Matt Murray

Nick Lowe

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are with guest Matt Murray. Matt is the recently departed editor of the Wall Street Journal, now on assignment for its parent company, News Corp. Check him out on Twitter at @murraymatt.Matt’s Music Pick: Nick LoweOkay, it says “Nick Lowe” right there above this line, but we need to be straight with you -- there’s a lot of other stuff happening in this show. Nick Lowe-adjacent acts are featured prominently, too. That means talk about Brinsley Schwarz, Rockpile, Dave Edmunds, and many, many more (even Huey Lewis!). There's a really simple way to summarize this episode: Here's a 3.5-hour love letter to Nick Lowe. That's pretty much the plot, people. Three hosts with a deep, abiding adoration for the music and production contributions of one of the biggest missing names from the Rock &amp; Roll Hall of Fame.Now, I imagine there are some people who are saying, "Nick who?" After all, Lowe's career is the definition of a technical one-hit wonder -- a single top-40 song (“Cruel To Be Kind”) and that's it in terms of true chart success. First of all, everyone is in for a treat, from longtime fans to newbies. Albums such as Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust are among the very best released in the 1970s. Second, Nick Lowe's musical influence and work as a producer certainly will be familiar to you.The term “Pub Rock” describes an entire wave of U.K. acts, and Nick was at the center of most of them. This means Brinsley Schwarz and Dave Edmunds for sure, but also acts such as Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, and The Damned. This was a back-to-basics movement and a reaction to the bloat of progressive rock and the flash of glam. These artists instead looked to the rock and R&amp;B of the '50s and '60s as guideposts.This is such a fun story to tell because the music is undeniable. The melodies are unimpeachable. And Nick Lowe's "second act" in his career has been so creatively satisfying. Starting with The Impossible Bird, he builds an entirely new sound and feel that is just as rewarding as the early work.He’s Nick Lowe and Political Beats is here to make the case that, although he’s not a household name, he certainly should be. 

Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are with guest Matt Murray. Matt is the recently departed editor of the Wall Street Journal, now on assignment for its parent company, News Corp. Check him out on Twitter at @<a href="http://twitter.com/murraymatt" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">murraymatt</a>.Matt’s Music Pick: Nick Lowe Okay, it says “Nick Lowe” right there above this line, but we need to be straight with you -- there’s a lot of other stuff happening in this show. Nick Lowe-adjacent acts are featured prominently, too. That means talk about Brinsley Schwarz, Rockpile, Dave Edmunds, and many, many more (even Huey Lewis!). There's a really simple way to summarize this episode: Here's a 3.5-hour love letter to Nick Lowe. That's pretty much the plot, people. Three hosts with a deep, abiding adoration for the music and production contributions of one of the biggest missing names from the Rock &amp; Roll Hall of Fame.Now, I imagine there are some people who are saying, "Nick who?" After all, Lowe's career is the definition of a technical one-hit wonder -- a single top-40 song (“Cruel To Be Kind”) and that's it in terms of true chart success. First of all, everyone is in for a treat, from longtime fans to newbies. Albums such as Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust are among the very best released in the 1970s. Second, Nick Lowe's musical influence and work as a producer certainly will be familiar to you.The term “Pub Rock” describes an entire wave of U.K. acts, and Nick was at the center of most of them. This means Brinsley Schwarz and Dave Edmunds for sure, but also acts such as Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, and The Damned. This was a back-to-basics movement and a reaction to the bloat of progressive rock and the flash of glam. These artists instead looked to the rock and R&amp;B of the '50s and '60s as guideposts.This is such a fun story to tell because the music is undeniable. The melodies are unimpeachable. And Nick Lowe's "second act" in his career has been so creatively satisfying. Starting with The Impossible Bird, he builds an entirely new sound and feel that is just as rewarding as the early work.He’s Nick Lowe and Political Beats is here to make the case that, although he’s not a household name, he certainly should be.

Episode 125: Matt Murray / Nick Lowe

Dave Weigel

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Dave Weigel. Dave is a founding reporter at Semafor, where he covers the 2024 campaign and writes the Americana newsletter. Check his work out here and find him on Twitter at @daveweigel.Dave’s Music Pick: Pet Shop BoysOpportunities are knocking: I've got the brains, and you've got the looks, so let's make lots of money as we use the post–July 4 week to celebrate the United Kingdom's most famous '80s/'90s synthpop dance-music duo! Of course, Pet Shop Boys -- a two-man collaboration that began in 1981 when rock critic Neil Tennant ran into bedsit-room synths-and-sequencers muso Chris Lowe at a record shop -- are much more than that besides. They managed the trick of being one of the United Kingdom's most commercially dominant chart acts while also being one of its cleverest and most tasteful, the result being that their classic run of albums beginning with Please (1986) have not dated even as they helped create and define the sound of '80s and '90s pop, club, and dance music. Neil Tennant's knack for melody and endlessly clever lyrics relating stories of heartbreak, ennui, and urban adventure from a then still-hidden subculture (gay London of the '80s and '90s) matched perfectly with Lowe's preternatural ability to layer keyboards hooks and sequenced percussion into compulsive radio fodder: The Pet Shop Boys scored 22 top-ten singles in the U.K. and ten over here in the United States, and you'll be surprised how many of them you knew without realizing you did.  So press play, get ready to dance, enjoy a real treat. By the end you may be asking yourself: "What have I done to deserve this?" 

Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are joined by guest Dave Weigel. Dave is a founding reporter at Semafor, where he covers the 2024 campaign and writes the Americana newsletter. Check his work out <a href="https://www.semafor.com/author/david-weigel" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> and find him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/daveweigel" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@daveweigel</a>.Dave’s Music Pick: Pet Shop Boys Opportunities are knocking: I've got the brains, and you've got the looks, so let's make lots of money as we use the post–July 4 week to celebrate the United Kingdom's most famous '80s/'90s synthpop dance-music duo! Of course, Pet Shop Boys -- a two-man collaboration that began in 1981 when rock critic Neil Tennant ran into bedsit-room synths-and-sequencers muso Chris Lowe at a record shop -- are much more than that besides. They managed the trick of being one of the United Kingdom's most commercially dominant chart acts while also being one of its cleverest and most tasteful, the result being that their classic run of albums beginning with Please (1986) have not dated even as they helped create and define the sound of '80s and '90s pop, club, and dance music. Neil Tennant's knack for melody and endlessly clever lyrics relating stories of heartbreak, ennui, and urban adventure from a then still-hidden subculture (gay London of the '80s and '90s) matched perfectly with Lowe's preternatural ability to layer keyboards hooks and sequenced percussion into compulsive radio fodder: The Pet Shop Boys scored 22 top-ten singles in the U.K. and ten over here in the United States, and you'll be surprised how many of them you knew without realizing you did.  So press play, get ready to dance, enjoy a real treat. By the end you may be asking yourself: "What have I done to deserve this?"

Episode 124: Dave Weigel / Pet Shop Boys

Dominic Green

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Dominic Green. Dom is a historian and columnist, and he used to be a musician. He is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and a columnist for the Washington Examiner and Jewish Chronicle. Check him out on Twitter at @DrDominicGreen.Dominic’s Music Pick: The JamIn some ways, this is one of the most necessary episodes of Political Beats ever. In other ways, this is one of the most obscure episodes of Political Beats ever. So come on in, Smithers-Jones, take a seat and a weight off your feet, because I've some news to tell you: The Jam is the most important and consequential British rock group that nobody outside of music nerds and record store clerks in America even knew existed. Paul Weller (guitar, vocals, primary songwriting), Bruce Foxton (bass, vocals, secondary songwriting), and Rick Buckler (drums) formed the late Seventies U.K. punk era's greatest power trio by explicitly patterning themselves off of the "straight lines" musical attack of mid Sixties mod-era Pete Townshend and The Who. They then almost immediately began to develop an approach that, by the time of All Mod Cons (1978), had evolved into a unique musical and lyrical response to the massive societal upheaval and displacement of the early Thatcher era. Even as The Jam sought and achieved universal critical acclaim and commercial success in Great Britain -- Paul Weller would later be dubbed "The Modfather" by '90s U.K. Britpop bands such as Oasis, Blur, and Teenage Fanclub -- their legacy failed to translate nearly anywhere else, and particularly to the United States. It's no mystery as to why: The Jam's lyrics and themes (driven by Weller) were uniquely British in a way few other top-tier rock artists' had been since the heyday of Ray and Dave Davies with the Kinks in the late Sixties. But these themes are nevertheless emotionally universal and humane, and the music? Oh, the music, my friends. If you are a Brit or a Jam fan of long-standing, then prepare for a delightful stroll through one mind-blowing punk, power-pop, or even string-laden art-rock memory after another. If you are new to The Jam -- and we must assume that many of you are -- prepare to be mowed down by a youth explosion as one pop masterpiece after another is brought to your attention for the first time. Some people might get some pleasure out of hate but you? You've enough already on your plate with this episode. Click play, and soon you'll be going underground.

Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are joined by guest Dominic Green. Dom is a historian and columnist, and he used to be a musician. He is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and a columnist for the Washington Examiner and Jewish Chronicle. Check him out on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/DrDominicGreen" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@DrDominicGreen</a>.Dominic’s Music Pick: The Jam In some ways, this is one of the most necessary episodes of Political Beats ever. In other ways, this is one of the most obscure episodes of Political Beats ever. So come on in, Smithers-Jones, take a seat and a weight off your feet, because I've some news to tell you: The Jam is the most important and consequential British rock group that nobody outside of music nerds and record store clerks in America even knew existed. Paul Weller (guitar, vocals, primary songwriting), Bruce Foxton (bass, vocals, secondary songwriting), and Rick Buckler (drums) formed the late Seventies U.K. punk era's greatest power trio by explicitly patterning themselves off of the "straight lines" musical attack of mid Sixties mod-era Pete Townshend and The Who. They then almost immediately began to develop an approach that, by the time of All Mod Cons (1978), had evolved into a unique musical and lyrical response to the massive societal upheaval and displacement of the early Thatcher era. Even as The Jam sought and achieved universal critical acclaim and commercial success in Great Britain -- Paul Weller would later be dubbed "The Modfather" by '90s U.K. Britpop bands such as Oasis, Blur, and Teenage Fanclub -- their legacy failed to translate nearly anywhere else, and particularly to the United States. It's no mystery as to why: The Jam's lyrics and themes (driven by Weller) were uniquely British in a way few other top-tier rock artists' had been since the heyday of Ray and Dave Davies with the Kinks in the late Sixties. But these themes are nevertheless emotionally universal and humane, and the music? Oh, the music, my friends. If you are a Brit or a Jam fan of long-standing, then prepare for a delightful stroll through one mind-blowing punk, power-pop, or even string-laden art-rock memory after another. If you are new to The Jam -- and we must assume that many of you are -- prepare to be mowed down by a youth explosion as one pop masterpiece after another is brought to your attention for the first time. Some people might get some pleasure out of hate but you? You've enough already on your plate with this episode. Click play, and soon you'll be going underground.

Episode 123: Dominic Green / The Jam

Eric Garcia

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Eric Garcia. Eric is senior Washington writer for the Independent and a columnist at MSNBC. Check him out on Twitter at @EricMGarcia.Eric’s Music Pick: Black SabbathThe storm is upon you; can you hear the peals of thunder in the background, and the bleak clang of the church bell in the sleeping village? Well then break out the most appropriate tritone you can think of as the gang discusses Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, Bill (and yes, Ronnie James as well) and the groundbreaking music of Black Sabbath. Sabbath are famed as the inventors -- with their self-titled 1970 debut album -- of what would come to be known as "heavy metal." As such, they've long been worshipped by surly teenagers and metalheads alike, and derided by parents and critics in equal proportion. What we will take great pleasure in explaining to you during this episode is that the kids and metalheads got this one right. The critics and your parents whiffed. Sabbath was an incredibly intelligent band that may have begun as a demonstratively sludgy blues-rock (hence the birth of "heavy metal") but almost instantly evolved into a progressive group afterwards under guidance of guitarist Tony Iommi's compulsive riff-writing abilities and the secret jazz predilections of bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward. And then there's good ol' Ozzy Osbourne -- the bloke from down at the pub made good, singing his head off as best he can and finding surprising depths in his everyman voice.Sabbath's posthumous reputation is dictated largely by the ubiquitous popularity of their first two albums -- if you have heard them on the radio, it's probably a song like "Iron Man" or "War Pigs" -- but as far as the gang is concerned, that's actually where it gets really interesting for a band whose ability to combine piledriving riffage with shockingly unexpected moments of beauty and soulfulness marked them out during the next seven years as not just the most important heavy-metal bands to exist, but (secretly, don't tell your mom) also one of the finest art-rock groups of its era. Click play and join us this week as we boldly head Into the Void.

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are joined by guest Eric Garcia. Eric is senior Washington writer for the Independent and a columnist at MSNBC. Check him out on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/EricMGarcia" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EricMGarcia</a>.Eric’s Music Pick: Black SabbathThe storm is upon you; can you hear the peals of thunder in the background, and the bleak clang of the church bell in the sleeping village? Well then break out the most appropriate tritone you can think of as the gang discusses Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, Bill (and yes, Ronnie James as well) and the groundbreaking music of Black Sabbath. Sabbath are famed as the inventors -- with their self-titled 1970 debut album -- of what would come to be known as "heavy metal." As such, they've long been worshipped by surly teenagers and metalheads alike, and derided by parents and critics in equal proportion. What we will take great pleasure in explaining to you during this episode is that the kids and metalheads got this one right. The critics and your parents whiffed. Sabbath was an incredibly intelligent band that may have begun as a demonstratively sludgy blues-rock (hence the birth of "heavy metal") but almost instantly evolved into a progressive group afterwards under guidance of guitarist Tony Iommi's compulsive riff-writing abilities and the secret jazz predilections of bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward. And then there's good ol' Ozzy Osbourne -- the bloke from down at the pub made good, singing his head off as best he can and finding surprising depths in his everyman voice.Sabbath's posthumous reputation is dictated largely by the ubiquitous popularity of their first two albums -- if you have heard them on the radio, it's probably a song like "Iron Man" or "War Pigs" -- but as far as the gang is concerned, that's actually where it gets really interesting for a band whose ability to combine piledriving riffage with shockingly unexpected moments of beauty and soulfulness marked them out during the next seven years as not just the most important heavy-metal bands to exist, but (secretly, don't tell your mom) also one of the finest art-rock groups of its era. Click play and join us this week as we boldly head Into the Void.

Episode 122: Eric Garcia / Black Sabbath

Adam Wollner

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are with guest Adam Wollner. Adam is a Washington-based journalist who has covered national politics for CNN, McClatchy, and National Journal. Check him out on Twitter at @adamwollner.Adam’s Music Pick: My Morning JacketA reverb-laden, indie-country band? Roots rock? Electro-funk? Jam band? All that and much more could be said to describe My Morning Jacket at various stages of their career. The constant has been solid-to-great albums and a dynamic live show that harnesses the power of the studio tracks and unleashes it upon the audience.Led by songwriter and lead vocalist Jim James, My Morning Jacket's music is most closely tied to the Americana folk scene, drawing comparisons, especially early on, with The Band and Neil Young. MMJ slowly adopted some of the moods and styles of the late '60s psychedelic/folk movement, as well. What results is a unique amalgam of genres, songs that seem to pick up new tricks and ideas from across a wide musical spectrum. MMJ has been around for 25 years but, if you're not in the right musical circles, you might not have heard of them before now. Which is, of course, a shame. As Scot explains in the episode, this is not music you need to work hard to love or enjoy. MMJ comes to you, arms open, holding a fluffy blanket. There are numerous ways to enter the world of this band. From there, wonder awaits.

Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are with guest Adam Wollner. Adam is a Washington-based journalist who has covered national politics for CNN, McClatchy, and National Journal. Check him out on Twitter at @<a href="http://twitter.com/adamwollner" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">adamwollner</a>.Adam’s Music Pick: My Morning Jacket A reverb-laden, indie-country band? Roots rock? Electro-funk? Jam band? All that and much more could be said to describe My Morning Jacket at various stages of their career. The constant has been solid-to-great albums and a dynamic live show that harnesses the power of the studio tracks and unleashes it upon the audience.Led by songwriter and lead vocalist Jim James, My Morning Jacket's music is most closely tied to the Americana folk scene, drawing comparisons, especially early on, with The Band and Neil Young. MMJ slowly adopted some of the moods and styles of the late '60s psychedelic/folk movement, as well. What results is a unique amalgam of genres, songs that seem to pick up new tricks and ideas from across a wide musical spectrum. MMJ has been around for 25 years but, if you're not in the right musical circles, you might not have heard of them before now. Which is, of course, a shame. As Scot explains in the episode, this is not music you need to work hard to love or enjoy. MMJ comes to you, arms open, holding a fluffy blanket. There are numerous ways to enter the world of this band. From there, wonder awaits.

Episode 121: Adam Wollner / My Morning Jacket

Mark Hemingway

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Mark Hemingway. Mark is a writer at RealClearInvestigations and RealClearPolitics and an occasional contributor at The Federalist. Check him out on Twitter at @heminator.Mark’s Music Pick: Big StarHow do you merit an episode of Political Beats when you've released only a handful of albums in your career? When two happen to be among the best pop/rock records ever recorded and a third is a fascinating “"lost masterpiece” that’s never had a real, official release and is steeped in so much mystery no one is even sure what the correct track order might be. That, and much more, is the story of Big Star.In actuality, there's a rich story behind the music of Big Star, from bad luck to poor distribution to bad timing to, much later, acknowledgement of the stellar work that was done. The songs they recorded form the rock solid foundation of power pop, influencing bands decades into the future. Some of your favorite artists likely learned numerous tricks from Big Star, bands like The Posies, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, Gin Blossoms, Wilco, Matthew Sweet, The Replacements, and many more.Only a few thousand copies of Big Star’s records sold upon release, both a comment of the prevailing tastes of the early 1970s and an indictment of the distribution strategy (or lack thereof) of the band’s labels. We try to explain the genius of both Alex Chilton and Chris Bell and come to praise the contributions of Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens to the arrangements. If you don’t know Big Star, this is a perfect introduction.As a side note, Mark Hemingway becomes our very first three-time guest on the show, opening the door for others to return again in the future. He’s been anointed “King of the Short Discography” after tackling The Replacements, Nirvana, and now Big Star on the show.   

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are joined by guest Mark Hemingway. Mark is a writer at <a href="https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/authors/mark_hemingway/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RealClearInvestigations</a> and RealClearPolitics and an occasional contributor at The Federalist. Check him out on Twitter at @<a href="http://twitter.com/heminator" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">heminator</a>.Mark’s Music Pick: Big StarHow do you merit an episode of Political Beats when you've released only a handful of albums in your career? When two happen to be among the best pop/rock records ever recorded and a third is a fascinating “"lost masterpiece” that’s never had a real, official release and is steeped in so much mystery no one is even sure what the correct track order might be. That, and much more, is the story of Big Star.In actuality, there's a rich story behind the music of Big Star, from bad luck to poor distribution to bad timing to, much later, acknowledgement of the stellar work that was done. The songs they recorded form the rock solid foundation of power pop, influencing bands decades into the future. Some of your favorite artists likely learned numerous tricks from Big Star, bands like The Posies, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, Gin Blossoms, Wilco, Matthew Sweet, The Replacements, and many more.Only a few thousand copies of Big Star’s records sold upon release, both a comment of the prevailing tastes of the early 1970s and an indictment of the distribution strategy (or lack thereof) of the band’s labels. We try to explain the genius of both Alex Chilton and Chris Bell and come to praise the contributions of Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens to the arrangements. If you don’t know Big Star, this is a perfect introduction.As a side note, Mark Hemingway becomes our very first three-time guest on the show, opening the door for others to return again in the future. He’s been anointed “King of the Short Discography” after tackling The Replacements, Nirvana, and now Big Star on the show.

Episode 120: Mark Hemingway / Big Star

Noam Blum

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by Noam Blum. Noam is Chief Technology Officer at Tablet Magazine and co-host of the Ambitious Crossover Attempt podcast and of All Crossed Out on the Callin app, both of which deal with pop culture, media, and politics. Find him on Twitter at @neontaster.Noam’s Music Pick: ToolSince Political Beats dealt with one of Gen Z's niche musical obsessions last episode in tackling The National, we've decided to double down in the new year and finally go after one of the Millennial generation's more beloved (and also, as we grant on the show, derided for their sincerity) bands with a discussion of Tool. Driven by the lyrical vision of Maynard James Keenan, the guitar geometrics/visualizations of Adam Jones, and the drumwork of Danny Carey, Tool was/is (though "is" is notional proposition, given that they've slowed their work pace to one album a decade) progressive heavy metal in their approach, a genre we haven't covered at all here on the show yet. We have dealt with many of their progenitors, particularly King Crimson (compositionally and musically) and Husker Du (lyrically and spiritually). And one day we'll get to Metallica, we promise. But Tool in many ways represents the final flowering of that line of intellectualized hard rock that began in the '70s, became unfashionable in the '80s, and then reemerged in the '90s. Their heavy sound and emotionally involuted lyrical obsessions would become endlessly imitated by many lesser groups seeking to recreate the intensity of their music, but those would be pale imitations. Here's the genuine article, a tool to use for yourself. Use wisely.

Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are joined by Noam Blum. Noam is Chief Technology Officer at <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tablet Magazine</a> and co-host of the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ambitious-crossover-attempt/id1602514287" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ambitious Crossover Attempt</a> podcast and of <a href="https://www.callin.com/show/all-crossed-out-jVWglWcHxW" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">All Crossed Out</a> on the Callin app, both of which deal with pop culture, media, and politics. Find him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/neontaster" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@neontaster</a>.Noam’s Music Pick: Tool Since Political Beats dealt with one of Gen Z's niche musical obsessions last episode in tackling The National, we've decided to double down in the new year and finally go after one of the Millennial generation's more beloved (and also, as we grant on the show, derided for their sincerity) bands with a discussion of Tool. Driven by the lyrical vision of Maynard James Keenan, the guitar geometrics/visualizations of Adam Jones, and the drumwork of Danny Carey, Tool was/is (though "is" is notional proposition, given that they've slowed their work pace to one album a decade) progressive heavy metal in their approach, a genre we haven't covered at all here on the show yet. We have dealt with many of their progenitors, particularly King Crimson (compositionally and musically) and Husker Du (lyrically and spiritually). And one day we'll get to Metallica, we promise. But Tool in many ways represents the final flowering of that line of intellectualized hard rock that began in the '70s, became unfashionable in the '80s, and then reemerged in the '90s. Their heavy sound and emotionally involuted lyrical obsessions would become endlessly imitated by many lesser groups seeking to recreate the intensity of their music, but those would be pale imitations. Here's the genuine article, a tool to use for yourself. Use wisely.

Episode 119: Noam Blum / Tool

Phil Wegmann

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are with guest Phil Wegmann. Phil is White House reporter for RealClearNews and RealClearPolitics. Check him out on Twitter at @PhilipWegmann.Phil’s Music Pick: The NationalLet us tell you, we have had *a bunch* of listeners ask us for an episode on The National, and we are nothing if not responsive to our fans. Neither one of your hosts previously was extremely familiar with the band, which is why we called in our ringer, Phil Wegmann, who earlier helped to lead our path through the Creedence Clearwater Revival show.Looking at Wiki's description of The National -- “The National has been compared to Joy Division, Leonard Cohen, Interpol, Wilco, Depeche Mode and Nick Cave &amp; the Bad Seeds” -- you could be forgiven for thinking this already was one of Jeff’s favorite bands. And that doesn’t even take into account the fact there’s a lot of Arcade Fire in this music, as well.Much of your opinion of The National could hinge on how you feel about lead singer/lyricist Matt Berninger and his classic baritone voice. There’s not a ton of vocal modulation on these tracks! That, of course, makes for a distinctive sound and separates the band from many of its peers.The band’s self-titled debut is a bit of an outlier – there are sounds there they never quite would return t0 – but after that, a fantastic string of albums begins with Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers, one Scot argues actually is among their best. Alligator, Boxer, and High Violet make the case for The National becoming one of the most consistent acts of the decade while continuing to tweak their songwriting and performance at each stage. 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me ends up as a top choice of all three of your hosts.Maybe you’re new to the band, too! Don’t worry. Jump in and experience The National through the eyes of a superfan and two other hosts who were in the same position you’re in. And if you already love The National, well, there’s a decent chance our takes will somehow manage to irk each and every one of you in some way. We can’t all be “Mr. November,” after all.

Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are with guest Phil Wegmann. Phil is White House reporter for <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/philip_wegmann/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RealClearNews and RealClearPolitics</a>. Check him out on Twitter at @<a href="https://twitter.com/PhilipWegmann" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PhilipWegmann</a>.Phil’s Music Pick: The National Let us tell you, we have had *a bunch* of listeners ask us for an episode on The National, and we are nothing if not responsive to our fans. Neither one of your hosts previously was extremely familiar with the band, which is why we called in our ringer, Phil Wegmann, who earlier helped to lead our path through the Creedence Clearwater Revival show.Looking at Wiki's description of The National -- “The National has been compared to Joy Division, Leonard Cohen, Interpol, Wilco, Depeche Mode and Nick Cave &amp; the Bad Seeds” -- you could be forgiven for thinking this already was one of Jeff’s favorite bands. And that doesn’t even take into account the fact there’s a lot of Arcade Fire in this music, as well.Much of your opinion of The National could hinge on how you feel about lead singer/lyricist Matt Berninger and his classic baritone voice. There’s not a ton of vocal modulation on these tracks! That, of course, makes for a distinctive sound and separates the band from many of its peers.The band’s self-titled debut is a bit of an outlier – there are sounds there they never quite would return t0 – but after that, a fantastic string of albums begins with Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers, one Scot argues actually is among their best. Alligator, Boxer, and High Violet make the case for The National becoming one of the most consistent acts of the decade while continuing to tweak their songwriting and performance at each stage. 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me ends up as a top choice of all three of your hosts.Maybe you’re new to the band, too! Don’t worry. Jump in and experience The National through the eyes of a superfan and two other hosts who were in the same position you’re in. And if you already love The National, well, there’s a decent chance our takes will somehow manage to irk each and every one of you in some way. We can’t all be “Mr. November,” after all.

Episode 118: Phil Wegmann / The National

Andrew Fink

Otis Redding

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Andrew Fink. Andrew is a member of the Michigan House of Representative (District 35 -- Branch &amp; Hillsdale Counties). Prior to that, he was the district director for Senate majority leader Mike Shirkey. Follow him on Twitter at @AndrewFinkMI.Andrew’s Music Pick: Otis ReddingLadies and gentlemens, we are so happy to be here with the Love Crowd tonight because we gotta gotta gotta gotta turn it loose about soul giant Otis Redding, a man whose recorded legacy looms large not just in the history of soul and R&amp;B but in modern popular music as a whole. Redding is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest R&amp;B vocalists of all time, and as a "soul giant," but what is far too less appreciated about him is that he was the first truly modern African-American popular musician, a man self-consciously carving out a sound, pushing sonic boundaries and the traditions of his genre, and working self-consciously to craft albums as complete statements at a time when absolutely no other black artist in the country outside of jazz was thinking along those lines.Redding's early singles established him, simply on their own terms, as an early Sixties soul great. ("Pain In My Heart," "Mr. Pitiful," "That's How Strong My Love Is," "I've Been Loving You Long," and "Security" are the sorts of timeless Redding soul belters that went immediately into the working books of countless English R&amp;B bands, notably including The Rolling Stones.) His mid-Sixties albums demonstrated that he, alone among all major soul/R&amp;B artists of his era -- long before Stevie or Marvin moved for their artistic freedom -- had a sound and vision that belonged to something more than a series of singles. And the music he was making before he suddenly died (in a December 1967 plane crash while flying between shows) was mutating both into chart-topping contemplative folk-pop ("(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay," his only #1 single) and forward-looking hard funk ("Hard To Handle"). Four albums of posthumous Redding material were released between 1968 and 1970. Much of it is great work. But one can only imagine where Otis would actually have been by 1970. He was growing so quickly as an artist.Join us this week, as we open with a long discussion of Stax/Volt and the nature of its "sound," and then engage in a celebration of one of the greatest popular musical artists of the Sixties -- and perhaps the most heartbreaking loss of modern musical history, in terms of what we likely missed when that plane went down on a cold winter's day in December 1967. Hail to The King of Soul.

Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Andrew Fink. Andrew is a member of the Michigan House of Representative (District 35 -- Branch &amp; Hillsdale Counties). Prior to that, he was the district director for Senate majority leader Mike Shirkey. Follow him on Twitter at @AndrewFinkMI.Andrew’s Music Pick: Otis Redding Ladies and gentlemens, we are so happy to be here with the Love Crowd tonight because we gotta gotta gotta gotta turn it loose about soul giant Otis Redding, a man whose recorded legacy looms large not just in the history of soul and R&amp;B but in modern popular music as a whole. Redding is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest R&amp;B vocalists of all time, and as a "soul giant," but what is far too less appreciated about him is that he was the first truly modern African-American popular musician, a man self-consciously carving out a sound, pushing sonic boundaries and the traditions of his genre, and working self-consciously to craft albums as complete statements at a time when absolutely no other black artist in the country outside of jazz was thinking along those lines.Redding's early singles established him, simply on their own terms, as an early Sixties soul great. ("Pain In My Heart," "Mr. Pitiful," "That's How Strong My Love Is," "I've Been Loving You Long," and "Security" are the sorts of timeless Redding soul belters that went immediately into the working books of countless English R&amp;B bands, notably including The Rolling Stones.) His mid-Sixties albums demonstrated that he, alone among all major soul/R&amp;B artists of his era -- long before Stevie or Marvin moved for their artistic freedom -- had a sound and vision that belonged to something more than a series of singles. And the music he was making before he suddenly died (in a December 1967 plane crash while flying between shows) was mutating both into chart-topping contemplative folk-pop ("(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay," his only #1 single) and forward-looking hard funk ("Hard To Handle"). Four albums of posthumous Redding material were released between 1968 and 1970. Much of it is great work. But one can only imagine where Otis would actually have been by 1970. He was growing so quickly as an artist.Join us this week, as we open with a long discussion of Stax/Volt and the nature of its "sound," and then engage in a celebration of one of the greatest popular musical artists of the Sixties -- and perhaps the most heartbreaking loss of modern musical history, in terms of what we likely missed when that plane went down on a cold winter's day in December 1967. Hail to The King of Soul.

Episode 117: Andrew Fink / Otis Redding

Noah Weinrich

Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are with guest Noah Weinrich. Noah is director of communications for Heritage Action, the grassroots and advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation. Check him out on Twitter at @weinrich_noah.Noah’s Music Pick: WeezerWhat kind of a band starts its career with two stone-cold classic albums, takes a nearly five-year hiatus, and then returns to mixed results for a 20+ year tail? We're about to find out. Covering the good (Maladroit! Everything Will Be Alright In the End!), the bad (Make Believe!) and the ugly (Raditude!), we try to lend some perspective on what made the band great, why perceptions have changed over the years, and what keeps them going.Of course, we spend a huge portion of the show discussing Weezer’s twin pillars of excellence: the debut (Blue) and Pinkerton. One beloved from the moment of release and the other taking years for fans and critics to fully appreciate. The response to Pinkerton clearly changed the trajectory of the band and influenced musical decisions for years to come.The second self-titled (Green) album heralded a comeback in 2001, but it was a different kind of band, divorced from much of what made the first two albums so consequential. Regardless, fans, some new and some old, embraced most of these sonic moves. There’s lots to discuss about the last 20 years and how Weezer should be considered so long after the early success.There’s also Rivers Cuomo’s lyrical journey from sharing ultra-personal thoughts and desires to crafting pop songs from spreadsheets and syllable counts. It’s . . . weird. One of the longest-lasting rock bands of the 1990s, but should it be considered one of the best? That question and many more get tackled on this Political Beats.

Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) are with guest Noah Weinrich. Noah is director of communications for <a href="https://heritageaction.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Heritage Action</a>, the grassroots and advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation. Check him out on Twitter at @<a href="https://twitter.com/weinrich_noah" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">weinrich_noah</a>.Noah’s Music Pick: Weezer What kind of a band starts its career with two stone-cold classic albums, takes a nearly five-year hiatus, and then returns to mixed results for a 20+ year tail? We're about to find out. Covering the good (Maladroit! Everything Will Be Alright In the End!), the bad (Make Believe!) and the ugly (Raditude!), we try to lend some perspective on what made the band great, why perceptions have changed over the years, and what keeps them going.Of course, we spend a huge portion of the show discussing Weezer’s twin pillars of excellence: the debut (Blue) and Pinkerton. One beloved from the moment of release and the other taking years for fans and critics to fully appreciate. The response to Pinkerton clearly changed the trajectory of the band and influenced musical decisions for years to come.The second self-titled (Green) album heralded a comeback in 2001, but it was a different kind of band, divorced from much of what made the first two albums so consequential. Regardless, fans, some new and some old, embraced most of these sonic moves. There’s lots to discuss about the last 20 years and how Weezer should be considered so long after the early success.There’s also Rivers Cuomo’s lyrical journey from sharing ultra-personal thoughts and desires to crafting pop songs from spreadsheets and syllable counts. It’s . . . weird. One of the longest-lasting rock bands of the 1990s, but should it be considered one of the best? That question and many more get tackled on this Political Beats.

Episode 116: Noah Weinrich / Weezer

Scot Bertram and Jeff Blehar discuss ask guests from the world of politics about their musical passions.

They get a fifth star as soon as they do a deep dive on The King. Maybe get Bill Clinton on board?

Waiting for Elvis

I learn new things about bands every time I listen. Can we get a Metallica episode?

Great podcast

Political Beats

Charles C. W. Cooke

Scot and Jeff discuss The Beatles with Charles C. W. Cooke. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Charles C. W. Cooke. He is the editor of NationalReview.com and the author of The Conservatarian Manifesto. Charles’s Music Pick: The Beatles There’s this band you might have heard of called The Beatles. It’s Paul McCartney’s old group. Anyway, if you’re not aware of them, or their music, Scot, Jeff, and Charles turn the spotlight on this foursome that broke up nearly 50 years ago and then slowly faded from the public’s consciousness. Oh, come on! It’s The Beatles! John. Paul. George, Ringo. We’re going to spend two episodes just scratching the surface of their catalog. Part One takes us through Rubber Soul and the double A-side single “We Can Work It Out” / “Day Tripper”.

Scot and Jeff discuss The Beatles with Charles C. W. Cooke. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Charles C. W. Cooke. He is the editor of <a href="http://nationalreview.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NationalReview.com</a> and the author of <a href="https://amzn.to/2MZXeYH" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Conservatarian Manifesto</a>. Charles’s Music Pick: The Beatles There’s this band you might have heard of called The Beatles. It’s Paul McCartney’s old group. Anyway, if you’re not aware of them, or their music, Scot, Jeff, and Charles turn the spotlight on this foursome that broke up nearly 50 years ago and then slowly faded from the public’s consciousness. Oh, come on! It’s The Beatles! John. Paul. George, Ringo. We’re going to spend two episodes just scratching the surface of their catalog. Part One takes us through Rubber Soul and the double A-side single “We Can Work It Out” / “Day Tripper”.

Episode 37: Charles C. W. Cooke / The Beatles [Part 1]

Scot and Jeff discuss The Beatles with Charles C. W. Cooke, editor of NationalReview.com and the author of The Conservatarian Manifesto. Part 2 of 2. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Charles C. W. Cooke. He is the editor of NationalReview.com and the author of The Conservatarian Manifesto. Follow him on Twitter at @charlescwcooke Charles’s Music Pick: The Beatles: Charles returns to finish our lengthy conversation about the Fab Four. Part Two begins with the “Paperback Writer” / “Rain” single and takes us through Abbey Road. Yes, we discuss the albums in the order they were recorded, so Let It Be comes first. An enormous amount of music means we crack the three-hour mark in length. Listener be warned.

Scot and Jeff discuss The Beatles with Charles C. W. Cooke, editor of <a href="http://NationalReview.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NationalReview.com</a> and the author of The Conservatarian Manifesto. Part 2 of 2. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Charles C. W. Cooke. He is the editor of <a href="http://NationalReview.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NationalReview.com</a> and the author of The Conservatarian Manifesto. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/charlescwcooke" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@charlescwcooke</a> Charles’s Music Pick: The Beatles: Charles returns to finish our lengthy conversation about the Fab Four. Part Two begins with the “Paperback Writer” / “Rain” single and takes us through Abbey Road. Yes, we discuss the albums in the order they were recorded, so Let It Be comes first. An enormous amount of music means we crack the three-hour mark in length. Listener be warned.

Episode 38: Charles C. W. Cooke / The Beatles [Part 2]

Matt Welch

Scot Bertram and Jeff Blehar discuss the first part of The Beach Boys’ career with Matt Welch. Introducing The Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (@scotbertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Matt Welch, former editor-in-chief and current editor-at-large of Reason, and co-host and self-described “provost” of “The Fifth Column” podcast. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattWelch and check out The Fifth Column podcast (whose members Political Beats likes so much that we’ve had literally every single one of them as a guest) here. Matt’s Music Pick: The Beach Boys Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for some Game Theory (if you get it, you get it…) as Matt Welch returns to the show and Political Beats begins its Summer Spectacular by returning to the place where it all pretty much started for the show: with The Beach Boys, a band that Jeff has been known to discourse about on Twitter. We invite you to celebrate the official beginning of summer by immersing yourself in the magnificent, groundbreaking music of Brian, Carl, Dennis, Mike, and Al (and also Bruce). One thing the gang are at pains to make clear, as they lovingly cover the scope of The Beach Boys’ first five years of existence (from 1961 through to Pet Sounds) is that, even given the Legend of Brian Wilson, Lonely Genius, the band is still somehow underrated compared to their peers. If you thought Brian Wilson’s talents were more or less limited to Pet Sounds, “that lost album,” and a few songs about cars and surfing, then this show will hopefully be an education for you in what the sudden flowering of musical genius sounds like. If you already know just how good The Beach Boys were, then this show will be a glorious celebration. Catch a wave, ho-daddys.

Scot Bertram and Jeff Blehar discuss the first part of The Beach Boys’ career with Matt Welch. Introducing The Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/scotbertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@scotbertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Matt Welch, former editor-in-chief and current editor-at-large of <a href="http://www.reason.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reason</a>, and co-host and self-described “provost” of <a href="https://twitter.com/wethefifth" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“The Fifth Column”</a> podcast. Follow Matt on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWelch" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@MattWelch</a> and check out The Fifth Column podcast (whose members Political Beats likes so much that we’ve had literally every single one of them as a guest) <a href="http://wethefifth.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. Matt’s Music Pick: The Beach Boys Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for some Game Theory (if you get it, you get it…) as Matt Welch returns to the show and Political Beats begins its Summer Spectacular by returning to the place where it all pretty much started for the show: with The Beach Boys, a band that Jeff has been known to discourse about on Twitter. We invite you to celebrate the official beginning of summer by immersing yourself in the magnificent, groundbreaking music of Brian, Carl, Dennis, Mike, and Al (and also Bruce). One thing the gang are at pains to make clear, as they lovingly cover the scope of The Beach Boys’ first five years of existence (from 1961 through to Pet Sounds) is that, even given the Legend of Brian Wilson, Lonely Genius, the band is still somehow underrated compared to their peers. If you thought Brian Wilson’s talents were more or less limited to Pet Sounds, “that lost album,” and a few songs about cars and surfing, then this show will hopefully be an education for you in what the sudden flowering of musical genius sounds like. If you already know just how good The Beach Boys were, then this show will be a glorious celebration. Catch a wave, ho-daddys.

Episode 60: Matt Welch / The Beach Boys [Part 1]

Stephen Miller

Scot and Jeff discuss U2 with Stephen Miller. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Stephen Miller. He is a contributor to National Review, Fox News, and a well known social media raconteur. Stephen is on Twitter at @redsteeze where he will calmly insult your music tastes, among other things. Stephen’s Music Pick: U2: The gang gets its Irish up this week as we cover a small Hibernian band of little renown known to the world as U2. As Stephen jokes, they’re the biggest band in the world (still) and yet everyone pretends to hate them. In this epic installment of Political Beats we trace the story of Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen, and that guy who Jeff used to mistake for a notorious New York City Congressman from their beginnings as a Dublin hooligan gang to world-saving musical superheroes. And in the telling we explain why, even though their most recent albums signal a seemingly permanent decline, you secretly love them too. You know it’s time to go, across the sleet and driving snow, across the fields of mourning light in the distance.

Scot and Jeff discuss U2 with Stephen Miller. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Stephen Miller. He is a contributor to National Review, Fox News, and a well known social media raconteur. Stephen is on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@redsteeze</a> where he will calmly insult your music tastes, among other things. Stephen’s Music Pick: U2: The gang gets its Irish up this week as we cover a small Hibernian band of little renown known to the world as U2. As Stephen jokes, they’re the biggest band in the world (still) and yet everyone pretends to hate them. In this epic installment of Political Beats we trace the story of Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen, and that guy who Jeff used to mistake for a notorious New York City Congressman from their beginnings as a Dublin hooligan gang to world-saving musical superheroes. And in the telling we explain why, even though their most recent albums signal a seemingly permanent decline, you secretly love them too. You know it’s time to go, across the sleet and driving snow, across the fields of mourning light in the distance.

Episode 51: Stephen Miller / U2

Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD), with guest Matt Welch, former Editor-in-Chief and current Editor-at-Large of Reason and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattWelch and read his work here. Matt’s musical pick: R.E.M. How did Matt get into them? Matt tells his story of being a kid in 1983 and having a friend hand a copy of Murmur to him. He explains how he learned to play guitar by spinning early R.E.M. records, and how their music followed him all through his life, from an auto-body shop in North Long Beach all the way to eastern Europe during the post-Communist ’90s. Jeff marvels at how R.E.M. was the one American indie band from the ’80s scene to gain escape velocity and make it big. The Early Years The gang discusses R.E.M.’s early mysterious LPs, the foundation of their legend. Is Murmur the greatest debut album of all time? Jeff certainly thinks so; whereas Scot doesn’t even think it’s the best of their first two records. preferring the more energetic Reckoning. Matt nominates “We Walk” for his upcoming compilation disc entitled Songs That Singlehandedly Ruin Otherwise Perfect Albums. Attention is given to the fully-formed nature of the band’s sound–it didn’t come about by chance, as it turns out–and the hints of impending gloom found on songs like “Camera.” KEY SONGS: “We Walk” (Murmur, 1983); “Wolves, Lower” (Chronic Town EP, 1982); “Gardening At Night (different vocal mix)” (Eponymous, 1988); “Laughing” (Murmur, 1983); “Perfect Circle” (Murmur, 1983); “Sitting Still” (Murmur, 1983); “Talk About The Passion” (Murmur, 1983); “Harborcoat” (Reckoning, 1984); “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” (Reckoning, 1984); “Pretty Persuasion” (Reckoning, 1984); “Camera” (Reckoning, 1984) R.E.M. in Transition: Fables Of The Reconstruction and Lifes Rich Pageant The gang celebrates Fables Of The Reconstruction as the height of R.E.M.’s ‘southern gothic’ approach, as Matt explains how its rolling textures and chords actually sound like the landscape they seek to evoke. Jeff, meanwhile, explains that he doesn’t entirely trust people who dislike the song “Driver 8.” Scot focuses on the underrated greatness of the record’s 1986 followup Lifes Rich Pageant, and everyone heartily agrees that it is mysteriously neglected. Jeff explains why it was a record that should have failed: heavily reliance on old/recycled material, a curiously odd instrumental, a cover track — and yet none of that matters. Matt singles out the effectiveness of the album’s environmental and political themes: powerful without ever seeming preachy. KEY SONGS: “Driver 8” (Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985); “Maps And Legends” (Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985); “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” (Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985); “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” (Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985); “Fall On Me” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986); “Superman” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986); “Cuyahoga” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986); “These Days” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986); “Swan Swan H” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986) R.E.M. breaks into the big-time with a big new sound. Document and the major-label debut of Green. Jeff just can’t think of enough bad things to say about Document, the R.E.M. album that broke the band into the mainstream with its two major radio hits, and Matt tends to agree. Scott appreciates it a bit more as the first record where he really became aware of the group, but all agree that “King Of Birds” is quietly one of R.E.M.’s most underrated songs. It also points the way toward Green, their big-boy-pants major label debut for Warner Brothers. Matt is similarly iffy on Green but Jeff is a big fan, insisting it be understood as two EPs–a catchy rock one and a visionary oddball folk one–that rammed into one another in a head-on collision. KEY SONGS: “Finest Worksong” (Document, 1987); “The One I Love” (Document, 1987); “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” (Document, 1987); “Disturbance At The Heron House” (Document, 1987); “King Of Birds” (Document, 1987); “Stand” (Green, 1988); “Orange Crush” (Green, 1988); “Hairshirt” (Green, 1988); “The Untitled Eleventh Song” (Green, 1988); “World Leader Pretend” (Green, 1988) Chamber-pop: R.E.M.’s artistic culmination, or the beginning of the end? Okay, so nobody wants to defend KRS-1’s rapping on the extremely cornball “Radio Song,” but otherwise the gang has high praise for Out Of Time, R.E.M.’s mega-smash #1 album that established the in the top commercial rank of rock acts. Jeff has a weak spot for well-recorded chamber-pop with odd conceits, and defends “Belong” in particular. Matt and Scot theorize that Mike Mills did such a good job singing lead vocals on the record (with “Near Wild Heaven” and “Texarkana”) that he doomed himself from ever getting another lead again (ah, intra-band politics). Automatic For The People, the band’s universally-praised follow-up, surprisingly divides the gang far more: Matt boldly stakes out his position as That Guy and argues that it’s not that great of a record, not even among R.E.M.’s top five albums, and marks it as the Beginning Of The End. Jeff is having none of that however and singles out “Sweetness Follows” in particular as the sort of song he is simply in awe of. Everybody defends “Everybody Hurts.” KEY SONGS: “Losing My Religion” (Out Of Time, 1991); “Radio Song” (Out Of Time, 1991); “Texarkana” (Out Of Time, 1991); “Near Wild Heaven” (Out Of Time, 1991); “Belong” (Out Of Time, 1991); “Me In Honey” (Out Of Time, 1991); “Drive” (Automatic For The People, 1992); “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight” (Automatic For The People, 1992); “Everybody Hurts” (Automatic For The People, 1992); “Sweetness Follows” (Automatic For The People, 1992); “Man On The Moon” (Automatic For The People; 1992) The disastrous faceplant of Monster, the revival of New Adventures In Hi-Fi, Bill Berry’s departure and the long slow sunset of the band The gang discusses the unexpected flop that was R.E.M.’s “hard rock”/we’re-a-live-act-again move, Monster–to date the the most returned CD of all time–and speculate on why it failed so miserably. Scot memorably describes it as a record that “sounds good . . . once.” Matt suggests that they didn’t fully understand the genres (grunge and glam) they were trying to cop, while Jeff speculates that they just couldn’t go home again; they had changed into something else during their evolution and there was no return. Jeff has high praise, however, for its follow-up New Adventures In Hi-Fi, which he considers the last truly great record the band ever released. Matt and Scot are less impressed, but this merely means that they are wrong. (N.B. Jeff writes the show-notes.) Jeff also praises Up as an admirable attempt to react to the loss of Bill Berry, who retired from the group in 1996 after a brain aneurysm, and while Matt can see the argument he thinks the band should have hung it up at this point. All three agree that R.E.M. lost something critical with Berry, something that renders their last four records (and the final decade of the career) a curiously unnecessary appendix. KEY SONGS: “Strange Currencies” (Monster, 1994); “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” (Monster, 1994); “Be Mine” (New Adventures In Hi-Fi, 1996); “Bittersweet Me” (New Adventures In Hi-Fi, 1996); “Leave” (New Adventures In Hi-Fi, 1996); “New Test Leper (acoustic version)” (B-side of “Bittersweet Me,” 1996); “Wall Of Death” (Beat The Retreat – A Tribute To Richard Thompson, 1994); “Lotus” (Up, 1998); “Walk Unafraid” (Up, 1998); “Hope” (Up, 1998); “All The Way To Reno (You’re Gonna Be A Star)” (Reveal, 2001); “Beachball” (Reveal, 2001) Finale Matt, Scot and Jeff each name their 2 key albums and 5 key songs by R.E.M.

Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>), with guest Matt Welch, former Editor-in-Chief and current Editor-at-Large of Reason and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast. Follow Matt on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWelch" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@MattWelch</a> and <a href="http://reason.com/people/matt-welch/all" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">read his work here</a>. Matt’s musical pick: R.E.M. How did Matt get into them? Matt tells his story of being a kid in 1983 and having a friend hand a copy of Murmur to him. He explains how he learned to play guitar by spinning early R.E.M. records, and how their music followed him all through his life, from an auto-body shop in North Long Beach all the way to eastern Europe during the post-Communist ’90s. Jeff marvels at how R.E.M. was the one American indie band from the ’80s scene to gain escape velocity and make it big. The Early Years The gang discusses R.E.M.’s early mysterious LPs, the foundation of their legend. Is Murmur the greatest debut album of all time? Jeff certainly thinks so; whereas Scot doesn’t even think it’s the best of their first two records. preferring the more energetic Reckoning. Matt nominates “We Walk” for his upcoming compilation disc entitled Songs That Singlehandedly Ruin Otherwise Perfect Albums. Attention is given to the fully-formed nature of the band’s sound–it didn’t come about by chance, as it turns out–and the hints of impending gloom found on songs like “Camera.” KEY SONGS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbK7WzJstTw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">We Walk</a>” (Murmur, 1983); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88TZSjL7mrw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wolves, Lower</a>” (Chronic Town EP, 1982); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ZEGhsPSKE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gardening At Night (different vocal mix)</a>” (Eponymous, 1988); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxyaq5NspiA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Laughing</a>” (Murmur, 1983); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSzFfgfAhTA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Perfect Circle</a>” (Murmur, 1983); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wj8AK32tQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sitting Still</a>” (Murmur, 1983); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sz0h5LYdyY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Talk About The Passion</a>” (Murmur, 1983); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntY15gVsgJA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harborcoat</a>” (Reckoning, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCst8UKSfL8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)</a>” (Reckoning, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOAbRT_vdLM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pretty Persuasion</a>” (Reckoning, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsiy1H5tIoM&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=3s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Camera</a>” (Reckoning, 1984) R.E.M. in Transition: Fables Of The Reconstruction and Lifes Rich Pageant The gang celebrates Fables Of The Reconstruction as the height of R.E.M.’s ‘southern gothic’ approach, as Matt explains how its rolling textures and chords actually sound like the landscape they seek to evoke. Jeff, meanwhile, explains that he doesn’t entirely trust people who dislike the song “Driver 8.” Scot focuses on the underrated greatness of the record’s 1986 followup Lifes Rich Pageant, and everyone heartily agrees that it is mysteriously neglected. Jeff explains why it was a record that should have failed: heavily reliance on old/recycled material, a curiously odd instrumental, a cover track — and yet none of that matters. Matt singles out the effectiveness of the album’s environmental and political themes: powerful without ever seeming preachy. KEY SONGS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVgO_KAcRqQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Driver 8</a>” (Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovuP_4is0wY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Maps And Legends</a>” (Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYA63w2PtFk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Feeling Gravity’s Pull</a>” (Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YalGy1R-9c" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Auctioneer (Another Engine)</a>” (Fables Of The Reconstruction, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ud6b1RIxE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fall On Me</a>” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_Wz1DRuPJo&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=9s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Superman</a>” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWPD1zPFZ3Q" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cuyahoga</a>” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vgEWp7Voyk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">These Days</a>” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NSJbEeNSe0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Swan Swan H</a>” (Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986) R.E.M. breaks into the big-time with a big new sound. Document and the major-label debut of Green. Jeff just can’t think of enough bad things to say about Document, the R.E.M. album that broke the band into the mainstream with its two major radio hits, and Matt tends to agree. Scott appreciates it a bit more as the first record where he really became aware of the group, but all agree that “King Of Birds” is quietly one of R.E.M.’s most underrated songs. It also points the way toward Green, their big-boy-pants major label debut for Warner Brothers. Matt is similarly iffy on Green but Jeff is a big fan, insisting it be understood as two EPs–a catchy rock one and a visionary oddball folk one–that rammed into one another in a head-on collision. KEY SONGS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkuA4X-iysg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Finest Worksong</a>” (Document, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av4FPE7mCGA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The One I Love</a>” (Document, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrY2uzW1pEQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)</a>” (Document, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwjgeH64qs8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Disturbance At The Heron House</a>” (Document, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q62I3aC6MOY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">King Of Birds</a>” (Document, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Uy2Igv9LI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stand</a>” (Green, 1988); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyi7jaB1u1Y" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Orange Crush</a>” (Green, 1988); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ErB9_gaA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hairshirt</a>” (Green, 1988); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isv5qjeiAt0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Untitled Eleventh Song</a>” (Green, 1988); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyF6SszbG7o" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World Leader Pretend</a>” (Green, 1988) Chamber-pop: R.E.M.’s artistic culmination, or the beginning of the end? Okay, so nobody wants to defend KRS-1’s rapping on the extremely cornball “Radio Song,” but otherwise the gang has high praise for Out Of Time, R.E.M.’s mega-smash #1 album that established the in the top commercial rank of rock acts. Jeff has a weak spot for well-recorded chamber-pop with odd conceits, and defends “Belong” in particular. Matt and Scot theorize that Mike Mills did such a good job singing lead vocals on the record (with “Near Wild Heaven” and “Texarkana”) that he doomed himself from ever getting another lead again (ah, intra-band politics). Automatic For The People, the band’s universally-praised follow-up, surprisingly divides the gang far more: Matt boldly stakes out his position as That Guy and argues that it’s not that great of a record, not even among R.E.M.’s top five albums, and marks it as the Beginning Of The End. Jeff is having none of that however and singles out “Sweetness Follows” in particular as the sort of song he is simply in awe of. Everybody defends “Everybody Hurts.” KEY SONGS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHeEXia7fbM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Losing My Religion</a>” (Out Of Time, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0pLIO0aDlo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Radio Song</a>” (Out Of Time, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jluo5VoZeYg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Texarkana</a>” (Out Of Time, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMFyV60KhdI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Near Wild Heaven</a>” (Out Of Time, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyOnKHTo8Xw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Belong</a>” (Out Of Time, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI95HD_6PIo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Me In Honey</a>” (Out Of Time, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El6Uq2u2z6A" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Drive</a>” (Automatic For The People, 1992); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dum-6gcW5U" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight</a>” (Automatic For The People, 1992); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rOiW_xY-kc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Everybody Hurts</a>” (Automatic For The People, 1992); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6OY-IoJLeY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sweetness Follows</a>” (Automatic For The People, 1992); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUm87Hnr_To" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Man On The Moon</a>” (Automatic For The People; 1992) The disastrous faceplant of Monster, the revival of New Adventures In Hi-Fi, Bill Berry’s departure and the long slow sunset of the band The gang discusses the unexpected flop that was R.E.M.’s “hard rock”/we’re-a-live-act-again move, Monster–to date the the most returned CD of all time–and speculate on why it failed so miserably. Scot memorably describes it as a record that “sounds good . . . once.” Matt suggests that they didn’t fully understand the genres (grunge and glam) they were trying to cop, while Jeff speculates that they just couldn’t go home again; they had changed into something else during their evolution and there was no return. Jeff has high praise, however, for its follow-up New Adventures In Hi-Fi, which he considers the last truly great record the band ever released. Matt and Scot are less impressed, but this merely means that they are wrong. (N.B. Jeff writes the show-notes.) Jeff also praises Up as an admirable attempt to react to the loss of Bill Berry, who retired from the group in 1996 after a brain aneurysm, and while Matt can see the argument he thinks the band should have hung it up at this point. All three agree that R.E.M. lost something critical with Berry, something that renders their last four records (and the final decade of the career) a curiously unnecessary appendix. KEY SONGS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdOMdH_uEO8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strange Currencies</a>” (Monster, 1994); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI7ZaBO5X_c" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I Don’t Sleep, I Dream</a>” (Monster, 1994); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiFhXuCLS10" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Be Mine</a>” (New Adventures In Hi-Fi, 1996); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izkgT1N_REg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bittersweet Me</a>” (New Adventures In Hi-Fi, 1996); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdqwvVLa3hc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Leave</a>” (New Adventures In Hi-Fi, 1996); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrcZyeQxt30" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">New Test Leper (acoustic version)</a>” (B-side of “Bittersweet Me,” 1996); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl6aWzgWLjM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wall Of Death</a>” (Beat The Retreat – A Tribute To Richard Thompson, 1994); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq6bheVYtJg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lotus</a>” (Up, 1998); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n8OHUJSmRo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Walk Unafraid</a>” (Up, 1998); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21472M8p9E" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hope</a>” (Up, 1998); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYeQb3yBF0c" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">All The Way To Reno (You’re Gonna Be A Star)</a>” (Reveal, 2001); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htnBqmWygVM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Beachball</a>” (Reveal, 2001) Finale Matt, Scot and Jeff each name their 2 key albums and 5 key songs by R.E.M.

Episode 4: Matt Welch / R.E.M.

Julie Roginsky

Scot and Jeff talk to Fox News’s Julie Roginsky about Led Zeppelin.

Scot and Jeff talk to Fox News’s Julie Roginsky about Led Zeppelin.

Episode 18: Julie Roginsky / Led Zeppelin

Andrew Kirell

Scot and Jeff discuss Bob Dylan with Andrew Kirell, a senior editor at The Daily Beast overseeing breaking news, political media, and occasionally music coverage. Part 1 of 3. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Andrew Kirll. He is a senior editor at The Daily Beast overseeing breaking news, political media, and occasionally music coverage. Follow him on Twitter at @andrewkirell Andrew’s Music Pick: Bob Dylan: Following our trip through the music of The Beatles, we decide to tackle an artist who is just as important and influential, but with a discography roughly four times as long. What could go wrong? In this part one of three, we tackle Dylan’s career from Bob Dylan (1961) through John Wesley Harding (1967), one of the most prolific and successful periods of any artist in history.

Scot and Jeff discuss Bob Dylan with Andrew Kirell, a senior editor at The Daily Beast overseeing breaking news, political media, and occasionally music coverage. Part 1 of 3. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Andrew Kirll. He is a senior editor at The Daily Beast overseeing breaking news, political media, and occasionally music coverage. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/andrewkirell" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@</a><a href="https://twitter.com/andrewkirell" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">andrewkirell</a> Andrew’s Music Pick: Bob Dylan: Following our trip through the music of The Beatles, we decide to tackle an artist who is just as important and influential, but with a discography roughly four times as long. What could go wrong? In this part one of three, we tackle Dylan’s career from Bob Dylan (1961) through John Wesley Harding (1967), one of the most prolific and successful periods of any artist in history.

Episode 39:  Andrew Kirell / Bob Dylan [Part 1]

Guy Benson

Scot and Jeff talk to Guy Benson about Billy Joel.

Scot and Jeff talk to Guy Benson about Billy Joel.

Episode 20: Guy Benson / Billy Joel

Scot and Jeff talk to Michael C. Moynihan about The Smiths Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Michael Moynihan, correspondent for Vice News Tonight on HBO and member of the Fifth Column podcast, Follow him on Twitter at @mcmoynihan and read his past work both here and here. Michael’s Musical Pick: The Smiths “Is it wrong not to always be glad?” This is the question Jeff poses as the gang launches into Lucky #13: the long-awaited blockbuster Political Beats tribute to The Smiths, legendarily reputed as one of the ’80s most literately mopey bands. (Jeff also pays tribute to a classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 bit in passing.) But Michael is immediately at pains to argue with The Smiths-as-miserabilists rap, and he explains that one of the reasons he loves them like no other band in the pantheon is Morrissey’s remarkable wit. Michael talks about getting into music as a kid, discovering postpunk in 1987, quickly finding his way to Newbury Comics in Boston and acquainting himself with the pride of Manchester: The Smiths. Like many a budding Smiths fanatic from the late ’80s and early ’90s, this involved a copy of The Queen Is Dead and an older brother questioning his heterosexuality. The rest is history, including Michael relocating temporarily to England and imbibing the mythos firsthand. Jeff’s intro to the band came later: college and a chance encounter with an eccentric friend who refused to lend her Smiths CDs to him because she valued them like other people value family heirlooms. Jeff emphasizes his love not only of Morrissey’s literate, playful lyrics, but actually elevates Johnny Marr’s contribution above it: even if only by a 51-49 margin, Jeff argues, this was Marr’s band, and his love of the eternal verities of melody, production, arrangement, and rock and pop are what make nearly every Smiths track from their beginning right up until the end worth hearing. KEY TRACKS: “The Queen Is Dead” (The Queen Is Dead, 1986); “William, It Was Really Nothing” (A-side of single, 1984); “Rusholme Ruffians (alternate version)” (unreleased, originally from Meat Is Murder, 1985) Morrissey meets Marr: The Formation of The Smiths and the Troubled Debut Album For an album as hailed as The Smiths (1984) is, it had an exceedingly troubled genesis and to this day gets mixed reviews from hardcore fans. The story goes thus: Johnny Marr (guitars, music) introduces himself to local scenester Stephen Morrissey (vocals, lyrics) and says they should form a band. Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums) are then inducted into this inchoate group and the so-called “Smiths” record a single in a local studio on spec: without a recording contract in hand, but confident enough in their talent to pay out-of-pocket and send it around to various labels in search of a record deal. The name of the label that bit was Rough Trade; the name of the song is their legendary debut single “Hand In Glove.” But the obligatory album follow-up was a much bigger problem: after recording a full version of the debut LP with Teardrop Explodes guitarist Troy Tate producing, The Smiths scrapped it and re-recorded the entire thing from scratch with John Porter. And nobody in the gang can agree on its merits! Scot grants Jeff’s point that the Tate version of “Reel Around The Fountain” is magisterial, but he thinks this is the worst of The Smiths’ four proper studio LPs. Jeff thinks it’s their best studio LP, even better than The Queen Is Dead, and explains why in detail. Michael is in the middle: he loathes “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” with eloquent passion, but praises the obscure B-sides from this era like “Accept Yourself,” “Wonderful Woman” and “Jeane.” How deep does the rabbit-hole go? This deep: Michael spends time praising Sandie Shaw’s (Smiths-produced) covers of “I Don’t Owe You Anything” and “Jeane” (and Jeff agrees)! Michael also calls out Andy Rourke’s follow-the-bouncing-ball bassline on “Pretty Girls Make Graves” and laughs about the song’s conceit as a Beach Boys number gone horribly wrong. He then spends time discussing his personal experiences with Rourke, and the cosmic unfairness of his lack of appreciation (including a depressing story about watching Rourke open for a Smiths cover band where some other guy was pretending to be Andy Rourke). KEY TRACKS: “Hand In Glove” (A-side of single, 1983; The Smiths, 1984); “This Charming Man” (A-side of single, 1983); “What Difference Does It Make?” (The Smiths, 1984); “Reel Around The Fountain” (The Smiths, 1984); “Still Ill” (The Smiths, 1984); “You’ve Got Everything Now (live at the BBC June 26th, 1983)” (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984); “Suffer Little Children” (The Smiths, 1984); “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” (The Smiths, 1984); “Wonderful Woman” (B-side of “This Charming Man,” 1983); “Jeane” (B-side of “This Charming Man,” 1983); “Pretty Girls Make Graves” (The Smiths, 1984); The Smiths as the Last Great Non-Album Singles Band; Hatful Of Hollow and Smiths Compilations in General No discussion of The Smiths is complete if all you consider are their formal studio albums; this was one of the all-time great non-album-single acts of the rock era, and Jeff argues that they share the sad distinction with New Order of being the last great one. The gang has a hearty chuckle over the gloriously funny, self-parodying lyrics of “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and salute Andy Rourke’s lovely bass work, then ponder whether “William It Was Really Nothing” (with its two B-sides “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” and “How Soon Is Now?”) is the greatest non-album single ever released during the 1980s. Michael takes a contrarian turn by insisting that he’s actually rather bored by “How Soon Is Now?” — the most famous Smiths song in the United States — but come on, now. This inevitably leads to a long and loving discussion of The Smiths’ adventures in repackaging. Few bands are better known for their sheer compilatory fury (especially given the relatively small overall discography) than The Smiths, but it actually makes sense given how nearly a third of their output was never released on an album. Jeff lays his cards down and declares Hatful Of Hollow (1984) to be the single greatest Smiths album ever released, even though it’s not even really an album: it’s essentially a revision of the debut LP and its various associated session recordings using impressively muscular, raw BBC takes in place of the overproduced studio versions. Add in all those great 1984 singles A’s &amp; B’s, and in Jeff”s opinion you get the best value-for-money proposition in the band’s entire catalogue. Michael is a Louder Than Bombs (1987) man, which makes sense given that this was the USA’s (later) answer to Hatful and thus the one he grew up with: a sprawling 2LP set collecting a slew of non-album singles, B-sides, and obscurities. As the gang is talking about the wonderful miniatures of The Smiths’ B-sides and BBC sessions, Michael takes the opportunity to point out how terrible Morrissey is when working in longer form. Particular attention is paid to the self-indulgence of his autobiography (which he insisted on having released as a Penguin Classic) and his even worse attempt at fiction, List Of The Lost. (List is so bad that it won an award for “worst sex scene” and yes, we are required per Jeff’s promise on the podcast to inflict it upon you here). “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” (A-side of single, 1984); “How Soon Is Now?” (B-side of “William, It Was Really Nothing,” 1984); “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” (B-side of “William It Was Really Nothing,” 1984); “London” (B-side of “Shoplifters Of The World Unite,” 1987); “These Things Take Time (live at the BBC June 26th, 1983)” (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984); “Oscillate Wildly” (B-side of “How Soon Is Now?,” 1985); “This Night Has Opened My Eyes (live at the BBC September 14th, 1983)” (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984); “Back To The Old House (live at the BBC September 14th, 1983)” (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984) The Smiths Go Rockabilly (?!) on Meat Is Murder Yes the lamentably stupid title track (people: Morrissey moos) would make all but the most devoted vegan run directly to Ruth’s Chris and order a juicy rare steak, but Michael and Scot both contend that The Smiths’ proper sophomore album Meat Is Murder is actually their most underrated record. Jeff really isn’t into the “behold, I am now Scotty Moore!” rockabilly trip that Johnny Marr is suddenly on with tracks like “Rusholme Ruffians” and “Shakespeare’s Sister,” but Scot has high praise for the puckish insouciance of “Nowhere Fast.” Much more to Jeff’s taste is the shimmering depression of “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” and the child abuse dance epic “Barbarism Begins At Home,” which is surely playing on repeat somewhere in Hell’s Discotheque. What everyone agrees on is that “The Headmaster Ritual” — written about, and no this is not a joke, Morrissey’s hatred of high school gym class — features one of the best guitar riffs Johnny Marr ever wrote. All agree that “Meat Is Murder” is the stupidest song ever written by anyone in the history of modern recorded music. “The Headmaster Ritual” (Meat Is Murder, 1985); “Barbarism Begins At Home (live March 18th, 1985)” (previously unreleased, originally from Meat Is Murder, 1985); “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” (Meat Is Murder, 1985); “Nowhere Fast” (Meat Is Murder, 1985); The Smiths Commit Regicide: The Queen Is Dead Before the gang gets to The Smiths’ most famous record, Jeff insists on stopping to recognize the greatness of their finest and most emblematic B-side: “Rubber Ring.” This is a song by Morrissey both about the songs he listened to as a child, and also self-consciously about how he realizes future generations will regard The Smiths themselves. Observant, warm-hearted, and catchy as heck, it explains nearly as well as any single song they ever recorded why this band has a cult surrounding them. But all that is prelude to The Queen Is Dead, which to this day remains the band’s most beloved album. Jeff states outright that the first four songs on Queen are actually garbage (he feels someone is pouring soil on his head every time he has to sit through “I Know It’s Over”) but “Cemetry Gates” may just be the single greatest thing they ever did and the rest of the album miraculously maintains that level, even the inevitable rockabilly number. (Seriously, “Vicar In A Tutu” is actually a good song.) Morrissey’s humor is in full flower here: he knocks on his own plagiarism issues with “Cemetry Gates,” commits majestic self-martyrdom on “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” and somehow ejects himself from his own home on “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.” Michael and Jeff wonder how people could have ever misunderstood the winsome, open-hearted humor of “There Is A Light” — double-decker buses and ten-ton trucks aside, this is a song about being transported by the heights and depths of romantic emotion that still manages to undercut its own self-seriousness. And then the LP ends with an extended fat joke. The gang quickly surveys the four post-Queen singles the band released in 1986 and 1987, as they were working their way towards their swan-song. Everyone agrees that the highlight is the epochal “”Panic,” a song inspired by Morrissey’s appalled reaction to the BBC Radio 1 announcer who segued from announcing the Chernobyl meltdown to Wham’s new big hit single “I’m Your Man.” With Aztec Camera’s Craig Gannon on second guitar and a riff nicked from T. Rex, “Panic” somehow manages to end with a children’s choir singing alongside Morrissey about the urgent need to lynch all DJs, yet still sounds like a glorious triumph. Michael unpacks the suspect racial undertones of “Panic” with reference to some of Morrissey’s later solo provocations, and Scot singles out “Half A Person” as the great late Smiths B-side. KEY TRACKS: “Rubber Ring“/”Asleep” (B-side of “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side,” 1985); “Cemetry Gates” (The Queen Is Dead, 1986); “Bigmouth Strikes Again” (The Queen Is Dead, 1986); “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” (The Queen Is Dead, 1986); “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others (live December 12th, 1986)” (B-side of “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish,” 1987); “Panic” (A-side of single, 1986); “Speedway” [Morrissey] (Vauxhall &amp; I, 1994); “Half A Person” (B-side of “Shoplifters Of The World Unite,” 1987) To the Madhouse with Them: Strangeways Here We Come Ends The Smiths’ Career Jeff loves The Smiths. Fans and critics adore The Queen Is Dead. But Morrissey and Marr insist, to this day, that The Smiths’ greatest achievement was their swan-song Strangeways, Here We Come. Are they blinkered or do they have a point? Jeff isn’t buying it, though he of course adores the wry humor of “Girlfriend In A Coma” (which also has the Spectorian virtue, as Michael observed earlier, of saying everything it needs to say in two minutes then going home). The standout track for Jeff is the exact opposite of “Girlfriend”: the messiest and most musically emotive song they ever recorded in “Death Of A Disco Dancer.” For all of Morrissey’s later attempts at political and social comment, this is the most brutally concise he ever got: “Love peace and harmony?/Very nice, very nice, very nice…but maybe in the next world.” Michael also praises the power pop of “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” and the skiffle shuffle of “Unhappy Birthday” (though he finds material like “Death At One’s Elbow” to be disturbingly generic) and Scot concludes the discussion by saluting Morrissey’s jealous valediction to Marr, “I Won’t Share You.” KEY TRACKS: “Girlfriend In A Coma” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987); “Death Of A Disco Dancer” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987); “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987); “Unhappy Birthday” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987); “I Won’t Share You” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987) Finale Michael, Scot and Jeff each pick their two key albums and five key tracks by The Smiths.

Scot and Jeff talk to Michael C. Moynihan about The Smiths Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Michael Moynihan, correspondent for Vice News Tonight on HBO and member of <a href="http://wethefifth.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the Fifth Column podcast</a>, Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/mcmoynihan" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@mcmoynihan</a> and read his past work both <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/michael-moynihan" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://reason.com/people/michael-c-moynihan/articles" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. Michael’s Musical Pick: The Smiths “Is it wrong not to always be glad?” This is the question Jeff poses as the gang launches into Lucky #13: the long-awaited blockbuster Political Beats tribute to The Smiths, legendarily reputed as one of the ’80s most literately mopey bands. (Jeff also pays tribute to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQR78U6zvGI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 bit</a> in passing.) But Michael is immediately at pains to argue with The Smiths-as-miserabilists rap, and he explains that one of the reasons he loves them like no other band in the pantheon is Morrissey’s remarkable wit. Michael talks about getting into music as a kid, discovering postpunk in 1987, quickly finding his way to Newbury Comics in Boston and acquainting himself with the pride of Manchester: The Smiths. Like many a budding Smiths fanatic from the late ’80s and early ’90s, this involved a copy of The Queen Is Dead and an older brother questioning his heterosexuality. The rest is history, including Michael relocating temporarily to England and imbibing the mythos firsthand. Jeff’s intro to the band came later: college and a chance encounter with an eccentric friend who refused to lend her Smiths CDs to him because she valued them like other people value family heirlooms. Jeff emphasizes his love not only of Morrissey’s literate, playful lyrics, but actually elevates Johnny Marr’s contribution above it: even if only by a 51-49 margin, Jeff argues, this was Marr’s band, and his love of the eternal verities of melody, production, arrangement, and rock and pop are what make nearly every Smiths track from their beginning right up until the end worth hearing. KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k30XeJNAbt4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Queen Is Dead</a>” (The Queen Is Dead, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M661HAkr_Dk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">William, It Was Really Nothing</a>” (A-side of single, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qCpYMKhj34" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rusholme Ruffians (alternate version)</a>” (unreleased, originally from Meat Is Murder, 1985) Morrissey meets Marr: The Formation of The Smiths and the Troubled Debut Album For an album as hailed as The Smiths (1984) is, it had an exceedingly troubled genesis and to this day gets mixed reviews from hardcore fans. The story goes thus: Johnny Marr (guitars, music) introduces himself to local scenester Stephen Morrissey (vocals, lyrics) and says they should form a band. Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums) are then inducted into this inchoate group and the so-called “Smiths” record a single in a local studio on spec: without a recording contract in hand, but confident enough in their talent to pay out-of-pocket and send it around to various labels in search of a record deal. The name of the label that bit was Rough Trade; the name of the song is their legendary debut single “Hand In Glove.” But the obligatory album follow-up was a much bigger problem: after recording a full version of the debut LP with Teardrop Explodes guitarist Troy Tate producing, The Smiths scrapped it and re-recorded the entire thing from scratch with John Porter. And nobody in the gang can agree on its merits! Scot grants Jeff’s point that the Tate version of “Reel Around The Fountain” is magisterial, but he thinks this is the worst of The Smiths’ four proper studio LPs. Jeff thinks it’s their best studio LP, even better than The Queen Is Dead, and explains why in detail. Michael is in the middle: he loathes “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” with eloquent passion, but praises the obscure B-sides from this era like “Accept Yourself,” “Wonderful Woman” and “Jeane.” How deep does the rabbit-hole go? This deep: Michael spends time praising Sandie Shaw’s (Smiths-produced) covers of “I Don’t Owe You Anything” and “Jeane” (and Jeff agrees)! Michael also calls out Andy Rourke’s follow-the-bouncing-ball bassline on “Pretty Girls Make Graves” and laughs about the song’s conceit as a Beach Boys number gone horribly wrong. He then spends time discussing his personal experiences with Rourke, and the cosmic unfairness of his lack of appreciation (including a depressing story about watching Rourke open for a Smiths cover band where some other guy was pretending to be Andy Rourke). KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6uEwpCdV3U" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hand In Glove</a>” (A-side of single, 1983; The Smiths, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYYZFx7_DS8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">This Charming Man</a>” (A-side of single, 1983); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5BSkVQLsw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">What Difference Does It Make?</a>” (The Smiths, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V04bUY5Kl8w" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reel Around The Fountain</a>” (The Smiths, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWvG-QZNsJk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Still Ill</a>” (The Smiths, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZYf3-9LtlQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">You’ve Got Everything Now (live at the BBC June 26th, 1983)</a>” (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZpmVgpRh9A" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Suffer Little Children</a>” (The Smiths, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azNq-XaaS9Q" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Hand That Rocks The Cradle</a>” (The Smiths, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt1YqCpLoYY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wonderful Woman</a>” (B-side of “This Charming Man,” 1983); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csn0e27Wp54" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jeane</a>” (B-side of “This Charming Man,” 1983); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Ql8HglIDE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pretty Girls Make Graves</a>” (The Smiths, 1984); The Smiths as the Last Great Non-Album Singles Band; Hatful Of Hollow and Smiths Compilations in General No discussion of The Smiths is complete if all you consider are their formal studio albums; this was one of the all-time great non-album-single acts of the rock era, and Jeff argues that they share the sad distinction with New Order of being the last great one. The gang has a hearty chuckle over the gloriously funny, self-parodying lyrics of “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and salute Andy Rourke’s lovely bass work, then ponder whether “William It Was Really Nothing” (with its two B-sides “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” and “How Soon Is Now?”) is the greatest non-album single ever released during the 1980s. Michael takes a contrarian turn by insisting that he’s actually rather bored by “How Soon Is Now?” — the most famous Smiths song in the United States — but come on, now. This inevitably leads to a long and loving discussion of The Smiths’ adventures in repackaging. Few bands are better known for their sheer compilatory fury (especially given the relatively small overall discography) than The Smiths, but it actually makes sense given how nearly a third of their output was never released on an album. Jeff lays his cards down and declares Hatful Of Hollow (1984) to be the single greatest Smiths album ever released, even though it’s not even really an album: it’s essentially a revision of the debut LP and its various associated session recordings using impressively muscular, raw BBC takes in place of the overproduced studio versions. Add in all those great 1984 singles A’s &amp; B’s, and in Jeff”s opinion you get the best value-for-money proposition in the band’s entire catalogue. Michael is a Louder Than Bombs (1987) man, which makes sense given that this was the USA’s (later) answer to Hatful and thus the one he grew up with: a sprawling 2LP set collecting a slew of non-album singles, B-sides, and obscurities. As the gang is talking about the wonderful miniatures of The Smiths’ B-sides and BBC sessions, Michael takes the opportunity to point out how terrible Morrissey is when working in longer form. Particular attention is paid to the self-indulgence of his autobiography (which he insisted on having released as a <a href="http://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2013/10/morrissey130913w1.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Penguin Classic</a>) and his even worse attempt at fiction, List Of The Lost. (List is so bad that it won an award for “worst sex scene” and yes, we are required per Jeff’s promise on the podcast to inflict it upon you <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/morrisseylist-large.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>). “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roe9-DlhXzY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now</a>” (A-side of single, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztC_7nkAd8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How Soon Is Now?</a>” (B-side of “William, It Was Really Nothing,” 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T8R_VDTOYQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want</a>” (B-side of “William It Was Really Nothing,” 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vxrDBFsMl0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">London</a>” (B-side of “Shoplifters Of The World Unite,” 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SdhP2pLvD8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">These Things Take Time (live at the BBC June 26th, 1983)</a>” (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADj_YlTkRiY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Oscillate Wildly</a>” (B-side of “How Soon Is Now?,” 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Y6UJ6AGmM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">This Night Has Opened My Eyes (live at the BBC September 14th, 1983)</a>” (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQvGXNmKe2o" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Back To The Old House (live at the BBC September 14th, 1983)</a>” (Hatful Of Hollow, 1984) The Smiths Go Rockabilly (?!) on Meat Is Murder Yes the lamentably stupid title track (people: Morrissey moos) would make all but the most devoted vegan run directly to Ruth’s Chris and order a juicy rare steak, but Michael and Scot both contend that The Smiths’ proper sophomore album Meat Is Murder is actually their most underrated record. Jeff really isn’t into the “behold, I am now Scotty Moore!” rockabilly trip that Johnny Marr is suddenly on with tracks like “Rusholme Ruffians” and “Shakespeare’s Sister,” but Scot has high praise for the puckish insouciance of “Nowhere Fast.” Much more to Jeff’s taste is the shimmering depression of “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” and the child abuse dance epic “Barbarism Begins At Home,” which is surely playing on repeat somewhere in Hell’s Discotheque. What everyone agrees on is that “The Headmaster Ritual” — written about, and no this is not a joke, Morrissey’s hatred of high school gym class — features one of the best guitar riffs Johnny Marr ever wrote. All agree that “Meat Is Murder” is the stupidest song ever written by anyone in the history of modern recorded music. “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQTc4GolJt4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Headmaster Ritual</a>” (Meat Is Murder, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrUeAm1VMmo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Barbarism Begins At Home (live March 18th, 1985)</a>” (previously unreleased, originally from Meat Is Murder, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nPT64U6X40" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore</a>” (Meat Is Murder, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJS6F6S3b5s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nowhere Fast</a>” (Meat Is Murder, 1985); The Smiths Commit Regicide: The Queen Is Dead Before the gang gets to The Smiths’ most famous record, Jeff insists on stopping to recognize the greatness of their finest and most emblematic B-side: “Rubber Ring.” This is a song by Morrissey both about the songs he listened to as a child, and also self-consciously about how he realizes future generations will regard The Smiths themselves. Observant, warm-hearted, and catchy as heck, it explains nearly as well as any single song they ever recorded why this band has a cult surrounding them. But all that is prelude to The Queen Is Dead, which to this day remains the band’s most beloved album. Jeff states outright that the first four songs on Queen are actually garbage (he feels someone is pouring soil on his head every time he has to sit through “I Know It’s Over”) but “Cemetry Gates” may just be the single greatest thing they ever did and the rest of the album miraculously maintains that level, even the inevitable rockabilly number. (Seriously, “Vicar In A Tutu” is actually a good song.) Morrissey’s humor is in full flower here: he knocks on his own plagiarism issues with “Cemetry Gates,” commits majestic self-martyrdom on “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” and somehow ejects himself from his own home on “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.” Michael and Jeff wonder how people could have ever misunderstood the winsome, open-hearted humor of “There Is A Light” — double-decker buses and ten-ton trucks aside, this is a song about being transported by the heights and depths of romantic emotion that still manages to undercut its own self-seriousness. And then the LP ends with an extended fat joke. The gang quickly surveys the four post-Queen singles the band released in 1986 and 1987, as they were working their way towards their swan-song. Everyone agrees that the highlight is the epochal “”Panic,” a song inspired by Morrissey’s appalled reaction to the BBC Radio 1 announcer who segued from announcing the Chernobyl meltdown to Wham’s new big hit single “I’m Your Man.” With Aztec Camera’s Craig Gannon on second guitar and a riff nicked from T. Rex, “Panic” somehow manages to end with a children’s choir singing alongside Morrissey about the urgent need to lynch all DJs, yet still sounds like a glorious triumph. Michael unpacks the suspect racial undertones of “Panic” with reference to some of Morrissey’s later solo provocations, and Scot singles out “Half A Person” as the great late Smiths B-side. KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3baT8twPM9s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rubber Ring</a>“/”<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtTPhcpures" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Asleep</a>” (B-side of “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side,” 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5cZ-oLVJzY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cemetry Gates</a>” (The Queen Is Dead, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW1Riwvr9SU" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bigmouth Strikes Again</a>” (The Queen Is Dead, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPZMhFa84U" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">There Is A Light That Never Goes Out</a>” (The Queen Is Dead, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBuFyyw7mP8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others (live December 12th, 1986)</a>” (B-side of “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish,” 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUGJjlkbDjQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Panic</a>” (A-side of single, 1986); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvbuLtncmtw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Speedway</a>” [Morrissey] (Vauxhall &amp; I, 1994); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABemQIEhnEE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Half A Person</a>” (B-side of “Shoplifters Of The World Unite,” 1987) To the Madhouse with Them: Strangeways Here We Come Ends The Smiths’ Career Jeff loves The Smiths. Fans and critics adore The Queen Is Dead. But Morrissey and Marr insist, to this day, that The Smiths’ greatest achievement was their swan-song Strangeways, Here We Come. Are they blinkered or do they have a point? Jeff isn’t buying it, though he of course adores the wry humor of “Girlfriend In A Coma” (which also has the Spectorian virtue, as Michael observed earlier, of saying everything it needs to say in two minutes then going home). The standout track for Jeff is the exact opposite of “Girlfriend”: the messiest and most musically emotive song they ever recorded in “Death Of A Disco Dancer.” For all of Morrissey’s later attempts at political and social comment, this is the most brutally concise he ever got: “Love peace and harmony?/Very nice, very nice, very nice…but maybe in the next world.” Michael also praises the power pop of “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” and the skiffle shuffle of “Unhappy Birthday” (though he finds material like “Death At One’s Elbow” to be disturbingly generic) and Scot concludes the discussion by saluting Morrissey’s jealous valediction to Marr, “I Won’t Share You.” KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy8mEOhSk0s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Girlfriend In A Coma</a>” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqnFUVCoIL0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Death Of A Disco Dancer</a>” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTqFdaVGRew" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before</a>” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0qh7wHw3Jk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Unhappy Birthday</a>” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgpfTP6EB-Q" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I Won’t Share You</a>” (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987) Finale Michael, Scot and Jeff each pick their two key albums and five key tracks by The Smiths.

Episode 13: Michael C. Moynihan / The Smiths

Eli Lake

Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Eli Lake, columnist for Bloomberg View. Follow Eli on Twitter at @EliLake and read his work here. Eli‘s Musical pick: Steely Dan From Brill to Can’t Buy A Thrill: the formative years Steely Dan tries to be an actual band, then thinks better of it: Countdown To Ecstasy and Pretzel Logic The transition into studio obsessionalism: Katy Lied and The Royal Scam Aja and Gaucho: from the perfection of jazz-rock fusion to the drawn-out hangover Aftermath and reunion: Fagen’s The Nightfly and the reunion albums Finale Eli, Scot and Jeff each pick their two key albums and five key songs by Steely Dan

Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Eli Lake, columnist for Bloomberg View. Follow Eli on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/EliLake" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EliLake</a> and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/eli-lake" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">read his work here</a>. Eli‘s Musical pick: Steely Dan From Brill to Can’t Buy A Thrill: the formative years Steely Dan tries to be an actual band, then thinks better of it: Countdown To Ecstasy and Pretzel Logic The transition into studio obsessionalism: Katy Lied and The Royal Scam Aja and Gaucho: from the perfection of jazz-rock fusion to the drawn-out hangover Aftermath and reunion: Fagen’s The Nightfly and the reunion albums Finale Eli, Scot and Jeff each pick their two key albums and five key songs by Steely Dan

Episode 22: Eli Lake / Steely Dan

Anthony Fisher

Scot and Jeff talk to Anthony Fisher about Pink Floyd. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Anthony Fisher, writer/reporter for The Week, Daily Beast and others, producer of The Fifth Column podcast, and Writer/Director of the award-winning indie feature film “Sidewalk Traffic” — a comedy drama about new fatherhood, depression, and holding on to your dreams and letting go of your baggage. Available on iTunes, Amazon, Youtube, Google Play, and most major VOD platforms. Follow him on Twitter at @anthonyLfisher and read his work here. Anthony’s Musical Pick: Pink Floyd Gravity bongs at the ready — it’s time to travel out into interstellar space, as Political Beats finally covers one of the true big beasts of classic rock, Pink Floyd. Anthony’s introduction to the band hits a lot of the same notes that most younger fans will recognize: hearing “Comfortably Numb” as a kid, with his mom saying “ugh this music is boring” as he sits there listening to Dave Gilmour soloing, transfixed. Jeff tells his amusingly quotidian “intro to Floyd” story, which could alternately be titled “the first time Jeff got high.” (Yes, it too involves “Comfortably Numb.”) Jeff then goes on to discuss how, as his musical tastes developed (and his preference for avant-garde wackiness grew), he found himself hanging on to Floyd’s earlier, ropier, more improvisational and instrumental years over their later commercial mega-hits. KEY TRACK: “Comfortably Numb (live August 1988)” (Delicate Sound Of Thunder, 1988) From Blues-Rock (?!) to Space-Rock: the Syd Barrett Era, 1965-1968 Fans know this already, but the rest of you may not: Pink Floyd, the sine qua non space-rock/psychedelic/hyper-stylized programmatic group of the classic-rock era, began life as a BLUES band. And they were terrible! Just truly, goofy, silly-sounding stuff. Floyd really only found their voice with the emergence of doomed frontman Syd Barrett’s songwriting voice, a highly psychedelicized British pastoral style supplemented by the band’s predilection for lengthy live instrumental freakout jams. The gang is actually surprisingly ambivalent about the Barrett era of Floyd, despite the fervor of its cult fans: neither Scot nor Jeff have much time for the tweeness of Barrett’s songs about gnomes, the I-Ching, and currant buns, but everyone enjoys the bonkers insanity of “Bike” and Anthony points out that “Astronomy Domine” is one of the most muscular, threatening psychedelic masterpieces of an era rife with them. Jeff points out that he owns 27 separate performances of “Interstellar Overdrive” alone, by way of arguing that this is the true masterpiece from Floyd’s debut LP The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967), while Scot and Anthony also single out “Lucifer Sam,” a song about a housecat that is way better than that description might make you think it is. During this part of the show, Jeff works an interstitial conversation in about Pink Floyd’s five early non-album singles, all of which he considers top-shelf. “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play” are already well-loved (and well-known) enough as Syd Barrett tunes to need no introduction or defense, but Jeff is at great pains to point out that “It Would Be So Nice” and “Point Me At The Sky” are, if anything, even better, and inexplicably underrated by both band and fans alike. Jeff also points out how pivotal Rick Wright was to Floyd at this point in their career; Roger Waters was actually an afterthought in 1967-68, and it was Wright who carried the most singing, performing, and songwriting weight behind Barrett until 1969. People, go listen to the wistful sadness of the B-side “Paintbox.” The discussion of Wright carries the gang into A Saucerful Of Secrets (1968), where all agree that his “Remember A Day” is a highlight (indeed, probably the best song on the record). Jeff rates Saucerful significantly higher than either Anthony or Scot do, but then he has an avowed preference for horrible noise. The gang discusses Syd’s fade into non-functionality, with “Jugband Blues” as a key track signalling Barrett’s creepily altogether-too-on-the-nose farewell to the Floyd (and to sanity). KEY TRACKS: “I’m A King Bee” (The Early Years 1965-1972, 2016); “Arnold Layne” (A-side of single, 1967); “Astronomy Domine” (The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, 1967); “Lucifer Sam” (The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, 1967); “Bike” (The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, 1967); “Interstellar Overdrive” (The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, 1967); “See Emily Play” (A-side of single, 1967); “Apples And Oranges” (A-side of single, 1967); “Paintbox” (B-side of “Apples And Oranges,” 1967); “It Would Be So Nice” (A-side of single, 1967); “Remember A Day” (A Saucerful Of Secrets, 1968); “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” (A Saucerful Of Secrets, 1968); “A Saucerful Of Secrets” (A Saucerful Of Secrets, 1968); “Jugband Blues” (A Saucerful Of Secrets, 1968); “Point Me At The Sky” (A-side of single, 1968) The Soundtrack Era: More, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, and Obscured By Clouds (1969-1972) This is Jeff’s favorite era of Pink Floyd, though he’ll be damned if he can give you a rational justification as to why. More (1969) is the middling soundtrack to a forgettable film of the same name, but its atmospheric instrumentals are interesting and Anthony and Jeff agree that “Cymbaline” (a fully-realized, catchy verse/chorus/verse construction) is the first sign of things to come in terms of Roger Waters’ songwriting ability. The gang ponders whether Ummagumma (1969) is the worst double-album ever released by a major band (Scot cites to a recent Red Hot Chili Peppers album as “obviously worse”), but Jeff perversely considers it one of their two essential records. All agree that the studio half of Ummagumma is mostly a flaming dumpster fire (Jeff singles out Gilmour’s “Narrow Way” suite, Scot has praise for part of Wright’s “Sysyphus”), but the real point here is the live disc, a four track example of Pink Floyd in early 1969 playing their exploratory repertoire in absolutely commanding fashion. Jeff loves early live Floyd — it is his primary obsession with the band — and considers this one disc so obligatory as to justify the rest of the studio garbage. Nobody has much good to say about Ummagumma‘s 1970 follow-up Atom Heart Mother either (Jeff can barely believe that it hit #1 in the UK record charts), though Anthony will stand up for the early unadorned “band-only” version of the title suite. The one piece that everyone agrees on is Rick Wright’s “Summer ’68,” a criminally forgotten piano ballad hidden away on the middle of the record that suggests that, as late as 1970, Wright was still bringing the best music to the Floyd collective. It’s hard to think of an about-face reversal as abrupt as the transition from Atom Heart Mother to Meddle (1971), however. Sure, “Echoes” has too many minutes of ‘whale noises’ in the middle. Sure, we probably didn’t need to hear about Seamus the dog. But otherwise, Meddle is a crowning achievement of pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd, from the terrifying proto-industrial grind of “One Of These Days” to the dreamy diurnal epic of “Echoes.” Jeff also rhapsodizes about “Fearless” for several minutes until Anthony points out that he sounds just like a stoner from a Richard Linklater film. The final album of Floyd’s transitional pre-Dark Side phase is another movie soundtrack, Obscured By Clouds (1972). This one is usually beloved by hardcore fans as a secret gem, but the gang isn’t too terribly impressed — they’re all already tired of Roger whining about his dead dad (yeah, war sucks, we know) in “Free Four.” But Anthony loves “Childhood’s End” (he just wishes Roger had written the lyrics, to make them sharper), Jeff and Scot both dig on the instrumental “Obscured By Clouds”/”When You’re In” pairing, and everyone praises the two unabashedly pop songs on the record: “Wot’s…Uh The Deal” and Rick Wright’s “Stay.” KEY TRACKS: “Main Theme” (More, 1969); “Green Is The Colour” (More, 1969); “Cymbaline” (More, 1969); “The Narrow Way, Pt. 1” (Ummagumma, 1969); “The Narrow Way, Pt. 3” (Ummagumma, 1969); “Sysyphus, Pt. 2” (Ummagumma, 1969); “Careful With That Axe, Eugene (live May 2nd, 1969)” (Ummagumma, 1969); “Interstellar Overdrive (live May 2nd, 1969)” (outtake from Ummagumma, 1969); “Summer ’68” (Atom Heart Mother, 1971); “Fat Old Sun” (Atom Heart Mother, 1971); “Atom Heart Mother (alternate version)” (The Early Years 1965-1972, 2016); “One Of These Days” (Meddle, 1971); “Fearless” (Meddle, 1971); “Echoes” (Meddle, 1971); “Obscured By Clouds“/”When You’re In” (Obscured By Clouds, 1972); “Wot’s…Uh, The Deal” (Obscured By Clouds, 1972); “Childhood’s End” (Obscured By Clouds, 1972); “Stay” (Obscured By Clouds, 1972) Eclipse: Pink Floyd Become International Superstars with Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall The gang has a laugh about how comically impossible it is to say anything new about Dark Side Of The Moon (1973). It’s all been done! But they plow forward gamely nonetheless, emphasizing that although the big ‘radio hits’ on this record have been played into the ground (“Time,” “Money,” etc.), all the rest is still immensely powerful, and evidence that Floyd, under Waters’ influence, had transitioned into a much more musically focused phase that would pay enormous commercial and critical dividends. Still, Jeff, Scott and Anthony can’t help but point out that the best contributions to Dark Side remain Rick Wright’s…those slow, patiently developing piano chords are wildly effective not only on “Us And Them” (which had been kicking around since 1970) but also on “The Great Gig In The Sky” as well. Anthony praises Roger Waters’ lyrical and metric sensibility on the “Brain Damage”/”Eclipse” suite, while Jeff points out that if you want to know why Dark Side is considered the hi-fi gold standard for audiophile production, you need merely listen to these two songs. People get tired of Dark Side Of The Moon. People get tired of The Wall. Some people have never had any time at all for Animals. But nobody has gotten tired of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side follow-up, the Syd Barrett tribute (and music industry lament) of Wish You Were Here (1975). This one gets a unanimous thumbs-up from the gang (even Jeff, who openly writes off this era). Scot talks about the pleasures of the title track and how it slowly unfolds into its final chorus, and argues that “Have A Cigar” features one of Gilmour’s finest guitar solos. Anthony calls this the ultimate “teenage blacklight” get-blazed album. We would recommend this album to you, but then again how on earth could it be possible that you haven’t already heard this album? Animals (1977) is the very odd, very strident next step in the Pink Floyd discography: Roger Waters takes over with a series of thinly veiled Orwellian allegories (is there even a veil on “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”?), but the gang overlooks that because the music is still so endlessly, recombinatively creative. Anthony and Jeff both agree that “Dogs” is one of the best Pink Floyd songs ever recorded, and the “jazz chill”-cum-“raving and drooling” slice of rage that is “Sheep” also comes in for praise. The Wall (1979) is where the gang sharply departs from critical and commercial consensus. Popular opinion holds The Wall — Roger Waters’ opus to the alienation he experienced from life as a world-famous rock star — to be their crowning achievement. Meanwhile, none of the gang likes it that much (Jeff memorably describes it as a “meticulously crafted piece of shit”). Jeff, Scot, and Anthony are all a little bit turned off by Waters’ rock star trip on this album (Scot also points out how utterly shot Roger’s voice sounds throughout the record), and argue that the turn toward highly programmatic musical theater hamstrings the band. That said, all agree that there are several great moments to be found on The Wall, though they also agree it’s telling that most of them are ones where David Gilmour has an outsized involvement. (The one exception may be Anthony’s pick of “Nobody Home,” which was itself written by Waters about Rick Wright, whom Waters kicked out of the band at this time.) Still, despite the bombast, it is an amazingly well produced and sequenced album — Jeff thinks the segue from “Happiest Days Of Our Lives” into “Another Brick Pt. 2” may justify the entire mess. KEY TRACKS: “The Great Gig In The Sky” (Dark Side Of The Moon, 1973); “Money” (Dark Side Of The Moon, 1973); “Us And Them” (Dark Side Of The Moon, 1973); “Brain Damage/Eclipse” (Dark Side Of The Moon, 1973); “Have A Cigar” (Wish You Were Here, 1975); “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (Wish You Were Here, 1975); “Wish You Were Here” (Wish You Were Here, 1975); “Dogs” (Animals, 1977); “Sheep” (Animals, 1977); “Comfortably Numb” (The Wall, 1979); “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives”/”Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)” (The Wall, 1979); “Mother” (The Wall, 1979); “Goodbye Blue Sky” (The Wall, 1979); “Hey You” (The Wall, 1979); “Nobody Home” (The Wall, 1979); “Run Like Hell” (The Wall, 1979) Collapse: The Final Cut and the Post-Waters Era of Floyd It’s tough sledding ahead as the gang tries to make sense of Pink Floyd’s post-Wall era. Nobody can offer a rational defense of the unmusical, maudlin, self-regarding politicized tripe that is The Final Cut (1983), an album that is almost bizarrely unlistenable outside of a few isolated tracks. Anthony sums it up by pointing out that “The Fletcher Memorial Home” features Roger Waters putting all of his political enemies into a gas chamber and then flipping the switch to “on,” like an alt-right meme…except deadly serious. As hard to justify as The Final Cut is, the gang can’t really find that much more to say in defense of the first Gilmour-only Floyd album A Momentary Lapse Of Taste…erm, I meant Reason (1987). This is just elevator muzak, yuppie lullaby mush, and even if “Learning To Fly” is a nice little toe-tapper it certainly doesn’t sound like Pink Floyd. Neither does The pision Bell (1994), really, although both Jeff and Anthony are willing to go to bat a bit more for it. “Poles Apart,” “What Do You Want From Me?,” “Coming Back To Life,” and “Marooned” are all nice little songs. But the spirit is gone, and this sounds like David Gilmour solo work rather than proper Floyd. A brief discussion of the Wright-posthumous Endless River wraps things up.  KEY TRACKS: “The Gunner’s Dream” (The Final Cut, 1983); “The Fletcher Memorial Home” (The Final Cut, 1983); “Learning To Fly” (A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, 1987); “What Do You Want From Me?” (The pision Bell, 1994); “Marooned” (The pision Bell, 1994); “Coming Back To Life” (The pision Bell, 1994); “Poles Apart” (The pision Bell, 1994); “High Hopes” (The pision Bell, 1994); “Autumn ’68” (The Endless River, 2014) Finale Anthony, Scot and Jeff each name their two key albums and five key songs by Pink Floyd.

Episode 12: Anthony Fisher / Pink Floyd

Terry Teachout

Scot and Jeff talk to Terry Teachout about The Band. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, author of the plays “Satchmo At The Waldorf” and “Billy And Me,” and author of, among others, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken and Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. Follow Terry on Twitter at @TerryTeachout, check out his excellent books of cultural and musical criticism here, and read his most recent work for the WSJ here. Terry’s Music Pick: The Band This week the gang hops on board the mystery train and takes a journey deep into the unknowable heart of America as they discuss The Band, one of the true sui generis phenomena of the rock era. The Band is a rock group that, despite their relatively short (and variable) major-label career, has called forth more profound verbiage from music and cultural critics than most other North American artists save Bob Dylan, so the gang understands that they are walking paths already trodden solidly into shape by others (hello, Greil Marcus!). Nevertheless, attention must be paid: Terry, a child of the ’50s growing up in southeast Missouri, tells the story of growing up in a non-‘rock’ household and suddenly becoming cognizant of the great cultural ferment playing out on the radio and on vinyl. An early ’70s purchase of the original edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide having piqued his interest, he mail-ordered The Band’s first two albums and nothing was the same after that. Terry talks about how, as he went on to become a gigging jazz bassist in his college days and afterwards, he returned to much of the rock he had absorbed earlier to find it trite and ephemeral….but what had not aged for him was The Band’s deeply authentic take on the American tradition. Jeff comes from a much later generation (born in 1980, a tail-end Gen X’er) but feels exactly the same way despite telling a different story, one about being exposed to The Band (simultaneously with Dylan) by his father, who was a Sixties folkie at heart. All agree about how preternaturally uncanny The Band’s skill was at creating music and lyrics that evoked the true, beating heart of the American historical experience — music both current and modern, yet inexplicably timeless — despite the legendary irony that 4/5ths of the group were actually Canadians. From the Hawks to The Basement Tapes: The Pre-History Jeff argues that few artists have an actual history more compelling than The Band’s pre-history, and Terry agrees. Their story begins as a group that came together piece-by-piece in the early Sixties as the backing ensemble for Ronnie Hawkins (a rockabilly musician from Arkansas who made his name playing in Ontario, Canada, bringing people an authentic sound otherwise unavailable in the Great North). Rick Danko (bass), Richard Manuel (piano), Garth Hudson (organ/keyboards), and Robbie Robertson (guitar) were all from the Toronto area; only Levon Helm (drums) was an American born-and-raised — and, tellingly, a Razorback just like Hawkins. After they struck out on their own as Levon &amp; The Hawks, they recorded a series of singles that made no impression on the charts but came to the attention of one Bob Dylan, who had just decided to shake off the shackles of folk-protest music and was looking for a touring band. What happened next is truly the stuff of music legend, and yet the legend is actual history: working as Dylan’s backing band during the moment of his most transcendent cultural importance, they participated in the recordings of the Blonde On Blonde (1966) era, and then went on tour with him as he visited the United Kingdom and played one of the most infamously confrontational series of concerts in the history of modern music. The protest-music lovers and Trotskyists roundly booed Dylan and The Band on a nightly basis for “selling out” to electrified music — “JUDAS!” — even as they were churning out a miasma of sound that still sounds to this day like (to quote Dylan himself) “thin white mercury music.” Levon Helm actually bowed out of the tour, tired of the brickbats he’d received on Dylan’s American gigs and unwilling to play music being denounced as the second coming of the man who sold out Christ. (Adding to the legend of the group, he ducked out of the music business entirely and went to work on an oil rig in Louisiana.) The true story of The Band as an independent entity (outside of Levon &amp; The Hawks) really begins after this point, when Dylan crashed out of the music scene in 1967 (nominally in a motorcycle accident, but more accurately in a bid to escape from the pressure of the unanswerable expectations placed upon him) and began recording demos with The Band in the basement of a curiously-colored house in Woodstock, NY. These of course became The Basement Tapes (perhaps the most famous bootleg recording of all time, before they saw an adulterated release in 1975 and a full and proper one in 2015). Jeff talks about how Robbie Robertson must have been influenced by watching Dylan come in, day after day, with traditional ballads, obscure covers, and then finally with new lyrics that were entirely out-of-step with the prevailing psychedelic trends of the time. (The way he set Richard Manuel’s “Tears Of Rage” to a lyrical theme of parents heartbroken by the callousness of an ungrateful daughter is the quintessence of this.) We Can Talk About It Now At this point the show notes will become briefer and less narrative, simply because The Band’s main-label career begins and all agree that this is music that speaks so eloquently for itself that, outside of our discussion on the podcast, too much further commentary feels pointless. Music From Big Pink (1968) is that rare musical earthquake that still retains its power to shock a half-century later: it felt so natural, so fundamentally real — as Scot says, “people conversing with each other about things that matter” — that it shook the entire pop/rock firmament out of its bloated psychedelic complacency and hastened the dissolution of several major bands (most notably Cream and The Beatles). Jeff singles out “Tears Of Rage” and “We Can Talk,” Scot singles out “The Weight” and “Lonesome Suzie,” and Terry still thrills to “Chest Fever,” but these citations are as beside the point as those for the next few albums will be; you quite simply need to hear and absorb Music From Big Pink, and you are not musically literate unless you have. There are only handful of pop/rock albums that actually ALTERED the shape of the music scene and sent many of its top talents off on a different course. This is one of them. History As Mystery As great as Music From Big Pink was (and as much of a cultural landmark it was), The Band (1969) is *still* incomprehensible as a follow-up: one of the most perfect albums in the history of popular music. Jeff, Scot, and Terry really want to make clear that this is not casual hyperbole. This is not fannish enthusiasm (Scot in fact thinks that The Band is TOO good, because it overshadows everything else they subsequently did). What the gang discusses during this segment is one of the finest albums ever recorded, a magical document of the reality and myth and mystery of the American experience, effortlessly running north to south, east to west, from post-bellum Virginia to the midwestern Grange to storm-battered Cleveland to Lake Charles, LA. Listen to Terry, Scot and Jeff discuss the individual songs — “Rockin’ Chair,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “When You Awake,” “King Harvest,” etc. — but most of all please listen to this album. It is as if magical spell is being worked upon you. N.B. Jeff and Terry both agree that Joan Baez’s (more well-known, hit single) version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is on the shortlist of the Most Benightedly Awful Covers Of All Time. See The Band with the Stage Fright Stage Fright (1970) is the moment where most people commonly signal the downfall of The Band after their alchemical glory of 1966-1969), but Terry insists that this is one of his favorites. John Simon is missed as producer, yes, but Terry especially singles out “Daniel And The Sacred Harp” as a powerful allegory. Jeff agrees that the darkness of Stage Fright is immediately obvious (drug problems, Richard Manuel’s psychological recession from the core of the band, particularly as a songwriter), and frankly dislikes the entire first half of the record. Robbie Robertson (then asserting himself as the group’s sole songwriter, filling the gap left by Manuel and Danko) even wrote a song about Manuel’s state of mind: “The Shape I’m In.” But Jeff emphasizes that the album’s title track is among their greatest songs, and that “The Rumor” is the beautiful sound of the curtain falling on The Band’s era greatness. The Wilderness The Band’s fourth album Cahoots (1971) is almost universally panned by critics, but Jeff ruefully admits that he doesn’t it dislike as much as he’s supposed to. And Scot and Terry agree, at least insofar as “Life Is A Carnival” (with its horn arrangements) and “4% Pantomime” (with its prime-era Van Morrison) is concerned. Furthermore, “When I Paint My Masterpiece” (with Levon on lead vox) may actually be their best Bob Dylan cover. That said, it cannot be denied that the rest of this album is almost appallingly generic…not bad, per se, but generic. Scot speaks up in favor of “Smoke Signal” and Terry wants to single out “The River Hymn” as well but, as Terry says, this is the undeniable point where The Band (in his words) “goes out of focus.” This was clearly evident than in their next release, Moondog Matinee (1973), an album of “classic covers.” It has long been Jeff’s personal thesis than unless your name is Bryan Ferry, the recording of a “covers album” is an admission of creative exhaustion (see: Bowie, Costello, etc.), but what is most depressing about Moondog Matinee is the fact that The Band should have actually nailed this kind of foray: who better to delve into the deep taproot of American rock culture than a group seemingly to the manor born? And yet so many of these covers are merely passable. The one exception, as Terry is at great pains to stipulate, is their version of “Mystery Train,” the classic ’50s rocker about the inarticulable loss of death (first made famous by Elvis, with a hundred subsequent takes to follow). Terry argues that, at least on this one song, The Band knew they had come up with something special, not only in terms of arrangement but in terms of performance and singing. And Terry is right. At a loss for inspiration during this period, The Band fell back upon something comforting and familiar: working with Bob Dylan and supporting him as his backing band. A proper discussion of Dylan’s Planet Wave (1973) and the subsequent tour album Before The Flood (1974) will have to wait until Political Beats’ inevitable Dylan episode, but for the present moment the gang agrees that Robbie, Rick, Richard, Garth and Levon provide stunningly sympathetic accompaniment to Bob on the record, no more obviously so than on its most famous song “Forever Young.” Northern Lights/Last Waltz The story of The Band would look like an obvious tale of a long apprenticeship followed by an early transcendent peak and a quick flameout were it not for Northern Lights — Southern Cross (1975), their late-period comeback record which is arguably as good as anything they did after The Band. Jeff isn’t quite willing to go that far, but he does note that it’s not just the critically-acclaimed songs on here (“It Makes No Difference,” “Ophelia”) that are worthwhile, it’s also less heralded moments like the vaguely progressive “Jupiter Hollow.” Terry, drama critic that he is, compares Northern Lights to late period Edward Albee: he seemed dried-up after Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and then, after years of deplorable playwriting, returned to form with Three Tall Women. So too did The Band here, and Scot agrees, saying that even on nominal trifles like “Ring Your Bell” they sound like they’re returning to the headspace of the early records. The gang dispenses quickly with Islands (1976) a contractually-required record which feels likes the odds-‘n’-sods outtakes release that it is, but inevitably must spend time on The Last Waltz, the 1977 biopic/soundtrack that nominally was meant to herald The Band’s end as a touring act, but (rather obviously, if you’ve seen the film) also ended up heralding the end of The Band. The gang gives it a surprisingly mixed review given its critical reputation — the sort of ambivalent review that could only come from serious fans of The Band’s music and lyrics, as opposed to their reified ‘Hollywood’ myth — but all happily admit that some of these Last-Concert-Ever performances really are among the finest of their career…in particular, Levon drumming and singing his heart out on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Finale Terry, Scot and Jeff each name their two key albums and five key songs by The Band.

Scot and Jeff talk to Terry Teachout about The Band. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, author of the plays “Satchmo At The Waldorf” and “Billy And Me,” and author of, among others, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken and Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. Follow Terry on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/terryteachout" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@TerryTeachout</a>, check out his excellent books of cultural and musical criticism <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Terry-Teachout/e/B001HMWT5E" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>, and read his most recent work for the WSJ <a href="https://www.wsj.com/news/author/7840" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. Terry’s Music Pick: The Band This week the gang hops on board the mystery train and takes a journey deep into the unknowable heart of America as they discuss The Band, one of the true sui generis phenomena of the rock era. The Band is a rock group that, despite their relatively short (and variable) major-label career, has called forth more profound verbiage from music and cultural critics than most other North American artists save Bob Dylan, so the gang understands that they are walking paths already trodden solidly into shape by others (hello, Greil Marcus!). Nevertheless, attention must be paid: Terry, a child of the ’50s growing up in southeast Missouri, tells the story of growing up in a non-‘rock’ household and suddenly becoming cognizant of the great cultural ferment playing out on the radio and on vinyl. An early ’70s purchase of the original edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide having piqued his interest, he mail-ordered The Band’s first two albums and nothing was the same after that. Terry talks about how, as he went on to become a gigging jazz bassist in his college days and afterwards, he returned to much of the rock he had absorbed earlier to find it trite and ephemeral….but what had not aged for him was The Band’s deeply authentic take on the American tradition. Jeff comes from a much later generation (born in 1980, a tail-end Gen X’er) but feels exactly the same way despite telling a different story, one about being exposed to The Band (simultaneously with Dylan) by his father, who was a Sixties folkie at heart. All agree about how preternaturally uncanny The Band’s skill was at creating music and lyrics that evoked the true, beating heart of the American historical experience — music both current and modern, yet inexplicably timeless — despite the legendary irony that 4/5ths of the group were actually Canadians. From the Hawks to The Basement Tapes: The Pre-History Jeff argues that few artists have an actual history more compelling than The Band’s pre-history, and Terry agrees. Their story begins as a group that came together piece-by-piece in the early Sixties as the backing ensemble for Ronnie Hawkins (a rockabilly musician from Arkansas who made his name playing in Ontario, Canada, bringing people an authentic sound otherwise unavailable in the Great North). Rick Danko (bass), Richard Manuel (piano), Garth Hudson (organ/keyboards), and Robbie Robertson (guitar) were all from the Toronto area; only Levon Helm (drums) was an American born-and-raised — and, tellingly, a Razorback just like Hawkins. After they struck out on their own as Levon &amp; The Hawks, they recorded a series of singles that made no impression on the charts but came to the attention of one Bob Dylan, who had just decided to shake off the shackles of folk-protest music and was looking for a touring band. What happened next is truly the stuff of music legend, and yet the legend is actual history: working as Dylan’s backing band during the moment of his most transcendent cultural importance, they participated in the recordings of the Blonde On Blonde (1966) era, and then went on tour with him as he visited the United Kingdom and played one of the most infamously confrontational series of concerts in the history of modern music. The protest-music lovers and Trotskyists roundly booed Dylan and The Band on a nightly basis for “selling out” to electrified music — “JUDAS!” — even as they were churning out a miasma of sound that still sounds to this day like (to quote Dylan himself) “thin white mercury music.” Levon Helm actually bowed out of the tour, tired of the brickbats he’d received on Dylan’s American gigs and unwilling to play music being denounced as the second coming of the man who sold out Christ. (Adding to the legend of the group, he ducked out of the music business entirely and went to work on an oil rig in Louisiana.) The true story of The Band as an independent entity (outside of Levon &amp; The Hawks) really begins after this point, when Dylan crashed out of the music scene in 1967 (nominally in a motorcycle accident, but more accurately in a bid to escape from the pressure of the unanswerable expectations placed upon him) and began recording demos with The Band in the basement of a curiously-colored house in Woodstock, NY. These of course became The Basement Tapes (perhaps the most famous bootleg recording of all time, before they saw an adulterated release in 1975 and a full and proper one in 2015). Jeff talks about how Robbie Robertson must have been influenced by watching Dylan come in, day after day, with traditional ballads, obscure covers, and then finally with new lyrics that were entirely out-of-step with the prevailing psychedelic trends of the time. (The way he set Richard Manuel’s “Tears Of Rage” to a lyrical theme of parents heartbroken by the callousness of an ungrateful daughter is the quintessence of this.) We Can Talk About It Now At this point the show notes will become briefer and less narrative, simply because The Band’s main-label career begins and all agree that this is music that speaks so eloquently for itself that, outside of our discussion on the podcast, too much further commentary feels pointless. Music From Big Pink (1968) is that rare musical earthquake that still retains its power to shock a half-century later: it felt so natural, so fundamentally real — as Scot says, “people conversing with each other about things that matter” — that it shook the entire pop/rock firmament out of its bloated psychedelic complacency and hastened the dissolution of several major bands (most notably Cream and The Beatles). Jeff singles out “Tears Of Rage” and “We Can Talk,” Scot singles out “The Weight” and “Lonesome Suzie,” and Terry still thrills to “Chest Fever,” but these citations are as beside the point as those for the next few albums will be; you quite simply need to hear and absorb Music From Big Pink, and you are not musically literate unless you have. There are only handful of pop/rock albums that actually ALTERED the shape of the music scene and sent many of its top talents off on a different course. This is one of them. History As Mystery As great as Music From Big Pink was (and as much of a cultural landmark it was), The Band (1969) is *still* incomprehensible as a follow-up: one of the most perfect albums in the history of popular music. Jeff, Scot, and Terry really want to make clear that this is not casual hyperbole. This is not fannish enthusiasm (Scot in fact thinks that The Band is TOO good, because it overshadows everything else they subsequently did). What the gang discusses during this segment is one of the finest albums ever recorded, a magical document of the reality and myth and mystery of the American experience, effortlessly running north to south, east to west, from post-bellum Virginia to the midwestern Grange to storm-battered Cleveland to Lake Charles, LA. Listen to Terry, Scot and Jeff discuss the individual songs — “Rockin’ Chair,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “When You Awake,” “King Harvest,” etc. — but most of all please listen to this album. It is as if magical spell is being worked upon you. N.B. Jeff and Terry both agree that Joan Baez’s (more well-known, hit single) version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is on the shortlist of the Most Benightedly Awful Covers Of All Time. See The Band with the Stage Fright Stage Fright (1970) is the moment where most people commonly signal the downfall of The Band after their alchemical glory of 1966-1969), but Terry insists that this is one of his favorites. John Simon is missed as producer, yes, but Terry especially singles out “Daniel And The Sacred Harp” as a powerful allegory. Jeff agrees that the darkness of Stage Fright is immediately obvious (drug problems, Richard Manuel’s psychological recession from the core of the band, particularly as a songwriter), and frankly dislikes the entire first half of the record. Robbie Robertson (then asserting himself as the group’s sole songwriter, filling the gap left by Manuel and Danko) even wrote a song about Manuel’s state of mind: “The Shape I’m In.” But Jeff emphasizes that the album’s title track is among their greatest songs, and that “The Rumor” is the beautiful sound of the curtain falling on The Band’s era greatness. The Wilderness The Band’s fourth album Cahoots (1971) is almost universally panned by critics, but Jeff ruefully admits that he doesn’t it dislike as much as he’s supposed to. And Scot and Terry agree, at least insofar as “Life Is A Carnival” (with its horn arrangements) and “4% Pantomime” (with its prime-era Van Morrison) is concerned. Furthermore, “When I Paint My Masterpiece” (with Levon on lead vox) may actually be their best Bob Dylan cover. That said, it cannot be denied that the rest of this album is almost appallingly generic…not bad, per se, but generic. Scot speaks up in favor of “Smoke Signal” and Terry wants to single out “The River Hymn” as well but, as Terry says, this is the undeniable point where The Band (in his words) “goes out of focus.” This was clearly evident than in their next release, Moondog Matinee (1973), an album of “classic covers.” It has long been Jeff’s personal thesis than unless your name is Bryan Ferry, the recording of a “covers album” is an admission of creative exhaustion (see: Bowie, Costello, etc.), but what is most depressing about Moondog Matinee is the fact that The Band should have actually nailed this kind of foray: who better to delve into the deep taproot of American rock culture than a group seemingly to the manor born? And yet so many of these covers are merely passable. The one exception, as Terry is at great pains to stipulate, is their version of “Mystery Train,” the classic ’50s rocker about the inarticulable loss of death (first made famous by Elvis, with a hundred subsequent takes to follow). Terry argues that, at least on this one song, The Band knew they had come up with something special, not only in terms of arrangement but in terms of performance and singing. And Terry is right. At a loss for inspiration during this period, The Band fell back upon something comforting and familiar: working with Bob Dylan and supporting him as his backing band. A proper discussion of Dylan’s Planet Wave (1973) and the subsequent tour album Before The Flood (1974) will have to wait until Political Beats’ inevitable Dylan episode, but for the present moment the gang agrees that Robbie, Rick, Richard, Garth and Levon provide stunningly sympathetic accompaniment to Bob on the record, no more obviously so than on its most famous song “Forever Young.” Northern Lights/Last Waltz The story of The Band would look like an obvious tale of a long apprenticeship followed by an early transcendent peak and a quick flameout were it not for Northern Lights — Southern Cross (1975), their late-period comeback record which is arguably as good as anything they did after The Band. Jeff isn’t quite willing to go that far, but he does note that it’s not just the critically-acclaimed songs on here (“It Makes No Difference,” “Ophelia”) that are worthwhile, it’s also less heralded moments like the vaguely progressive “Jupiter Hollow.” Terry, drama critic that he is, compares Northern Lights to late period Edward Albee: he seemed dried-up after Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and then, after years of deplorable playwriting, returned to form with Three Tall Women. So too did The Band here, and Scot agrees, saying that even on nominal trifles like “Ring Your Bell” they sound like they’re returning to the headspace of the early records. The gang dispenses quickly with Islands (1976) a contractually-required record which feels likes the odds-‘n’-sods outtakes release that it is, but inevitably must spend time on The Last Waltz, the 1977 biopic/soundtrack that nominally was meant to herald The Band’s end as a touring act, but (rather obviously, if you’ve seen the film) also ended up heralding the end of The Band. The gang gives it a surprisingly mixed review given its critical reputation — the sort of ambivalent review that could only come from serious fans of The Band’s music and lyrics, as opposed to their reified ‘Hollywood’ myth — but all happily admit that some of these Last-Concert-Ever performances really are among the finest of their career…in particular, Levon drumming and singing his heart out on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Finale Terry, Scot and Jeff each name their two key albums and five key songs by The Band.

Episode 29: Terry Teachout / The Band

Mark Davis

Scot and Jeff talk to Mark Davis about Paul McCartney and Wings.

Scot and Jeff talk to Mark Davis about Paul McCartney and Wings.

Episode 28: Mark Davis / Paul McCartney and Wings

Jack Butler

Scot and Jeff discuss The Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) with Jack Butler, host of Ricochet’s Young Americans podcast, sidekick of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, and a freelancer writer living in D.C. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Jack Butler, host of Ricochet’s Young Americans podcast, sidekick of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg,  and a freelancer writer living in D.C.  Jack  is on Twitter at @jackbutler4815. Jack’s Music Pick: The Electric Light Orchestra: What began as a dream of Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne to fuse modern pop songs with classical touches became a hit-making machine through the mid-to-late-1970s and early-1980s. Wood left after album number one, leaving the creative direction to Lynne alone. And direct he did! From the prog-rock stylings of ELO II to the full-on, sugar-sweet, pristine production on OUT OF THE BLUE, to the synth-driven concept album TIME, ELO managed to sell more than 50 million albums in little more than a decade. The music has been used endlessly in the past 20 years in movie trailers and commercials, keeping the band in the public view. Heck, we also make time to discuss Lynne’s turn as “producer to the stars” in the 80s and 90s. Rev up the technicolor spaceship and set your vocoder to “high” — it’s time to dive in to ELO!

Scot and Jeff discuss The Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) with Jack Butler, host of Ricochet’s Young Americans podcast, sidekick of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, and a freelancer writer living in D.C. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Jack Butler, host of Ricochet’s Young Americans podcast, sidekick of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg,  and a freelancer writer living in D.C.  Jack  is on Twitter at @<a href="https://twitter.com/jackbutler4815" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">jackbutler4815</a>. Jack’s Music Pick: The Electric Light Orchestra: What began as a dream of Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne to fuse modern pop songs with classical touches became a hit-making machine through the mid-to-late-1970s and early-1980s. Wood left after album number one, leaving the creative direction to Lynne alone. And direct he did! From the prog-rock stylings of ELO II to the full-on, sugar-sweet, pristine production on OUT OF THE BLUE, to the synth-driven concept album TIME, ELO managed to sell more than 50 million albums in little more than a decade. The music has been used endlessly in the past 20 years in movie trailers and commercials, keeping the band in the public view. Heck, we also make time to discuss Lynne’s turn as “producer to the stars” in the 80s and 90s. Rev up the technicolor spaceship and set your vocoder to “high” — it’s time to dive in to ELO!

Episode 50: Jack Butler / The Electric Light Orchestra (ELO)

Dan McLaughlin

Scot and Jeff talk to Dan McLaughlin about Tom Petty. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Dan McLaughlin, contributing columnist at National Review, attorney, and baseball fanatic. Follow Dan on Twitter at @baseballcrank and read his work here. Dan’s Musical Pick: Tom Petty &amp; the Heartbreakers Yes, it’s a sad day for us at Political Beats as we mark the sudden passing of rock legend Tom Petty, taken too soon by a heart attack. But Dan is here to sing his praises, and the gang has decided to celebrate his music instead of simply moping about. Dan explains how he first got into Petty, and amusingly enough it more or less mirrors Jeff’s entry into Pettydom despite the fact that they’re a decade apart, age-wise: the hallucinogenic “Don’t Come Around Here No More” music video, and then the ubiquitous Full Moon Fever. KEY TRACK: “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (Southern Accents, 1985) It Crawled from the South: The Early Tom Petty &amp; the Heartbreakers From Gainesville, FL to Los Angeles, CA. A band named Mudcrutch collapses due to having too many songwriting cooks gathered ’round the stewpot, leaving only frontman Tom Petty, who gathers a few of his ex-bandmates back together along with a couple new additions to create one of the finest rock groups in history: The Heartbreakers. The gang discusses Petty’s origins and his first two pre-superstardom records, Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers (1976) and You’re Gonna Get It! (1978). Jeff, Scot and Dan are all agreed that Petty came out of the gate pretty much fully-formed (though Jeff notes that he did indeed serve a musical apprenticeship, i.e. his Mudcrutch years). Dan cites to “Breakdown” as an example how singular and weird Petty’s singing voice truly was, running the gamut from a slurry drawl to a smooth Roger McGuinn tenor all the way up to an excited, Sam Kinison-like screech (Jeff calls it the “chicken-squawk.”). Jeff argues that You’re Gonna Get It! is the most underrated record of Petty’s career, and delightfully brief to boot. Scot cannot help but point out what compellingly UNattractive guy Petty was, which was just another part of his strange rock appeal. KEY TRACKS: “Breakdown” (Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, 1976); “American Girl” (Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, 1976); “The Wild One, Forever” (Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, 1976); “Strangered In The Night” (Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, 1976); “When The Time Comes” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978); “Hurt” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978); “Listen To Her Heart” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978) At War with the Record Label: the Damn The Torpedoes/Hard Promises Era Normally when an artist goes to the mattresses against their own record label it portends doom for their career. Not so for Tom Petty, who came up with what many believe to be his finest record, Damn The Torpedoes (1979), while suing MCA for absorbing his record contract from his original (failing) label against his will. Jeff takes this moment to single out the Heartbreakers’ lead guitarist Mike Campbell, not just for his peerlessly tasteful guitarwork, but for the massive songwriting contribution he made to Petty’s records (“Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl” are both his on Damn The Torpedoes). Scot emphasizes that the songs you haven’t heard from Damn The Torpedoes like “Shadow Of A Doubt” and “Century City” are just as good as the ultra-famous ones you already know, and Dan agrees, chiming in with “Louisiana Rain.” The story behind 1981’s Hard Promises is that MCA wanted to charge an elevated “superstar artist” price of $9.98 for it, so Petty threatened to name the record $8.98 to humiliate them unless they relented. Yet again, he won his fight against his label, and came out with a triumph. Scot raves about “The Waiting,” naming it perhaps his single favorite Heartbreakers song. Jeff adores this record as well, and laments that the only way most people know about it is through the (admittedly classic) episode of The Simpsons where Homer wants to buy a gun. So much good material was available from these sessions that Petty was even able to give away “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” to Stevie Nicks. Dan salutes the glimmers of hope that are always imbued in the stories of the protagonists of Petty’s songs (“Nightwatchman” is a good example of this on Hard Promises) and Jeff agrees, contrasting him favorably to the depression-chic of, in his words, “wannabe-John Steinbeck-era Bruce Springsteen.” The gang is somewhat less enthusiastic about Long After Dark (1982), the last album of this early era of The Heartbreakers, though yet again nobody can really find too much to criticize. What stands out is the interesting synthesizer attack of “You Got Lucky” and the killer album track “Straight Into Darkness.” KEY TRACKS: “Refugee” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “Even The Losers” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “Here Comes My Girl” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “Don’t Do Me Like That” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “Louisiana Rain” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “The Waiting” (Hard Promises, 1981); “Something Big” (Hard Promises, 1981); “Nightwatchman” (Hard Promises, 1981); “A Thing About You” (Hard Promises, 1981); “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” [Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers] (Bella Donna, 1981); “You Got Lucky” (Long After Dark, 1982); “Change Of Heart” (Long After Dark, 1982); “Straight Into Darkness” (Long After Dark, 1982) Tom Petty &amp; the Heartbreakers Spin Their Wheels with Southern Accents and Let Me Up The first major hiccup in Petty’s career comes with the long-delayed Southern Accents, a half-realized attempt at a concept album that Jeff deems a failure upfront. Whether it was due to creative confusion, drugs, or some combination of the two, this is an album that doesn’t quite work in his opinion. But that doesn’t mean it lacks for classics! “Rebels” and “Don’t Come Around Here No More” are as good as Tom Petty ever got (even if that electric sitar on “Don’t Come Around” is as far from Petty’s signature sound as he would ever get on one of his big hits). Dan emphasizes that the backwater American South that Petty was writing about on songs like “Rebels” is a world that simply no longer exists in Florida: Gainesville in the 1950s and ’60s was a vastly different place than it is today or even was by the mid-Seventies and Eighties. If Southern Accents was a flawed-yet-worthy record, its follow-up Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) is the first (and maybe last) truly poor album of Petty’s career. None of the gang has much good to say about this album outside of the lead single (co-written with Bob Dylan) “Jammin’ Me.” Jeff observes that it’s the only LP of Petty’s career that is saddled with classically “Eighties” production tics (drum sounds, synth tones, etc.) and it does it no favors. This sounds like a band at the end of its rope, and it’s no surprise that Petty took a break from the Heartbreakers for several years afterwards. KEY TRACKS: “Rebels” (Southern Accents, 1985); “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (Southern Accents, 1985); “Spike” (Southern Accents, 1985); “It Ain’t Nothin’ To Me” (Pack Up The Plantation – Live!, 1985); “Jammin’ Me” (Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), 1987); “Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)” (Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), 1987) Revival Tom Petty takes a holiday from The Heartbreakers and revives his career: Full Moon Fever and The Traveling Wilburys. After two albums of diminishing returns with his band, Petty stepped away from them, hooked up with ELO’s Jeff Lynne as a producer, and found the joy in making music again. First up was Full Moon Fever, a ‘solo’ album (though every Heartbreaker except drummer Stan Lynch makes an appearance) that just so happened to be stuff with some of the most famous, tuneful, and immediately catchy songs of Petty’s career. His record label rejected the record at first, claiming “there was no single” on it. Millions of listeners would be to differ, since this is the home of “Free Fallin’,” “Runnin’ Down A Dream,” “I Won’t Back Down,” and several others. Scot remarks that Petty seems awfully happy for a guy whose house had just been burned to the ground by an arsonist. This is Dan’s favorite Petty LP for reasons that need little explanation (he even defends “Zombie Zoo!”). Jeff is less enthusiastic, musing about whether it’s possible for an album to “perish through absorption”; in other words, for it to be so embraced by radio, so folded into what our standard definition of ‘classic rock’ is, that it almost becomes superfluous to listen to anymore. Perhaps it’s our fault for loving it too much. Although Full Moon Fever was mostly in the can by mid-1988, it was held back because Petty was fully ensconced in another project, the delightful Traveling Wilburys. The Wilburys were basically the super-est supergroup to ever exist: Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Bob Dylan. And yet Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 is the opposite of a pompous, bombastic ego-trip: it’s a breezy, charmingly low-key record full of pop/rock songs and sly humor. The entire gang agrees that you’re missing out on one of the finest rock albums of the ’80s (of all time, in fact, Dan would argue) if you don’t own this record. This era concludes with Into The Great Wide Open (1991), Petty’s reunion with The Heartbreakers. Jeff likes the big singles, but is down on the record as a whole, arguing that it’s more of a Tom Petty/Jeff Lynne solo LP than it is a true Heartbreakers record. But Dan really loves the rockers on the record like “Out In The Cold” and “Makin’ Some Noise”: tributes to rock &amp; roll for its own sake. KEY TRACKS: “Free Fallin’” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “Runnin’ Down A Dream” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “I Won’t Back Down” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “Yer So Bad” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “The Apartment Song” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “Last Night” [The Traveling Wilburys] (Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1, 1988); “You Got It” [Roy Orbison] (Mystery Girl, 1989); “Learning To Fly” (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991); “Two Gunslingers” (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991); “Makin’ Some Noise” (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991); “Into The Great Wide Open” (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991); “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” (Greatest Hits, 1993) Into the Firmament The post Greatest Hits era: from Wildflowers all the way to Hypnotic Eye. With the release of 1993’s Greatest Hits, Petty solidified his place in the firmament of the rock world. But that wasn’t the end of Petty’s greatness. Wildflowers (1994) may be 20 minutes too long (or so Jeff thinks), but the title track, “You Wreck Me,” and “It’s Good To Be King” are all classics on par with the best of his work. The gang talks about the effects of Petty’s divorce and his (long-concealed) mid-’90s heroin addiction on the lower gear of much of the music from this era, though Jeff thinks of She’s The One as the last great, authentically energetic Heartbreakers album. Scot begs to differ and cites to Echo (1999), which he thinks is even better. Everyone agrees that “Room At The Top” is a masterpiece, but Scot also points to “Echo,” “Lonesome Sundown,” and two or three others. The gang generally dismisses the sour The Last DJ as being the album equivalent of the Simpsons meme “Old Man Yells At Cloud,” but Dan is a huge fan of the final two Petty albums, Mojo (2010) and Hypnotic Eye (2013). KEY TRACKS: “Wildflowers” (Wildflowers, 1994); “You Wreck Me” (Wildflowers, 1994); “It’s Good To Be King” (Wildflowers, 1994); “A Higher Place” (Wildflowers, 1994); “Walls (Circus)” (Songs and Music from the Film “She’s The One”, 1996); “Angel Dream (No. 2)” (Songs and Music from the Film “She’s The One”, 1996); “Change The Locks” (Songs and Music from the Film “She’s The One”, 1996); “Room At The Top” (Echo, 1999); “Lonesome Sundown” (Echo, 1999); “Echo” (Echo, 1999); “Swingin’” (Echo, 1999); “High In The Morning” (Mojo, 2010); “Running Man’s Bible” (Mojo, 2010); “Fault Lines” (Hypnotic Eye, 2013); “American Dream Plan B” (Hypnotic Eye, 2013) Finale Dan, Scot and Jeff name their two key albums and five key songs by Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers.

Scot and Jeff talk to Dan McLaughlin about Tom Petty. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Dan McLaughlin, contributing columnist at National Review, attorney, and baseball fanatic. Follow Dan on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@baseballcrank</a> and <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/author/dan-mclaughlin" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">read his work here</a>. Dan’s Musical Pick: Tom Petty &amp; the Heartbreakers Yes, it’s a sad day for us at Political Beats as we mark the sudden passing of rock legend Tom Petty, taken too soon by a heart attack. But Dan is here to sing his praises, and the gang has decided to celebrate his music instead of simply moping about. Dan explains how he first got into Petty, and amusingly enough it more or less mirrors Jeff’s entry into Pettydom despite the fact that they’re a decade apart, age-wise: the hallucinogenic “Don’t Come Around Here No More” music video, and then the ubiquitous Full Moon Fever. KEY TRACK: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JvF9vpqx8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Don’t Come Around Here No More</a>” (Southern Accents, 1985) It Crawled from the South: The Early Tom Petty &amp; the Heartbreakers From Gainesville, FL to Los Angeles, CA. A band named Mudcrutch collapses due to having too many songwriting cooks gathered ’round the stewpot, leaving only frontman Tom Petty, who gathers a few of his ex-bandmates back together along with a couple new additions to create one of the finest rock groups in history: The Heartbreakers. The gang discusses Petty’s origins and his first two pre-superstardom records, Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers (1976) and You’re Gonna Get It! (1978). Jeff, Scot and Dan are all agreed that Petty came out of the gate pretty much fully-formed (though Jeff notes that he did indeed serve a musical apprenticeship, i.e. his Mudcrutch years). Dan cites to “Breakdown” as an example how singular and weird Petty’s singing voice truly was, running the gamut from a slurry drawl to a smooth Roger McGuinn tenor all the way up to an excited, Sam Kinison-like screech (Jeff calls it the “chicken-squawk.”). Jeff argues that You’re Gonna Get It! is the most underrated record of Petty’s career, and delightfully brief to boot. Scot cannot help but point out what compellingly UNattractive guy Petty was, which was just another part of his strange rock appeal. KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqxns-JTTqA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Breakdown</a>” (Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, 1976); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIhb-kNvL6M" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Girl</a>” (Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, 1976); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US-pEqevjvc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Wild One, Forever</a>” (Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, 1976); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC9FDx3HISw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Strangered In The Night</a>” (Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, 1976); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykCmB_ZlI68" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">When The Time Comes</a>” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojlIbccEMxc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hurt</a>” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH7nUIHLIC0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Listen To Her Heart</a>” (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978) At War with the Record Label: the Damn The Torpedoes/Hard Promises Era Normally when an artist goes to the mattresses against their own record label it portends doom for their career. Not so for Tom Petty, who came up with what many believe to be his finest record, Damn The Torpedoes (1979), while suing MCA for absorbing his record contract from his original (failing) label against his will. Jeff takes this moment to single out the Heartbreakers’ lead guitarist Mike Campbell, not just for his peerlessly tasteful guitarwork, but for the massive songwriting contribution he made to Petty’s records (“Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl” are both his on Damn The Torpedoes). Scot emphasizes that the songs you haven’t heard from Damn The Torpedoes like “Shadow Of A Doubt” and “Century City” are just as good as the ultra-famous ones you already know, and Dan agrees, chiming in with “Louisiana Rain.” The story behind 1981’s Hard Promises is that MCA wanted to charge an elevated “superstar artist” price of $9.98 for it, so Petty threatened to name the record $8.98 to humiliate them unless they relented. Yet again, he won his fight against his label, and came out with a triumph. Scot raves about “The Waiting,” naming it perhaps his single favorite Heartbreakers song. Jeff adores this record as well, and laments that the only way most people know about it is through the (admittedly classic) episode of The Simpsons where Homer wants to buy a gun. So much good material was available from these sessions that Petty was even able to give away “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” to Stevie Nicks. Dan salutes the glimmers of hope that are always imbued in the stories of the protagonists of Petty’s songs (“Nightwatchman” is a good example of this on Hard Promises) and Jeff agrees, contrasting him favorably to the depression-chic of, in his words, “wannabe-John Steinbeck-era Bruce Springsteen.” The gang is somewhat less enthusiastic about Long After Dark (1982), the last album of this early era of The Heartbreakers, though yet again nobody can really find too much to criticize. What stands out is the interesting synthesizer attack of “You Got Lucky” and the killer album track “Straight Into Darkness.” KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ccAnetGh0s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Refugee</a>” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMpYIlbEv5A" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Even The Losers</a>” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWdKCRI7YW0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Here Comes My Girl</a>” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69qxLrBBP5E" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Don’t Do Me Like That</a>” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boFiFJcFp0A" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Louisiana Rain</a>” (Damn The Torpedoes, 1979); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ0UzX3vGnE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Waiting</a>” (Hard Promises, 1981); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzMyVnh7aOM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Something Big</a>” (Hard Promises, 1981); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-GgBfokEZg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nightwatchman</a>” (Hard Promises, 1981); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jEOhyQ40m0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Thing About You</a>” (Hard Promises, 1981); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeyjEWIDJ5Q" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around</a>” [Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers] (Bella Donna, 1981); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGv6BqN20ck" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">You Got Lucky</a>” (Long After Dark, 1982); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqRmbdpg7ZA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change Of Heart</a>” (Long After Dark, 1982); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUovjEQri2I" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Straight Into Darkness</a>” (Long After Dark, 1982) Tom Petty &amp; the Heartbreakers Spin Their Wheels with Southern Accents and Let Me Up The first major hiccup in Petty’s career comes with the long-delayed Southern Accents, a half-realized attempt at a concept album that Jeff deems a failure upfront. Whether it was due to creative confusion, drugs, or some combination of the two, this is an album that doesn’t quite work in his opinion. But that doesn’t mean it lacks for classics! “Rebels” and “Don’t Come Around Here No More” are as good as Tom Petty ever got (even if that electric sitar on “Don’t Come Around” is as far from Petty’s signature sound as he would ever get on one of his big hits). Dan emphasizes that the backwater American South that Petty was writing about on songs like “Rebels” is a world that simply no longer exists in Florida: Gainesville in the 1950s and ’60s was a vastly different place than it is today or even was by the mid-Seventies and Eighties. If Southern Accents was a flawed-yet-worthy record, its follow-up Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) is the first (and maybe last) truly poor album of Petty’s career. None of the gang has much good to say about this album outside of the lead single (co-written with Bob Dylan) “Jammin’ Me.” Jeff observes that it’s the only LP of Petty’s career that is saddled with classically “Eighties” production tics (drum sounds, synth tones, etc.) and it does it no favors. This sounds like a band at the end of its rope, and it’s no surprise that Petty took a break from the Heartbreakers for several years afterwards. KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtXGBdAgN7E" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rebels</a>” (Southern Accents, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPuMx4Joasw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Don’t Come Around Here No More</a>” (Southern Accents, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZRpB5ydLas" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Spike</a>” (Southern Accents, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSLHA24uR2U" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">It Ain’t Nothin’ To Me</a>” (Pack Up The Plantation – Live!, 1985); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjfhuqTD79w" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jammin’ Me</a>” (Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), 1987); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHoKxxpG54E" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)</a>” (Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), 1987) Revival Tom Petty takes a holiday from The Heartbreakers and revives his career: Full Moon Fever and The Traveling Wilburys. After two albums of diminishing returns with his band, Petty stepped away from them, hooked up with ELO’s Jeff Lynne as a producer, and found the joy in making music again. First up was Full Moon Fever, a ‘solo’ album (though every Heartbreaker except drummer Stan Lynch makes an appearance) that just so happened to be stuff with some of the most famous, tuneful, and immediately catchy songs of Petty’s career. His record label rejected the record at first, claiming “there was no single” on it. Millions of listeners would be to differ, since this is the home of “Free Fallin’,” “Runnin’ Down A Dream,” “I Won’t Back Down,” and several others. Scot remarks that Petty seems awfully happy for a guy whose house had just been burned to the ground by an arsonist. This is Dan’s favorite Petty LP for reasons that need little explanation (he even defends “Zombie Zoo!”). Jeff is less enthusiastic, musing about whether it’s possible for an album to “perish through absorption”; in other words, for it to be so embraced by radio, so folded into what our standard definition of ‘classic rock’ is, that it almost becomes superfluous to listen to anymore. Perhaps it’s our fault for loving it too much. Although Full Moon Fever was mostly in the can by mid-1988, it was held back because Petty was fully ensconced in another project, the delightful Traveling Wilburys. The Wilburys were basically the super-est supergroup to ever exist: Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Bob Dylan. And yet Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 is the opposite of a pompous, bombastic ego-trip: it’s a breezy, charmingly low-key record full of pop/rock songs and sly humor. The entire gang agrees that you’re missing out on one of the finest rock albums of the ’80s (of all time, in fact, Dan would argue) if you don’t own this record. This era concludes with Into The Great Wide Open (1991), Petty’s reunion with The Heartbreakers. Jeff likes the big singles, but is down on the record as a whole, arguing that it’s more of a Tom Petty/Jeff Lynne solo LP than it is a true Heartbreakers record. But Dan really loves the rockers on the record like “Out In The Cold” and “Makin’ Some Noise”: tributes to rock &amp; roll for its own sake. KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BKda_T1eVM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Free Fallin’</a>” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TEQqeLXo7o" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Runnin’ Down A Dream</a>” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1II7B7rjhMw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I Won’t Back Down</a>” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8qJVZ9IFn8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Yer So Bad</a>” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6W6GtoMJ-Q" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Apartment Song</a>” (Full Moon Fever, 1989); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX4JXUNbXZs" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Last Night</a>” [The Traveling Wilburys] (Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1, 1988); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJn_RwQ0WTo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">You Got It</a>” [Roy Orbison] (Mystery Girl, 1989); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHktzTmoFo8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Learning To Fly</a>” (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vdhcQoUQeo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Two Gunslingers</a>” (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWSz-GGLYPk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Makin’ Some Noise</a>” (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2abWAAnfysU" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Into The Great Wide Open</a>” (Into The Great Wide Open, 1991); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juD8GHvPULs" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mary Jane’s Last Dance</a>” (Greatest Hits, 1993) Into the Firmament The post Greatest Hits era: from Wildflowers all the way to Hypnotic Eye. With the release of 1993’s Greatest Hits, Petty solidified his place in the firmament of the rock world. But that wasn’t the end of Petty’s greatness. Wildflowers (1994) may be 20 minutes too long (or so Jeff thinks), but the title track, “You Wreck Me,” and “It’s Good To Be King” are all classics on par with the best of his work. The gang talks about the effects of Petty’s divorce and his (long-concealed) mid-’90s heroin addiction on the lower gear of much of the music from this era, though Jeff thinks of She’s The One as the last great, authentically energetic Heartbreakers album. Scot begs to differ and cites to Echo (1999), which he thinks is even better. Everyone agrees that “Room At The Top” is a masterpiece, but Scot also points to “Echo,” “Lonesome Sundown,” and two or three others. The gang generally dismisses the sour The Last DJ as being the album equivalent of the Simpsons meme “<a href="http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/044/247/297.png" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Old Man Yells At Cloud</a>,” but Dan is a huge fan of the final two Petty albums, Mojo (2010) and Hypnotic Eye (2013). KEY TRACKS: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AldoDm2bV04" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wildflowers</a>” (Wildflowers, 1994); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyi-LOVfvd8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">You Wreck Me</a>” (Wildflowers, 1994); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uVs6PD4l5A" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">It’s Good To Be King</a>” (Wildflowers, 1994); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVH4rLkTbl8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Higher Place</a>” (Wildflowers, 1994); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aoEIA38kTQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Walls (Circus)</a>” (Songs and Music from the Film “She’s The One”, 1996); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EQYbvuxYRY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Angel Dream (No. 2</a>)” (Songs and Music from the Film “She’s The One”, 1996); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9_6psXSkOA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change The Locks</a>” (Songs and Music from the Film “She’s The One”, 1996); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLCT6AAQLek" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Room At The Top</a>” (Echo, 1999); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IIX0nGyfyA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lonesome Sundown</a>” (Echo, 1999); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjC1Idf9w_4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Echo</a>” (Echo, 1999); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6Cg6pUApE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Swingin’</a>” (Echo, 1999); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaAdVqdCUeY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">High In The Morning</a>” (Mojo, 2010); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFzvaf90OKM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Running Man’s Bible</a>” (Mojo, 2010); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av2oNQAqMQs" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fault Lines</a>” (Hypnotic Eye, 2013); “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFUyHYqp_5w" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Dream Plan B</a>” (Hypnotic Eye, 2013) Finale Dan, Scot and Jeff name their two key albums and five key songs by Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers.

Episode 8: Dan McLaughlin / Tom Petty

Scot and Jeff talk to the WSJ‘s Matt Murray about Talking Heads. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Matt Murray, executive editor of the Wall Street Journaland author of The Father and the Son: My Father’s Journey into the Monastic Life. Follow Matt on Twitter at @murraymatt. Matt’s Music Pick: Talking Heads This week the gang stops making sense as they tackle Talking Heads, a band that resolutely defies easy classification. Beginning as the most self-consciously quirky (yet appealingly melodic) band on the New York CBGB punk/new-wave scene of the mid-1970s, they gradually transformed into pioneers of complex polyrhythmic Afrobeat fusion under the auspices of producer Brian Eno until suddenly remaking themselves once again as a pop band. All throughout, they were guided by the singular muse of lead singer (and guitarist) David Byrne, whose lyrical concerns ranged from quotidian to the profound and frequently encompassed both simultaneously. Matt tells the story of his exposure to Talking Heads, first as a child with ’77, and then how they were ubiquitous on the college scene in 1983 with Speaking In Tongues. Jeff remembers to this day the moment he first became aware of the group: having his senses assaulted as a 10-year-old by the famous music video for “Once In A Lifetime” and barely being able to believe it wasn’t some sort of elaborate practical joke VH-1 was playing on him. From CBGB to ’77: The Formative Years Scot and Jeff run through the brief history of Talking Heads’ formation: songwriter and guitarist David Byrne was in a band with drummer Chris Frantz while the pair were students at Rhode Island School of Design. After moving to New York City along with Frantz’s girlfriend (and later wife) Tina Weymouth, she is cajoled into learning to play the bass from scratch. She was a quick study and completed them as a trio just in time for them to be present at ground zero for the birth of the American punk/new-wave scene in New York City, centered around the Manhattan club CBGB and featuring such legendary artists as the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, the Voidoids, and an odd-duck group that never quite fit in: Talking Heads. While the other groups in the scene were deeply confrontational, either playing loud and aggressively or adopting transgressive lyrical poses, Talking Heads were…downright nice. David Byrne’s terse, naively childlike quasi-Aspergers approach to lyrical themes immediately set him apart from the snarling contemptuousness of the rest of the American punk scene, while the band’s herky-jerky compact melodicism and clean crisp rhythms were miles away from the snarl of, say, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. Little wonder, then, that they were very quickly given a major-label record deal and immediately began to make good on it. Their only officially-released recording as a trio was their debut single “Love -&gt; Building On Fire” (the title alone gives fair indication of how Byrne wrote), at which point they expanded to a quartet with the addition of keyboardist/guitarist Jerry Harrison (formerly of the ahead-of-their-time Modern Lovers), who rounded out their sound. This is the group that would record their debut album Talking Heads: ’77 (no prizes for guessing which year it was released). Jeff thinks this is their most underrated album, unfairly neglected because it falls outside the upcoming “Eno trilogy,” and chockablock full of wonderful, weird tunes. Matt and Jeff spend a lot of time discussing why David Byrne is so compelling as a lyricist. Matt says that he is an artist in the truest sense of the word: trying to take the familiar things in this world and see them with fresh eyes. Jeff agrees and compares the seeming lack of artifice in Byrne’s vocals and lyrics to outsider art. He also adds that Talking Heads’ lyrics during this era make sense the moment you realize that they are meant wholly unironically: “New Feeling” is about a new feeling, “The Book I Read” is about a book David Byrne read, and “Don’t Worry About The Government” is a song that suggests that you shouldn’t worry about the government. Matt and Scot also note that “Pulled Up” is exactly what it purports itself to be: an earnestly cheerful song of thanks from Byrne to his parents for pulling him up from the doldrums of depression. The Brian Eno Era: More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light Enter Brian Eno. Fascinated by the rhythmic and lyrical approach he heard on Talking Heads: ’77 (so much so that he wrote an anagrammatic tribute to them on his own Before And After Science called “King’s Lead Hat”), Brian Eno came to the band and offered to produce their next album, beginning one of the most well-known artist/producer collaborations of the rock era. More Songs About Buildings And Food (1978) draws primarily from the same first batch of songs the group had written as far back as 1975, so structurally these songs sound the same as those on ’77. Sonically, however, Eno brought them a quiet revolution: without attempting to remake the band in his own image (at least not yet), he lends them a sheen and in particular a percussive attack — most obviously on the hit single “Take Me To The River” — that was entirely absent from their previous work. Scot is a bit skeptical of More Songs but Matt and Jeff are both agreed that this is actually the band’s best album: unwaveringly consistent, still written in that disarmingly weird early Byrne lyrical style, and brilliantly sequenced. Jeff in particular singles out the joy of listening to “The Girls Want To Be With The Girls” tumble directly into “Found A Job” and realizing just how in command Talking Heads are over their artistic self-presentation. Scot considers TH’s version of “Take Me To The River” to be one of the greatest cover songs of all time (something that comes as no surprise to anyone who has heard our “Covers” episode), marveling at how the band and Eno slow the song down to an absolute crawl and yet retain its essential funk. Matt emphasizes that it is here where you can first begin to hear the ensemble sound that would fully bloom years later on Remain In Light: so many of the great moments on More Songs (“Artists Only,” “I’m Not In Love,” “Warning Sign,” “Found A Job,” “Stay Hungry”) are built around lengthy passages where the band just cuts loose and plays, hypnotically. Fear Of Music (1979) is a departure for Talking Heads in many ways; the second record of their Eno trilogy finds Byrne working up a new batch of lyrics for the first time since the 1975-76 era, and his response was to create a concept album that most people never even realize is a concept album. This is “fear of”-music: songs each written about specific topics of potential neurosis. (Literally just add the words “(fear of)” as a parenthetical to every single song on the record outside the instrumental opener and you’ll get the point.) It’s hard to know whether Byrne is channeling his own feelings on songs like “Air” or “Memories Can’t Wait” or “Animals,” or speaking in an imaginative voice as on “Psycho Killer”, but the result is a glorious catalogue of modern paranoia. One that feels like it comes from a more personal place is “Heaven,” Byrne’s meditation on the afterlife. Jeff raves over the brilliance of the conceit — heaven as an eternity of boredom and ennui as you are spoonfed your “favorite things” over and over again without variety until you loathe them — and thrills to the way the ice of the click-clock metronomic arrangement finally cracks when Chris Frantz roars in frustration heading into the final chorus. Scot proclaims this their greatest album, citing Byrne’s vocal performance on “Mind” especially. Matt gets an enormous laugh out of “Life During Wartime” and “Air,” a song where (as he points out) Tina Weymouth’s backing vocals feel for all the world like they’re mocking David Byrne’s neurotic fear of very environment around him. As it turned out, the one song on Fear Of Music that pointed toward the band’s future was the mostly instrumental opening track “I Zimbra.” Without it, nothing would have prepared anyone for the landmark Remain In Light (1980), where the band as previously known nearly disappears, to be replaced by a polyrhythmic hydra. This album (inspired in large part by the recordings of Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti) basically invented the subgenre of rock/world-beat fusion, and yet has never itself been equalled in critical esteem. Which makes it all the more interesting that all three of the gang argue that this record, for all its universal critical adulation, is significantly flawed: the back end of the album is glutted with forgettable music and failed experiments. (“The Overload” = interesting in theory, pointless in practice.) But who cares, as Jeff says, when the first half of it is so perfect? The gang spends time discussing every song on Remain In Light (except for “Born Under Punches,” a fantastic song that we sadly could only spare a lone “TAKE A LOOK AT THESE HANDS!” for), but it’s “Once In A Lifetime” and the epochal “The Great Curve” that naturally come in for the most praise. If Scot is right that Remain In Light is not the place for neophytes to begin with Talking Heads because of its density and weirdness (and he is), this is nevertheless an album that all serious music lovers owe it to themselves to hear. But then the same could be said for all four of Talking Heads’ early albums. Hiatus and Return: The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues and Stop Making Sense At the peak of their artistic powers, at the moment of their greatest critical praise . . . Talking Heads disbanded and took a hiatus from the studio for three years. This was telling as to the state of interpersonal affairs within the group (the developing bad blood between Byrne and Weymouth would eventually become the stuff of legend), but the upside of it is that the band took this time to release the live retrospective The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads (1982). Matt and Jeff both urgently importune you: buy this album in its 2CD expanded reissue, as it is literally the single greatest record Talking Heads ever released. Yes, that’s right, a live album is your proper one-stop introduction to Talking Heads, as this is is a brilliant, copiously thorough (141 minutes in its reissued form) survey of Talking Heads at every stage of their live career, from 1977 all the way to the expanded ensemble heard on the 1980/81 Remain In Light tour. One of those secrets that only Talking Heads fans fully understand is that they were one of the great live acts of their era (or any era for that matter), and that, as well produced as their early records were, they came across even more vigorously and joyfully onstage. Jeff considers The Name Of This Band to be one of the four or five greatest live albums ever released, and he’s not alone in that sentiment. Check it out. In 1983, the Heads finally returned with Speaking In Tongues. Shorn of Eno and now self-producing, this represented their commercial and critical peak, although in retrospect all three of the gang agree it hasn’t aged as well. Still, this is Talking Heads working in a deep art-funk mode, with songs like “Making Flippy-Floppy” and “Girlfriend Is Better” rolling through oceanic grooves (“Burning Down The House” was inspired by Parliament Funkadelic and sounds like it). The gang is also less effusive in its praise of the critically beloved “live” album Stop Making Sense (1984) than most others: the word live is in scare quotes back there for a reason (everything was re-recorded in the studio except for the drums, pretty much) and all agree that it works far better as a visual experience (you really need to SEE David Byrne in his “big suit”) than as a purely auditory one. What Happened? Little Creatures, True Stories and Naked The last seven years of Talking Heads’ career span three albums and, if you believe Jeff, only four truly great songs. You may disagree with assessment, but what is beyond dispute, as all in the gang agree, is that the tail-end of the band’s career is for the most part a curiously astringent affair, as David Byrne retreats from the funk and afro-beat stylistics of Remain In Light and Speaking In Tongues for more direct ‘pop’ song structures that are largely uncompelling. Little Creatures (1985) is perhaps the best of these records, if for no other reason than that it begins and ends with two of Talking Heads’ all-time classics: “And She Was” (a subversively cheery hit single about a pedestrian suburban acid trip) and the fearless ode to nihilism of “Road To Nowhere.” True Stories (1986) is even worse, a nadir for the band — who were tasked with recording a series of songs that Byrne wrote for his vanity film of the same name, which ironically is far better than the album itself — unrelieved by a single good track outside of the musically splendid “Wild Wild Life.” Finally, Naked (1988) ends the band’s album career with a misbegotten attempt at returning to a more groove-based approach, but the feeling is gone…with one exception. And that sole exception is actually one of Talking Heads’ greatest achievements (and Byrne’s finest lyrics), the delightfully funny anti-ecofetishist anthem “(Nothing But) Flowers.” Finale Matt, Scot and Jeff each name their two key albums and five key songs by Talking Heads.

Scot and Jeff talk to the WSJ‘s Matt Murray about Talking Heads. Introducing the Band Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/ScotBertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/EsotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Matt Murray, executive editor of the Wall Street Journaland author of The Father and the Son: My Father’s Journey into the Monastic Life. Follow Matt on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/murraymatt" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@murraymatt</a>. Matt’s Music Pick: Talking Heads This week the gang stops making sense as they tackle Talking Heads, a band that resolutely defies easy classification. Beginning as the most self-consciously quirky (yet appealingly melodic) band on the New York CBGB punk/new-wave scene of the mid-1970s, they gradually transformed into pioneers of complex polyrhythmic Afrobeat fusion under the auspices of producer Brian Eno until suddenly remaking themselves once again as a pop band. All throughout, they were guided by the singular muse of lead singer (and guitarist) David Byrne, whose lyrical concerns ranged from quotidian to the profound and frequently encompassed both simultaneously. Matt tells the story of his exposure to Talking Heads, first as a child with ’77, and then how they were ubiquitous on the college scene in 1983 with Speaking In Tongues. Jeff remembers to this day the moment he first became aware of the group: having his senses assaulted as a 10-year-old by the famous music video for “Once In A Lifetime” and barely being able to believe it wasn’t some sort of elaborate practical joke VH-1 was playing on him. From CBGB to ’77: The Formative Years Scot and Jeff run through the brief history of Talking Heads’ formation: songwriter and guitarist David Byrne was in a band with drummer Chris Frantz while the pair were students at Rhode Island School of Design. After moving to New York City along with Frantz’s girlfriend (and later wife) Tina Weymouth, she is cajoled into learning to play the bass from scratch. She was a quick study and completed them as a trio just in time for them to be present at ground zero for the birth of the American punk/new-wave scene in New York City, centered around the Manhattan club CBGB and featuring such legendary artists as the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, the Voidoids, and an odd-duck group that never quite fit in: Talking Heads. While the other groups in the scene were deeply confrontational, either playing loud and aggressively or adopting transgressive lyrical poses, Talking Heads were…downright nice. David Byrne’s terse, naively childlike quasi-Aspergers approach to lyrical themes immediately set him apart from the snarling contemptuousness of the rest of the American punk scene, while the band’s herky-jerky compact melodicism and clean crisp rhythms were miles away from the snarl of, say, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. Little wonder, then, that they were very quickly given a major-label record deal and immediately began to make good on it. Their only officially-released recording as a trio was their debut single “Love -&gt; Building On Fire” (the title alone gives fair indication of how Byrne wrote), at which point they expanded to a quartet with the addition of keyboardist/guitarist Jerry Harrison (formerly of the ahead-of-their-time Modern Lovers), who rounded out their sound. This is the group that would record their debut album Talking Heads: ’77 (no prizes for guessing which year it was released). Jeff thinks this is their most underrated album, unfairly neglected because it falls outside the upcoming “Eno trilogy,” and chockablock full of wonderful, weird tunes. Matt and Jeff spend a lot of time discussing why David Byrne is so compelling as a lyricist. Matt says that he is an artist in the truest sense of the word: trying to take the familiar things in this world and see them with fresh eyes. Jeff agrees and compares the seeming lack of artifice in Byrne’s vocals and lyrics to outsider art. He also adds that Talking Heads’ lyrics during this era make sense the moment you realize that they are meant wholly unironically: “New Feeling” is about a new feeling, “The Book I Read” is about a book David Byrne read, and “Don’t Worry About The Government” is a song that suggests that you shouldn’t worry about the government. Matt and Scot also note that “Pulled Up” is exactly what it purports itself to be: an earnestly cheerful song of thanks from Byrne to his parents for pulling him up from the doldrums of depression. The Brian Eno Era: More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light Enter Brian Eno. Fascinated by the rhythmic and lyrical approach he heard on Talking Heads: ’77 (so much so that he wrote an anagrammatic tribute to them on his own Before And After Science called “King’s Lead Hat”), Brian Eno came to the band and offered to produce their next album, beginning one of the most well-known artist/producer collaborations of the rock era. More Songs About Buildings And Food (1978) draws primarily from the same first batch of songs the group had written as far back as 1975, so structurally these songs sound the same as those on ’77. Sonically, however, Eno brought them a quiet revolution: without attempting to remake the band in his own image (at least not yet), he lends them a sheen and in particular a percussive attack — most obviously on the hit single “Take Me To The River” — that was entirely absent from their previous work. Scot is a bit skeptical of More Songs but Matt and Jeff are both agreed that this is actually the band’s best album: unwaveringly consistent, still written in that disarmingly weird early Byrne lyrical style, and brilliantly sequenced. Jeff in particular singles out the joy of listening to “The Girls Want To Be With The Girls” tumble directly into “Found A Job” and realizing just how in command Talking Heads are over their artistic self-presentation. Scot considers TH’s version of “Take Me To The River” to be one of the greatest cover songs of all time (something that comes as no surprise to anyone who has heard our “Covers” episode), marveling at how the band and Eno slow the song down to an absolute crawl and yet retain its essential funk. Matt emphasizes that it is here where you can first begin to hear the ensemble sound that would fully bloom years later on Remain In Light: so many of the great moments on More Songs (“Artists Only,” “I’m Not In Love,” “Warning Sign,” “Found A Job,” “Stay Hungry”) are built around lengthy passages where the band just cuts loose and plays, hypnotically. Fear Of Music (1979) is a departure for Talking Heads in many ways; the second record of their Eno trilogy finds Byrne working up a new batch of lyrics for the first time since the 1975-76 era, and his response was to create a concept album that most people never even realize is a concept album. This is “fear of”-music: songs each written about specific topics of potential neurosis. (Literally just add the words “(fear of)” as a parenthetical to every single song on the record outside the instrumental opener and you’ll get the point.) It’s hard to know whether Byrne is channeling his own feelings on songs like “Air” or “Memories Can’t Wait” or “Animals,” or speaking in an imaginative voice as on “Psycho Killer”, but the result is a glorious catalogue of modern paranoia. One that feels like it comes from a more personal place is “Heaven,” Byrne’s meditation on the afterlife. Jeff raves over the brilliance of the conceit — heaven as an eternity of boredom and ennui as you are spoonfed your “favorite things” over and over again without variety until you loathe them — and thrills to the way the ice of the click-clock metronomic arrangement finally cracks when Chris Frantz roars in frustration heading into the final chorus. Scot proclaims this their greatest album, citing Byrne’s vocal performance on “Mind” especially. Matt gets an enormous laugh out of “Life During Wartime” and “Air,” a song where (as he points out) Tina Weymouth’s backing vocals feel for all the world like they’re mocking David Byrne’s neurotic fear of very environment around him. As it turned out, the one song on Fear Of Music that pointed toward the band’s future was the mostly instrumental opening track “I Zimbra.” Without it, nothing would have prepared anyone for the landmark Remain In Light (1980), where the band as previously known nearly disappears, to be replaced by a polyrhythmic hydra. This album (inspired in large part by the recordings of Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti) basically invented the subgenre of rock/world-beat fusion, and yet has never itself been equalled in critical esteem. Which makes it all the more interesting that all three of the gang argue that this record, for all its universal critical adulation, is significantly flawed: the back end of the album is glutted with forgettable music and failed experiments. (“The Overload” = interesting in theory, pointless in practice.) But who cares, as Jeff says, when the first half of it is so perfect? The gang spends time discussing every song on Remain In Light (except for “Born Under Punches,” a fantastic song that we sadly could only spare a lone “TAKE A LOOK AT THESE HANDS!” for), but it’s “Once In A Lifetime” and the epochal “The Great Curve” that naturally come in for the most praise. If Scot is right that Remain In Light is not the place for neophytes to begin with Talking Heads because of its density and weirdness (and he is), this is nevertheless an album that all serious music lovers owe it to themselves to hear. But then the same could be said for all four of Talking Heads’ early albums. Hiatus and Return: The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues and Stop Making Sense At the peak of their artistic powers, at the moment of their greatest critical praise . . . Talking Heads disbanded and took a hiatus from the studio for three years. This was telling as to the state of interpersonal affairs within the group (the developing bad blood between Byrne and Weymouth would eventually become the stuff of legend), but the upside of it is that the band took this time to release the live retrospective The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads (1982). Matt and Jeff both urgently importune you: buy this album in its 2CD expanded reissue, as it is literally the single greatest record Talking Heads ever released. Yes, that’s right, a live album is your proper one-stop introduction to Talking Heads, as this is is a brilliant, copiously thorough (141 minutes in its reissued form) survey of Talking Heads at every stage of their live career, from 1977 all the way to the expanded ensemble heard on the 1980/81 Remain In Light tour. One of those secrets that only Talking Heads fans fully understand is that they were one of the great live acts of their era (or any era for that matter), and that, as well produced as their early records were, they came across even more vigorously and joyfully onstage. Jeff considers The Name Of This Band to be one of the four or five greatest live albums ever released, and he’s not alone in that sentiment. Check it out. In 1983, the Heads finally returned with Speaking In Tongues. Shorn of Eno and now self-producing, this represented their commercial and critical peak, although in retrospect all three of the gang agree it hasn’t aged as well. Still, this is Talking Heads working in a deep art-funk mode, with songs like “Making Flippy-Floppy” and “Girlfriend Is Better” rolling through oceanic grooves (“Burning Down The House” was inspired by Parliament Funkadelic and sounds like it). The gang is also less effusive in its praise of the critically beloved “live” album Stop Making Sense (1984) than most others: the word live is in scare quotes back there for a reason (everything was re-recorded in the studio except for the drums, pretty much) and all agree that it works far better as a visual experience (you really need to SEE David Byrne in his “big suit”) than as a purely auditory one. What Happened? Little Creatures, True Stories and Naked The last seven years of Talking Heads’ career span three albums and, if you believe Jeff, only four truly great songs. You may disagree with assessment, but what is beyond dispute, as all in the gang agree, is that the tail-end of the band’s career is for the most part a curiously astringent affair, as David Byrne retreats from the funk and afro-beat stylistics of Remain In Light and Speaking In Tongues for more direct ‘pop’ song structures that are largely uncompelling. Little Creatures (1985) is perhaps the best of these records, if for no other reason than that it begins and ends with two of Talking Heads’ all-time classics: “And She Was” (a subversively cheery hit single about a pedestrian suburban acid trip) and the fearless ode to nihilism of “Road To Nowhere.” True Stories (1986) is even worse, a nadir for the band — who were tasked with recording a series of songs that Byrne wrote for his vanity film of the same name, which ironically is far better than the album itself — unrelieved by a single good track outside of the musically splendid “Wild Wild Life.” Finally, Naked (1988) ends the band’s album career with a misbegotten attempt at returning to a more groove-based approach, but the feeling is gone…with one exception. And that sole exception is actually one of Talking Heads’ greatest achievements (and Byrne’s finest lyrics), the delightfully funny anti-ecofetishist anthem “(Nothing But) Flowers.” Finale Matt, Scot and Jeff each name their two key albums and five key songs by Talking Heads.

Episode 30: Matt Murray / Talking Heads

In this episode, Scot and Jeff discuss Radiohead with Molly Ball, TIME magazine’s national political correspondent and a political analyst for CNN. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Molly Ball (@mollyesque). She is TIME magazine’s national political correspondent and a political analyst for CNN. Molly’s Music Pick: Radiohead: Ahoy! In the deepest oceans, the bottom of the sea, Captain Ahab (aka Jeff) finally goes after his white whale and does an episode on the band people most associate him with, Radiohead! And he is in excellent company this week as the gang is joined by Molly Ball, another Radiohead mega-fan — and this is a group which has spawned an extremely dedicated, devoted fanbase which sits apart from its mainstream praise — to explore the full career of one of the greatest bands of all time. From Pablo Honey all the way to 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool, the gang charts its way through an odyssey of music. There are stopovers to discuss the B-sides, the unreleased outtakes, the song that got ruined in the studio…this is one not only for people who are new to Radiohead, but also people who have been obsessed with them their entire adult lives, as Jeff and Molly have. A true labor of love.

In this episode, Scot and Jeff discuss Radiohead with Molly Ball, TIME magazine’s national political correspondent and a political analyst for CNN. Introducing the Band: Your hosts Scot Bertram (<a href="https://twitter.com/scotbertram" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@ScotBertram</a>) and Jeff Blehar (<a href="https://twitter.com/esotericCD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@EsotericCD</a>) with guest Molly Ball (<a href="https://twitter.com/mollyesque" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@mollyesque</a>). She is TIME magazine’s national political correspondent and a political analyst for CNN. Molly’s Music Pick: Radiohead: Ahoy! In the deepest oceans, the bottom of the sea, Captain Ahab (aka Jeff) finally goes after his white whale and does an episode on the band people most associate him with, Radiohead! And he is in excellent company this week as the gang is joined by Molly Ball, another Radiohead mega-fan — and this is a group which has spawned an extremely dedicated, devoted fanbase which sits apart from its mainstream praise — to explore the full career of one of the greatest bands of all time. From Pablo Honey all the way to 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool, the gang charts its way through an odyssey of music. There are stopovers to discuss the B-sides, the unreleased outtakes, the song that got ruined in the studio…this is one not only for people who are new to Radiohead, but also people who have been obsessed with them their entire adult lives, as Jeff and Molly have. A true labor of love.

Episode 47: Molly Ball / Radiohead

The best podcast episodes on parenting. Interviewing experts and talking through common issues surrounding parenting. This topic is filled with important lessons and insights for anyone listening. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

OwlTail

Best Parenting Podcasts

The Best Multi-Part Documentaries, with documentaries on Obama, Federer vs Nadal, the making of Star Wars, Netflix vs Blockbuster and more. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!