Past Prime

On episode 25 of  ⁠⁠Past Prime⁠⁠ , we travel through The Mystic to the other side, where, in 2022, lockdown Van was consumed with "the data," Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab (head of the World Economic Forum). In Van's hard to explain new phase, however, Matty and Steve discover an unexpected new frontier -- Past Past Prime. Past Past Prime Van Morrison is part freedom fighter, part scie...

On episode 24 of  ⁠Past Prime⁠ , we go full “Sad Dad.” In 2017, after a decade being carried in the arms of cheerleaders, The National were disoriented. Their unexpected stardom was bumping up against their middle-aged domesticity. There was the scary new President. Members of the band even dared to leave Brooklyn for “the ru-burbs.” “Sleep Well Beast” was the band anxiously experimenting their wa...

On episode 23 of  Past Prime , Steve and Matty revisit The King of Pop's penultimate album, which was really a double album, consisting of one greatest hits record and one lavish, eighty minute, fifteen track selection of new songs. "HIStory" was made while Jackson was being investigated by the Santa Barbara District Attorney for child abuse & endangerment, while he was also in t...

On episode 22 of  Past Prime , and with the passing of Tom Verlaine still very much a recent event, Steve and Matty return to the third (and final) album from New York proto-punk legends, Television. Released in 1992, fourteen years after the band had broken up, but just before the world wide web became a source for instant information, "Television" arrived as a titanic surprise to fans...

On episode 21 of  Past Prime , Steve and Matty put on their dayglo, double-breasted suits and grab their headless guitars to fully absorb the proto-Alt noise of Tin Machine "II," the second album from David Bowie's alleged band of equals. Alongside Staten Island everyman, Reeves Gabrels, and two of Soupy Sales kiddos, the once Thin White Duke maintained he was just one fourth of a mi...

On episode 20 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty hoist a nautical distress signal and recount every headline of the second half of the twentieth century, including "Belgians in the Congo," as they try to figure out who, exactly, started that fire. They bravely confront the middle-aged storm that was Billy Joel's eleventh studio album, a song cycle about supermodels, Long Island fisherman, Russian clo...

On episode 19 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty bravely slog their way through "Calling All Stations," the fifteenth studio album from Prog Rock turned Stadium Pop legends, Genesis, and one of the most infamously awful last gasps in the history of Rock and Roll. In 1986, a decade after Peter Gabriel left them behind, Phil, Tony & Mike reached the top of the charts with "Invisible Touch." But one...

On episode 18 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty confront their demons which, as it turns out, do not look like Jam Bands. Nor do they resemble hacky sackers or fratty teens drinking Zimas and smoking joints in the parking lot. No, Matty and Steve come face to face with the most insidious of fiends -- their own biases. The problem apparently was not with Dave. The problem was with our co-hosts and th...

Episode 17 is another edition of Past Prime Pastime , wherein Matty and Past Prime baseball correspondent, Kevin Blake, try to explain the unexplainable career of Giant (and Met and Mariner and Padre and Red and Daiei Hawk) great, Kevin Mitchell. In 1989, Mitchell was on pace to break Roger Maris' coveted single season home run record. The man who was previously the twelfth best player on the 1986...

On episode 16 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty comb through the voluminous hair, pick at the long fingernails and revisit the rumors of an elusive stadium Rock star who spent his adulthood feeling miscast and misunderstood. Steve is a lifelong Fleetwood Mac fan, enamored equally of Stevie and Lindsey, but perhaps more "Buck-curious." So curious, in fact, that he'd traveled down the wormhole of Buck...

On episode 15 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty try to recapture "That Summer Feeling" through the music of a wide-eyed, hip shaking, Velvet Underground acolyte (and sometimes stonemason). Our co-hosts return to "I, Jonathan," from 1992, when Jonathan Richman was was forty-one, on the brink of a star turn with the Farrelly Brothers, and in a reflective, autobiographical mode. Many years after his fa...

It's baseball season! So, it seems only fitting that episode 14 is about Past Prime Pastime ! Matty is joined by Past Prime baseball correspondent, Kevin H. Blake to discuss the greatness of former Baltimore Orioles great, Edward Clarence Murray -- specifically his abominable final season, with the Angels and Dodgers in 1997, wherein he bounced between the Majors and AAA. After a Hall of Fame care...

On episode 13 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty return to 1985, when a thirty four year old, mullet-curious drummer, who loved Hawaiian shirts and Motown, ruled the airwaves. We know what you're saying -- this album is not "Past Prime" -- it's the very definition of "prime!" Maybe so. It produced number one hits. It won Grammys. It sold tens of millions of copies. It landed Collins on the mountainto...

On episode 12 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty dust off their monocles and their old, college Comp Lit textbooks to try to understand Sting's 1991 solo album, "The Soul Cages." Following his too short stint as the too handsome frontman of the world's most popular Rock band, the former Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner turned his attention to headier subjects. Jazz replaced Reggae and then Jazz was paire...

On episode 11 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty reassess a guitar great who was called "god" in the 1960s, "Slowhand" in the 1970s, and who was passed down generation to generation as a Classic Rock treasure. But, perhaps his greatest accomplishments are as a style icon. His Armani blazers fit great. He pulls off a mock turtleneck somehow. And he offsets his lack of a chin with a heck of a five o'cl...

On episode 10 of Past Prime , Steve and Matty lift the veil off of one of the great cold cases of American Classic Rock. The co-hosts first travel back to 1988 and pull on the thread of CSNY's "American Dream." And then they keep pulling and pulling, all the way back through "Deja Vu" and through CSN's (minus Y) 1969 debut. They shed their Gen X biases, the decades of Boomer propaganda and cast a...

On episode 9 of Past Prime , Steve helps Matty confront the shame he has lived with for turning his back on Queen in the late 1980s. "The Miracle," was released in 1989 amid a very public divorce for Brian May and, more importantly, private, terminal suffering for Freddie. Steve has the revelation that Queen was the sort of band that would strike out nine times in a row before hitting an unthinkab...

On episode 8 of Past Prime , Matty & Steve head to Muswell Hill and share a pint as they gush over The Kinks' oft-maligned, 1984 album, "Word of Mouth." This album, a staple of used record bins and thrift stores, marked the end of a relative hot streak the Davies brothers had experienced at the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s. Its cover was ghastly, desperately insisting this original...

On episode 7 of Past Prime , Matty & Steve sit down in their bespoke suits for a cup of Earl Grey tea to discuss The Rolling Stones' 1994 "comeback" album, "Voodoo Lounge." Released after a string of tepid albums and more frequent and public spats between The Glimmer Twins, the band got into the studio with taskmaster Don Was and aimed to reclaim some of their greatness. The result was a...

On episode 6 of Past Prime , Matty & Steve gather their twenty-sided dice and Ren Faire costumes to revisit Jethro Tull's 1999 album slash website advertisement, "J-Tull Dot Com." Nearly thirty years after "Aqualung" and over a decade after the Heavy Metal Grammy winning, "Crest of a Knave," Ian Anderson and company returned with what would become the final Tull studio album. Our co-hosts try...

On episode 5 of Past Prime , Matty and Steve head back into the Mystic to revisit the album that inspired their website and podcast to begin with -- Van Morrison's "A Sense of Wonder" (1985). The co-hosts admit that they both avoided this album because, first and foremost, it features one of the most unfortunate cover designs and wardrobe decisions ever printed. Van famously looks like a woodland...

On episode 4 of Past Prime , Matty (reluctantly) and Steve (religiously) buckle up for the legendarily wild, bloated, melodramatic, 1993 smash "Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell." Written and produced by mad-scientist, Jim Steinman , and performed by his inimitable Frankenstein, Meat Loaf , the album is the sequel to 1977s triumph, "Bat Out of Hell." Steve is an elite Steinman-ologist while Matty...

On episode 3 of Past Prime , Matty and Steve confront the grit-less, flavorless, bottled water of James Taylor's 1988 album, "Never Die Young." Equal parts singer songwriter, dope fiend and Hippie-turned-Yuppie icon, Taylor and his music are confounding to our co-hosts. Like most of his 80's albums, "Never Die Young" sounds both like high end children's music and low end white R&B. It features...

In episode 2 of Past Prime , Matt and Steve carefully (out of fear) discuss Lou Reed's 1982 solo album, "The Blue Mask." Considered by many to be his greatest album in between "Transformer" and "New York," it is definitely his most domestic, heterosexual, average-guy album. Lou got married and off drugs right before making this album. As a result, the music and the discussion wrestle with who is L...

On the inaugural episode of Past Prime , hosts Matty and Steve discuss Alex Chilton's 1995 solo album, "A Man Called Destruction." At the time of its release, it was hailed as a long-awaited great work by the beloved former Big Star front man and legendary sad sack. Since his "should have been" days as a Power Pop master in the 70s, Chilton only managed to eek out a handful of half-baked records....