Word In Your Ear

The Proclaimers have only had a handful of hits but they’re songs that have kept expanding for nearly 40 years. And the World Cup was a reminder of how far they’ve reached. Craig and Charlie Reid talk to us here about first adventures onstage, talent shows, the tour circuit, the new album ‘You May Offend’ and …   … the moment the Proclaimers took off   … first records bought in Woolworth...

The original rock podcast - now in its 20th year! – knocks the week’s news across the conversational net. Amid the top-spin, rallies and double-faults, you’ll find …   … farcical developments in the Tupac trial   … the shock-horror reaction to the Sam Mendes Beatles’ wigs!   … Dave Marsh’s ‘1001 Greatest Singles’ in 1989: what 45s released since would make his Top 10?   … ‘If t...

Martin Simpson got backstage when he was 15 and met Jimmy Reed and Big Joe Williams and it changed his life forever. He’s been on the folk circuit ever since, still at the top of his game and with the wealth of knowledge and experience reflected in this extremely entertaining podcast. His ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ album celebrates 50 years since his first record and he’s on tour in September. And tal...

The Shadows were the strongest brand in British pop, adored and widely imitated. When they went out of fashion, no-one wanted them to change. Bob Stanley salutes their enormous influence and creation of the guitar hero and unravels their rapid post-Beatles decline in his superb new book, ‘The Shadows: the Definitive Story’. And talks to us here about …    … Hank and Bruce arriving in Lon...

Stuff, nonsense, the white heat of debate and yesterday’s news today! Which this week involves …   … which of these didn’t host a TV chat show – Ian Botham, Charlotte Church, Lily Allen or Harold Wilson?   … if you’d paid £102 to see two-thirds of the Fugees show up an hour late, wouldn’t you SCREAM for a refund?   … Britain’s most rock’n’roll hotel and why the idea of “excess” seem...

A sense of melancholy hangs over the music of songwriters whose lives were tragically short – Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Eva Cassidy, Judee Sill - and we’re left knowing very little about them. Jamie Fisher, writer and New York Times researcher, discovered Elliott Smith 12 years after he’d died and contacted 40 of his friends and fellow musicians to build a picture of him for her memoir Nobody Brok...

Michael Cragg’s devotion to all things Kylie once led him to Melbourne in search of the actual carousel horse she rode in a pop video. He got a tattoo a day later. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head is a funny and fondly detailed personal account of the risk-taking variety of her records, the mystery of her private life and the irresistible nature of her appeal, a girl who, were there a war on, would be...

‘Sandy Denny: A People’s History’ has just been published, memories from fellow musicians, old friends, producers, writers, fans and admirers. Linda Thompson met her when they were both 16 and was devoted to her ‘til she died in 1978 – “she’s still with me, I talk to her all the time”. She looks back here at their lives in Soho bars, folk clubs and studios, the world they inhabited and the musicia...

The news slapped on the conversational barbecue and served with a side of old hokum. This week’s mixed grill includes …   … our favourite story in the whole of popular music!   … Lisa Marie Presley & Michael Jackson, Neil Young & Daryl Hannah and other weird celebrity weddings   … how Glen Hansard got hired for the Commitments   … “Everybody has a plan ‘til they’re punc...

Tim Pope caught the video wave in 1981 and made hundreds of promotional clips, often three or four a week, edited at night and on-air days later. You’ll have seen them, singles for the Style Council, The The, Iggy Pop, Hall & Oates and many others. For 15 years he was the man to call – inventive, caffeinated, risk-loving, clubbable – and “nothing was too mad or stupid”. He celebrates that magi...

Pauline Black was seen singing Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell songs in Coventry folk clubs and recruited by a local reggae band. Then converted to ska and joined the Selecter - back on tour this summer and with a box-set of live recordings, ‘The Selecter at the BBC’. She looks back here at …   … their first gig with Madness for 47 years in Brighton – “very red fezzy!”   … her Sliding Do...

Tony Fletcher launched Jamming! when he was 13, wrote for the Face at 16, ran a label with Paul Weller at 17 and a year later was presenting the Tube. And was in a band signed to EMI. If anyone did more as a teenager, we want to meet them. It’s all in his coming-of-age memoir ‘Pow! When UK Punk Went Pop 1980-84’ - discussed here - which touches on …   …the speed, the possibilities and the ric...

Testing the temperature of this week’s news to see what trips the fire-alarm, which includes …   … does having a Number One still matter?   … Pauline Black’s sliding doors moment   … rock stars you can’t imagine dancing   … heatwaves, fire, rain, dust and thunderstorms: how extreme weather’s changing the festival circuit   … when Jarvis Cocker was a fishmonger and Bryan Fe...

This week’s news in a conversational cocktail-shaker and served with ice and a little paper parasol. Those Happy Hour highlights include …   … six musicians who keep getting better looking   … Plas Johnson RIP, a part of everyone’s life for 60 years     … the Odyssey and how Hollywood thinks the rest of the world has a foreign accent   … why you couldn’t make Bugsy Ma...

Ben Sidran was in a teenage band with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs, a session pianist with the Stones in 1969 and carved a brilliant career as a jazz musician, producer, author and broadcaster. He’s just written ‘Cool Cat Blues’ about his old friend and collaborator Georgie Fame and the brief, luminous, pre-rock London blues and jazz scene that launched him. This enthralling conversation looks at t...

Steve Hackett’s seven years in Genesis get re-explored when he tours in October, along with ‘solo gems’ from the records he’s made since, the latest ‘the Roaring Waves’, a collaboration with old pal Steve Rothery. He looks back here at defining moments in the Genesis story such as the stage props, the early American tours and Phil Collins when he met him having just auditioned for Zeffirelli and b...

Mari Wilson has drunk deep of all that London nightlife has to offer, from a London Transport social club in Wembley to a posh venue in Chelsea via the Cooks Ferry Inn in Edmonton, and she remembers it well. Here she marks the release of her new album “Girl About Town” by talking about: •⁠ ⁠making bacon sandwiches for Mott The Hoople •⁠ ⁠entertaining her dad’s mates with her Alma Cogan i...

Another over-heated week put through the conversational air-conditioner, which involves …   … the man who got rich writing words that could never be sung   … Anna Bullock? Stefani Germanotta? People who’d never have made it if they hadn’t changed their names   … and the best stage name ever!   … Marco Pirroni’s jukebox   … when the Rock'n’Roll rulebook declared ‘Thou Shalt...

Marco Pirroni’s moment in the sun was big, lucrative but incredibly short. It was under a year from Adam & the Ants’ first hit to their last and immediate break-up. Adam, he remembers, was the perfect writing partner – driven, intensely competitive and with “a pathological fear of only being Number 2”. He’s got no regrets, hasn’t had to do day’s work since, and looks back here at … … being the...

The Specials have officially disbanded, bowing out with a swansong album recorded in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral in 2019. Horace Panter looks back at the first shows they played - when Jim Callaghan was still PM! - and the rigours of mastering ska when some of the group thought it was “old man’s music”. Along with …   … the dignified way for any band to retire   … the 2-Tone tour of...

As this week’s news hurtles over the net, we sort the aces from the double-faults. The final score …    … Madonna, Shakira, Chris Martin and World Cup 11-minute half-time overload!   … how many Stones albums were “the best since Exile On Main Street”?   … Kevin Rowland’s heart-breaking songs about Life’s Third Act   … 10 good reasons to miss the Nineties   … Country &...

We first saw Kevin in ‘77 wearing jodhpurs onstage with his art-punk band the Killjoys! He’s formed a new version of Dexys, made an album, starts a tour in October, and looks back here at central moments in his life, some recent ones so huge and affecting “that I put them to music” and they’ll be performed as a drama in the first half of these upcoming theatre shows. This touches - in vivid detail...

This week’s penalty shoot-out of news sorts the surefire hits from the over-the-bar misses. That final score again …  … what Morrissey’s only gone and done now  … when your logo’s worth than your songs  … Taylor Swift’s wedding and how Sly Stone got there first  … do musicians care about awards? … Divine Comedy, Jonathan Richman, Fountains of Wayne, Zappa: why are ‘humorous’ re...

The blistering heat of 1976 burnt various things onto the memory – standpipes, strikes, Entebbe, ‘Confessions’ movies, Jeremy Thorpe – but most of all the records that became its soundtrack, some of them revolutionary, others begging for extinction. John L Williams captures the moment in ‘Heatwave: the Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point’ and a paints of picture of a country on the brink of a...

Nige Tassell fell in love with the literary allusions of Prefab Sprout when at school and his new book ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ tells their unique and inscrutable story – and involves some delightfully off-road “deerstalker” investigation. You’ll find self-sabotage, square pegs in round holes, the eternal pressure to have hits, and a devoted portrait of ringmaster Paddy McAloon that leaves you convince...