I tend to think of Adam Ant as being more dashing than articulate, but I believe he said it best in an interview with Smash Hits in June 1981: And I maintain that the audience is the most important consideration... tonight, tomorrow, next year, next century. And once you think you're "above" your audience, then I think that's the time to seriously reconsider your career. It was an idealistic proposition and one that made me overlook Mr Ant's tendency to kick in chairs and knock down tables in a restaurant in a West End town. It touched upon this nebulous idea of artist-fan requitedness: although they're singing to millions, they are humbled by the fact that you actually care.

I can see now that it would easier for the establishing artist to convey that sense of gratitude. That shock, seeing fans with placards wait at Narita Airport. That thrill, being invited to play Glastonbury for the first time. Interviews are unrehearsed, running more like therapy sessions than press conferences. Even if the establishing artist is completely convinced of their talent, there's still this unforced humility which makes you feel as if anyone can do it, if they really tried. There is always that paradox in supporting those establishing bands from the start. You so wish for their ground-breaking popularity, but your sense of ownership becomes damaged by all these other people who never seemed to care before.

We know that when an artist becomes established, a great divide is created. Although few would openly admit it, I believe we yearn for the established artist to share that nubile sense of gratitude. We know it more than anyone else, we know that commercial success is ultimately guaranteed, yet for some reason, it's vital that the artist appears to appreciate the full extent of their power and privilege. The artist can do it in an interview, like Mr Ant or even in a Grammy acceptance speech, but I find the search for artist-fan requitedness almost always comes down to the live show. It's a crafted demonstration of effort and so often, it comes down to a simple token gesture, a guitarist handing out a misshapen Dunlop Tortex plectrum to a hysterical girl in the front row. It's like they get this is a big deal...

The irony is that the sense of artist-fan requitedness would never extend to fans sympathising with the exhaustion associated with touring. We could hardly care less if the artist is playing a show every night or every other night, we could hardly care less if the artist is sick to death of playing that song. We demand that fantasy, that the performance of that song in this city is special to them, because it is special to us. In that regard, this nebulous idea of artist-fan requitedness seems to be a bit like a mutually insincere agreement to act sincere. It's important to keep up that façade, it's important to act as if everyone really cares.


Fighting over a piece of Morrissey's heart/shirt
Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Danish Pop Podcast #55
The Raveonettes - Sleepwalking
Bodebrixen - My Name is Carl (Live)
Fallulah - Use It For Good
Northern Portrait - That's When My Headache Begins
Our Broken Garden - Garden Grow
Trentemøller - ... Even Though You're With Another Girl
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - Around the Bend
Laban - Caught by Surprise

Download (55.4 MB)

It may interest you to know that C&CM has just opened up its own Etsy salon, featuring handwritten zines and stencil graffiti artwork of C&CM musical heavyweights including Queen, The Beatles, The Cure, Joy Division, The Smiths et al.
To celebrate the opening, C&CM is offering a 10% discount when you check out with the codeword SWOON. Offer expires March 1st 2013!

Thank you for your continuing support!

I was on the ground floor of Melbourne's City Library when the most unlikely music made me freeze and look up. I knew what it was immediately, there was no mistaking that I was listening to the sound of my childhood. I ran up the glass staircase immediately, without contemplating my frantic outward appearance and I found myself breathless and winded, trying desperately not to disturb the calm and sedate audience. They were watching a seated older man, playing the strangest looking instrument I'd ever seen.

"Do you know this music?" He asked me, as he kept pushing the buttons on what seemed to be a weird augmented harp of some description. I replied joyously, "Of course I do!" He went on to explain to the audience: "In the 80s, I composed music for a computer game called Defender of the Crown. This is the music that you'd hear when you won the game." I smiled in bemusement, "That's probably why I'm so familiar with it." Everyone laughed. It was the most unique and surreal live experience, ever.

I didn't stop to talk to Jim Cuomo after the performance, although I wish I did. Instead I ran downstairs to call my brother, Andrew to tell him what had just happened. It was so much stranger than having a DJ publicly drop your most obscure, in-house dance hit. To my mind, I had never considered that Defender of the Crown could have been performed in public, well away from the Amiga 1000. The Amiga does not have the same kind of kitsch currency as the Nintendo. Despite its tremendous legacy, it's unusual to find people around these parts who share that specific childhood gaming experience.

Since I accidentally witnessed that performance, Andrew re-introduced me to online communities who preserve, restore and remix the music of Amiga games and demos. Free from the distraction of any visual presence, you can begin to truly appreciate the Amiga's ability to mimic the rhythmic and melodic style so many genres, nominally Acid House, Techno and Italo Disco. More often than not, the modern-day Amiga remix is a slamming dance anthem which indulges that unspoken fantasy of actually hearing it out loud at some club where, stripped of its context, it is treated as a really good (and truly legitimate) song.

So I'll leave you with a podcast that seeks to glorify the musical output of the Amiga. Despite the various bleeps and bloops, I genuinely maintain that its appeal has nothing to do with any nostalgic affiliation, but I do warn you. My persuasion is a bit biased as I really did spend a lot of time playing Defender of the Crown.

Have at you!
Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Amiga Podcast #54
Pino Zulpo - Test Drive II
Piepie - Enigma
Foxx (SA) - Secret Rites
Marx Marvelous - Unusually Bright
Hans-Hermann Franck - Cobra-stage 2
daXX - Lotus III - Shamrip
BeeZerk - Final Fight
Bill Williams - King of Chicago

Download (46.7 MB)

We had dipped out of band rehearsal one time to see another unnamed band on Smith St. My friends had warned me that the lead singer played the violin too, but not in a classical kind of way. Not even in a folky kind of way. It was a method that should have appealed to my punk sensibilities, thrashing about randomly with a desperately detuned Suzuki, but the sight of it made me grizzle and then my friend informed me: "He picked it up at a garage sale, apparently. He never bothered to learn it."

I wish I could have marvelled at the on-stage antics, as my friends did. I could have accepted the squeaks and the squawks if it served any kind of melodic purpose. Instead I looked on, feeling irked by the whole demonstration. I could see that it was a clearly an on-stage gimmick, used deliberately to highlight a kind of roughed-up credibility. He was making it clear that his parents did not fork out money for violin lessons.

I thought my issue with it had something to do with my long-established relationship with the violin, after all, I'm irrationally territorial about it at the best of times. I thought that it had something to do with the physicality of the violin itself, how its delicacy suggests that its handler has been duly taught how to handle it respectfully. It's quite unlike the guitar in that way, in that it's relatively common for guitarists to be self-taught.

Thinking about it all now, I believe the source of my irritation really had nothing to do with the violin, itself. It didn't even have anything to do with my bourgeois expectations. If I had witnessed any performer play any instrument, from guitar to tuba, I would hope that the performer had made some small attempt to learn their instrument. I don't believe you need to be extraordinarily good, after all, I am the first to vouch my love for the Sniffin' Glue creed, This is a chord, this is another, this is a third... now form a band.

Friends, in leaving you with this week's Orchestral Pop podcast, I'm looking for your thoughts on a couple of things! Do you believe that notions of class attach themselves to certain musical instruments, but not others? Do you believe that certain instruments require professional guidance? What credibility comes from being a self-taught musician? How musically proficient do you expect your favourite musicians to be?

Ringleader
Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Orchestral Pop Podcast #53
Depeche Mode - One Caress
Owen Pallett - Lewis Takes Action
Kishi Bashi - I Am The Anti-Christ To You
Beirut - Forks & Knives (La Fête)
Jens Lekman - Your Arms Around Me
Morrissey - I Know Very Well How I Got My Name
Agnes Kain - You Next To Me
Theoretical Girl - I Should Have Loved You More
Jem - They
Guillemots - São Paolo

Download (65.5MB)

I've only encountered it a few times, the songwriter's peculiar insistence that this song does not belong to me. It happened a couple of times during The Beatles Anthology, I particularly remember Paul's memory of conceiving Let It Be (1970). The story goes that came to him in a dream and the melody was so familiar, he insisted that it must've been someone else's song. George said something alarmingly similar in regards to Something (1969). He was so sure that it belonged to someone else that he left it for a couple of days, just to be sure.

I've been thinking of this idea a lot, ever since I heard Joe Meek's first hit for John Leyton, Johnny Remember Me (1961). From the galloping rhythm section to the wailing backing vocals, the song creeps me out something shocking. If it wasn't disquieting enough, songwriter Geoff Goddard also carried this disclaimer that this song did not actually belong to him. Like Paul and George, he woke up one night and sang Johnny Remember Me into his portable tape recorder, however, but he always insisted that he did not write that song. Apparently, Buddy Holly did, beyond the grave.

Ghosts and the supernatural are a little outside of the scope of C&CM and I can't even say that I necessarily believe any of those stories. Yet it's captivating to have a musician say, I am the conduit, I am the means by which the dead can express their music. It's the most incredible fantasy if it were true, if someone could practically harness the creativity of the late Freddie Mercury, Jeff Buckley, Karen Carpenter and any number of impossibly talented deceased musicians. However, I think I might need a bit more than a dream, an assurance and a familiar song to convince me that it is really the case.

Waylon and Buddy, 1959.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Mod Podcast #52
The Chob - We're Pretty Quick
The Messengers - We Can't Get Along
The Buckett City Distortion Racket - I Lied
Heinz - Just Like Eddie
John Leyton - Johnny Remember Me
Buddy Holly - I'm Gonna Love You Too
The Beatles - Anna (Go To Him)
The Love Society - Let's Pretend (We're Making Love)
Herman's Hermits - No Milk Today
Michael and the Messengers - That's the Way a Woman Is

Download (42 MB)

I cannot exactly remember which one of us first articulated it, but there's this theory in my house that a decade only truly develops its identity 4 years in. We discovered this after living on a childhood diet of Video Smash Hits in the years spanning 1990 to 1992. It was inevitable, after such a consistent intake of Technotronic, C & C Music Factory and Snap! that we would eventually develop the ability to not only accurately characterise that musical aesthetic but to see its strong links with the late 1980s.

I can't help but be convinced that something changed in 1993, as it did in 1983 and in 1973. With specific reference to 1993, there was an obvious and growing emergence of Eurodance, Grunge and Britpop. Consequently, the 1990s managed to sever those strong stylistic links with the 1980s and somehow consolidated its own taste, style and identity. I mention all this now, because we're only days into 2013 and I'm not entirely sure how to view this decade. I'm not entirely sure how it's ever going to define itself, as other decades have managed to do.

Perhaps it is a preposterous suggestion. Surely, we will soon get a taste of what this decade is and how we will characterise it, stylistically. There are methods of measuring taste, there are charts and dancefloors, YouTube hits and Spotify. There are writers who go on about what is trendy, spouting words like "sludgecore" and "beardwave". Yet, I can't help but feel like we treat the endorsements of the established musical press with a high degree of suspicion. We download from independently run blogs to find one-off songs that are truly aligned to our taste.

I may just be looking for another Beatles, another Strokes, another Oasis, another group that manages to coincide with that dramatic re-invention of a new decade. The cynic in me is uncertain whether it's even really possible to garner up that extreme degree of popularity in a time when genres are so heavily fragmented and obscurity is king. In the case of Psy's Gangnam Style, a video receives in excess of a billion hits does not necessarily equate to a popular song, in the sense that everyone likes it. It simply means that a lot of people have seen it.

Weeks ago, I was at the Face the Music conference when I heard a woman shout out: "But no one is going to remember Gangnam Style!" It was an interesting moment, because in spite of all my reservations about this decade's identity, I knew she was wrong. It is indisputable that people will remember that song, in the very same way that we can vividly recall the irksome refrain of Eiffel 65's Blue. I have to remind myself that it is simply not possible that an era can exist without its own sense of definition.

Japanese Youth in Revolt
Even if our listening practices are totally disparate, even if nothing is as massive as it once was, I know that we will remember those songs which are truly important. I know that it will all begin to make sense with the passing of time.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Indiepop Podcast #51
Health - In Heat (Javelin Remix)
Joe Goddard - Gabriel (feat. Valentina)
Chairlift - Ghost Tonight
Yeasayer - Henrietta
Foster the People - Helena Beat
daXX - RSI Megademo
Washed Out - Belong
Major Lazer - Get Free (feat. Amber of Dirty Projectors)

Download (51.2 MB)

I have just made the most startling discovery: a vast majority of the songs I love feature the chord progression Bm G A. You may think I'm joking, but seriously, The Beat, Girl You Know It's True, Listen To Your Heart, Hate You, I've Been Thinking About You, Lost in the Night and about 70 other songs I fail to mention (but can now play on guitar) follow this musical sequence. It compels me to ask, in a style not too dissimilar to a question that may be posed by Carrie Bradshaw: Am I just falling in love with the same song over and over again?

Yes, quite possibly, but it isn't a question that particularly offends me. Sure it might get a bit awkward if you realise that you're not looking for the perfect song, you're only looking to subliminally reinforce an already-existing musical quality. This notion of subliminal reinforcement is hardly surprising within the confines of a genre such as Mod Revival or Italo Disco, where, to a new listener "everything sounds the same". What's interesting is the idea that an already-existing musical quality can transcend genre and the very thing that attracts you to Garage could be the same thing that attracts you to Eurobeat.

Perhaps it is a far-fetched theory, but I think there is definitely something in it. The phenomenon is central to the practice of those friends who have the ability to accurately predict and recommend songs I would love, with almost 100% accuracy. It's quite possible that they, too, have somehow tapped into that key and that chord progression, that sound which is going on far back in the bassline. It's a worthwhile thing to remember, when listening to the most disposable of pop or the grittiest of metal, when you strip it down to its most fundamental level, it's all the same... and to be loved, it really needs to contain Bm G A.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Italo Disco Podcast #50
Costas Charitodiplomenos - Lost in the Night
Mike Rogers - Just a Story
Dyva - Leftover Love
Stage - Ocean of Crime
Radiorama - Fire
Hiroko Murata - Valentino
Kay Franzes - Shadow in the Night (Special Club Mix)
Modern Talking - Atlantis is Calling (SOS for Love)

Download (67.6 MB)

I doubt I'll ever forget the precise moment I stepped onto the Westbound Platform at Earls Court tube station. It was seven years ago and I had just arrived in London, via Tokyo. The first thing I saw was an indie kid sitting cross-legged on the platform, with guitar case and sandy coloured rucksack featuring an intricate Queen crest, evidently drawn with black ball-point pen. Even though I was completely shattered, I couldn't help but smile to myself, London is just as I imagined it.

I had arrived with this heavy expectation that Londoners would get it. At that point, I had been so intent upon finding these musical connections, finding friends who shared a voracious passion for English pop. I never consciously realised that even then, the promise of that bond had become so essential to the mythology of a musical London. On some level, the musical pilgrimage celebrates that accidental occurrence of meeting someone and creating something great.

I've been rather fortunate in finding those connections, even momentarily. I grin when I recall discussions of Erasure in the muddy fields of Hyde Park or Johnny Thunders in an underground vault in Mayfair and Mr Flagio in a closing pub in Dalston. The thrill of the connection has never diminished, although I now find myself spoiled by local friends who share that voracious passion, who speak endlessly of an imagined London that we seem to have missed.

Joy Division by Anton Corbijn, at Lancaster Gate
I wouldn't say I've necessarily abandoned my search for the musically requited. Indeed, I think I've found a new way of loving that city, clinging to its meanings and associations in solidarity. There's something really potent about being alone on the London Underground, running down curved corridors, listening to songs which make everything seem so cinematic. The Piccadilly Trail on the Central Line, Automatic Lover on the Jubilee Line.

London promises more than I could ever articulate, but it's one of the reasons I find myself so desperately in love with the place. It's bound to be fraught with the threat of disappointment, what with its intense level of expectation. But even without the punks on the King's Road, without the pigeons at Trafalgar Square, without the fumes of Paddington station, it's a place that manages to fill me completely, in a way that far exceeds any passing discussion about music.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: London Podcast #49
The Smiths - London (Peel Session)
Elvis Costello - (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea
The Libertines - Boys in the Band
The Clash - Rudie Can't Fail
The Exits - Cheam
The Jam - Down at the Tube Station At Midnight (Live)
Eugene McGuinness - A Child Lost in Tesco
Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls

Download (41.1 MB)

I'm not sure whether it was Jens Lekman, Andy Bull, Sean Lennon or Liam Finn who identified the songwriting principle: in simple terms, the most compelling pop songs often pair sad words with happy melodies (and vice versa). The principle (much like the citation) is vague, but I like it. I like that idea of incongruence, that lyrical meaning can be sufficiently disguised by sound. That, and it's intriguing to think that the expression of melancholy can somehow lead to the most fun and liberating of pop anthems. They are the kinds of songs that make you shriek, grab your friends and run to the dancefloor.

This songwriting principle can be identified in many, if not most musical genres. Arguably, that incongruence is at its most compelling in Powerpop, those one-off 7" singles from the early 1980s. The genre is dominated by teenage boys, begging for a place in your heart (as per Protex) or else, one more chance (as per The VIPs). They express jealousy (Jilted John), loneliness (The Letters) and confusion (The Buzzcocks). Adolescent anxiety is relatively commonplace, but it's surprising to hear such visceral expressions of vulnerability paired with frantic drums, jangly Rickenbackers and upbeat, catchy vocals. It's all terribly heartbreaking, but due to its shiny sheen, you need never realise it.

When you do listen closely, you wonder how the adolescent anxiety resolved itself. Their stories of hope and loss remain untapped and unfinished: they will exist as lovelorn seventeen-year-olds forever. You listen to the scenarios they describe and you hope, thirty years on, that it all worked out somehow. For me, I hope that the writing of such songs brought about some sense of clarity. I hope that when it all went down in the suburbs of London and Los Angeles, it was vindicating to have strangers dancing at gigs, singing along and relating intimately to every word.

I don't want to be alive when I'm 25...

It's that very idea, the idea of a crowd singing along and relating to these lyrics which eases that disparity between the so-called happy music and sad lyrics. No matter what the lyrical content, whether it be heartbreak, grief or sadness, there is is a unique happiness associated with finding something which carries a high degree of personal resonance. There is a certain glory associated with singing those relevant words. Singing it out loud provides an implicit kind of solace, that no matter what the hardship, there is always that capacity to connect and recover.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Powerpop Podcast #48
Protex - A Place in Your Heart
The Romantics - What I Like About You
The VIPs - One More Chance
The Times - I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape
The Really 3rds - Everyday, Everyway
Direct Hits - From the Underworld
Mood Six - What Have You Ever Done?
The Rubinoos - I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
The Bureaucrats - Feel the Pain
The Numbers - 77 Sunset Strip

Download (49.2 MB)

It occurred to me today, as our bus frantically sped through the tight, narrow roads of the Wiltshire countryside. I was listening to a song by The Cure on my ever-faithful iRiver (Mark II). I was listening to High, a song I'd heard a countless number of times before. I had always described it as my very favourite song from their 1992 album, Wish, along with A Letter To Elise. However, it was today that I listened to High and I realised that it was probably the happiest song I'd ever heard, along with Friday, I'm In Love.

I suddenly became preoccupied with this idea of the polarities of popular perception. While a casual listener of The Cure can describe their music as dark and gothic, a fan can identify something far more glowing and optimistic. Similarly, fans of The Smiths have the tendency to obsessively dismiss the popular "miserablism" tag which is frequently associated with the band. Fans will insist that Morrissey's lyricism possesses great wit and pathos. To that, you will hear the classical retort: "But they have a song called Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now!"

I'm reluctant to suggest that the perception of the casual listener is invalid, indeed, it's a perception that has been cultivated by a multitude of sources, from print publications to high-powered marketing executives. Almost every successful group possesses this cohesive and convenient descriptor. The point is that music fans and casual listeners alike can have this intrinsic understanding of where a group fits in the grand scheme of things. Even without hearing a group's music, we have some idea of how to identify their style, purpose and audience.

I don't believe that it's quite as straightforward as, "the noobs think it's sad, the fans think it's happy". In my experience, many fans are keen to see beyond the flimsy, cohesive and convenient. In their appreciation for a group, they tend to develop a personal, complex understanding which is both multi-faceted and authoritative. When a flippant casual listener engages with a passionate fan, the fan's tendency to assert their authority ultimately results in that polarity. In matters regarding musical snobbery, it tends to come down to that demonstration: "I know and you don't."


Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: New Romantic Podcast #47
David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes
Spandau Ballet - To Cut a Long Story Short
Adam & The Ants - Ant Music
The Human League - Love Action (I Believe In Love)
ABC - The Look of Love
Simple Minds - Speed Your Love To Me
Duran Duran - Union of the Snake
Mark Ronson & The Business Intl - Somebody To Love Me (feat. Boy George)

Download (49.6MB)