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Talking to cool people making cool things
Episodes
Sunday Aug 23, 2020
Sunday Aug 23, 2020
Young Southpaw chats to Kevin Crace and gets the skinny on his legendary label, Humbug Records. Ignored in their native country, the label was nevertheless home to some of the finest eccentric British songwriters - Captain Sensible, Martin Newell, Simon Turner, Colin Lloyd Tucker, TV Smith... Some excellent records were made, along with homemade jam, early xmas parties, and the conviction/label motto that “two dozen people can’t be wrong”.
https://www.discogs.com/label/29069-Humbug-2
Kevin Crace: I wanted to create my own label and a label that was sort of themed, sort of stylized label. I was really listening to people like él Records. That’s really where I was coming from at that time. Me and my friends were some of the few people sitting around in London listening to él, listening to XTC, listening to this sort of esoteric pop music. And really I felt the world really needed that at that time. And I nicked a couple of the él artists, and was quite pleased to do so. Louis Philippe came and joined me and I did some work with Simon Turner, The King Of Luxembourg. I loved él. There were probably very few people who were ever listening to it, if I’m being honest, it was so specialized. It didn’t represent anything else that was going on in the music world at that time, but it just really worked for me, it was so beautiful. And as much as I’d come from a punk background, and an electronic background, and an indie background, I really like things like The Ink Spots. I love some of those old classic bands that had just been totally forgotten at that stage. So when 1992 came around, I started to look at acts to sign for Humbug Records and I found that there was this whole amazing selection of great, great British singer-songwriters that were homeless. They weren’t able to make money, they weren’t able to get signed, and they certainly weren’t able to get any recognition in the media for how great they were. So to some extent, there was an endless list of people that I could have signed as an independent at that stage.
So I started off, the first signing was Captain Sensible. I love The Damned. For me, they were my childhood band. They were the punks, not the Pistols, they were the real punks. And Captain had split with The Damned at that time, he’d been apart from them for a number of years, he was creating this wonderful, wonderful pop music. Just simply brilliant. That it was almost impossible to get anybody to listen to. That was always the problem. With Captain, with Humbug, with all of these, it was a very difficult time to get the media to support you. Because at that time there wasn’t really the respect shown to the great British artists.
Sunday Aug 16, 2020
Sunday Aug 16, 2020
Young Southpaw talks to The Church’s Steve Kilbey about his new solo album 11 Women, the songwriting genius of Kilbey, Bolan, Dylan, Lou Reed, Lennon, McCartney, and the magic & mystery of songs themselves
https://www.instagram.com/stvklby/
https://twitter.com/stevekilbey
Steve Kilbey: That’s what I want to do with songs, truly break through to that sort of hypnogogic state, where all the music and the words, everything, it’s just a flow of thoughts, that aren’t completely random. If you go too random, then you get meaninglessness. You don’t want that. You don’t want people to go ‘there’s no meaning in this’. You’ve gotta have this, it’s a very subtle thing and only the really great songwriters understand that. These subtle threads that keep you interested in a song, even though it seems on the surface, superficially it seems like there’s no thread. There is some kind of internal thread that the listener will grasp, and it will make you feel good that you’re sort of in on it. People write to me and go ‘your songs make me feel like I’m in on something’. And that’s cause you’re sort of grokking it, ya know?
Young Southpaw: Yeah. ‘Sheba Chiba’ reminded me of like a Bolan rhyme as well.
SK: Oh yeah, of course. Marc Bolan and David Bowie and Bob Dylan and The Beatles are never far from any of my songs. I played 11 Women to a girl who came round the other day and she said ‘wow, it’s really Marc Bolan’ and I go ‘yeah, of course it is’. But hopefully the good part of Marc Bolan and not the bad part. In my opinion, Bolan went really badly off the rails, and is a spectacular example of what not to do. He was really writing these wonderfully ambiguous songs and then he became really famous and it all went to his head and he started just making up nonsense. Instead of having this ambiguous dreamlike hypnogogic stuff, he was just making up nursery rhymes and nonsense. The last album I ever bought of his, there was a line ‘Uncle Bimbo drank up the sea of Galilee, and like a fool he promised it all to me’. And when I heard that line I went, ‘you’ve lost it, Marc. I don’t wanna hear that anymore.’ And there was David Bowie putting out Aladdin Sane, and I’m like ‘well, it really hurts me to do this, but David Bowie’s now my main man. Sorry, Marc.’ And I felt like Bolan had lost it.
Later on, I read he was heavily into cocaine and heavily into drinking a lot of red wine and snorting a lot of coke, and he lost his mojo. Where the cocaine worked for Bowie. But for Bolan it didn’t, it just sort of made him egotistical, and he thought ‘oh, I can just do anything’. And you can never! You can’t! No one - not John Lennon, not Bolan, not me, no one - can just do anything.
Sunday Aug 09, 2020
Sunday Aug 09, 2020
Young Southpaw talks to Martin Atkins (Pigface, PiL, Brian Brain, Killing Joke, Damage Manual, etc.) about his punk rock ethos, entrepreneurial skills, books and zoom talks, as well as Public Image Limited on American Bandstand, Commercial Zone, GG Allin, the ‘Paul McCartney clause’, and much more
https://martinatkins.bigcartel.com/products
Martin Atkins: I’ve got four drawers of board tapes, alternative mixes...So if you’re a PiL fan, I’ve got both nights in Paris, it was released as Paris Au Printemps, that was my first show. And I’ve got both nights’ board tapes. It was actually my suggestion that we release it as a live album. I’ve got both nights in Tokyo. We released one night.
[Commercial Zone] is only Keith Levene’s album in that he stole the tapes. I talk about this in one of my presentations - while we were in New York, there were 17 rolls of two-inch tape. So this is me applying - I have my Master’s Degree now, big deal, but it changes the way I look at things - so instead of just going ‘we recorded a bunch of material, it was crazy’, well how much material did we record? Okay, so I go and look at my cassette archive, there’s 17 rolls of two-inch tape. How much music fits on a roll? 32 minutes. Oh my god. So now I have a spreadsheet with all of the songs, all of the versions. There are some songs on Commercial Zone that Keith isn’t even on, that he didn’t know existed until he took the tapes.
I don’t think it’s any secret that Keith had a drug problem. Like a really serious drug problem. A really serious problem with serious drugs. We were all using speed and drinking a lot, but he was levels above. There were times...you know John [Lydon] is a magical, charismatic individual. And his charisma protected PiL. There could be 10,000 people in a room and John could stare everybody down, more effectively than security punching people. And we were protected by that. It also allowed for Keith to be not always there at shows. He’d take a two song break. And we’d just do an instrumental version, or John would just sing over bass and drums. And people would be like ‘wow, PiL, it’s crazy’. Instead of ‘hold on a minute, where’s the guitarist? I like this song.’ But we got away with it. I think less and less, but we did get away with it.
When we booked ten shows in Japan, the walls started to close in on this version of the band. There are very strict drug laws in Japan. You can’t have a Vicks inhaler. They’re illegal because they’re a stimulant. Never mind heroin. And then Paul McCartney and his band, Wings, he got off a plane with like a kilo of weed. He was in jail for 11 days. I mean, the world went mad. He was fined a million dollars, and then let go. But what happened was every Japanese promoter then retroactively inserted something called ‘the Paul McCartney clause’....
Tuesday Aug 04, 2020
Tuesday Aug 04, 2020
Young Southpaw talks to The Silent Academy founder Andrew Shaw about his new metaphysical mixtape in book form questions, Bill Drummond, suspending your brain, Pigs & Zen, and much more. Van Halen too, obviously...
https://www.silentacademy.com/product/questions-book/
Young Southpaw: At the end of the intro you write that your hope is that ‘in accessing intuitive awareness, we are free to act with the full force of our nature, to create some things and to smash some things - completely.’
Andrew Shaw: Yeah
YS: Which reminded me of The Damned song ‘Smash It Up’. And then the first question you pose - ‘does light from the stars create loneliness’ - reminded me of that Lush song ‘Light From A Dead Star’. So in what ways is this book a mixtape?
AS: Aw, man. Again, like the Van Halen...absolutely. It is a mixtape, isn’t it? I mean is anything not a mixtape? When you really think about it...(laughs)
YS: But yeah I like the idea that this is a compilation, well in the truest sense it’s a compilation like a mixtape is a compilation, but it also has resonances and is your form of communication
AS: And you pass it to a girl to impress her
YS: Obviously
AS: Or an object of your affection, yeah. I mean why else would we do these things? I think a mixtape’s a pretty nice analogy. It’s a grab bag of ideas and observations from everywhere and then scramble them up and hope there’s some continuity that makes sense to anybody that spends time with it. Yeah. Something interesting along the way.
YS: I like that a lot. Yeah. I miss mixtapes, man. Luckily we have your book now.
AS: Oh yeah, I really miss mixtapes. The Spotify playlist doesn’t really cut it, does it?
YS: It really doesn’t. I mean, having two sides that you would structure accordingly.
AS: Right. And sticking the pencil in the middle to correct it.
YS: Funnily enough, that came up on the last episode of ETC. Something about pencils. I think the cassette was really the highest point of technology we needed. I don’t need everything going on these days. But to be able to listen to music in your car, I’m glad we got there.
AS: Yeah. And the unspooling. Just even the word ‘unspool’.
Sunday Jul 26, 2020
Sunday Jul 26, 2020
Young Southpaw chats to magician and comedian Paul Kilmer, aka Magical Paul aka Jurassic Paul, about songs about cards, being offered large amounts of dairy products while performing, his positive philosophy of comedy, and dinosaurs, of course.
Paul Kilmer: In the early 90s my dad was a construction worker and a mechanic so he exposed us to all those late 70’s/early 80’s “metal” bands, hair bands were very popular, RATT, Whitesnake, other animals, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Poison. And my dad was interesting because he did like those but he also exposed us inadvertently to John Denver, and my grandfather exposed me to guys like Buddy Holly and Elvis and Johnny Cash. And Johnny Cash has got albums galore. So yeah, I grew up with Van Halen. I like Jump. I like Panama. Recently RATT has made a comeback cause they had one of their songs in a commercial and I was like ‘I really like Round & Round as a song, I’m glad they made that into a commercial’. I like Van Halen -
Young Southpaw: It’s the Year of the Rat. So hopefully they will make a huge comeback. I wanted to ask you, as a fan of card tricks, do you like songs that mention cards like AC/DC’s The Jack or Stacey Q’s Two Of Hearts? I mean if you were doing a card trick for AC/DC, you would expect their card to be the jack. And for Motorhead, it’d obviously be the Ace of Spades.
PK: Cause there are other songs, like Magic Man...Two Of Hearts, actually a lot of really good magicians do non-talking sets to that song, or Magic Man. They definitely have their place in magic. Cause specifically they reference specific cards. But I wanna say my favourite is Ace Of Spades by Motorhead. Because like I said those are the songs that just kind of pop into your life. I guess my favourite song of all-time would have to be one of those songs that I didn’t know the name of and tried to track down which was Wall Of Voodoo’s Mexican Radio. It always plays between 2:34-2:50 in the morning on some radio station that you’re driving from one location to another, and you’re not paying attention and you miss the name.
Monday Jul 20, 2020
Monday Jul 20, 2020
Young Southpaw talks to phenomenal Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad about her new record Ekhidna, opening for John McLaughlin while six months pregnant and having just had appendix surgery, snakes, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Lifeson, and much more.
https://soundcloud.com/hedvigmollestadtrio
Hedvig Mollestad: How do you feel about John McLaughlin’s way through music, his career, where he started and where he is now
Young Southpaw: I listened to that new record he put out a couple months ago, I enjoyed it. My favourite stuff of John McLaughlin’s are those Miles Albums, those electric Miles albums. A Tribute To Jack Johnson, I could listen to that forever. Just wonderful playing. And of course Bitches Brew and Live/Evil and all those. That for me is my favourite type of music.
HM: Live/Evil and Bitches Brew to me also is just, that’s just the defining what you have to try to avoid, because you can never be close to how good those records are. So if you play that kind of music it’s really hard to avoid those references. It’s really really really hard because you can never be that good. And still it’s so fun when you get into that kind of place with musicians. Absolutely.
Something I found fascinating with John McLaughlin because he is just a machine, like his technique, talking about fast but he has his own way of playing fast. It’s very accentuated, in a very pentatonic-based position. But suddenly it’s not. And I’ve been thinking, because the Mahavishnu records has this thing that is something that I’m still listening to when I listen to them, that is the guitar sound. It’s wrenching, and it’s roaring, and it’s in your - it’s almost inside your face, because it’s so close. To me, that is one of the things that I really cherish.
......
HM: The Antilone riff is very jumpy
YS: It’s like a frantic boogie. And the opening, my first thought was AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’.
HM: Yeah. I love AC/DC, really love them. Yes, that is a great reference, and also the Black Sabbath opening. The rain and the thunder. That’s fantastic, I love that reference. Putting on a jazz record in 2020 and saying ‘ah, I hear AC/DC in this jazz-rock’, that is a goal achieved. Thank you so much.
Monday Jul 13, 2020
Monday Jul 13, 2020
Young Southpaw chats to David Ryder Prangley about his debut solo album Black Magic & True Love, KISS & their solo albums, Shampoo & swatches, Twin Peaks, and Prangley’s Great Van Halen Smiths Theory, leading Southpaw to conjecture post-interview ‘what if Johnny Marr had joined KISS?’
https://davidryderprangley1.bandcamp.com/
Young Southpaw: What’s your favourite of the KISS solo records?
David Ryder Prangley: I think they’re actually all amazing. Some KISS fans judge them by how much they sound like regular KISS records. Which to me is obviously not the point of them, they don’t really sound like KISS records. Gene Simmons’ album is just incredible, with all those guest artists on it, and the orchestration, and the fact that all the songs kinda sound a bit like The Beatles. I think they’re great. And even Peter Criss’ solo album, which people were just like ‘it’s kinda like an easy listening album’, but there’s some great songs on that and he’s got a fantastic voice. I like them all for different reasons. I think Paul Stanley’s solo album is incredibly exciting. And the guitar sound on it is just phenomenal. Then you got Ace’s album which is...he doesn’t go around the obvious pop songwriting route, he goes down the real almost like Black Sabbath - here’s a riff and here it is for five minutes (laughs). And I love that. And the kind of weird...on his album he was using the early Roland guitar synth and it’s just totally out of tune. You listen to it and you’re like ‘it’s completely out of tune’, but it’s still on there.
And I love all that stuff. It’s really exciting. When I was a kid, they were the first band that I got into, that I discovered myself, cause I was really into Marvel comics. You’d see the adverts, and it didn’t even say it was a band. It would just go KISS...nothing (laughs). And it was like ‘what is this? are these some superheroes or what?’ And at the time I was just really into music and Marvel comics and Star Wars, and then KISS come along and they’re like the perfect blend of science fiction and rock n’ roll.
Sunday Jul 05, 2020
Sunday Jul 05, 2020
Young Southpaw chats to Matt & Mauro from the UK ‘Ronettes Punk’ band The Speedways about their new album Radio Sounds, what Eddie Van Halen being in KISS would’ve been like, Billy Ocean/ABBA covers albums, Hanoi Rocks, and much more.
Check them out at https://thespeedways.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/JustAnotherRegularSummer
Young Southpaw: That’s all my questions. Anything else you wanna add?
Mauro: There wasn’t much Van Halen in this chat.
Matt: No, there wasn’t much Van Halen.
YS: Happy to talk about Van Halen. What’s your favourite Van Halen album?
Matt: The first one. Cause when I first started playing guitar I loved Eddie Van Halen but I could never play that kind of stuff. But I can play ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love’, with the phaser pedal on it, I can just about get through that. And ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’ I can play that as well. ‘Unchained’, that’s on Fair Warning?
YS: Greatest rock song of all time, in my opinion.
Matt: I can play that as well.
YS: On the 1982 tour they opened with ‘Unchained’ and went into ‘Romeo Delight’ and I think that’s all you ever need ever. [NOTE: It’s actually the other way around, but THE POINT STILL STANDS!] Two of the greatest rock n’ roll songs. And then they always had that third song would be a drum solo, as if two songs were really too taxing to be on stage for and the three of them needed a break.
Mauro: Immediately, yeah
Matt: I only saw them one time, with Sammy, obviously. At the Birmingham NEC in the UK. I just wanted to see Eddie play, really. I remember being down the front and when he played ‘Eruption’ and everything, that was what I wanted to see. I just wanted to see him play the guitar, just watch him play. Just astonishing, he’s so good.
YS: I saw them on the last reunion tour and it seemed like his guitar solo was even faster. Like, you woudn’t think that was even possible.
Matt: Yeah, fantastic. Such a great band.
Mauro: I’d probably have pick II acutally. I’m one of the Van Halen II club, I reckon. ‘Light Up The Sky’, ‘D.O.A.’, those ones...
YS: Oh yeah. ‘Somebody Get Me A Doctor’.
Mauro: Yeah. It’s all great. ‘Dance The Night Away’ of course. That’s the closest Van Halen get to power pop, you could argue.
Sunday Jun 28, 2020
Sunday Jun 28, 2020
Young Southpaw: You’re a big Rush fan, right?
Bo Butler: This is true.
YS: What do you think Tommy P (Thomas Pynchon) makes of Rush?
BB: That’s a really good question. Almost impossible to answer. But...my guess is, we talked about Inherent Vice, there’s a lot of songs mentioned in Inherent Vice, and my guess is that those songs are what Thomas Pynchon listens to, for the most part. Or at least of those genres. There’s some crossover, in a weird way. Their drummer, Neil Peart, his dad listened to a lot of Sinatra and those kind of things, and you see some of that come up in Inherent Vice, but I don’t know that Thomas Pynchon has ever listened to Rush. But I think since I like Thomas Pynchon and I like Rush, I think Thomas Pynchon would also like Rush.
YS: Like the transitive property. Though we all know how him and mathematics works, I can’t guarantee it.
BB: I think it works the same way.
YS: And Neil Peart you mentioned, he was a big reader. I was thinking like what if ‘Tom Sawyer’ was originally called ‘Tom Pynchon’? Scans the same. And ‘catch the mystery’ would certainly apply.
BB: That is true. Honestly, I think the whole thing would still apply. But...it would be hard to sing. “Today’s Thomas Pynchon, mean mean pride...”, it just doesn’t work.
YS: Yeah. That’s probably why they changed it, ya know?
BB: Yeah, probably. Just went with a different character.
YS: Cause Tom Sawyer has never really made sense to me in that song either. ‘Modern-day warrior’.
BB: Me either. I’ll be honest.
YS: Now are you holding out hope that Pynchon will write a Rush biography one day?”
Sunday May 24, 2020
Sunday May 24, 2020
Young Southpaw talks to the musician and comedian Nick Grunerud about Bauhaus leading the way to the future of hide-and-seek music festivals, a new calendar where you never know what month is coming next, Toledo, Ohio’s role in nocturnal fitness, and much more
https://nickgrunerud.bandcamp.com/
https://nickgrunerud.wordpress.com/blog/