Episode 140 - Remembering Talking Heads 40 Years On

One of the many great albums I got to know thanks to the enlightened Herbert Art Gallery Audio Lending Department was ‘Fear of Music’ . As is traditional in these things, the first album from a band you hear fixes itself in your consciousness as the standard outside of which all their other albums deviate.

‘Fear of Music’ is the most paranoid outing from a band who were frequently paranoid and sounded paranoid when they were being straight. ‘Electric Guitar’, ‘Drugs’, ‘Animals’ and ‘Memories Can Wait’ are as bleak as they got. And I loved it. Not forgetting ‘Cities’ and ‘Life During Wartime’, the commercial front. ‘Air’, ‘Mind’ and ‘Heaven’ were a little lighter, a little more art rock. ‘Paper’, the track featured here, goes nicely with ‘Heaven Sent’ by Josef K, the Scottish Talking Heads (at least until Franz Ferdinand came along).

The following year in 1980, the band attained what is generally regarded as their artistic zenith, with ‘Remain In Light’. And like Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ in the same year, they finally had a breakthrough hit in ‘Once In A Lifetime’ (not featured here – I’m sure you know it). Talking of whom, the band were familiar with Joy Division from the music press but had never actually heard anything by them (different locales, different times). So they wrote ‘The Overload’ as an approximation of what they imagined the Factory band might sound like. In the event it’s not a million miles away from a track like ‘I Remember Nothing’ from ‘Unknown Pleasures’. ‘Closer’ saw off ‘Remain in Light’ to top the NME Album of the Year, though Pitchfork ultimately disagreed, crowning the latter as the best album of the ‘80s. Who’s arguing? Both incredible, ground-breaking works. You get two tracks from ‘RIL’ – ‘Crosseyed and Painless’, which single track has launched a hundred careers including The Rapture’s, and ‘Houses In Motion’, paired with LCD Soundsystem whose James Murphy makes no secret of TH’s influence.

The first two albums – ‘77’ and ‘More Songs About Buildings and Food’ – are excellent in their own way. A little more streamlined art-post-punk. Still great. Here we have ‘Don’t Worry About The Government’ (a classic counterpoint to the message from a hundred cartoonish punk bands of the time) paired with Canadians Ought; and ‘Found A Job’ which, as mentioned in the episode, appears to invent Tik Tok in 1978, teamed up with Squid from Brighton.

Once we get past 1980, the band, in my opinion, lost their way, despite this being the time of their commercial singles, memorable videos and famous films. ‘Naïve Melody’ has weathered well, replete with wistful melancholy and sits neatly alongside the Byrne-esque vocal yelp of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Not that this was a one-man band, by any means. Tina Weymouth was a wonderful bass player, her sinuous rhythms anchoring the band’s music, proving a perfect complement to Byrne’s rhythm guitar. She’s been married to drummer Chris Frantz for 46 years now – and it’s that lack of rock’n’roll lifestyle which has always characterised the group. Outsiders, not quite fitting any one label, mildly paranoid - of each other as much as the world around them. Let’s not forget the fourth member Jerry Harrison either who played an important role.

Looking forward to seeing the film, 40 years on.

Tracklist:

Crosseyed and painless, Talking Heads

Whoo! alright – yeah uh Huh, The Rapture

Paper, Talking Heads

Heaven Sent, Josef K

This must be the place (Naïve melody), Talking Heads

Over and over again (lost and found), Clay Your Hands Say Yeah!

Houses in motion, Talking Heads

Change yr mind, LCD Soundsystem

Found a job, Talking Heads

Houseplants, Squid

Don’t worry about the government, Talking Heads

The weather song, Ought

Episode 139 - Lovers of Today

Go back to the late ‘seventies and it’s interesting to review how the post-punk bands were wrestling with what to sing about when you sing about love. Here’s the Only Ones with the song from which this track takes its title.

“I want you to be around ‘til the summer comes along and I don’t mind having you around ‘til the summer comes along

Then you go and make that first mistake of trying to walk before you can even run

I wanna be by your side, it’s so cold on this side

I wanna tell ya about love, love that’s around today

We’re lovers of today, we ain’t got feelings, we’ve got no love, we ain’t got nothing to say

We’re lovers of today

If we ever touched it would disturb the calm, physical effort often causes mental harm

I don’t have the energy, you could say things get pretty tranquil with me

Maybe you can’t see but I love you baby - much more than me

When you know that’s all to know, maybe you’ll just come and see the show

We ain’t got feelings, we’ve got no love, we ain’t got nothing to say

We’re lovers of today”

Or when you don’t sing about love. Here’s the Gang of Four on ‘Love Like Anthrax’:

“Love comes up quite a lot and it's something to sing about cause most groups make most of their songs about falling in love or how happy they are to be in love

You occasionally wonder why these groups sing about this all the time

It's because there's something very special about it; either that or it's because everybody else sings about it, always has

To sing a song, you had to be inspired

I said to myself, "Nothing inspires quite like that" and these groups of singers think they appeal to everyone or they would have you believe that anyway

But these groups have something I don't wanna catch”

Love is universal and singing is universal. Young people sing more than old people so there are lots of songs about love - even today. Here are some songs about Love in the 2020s.

Tracklist:

Love theme, Mandy, Indiana

Undilated lovers, Snapped Ankles

Hellow I love u, Astro-B

You are every girl to me, M J Lenderman

Territorial call of the female, Bodega

Time for love, The Pink Tiles

Love, try not to let go, Julia Jacklin

The only place, Big Thief

Shotgun, Soccer Mommy

I love you, baby, Opus Kink

Future lover, Daughter

Love, Occult X

There’s so many people that want to be loved, Sorry

Episode 138 - Guest Host, Gideon Haigh

Gideon Haigh is a polymath amongst journalists: his interests from true crime via office culture, legal history and beyond could fill up several other podcasts. I’m surprised he had the time to spare for this podcast with someone he’d never met - but am thrilled he did. First and foremost though, Gideon is the pre-eminent cricket journalist in Australia. He’s even been described as “the greatest cricket writer alive”, although his friend, with whom he stays when in England for The Ashes, Michael Atherton is another claimant to the title.

Yet we all have our limits. Having watched and commentated on cricket myself for many years, I do know that Mike Atherton has no knowledge of music whatsoever. Which I suppose places him one notch above the typical sportsplayer’s love of Oasis and Coldplay. But just the one notch.

Gideon, on the other hand, is very much the exception in the world of sport (alongside his podcast confrere, Peter Lawlor) in that he regards The Fall as the most significant group in history. He was delighted to brandish his phone case, decorated in the style of what he described as the Ur-Fall album, Hex Enduction Hour. Needless to say, from that starting point, Gideon’s playlist could not have been more on brand for Sombrero Fallout.

And not only, as it turned out, did we have musical taste and cricket in common, we also shared a passion for polar exploration. I got the feeling that had we hung out together any longer Gideon would have revealed his favourite authors to be Richard Brautigan and Ivy Compton-Burnett. (Actually you can find out exactly what his other interests are by heading to the “Things I Like” section of his website: https://www.gideonhaigh.com/things-i-like/)

Underpinned by a shared love of Slint, Chris Tavare’s forward defensive and doomed Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, please enjoy the recording of the highly enjoyable time I spent in the company of Gideon Haigh.

Setlist:

New face in hell, The Fall

What we all want, The Gang of Four

Between you and me, Graham Parker

Kamikaze, P J Harvey

I feel mysterious today, Wire

Final solution, Pere Ubu

The big payback, Big Black

Gamma ray, Beck

Good morning captain, Slint

Oddity, The Clean

Episode 137 - False Endings

This is an episode of false endings although, musically speaking, I’m still not entirely sure what the point of them is. I think they work best if the coda is in a different tempo or takes off in an entirely new musical direction. That can be very satisfying. When they first started, Arcade Fire (not featured here) used to pull off that sort of thing very well.

They probably work best in films. Less so in books because you can tell how much book is left. And probably these days you’re watching the film on Netflix and have worked out whether you can fit the running time in before a weekday bedtime. So you know there’s still 38 minutes left. But in the cinema it works.

‘Alien’’s a good example. Horror films generally, perhaps. It’s almost a calling card to leave the possibility of a sequel open. The camera pans back to see the archvillain pov. He did not actually get destroyed in the fall from the tall building, no. He’s still lurking in the shadows, haunting everyone’s dreams, ready to go again in Part 5.

If it’s a 10-parter and the action is all wrapped up halfway through Episode 9 you can guess we’re not done yet. Colombo used to do this sort of thing rather well in the detective genre. Pausing in the doorway, shuffling round before taking his hat and leaving. “There was just one other thing I noticed …” In fact well constructed whodunits on the classic pattern descend into a long series of false endings from halfway through. The police congratulating themselves on closing the case when there are still 75 pages left.

A false ending is quite brave to perform live. Not everyone knows the song. People will always start clapping as the song apparently comes to a close. The cognoscenti can feel smug sitting on their hands. Maybe that’s a reason it’s done?

So, false endings. It’s a fun episode. They think it’s all over - two minutes later, it is now.

Tracklist:-

Tidal wave, MX-80

Flame, Sebadoh

City hell, Jockstrap

Pneumonia, Fog

Passing over, Nice Biscuit

A paw in my face, The Field

Safe European homes, The Clash

No surprise, Fugazi

Shady lane, Pavement

John Doe #24, Mary Chapin Carpenter

Episode 136 - Chicago Now

I went to Chicago once, in 1996. I wasn’t there for very long and don’t remember too much about it. We had the Budweiser account in London, had been to the brewery in St Louis and now were visiting the Chicago agency. I recall row upon row of copywriters as far as the eye could see. In London we had one corridorful. America – it’s similar but on a much bigger scale.

The Chicago suit took us out in the evening and we went up a skyscraper to a revolving restaurant. I recall some old buildings and sitting beside a vast lake. That’s kind of it. If I went now I’d do more prep and take more time.

Meanwhile in 2023 a new wave is crashing in from the Great Lakes. Or a storm of change is brewing up in the Windy City. Choose your metaphor.

I was delighted to discover in the course of my research a vibrant young Chicago music scene. Some of it is based around a core group centred on the Hallo Gallo fanzine, the epicentre being Horsegirl, the only group we’ve played before on the programme. Their pals include Lifeguard, Dwaal Troupe, Post Office Winter and Friko. They’re all very young, some of them still at school. The future looks limitless.

But there are other artists beyond the brigade with the Sonic Youth record collections. Orisun, Kara Jackson – whose album “Why does the earth give us people to love?” is being mentioned as one of the albums of the year – and NNAMDI all give us new hybridised sounds that go to highlight Chicago as a cradle of musical innovation.

See what you think. Nearly all these tracks from the last couple of years.

Setlist:

Five finger exploding heart technique, OK Cool

Thousand times, Dehd

Spiked seltzer, Scarlet Demore

Billy, Horsegirl

Sudafed, NNAMDI

Dickhead blues, Kara Jackson

Alarm, Lifeguard

Some blood for Luna, Dwaal Troupe

Spoken word, CalicoLoco, Porkboii

Wake, Post Office Winter

Half as far, Friko

You turned off the light, Sharp Pins

Funhaus, Orisun

Promises, Bnny

Limited edition, Cusp

Episode 135 - On returning

I’ve just enjoyed my first holiday for four years. I’m painfully aware that other people don’t go on holiday at all, so feel free to wince at the air of smug entitlement.

It’s the first time there’s been a break in transmission of the podcast since the end of 2019. A chance to take stock, consider, reflect as I gazed at the masterpieces in the Uffizi Museum and the Sistine Chapel, at the massive stuffed walrus in the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill.

What should I be doing differently? How could I improve? Should I expand into new markets? Join Instagram, Tiktok? Get ChatGPT to write these blogs, perhaps.

Well, I’ve decided that nothing is really going to change. I like things the way they are and you seem to like listening to them. Or enough of you anyway, to make the whole project worthwhile. So that’s how it’s going to be from now on. More or less the same.

It’s not how Elon Musk goes about things but I, sir, am no Elon Musk.

Here’s some songs about returning. It’s nice to be in your ears once more.

Tracklist:-

Gotta see Jane, R Dean Taylor

Return my head, The Murder Capital

Backflip, Wombo

Black starliner must come, Culture

Holiday house, Beach House

Like it was again, Dignan Porch

Disco 2000, Pulp

Please don’t take him back, Bearsuit

Please don’t take me back, Martha

To remain/to return, Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily

Don’t take me home till I’m drunk, The Wedding Present

Back in denim, Denim

Home sweet home (at Christmas), Viv Albertine

On returning, Wire

The most beautiful widow in town, Sparklehorse

Episode 134 - Over the Oceans

The time has come to spread my wings and fly over the oceans. I’ve been cooped up – in pleasant confinement, let it be said – for the last four years, with the exception of a short trip to Tasmania a couple of months ago.

So, this is going to be the last podcast until August. It’s been an uninterrupted flow since December 2019. Remember then? It was so long ago we’d never heard of Covid. A month later, it was the coronavirus, briefly Kung Flu, then Covid-19 before settling into cute old Covid and now, “a certain worldwide pandemic”.

This actually started up six years ago. It was my birthday (May 2017) and we’d gone away for a weekend in a converted railway carriage with our twin boys. When they still tolerated that kind of thing. I was keen to do some radio DJ-ing and over brunch on the Sunday discussed ways in which this might happen. The conclusion was it would be impossible for someone my age with no previous experience to break onto the hospital internal broadcast circuit. And what would I play if I did? Did fading octogenarians really want to hear Bingo Master’s Breakout? I now can’t remember how it came up, but I think one of my sons mentioned podcasts.

Truth to tell, I’d barely heard of them But I spent the next couple of months following a Youtube documentary on how to start one, pausing and starting it again and again over its two-hour duration. I still never got round to the bit where you equalise the sound levels with some special tool. Sorry.

So, I learned how to use Garageband, Facebook (I know right), refamiliarized myself with Apple – then had to set up a website for the first time, which meant learning Squarespace. Plus how to use Soundcloud as a platform. Hours of swearing. Had to research microphones and pop filters. Then spent 24 hours convinced there was no way to “save” what I’d done as a podcast. Turned out they’d taken the “Save as podcast” tab off. Thanks for that. Later, Zoom interviews.

During the first six months, it registered 3,000 listens. I recall the excitement when I realised people were listening in other countries. Then, having scratched the itch, I stopped for the next 18 months and focused on writing a novel. Which I did. It’s still on a file, awaiting worldwide acclaim.

A couple of stray comments got me started again in late 2019. In March 2020 I got a harsh rejection letter from an agent. That was quite a dark moment for someone who’d imagined they might be bashing out Booker longlisted material for the next twenty years (ah, vanity). Two days later The Guardian kindly featured me as the musical choice in “Podcasts to binge on during lockdown”. Two years after that, Adam Buxton kindly featured me on his show. Last year we had 150,000 listens.

My friend Sam says that if you keep doing something, you’ll increase your chances of a “Black Swan” event. That’s what happened to me. I was lucky. And back then there was 100,000 podcasts. Now there are 2 million. Spotify, which didn’t exist then, covers the more functional side of what I do, and perhaps I wouldn’t have started what I do now. But, people do say they like to hear a friendly voice.

By far the biggest success though is creating a community of listeners. What else is there in life except family and friends, really? Thank you all so much for sending in commentary to Friends of Sombrero Fallout, via Messenger and email. Even if I don’t reply straightaway – and even if occasionally I just forget to reply altogether (sheer administrative incompetence) – I really do appreciate all your interest and correspondence.

So, here’s an Ocean’s Eleven (and three more; little reference to Max Beerbohm there). See you in August.

Tracklist:

Pipeline, The Chantays

Ocean, Sebadoh

Run into the sea, The Hobbes Fanclub

Surf song, James Yorkston and the Athletes

Salt and sand, Pram

Underwater, Ghostface Killah

Sea of love, The National

Weird fishes/arpeggi, Radiohead

Great waves, Dirty Three

Ocean of noise, Arcade Fire

The golden boy who was swallowed by the sea, Swans

Ocean breathes salty, Modest Mouse

Ocean night song, Laura Veirs

All is calm, Rachel’s

Episode 133 - Guest Host, Simon Reynolds

Many years ago, when we had shiny complexions, Simon Reynolds and I arrived in the same college of the same university. We got chatting in the first few weeks when he was setting up Monitor, his first publication, with his friend David Stubbs. He’d already marked himself down as more adventurous than most of us by getting a friend from another college. From memory I wrote reviews of Josef K’s The Only Fun In Town and Wire’s 154. He chose the latter for publication.

It was a rubbish review, most likely. Just a suburban lad who’d been reading the music papers and listening to John Peel in the evenings. Mind you, that applied to Simon too. But he’d decided that he really did want to be a writer. It wasn’t long before he moved on from the Paul Morley phase that assailed many of us in our writing then and forged his own unique voice.

I recall a few more chats we had when we were students. One when he’d heard Kitchen Person by The Associates coming out of my room as he walked by. Then life took over and we went our separate ways. Now he’s in Pasadena and I’m in Melbourne.

Since then, Simon’s career has soared – I know many of you have read his books. He’s got his own Wikipedia page and here’s an extract from it:

 Reynolds' writing has blended cultural criticism with music journalism. He has written extensively on gender, class, race and sexuality in relation to music and culture. Early in his career, Reynolds often made use of critical theory and philosophy in his analysis of music, deriving particular influence from thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. He has on occasion used the Marxist concepts of commodity fetishism and false consciousness to describe attitudes prevalent in hip hop music. In the 2000s … Reynolds made use of Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology to describe a strain of music and popular art preoccupied with the disjointed temporality and "lost futures" of contemporary culture.

There are some people who, to quote Alexander Pope, “drink deep of the Pierian spring” and Simon is clearly one of them.

But at the end of the longest chat we had in fact ever had together, we discovered that Simon had recently been unearthing the joys of English folk music, following a similar pattern to another old college friend we had on the show, Guy Haslam. And then that our favourite contemporary band is the same one: Dry Cleaning. As I compared them to Mark Corrigan from Peep Show and Simon settled on the adjective ‘mordant’, we were back in the bar at university.

So, thank you to the music for bringing us all back together, as it always does sooner or later.

Cracking and eclectic choice of tracks from Simon, as you’d expect.

Tracklist:

My old man, Ian Dury

Ping pong affair, The Slits

Bibbly-o-tek, Scritti Politti

Everybody’s been burned, The Byrds

Kite dance, Jan Garbarek

Asbestos lead asbestos, World Domination Enterprises

I believe, My Bloody Valentine

Clonk’s coming, Sweet Exorcist

Menace, Rufige Cru

Top down on the nawf, Migos

Heather down the moor, June Tabor with Martin Simpson

Leafy, Dry Cleaning

Episode 132 - Remembering Tom Verlaine

In 1977 Nick Kent devoted two pages in the NME, then the most prestigious musical weekly, to a famous review of a band’s debut album. It was by a group from New York led by Tom Verlaine, who has just passed away. While famous in the few blocks around CBGBs nightclub, Television were almost unknown outside that world. It’s hard to argue Kent called it wrong as the record regularly pops up still in Best Of charts. I dug out the original review to see what Kent had to say almost half a century ago. He starts with an overview.

This, Television’s first album is  …  a record for everyone who boasts a taste for a new exciting music expertly executed, finely in tune, sublimely arranged with a whole new slant on dynamics, chord structures centred around a totally invigorating passionate application to the vision of centre-pin mastermind Tom Verlaine.

 Then points out it’s definitely not what you think it is:

To call it Punk Rock is rather like describing Dostoevsky as a short-story writer. This music itself is remarkably sophisticated, unworthy of even being paralleled to that of the original Velvet Underground whose combined instrumental finesse was practically a joke compared to what Verlaine and co are cooking up here. 

Next Kent does provide some reference points:

Verlaine’s appearance is simply as exciting as any other major innovator’s to the sphere of rock – like Hendrix, Barrett, Dylan – and, yeah, Christ knows I’m tossing up some true-blue heavies here but Goddammit I refuse to repent right now because this record just damn excites me so much.

 On the episode I’ve read out Robert Forster’s response to hearing the track ‘Venus’. Here’s Kent’s:

(‘Venus’ is) simply one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard; the only other known work I can think of to parallel it with is Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ – yup, it’s that exceptional. Only with Television’s twin guitar filigree weaving round the melody it sounds like some dream synthesis of Dylan himself backed by the Byrds circa ‘65. It’s really damn hard to convey just how gorgeous this song is – the performance, – all these incredible touches like the call-and-response Lou Reed parody. The song itself is like Dylan’s ‘Tambourine’, a vignette of a sort dealing with a dream-like quasi-hallucinogenic state of epiphany.

As if that were not enough, the title track provides a new high-water mark for guitar music. The following might sound like hyperbole were it not for the fact that in 2023 it doesn’t sound dated in the least:

‘Marquee Moon’ is as riveting a piece of music as I’ve heard since the halcyon days of… oh, God knows too many years have elapsed … The song’s structure is practically unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. It transforms from a strident two chord construction to a breathtakingly beautiful chord progression which acts as a motif/climax for the narrative until the music takes over altogether … The instrumentation reaches a dazzling frenzied peak before dispersing into tiny droplets of electricity and Verlaine concludes his ghostly narrative as the song ends with that majestic minor chord motif … Verlaine’s guitar solos take the feed-back sonic “accidents” that Lou Reed fell upon in his most fruitful period … these potentially cataclysmic ideas and rigorously shapes them into a potential total redefinition of the electric guitar. As far as I’m concerned, as of this moment, Verlaine is probably the most exciting electric lead guitar player barring only Neil Young. 

His conclusion is no less ecstatic:

If this review needs to state anything in big bold, black type it’s simply this. Marquee Moon is an album for everyone whatever their musical creeds and/or quirks. Don’t let any other critic put you off with jive turkey terms like ‘avant-garde’ or ‘New York psycho-rock’. This music is passionate, full-blooded, dazzlingly well crafted, brilliantly conceived and totally accessible to anyone who (like myself) has been yearning for a band with the vision to break on through into new dimensions of sonic overdrive and the sheer ability to back it up.

I’m currently reading a memoir by the Joy Division drummer Steve Morris in which, after sharing the excitement around the first album and seeing the band play live, he describes Tom Verlaine and Television’s 1978 follow up ‘Adventure’ as ‘over-produced’ and ‘horrible’. Very sadly too many people agreed with that verdict, although if you listen to the first track on this podcast, ‘Days’, you are sure, I think, to vehemently disagree. Partly as a consequence of the hostile response, Television broke up shortly afterwards.

And, very sadly, Tom Verlaine has now left us. My friend Nigel Webb, who knows about these things, rates much of Verlaine’s solo work higher in his estimation than Marquee Moon.

But it’s no bad thing to have written one of the landmark albums of all time, no matter people’s varying opinions on the rest of their work.

Here’s a tribute to Tom featuring some of the (many) bands influenced by his work. There wasn’t even space for the Postcard stable of Orange Juice, Josef K and The Go-Betweens, all podcast favourites and all indelibly influenced by his work. Hope as ever that you enjoy the show.

Tracklist:

Days, Television

Hot rock, Sleater-Kinney

Venus, Television

Background bridge song (what could I say), True West

Little Johnny Jewel, Television

Tom Verlaine, Alvvays

Five miles of you, Tom Verlaine

Going nowhere, Dump Truck

See no evil, Television

Sex beat, Gun Club

O foolish heart, Tom Verlaine

That’s what you always say, The Dream Syndicate

Carried away, Television

Episode 131 - Tara Emelye Needham, Guest Host

Tara Emelye Needham represents the best of us.

She was in a load of cool bands. Mad Planets, but others too.

She has a day job where she’s an expert on one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.

From her house she can gaze across at the parties Jay-Z is holding on the south fork of Long Island. But is waaay too cool and unneedy to actually attend.

Tara is a fan of our podcast.

We share a deep appreciation of the Go-Betweens.

Her favourite song when she was a kid was Funky Town. For too long our podcast has resisted the allure of Lipss, Inc and now we may usher it onto the roll of tracklist honour.

On this episode she has introduced us to a tranche of new bands we might never have discovered.

Now she’s got the next generation of cool bands paying homage; Julie, featured in this episode, amongst them.

For nineteen years she looked after her cat, Pencil, along with her husband, Josh. Sadly, since the episode was recorded Pencil has gone to the great Feline Valhalla in the sky.

Pencil’s favourite toy was a stuffed platypus, so that was highly suitable for our Australian-based pod. Here’s to Pencil – this podcast’s for you.

And thank you, Tara.

Tracklist:

Funkytown, Lipps Inc

Tar baby, Shelleyan Orphan

Slow slow music, The Go-Betweens

Fagetarian and dyke, Team Dresch

Paperchase, The Mad Planets

Lines and lines, The Spinanes

The trouble with me, Lois

Keep your eyes ahead, The Helio Sequence

Spies (no more), The Chandler Estate

April bloom, Julie

Casio, Ibibio Sound Sysytem

Reflections, Diana Ross and the Supremes

The leap, Tara Emelye Needham