The CAT Club (Classic Album Thursdays)

NEBRASKA – BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN A CAT Club presentation in association with the E Street and Strange Brew Podcasts. Recorded on four-track cassette in his New Jersey bedroom, 'Nebraska' has proved one of Springsteen’s most enduring works. A raw, haunted acoustic record populated by lost souls searching not for salvation through music, but simply a reason to believe. JASON BARNARD & JEFF MATTHEWS...

POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES – NEW ORDER with special guest Lindsay Reade. 'Power, Corruption & Lies' cemented New Order's place as the most exciting dance-rock hybrid in music. Released on Factory, the album stands as a thrilling introduction to a band finding its feet and leaping ahead of the pack. With special guest LINDSAY READE. We were delighted to welcome Lindsay Reade as our guest, who...

BLUE – JONI MITCHELL with special guest Barney Hoskyns. Sad, spare, and beautiful, 'Blue' is the quintessential confessional singer/songwriter album. Forthright and poetic, Joni Mitchell's songs are raw nerves, tales of love and loss. Mitchell's music moves beyond the constraints of acoustic folk into more intricate and diverse territory, setting the stage for the experimentation o...

AN AUDIENCE WITH MANZANERA . . . Phil Manzanera is one of the UK’s best-known musicians and record producers, having shot to prominence in the early ‘70’s as the lead guitarist with the seminal band, Roxy Music. He is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading guitarists and is in much demand both as a performer and record producer. In 2019 Roxy Music were inducted into the US Rock and Roll...

ALADDIN SANE – DAVID BOWIE with special guest Suzi Ronson. On 5th July 2017, The CAT Club's featured album was Bowie's 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.' Our special guest that day was the band's drummer, Woody Woodmansey. We've wanted to present the follow up record to Ziggy Stardust, the truly wonderful 'Aladdin Sane' for some time no...

SIMPLE MINDS – NEW GOLD DREAM (81-82-83-84) with special guest Derek Forbes. “Ecstatic” is a good word. 'New Gold Dream' remains a bewitching, mystic work. Following five albums of often magnificent abstraction, Simple Minds located the sweet spot between art and pop, shadow and light, trance and melody. The lead single from the album, 'Promised You a Miracle,' became their first h...

JOHN LENNON/PLASTIC ONO BAND with special guest Philip Norman. John Lennon’s stunning debut album is quite rightly regarded as his best. Bleak, exhilarating and soulful, ‘ John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band’ is a true classic album. Legendary author & journalist, Philip Norman wrote ' Shout! The True Story Of The Beatles,' the multi million seller biography that was published in 1981. '...

BUZZCOCKS – A DIFFERENT KIND OF TENSION with special guest, Paul Hanley. Buzzcocks’ 1979 album, 'A Different Kind of Tension' may have been released the same year as ‘Singles Going Steady,’ but it is a different shape of beast to ‘Singles.' For a start it was recorded intentionally as an album rather than cobbled together by a naive U.S. label in search of punk dollar. Track three is “...

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD – DUSTY IN MEMPHIS with special guest LUCY O'BRIEN Surprisingly unsuccessful at the time, the album has thankfully become a monument to the unique soulfulness of one of Britain’s finest-ever voices. The record that’s widely held to be the greatest album in the distinguished catalogue of Dusty Springfield – in fact, for many, one of the greatest albums, period – was released o...

An Audience with TORIA GARBUTT The CAT Club's 'Sunday Showdown' presented the extraordinary ‘High Priestess of The Spoken Word,’ TORIA GARBUTT in a brutally honest conversation, followed by a stunning performance. Gary ‘Guestlist’ Lethbridge was in the interviewers’ chair . Since bursting onto the scene in 2014, Toria Garbutt has been a regular tour support for Dr John Cooper Clarke, m...

CREAM – FRESH CREAM with special guest MALCOLM BRUCE Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker formed Cream and released their stunning blues based debut album in 1966. ‘Fresh Cream' represents so many different firsts, it's difficult to keep count. Cream, of course, were the first supergroup, but their first album not only gave birth to the power trio, it also was instrumental in the birt...

TELEVISION – MARQUEE MOON with special guest Will Sergeant. This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. 'Marquee Moon' is a revolutionary album, but it's a subtle, understated revolution. Without question, it is a guitar rock album – it's astonishing to hear the interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, but it is a guitar rock album unlike any...

AN AUDIENCE WITH GLEN MATLOCK We were delighted when the Sex Pistols and Rich Kids legendary bass player, Glen Matlock joined us at The CAT Club to talk about his fascinating new book, T riggers: A Life In Music – which charts his life and career through the lens of thirty of his most formative songs – from the ones that influenced him as a child to the ones he wrote and played on as a star. CAT C...

THE BAND – The eponymous second album with special guest JOHN NIVEN. This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. The Band’s debut, ‘Music From Big Pink’ and their eponymous second LP are two of the most influential albums ever made. John Niven’s novella, Music From Big Pink caused the Band’s Robbie Robertson to ask, “Was that guy in the room?” John is one of the UK’s...

THE BEATLES – A HARD DAY'S NIGHT with special guests Peter Mills & James McGrath. This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. Considering the quality of the original material on 'With the Beatles,' it shouldn't have been a surprise that Lennon & McCartney decided to devote their third album to all-original material. Nevertheless, that decision...

GEORGE MICHAEL – FAITH with special guest JOHN ALTMAN. This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. It has to be said that John Altman is one of the great raconteurs and his stories caused many a jaw to drop in what was a truly classic CAT Club gathering. Unfortunately, George Michael didn't get much of a look in, but after listening this podcast you will understa...

'THE DOUBLE LIFE OF BOB DYLAN VOLUME 2 (1966-2021) Far Away From Myself' with CLINTON HEYLIN. We were delighted that author and leading rock journalist, Clinton Heylin chose The CAT Club to mark the official launch of his second volume of 'The Double Life of Bob Dylan.’ Clinton is one of the leading rock historians in the world and, according to Rolling Stone magazine, “the world's...

AN EVENING WITH CHAZ JANKEL On 31st August 2023 we at The CAT Club were lucky to be in the company of one of the most fertile talents in British pop music, Chaz Jankel was at the epicentre of Ian Dury & The Blockheads, acting as the mercurial Londoner's sidekick, songwriting partner and musical director. If Dury brought the rock and the roll to their music, then Jankel delivered the funk i...

SONIC YOUTH – EVOL with special guest Dave Hallam This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. EVOL – Sonic Youth  Released in May 1986, Evol  is the third full-length studio album by Sonic Youth. A raucous but beguiling mix of dissonance, attitude, weird guitar tunings, and beating rhythms (it was their first album with drummer Steve Shelley). Sonic Youth have been l...

“This sparky woman has done so much, lived so much, crammed so much in. Most of all, she has informed our appreciation of British and North American folk music, like very, very few people have. Then factor in her multiple roles in illuminating the folk, political song and feminist scenes and how her songs have enriched the folk idiom, and you have somebody worth getting amazed about.” - Ken Hunt /...

THE BEE GEES – MAIN COURSE with special guest Bob Stanley This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. It may sound silly to call the twelth album by a group with an eight-year string of gold records behind them a "breakthrough," but that's what Main Course was. Released in 1975, the group's first disco album – and, for many white listeners, the firs...

EDGAR ‘JONES’ JONES – SOOTHING MUSIC FOR STRAY CATS with special guest Edgar Jones This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. Soothing Music for Stray Cats is an innovative witches brew of Jazz, R ‘n’ B, Soul, Doo Wop mixed with Edgars’ own special ingredients to create something quite unique. One of this country’s greatest music talents, it seems incredible that th...

THE CARPENTERS – A SONG FOR YOU with special guest Lucy O'Brien. This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. Up to the release of  A Song for You , the Carpenters' success had seemed an awesome if somewhat fluky phenomenon, built on prodigious talent, some beautifully crafted pop sensibilities, and a very fortunate choice of singles -- their albums  Close To...

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS – EXODUS with special guest Chris Salewicz. This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. What was it about Bob Marley that made him so popular in a world dominated by rock ’n’ roll? How is it that he not only has remained the single most successful reggae artist ever, but also has become a shining beacon of radicalism and peace to generati...

THE SEX PISTOLS – NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS with special guest Clinton Heylin. This interview took place before and after we listened to the vinyl album. Never Mind the Bollocks perfectly articulated the frustration, rage, and dissatisfaction of the British working class with the establishment, a spirit quick to translate itself to strictly rock & roll terms. The Pistols paved the way for countl...