42: A plague on both your houses!

I was pretty sick when we recorded this show. I'm all better now. Sometimes when you have a near death experience like that your whole life flashes before your eyes... This is one of those times. I know I bullshit a lot but all of these are true.

To hear this episode (which mostly consists of me coughing...)  press

PLAY

Track Listings

 '2nd Sucks' by A day to Remember
Memory one... it's sports day and in order to make myself run faster I have bought myself a Mars Milkshake drink. I am pretty quick for a short kid and manage a half decent time in the 100 meters. Then I heave over and puke that milkshake all over the floor.

'I Could Never Break Your Heart' by Fol Chen
Memory two. I am on a German exchange programme. I am 14 years old and wandering around a zoo in Hamburg with a kid called Gavin from Weston super Mare. Before we went to the zoo we had been to visit the Burgermeister  (Mayor). There had been a hospitality table with free cokes and I'd loaded up on that shit. Now, back at the Zoo, I badly need to piss but all the signs are in German and to make matters worse they seem to lead me on a route that goes all the way around the damn zoo before going anywhere near a urinal. To cut a long story short, somewhere near the Penguins I piss myself. Gavin and I walk around until my trousers dry off. Then we get back on the bus with all the other kids and go back to the hotel.

'Side projects are never successful' by Bomb the Music Industry 
Memory three. Despite a crippling lack of talent my mum is convinced I can follow in her footsteps and play in an orchestra, she plays the cello (so does my sister) and I play violin. I fail the audition but they let me in anyway because mum is one of the teachers and they are worried that if none of her kids are involved she will stop volunteering her weekends and they will have to find a new cello coach.
I am a fourth row second violin. I am mostly lost and holding the bow above the strings so that I don't mess thing up for my mum by actually making any noise.

Sometimes we play a piece called 'Andrews piece.' All I know is that I like it and it's by one of the kids in the orchestra. I assume one of the soloists or  front row 1st's.  There is another kid in my row called 'Scabby' he stinks like a tramp and is badly bullied. Word is he'll do anything for half a chew-it. I find out weeks later that he is Andrew. The contradiction blows my mind.


'Highways' By Joe Purdey 
Memory Four. It's the last year of GCSE's I am reeling from the fact that my parents have finally divorced. My sister is dating a psycho boxer and I am getting regularly beaten up in the street, (mostly for being small, white and confused).

I decide that talking is over rated and that it's easier to get through school if I just stop. I don't say another word for two months. On my last day a group of kids tells me that they are going to gather in the stairwell to beat me up when the bell goes. I don't even try and avoid them. I just walk right over and let them do it. After a while they get bored and I walk home.

'Hands down' by Dashboard confessional
Memory Five. I am standing with my old best friend at the top of a hill called 'Dangerous Hill' We are looking at the view of the city. In that moment we are in love with the city. We love the reality of it. The ugly beauty. This city of tiny lights is spread out in front of us like a mirror image of the milky-way. In my mind each one of those lights represents another human being, another life, another perspective on the unknowable nature of the universe.

Years later I try and skateboard down dangerous hill and bust up my ankle pretty bad. Guess I should have taken more heed of the name.

'I walked' Sufjan Stevens 
Memory Six. I am sixteen and living in rural Wales. My route home takes me past some crazy ass one-eyed farm-dogs that like to chase cars. Usually one of my step brothers is with me but today I am on my own. The dogs look at me. I look at them. They bare their teeth and growl. I decide to go around the block to avoid them. It turns out that 'Around the block' is about five miles, this is the trouble with applying urban logic to a rural problem.

'In the Offing' by Worn in Red 
Memory Seven. I am 11 years old and lying on a beach, everyone else is body-boarding later on I will have a go and realize how fun it is but right now I think it looks silly, cold and dangerous. I am next to a four month old baby who is playing with some pebbles. Just as I am drifting off into a day dream the kid picks up a rock and smashes it into my head. It doesn't break the skin but it hurts like hell huge lump comes up like in a cartoon. The baby laughs and laughs.
 
'Walkin' by My Morning Jacket
Memory Eight. I am thirty years old and I'm not happy about it. My cousin has just died in an avalanche on Ben Nevis. the dude was amazing. Pure smile, muscle and heart and now I'm off to his funeral.  There is snow all over the road and in order to get my car out I am having scrape it off the road with a shovel and lay a trail of rock salt that some guy has brought out from his house. I hate snow is a way that I never thought I would.

Goodnight. 

3a: In Bed with a White Wedding.

You can listen to this episode HERE

The Beds
A bed is what we Dj's call the music we play to fill up the gaps in our talking. I have called this episode 'in bed with a White Wedding because there is much discussion at the start over my 'cheesy choice of bed' We eventually switch to a bit of DJ Shadow.

I'm gonna make some new beds. I promise. No Seriously. Stop looking at me like that. I'll bloody do it OK! Fine then be like that. See if I care.

Track Listings
'Summertime Clothes' by Animal Collective
Animal Collective were much touted as the next being thing about a year or so ago. They've been around for ages but most of their music is too... inaccessible for most people. With their Album 'Merriweather Post Pavilion' they kind of made it more mainstream and the pundits thought that this would make them explode like a musical supanova... Sadly this only kind of half happened for them, but they are still awesome. Merriweather Post Pavillion had an optical illusion for an album cover And possibility the worst name for an album of all time. This track is about insomnia on a hot summers night and the feeling of absolute relief at finding someone else that can't sleep and wants to go walking around the cooling city streets at night.

'Hip Hop is Art' by Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip
Dan Le Sac got famous because of this awesome Viral Youtube Video While probably being the best hip hop artists working in the UK today, I know nothing about Dan Le Sac and most of what I know about Scroobius Pip is that he has a massive beard and probably the most annoying voice in the world. luckily his talent outstrips his leather-elbow-padded, academic-on-the-sex-register looks and sound to make him a hit with everyone on the internet that like to think of themselves as cool. Hip Hop artists of the old school cannot really get to grips with Scroobius Pip's lack of visible ego, jewellery and women.

'Wash Away (reprise)' by Joe Purdy
If you listen to the show you will find out that I heard Wash Away at the end of a seminal Lost episode and then went on a one man 500mile quest to track it down. Such was the chord it struck with me. Matt has the impudence to compare it to Damien Rice who is worse than this which I actually quite like. I mean at least the guy obviously has some real pain in his life and doesn't come out with mindless and clichéd rhyming couplets just to feed his growing cocaine addiction. Damien Rice is a class A moron and he can eat my poo. I think the only reason he got famous at all was because people confused his name (and sound) with that of David Grey, who actually isn't that bad either, for a London-Underground busker. One wonders how many people he had to sleep with to get to the top? The answer is seven. David Grey slept with seven people to get to the top, three of them at the same time... to put things in perspective, Joe Purdy slept with a Plymouth Sedan and Damian Rice Slept with the entire population of Tunbridge wells. As far as I know, Mark Gormley has never slept with anyone. For legal reasons let me add that much of the above is not necessarily true.

'Love, Ire and Song' by Frank Turner (previously of Million Dead)
This is a kind of protest song about not really feeling like protesting any more and then you know... getting that impetus back. It's nice enough but it is the second acoustic guitar type hippy song in a row... for which I apologise. Sadly I cannot go back in time and slot in a bit of hardcore something angry.. and wrathful... There are moments in this song when Frank breaths really loudly. I want you to seek those moments out and try your best to enjoy them. You could turn it into a drinking game. or even a breathing game. or perhaps it could be like some kind of kissing game... which would be sick hot. I also hope that Matt has uploaded the clean version of this Episode otherwise... I'm really sorry about all the swearing ya'll.

'Acid Song' by Loudoun Wainwright III
Loudoun reminds me of my dad quite a lot. My dad has never taken acid but he does love to sing and play the guitar. Some of my favourite childhood memories are of my dad waking me up in the morning by strolling into my bedroom, softly strumming an old 6 string and singing that it was time to get up. We were poor back then and dad used to get all his guitars from second-hand shops for about a tenner. He has one now that's probably worth about a grand. I made him give me one of the old ones because I like the sound that they make. It's painted white from top to bottom and right now it's in the corner of my bedroom gathering dust. At least one of the strings is broken. I really should get that fixed and start playing again. Dad says if I don't play it then he'll take it back.

'Moved as Mountains, dreamt of by the sea' by The Ghost of 1000
Matt Finally returns to form by playing a band that sound and look like angry teens.
The Ghost of 1000 play musically intelligent riffs and licks buried beneath a collapsing wall of sound. That's quality music journalism right there, the kind of solid writing you have come to expect from me... Like Burt Baccarat taped face-down on a pile of old Metallica Vinals while Grace Jones beats him to death with a whip. Ahh yeah.. I'm on a Roll.

'Divine' by Sebastian Tellier
A previous French Eurovision entry that for some reason I fell in love with. I think the French may well take Eurovision just about as seriously as we do. I think our entry might have been the 35 year old Daz's Anti Educational Rant 'Teenage Life'. What makes me love this song more than anything though, is how much Matt hates it.

'Only in Dreams' by Weezer
Matt and I agree that this is the best last song on the album of any album ever. It's about 10 minutes long. Erotically charged and yet wistfully nostalgic. Certainly for me anyway. I first heard this song during my Sixth Form Years. I was young free and single then and I did my best to make the most of that. There was this one night when... You know what, I'm not even going to tell you about that. But feel free to imagine it if you like... perhaps on a bus or in your place of work, and when someone asks you why you are smiling you can say... 'oh no reason, I'm just happy' and they'll have to take your word for it and the last laugh will be on them.

Goodnight!