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Talking to cool people making cool things
Episodes
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/
Friday May 08, 2020
Friday May 08, 2020
Young Southpaw talks to The Black Watch main man, John Andrew Fredrick, about their ace new record 'Brilliant Failures', their fantastically named previous albums 'Led Zeppelin Five' and 'Magic Johnson', shoegazing & tennis, time travel (he's not into it), and much more
Friday Apr 24, 2020
Friday Apr 24, 2020
Young Southpaw talks to Boston comedian Rob Crean about his new record, 'Sadly Sackerton', his comedy nights and their relation to Roman mythology, The Replacements, and more
@robcrean
Buy the record at https://deadandmellow.com/rob-crean
Sunday Apr 12, 2020
Sunday Apr 12, 2020
Young Southpaw offers a unique career retrospective of The Indelicates, speaking with Simon & Julia about time travel, spectral presences, Ohio, Paul Nicholas, and much more
Their info: www.theindelicates.com
FB/Twitter/IG: @theindelicates