The James McMahon Music Podcast

Pauline Murray is best known as the lead vocalist of the punk rock band Penetration . After the original demise of that group in 1979 she made the album Pauline Murray and The Invisible Girls with John Cooper Clarke's backing band. In 2011 Murray established Polestar Studios with her partner, and Penetration bassist, Robert Blamire, in Byker, Newcastle. Her memoir, Life's a Gamble: Penet...

MC Hammersmith is a multi-award winning hip hop comedian from west London. He performs improvised and scripted hip-hop comedy, and tours the UK in March 2024. Now based in Edinburgh, he released his debut album, Mother's Fettuccine , this year. PLEASE VOTE FOR THE JAMES MCMAHON MUSIC PODCAST IN THE OH MY POD CATEGORY (BEST INDEPENDENT PODCAST) OF THE 2023 POD BIBLE LISTENER POLL . YOU CAN DO...

Barrett Martin is a Grammy Award winning American record producer, percussionist, writer, and ethnomusicologist from Washington. He was a member of Screaming Trees between 1992 and their break-up in 2000, and a member of the grunge 'supergroup' Mad Season . He has played music with Stone Temple Pilots, R.E.M., Greg Dulli and more. In 2000, he was ordained as a Zen monk. His book concerni...

Julian Lloyd Webber OBE is a British solo cellist, conductor and broadcaster. He is the former principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the founder of the In Harmony music education programme. Bach Revealed   - by Julian and Jiaxin Lloyd Webber - tours the UK in January 2024. PLEASE VOTE FOR THE JAMES MCMAHON MUSIC PODCAST IN THE OH MY POD CATEGORY (BEST INDEPENDENT PODCAST) OF THE 2023 POD...

Adam Franklin has fronted the British alternative rock band Swervedriver since 1989. Though the Oxford born band went on hiatus between 1998 and 2008, Adam kept busy with a variety of projects; his group Toshack Highway, Bolts of Melody , Magnetic Morning, and his involvement with the Sophia collective being the most notable. Swervedriver's most recent release was 2019’s excellent Future Ruin...

John Doe has played bass and sang in the seminal U.S. punk band X since 1977. After a period of inactivity during the mid-to-late 1990s, X reunited in the early 2000s. Alongside X, John has a thriving solo career, and has been a working actor since 1982. His most recent film, D.O.A. , is available to rent and buy now. PLEASE VOTE FOR THE JAMES MCMAHON MUSIC PODCAST IN THE OH MY POD CATEGORY (BEST...

Michael Azerrad is an American author, music journalist, editor, and musician. He has written for publications such as Spin , Rolling Stone , and The New York Times . His 2001 US indie rock anthology, Our Band Could Be Your Life , is probably my favourite music book ever. His 1993 Nirvana biography, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, has recently been re-issued, with annotations by the author...

Katherine von Drachenberg, better known as Kat Von D , is a Mexican-American tattoo artist, entrepreneur and recording artist. She is known for her work as a tattoo artist on the reality television show LA Ink , which ran for four seasons. She is also known for being the former head of Kat Von D Beauty (renamed KVD Vegan Beauty). Her debut album, Love Made Me Do It , was released in 2021. Her new...

Rose Elinor Dougall is an English singer, songwriter and musician. She was a member of The Pipettes and has written and performed with Mark Ronson . Since 2022 she has been a member of The WAEVE , alongside partner Graham Coxon . The band released their eponymous debut album in February 2023. Watch this episode here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o-bbo-zOA4 Show theme by Bis . Want more? Join...

Andrew Harrison is the Group Editor of Podmasters , home of Oh God What Now? , The Bunker , Paper Cuts , and more. Formally the editor of Q and Word , he worked in a variety of roles at Select magazine - my favourite music magazine of the nineties, because NME was a paper then and thus doesn't count - between 1990 and 1995.  Show theme by Bis . Want more? Join The James McMahon Music Podcast...

Saul Galpern owns Nude Records . Best known for signing Suede , thereby igniting the scene that would come to be known as Britpop, Nude also had success with releases by Black Box Recorder, Geneva, Billy Mackenzie, and my personal favourites Ultrasound. Show theme by Bis . Want more? Join The James McMahon Music Podcast  Patreon .  Twitter - @jamesjammcmahon Substack - https://spoook.substack.com...

Rick Witter has fronted Shed Seven since 1990. Between 1994 and 1999 the York based band had fifteen UK Top 40 singles and four UK Top 20 albums. They return on January 5th, 2024, with a new album, A Matter of Time and celebrate their 30th anniversary in July with two hometown shows at York Museum Gardens . Watch this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlZAVRI7n8M&t=16s Show theme b...

Andy McCluskey is the bassist and lead vocalist in British electronic pop pioneers OMD , and the only constant member since their formation in their native Wiral, Merseyside, in 1978. Having sold to date over 40 million records globally, the group recently released their fourteenth studio album, Bauhaus Staircase . They tour in the UK in 2024. Watch this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch...

Ian Broudie is the singer, songwriter, and guitarist, in The Lightning Seeds . A former member of Big In Japan, and the producer of classic records by Echo & the Bunnymen , the Fall, and the Coral, he recently released his first book, Tomorrow's Here Today: Lightning Seeds, Football and Cosmic Post-Punk on Nine Eight Books. The Lightning Seeds tour in support of Madness in November/Decemb...

I went on the telly. Yes, I know I need to tidy my spare room . Twitter - @jamesjammcmahon Substack - https://spoook.substack.com YouTube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Vf_1E1Sza2GUyFNn2zFMA Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/jamesmcmahonmusicpod/

Enjoy episode one of my conversation with The Futureheads ? Look, I know this podcast thing is a one way conversation, but I’m going to presume that you did given that you appear to have come back for more. Yes, what follows is the rest of my conversation with The Futureheads’ Barry Hyde and Ross Millard , and it includes, among other things, some titbits about what the Sunderland band might do ne...

I can’t believe it took 199 episodes but I finally got, not just one of my favourite bands, but a group I grew up with – an outfit that I’ve known and championed for my entire career as a music journalist – on an episode of the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, all who fall in between, on this episode I’m speaking to Ross Millard and Barry Hyde from Sunderland new wave punk pop art ro...

Jordan Bassett used to be a commissioning editor at my beloved NME . Now he’s written his first book. Part of the 33 1/3rd series, the recently released Here's Little Richard   tells the story of the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer's 1957 debut , and does so with the flair and precision that I do so love about Jordan’s writing. In this episode we talk about how the book came to be, how Jordan bala...

You probably know by now that I am obsessed with the music press, and so it was it was a treat to speak to Record Collector editor Paul Lester on this episode. Paul is obsessed with the music press too, and as a former staffer on the forever missed Melody Maker , then pivotal in the creation of Uncut magazine, and now editor of a revitalised Record Collector ,  he is perfectly placed to spend an h...

Okay, so there’s still two months to go, but I’m fairly certain that when 2023 is through, my favourite album released this year will be House & Trance by Long Island melodic hardcore champs, Crime In Stereo . Their first album in 13 long years , you might consider the record as a treatise on the state of the world right now. It's fascinating record, not so much political as a portrait of...

Echo & the Bunnymen are, in my educated opinion, one of the best bands of all time. Listening to their music growing up I found their songs, and their style, mysterious, detached, magical even, and so when guitarist Will Sergeant had his first memoir published, Bunnyman , in 2021, I dived right in, delighted to peak behind the veil. Part two of his memoir series, Echoes , was released this sum...

I was very fond of million unit selling, Balham band Turin Brakes when I was a younger man. In fact their first two records - 2001’s The Optimist and 2003’s Ether Song - soundtracked a lot of miserable times I spent in bedsits. It’s testament to the songwriting nous of Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian’s group – and a bit of luck, cough , Take That – that they’re still making records all these yea...

Paul Rees was editor of Kerrang! magazine two suckers before I was. Then he was editor of the forever missed Q . Then he wrote a book about West Brom Football Club that I thought was incredible despite having very little opinion on West Brom Football Club prior to reading it. Now he’s written a book about the late, great Elliott Smith, titled Shooting Star: The Definitive Story of Elliott Smith ,...

Paul Hanley used to be in The Fall – he played on, amongst other seminal releases, one of my favourite records, 1982’s Hex Enduction Hour , and with brother Steve, also a member of Mark E Smith’s hugely influential avant garde pop outfit, now hosts the Fall podcast Oh! Brother – but he really, really loves Buzzcocks , who happen to be one of my very favourite bands too. I enjoyed Paul’s first book...

The mysterious n0trixx hails from Russia, though she now lives in Turkey after fleeing her homeland and Putin’s thugs in the wake of an anti-war protest she attended in Moscow’s Red Square after Mother Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. This is why she now, in public, wears a mask. She also has dissociative identity disorder , a controversial diagnosis to some, but a condition that today’s guest says...