Don McLean / Spencer Zahn

It seems like a good time to take a deep dive into Best Picture nominee, and more importantly, my favourite film of 2023, “Past Lives”. This episode I’m joined by the film’s Assistant Director Ben Kahn to discuss his personal impact on the film, creating the remarkable chemistry between the cast, evoking an older digital landscape, and the profound effect the movie is having on people.

Hope you enjoy! 

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This Friday, March 1st Bruce Hornsby releases a new album in collaboration with chamber ensemble yMusic. The record is entitled “Deep Sea Vents”. It straddles the line between contemporary songwriting and modern classical, and the album has an aquatic theme with all the songs dealing with the ocean, or at least water in some way. The album is emblematic of much of Hornsby’s career in that it veers from the strange to the beautiful to the funny to the challenging. He doesn’t like the easy route.

If you know anything about Bruce’s career you’ll know his mid-80s smash “The Way It Is”, released by Bruce Hornsby and the Range, a powerful piece of social commentary inspired by his life growing up in Virginia, and featuring two piano solos. It’s a song that’s hung around, being sampled by rappers like 2Pac and Polo G. Bruce seems to have a conflicted relationship with the song. He often stills play it live but in a re-worked way, and he seems keen to be seen as a forward-thinking artist, not wishing to be defined by the past.

He was a live member of the Grateful Dead in the early 90s playing over a hundred shows with them. In recent years, he’s collaborated often with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, and you’ll see like the likes of Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig or The Staves or Blake Mills pop up on his album credits.

I was a big admirer of his 2019 album “Absolutely Zero” which is well worth your time. Bruce was fantastic company when we spoke, and I hope you enjoy our chat!

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Welcome. My guest this episode is artist and photographer Lynn Goldsmith.

Her career as a photographer has brought her into the orbit of rock n roll legends like Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, and notably Bruce Springsteen with whom she had a romantic relationship in the 70s as he was still working his way up, with his blistering live shows, and the relentlessly determined creative drive which produced the album Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Her document of this era forms the basis of a new coffee table book published by Taschen entitled “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Darkness on the Edge of Town”.

She’s had an incredible life: working with Elektra Records in the late 60s, co-managing Grand Funk Railroad in the early 70s, and releasing music under the name of Will Powers in the early 80s.

She’s also worked in other mediums of art and her photographs have graced album and magazine covers.

Lynn joined me from Nashville to talk about her new book and her career in general. We had a great chat. Hope you enjoy it. 
 

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I’m listening! Hopefully you are too, as this week is incredibly fun. I’m joined by “Frasier” writer and consulting producer Bob Daily.

Bob was on the writing staff for several seasons of the original run of “Frasier” and he’s back on board for the new revival series out now on Paramount+. If you’re at all interested in how TV shows like this get made, you’re going to find this fascinating. We dig into the world of show development, writers rooms, table reads, and more.

Bob is very articulate about his craft but incredibly personable too, and I had a blast hanging with him. Let me know what you think!

This will likely be the last show of the year, but I’ve already got things in the pipeline for next year, so I’ll be back soon. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to help the show, please keep listening, leave a nice review or rating, tell your friends about the show, and/or follow me on the socials; it’s all appreciated.

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Hey. It’s a special one this week. Juliana Hatfield is a singer-songwriter based in Massachusetts. She was a member of the Lemonheads in the early 90s, as well as bands like Blake Babies in the late 80s and Some Girls in the early 00s. She’s made albums with Matthew Caws from Nada Surf and Paul Westerberg from The Replacements. She’s also released around 20 albums under her own name, sometimes as the Juliana Hatfield Three. Although a prolific songwriter, in recent years she occasionally releases an album of covers by a specific artist. Her latest one, “Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO”, follows her albums of songs by Olivia Newton John and The Police. Being a big ELO fan myself, it seemed like a great time to talk with her. She had a particular rough time in the press in the 90s and he experience with working with a major label has clearly left it’s scars. Stick with this one, after a lot of ELO geek talk we go deep. It was genuinely one of my favourite conversations I’ve had for the show. Sometimes you have a guest where you feel you’re really chasing down some kind of epiphany. I’m not sure we reached one, but you decide.
 

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This week I’m joined by drummer Chester Thompson. Chester is perhaps best known for his live work with Genesis and Phil Collins, but he has also worked with Frank Zappa, Weather Report, The Bee Gees, and The Pointer Sisters. He has a new jazz album out called “Wake-Up Call” and he joins me from Nashville to discuss it’s “genesis” (see what I did there?). Anyway, Chester schools me in the ways of jazz, talks about his career, and indulges my Genesis fan-boy questions. Hope you enjoy.
 

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Breathe deep the gathering gloom. This episode I welcome back John Lodge of The Moody Blues to the show!

John has recently released his re-working of The Moody Blues 1967 opus “Days Of Future Passed”. I think it’s fair to wonder whether it’s a good idea when artist take on projects like this, and I want to ask John about the possible disconnect between fan expectations and artist perspectives. I was also naturally curious about the current state of relationships between John and his former bandleader Justin Heywood.

John was really good company and I had a great time talking with him. Hope you enjoy it too!

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Waddup? I’m joined this episode by Jonathan Higgs from the excellent Everything Everything. The band are from Manchester and formed in 2007. They’ve so far released 6 albums, 2 of which were nominated for the Mercury Music Award. They’ve also had 5 Ivor Novello nominations.

Their most recent album 2022s “Raw Data Feel” saw the band experiment with the use of AI to create the album artwork as well as some of the lyrics for the album. Mark Hanslip, a researcher from the Unversity of York, helped Higgs develop an AI bot named Kevin which was fed 4 sources of information: LinkedIn’s terms and conditions, the classic poem Beowulf, 400,000 posts from controversial message board 4chan, and the sayings of the Confucius. The generated results were poured through and compiled into useable material. Jonathan has generally preferred to keep secret which lyrics are his and which were generated by AI, which accounts for about 5% of the albums lyrics.

The band’s debut album 2010s “Man Alive” is about to get a deluxe reissue. It’s an album I really like, so it was a great opportunity to speak to Jonathan. Hope you enjoy it.

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Welcome. Dave Pegg is the longest serving member of Fairport Convention. Fairport are one of those bands who are a subculture unto themselves. They were formed in 1967 with Dave joining the band in 1969. Fairport split in 1979 but reformed in 1985 and have been active since then.

They’re still a very hardworking touring band here in the UK. They came through my hometown of Southend earlier this year and I saw my first Fairport show. Frankly, I was shocked how good it was.

The band on record tend to be a bit defined by a run of albums they did in the late 60s when Richard Thompson and the late Sandy Denny were in the band. I think a bit of line-up snobbery had contributed to my not having seen them sooner, but alongside Dave, the band still features founding member Simon Nicol. Multi-instrumentalists Ric Sanders and Chris Leslie have been in the band since 1985 and 1996 respectively. The tour I caught them on also saw them reunite with drummer Dave Mattacks who originally joined in 1969 and has had several spells in the band.  

A big part of the Fairport culture is their annual music festival Cropredy which is taking place in August this year, so we discuss preparations for this year’s event.

In addition to Fairport Convention, Dave played with Jethro Tull for a long time, as well as working with Nick Drake on his wonderful “Bryter Later” album.

Hope you enjoy our conversation.
 

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Good dawning to thee, friends. My guest this episode tv producer and Daria co-creator Susie Lewis.

Susie Lewis was an intern at MTV when she began working on the show Beavis and Butthead. That show featured a sardonic character names Daria, and feeling that MTV needed more content for girls, Susie was drafted in alongside Glenn Eichler to create a spin-off series called Daria.

Daria is not just a great animated series, it’s a great TV series, full stop. It still stands up really well. It’s smart and funny and warmly evocative of the late 90s and millennium era in which it was made.

It’s one of my all-time favourite shows, so I was delighted Susie was willing to come on the show. She was lovely company, as you’ll hear.

Thanks for listening.
 

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