movement. He changed the world view of Andrew Loog Oldham, which shaped the early Stones, and he managed the Who, remodelling their look and sound, writing their first single and turning them into Mod figureheads. Steve Turner interviewed him in 1975, an exchange that's now the centrepiece of his new book 'K…
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Great album trilogies, suing Madonna and "the pantheon of psychedelic heaviosity"
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47:11
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This week the conversational Super-Trouper of Enquiry lights up the following … ... why care when "rock critics get it wrong"? ... the dreadful death of the Allman brothers' dad. ... is there any other branch of entertainment where you can be two hours late onstage? ... has any show got worse reviews than Eddie Izzard's one-woman Hamlet? ... the un…
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A Word in Your Ear: The Language of Music
34:53
34:53
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Music has the uncanny ability to be understood by anyone, anywhere. But why? And how did music develop its own kind of "language"?By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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The spectacular Dead & Co, songs performed backwards & happy birthday Diamond Dogs!
43:29
43:29
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43:29
Tuning into this week's rock and roll soundwave to filter signal from noise, we cranked up the volume on the following ... ... 'Zuma Nester Rock' and the eternal curse of rock stars' kids' names. ... Bowie's spat with Robbie Williams at Netaid. ... celebrating awkward sods like Kevin Rowland. ... why Paul Carrack has seen it all. ... 'Lewis' Armstr…
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Why They Might Be Giants now perform an entire song backwards
27:04
27:04
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27:04
They Might Be Giants – old school fiends John Flansburgh and John Linnell – have been making elliptical, funny and adventurous records for over 40 years and writing music for children, advertising and TV comedies. We talk to John Linnell here about songwriting, early shows in art spaces, the way you saw the world when a "wiseacrey teenager" and wha…
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Guy Chambers - writing with Robbie, a tangle with Bowie & half a bagel with Paul McCartney
36:35
36:35
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Guy Chambers was a teenager in Liverpool and at John Lennon’s old school - "same headmaster, Mister Pobjoy". He remembers the Beatles, Queen, Abba and Jesus Christ Superstar sparking his interest in the "perfect song package" and went on to work with Tina Turner, Rufus Wainwright, Kylie, Diana Ross and scores of others. He talks here about early sh…
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A Word in Your Ear: Feminine and Gendered Language
24:34
24:34
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24:34
From ships and professions to family structures and pronouns, Roly Sussex navigates the complex web of gendered language.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Alan Edwards, pop PR – ‘Bowie was like King Arthur and the Spice Girls like the Pistols’
42:16
42:16
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42:16
We’ve known Alan Edwards since the days when we’d ring him for a quote from Blondie or the Stranglers in the late ‘70s and he’s still one of the key figures in music PR. He’s looked after the Stones, Prince, Michael Jackson, Blondie, Amy Winehouse, the Beckhams and many others. No-one is better positioned to see how that world has changed, from the…
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Rock’s image-makers, men on dancefloors and why bands can’t act like bands anymore
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55:09
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This week’s items slapped on the rock and roll barbecue and lightly grilled include … … why Eurovision will never avoid political controversy. … when AI does David Hepworth! … what’s the secret of NTS radio? … “there are two types of wedding disco, ones that start with Abba's Dancing Queen and terrible ones.” … Tony Hall’s prophetic preview of Revo…
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Paul Carrack has seen it all – beat, soul, prog, pub rock, pop & the perfect ‘slow burn’ career.
37:30
37:30
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37:30
We’ve followed Paul Carrack for 50 years, a big hit single – How Long – when he was with Ace, 19 albums, countless sessions (the Smiths, Eagles and Pretenders among them) and a touring band member with Squeeze, Roxy Music, Roger Waters and Nick Lowe. He once put out an album called ‘I Know That Name’ as for so many people he’s still under the radar…
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Nige Tassell was so obsessed with Dexys he’s tracked down all 24 ex-members
35:19
35:19
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Nige Tassell used to go to school in full donkey-jacket-and-woolly-hat ensemble to express his boundless devotion to Dexys Midnight Runners. Forty years later he set out to find and interview everyone who’d ever been a member. For some, their time in the ranks was a joyful, career-launching delight. Others felt it was like a slightly chilly and con…
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A Word in Your Ear: Weather Words with Jenny Woodward
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23:09
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Wind, clouds and rain... ABC's Roly Sussex discusses weather words alongside ABC TV Weather Presenter Jenny Woodward.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Why Nick Mason’s “cottage industry” band plays just early Pink Floyd
27:29
27:29
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Missing being on tour and exasperated by internal disputes, Nick Mason set out to tour small-scale venues with his band Saucerful Of Secrets in 2018. They’re mid-way through another world tour (Gary Kemp’s the main singer and one of the guitarists). He doesn’t miss the stadium circuit where “you need a golf cart to get from one side of the stage to…
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Let It Be revisited, the wisdom of Steve Albini and a woeful tale about Steve Marriott
53:26
53:26
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53:26
We were at the Curzon Mayfair on May 7 for the premier of the rebooted Let It Be in all its burnished finery and came away with a ton of things to unravel, among them … … what we never knew when the film came out 54 years ago. .. seeing it in the shadow of Peter Jackson’s Get Back. … how the edit was overtaken by events and the tangled reasons it t…
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Flat out like a lizard drinking! ABC's Roly Sussex discusses catchy phrases.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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The genius of Little Feat, the Man with the Twang & pop’s greatest scandal in the making
46:14
46:14
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We stuck a few coins in this week’s Wurlitzer and these were the tunes that got played … … when records became all about sound not songs. … Fonzworth Bentley, Puff Daddy’s butler, the man who held an umbrella over him on the beach at Cannes. … what Henry Kissinger, Martha Stewart and Leonardo DiCaprio kept very quiet about. … Manchester’s Co-Op, a …
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Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks remembers the day “a terrible beauty was born”
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30:18
Steve Diggle met Pete Shelley when the Pistols played Manchester in 1976 and the Diggle-fronted Buzzcocks are now on a world tour that began in Mexico and takes in North and South America, Europe and Australasia before winding up at the 100 Club where they played the Punk Festival 48 years ago – “we’ve come full circle”. He looks back here at the f…
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A Word In Your Ear: Phonetics and The Sounds of Language
22:49
22:49
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22:49
Lips, tongue, teeth and cheeks... ABC's Roly Sussex discusses the sounds of language.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Rock snobbery, the seven wives of Gregg Allman & the greatest solo on a pop record
1:03:52
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1:03:52
This week’s theories, rants, ruminations, recollections, weak gags and free and frank exchanges of view alight upon the following … … is pop music now all about identity? …. the recording of the Animals’ House of the Rising Sun and other apocryphal tales. … has any act been as ubiquitous since Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984? … or has anyone insp…
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Harold Bronson of Rhino Records kept a 40-year rock and roll diary…
39:55
39:55
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File this under ‘right place, right time’. Harold Bronson was a teenager in mid-60’s Los Angeles and saw every act imaginable. Then wrote for the Daily Bruin and Rolling Stone and interviewed everyone that interested him. Then managed a music store and co-founded Rhino Records, pretty much inventing the idea of the top-end reissue – “Sooner or late…
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A Word In Your Ear: The Anzac Legacy in Language
23:48
23:48
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Tell me a furphy... What is a brass razoo? ABC's Roly Sussex discusses language used during wartime.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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The “amniotic throb” of modern pop, the eternal life of the Top Gear theme and the Blue Nile’s lucky break
47:48
47:48
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With Mark Ellen in foreign parts David Hepworth and Alex Gold light cigars, pass the port in the correct direction and discuss….. …..the fact that there is only one way to play a Beatles song and that is the way the Beatles did it. …..the chances that Taylor Swift is reaching her imperial phase and nobody is prepared to tell her what she really nee…
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A Word In Your Ear: New Words and The Yoghurt Debate
27:20
27:20
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27:20
Omnishambles? Yoghurt? ABC's Roly Sussex discusses new words and how to pronounce yoghurt.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Hollywood Babylon, the inspired gimmickry of Catch A Fire and the luck of Ron Wood
58:43
58:43
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58:43
We lobbed the feathered arrows of enquiry at the rock and roll dartboard this week and these got the highest scores … … rock stars v the new league of the Super-Rich. … package tours of the mid-‘60s – eight acts, an interval, a compere plus God Save the Queen. … ‘Hits, Flops and Other Illusions’ by Edward Zwick and the fantastic tale about arroganc…
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Neil Tennant remembers life “with dyed red Bowie hair and clattering platforms”
43:54
43:54
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43:54
Neil’s an old friend from our days back at Smash Hits in the early ‘80s. The first Pet Shop Boys demos were played on the office tape machine, though he was a bit self-conscious about “the one with the rap on it”. He’s always had a journalistic capacity for story-telling, remembering everything in famously entertaining detail, and we had so much ma…
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Richard Thompson – “you know it’s time to go when the audience starts throwing chairs”
24:01
24:01
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Richard Thompson first appeared onstage aged 14 playing Beatles covers in a school group “so bad we were pelted with pennies”. Sixty years later his range of operations includes touring solo and with his band, occasional reunions with Fairport Convention, residencies on Adriatic cruise ships and running a Guitar Camp in the Catskill Mountains (alon…
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A Word In Your Ear: Avoidance Language and Rhyming Slang
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A frog and toad for the road? ABC's Roly Sussex discusses avoidance language and rhyming slang.By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Neil Tennant remembers the pop press and “the last great era of forward-looking songs"
36:37
36:37
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36:37
Neil’s an old friend from our days back at Smash Hits in the early ‘80s. The first Pet Shop Boys demos were played on the office tape machine, though he was a bit self-conscious about “the one with the rap on it”, and he’s one of the few people who’s seen the music press from every angle - as a reader in the ‘70s, as a writer and interviewer and as…
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