"Crafted music negates genuine emotion..." I flip through my notebook to see who said this. John Lydon of the Sex Pistols. Ah.

It reminds me of an interaction that happened in 1977, down the road at Wessex Sound Studios in Islington. Queen were recording News of the World when the Sex Pistols' bassist, Sid Vicious stumbled in and said, "So, you bringing ballet to the masses then, Fred?", to which Freddie replied, "Ah Simon Ferocious! We're trying our best, dear..."  

It's a story that's been told so many times that the tone of the encounter varies from the playful to the menacing. Sometimes Simon Ferocious is Stanley Ferocious, sometimes Freddie mocks the safety pins on Sid's jacket. In some versions, Sid steps up: "So what you gonna do about it?". Freddie then grabs him by the collar and throws him out of the control room.

Queen may have been the less authentic group, according to John Lydon's exacting standards, but Freddie, the delicate underdog, had won this time... 

It would appear that they're two groups in musical opposition, both in class and in style, but it's more complicated than that. Queen delve into different musical genres and place unsuspecting songs side by side, even exploring punk at one stage. Their efforts never felt cod or inauthentic, Brian breaks a guitar string from all the thrashing, live in Paris 1979. Freddie even knocks over a speaker stack.

"Genuine emotion" doesn't mean much when you look at Queen's lyrics and see how the emotional and the analytical sit side by side. I don't think anyone has really analysed that in Queen's lyrics before, how they describe what you should feel (pietas) compared to what you do you feel (furor). They're good at those contrasts, how for every heavy song, there is a frothy and frivolous romp. The meaningless sits alongside the meaningful. It makes for interesting listening, but it's hard to convey to mansplainers.

Those contrasts and contradictions are a part of me, somehow. They play into my humour and sensibility, my desire for high culture to mix with the low. It all reminds me of a story from when I approached a group of punks hanging out by the play equipment in Burnham Park. I was five at the time, but I was compelled to ask them, "Do you like ballet?", they were bemused and gushed back at me, "Oh yeah, we love ballet!"

I was thrilled. Finally, I had found some kindred spirits.

My guess is I'm in for a cloudy and overcast

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: 1980s Australian Podcast #67
Boom Crash Opera - Great Wall
Australian Crawl - White Limbo
INXS - Black and White (Extended Mix)
The Models - I Hear Motion
Midnight Oil - Sleep
James Reyne - Fall of Rome
Darryl Braithwaite - One Summer
Split Enz - Doctor Love

Download (93.5 MB)

Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-66 here

"It's the imperfections - the faintly out of tune guitar, the voice, the rasp that creeps in, the garbled lyric, the sigh, the unexpected drum fill played by human hand, these are the things I gravitate to in my favourite music... the humanness of it." - Susanna Hoffs

This line reminded me of a mix I had put together called Dancing on the Night Wire. It features copious amounts of Per Gessle demos and sketchy Kino recordings, all reminiscent of a bedroom recording from 1984. It features human imperfections, but I seek out another kind of clumsiness. It's in the thin production, the super gawky synths, the tinny drums and the double tracked oohs in the background.

The dream would be to analyse each of these songs, to take them apart in order to figure what kinds of instruments they use and what kinds of hooks they employ. I'd even bask in the lyrical themes and dramatic lexicon. I'd slavishly strive toward a perfect kind of imperfect, all while being mindful that at some point, I would need to stop replicating these other artists and accept my own unique brand of mediocrity.

I store these songs in some imagined dream space in my mind, somewhere between Sweden and the USSR in the 1980s. It only just occurred to me that the midpoint between these two countries is Finland. Perhaps that's one reason that I came back with C&CM Finnish Podcast #65. The country exists as another kind of dream space, one where the days never really got dark, back when it was still possible to go outside and cackle together for hours.

To some listeners, some demos would be too shabby to exist, but for me, so many of these rough sketches reveal a modest kind of beauty. The recording is created when the artist is in a state of flow, yet the imperfection of the recording betrays an uncomfortable creative midpoint. I wonder how these demos came into existence. I wonder how is it possible to press record when the inner-perfectionist never leaves you alone?

Dancing on the night wire, Turku

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Finnish Podcast #65
Leevi and the Leavings - Pohjois-Karjala
Kaseva - Mari
Jukka Nousiainen - Jukan tehdas
Litku Klemetti - Sinä tiedät sen
Digital Dance - Cairo C
Dingo - Autiotalo
Eppu Normaali - Joka päivä ja jokaikinen yö
Leevi and the Leavings - En tahdo sinua enää

Download (84.7 MB)

Explore Podcasts 1-64 here

The proposition for the RPM Challenge seemed simple enough: for the month of February, you are to write and record ten songs and/or 35 minutes of music. In other words, your album. The creators likened the challenge to a kind of musical NaNoWriMo, where participants are required to write a 50,000+ word novel in the space of 30 days. In both scenarios, the idea is daunting but doable. Even if you failed to accomplish the task at hand, you would still hopefully emerge with some creative work that you wouldn't have attempted otherwise. This positive reasoning does little to beat the ongoing sense of resistance and confusion as to why they had to choose the shortest month of the year to do this.

I'm no stranger to the idea of establishing creative parameters. Paul Weller discussed it himself during his episode of The Mastertapes, locking himself up in an office, attempting to churn out tracks for the 1982 Jam album, The Gift. Perhaps the idea of working to a deadline diminishes from the romance of the creative process, but it's intriguing how quickly the mind can generate ideas with such firmly set limitations. It needn't be time restrictions either, you might only need a single word that resonates with you and if you allow yourself to take a few moments to explore the concept, something will invariably emerge. Using the methodology of Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg, it's necessary to write fast, write without thinking and block out the voice that says you cannot do this.

Both these challenges draw upon this compounded appeal of not only being creative, but also being prolific. It carries this implicit hope that you've managed to sort out your doubts, motivations and work in an almost mechanised fashion. It's entirely possible, you need only to listen to the impressive claim of Severo Lombardoni, the producer of the iconic Italo Disco label, Discomagic: "My setup allowed me to produce 50-60 albums a month. I even did 5-6 albums a day!" We're talking about pop music that was manufactured on the largest scale imaginable, but the sheer breadth of its catalogue does little to detract from its creative merit. It's much like an archaeological dig, where people are still searching and uncovering this music, they're making mixes and dance tracks. Their love of it is ultimately inspiring a new musical culture.

I'm drawn to analysing the nature of creativity, but I know for some that understanding creativity spoils the magic somehow. I'm often reminded of Joe Strummer's remark to Melody Maker's Caroline Coon: "If I told you how I write, when I next do it, my words will haunt me and destroy me completely..." There was a process, there must have been, yet the artist's reluctance to discuss it makes the music-making process even more mystical than it probably should be. I'm also wary of the fact that a lengthy dissection of the music-making process can be an act of procrastination. After all, it is much easier to get fired up by a TED Talk than to go through the grief of picking up a guitar and actually working out a new song.

If anyone else were to ask me whether they should take part in the RPM Challenge, I would say "Do it, create, because it's the most important thing." I'd be sure to add the words of a fellow singer who recently said to me, "Your work only exists because of you." I'm yet to fully appreciate why those words reassured me as they did, but it somehow goes to the heart of what it means to honour your ideas and will them to existence. Sure, there may be some vain component in the whole creative process, there may exist some hope that someone else will connect with your work, free of obligation or personal association. Yet, I maintain that it's the most important thing because you can never truly appreciate the breadth of your influence. Create, because you will ultimately inspire others to create.

Behind the scenes of Ratcat's That Ain't Band videoclip (via)
Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Mod Podcast #62
Au Pairs - You
Screaming Tribesmen - Ice
Ratcat - Skin
Spivs - Boys of Desillusion
Rotjoch - Too Many Weirdos
Ricky and the Teendreams - Alison, Please
Mood Six - Memories
Uncanny X-Men - I Wanna Be Your Baby
Gyllene Tider - Tuff Tuff Tuff (Som Ett Lokomotiv)
Various Artists - She's a Machine

Download (51.6 MB)

C&CM Exclusive: Download Rare 1985 Radio Interviews from The Direct Hits!

I'm thrilled to announce that The Direct Hits have graciously donated two radio interviews to C&CM that have been unplayed since their original broadcast in 1985!

Originally broadcast in April 1985 on the South East London pirate radio station, Skyline Radio, host Nick Miller talks to Colin Swan, Geno Buckmaster and Brian Grover about fostering talent on their imprint Direct Records, the mood of London audiences and the interest surrounding their forthcoming tour of Germany and Italy.

The second interview dates from July 1985 and features both Colin and Geno discussing exploits from their most recent tour ("I lost a shoe in Hamburg"), humorous reflections on Live Aid not to mention their thoughts of some new record releases. Both clips are fascinating portrait of the band both before and after their career-defining tour of the continent.

The Direct Hits - The Skyline Radio Interviews (1985)
The Direct Hits - Radio Press (1985)

The discovery of these interviews comes with The Direct Hits unearthing artefacts including previously unseen photographs, gig posters, tickets for the Christmas release of a new book called "My Back Pages". You can keep up to date with this and other upcoming developments on both the band's official page and their Facebook page.

As an added incentive, check out these nifty badges dating from 1987 which recently featured! I want each and every last one of them.

EDIT: Be careful what you wish for! These fair badges just arrived in my mailbox! AMAZING!

And just in case you missed it the first time round, this is the C&CM Conversation with Colin Swan.

The title of the book was enough to capture my attention, A Scene in Between: Tripping Through the Fashions of UK Indie Music 1980-1988. Upon its arrival at my house, I poured over every matte-print photograph of stylish yet seemingly anonymous musicians. They'd sport black and white horizontal striped shirts, drain-pipe jeans and scruffed-up Chelsea boots. Their heavy, hollow-bodied guitars would crumple billowy shirts, anoraks and duffle coats. The girls would accessorise familiar '50s polka-dot dresses with matching linen belts. Everyone would pose awkwardly on crumbling grey streets, they would play self-consciously on stages in pine-clad rec-halls among friends. It was all reminiscent of the life I had always wanted and the style I sought to revive... and then I saw this photograph of the Swansea band, The Pooh Sticks.

So Wylde
The photograph was the most sublime combination of style and inconvenience I had ever seen. Without hesitation I made it my Facebook profile picture, never stopping to consider whether anybody would appreciate what was so cool about it. Much of my fascination had to do with the fact that I've maintained a fringe for the best part of eight years and for me, fringe trims have always been an ordeal. Every six weeks, my obscured eyesight would remind me of my ongoing obligation and they were almost always poorly executed endeavours. Sure, it's a minor operation, cutting ten centimetres of hair across my face in a straight line but it usually results with stray strands and a mystifying jump in length over my left eyebrow. A slapdash hairdresser would brush me off, both physically and literally: "It's just your hair!" and I would have to stop myself from saying: "It's just one third of my freaking face!"

Aside from fringe trims, the photograph seems to fascinate me on an entirely different level. Sure, seeing, breathing and eating would be quite difficult with such a trendy aesthetic, but I love the idea of losing yourself, ultimately sacrificing your face to style. I love the idea that a person can choose anonymity, particularly in the face of cultural recognition. Identification, attribution and celebration appears to be such an integral part of the art-making process that choosing to be anonymous seems to be such a bizarre notion. Then again, it's kind of sweet to think that all you really need to know about them is contained here. You can't see their faces, sure, but you can see it in how he tilts his head, how the other holds his cigarette, how they all stand together as they do. They're the ones with attitude, with swagger. They're the ones who understood the thrill and the value of '60s garage.

I want to be in their gang.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Jangle Pop Podcast #60
The Fire Engines - Big Gold Dream
Orange Juice - Falling and Laughing
The Servants - Aim in Life
The Direct Hits - Captivating Eyes
Primal Scream - May the Sun Shine Bright for You
Marine Girls - A Place in the Sun
Strawberry Switchblade - Go Away
June Brides - Heard You Whisper
Phil Wilson - 10 Miles
Talulah Gosh - Talulah Gosh

Download (48.5 MB)

I've always struggled with the concept of artistic fulfilment, I could never figure out what it was or how to get it. You could imagine that I was surprised when I came across a recipe for how to attain creative satisfaction from one of the panellists of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time. The ingredients are really quite simple: all you need is creative control, remuneration and recognition. It's a nice thought but there are so many questions that follow this premise, all the questions involving quantity, ego and expectation. It reminds me of those local musicians who never managed to "cross over" and "make it" in other cities or countries.

To be honest with you, I have a real fascination with those musicians who were never promoted here. I am in love with those songs that I was never meant to hear. My friend Dimitri offers me this insight into what it was like to be a French child of the 1980s. He shares rare music videos, songs that many French people cannot even recall. He accompanies each song with this extraordinary understanding of its social context and critical reception. At the same time, he manages to describe the personal legacy of these songs: every song has an association.

 Muriel Moreno of Niagara

In exchange, I offer up my Australian childhood songs, awkwardly conscious of the fact that my exposure to local musical culture peaked when I was a child. I developed a liking for Ratcat, The Screaming Jets, Southern Sons and Diesel from watching Video Smash Hits. However, my exposure to local music ultimately ended when I quickly fell in love with English pop music. Throughout my twenties, there has been enormous pressure to support local music and as the pressure has intensified, my curiosity has dwindled and died out. I now live with this thought that I have purposefully ignored so much of what has been happening around me, just to indulge in this dream of living in another place, in another time.

I recall one of our last conversations, it was a cold night on Lygon Street and we were sipping these extravagant iced mochas. You were telling me of the intimate going's-on of Melbourne's 2002 Garage Rock movement. It was akin to my appreciation of London in 1977, Bristol in 1981, Milan in 1983 or Leningrad in 1984. There's this core group of tirelessly cool musicians who manage to create a community, unified by this distinctive sound and attitude. With the right sources, you can daydream about what it must have been like to be in that club, what it meant to be among the few people who understood the significance of actually being present.

"That's a good quality to have." I said, in between sips. "To be able to deconstruct an emerging scene, to recognise and define the consequence of the present. I think that's pretty special..."

Perhaps, it's not about the breadth of the acclaim, it's not about whether you're huge in Melbourne, Milan or even Mexico. When it comes to the recognition component of that artistic fulfilment recipe, I think it's about creating some kind of legacy. Whether that's in the form of a personal or cultural legacy, I think every artist has that desire to have their work placed within some sort of a context. Maybe it's up to us to create those histories, not only for our own understanding of how it all went down, but for the artist, too. We should let them know that we care, we should let them know that we've committed them to memory...

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: French Pop Podcast #57
April March - Brainwash Part II
BB Brunes - Houna
Mai Lan - Schumacher
Exsonvaldes - L'aérotrain
Aline - Elle m'oubliera
Les Calamités - Vélomoteur
Yelle - A Cause Des Garçons
Corynne Charby - Boule de Flipper
Images - Love Emotion
Soko - I'll Kill Her

Download (56.5 MB)

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)

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'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)

Don't be shocked, seriously, don't be. C&CM is not so Anglocentric that there can't be the odd podcast devoted to Australian music once in a while. But that doesn't mean that C&CM particularly endorses music just because it is local. We're not into tokenistic endorsement around here. It's just not our bag.

These songs are all too reminiscent of an Australian childhood. Front yard cricket, endless games of table tennis in the family room (while listening to The Swing on vinyl), It's a Knockout, Big M commercials, playing with the parachute, the Comedy Company, Whammies, Young Einstein, Triple M and that translucent blue Blue Sky Mining cassette. It was all pretty damn fun.

So, please share your memories of fun times in 1980s Australia and perhaps, their tenuous musical links. Thankies.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: 80s Australian Podcast #7
Boom Crash Opera - Dancing in the Storm
Hunters and Collectors - When the River Runs Dry (Live)
Midnight Oil - Forgotten Years
INXS - Dancing on the Jetty
The Stems - At First Sight
The Church - Constant in Opal
The Sunnyboys - Alone with You
Icehouse - Hey Little Girl

Download (34 MB)