Love is the Message: Dance, Music and Counterculture

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the full thing and a whole lot more, go to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this patrons-episode Jeremy raises a devil’s horn salute to the gods and demons of heavy metal. He explores the etymology of the genre term, excavating its shared roots with acid rock, and explaining how heavy metal compliments our story here on LITM. With reference to...

In the final episode of our three-parter on punk, Jeremy and Tim stick a pin through their ears and make their way down the Kings Road for the release of Anarchy in the UK. We hear about the mercurial Malcolm McLaren, Situationism, Symbolism and SEX in discussion with the Pistols project. We uncover why John Lydon knows what he hates but not what he wants, how a prime-time curse word scandalised B...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the whole thing and much more besides, visit Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod Earlier this month UNESCO added Berlin techno to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, a register to recoginize and safeguard important traditions, practices and expressions. This news was met with consternation from music fans over how this honour completely overlook...

In this episode we continue our trio of episodes on Punk by examining some crucial mid-70s proto-Punk antecedents. Via the lean funkiness of Dr Feelgood Jeremy and Tim explore the interesting British formation of pub rock, with its R’n’B roots and distinct danceability. This leads to a discussion on the slipperiness of Rock’n’Roll as a term and its tensions with ‘rock’ proper. We also hear an earl...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the whole thing and a huge number of other conversations, head to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this patrons episode Jem and Tim once again share what’s been on their turntables recently. We hear two tracks - one contemporary and one not - from the UK Asian Underground, along with a consideration of the cosmopolitan aesthetic of artists like...

Welcome to Series 6 of Love is the Message! We hope you enjoyed the series of conversations with writers and academics that comprised Series 5, but now we are returning to our usual format to examine a watershed year: 1977.  In this first episode we are unpacking Punk. What is it? A musical style, a subgenre of rock, a fashion sensibility, an attitude, a structure of feeling? In the first of three...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the whole thing and a lot more besides, head to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this patrons’ episode we conclude our trio of episodes on Glam Rock. Tim and Jeremy pick up where they left off with a walk on the wild side. This leads to a discussion of the relationship between Lou Reed, Bowie and Iggy Pop in the early 70s. They discuss the undi...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the whole show, and a whole lot more besides, head to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod to sign up. In this patrons’ episode we move into the second of three episodes on Glam. The third part of this trilogy will be dropping in your feed sooner than our normal schedule so hold tight for that. Tim and Jeremy discuss that big beast of British rock, Rox...

In this episode Jeremy and Tim are joined by writer, historian, and friend of the show Simon Reynolds to discuss British musical trends of the 1970s and his life as a music journalist. Simon is arguably the most important music critic writing today, having penned seminal books on post-punk, electronic dance music, feminist rock and much more. In this interview he mostly talks about his most recent...

UNLOCKED - We've made public this previously patrons-only episode following the death of Can singer Damo Suzuki. If you'd like to become a patron, visit Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. W do you call it? Krautrock, space rock, the Great Komische Music? It’s all German to me. In a little under two hours the guys cover the history of post-WW2 Germany (East and West), anti-Communist geopolitics, w...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the whole thing, plus dozens of hours more discussion and conversation, head to patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this patrons’ episode we continue our look at musical currents of the 1970s by pulling on our platform boots, pasting on some eyeliner and getting ready for Glam Rock. In the first of two episodes, Tim and Jeremy excavate the pre-his...

To hear an extended version of this conversation, become a patron at Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this episode Jeremy and Tim are joined by historian and New Yorker Kim Phillips-Fein to discuss a crucial event in the Love is the Message story: the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis. Kim’s book ‘Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics’ is widely regarded as the defini...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the whole show, plus much more, head to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. On this festive edition of What We’re Listening To, Jeremy and Tim share selections from their turntables alongside thoughts on religion, atheism, death - and Blondie. We hear psychedelic jazz from north India and northern England, a brace of uplifting Gospel anthems from Pas...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the full show, and much more, head to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this episode Tim and Jeremy begin a series of shows for patrons that flesh out some of the other musical currents of the UK and Europe in the late 60s and early 70s, beginning with… well, what do you call it? Krautrock, space rock, the Great Komische Music? It’s all German t...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the full show, plus much more, sign up at Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this patrons episode, Tim and Jeremy continue their investigation into the musical cultures of Europe and the UK of the 1970s. For this show, pull on your wide-leg jeans, pop a dexy and talc the floor, because we’re talking Northern Soul. We hear about Mod culture, subcu...

In this week’s episode, Tim and Jeremy are joined by writer, critic and academic Emily J. Lordi to discuss her 2020 book The Meaning of Soul (and much more besides). Emily talks about how she got into writing about Black music and the particular status Soul held in academia at the start of her career. The three consider changing historiographies of Black culture, talk over some key canonical texts...

In this week’s episode, Tim and Jeremy are joined by writer and scholar Mark Anthony Neal. Mark’s 1999 book ‘What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture’ is a crucial text for us here at Love is the Message, so it was fantastic to have him join the show to discuss his life and work in music. We discuss how the Black popular music of the past 60 years provides an insight into...

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the full show, plus many more hours of conversation, become a patron at Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this patrons episode Tim and Jeremy offer music on the theme of war and peace. They reflect on the ongoing conflict in Palestine, discussing the current unfolding crisis and taking a longer view on Israeli history. We hear about the ecstatic...

In this week’s episode, Tim and Jeremy welcome writer and academic Gayle Wald to the show to tell us about the life and times of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Christened on social media ‘the queer black woman who invented rock’n’roll’, yet derided in 1970 as ‘a blacked up Elvis in drag’, Sister Rosetta’s story disrupts the received narrative of rock history. We hear about her religious upbringing, hittin...

Love is the Message is back for Series 5! After a few weeks off for the summer holidays, Tim and Jeremy return to the show for more music, dancing, sound systems and counterculture. This time round, we’re changing things up. As you’ll hear, we’re taking a break from our chronological narrative to bring in scholars and writers for a series of guest interviews, allowing us to both deepen our underst...

This is it - the final episode of series 4, New York City 1975-76. For this show Jeremy and Tim are staying in the Bronx for more discussion around the links between Downtown party culture and the port hip-hop scene. We hear about the very first B Boys, what their moves looked like, and what sort of music they were breaking to. We explore how important performing or being watched was to these danc...

In the penultimate episode of our current series, Tim and Jeremy explore the earlier incarnations of what would become Hip-Hop. They begin by asking where the term comes from and interrogating the problematic historiography of the genre. The show then moves on to a detailed profile of the legendary DJ Cool Herc and his nascent rec room parties, alongside the contemporaneous mobile DJ culture, the...

For this episode, Tim and Jeremy pull on their dancing shoes to explore why the Downtown dance floors of the early 1970s were such historically unique places. Situating the forms of dancing found at the Loft and the Sanctuary as part of a turn away from the forms of partner dancing covered in our previous episode, we hear how these new forms of dance deconstructed how people experienced their bodi...

This is an excerpt from a patrons episode. To hear the full show, and much more like this, head to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod. In this patrons-only bonus episode, Jeremy explores what it means to analyse music from a feminist perspective. Beginning with a literature review of both the various forms of feminism theorised in the 1970s, and the body of feminist music writing from the late 80s to the...

We say that LITM is a podcast about music, the dance floor, sound systems and counterculture, but we realise that we haven’t dedicated a show to dance floor practices for some time. So in this episode, Tim is in the hot seat to give us a quick primer on the history of social dance in the USA and beyond. With reference to the prevailing gender, class and power relations of their time, we learn abou...