Gig Pigs with Ivo Graham and Alex Kealy

Do you like funny jokes? Do you like famous bands? Well, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into here, as Alex and Ivo (electro) swing from the Ally Pally to the Staggy Claggy via a Staggeringly Specific Shakedown of Alex’s DJ choices in Machynlleth. Uphold awhile the unyoked humour of our idleness! And see you on June 8th! For extra bonus Gig Pigs episodes and exclusive content every...

Los Campesinos!? As in, death to Los Campesinos!? The gigd*icks and the dipsh*t lay down their weapons to discuss pinching lyrics, kissing Tories and living off 2008, via a triumphant gig at the Troxy and the announcement of a new album! All’s hell that ends well! For extra bonus Gig Pigs episodes and exclusive content every month head over to www.patreon.com/gigpigs to support the show. Downloa...

He’s an astronomical, fan of bowling balls, so welcome in Felix White, the shirt-shredding, pepper-grinding, review-devouring guitarist of first the Maccabees and now 86TVs, who pigs as hard as he gigs and has plenty kind words to say about liking the rock music of Sea Power, Cumbria’s finest via Tunbridge Wells, the Islington Assembly Hall and the (Irish it turns out) Isle of Aran. We never wante...

We're the wrong kind of people, why'd you listen to us? Because we've achieved our Desire! Desire! and (so nearly) watched Everything Everything, the most interesting and consistent band of their generation, alongside their biggest fan, and Alex's birthday twin, Lolly Adefope (Saltburn, Ghosts, @elevenish). A joyous hour of pig climbs, pig falls, and pink piggies with their hands on their ears: sh...

Is he free, can he gig, is he promised to the pig? An apologetic pleasure to speak easy with Johnny JR about the Planet of Sound (if not Vision) that was Pixies at the Forum: bearded villains, corporate restructuring and where his mind's at re: gig etiquette and encore requirements. Our heads were feeling scared but our hearts were feeling free! For extra bonus Gig Pigs episodes and exclusive co...

Seasons change, and we’ve grown tired trying to change for you (we haven’t). Alex and Ivo are joined by Eleanor Tiernan to discuss hot chocolate, fanboying the Waterboys, and Baltimore’s finest, Future Islands, who made some old pigs very happy at the Kingston Pryzm in January! For extra bonus Gig Pigs episodes and exclusive content every month head over to www.patreon.com/gigpigs to support the...

Connect me to the manager please, we’re on 302! From Bake Off to bag drop, a vast rotation of mirth with critically acclaimed apocalypse dreamers Frankie and Liv, who were in a uniquely weird place when it came to watching this week’s mum-ringing 6 music darling. We’re more than alright with this pod! For extra bonus Gig Pigs episodes and exclusive content every month head over to www.patreon.co...

The pigs are officially back gigging (/uploading discussions of more gigs we pigged in 2023) and what a jewel (emerald) we have to kick things off: multi-instrumental viral alchemist and late-noughties Oxegen mainstay Michael Fry, guiding us through the scorching intensity of his compatriots Gilla Band and their lamentably cursed garage, as experienced at Fabric in December. We try not to boast an...

How many Beatles songs is Paul McCartney obliged to play at Glastonbury? How many Beta Band songs is Steve Mason obliged to play at Green Man? And how many Gig Pigs songs will Foxes and Hedgehogs be obliged to play at the Amersham Arms? Both of them, we hope, as Alex and Ivo talk to Dan and Jack of F&H, soundtrackers to the pod, ahead of February 16th’s collision of worlds in south east London. Tu...

This is how we gig, with our face to the pig, and we were delighted to do so this week with comedy’s most dedicated music purchaser and reorderer, James Acaster, after a trip to watch newly unretired Idahoan dream-popper Youth Lagoon, with some solid time allotted to wedding DJs, prepared shibboleths and a one-man anti-Slipknot protest at Reading Festival 2000. It’s the last episode-with-guest til...

Has Ivo always been like this? No one more qualified to answer than this week’s guest, his very own sister, joining us to eat, sleep, gig (nothing but pig) at apparently the most beautiful venue Bombay Bicycle Club have ever played! Nostalgia heavy even by our standards this week: it’s that ancient love that you won't outgrow! Support your local record store! Download extra swill, rate and leave r...

You know we’re bad at communication, it's the hardest thing for us to do, and it's said, it's the most important part that podcasters need to do! In this case, one pretty honking error from Ivo in the top, apologised for profusely in the tail, with an hour and a bit of glorious Alison Spittle (we've forever believed in their insight) in the middle, chatting Shrek suits, Mumba marquees, and a stunn...

Give us everything you've got, we’ll take what we can get, we want to hear your story and be a part of it! The casual text that snagged nominated nut-buster and Office reinventer Felicity Ward to join us for true-blue indie supergroup Boygenius at Pryzm Kingston and then answer some easy questions about work and school for a souvenir. It was a good idea, and she was all about it, a joyous guest wi...

Leave your home, watch a gig, wait a week, do a pig! A colossal ep reflecting on two dumb, slow shows at the Ally Pally by a band who don’t know how much we love them, do they? Serial Berningerer Helena Wadia and montage connoisseur Stuart Laws join to try and figure out everything at once, from novelty bombs v novelty bongs to just how much money, how much money, Ive-owes! Sign up to the Patreon...

Gig-pigger, where you been? You look so worn, so thin. To be fair, it was halfway through the Fringe when the pod that doesn’t take the easy road, the easy road, bundled Chloe Petts, classiest glasser in town, into the Pleasance Cabaret Bar to find the silver linings in a chagrin heavy evening at the “hideous” O2 Academy. And before we even get to it - and its side helpings of Kasabian pits, Kille...

A quart(sthoff)-century of eps into the pod and it’s been sorely lacking in two things: classical music and the First World War. What a delight to have rectified both omissions in Edinburgh in August, watching a history-infused Amatis Trio at the Queen’s Hall with the crown prince of the Fringe (other sweeping statements available on request) Kieran Hodgson. Grab yourself a Swedish bun and relax a...

Bonjour et bienvenue au café du jazz! Whatever trip these cats are on it’s the right trip, and this week it’s a trip they (/he) took to watch the relentlessly romantic two-jobbed soul veteran Lee Fields, alongside tux-wearing, task-slamming earthquake (relief concert) survivor Sarah Kendall. And what about the episode’s hefty top, the hefty tail and the hefty middle bit about boarding school traum...

Holding him back, Gig Pigs are holding him back, he wants to go home to release his girlfriend, why don't we leave it at that? Here we are, then: Rhys surviving domestic distraction and relentless tangents about newspaper cartoonists / panel show email logins, to compare notes on "our" trip to worship (yet another) Harry at Wembley.  Download extra swill, rate and leave review, just add it to the...

Oh, is this the way they say the podcast’s meant to feel? Or just three Pulp fans chatting in a field? Live from the Listening Post, as the rain poured on Paul Heaton outside, Alex and Ivo ask Shappi if she remembers the first time she saw live music, etc, before talk turns to Rachel Johnson and the chat slides out view. Download extra swill, rate and leave review, just add it to the list of thing...

S2 EP1: Blur with Josh Widdicombe Whoo-hoo! There’s no other way we’d like series 2 to kick off than here, talking about Blur with the literal mastermind of the band, seat-seeking Sunday sceptic Josh Widdicombe. Well, here’s our lucky day: after watching/livestreaming/latestreaming the the new album at the (yes please) Hammersmith Apollo, we tuck into the Ballad of Darren, the jealousy of Tim and...

The pigs are back in the trough and familiar roles have been assumed ahead of next week’s official return: Alex has devised, formatted and tiered the new Patreon, and Ivo has put written some song titles on small scraps of paper and put them into bucket hats for a quiz. Click the link below to find out the hours of extra pig tails and other swill we’ll be trotting out each month for £3.80/£5/£10,0...

Proposals, printed lyrics, and promised lands: the pigs recount their respective trips to the circus (literal: Maximus, metaphorical: BST Hyde Park’s tiered standing) to watch the Boss this summer, in an episode that arguably hits a bit harder than last week’s game of “guess the Really Hot Chili Peppers setlist”. Dedicated to our friends around the river bend, and all those remembering them. The E...

Look at that title and tell me these boys aren’t serious. The purge steps up this week as Alex and Ivo discuss Live Aspects but also Non Live Aspects of their hoariest mid noughties chestnuts: one more chance to rank the Chamber Bullets’ non album singles, whether the Great Scots could have had it so much better with a bit more emotional weight, a largely revelation free black hole of chat on the...

The podcast may be in flux between seasons, but this shouldn’t stop us getting our talons into one of the jewels (exact jewel ranking TBC) in the “UK festivals that you can camp at” crown. Arguably not the most total review of the sumptuous Suffolk smorgasbord, compromised by admin and rain and cold Saturday night pragmatism, but with enough regrets and soup-based hypotheticals to tide us over unt...

It’s the final Gig Pigs Proper of the series and we’re going (sn)out with a bang(er)! Two guests with four Arctic Monkeys gigs this year (and many more before) between them, tackling the mardiest rock debate of our times: whether the new songs make perfect sense or if they should just snap out of it??!! This pod there’ll be some love (serial Alex fancier Mhairi Beveridge!), this pod there’ll be a...