Aaaaaaand finally... we're delighted to welcome Sam Clements to the show for an extended farewell to the podcast, discussing the process involved in producing a weekly music show for 8+ years. Martin and Sam fess up to a few things, talk about the work involved behind the scenes, and consider what a project like this affects the people involved.
It's been a pleasure folks, the time went so quickly. Speak soon. x
We're delighted to bring you an extended interview with the man who literally wrote the book on Tom Waits, Barney Hoskyns. Bouncing through a selection of Waits's material from the 70s to the present day, we discuss what it's like to interview and write about artists, what changed (and stayed the same) in Waits's music, and how you should always take a suggestion from Nick Cave seriously.
Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include:
Ol' 55, Closing Time, Tom Waits (1973)
Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen), Small Change, Tom Waits (1976)
Shore Leave, Swordfishtrombones, Tom Waits (1983)
Goin' Out West, Bone Machine, Tom Waits (1992)
Take It With Me, Mule Variations, Tom Waits (1999)
Satisfied, Bad As Me, Tom Waits (2011)
Log into the Spotify web player to hear these tracks.
Returning to deliver our GCSE Drama lecture for the season, Callum Hughes chats with Martin and Sam about the theatrical history of Woyzeck, some of the themes present in the play, and gives us a jumping off point for the Waits album to come.
Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include:
Misery Is the River of the World, Blood Money, Tom Waits (2002)
Woyzeck to go (Buechner in 9 minutes), Sommer's World Literature to go, via Youtube (2017)
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Before embarking on our Alice season, we thought a little context on the books, the play, and the biography of the major players would be relevant (for us as well as you, dear listener). So we welcome Carrolian scholar Justine Houyaux to talk about the writing of Charles Dodgeson, his friendship with Alice Liddell, and the adaptation by Robert Wilson, Paul Schmidt, Kathleen Brennan and... who's the other guy?
Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include:
There's Only Alice, The Alice Demos, Tom Waits (1992 - unreleased)
Untitled (Barcarolle), The Alice Demos, Tom Waits (1992 - unreleased)
Unable to find a link to this
Alice Documentary, The Late Show (BBC, UK) - via YouTube (1992)
Alice Documentary, unknown origin - via YouTube (1992)
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland with Angelika Zirker, Virginie Iché, and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Forum, BBC Sounds (2017)
Justine Houyaux' website for further reading
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Hey folks! Thanks to everyone who came along to our listening parties for Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night - we had a lovely time pretending to be radio DJs and talking over the best bits, hope everyone listening along appreciated how intrusive we were.
A brief note to let you know that we spent this afternoon recording for Season two, The Heart of Saturday Night, so will be releasing episodes into the wild on a weekly basis very very soon - later this week if all goes well.
For this season we'll be joined by some guests, giving us some different perspectives and extra insight, as well as putting us in our place when we lose all sense of perspective. For the first few tracks, our friend Anna Turrell will be adding her two cents, with other guests lined up for the rest of the season.
Get in touch, let us know whether more listening parties (or viewing parties... anyone up for Down By Law?) would be interesting to people, give us your insights and bugbears on upcoming tracks, and as ever point out to us how wrong we are about everything on twitter or email.
There's a lot of Tom Waits material out there, and we'd like to offer some of our favourite bite-sized chunks - so for your viewing pleasure, have a look at Blank on Blank's animated interview from 1988 which has been doing the rounds, "Tom Waits on Everything and Nothing". We'll see you soon.