C&CM returns to FOTW's Halloween Listening Party for 2025

Your Halloween plans are sorted! A new episode of C&CM will air on FOTW's Halloween Listening Party, and you can listen live in your timezone! Tune in on Friday 31st October for an hour-long special of spooky Italo and synth pop: halloweenlisteningparty.com

For listeners in Sydney, London, New York and LA, you can listen on Friday 31st October at 9pm. If you live outside these timezones, you can find out what time to listen.

This is an especially special Halloween night, as dear friend of the pod, Luke Applebee (aka Word Tweak) will also be airing a spooky story for the listening party.

Discover the C&CM x FOTW Halloween Listening Party Archive

Listen to the 2024 show here.

Listen to the 2023 show here.

Listen to the 2022 show here.

Listen to the 2021 show here.

Listen to the 2020 shows here.

halloweenlisteningparty.com

[UPDATE] You can download the 2025 C&CM x Halloween Listening Party for FOTW show here:

Download (137 MB)

I get territorial when I start thinking about Queen I. It's my album, and while it is so often overlooked by critics and fans alike, I tend to go back to it and hide out in its songs. The mood is so softly sepia to me, with lashings of impoverished glamour. It's Freddie's satins and furs, pillows and feathers, grapes and other ephemera in his Holland Park flat. It's the black and white photos of Freddie thrashing about on stage at Imperial College. There's this heady precociousness that I can get on board with: the vast contrasts moment-to-moment in Great King Rat, the hazy vision of friendship in The Night Comes Down, the adolescent rage of Son and Daughter. It all exists in a familiar place in my heart.

The Queen 1 boxset is enormous, and to traipse through it is to be overcome with awe with archives that didn't seem to exist before. Handwritten sketches of the Queen crest and its elements, delicately drawn by Freddie. There's lyric sheets for songs like Hangman or Mad the Swine, their existence seems to be positively folkloric. Then there's Roger's diary entries, Brian's handwritten tour notes, written on the back of a Queen poster, and then there's the photos that have been hidden for decades: Freddie singing All the Young Dudes on stage with Mott the Hoople, or else staring you down - poised as if he's about to impale you with a sword.

It's vast, complex and intricate, with everchanging meanings, in my heart, at least. The demos are filled with conversation and clattering, accusations that someone is out of tune or out of time. Freddie counting out loud. Things not coming in when you expect them to. Then there's the placeholder lyrics, poignant lines reduced to bits that need filling in later. It's like they're an ordinary band, but they're so far away from any ordinary band that's ever existed. I remember one random radio interview with Freddie in the mid-80s, where he talked about how he'd never like to release demos, because he'd never want to release anything imperfect.

Queen fans have always known Queen I was recorded under bad circumstances, in snatched pockets of night at Trident Studios in Soho. The narrative has been drummed into us: "the drums were all wrong! The Sheffield brothers were shonky charlatans!" The Queen 1 boxset reframes the first album entirely, ushering"the debut album that we always dreamed of bringing to you". The remastered mixes are markedly different: the drums are more expansive, the guitars more pronounced, Freddie's vocals seem other-wordly at times. Are these entirely different takes? Each listen brings about another startling nuance, and there are more pieces to uncover still.

I appreciate the discomfort in confronting the archive, particularly when a project didn't pan out the way you wanted it to. The artist insists repeatedly, "it's imperfect, it's imperfect, this isn't how I wanted it to be!" As a fan, I'd insist that there's beauty in the sketch, in the attempt, in the ambition. I'd insist that Queen I exists in a perfect original state, but if I can get beyond myself, it's more interesting to look at the evolving meaning of the mixes: what was wrong before, what has been pulled out of the archives, and why was this mix deemed to be so perfect?

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Electro Podcast #77
Stealing Sheep - Jokin' Me
Ariel Pink - Lipstick
Kauf - The Closest
Nation of Language - What Does the Normal Man Feel?
WhoMadeWho - Keep Me in My Plan (Modernaire Remix)
Amason - Marry Me Just For Fun
PNAU - Telegraph to the Afterlife
Neon Indian - Annie
Purple Disco Machine & Sophie and the Giants - Hypnotized
Graceorsomething - Short King Advocate (feat. Wyatt Delp)

Download (99.3 MB)

C&CM is returning to FOTW's Halloween Listening Party for 2024

C&CM is returning for the 10th birthday of FOTW's Halloween Listening Party! That means it's time to tune in live for an hour-long special of thematically-relevant Italo Disco, indie obscurities, and more. Listen in live year round (but especially during my show) at halloweenlisteningparty.com

For listeners in Sydney, London, New York and LA, you can listen in on Thursday 31st October at 9pm.

Find out what time to listen in your timezone.

Listen to the 2023 show here.

Listen to the 2022 show here.

Listen to the 2021 show here.

Listen to the 2020 shows here.

halloweenlisteningparty.com

Thank you and congratulations to the dear IJ Wilson for his endless encouragement and a decade of spooky seasonal programming! Here's to many decade(s) more of spookytimes.

[UPDATE] You can download the 2024 C&CM x Halloween Listening Party for FOTW show here:

Download (137 MB)

Analysing Anthology 1 on I Am The Eggpod

Listen to Vikki Reilly, Chris Shaw and Missy El analyse the Beatles' Anthology 1 on the Beatles' podcast, I Am The Eggpod.

Listen on iamtheeggpod.com

You can also listen to the C&CM Get Back episode of I Am The Eggpod here!

Announcing C&CM x FOTW's Halloween Listening Party 2023

It's time for C&CM's show for FOTW Radio's Halloween Listening Party for 2023! Tune in for an hour-long special of macabre synth-pop, indie obscurities, Italo Disco and much more! Tune in live at halloweenlisteningparty.com

For listeners in Sydney, you can listen in on Tuesday 31st October at 10pm.

For listeners in London, you can listen in on Tuesday 31st October at 10pm.

Find out what time to listen in your timezone.

You can listen to the 2022 show here.

You can listen to the 2021 show here.

You can listen to the 2020 shows here.

halloweenlisteningparty.com

[UPDATE] You can download the 2023 C&CM x Halloween Listening Party for FOTW show here:

Download (137 MB)

I think if you were to describe the Budbrain Megademo to someone who had never seen it, you would sound a bit deranged: "there's this constipated man who flies off the toilet and these beatboxing baby chicks, and then there's this multi-part film about an intruder...?" You'd invariably trail off, but that doesn't detract from how rad it is. My older brother and I would watch it together and it was crucial he was there, because he had to turn off the Amiga before the dick jokes appeared.

I was six when I first saw Budbrain and I immediately fell in love with the KAOS sequence. It's like your own private nightclub, where the Dr Baker mashes with Technotronic and Coldcut, synthy stabs are synchronised with a seemingly infinite array of flashing images: a punk baby and a foot-tapping Elvis. It's cool in the most confident sense of the word... and although it may be difficult to faithfully describe it, anyone who knows it has the tendency to agree.

KAOS

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Amiga Podcast #75

Jester - Elysium

Karsten Obarski - Rallye Master

Frog - Angie S.

Mulperi - Crystal Hammer (Mulperi Remix)

Captain - Space Debris

Wobbler - DNA Dream (Vanilla Roachford Remix)

Piepie - STAG 2

daXX - BA1 (D4XX 2005 Remix)

Download (89.7 MB)

Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-74 here

Buy ZZAP! AMIGA Magazine

"Tonight you'll see how love can stay here forever, when all you want is just the one last time..."

I remember how I felt when I first realised that the Hurricanes' Only One Night beared a lyrical similarity to Hot Chip's I Feel Bonnie (House Mix). I realised there was something in these songs that could be made into something, a podcast discussing parallel lyrical themes: two songs that were musically unrelated, but they used the ephemeral nature of music to enhance the meaning of the lyrics.

Both songs look at the concept pleading for "one more night", using it as an anthem for temporary lovers: "I only want one night together, in our arms, this is the only night, we're meeting arms to arms..." The lines would loop over and over again and the repetition of it echoed its madness, suggesting that despite its insistent lyrics, that one night would never be enough.

Daydreams for such projects ring out while on walks, but they're rarely meaty enough to materialise into anything real. They faintly echo the preoccupations of Consequential Lyrics, a project I did actually complete in August 2013. It involved playfully pasting up lyrics and gushing about personal meanings in episodes about Queen, The Beatles, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, The Smiths, Erasure and Roxette. There was also a fan episode, made up of contributions from musicians, writers, broadcasters, and fans.

It had to constantly remind myself that there had to be some value or even charm in recording the way people find these poetic dimensions in pop lyrics. These stories would become a precursor to the life I would lead at the hostel, sharing songs and lyrical associations with guests, late into the night. I sometimes wonder whether these lyrics were meaningful because we didn't read enough poetry, or whether we were just incapable of admitting how we truly felt.

As the hostel life moves further away from me, I wonder about those daydreams for projects that ring out. It's much like child tugging on my leather jacket, pitching ideas in vain. I'm left asking whether it's really my responsibility to do all this, to reveal personal stories with nauseating levels of vulnerability. My confidence wavers. Did I faithfully remember those lines that stung? Did I just make it all up?

Consequential Lyrics artwork by Antonio Sanciolo

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Consequential Lyrics Podcast #74
Fleetwood Mac - Isn't it Midnight
England Dan & John Ford Coley - I'd Really Love to See You Tonight
Sam Cooke - Desire Me
Sohn - Artifice
Nils Bech - Glimpse of Hope
Alexandra Savior - Crying All the Time
Boy Jr - Are They Actually Attractive?
Emma Pollock - If Silence Means that Much to You
Jim Croce - A Long Time Ago

Download (81.5 MB)

Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-73 here

Submit your voice recording of your Consequential Lyrics - quote its lyrics and expand on its meaning - for a future fan episode of C&CM. Please include the song title, personal story and relevant lyrics in your voice recording: consequentiallyrics@gmail.com

"The pureness and simplicity must come across so people can hear the human part of the song. That is everything."

I came across that quote and I immediately thought of the bonus mini-zine that Teatles made called Beautiful Beatle Moments. It features contributions by tweet to the question: "Does anyone have a favourite moment in a Beatles song? A second or two where it all gets perfect?"

The quotes are abundant and anonymous: "The pause in the middle of She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, just before the "She said she'd always been a dancer." Each moment is spliced into a micromoment, conveyed in only a handful of words but it takes you straight to a heart-buzzing vocal take or an instrumental that makes you feel vast levels of love and gratitude. Intense emotions are cited, "John's high-pitched desperate 'pleeease' at the end of Don't Let Me Down."

In any Beatle-related conversation, it is common to bandy around the term "perfect". It's convenient for the hyperbolic gushy types like myself, but it's also helpful to convey a certain sense of gratitude that everything managed to transpire as it did. It's also helpful that to have community of people who can identify these "moving" micromoments of happiness, something barely detectable that somehow reveal the humanness, the laughter and mistakes of this band: "George fudging the solo in All You Need is Love - I know it was live. All these add to their greatness rather than detract from it."

Others run towards the raw expression and I can feel the beauty of these moments too: "Oh, how could I forget this? John baring his soul and almost sobbing the vocals, five years prior to the Plastic Ono Band album, "But it's my pride, yes it yes, yes it is, yes it is." It's beautiful to recognise something that could have been characterised as a therapeutic release, despite the evident levels of pain. We like to think we know what John had been going through and detecting these small dimensions of grief help us in some way. They help, because we miss him. It also provides a small hope that this music was cathartic for him too.

It's strange but that kind of vulnerability was mentioned only today, when I watched Paul analyse his photographs for the NPG's exhibition, Paul McCartney, Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm. Paul looked up at his photograph of John sitting in the back seat of a car, his hand folded to cover his mouth. "I forgot how he used to do that all the time..." I recognised that self-soothing gesture within myself, as a former thumb-sucker. You cover up on your month in moments of stress and you do so without even thinking about it, and then you realise you're doing it all the time.

Got to be good looking 'cause he's so hard to see

In Music and Imagination, Aaron Copland wrote about how difficult it was to seize the musical experience and hold it. "Unlike that moment in a film when a still shot suddenly immobilises a complete scene, a single musical moment immobilised makes audible only one chord, which in itself is comparatively meaningless." It might be easier to look at Paul's photograph of John and extrapolate the character of a man we feel like we know, but it's still fun to challenge Copland. We're each attempting attempt to seize the musical experience, as fleeting and granular as it is. The joy is in the attempt.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Early 90s Pop Podcast #73
The Adventures of Stevie V - Dirty Cash (Money Talks) (Sold Out 7 Inch Mix)
Ace of Base - Happy Nation
Split Mirrors - The Right Time
Peter Gabriel - Digging in the Dirt
Oingo Boingo - Dream Somehow
Leevi and the Leavings - Turkmenialainen tyttöystävä
The Beloved - Time After Time
C+C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)

Download (87.8 MB)

Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-72 here

 "What would you do if you got to him?"

I had just returned from a night out at the BFI Mediathque. I meet Glynne there from time to time and we generally watch a lot of 1970s television together. Weird stuff mostly, some puzzling game shows, some awkward children's television. We had recently been preoccupied with a show called London Bridge. It was a Saturday morning TV show, designed for teenagers, made between 1974 and 1975. It's hilarious and stilted, quite often, featuring a cavalcade of stars and heartthrobs that would have made the average 70s teenager wheeze.

Calm thyself...

The distinction between adult and teenager becomes increasingly apparent when watching this show. Every segment is a kind of heavy-handed suggestion of something kids can "do" with their lives, whether that's journalism, nursing, veterinary science or acrobatics. They have a team of teenagers, sitting on the set, politely waiting their turn to ask their carefully-crafted question in a soft cockney whisper. Occasionally they are forced to step up and volunteer themselves for garish haircuts and/or makeovers by overbearing adults, often pushing weird or problematic agendas.

The sacred clapperboard

One specific episode struck me and I promptly made notes about it as soon as I came home. It was an episode where the Bay City Rollers were guests in the studio. The girls on set were especially jittery, their cheeks glowed a purplish red as they pawed nervously at their tartan scarves. They were, after all, sitting thigh by thigh with their favourite pop stars. You would have thought it would have been like any other interview, but then the bodyguards of the Bay City Rollers were introduced to the show.

The host cut to clips of the Bay City Rollers stepping out onto the tarmac, being greeted by legions of hysterical fans, just as if it were ten years before with John, Paul, George and Ringo (or maybe six months before with Freddie, Brian, Roger and John?). You couldn't help but cackle at the sheer scale of it. No offence to any Bay City Rollers fans but the hysteria seemed disproportionate to the actual handsomeness of the musicians concerned, but then, I am especially shallow and hard to please.

Rubbish

Instead of asking any questions to the fans or the group, the host looked to the band's bodyguards, questioning them about how you become a bodyguard and what it is like to travel from city to city, protecting pop musicians. The discussion turned to the rabid behaviour of the fans, throwing themselves onto cars and crying. One of the bodyguards turned to one of the girls and said, "What would you do if you got to him?" She stuttered, almost tearfully, "I don't know, I just love him..."

It was a diabolical scenario, what maniac thought this up? What would it have been like to be seated with your favourite musicians, only to be confronted by thuggish henchmen? How could you possibly account for the rabid behaviour of other teenage fans, when you're containing your lust so calmly? "What would you do if you got to him?". I wouldn't dignify that question with a response, after all, such a prompt is worthy of scrutiny only among the closest of friends, lying in the darkness on the floor of a sleepover.

Such discussions would no doubt involve detailed scenarios, dreams of what it'd be like to be face to face, hip to hip, cheek to cheek. Such admissions featured in Fred Vermorel's sociological study, Starlust: The Secret Lives of Fans. Published in 1985, the anonymity of the admissions revealed the depth, the meaning and the clarity of those daydreams. Usually, but not always, that fangirlism provided solace against the backdrop of terrible grief and loneliness.

If I could go back and advise those girls on London Bridge, I would tell them not to be rattled by those bodyguards, not to fazed by their bullish interrogation tactics. I would give them permission to obliterate their calmness and scream, scream their lungs out, just like the girls on the tarmac. They had just met their favourite band! They had just sat alongside them! Knees touching knees! Feet touching feet! This will be a day they'll remember forever. 

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Baroque Pop Podcast #72
Jethro Tull - Bourée
Amazing Blondel - Highwayman
Cat Stevens - Moonstone
Carpenters - Mr Guder
Paul McCartney - Dear Boy
Andrew Bird - Roma Fade
Vashti Bunyan - Come Wind Come Rain
Enya - Caribbean Blue
Lindisfarne - Lady Eleanor
Jacqueline Taieb - Ce Soir Je M'en Vais

Download (87.2 MB)

Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-71 here

I was listening to the audio commentary of PG Roxette's latest album, Pop Dynamo and Per said something like, "I'm a melody guy..." and I agreed enthusiastically, "Yes, yes, I know what you mean, Per. I, too, am a melody girl."

I approached the prospect of making a 1980s Eurovision episode with the mindset of a "melody girl". I perpetually seek out catchy vocal lines and synthy hooks, but I also lack the patience to watch whole competitions. So scrubbing song after song, competition after competition, I realise that I am looking for something super specific. I want something upbeat in a minor key. Needless to say, my favoured entries came from Belgium, Finland and Turkey.

Turkey in Eurovision, 1989

A more naturalistic approach would be to watch the whole competition among my friends back home in Australia, and cackling heartily with a bucket of hummus on my lap. There'd be sarcastic comments, but it would never be mean. After all, we're on the same mission to find some perfect Europop. We'd have our phones out, making notes on our favourites, perpetually reminding everyone of who we liked until the voting process destroyed our pop hopes and dreams.

I did attend Eurovision one year, back in 2016. It was a surreal, awe-inspiring affair but nothing like the hummus-cackling. The smallest things transfixed me like the speedy changes between acts and the LED lanyards that illuminated in sequence with the rest of the stadium. The first semi-final, I found a perfect piece of pop: If Love was a Crime, Bulgaria's entry by Poli Genova. Since then it's been my go-to recommendation for any doubters.

Eurovision, 2016

I'll be going up to Liverpool for this year's competition soon. In typical ritualistic fashion, I haven't listen to this year's entries and perhaps that's a part of being a "melody girl". For me, Eurovision requires another kind of pop sensibility, "dethroning the serious" as Susan Sontag would say. "Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation - not judgment." The month of May is my time for just that, for the campness and the revelry, for friendship and that earnest search for perfect pop.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: 1980s Eurovision Podcast #71
Bucks Fizz - Making Your Mind Up (UK, 1981)
Ofra Haza - Hi (Israel, 1983)
Pas de Deux - Rendez-vous (Belgium, 1983)
MFÖ - Didai didai dai (Turkey, 1985)
Pan - Bana Bana (Turkey, 1989)
Sandra Kim - J'aime La Vie (Belgium, 1986)
Liliane Saint Pierre - Soldiers of Love (Belgium, 1987)
Sonja Lumme - Eläköön elämä (Finland, 1985)
Vicky Rosti & Boulevard - Sata salamaa (Finland, 1987)
Cadillac - Valentino (Spain, 1986)

Download (77.8 MB)

Listen to the C&CM Mixtape - Eurovision Favourites (2008-2014)

Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-70 here

Whenever I queue up the YouTube of Oingo Boingo, live at the Ritz in 1985, I'm typically met with a familiar feeling that I shouldn't be doing this, not again. Yet, whatever sense of dread I feel is aligned with the doom-laden humour of Oingo Boingo Struggle Tweets 2. Incredible awe is met with inevitable dread. I carcrash my passions. I overindulge and reach a saturation point with my listening practices.

"Live from the Ritz, Oingo Boingo..."

Unsurprisingly, I first came across Oingo Boingo at a Halloween party years ago. I shazammed Dead Man's Party not once, but twice, and it seemed that my fascination with that one song sustained me for a long time. I still haven't tired of its bombastic horns and the snide Frakenstein-cries: "Don't run away! It's only me!" I make it my business to shoehorn it into every FOTW Halloween Listening Party x C&CM show.

Saying that, I fell in with Boingo slowly, mostly finding one-off tracks and listening to them on solitary walks around Hampstead Heath. Grey Matter, Only a Lad and Just Another Day became so apart of that rona-ritual of walking, thinking and keeping the hell away from other people. When Spotify Wrapped comes round with ever-increasing frequency, I tend to foreshadow it with the obvious, "I mean, surely it's just all Oingo Boingo?"

Nowadays, I make it a habit to listen to the Oingo Boingo Secret Appreciation Society, a podcast which dives deep into its recurring lyrical themes and connections, and it's a humbling thing to be at the beginning of my Boingo fandom. The episode of Not My Slave especially had this fascinating analysis about relationship dynamics. I love how they cooed over the poetics of the line: "With deafening sound, whisper, "I love you"..."

I like to listen, not to be an expert, but to figure out where these songs sit within myself. Finding whatever aspects that resonate, holding them to the light and thinking about why that is. It's much like walking on the Heath and pursuing whatever paths I want to take. I present interesting Boingo bits I find to my friend, Bec at Mild Scribbling. She also watches that performance of Oingo Boingo, live at the Ritz in 1985.

We talk about the gestures and Danny's maniacal expressions, how maddeningly raucous it is. I feel grateful that despite my predilection to carcrash everything, I can share my thoughts with my very own Boingo friend.

Oingo Boingo at the Ritz by Bec 

(mildscribbling.com)

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Disco Podcast #70
Vivien Vee - Alright
Patrick Cowley - Tech-No-Logical World
Miquel Brown - So Many Men, So Little Time
Michael Zager Band - Let's All Chant
Tim Curry - Paradise Garage
Bucks Fizz - Shine On
Village People - Magic Night
PFO Pilgrim Fathers Orchestra - Touch Me Don't Stop (12" Extended Mix)

Download (64 MB)

Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-69 here

When I visit Liverpool, I'm prepared to go anywhere Teatle Huw is willing to take me, and on this occasion, it's the exterior of an abandoned tea warehouse where the Beatles once posed for a photo shoot. He furnishes the photographs of the Beatles in question, like we are gumshoe detectives familiarising ourselves with the case at hand. I don't recall ever seeing these photos before, but I clocked that it must have been early, and it was, 1962, in fact. There they stood in their suits, amongst the overgrown grass and the rubble.

The backdrop is cold and austere and were it not for the Beatles, it could be a photograph from the 1890s. There are variations of the photo at hand, in one they look more taciturn, standing several feet apart from one another, Ringo holds his drum sticks in vain, I imagine he is ready to attack if any unscrupulous characters were to approach. In another shot, they are much more lighthearted, John is mansplaining something to George, Paul is visibly cackling and it's just beautiful. Ringo looks on in amusement. You wonder what they were talking about, you wonder why they were there... 

A magical Teatle time for all...

We approach the site in question. It isn't far from the docks. We quickly realise the sightline is obstructed by the back of one-storey industrial estates on Saltney Street, so we take a closer look on Dublin Street. Teatle Huw informs me that this was not only a Beatle location, Bob Dylan came here too - his photos reveal a much more Victorian outlook, interacting with the scene and posing with street urchins. The building itself looks more dilapidated - sprigs of greenery appear from the jail bar windows and corroded copper doors. There's illegible graffiti tags, but it's a million miles from the loving inscriptions at the wall at Abbey Road Studios.

Teatle Huw takes a photo of me by the factory, allowing a sunflare to dramatically filter through. Teatle Huw would later use his stealthy Photoshop handiwork to scale himself down so he is very, very far in the background, gleefully photobombing the band. I tweet: "Today we investigated an abandoned tea factory where the Beatles made their own Teatle pilgrimage!" It's a thoroughly farcical prospect, but posing it in such a way seemed rather plausible, especially given their undeniable love of tea.

Less than a month later, I am in the audience for a preview of Mark Lewisohn's talk, Evolver '62. Late in the talk, this very photo comes up on the screen (although Teatle Huw is unfortunately omitted from the background). I hold my breath as I hear the truth behind this rare Teatle pilgrimage: it was actually a photoshoot to promote their first single, Love Me Do, which had just been released by Parlophone in October 1962. The curious thing about this photograph is that although John Lennon is actually standing in the spot where his great-grandfather James Lennon had settled with his future wife, Jane McConville. Around 1849 they had settled in Saltney Street. There, they lived in cramped squalor, where typhus, dysentery and cholera swept through the community.

But why were the Beatles there in 1962? Lewisohn said something to the effect that it looked cool, and I suppose that's reason enough to do anything. Despite the lack of tea in their real motive, the photoshoot suddenly take on a poetic dimension: The Lennons survived, this is who John became, little did he know what he was about to become...

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Yugowave Podcast #68
Neki to vole vruće - Teška Vremena, Prijatelju Moj
Data - Neka Ti Se Dese Prave Stvari
Oskarova Fobija - Beli Dekolte
Videosex - Videosex
Max & Intro - Beogradska Devojka
Oliver Mandic - Smejem se a plakao bih
Denis & Denis - Ja sam lazljiva
Stil - Fiks Ideja

Download (75.2 MB)

Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-67 here

"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

The return of the C&CM Takeover Hour for FOTW's Halloween Listening Party

Join Cassettes & Chocolate Milk for the premiere of a new episode created for FOTW's Halloween Listening Party.

For listeners in New York and London, you can listen in on Saturday 30th October at 11pm.

For listeners in Sydney and Melbourne, you can listen in on Sunday 31st October at 11pm.

You can also listen to the 2020 episodes of C&CM x FOTW here.

halloweenlisteningparty.com

[UPDATE] You can download the C&CM x Halloween Listening Party for FOTW here:

Download (137MB)

You can read all about the best of the Halloween Listening Party for 2021. Thank you IJ Wilson for letting me be a part of the fun!

 "The listener memorises a performance as a revelation, a phenomenon, while the artist only terms of skill and sound." - Mateusz Torzecki and Łukasz Słoński

This line appeared in a chapter about female performers in the 1980s Polish rock scene. It was specifically about Kora, the lead singer of Maanam, one of the bigger groups of the era. It followed visceral descriptions of their performance at the Opole Festival in 1981. Witnesses described how Kora sang with such confidence that it completely redefined how local punk musicians should act and present themselves. Comments on YouTube would reinforce the idea of this performance as a complete revelation, and they would all be balanced by Kora's own assessment of the show: "The sound was terrible but more to the point, I just couldn't hear anything."

I watched the clips and the sound is screechy and atonal, far too raucous for my sherbet-sweet tastes. A person commented how they had this song on a cassette, a friend bought it for them from a music shop in Shinjuku and they listened to it over and over again. They never thought they would be able to see this actual performance but it was here! I understood that shock and that overwhelming gratitude, seeing your "perfect song" materialising from the archives with a video you never knew existed. Suddenly, the chasm between perfect and imperfect could never seem greater than the fan and the artist's impression of their own performance.

I love the absurd idea of a career-defining performance that the performer couldn't even hear. However, I find it irksome to imagine that Kora, as a leading punk figurehead, would be preoccupied by notions of "skill and sound". It's just so crazy and neurotic, it superimposes this perfectionist attitude that clashes with basic punk ideology. I truly believe that you can tell when someone is performing from an entirely free and unconcerned state. That's what makes performances like Maanam at Opole 1981 so extraordinary. You are witnessing an artist in a supreme state of commitment to their own artistry. When you see something like that, you finally realise that perfectionist angst is for amateurs. It is more important to show up and will your art into existence.

Maanam at Opole, 1981

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Polish Pop Podcast #66
Papa Dance - O La La
Roxa - A ona tańczy
Maanam - Lipstick on the Glass
Tilt - Mówię Ci że
Kapitan Nemo - Twoja Lorelei
Andrzej Zaucha - Byłaś serca biciem
Papa Dance - Czy ty lubisz to co ja
Ex Dance - Powrót Donalda

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Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-65 here

C&CM Takeover Hour on FOTW's Halloween Listening Party

On Saturday nights throughout October, FOTW'S Halloween Listening Party showcased the Cassettes & Chocolate Milk Takeover Hour, recorded exclusively for FOTW. As anticipated, C&CM featured all the best in dark 'n macabre 80s synthpop, Italo Disco, powerpop, indie obscurities and more...

Not just for Halloween... listen to FOTW's Halloween Listening Party now

Show ya fangs

[UPDATE] Did you miss out on C&CM x FOTW's Halloween Listening Party shows? Fear not, you can download all four episodes here:

Download Episode 1 (140MB)

Download Episode 2 (138MB)

Download Episode 3 (140MB)

Download Episode 4 (142MB)

Tracklists are in the comments. Thank you to Iain FOTW for hosting C&CM!

"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

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Explore Podcasts 1-64 here

It was in the East Wing of Somerset House where I spotted Brian May down the white marbled corridor. I calmly weaved around the arty types, standing by the trestle tables with their stacks of hardcover photography books. All the while, I felt quietly stunned that even from across the room, his expression seemed to suggest that he knew that I had come there for him. In my dramatic retelling of the encounter, I wave my hands about to indicate that it must have been my slinky 1974-era Freddie Mercury aesthetic which had given my intent away. The crowds parted as I came up to him. I smiled shyly, held out my hand and laughed: "It's been twenty-five years leading to this moment."

The truth is that I had come to terms with the idea that I would never meet Brian. As a Queen fan, I had heard the stories of friends eagerly waiting at airports and stage doors, often armed with their own replica Red Special guitar to be scribbled on with black marker. There have been stories of a friend holding the real Red Special in a studio, recalling "the neck was too thick and he didn't drink the tea I made for him". Yet, for all the premieres and launch parties I had managed to wrangle my way into, I could never actually make it happen. It seemed like behind every velvet rope was another velvet rope... and behind that velvet rope was a VIP area that excluded my types from entering.

"What would you ask, if you had the opportunity?" I had years to meditate on this point, but I never managed to articulate a single question for him. I would always say that I just wanted a meaningful dialogue, an ordinary encounter except with my greatest creative influence. There'd be certain qualities that I'd hope for, a kind of warmth and a genuine interest, even if it was a momentary thing. I can only assume this is what we're looking for when fans share these types of stories with one another: a vicarious joy and curiosity when you hear of the circumstances that transpired in meeting the musician you love. You want to hear of every detail, if only to say, "You are so lucky, I'm so insanely happy for you!"

It was a disjointed encounter, with VIPs continuously tugging at his sleeve for attention. He'd return to me though, as I would madly flip through my mental filing cabinet to recall every Queen anecdote that might be of some vague interest to him. I told him of my brother's ability to identify the specific location of where Queen photographs where taken in Japan in 1975 and 1976. "How does he do that?" Brian asked. "By analysing the buildings and the topographical details of each photograph. He can come back to me within the hour with a link to where the photo was taken Google Street View." Before I'd get any response, we'd be interrupted...

"So, what about you? What do you do?" I laughed and I panicked, in much the same way that I do when anyone asks such a confronting question. "Well, I live this pseudo-bohemian lifestyle where I live and work in this youth hostel in Bloomsbury but then I travel and go to museums and I write essays about music and relationships..." We were interrupted again by an older, more important man. Brian would come back to me with that dialogue still intact. "It doesn't sound like you're pseudo-bohemian, it sounds like you're a proper bohemian." Of course, there's a retrospective agony in using that word, bohemian, as if I used it as a knowing reference...

It was like an awkward Tinder date where all the silences would be filled with speedy anecdotes of how I have attempted to analyse and honour his band for literally decades. I felt embarrassment, as every utterance seemed to straddle the fine line between the gushy and the academic. I'd be spouting these seemingly endless stories of my own creativity, hoping for an apt reply or connection, while knowing that Queen isn't his central priority anymore. His interests lie in astronomy, animal conservation, stereo photography and politics, quite simply in another universe well beyond the scope of this little band that was established nearly five decades ago.

Yet like any good fan, I guard memories of those tiny interpersonal details, like how he had hot pink nail polish painted on his left ring finger: "I have no idea how it got there." Randomly enough, I had gold nail polish painted on my right ring finger. There was a sweetness and warmth in asking how to spell my name and then signing his own, marking a little cross and then looking up to smile at me. When we went in to pose for a photo together and how we laughed after I said: "You would tell me if I had something on my face, yeah?" Among all the well wishes and hopes that we would meet again, I shook his hand and then he placed both his hands on my upper arms and kissed me on both my cheeks. I blushed wildly.

They're the details that get conveyed in frantic post-meeting phone calls and notebook ramblings, but they never really get conveyed when you upload a photo to Instagram. On Tumblr, a certain sweetness was recognised: "So wonderful. That gentle hand on her shoulder 💜" Perhaps it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but it's interesting to think about these sorts of encounters and what they mean to fans. How can you possibly manage the awkwardness and the luxury of such a moment when you've had a lifetime to imagine what you could say. There's a risk they could be disinterested or there's the chance that you could articulate the enormity of it. More than likely, you'll just get the chance to say what we've all said: thank you for your time, thank you for your music.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Scandipop Podcast #64
Peter Bjorn & John - Second Chance
Kakkmaddafakka - Restless
Veronica Maggio - Vi Mot Världen
Fallulah - Out of It
Per Gessle - Galning
The Mary Onettes - Lost
Susanne Sundfør - Slowly
Simian Ghost - A Million Shining Colours

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The most memorable song recommendation occurred one April night in 2006. I was upstairs at the Tote when I was suddenly accosted by a random man holding a second generation iPod: "You absolutely have to listen to this song!" As he untangled the white wires and cued up the track, he gushed breathlessly, never stopping to mention the artist or the song name. The song was ready. Armed with one earbud each, we sat down together on what I could only assume must have been a collapsed couch. The song sounded so familiar, that smack of a jangly 12-string Rickenbacker, an arpeggio and that masochistic first line: "Just say the word and I would die for you..." I knew it, I definitely knew it, just not the name. "It's the surfing scene in Young Einstein, of course I know this!" He laughed, "Yeah, it's the Stems!" I couldn't help but smile. "It's perfect, it's actually perfect."

It was such a ceremonious encounter that I've never managed to forget it. It lacked context and even conversation, yet it formally introduced me to a scene filled with consequence. Song recommendations don't tend to be so ceremonious now, there's the occasional email attachment or a YouTube link with that requisite exclamation: "This is so so you." Friends have developed the ability to predict my taste with an eerie degree of accuracy and I marvel at their attentiveness (and my predictability). The act of recommending a song can be a bit hilarious too, I chortle upon recalling my old managing director calling me into his office to play me a Russian rockabilly cover of Kraftwerk: "I listened to it and I thought, I know who would like this!" It's a such a fond act of cultural assessment and it so frequently occurs without conscious forethought. With friendship comes that willingness to situate and anticipate a person's musical taste.

My romantic vision of the song recommendation took a bashing upon reading the introduction of Tristan Murail's essay, After-thoughts (2000): "Asking people to listen to a piece of music takes some of their time, some of their life: the composer is stealing a little bit of life from each listener." It had never occurred to me that a composer's creative intent could carry such a malevolent component. The suggestion made me consider whether it even had very much to do with time. I particularly refer to all those uninvestigated recommendations: band names scrawled on a scraps of paper, lost in drawers; unplayed yet carefully curated mixtapes, lost in cars. Each song choice carried that hope that you would look into it, but for whatever reason you didn't.

There are other kinds of recommendations that are unaffected by time, they're associated with that desire to share songs with those you can no longer talk to. It appears that there is a vault of lost recommendations: songs you should have paid attention to, songs you should have told them about.

There's another thing, too, you may never get the opportunity to convey the significance of a recommendation. Some time ago, I received an email from a listener who wrote to tell me that he and his girlfriend have bonded over one particular Yé Yé podcast. I felt such happiness and gratitude as I read about how frequently they listen to the mix, dote over the songs and affectionately imitate my back-announcing as some kind of private in-joke. Now they are getting married, they wanted the songs from the podcast to be featured at the ceremony. The correspondence made me think of the nature of online recommendations and how thrilled I was to learn of that story, particularly since it's so unusual to get that kind of insight.

It made me want to go back and thank those people who were generous enough to share their music, knowledge and insight with me, whether it be at loud parties, on blogs or on email. I know it's hardly practicable or realistic, but it would be sweet thing to say "Thank you for telling me about that song, it really meant a lot to me..."

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Electro Podcast #63
Perfume - Handy Man
AlunaGeorge - Best Be Believing
Years & Years - Desire
Flight Facilities - Stand Still
Marcella - Cave and Text
Ace of Base - Pole Position
Nottee - Don't Waste Your Light On Me
Marina and the Diamonds - Can't Pin Me Down

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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

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