Speaker 1Hello and welcome to a special Christmas episode of The Album Years. Merry Christmas everyone. Happy Christmas. Yes, said with extreme gusto. Yeah, that was gusto I thought. Now we have a guest. I'm going to introduce the guest in a moment. But first of all, you know, obviously you know that our normal MO is to talk about a particular year, talk bollocks about, you know, music from a particular year. This particular episode, we're not going to do that. We're just going to talk bollocks. We're going to take stock of the podcast because we've been running this for about what? Almost two years now, right? Almost two years.
Speaker 2It started at the beginning of. Of the first lockdown. So I remember having the conversation with you, I think in late March of 2020.
Speaker 1It was a lockdown project, wasn't it? It was one of those things where we kind of saw this sort of chasm of spare time opening up in front of us and thought, what are we going to fill this time with? And one of the things that you and I discussed, had discussed, I think already, was the idea of doing a podcast. It seemed like the right time, didn't it?
Speaker 2Indeed. And we felt a need to spout nonsense, really.
Speaker 1So we're going to do that. And it seems like a lot of you out there also enjoy us spouting. Spouting nonsense. So we're going to do nothing but spout nonsense on this particular episode. We're going to talk about the podcast, our experience of making it. Tim has been keeping a very, very firm eye on what you've been saying about it. And I think it's been mostly positive, hasn't it, Tim?
Speaker 2Yeah, I'd say 95, 96 percent. Very, very positive. And one of the things that's been really, really sweet is how many people say that we've introduced an album to them or we've reintroduced an album to them, that it's kind of encouraged enthusiasm and discovery. And that was. That's the whole point of the podcast, really.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, that's amazing to hear, isn't it? I mean, because that, you know, at the end of the day, our kind of schoolboy enthusiasm, we're hoping that's going to kind of rub off on other people. I'm going to bring in our special guest now. Now, I think a lot of people who listen to this show will already know this guy because he runs an amazing website called superdeluxeedition.com, which I think it's fair to say has a lot in common with this particular show in terms of the kind of people that it's appealing to. So I'm going to bring him in now. This is Paul Sinclair. Welcome to the show, Paul. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for having me. So I think it's fair to say that your website. So just to explain to people who don't know about Paul's website, your website is kind of focused on. Well, your tagline is holding the music in your hands. Is that right? Have I paraphrased that slightly?
Speaker 3Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Yeah, it's very much about people that still enjoy buying physical music because obviously a lot of people stream these days. A lot of people just don't see the value in buying music. But yeah, the website's about. It's about people who enjoy buying physical product, who enjoy buying reissues, box sets, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1It's more than that, though, isn't it? Because it's also about, or at least it appeals to people that I think like the idea of the album as an experience, as a listening experience. Now, this, of course, becomes increasingly, you know, out of fashion as a way of listening to music. We do live in the era of, you know, playlist culture, don't we? That kind of jukebox mentality where you don't listen necessarily to albums from beginning to end. You don't have that kind of ritual of putting on and immersing yourself in a musical continuum, a musical journey. But I think all the people that kind of follow your site, I think it's fair to say they love the idea of the album as an experience, don't they?
Speaker 3Yeah, very much so. And I think, you know, that's. They're buying the albums that they love all over again. That's kind of. That's one of the things that appeals to them. Not only do they love the album, but they want to buy the same albums again and again with the bonus tracks and the 5.1 mixes and all the rest of it. And the other thing is, you know, they love music so much. A lot of people, I've noticed, they post their pictures up of their music rooms in their house. So, you know, they've got the luxury of maybe it's the end of the lounge or it's a separate room or whatever, but it's not just, you know, listening casually to a bit of music. It's having space, having all your records on the wall, creating an environment where you can just sit there and sort of immerse yourself in the music. And I think, you know, that's really important to a lot of SDE readers.
Speaker 1And is this very much. It's such a generational thing. Are we the last generation that this will be true of? I'm sure there's always the outliers, you know, the 17-year-old kid who loves buying vinyl, but they are the outliers, aren't they? We're kind of the last generation that had that mentality.
Speaker 2There might be, but you've got to realise that things do change. I mean, obviously, if you think of, say, the publishing industry, up until quite recently, the Kindle was becoming incredibly dominant. And over the last five years, book sales, physical book sales have increased. Streaming seems to have destroyed music, and it seems to have destroyed music in terms of form, in terms of people's ability to deep listen, in terms of musicians' ability to earn income in a way that it hasn't with other mediums. So the film industry, you know, if Amazon Prime are, let's say, paying Mike Lee for a film exclusive, he'll be paid the same amount, if not more. His cameraman will be paid the same amount, if not more. You go into something like publishing, and again, there isn't an equivalent of streaming in literature. So you have the Kindle, which is an equivalent of a download, or at least there's a proper royalty. And it's kind of interesting, isn't it, that music has allowed itself to be the one artistic form that's absolutely been beaten by streaming and the digital age. And it kind of still astonishes me that there seems to be sort of a trashing of history. You know, if I think of No Man's Work, for example, half our albums don't even have the proper release years on them. There's something really shabby about it.
Speaker 1I think you're absolutely right. But don't we, in a sense, live in a world now, and I'm Paul's side, it's kind of testament to that, that there is more information. For the people that want it, there is more information about the sort of minutiae of making records than ever before. There are documentaries about almost every artist you could think of online. There are YouTube clips deconstructing every classic song and explaining to you what the artist did and why it's amazing. So there seems to be more obsession about those kind of details of making music than ever before. You know, and Paul, you must have, I mean, you must have seen this because your website, it's about 10 years old now, is it?
Speaker 3Yeah, 10 years, yeah.
Speaker 1So you must have seen, I mean, I've noticed this being someone that's kind of been involved in remixing and you mentioned the 5.1 mixing and now it's becoming Atmos mixing too. You must have seen this incredible explosion of the whole sort of box set phenomenon. I mean, when you started, it was probably just one or two a year and it's now even like albums that were considered C-list albums by artists are getting this extraordinary lavish box set treatment,
Speaker 3aren't they? Yeah, no albums. One of them is too low to be reissued as a box set in terms of what it did the first time around. But you're right. I mean, the amount of knowledge and discussion that goes on online is incredible and there's nowhere to hide anymore. For the record industry that are putting out these sets, you know, everyone seems to know everything. So when it comes to making mistakes or putting the wrong version of a track or not getting something right, you know, they get a lot of negative feedback because, you know, the mechanisms are there for people to obviously go online, take part in discussions on sites like SDE or wherever and sort of try and sort of hold the industry to account or hold the record companies to account when they get something wrong. So that's another shift that's happened. You know, in the old days, a CD would come out in 1992, there'd be a wrong track on it and, you know, nothing would ever happen. But now, you know, there's these feedback mechanisms and, you know, you get a lot of complaining and a lot of moaning. But, yeah, for better or for worse, that's kind of where we are.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I think that, you know, one of the things is about streaming that sometimes you always have a reaction to that. So the production of box sets and vinyl reissues tends to be far more thorough than it was pre-streaming because you realise what you've got to compete against. It's encouraged more detail, more attention on artwork. I mean, I don't know about you, Stephen, but for me, when I'm doing an album, ever since, you know, the age of download and streaming, I've tried to do it in a way that's more, you know, what you can't do very easily on the computer, have quite lavish covers. Maybe use a string quartet if I can afford it. In other words, more detail in the sound, more detail in the way it's actually forced me to think about what an album can be and how much I put into it. It's made me believe in it more.
Speaker 1I'm sure Paul will concur on this, that just doing a disc in a crystal case is no longer enough. You have to think about the way you present your music. Otherwise, why? Why would someone bother to buy a physical piece at the end of the day? So that's almost a return, isn't it, to the golden age of, you know, the beautiful vinyl and the gatefold sleeve with the inner bag and all the inserts and the novelty stuff that went, you know, that people used to really think about artwork in the sort of great era for vinyl. And then we kind of lost that with CD, which was kind of almost pseudo software in the way it was presented. It was neither one thing or the other.
Speaker 3I think the music industry kind of gave up too easily on the CD. I mean, they made four tunes out of it in the 90s and then, you know, and then when the sort of threat of illegal downloading and Steve Jobs and iTunes came in, instead of kind of defending it robustly and they sort of gave up on it. And the same goes now with the so-called vinyl revival. You know, they just dumped the CD and switched to vinyl and it's a bigger margin product. They didn't, you know, I often say this, but the industry could have campaigned and worked with the motor industry to keep CD players in cars, you know, because they didn't want to do that. That was the one reason people would still buy CDs 'cause I'm going on a long journey i'm going to take a box of cds and play them in the car but they just happily let you know bluetooth connections and all that take over and there's another reason not to buy cds so um there's a sort of short-term kind of view with the music industry they just focus on the thing that's going to make them the most money at the moment and they kind of did that when cds took over from vinyl they you know they bodged it up around the time of the mp3 but now they're back on the the trail with um with vinyl which um and they apart from box sets where you get lots of cds in one box they're kind of not interested in the cd yeah yeah
Speaker 1well i was going to say i think i think that of course they are still supporting cd but only in this kind of multi-disc uh format where the price is a premium and i suppose the other thing that you've noticed during your time running the website is the kind of normalization of things like including demos yes exactly um and you know board tapes uh you know very roughly recorded live almost you know taking a bootleg that's been available online or you know available to fans on cassettes for years and years cleaning up and somehow selling that back to the same people that already had it on a cassette or a bootleg cd and that's become you know a way of filling out these box sets hasn't it kind of making them into
Speaker 2multi but i think cd as well i think sometimes artists can take um some responsibility because you know one of the things that when i first started burning shed was that cds were still great deal and they were cheap to manufacture and you found that even a lot of artists outside of the major label system would do an album then they do the remix album then the live album of this then the demos and quite often there wasn't as much for me quality control it was very easy to produce these albums that would make a profit for the artists and so i certainly think around the early 2000s cds were perhaps overpriced and artists exploited that by releasing material that should never have seen the light of day and you know i think that's something that's been you know so so in that sense i think the the companies are more responsible i think paul's point about cars is entirely correct but i think artists some artists have to take some responsibility and you and i steven you know we've often had this idea that the cd ushered in the destruction of the album in a way because it people were filling the space rather than making these statements you know form format often dictates form and as we're talking about say with streaming one of the things they found is that people listening to streams now have the attention span of an average 1980s a and r person if they've not got it in three or five seconds they dismiss it and it's kind of interesting that you know so many of the most important albums in history will be dismissed because they have slow three to ten minute introductions and i think that you know we have found that it is dictating form that everything has to be a banger all the time and this is a general because of course there are some people who are still deep listen who stream there are some people who will still take the album seriously stupidly still always listen to tusk in the way lindsey buckingham intended but you know the point is that i will always listen to the album in the way that the artist intended so the other thing i wanted to say paul is
Speaker 1i love now the thing is i never read comments posted on any of my own social media but i do read the comments that people post on your website because i find it fascinating partly because i relate to a lot of the sort of mentality of the people that are posting there but also i love this idea that people are posting on your website that a box set comes out and it's a centered around a particular album and there's a remaster of the album and there's an album there's a cd of demos and there's a cd or two or three or four of all the remixes that were attendant to that particular album and i love it when people come in and they say things like or it could have been a really good set except they've missed off the rare remixed seven inch that only came out in guatemala yeah disaster won't be buying this
Speaker 3yeah that's that's glass it's sort of you know half empty kind of mentality it's it's um yeah that's it's weird some people are just like that they'll they'll want to focus on the negative and not look at the positive and um yeah you're always going to get people like that but i think in general certainly on my side i mean i do i do moderate it you know i get a bit of criticism because i moderate it quite firmly so that you know people can have a friendly discussion and not think they're going to get jumped on or trolled or whatever
Speaker 1but it's also the box ticking thing it's like yeah that got that got that got that got that oh that's not there never mind the fact that it's shit and i'm never going to listen to it it's not included disaster and i think that's you know that comes back to what we were talking about earlier that these days that sort of whole phenomenon of the box set and that completism means that we're getting a lot of music and we're listening to be fair i do it too i get box sets i find myself listening to stuff that i'm not
Speaker 3enjoying it i mean the thing is we're in the third sort of generation of some of these albums now coming out of box as box sets so they have to think of something new to add so you know you you get you get kind of bob dylan box sets which literally have every take of every song of you know of an album because you know we've already had some bob dylan box set 10 years earlier that covered all the really important stuff and um yeah i mean it's it's i think it depends on the approach from the artist and from the label i mean some people will say look you know that's shit i don't want it on my box set and so i'm sorry you can't do it whereas other other people are a bit more relaxed and you know like you say some box sets are sort of they're all about let's compile every single commercially released single b-side extra track from a 12 inch that came out at the time and that that will be the and if that is your goal then you have to make sure you do it right otherwise the fans are going to come down on you but if it's just kind of like you know here's a collection of interesting stuff from the time and we're not trying to be completely comprehensive then i think you know you're okay i
Speaker 2think conversely though some artists you know kate bush peter gabriel uh david bowie where a lot of fascinating work that actually is arguably as good as if not better than the album material doesn't appear on box sets you know i know bowie i remember talking in the early 90s about the fact he had two albums worth of low hero era outtakes and i've got several outtakes and for example the original version of the album outside quite a lot of kate bush bowie bowie outtakes that are actually braver more interesting um so on on one level you're right certain artists will spew every appalling guatemalan b-side on the box set and then other artists the gems completely ignored
Speaker 3well prince is prince is the classic example of that isn't he because in his lifetime he didn't want anything released really from the vault you know and then once he once he was gone it was kind of the flood doors opened which was you know just shows you the
Speaker 1difference i think i mean he's the exception that proves the rule you know that the two or three artists that tim's mentioned are kind of the exceptions that prove the rule aren't they but i think you know what i think what i object to most is when you get those sets where you get the extra disc and you've got the big single from the record so you've got the seven inch edit followed by the mono seven inch edit followed by the the american remix followed by the 12 inch version of the american remix this is the same song with
Speaker 3that steven that's brilliant isn't it
Speaker 2it's so boring followed by the spanish language version of it well i think it's a good idea to do that i think it's a good idea to do that i think it's a
Speaker 3when they're in a row i agree but if you can split them up and spread them out i think it's all right
Speaker 1yeah i guess so but i mean again it's that it's that box ticking thing it's like everyone wants to have every single version and it's not necessarily about making a satisfying listening experience with exceptions i mean i'm saying you can do it as you say you can do these things well and you can do this i mean i've helped
Speaker 3put a few of these together as you know like tears for fears and um so have i exactly and but the thing i always have in my mind is that you know like an you know when that box set came out you you kind of think it's never going to come out again after this or at least you think it's not going to so you know even if this slightly kind of dodgy edit from portugal or whatever isn't brilliant you know what's the harm in putting it on because it all if someone somewhere wants that you know you they've missed the opportunity and they'll never get it
Speaker 2again you know now the harm for us it might just put us off it for good that that dodgy edit from
Speaker 3portugal well by the time you've worked your way through you know 55 tracks i don't think it's going to make sense i don't think it's going to make sense i don't think it's going to make sense yeah but also i would
Speaker 1say that by the time you've worked your way through 65 tracks you never want to hear that fucking song again as long as you live indeed because you you've heard 12 different versions of it you know and i think that's the point i mean you're right there's always something that's going to want that is that i suppose the the number one question really is is that a good enough reason to do it is that good because for years and years and years the artist was responsible for what they allowed out of their own vault and what they allowed out of the studio and now it demands the fans demand that they have every single take of bob dylan running through that's
Speaker 3true i always think the artists have had they had their chance to do the the artistic expression they had the album the nine track album in 1985 or whenever it was you know so they've sort of done that so the box set isn't really so much about an artist trying to um you know trying trying to do something artistic i think it's a bit more about you know it's a bit more fan centered and it doesn't really matter i don't think it's a bit more about you know it's a bit more fan centered i don't think too much if if things don't flow in a kind of artistic way you're right but there's
Speaker 1also i think we're only we're not only talking about reissues here there is an expectation these days and i know as someone that's making records and tim obviously that's the same there is an expectation there will be a special edition from the get-go and that that special edition will include demos instrumentals rejects um i suppose in a way though i'm kind of arguing with myself here i suppose in a way that's no different to the you know the old tradition of the b-side you know the leftover the sort of track that didn't quite measure up that ended up on the b-side of the single or on the 12-inch single and i used to love those things you know so I mean I mean your
Speaker 3your albums have been coming out in recent years Stephen I mean you're you know the box set versions are effectively denying you a box set in 20 years time because you put everything on there already but
Speaker 1that but that is the expectation I think people are expecting particularly from me now kind of I've kind of made a rod for my own back now people are expecting me with every record to do a very lavish and I love doing those things so I'm actually but that's an
Speaker 3interesting point though because that's a shift because you know 10 years ago box sets primarily were about old albums coming out again but now every new record needs to have some kind of if not a fully blown box set at least a kind of deluxe edition with some extra tracks on it and that that isn't something that used to happen so that's because I think the record labels think you know there will be no 20th anniversary box set of whatever this new album is so we've got to sort of make the most of it now you know
Speaker 1so we talked about the comments on YouTube and we've got to sort of make the most of it now you know so we talked about the your website Paul so Tim now has been compiling all of the negative comments particularly about me particularly about me he's very he really enjoys telling me about something negative I can't believe there's
Speaker 3any negative comments surely well
Speaker 1apparently there has been but anyway we're not gonna we're gonna ignore the negative
Speaker 2comments but Tim you've you've compiled some yeah I've compiled I do always tell Stephen what's been said about him and me generally speaking as I said 96 percent extremely lovely very positive so it's been it's been a joy to do and the response but of course a
Speaker 1lot a lot of the comments are about our terrible schoolboy errors that we make frequently aren't they
Speaker 3I thought you threw them in deliberately Stephen
Speaker 1you know just well sadly sadly not no I made a terrible terrible error in the last episode songs from the beehive by David Sylvian and do you know the first person that alerted me to the terrible error was Richard Barbieri he was straight on text message to tell me that I'd made a terrible terrible schoolboy error so I do hang my head in shame but there is always a few now Tim edited all of his own out of the last episode I don't want the mask of expertise to slip so what comment what other schoolboy errors have the have the listeners picked up on what other comments have they had over the over the well to be
Speaker 2honest with you I've not done what I've done this time we we asked via your Facebook and my Facebook questions they would like to ask us about the show and one I think it's kind of an interesting idea Thomas Barthelmius says I'd love you to do deep dives into your favorite drinking game artist artists do a whole episode on each and then maybe a deep dive into what specifically inspired you while working together on your collaborative albums e.g. no man
Speaker 1the artists that have become sort of part of the drinking game if correct me if I'm wrong Tim are Fripp yeah Sylvian is he one he's in there he's in there talk talk you know
Speaker 2talk talk what about the ham the ham the ham gets in a few of them I'm surprised that Kate Bush and Bowie and Floyd haven't because they've they do get mentioned well I I'd love
Speaker 1to do a drink I'd love to do a whole episode dedicated to one of those artists but only if people will continue the drinking game so if we do a whole episode uh on say Robert Fripp you must you must drink a shot every time we mention Robert Fripp
Speaker 2I will be the only one who'll be sober because I haven't drunk since I was 18 just order the
Speaker 1ambulance before the show begins yeah okay so what other comments have we or questions um maybe
Speaker 2Paul can chip in yeah well Paul we'll like this one you'll love this Chris Teig Chris Teig says further discussion of McCartney 2 would be most welcome well
Speaker 1now now I was going to say that what we should do today is we should also go back and maybe review some of our own discussions about some of these albums and perhaps we've been a bit unfair about some of them now Paul I remember you when we listened when you listened to the very first podcast you said to me I think I could have made a better defense of McCartney 2 than Tim did I think I could have made a better defense of on our very first episode
Speaker 2can I right Paul thanks for your criticism thank you anyway no I actually edited out because I did a lot of editing on that as well and basically I spoke for probably and we do this a lot um when Stephen and I do this podcast we can often speak for about three or four hours and so the McCartney 2 discussion was about 10 times longer and I just kind of cut it out because partly I'd not said what I wanted to say about it but I was more vociferous and articulate in its than is heard and I think we just left it as it was for comedy value
Speaker 1you're a very very very very poor apologist for Paul McCartney I don't remember saying
Speaker 3that Stephen anyway I think Stephen's just winding you up but but the McCartney I mean what have you got against Paul McCartney Stephen Wilson that's what I want to know I don't have anything have you said anything positive about him in any of your nothing
Speaker 1well the thing is okay right we've only talked about McCartney 2 right and pressed to play and which I've not even heard okay now I have read your your book on press to play um yeah and it doesn't make me want to go and listen to it Paul I've got to
Speaker 3say the funny thing is press to play I've actually got a bone to pick with Tim here because he said press to play is better than tug of war which is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard somebody else said actually
Speaker 2said in what universe is press to play better than tug of war and I said well mine clearly um artificial art pop wankery if that makes any sense tug of war to me didn't have the majesty or creativity or insanity of some of his 70s albums you know I quite like London Town you know I know but tug of
Speaker 3tug of tug of war has that craft work that songwritery craft work I mean it does have the George Martin production which makes it maybe sound a little bit old-fashioned or whatever but um press to play is a load of average songs sort of layered with Hugh Padgen production and once you take the production away which I I do enjoy that kind of mid-80s production but once you take it away there's not actually that much there left
Speaker 2I would agree but this is like you know press to play you've opened your drawer and there's a whole load of really fascinating green goop in there with tug of war you've opened the next drawer and it's kind of cardboard ironed underpants
Speaker 1a nice metaphor yeah a nice metaphor I I think I abuse you guys of the notion that I've got something against Paul McCartney matter okay listen I my favorite Beatles song is essentially a Paul McCartney solo performance Blackbird okay I love McCartney one if we've been talking about McCartney one I love it maybe I'm amazed one of the greatest songs ever written by him anyone I think McCartney 2 is just
Speaker 3not very good no no no no coming up from from McCartney 2 I think coming up is Stan's you know with any of his post-beat or solo work I think coming up is one of the best songs he's ever written after the Beatles
Speaker 2waterfalls it's the new long and winding road I mean
Speaker 3McCartney McCartney one I mean it's it's a charming album and he's still got the kind of shadow of the Beatles and he's there playing his bass and his piano in Abbey Road or wherever but McCartney 2 is is that is Paul kind of experimenting you know learning how to play early sequences synthesizers I mean and sort of succeeding and it's not really a mess it's kind of it's a creative experimental commercial success which is
Speaker 2inventing drum and bass Stephen
Speaker 3coming up got John Lennon out of the studio recording double fantasy I mean you know that's how good it was I
Speaker 1think I think I was slightly against it from the beginning because Tim was making such preposterous claims for it as he just has again there that McCartney 2 invented drum and
Speaker 2bass I think go I think go I think if you listen if you listen
Speaker 3to check my machine which is a b-side from that record that's like gorillas sort of 25 years oh no you're
Speaker 1doing it too now look I listen I would be the first to admit it's got some lovely songs on it waterfalls is indeed lovely coming up is a great pop song band on the run great album ram masterpiece masterpiece um I'm just not really what about McCartney 3 Paul have you got anything to say about McCartney 3 I do
Speaker 3quite like it but I mean I think the sad fact is is McCartney's voice just you know it's gone no longer the wonderful wonderful instrument it once was and so therefore he doesn't he doesn't create the melodies that he once created and I think you know there I did enjoy the record I actually really liked the remix version as well that came out but um but the sad thing is you know you can't every time a new McCartney album is announced you're sort of you kind of you're a little bit because you just know that you know his his his days are gone a bit I think he's one
Speaker 1of those artists a bit and I in this case there are parallels between him and people like Neil Young and Lou Reed while he was still alive and Bowie also is that I think every time they release an album the fan base is desperate to proclaim it a return to form aren't they and that desperation I think sometimes makes you listen through rose-tinted ears if such a thing is possible
Speaker 3I know I know I mean there's there's a wonderful track at the end of McCartney three called when winter comes and um and I listened to the whole album and thought yeah this is pretty good in places it's you know it's experimental it's interesting he has to do a bit more interesting things because he can't craft a brilliant pop song in the way that he used to so it's quite experimental and quite nice but then at the end there was this song called when winter comes and um and it was beautiful and his voice was beautiful and I was thinking wow you know I was almost brought me to tears listening to how good it was and then I realized it was an old song from 1992 that he'd shoved on the end of the record and and it was kind of like well okay i understand why that sounds so good now because it's the paul mccartney of nearly 30 years ago
Speaker 2but i think some artists managed to to work with their aging voices so people like johnny cash leonard cohen scott walker you know their later works were as good as their earlier works and arguably um bob dylan in a sense aging hasn't necessarily ravaged his voice he never had a singer's voice and he's managed to make aging work for him and i think it's kind of interesting that mccartney had such a sweet beautiful voice that perhaps that's one of the issues all
Speaker 3the touring he's been doing over the last decade you know he doesn't seem to change the key of the songs that he sings and i think i don't really think that's helped very much to be honest with his voice i mean there are certain
Speaker 1singers aren't they where age makes no difference tom waits neil young they sounded like 70 year old men at the beginning of their career so i mean in that sense i suppose mccartney had a lot more to lose um
Speaker 3in yeah i mean it's it's very cruel i think that you know the way that you know singers and songwriters lose their voice and i mean i know it's just mother nature and time and everything but it's it's a it's a cruel blow and that gets taken away
Speaker 2from you i think true but but it doesn't always happen and obviously we're seeing with an artist like nigg cave where actually his work he's grown into it i think as he's developed as an artist in his 60s he's arguably more creative than he was in his 30s so quite a lot of people were asking us about favorite albums albums that we give to one another as gifts and also our favorite christmas recordings are we had quite a lot of those somebody here steve fincham says have either of you walked into a record shop heard some music playing in the shop and immediately thought i have to buy this and walked out with the album
Speaker 1not not not for many years i have to say but but certainly um yeah in in in my record buying days in the 80s very very often um even through the 90s yeah i can't remember specific things but yeah
Speaker 2i can think well 2000s i remember specifically bizarrely i think it was virgin in norwich and i think one was um sigel ross and i can't even pronounce svenny engler which i think was the and i heard that in the shop was utterly blown away had to buy it and the next week i went in and they played the um golf rap uh lovely head which again absolutely floored me in the shop and had to get you know both those i remember hearing consolidated
Speaker 1tool or die in that record shop in manchester tim that had the the basement with all the cheap records in it you must have yeah yeah and immediately buying that anyway what about you paul last time you were in a record shop heard something and couldn't resist
Speaker 3buying it i i can't really remember but i'm like you steven i'm sure i did it you know you used to go to the front of our price and they'd have the little cd case on there wouldn't they showing you the album that they were playing um but yeah i mean it's it's been so long it's a shame really that doesn't sort of exist in the same kind of way other than obviously the independent network of well it's is the equivalent
Speaker 1now is the equivalent now hearing uh seeing something on youtube or getting a you know getting a text message from a friend and saying check this band out and you go to you follow the link and you hear the music and i don't know about you if i hear something i like on youtube i immediately tend to go and buy the album you know that's that's just the way i work
Speaker 3i think that's probably i think that's true and also on the super deluxe edition website there's people are always recommending things to other people and that kind of community spirit i think is you know wonderful okay
Speaker 1another comment or question sim well
Speaker 2here's one i've not i can't answer but you you two might be able to two-parter have you watched get back yet and what are your thoughts about peter jackson sonic restorations this is from dc daily and i think it'd be fascinating for both of you to compare and contrast the george martin and jars martin approaches to albums where you know i do have those so i could kind of comment um but i've not
Speaker 3i have
Speaker 1not either so paul have
Speaker 3you seen it i i have seen it yes and um i think it's amazing i mean a lot of people have said oh it's too long eight hours you know it's boring but um i think it's it's possibly the best document we're ever going to get in terms of like how the beatles work together and operated together as a band you know so obviously it's near the end but um i thought it was absolutely fascinating and the thing is having all the kind of in quotation marks boring stuff where they're trying to work out songs you know you need that because when they get to the end and they're on the rooftop or they're they're finishing off a song you know it means something then because you've sat through all you know you've sat through all the you know you've basically been in the position of the band members you've been sort of trying to understand what's going on what's good what's bad about this song and then you see the final product at the end i think i think it's amazing absolutely amazing well
Speaker 2i think is what's kind of interesting about this is that you know it's it's it's so it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's you think of how they've gone from being a kind of rock and roll covers band in liverpool to this you know the birth of um mercy beat and then you know via help sergeant peppers abbey road i mean the growth of the musicians over an astonishingly short period of time that's the thing that always gets me about the beatles
Speaker 3i mean exactly it was this was january 1969 so you know if you if you five years you know they hadn't even gone to america and sort of no had a hit with i want to hold your hand which is sort of unbelievable when you think of it in those terms yeah the other thing i got from that documentary was just the sadness of of how it all deteriorated because um you know what peter jackson has done is he's reframed that whole era and you know and it sounded like hype at the beginning oh they were really happy they weren't arguing and you kind of thought really i'm not sure i believe that but but actually it's true you know they john lennon was very funny yoko was sitting there not really annoying anyone just a bit weird that she was there but you know she wasn't she wasn't annoying anyone or you know really sort of um sort of stopping them doing what they wanted to do and i think it was the alan klein thing that really was was the big thing that ended up sort of making it go downhill but it looked and felt as if there was another few beatles albums at least you know well i think sometimes with bands
Speaker 2falling apart you and steven and i know this from experience with a lot of bands falling apart it's often when people don't talk they don't communicate you know if you look at say the disintegration of the smiths it seems that people were spreading rumors behind the scenes and morrissey and ma for whatever reason couldn't discuss it and um i think you know one of the good things i've always liked about working with steven is that actually both of us have always been incredibly honest and open so i won't go into it but we had um an industry manager who actually at one point tried to be very honest and honest and honest and honest and honest and honest and very divisive and actually both of us just talked to one another outside of this and i remember him saying i hate you two you're the only two people i've ever worked with who actually talk so that's kind of interesting yeah
Speaker 3it seems to happen so often in bands it's unbelievable and i think as soon as individual band members get different management if people looking after their affairs then i think you're in trouble and that's effectively what happened you know paul had john eastman linda's dad um john john and the others went with alan klein and and that was a path that you know ultimately split them up i think yeah
Speaker 2and i think you're right um okay more questions okay this is somebody here asked about 17 questions but i'll get his first two this is shane borger or borger and he goes steven how do you really feel about genesis and then he says make sure that tim tells his story about buying foxtrot again so i went into warrington rumbelows and i got angelic upstart so i'm an upstart not
Speaker 1that story again oh my god i think there's a there's a perception that i actually actively dislike them um i don't i quite like them i i think there was almost like this automatic expectation that i must love genesis because i am uh you know so immersed in that world of progressive rock yeah you're the prince of yeah exactly yeah and i and actually there's a lot of progressive rock that i'm fairly ambivalent about there's some i quite like and there's some i love and the bands i loved were floyd king crimson i love yes and there were bands i quite liked uh genesis would have been one of those bands i don't have all the records and uh actually i'm quite fond of some of the more pop orientated stuff there's an album called and then there were three that i think it's got some really beautiful songs on it very sweet well
Speaker 2we're going to do 1978 next and um i think there are going to be quite a few albums like that that are unexpected i think both of it's quite like plus a few indefensible albums i'm prepared to defend so the next one could be something of a fight i think the okay look forward to that one then we we shall we shall see a few people asked us about our collection so um penny reynolds for example and klaus paulson and it was how was your personal record collection catalogued and also how many do you have oh um paul
Speaker 1can answer the question too i don't i don't know how many records i've got i'm gonna guess probably not as many as people might think i've probably got a couple of thousand alphabetically that's all i don't i don't separate we're getting into real nerd territory here i don't i don't separate genre because i don't recognize the concept of genre uh that and there's always that problematic artist that you can't say whether they're this or that you know is is maha vishnu orchestra a rock band or are they a jazz band well i
Speaker 2mean i mean i go for my mine is alphabetical and within that chronological within the alphabetical and i know exactly i know exactly it's all because i think that you know when i first knew you i think i had a couple of thousand lps and because of moving across london and so on that became zero lps and obviously i went the way of the cd and what's quite funny is that I probably have the same amount now that I had 20 years ago. So I've got about a thousand CDs, a hundred CD box sets, and now probably a couple of hundred vinyl. So it's actually quite small. And partly for me, it's because I constantly reassess what I like, why I like it, what's the reason for me keeping this. So in a sense, although I constantly, you know, I still buy CDs, I still buy vinyl, I reassess to the point where actually my collection probably hasn't grown for the last 10 years.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think I'm the same. I mean, particularly over the last year, I probably got rid of half my box sets because this goes back to what we were talking about earlier with Paul, is that I look at a lot of them and I think I'm never going to listen to 90% of the content of this box set. And it just takes, they take up so much space, don't they? Paul, I can't imagine how many box sets you must have and how much space they take up in your house. Well, we're looking at Paul now.
Speaker 2Well, Paul's neck, Paul's neck is bent double because there are so many box sets in that room. I mean, I'm not going to use the word hoarder, Paul, but life laundry, Paul, life laundry.
Speaker 3I mean, yeah, you do have to be careful. I mean, there is that, there's that thin line between collecting records and being a hoarder on one of those programs on ITV. So, I mean, for the record, mine's all in alphabetical, chronological within that. But the problem is it's not all in one. So, this alphabetical thing falls apart when you've got piles in the lounge and piles in the office and piles in the bedroom, you know. So, it gets quite complicated. But yeah, I mean, I think sometimes I look at things and think when was the last time I played that record? If it was over five years ago, you know, is it earning its keep? You know, is it paying its rent by being in that space? That's sort of, and so sometimes I take things to the, I took a load of 12-inch singles to the charity shop recently because I thought, you know, it was actually a load of Alison Moyet 12-inch singles, He Whispers. But I was thinking, well, you know, I've got the deluxe CD of this album, you know. It had all the mixes on it. Do I need, you know, two inches of Alison Moyet 12-inch mixes in my collection?
Speaker 1But the problem with that philosophy, Paul, is you take it to its ultimate extreme and you just end up with an iPhone with all your music on it, don't you? Because that takes up the least amount of space of all. But I completely, I'm playing devil's advocate here because I completely understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 3The problem is, you know, everyone has a finite amount of space and you can't just, you know, buy everything and collect everything and have everything because it's not physically possible to do that.
Speaker 2People do. I mean, one of my cousins is interesting. He saw my record collection when I was a teenager and was absolutely entranced by it. He has 20,000 LPs. I don't think. Which is considerably more than I thought. But where are these? I mean, where does he start? Apparently, they take up his entire second floor, the second floor of his house.
Speaker 1Well, that's Michael from Opeth as well. His entire living room is basically just LPs. I don't know how his girlfriend puts up with it. But anyway, the point is, I suppose, is that I can't think, I probably couldn't think of 20,000 LPs. And I consider myself someone that has very eclectic taste. I couldn't think of 20,000 records that I genuinely really like or love. So in that case, I'm imagining that among those 20,000 LPs is a lot of stuff that. that your cousin doesn't actually like that much, but they have it because it completes a collection. It's the completism gene kicking in.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, for example, I think my albums. Well, absolutely. they'll be in his collection for that reason.
Speaker 1Exactly. That's exactly why I've got your albums, yeah.
Speaker 3But the other point here is, you know, record companies are producing eight different coloured vinyl copies of McCartney 3. And so Paul McCartney fans, you know, the obsessive ones are thinking, well, I've got to buy that eight times now. So therefore, you know, it's. it takes up more space and you're buggered. To be fair to the music industry, they're trying to give exclusives to certain retailers in certain territories and that they're not. they're not necessarily saying, hey, Paul McCartney fans, you need to buy eight copies. But of course, you know, because of the internet, it's quite easy to get hold of things these days. There's no barriers anymore. So people go off and do it and then blame the record companies for making them spend so much money.
Speaker 2Another thing that isn't kind of discussed very often, but there have been increasingly articles on it in The Guardian, for example, that environmentally streaming is actually worse than vinyl production and CD production at their peak combined. I would happily go back a few steps in terms of technology. I would happily forego streaming, forego my Netflix, if this had an environmental impact. It seems counterintuitive, doesn't it, that physical production, so even physical production of vinyl, if it's peak in the 70s and CD, it's peak in the 90s, combined is. It's less than the environmental impact of streaming because of the power required for service. This is according to certain research. And it is sort of interesting that this isn't discussed more widely, to me, anyway, especially at this point in history. Very interesting, yeah.
Speaker 3Now, I mean, I think the power of convenience, you can't underestimate it. I mean, that's, you know, in the 90s, I used to go around to friends' houses and it was all about what amplifier have you got, what speakers have you got, what setup have you got. And of course, MP3s come in and all that kind of stuff. And that goes out the window because I'd rather have 5,000 songs in my pocket, thanks very much, you know.
Speaker 2So, Lyndon Garrett, love the show, but with all the production skills you both possess, why does Tim always sound like he's recording in the toilet? Now, I've got the answer to this one, that basically the first few shows, and hopefully the last couple will be all right, the ones in between were all done in my outbuilding. Now, when I record my vocals in my outbuilding, I've got this Isovox 2 and my Neumann mic inside it so you get pristine sound. But unfortunately, it's got a vaulted ceiling, so it actually does sound like a 19th century toilet.
Speaker 1Yeah, you do have the. Well, you had a period where you were still building your studio, didn't you? So you didn't have the soundproofing in.
Speaker 2Yeah, and then when it was built, it sounds even worse. But obviously, when I'm doing my vocals, I've got the Isovox, so obviously it sounds absolutely fine. So I'm doing this in the house. Hopefully, it's going to be slightly better. And the reason I don't do it in the house normally is because we've got, like you, Stephen, we've got a dog downstairs, we've got Birdie, who can be loud, and then also an 11-year-old child who can burst in screaming. So this is why I do it in the 19th century toilet.
Speaker 1Right, right. You see, all the same things that McCartney had to put up with when he was doing McCartney 1 and 2 at home, in his home studio. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2Quite a few people asking us what our albums of the year are. Also, what our favourite year for music and least favourite year for music, that's Andreas Herr. So albums of this year. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders. Yeah, the Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, I think is great. Grass Cut, Overwinter, I think is a lovely album. Got to say the Damon Albon album, I think is fantastic, the new one. I think it's one of his best. And Milkbone, Matt Berry, I think his new trio is a very lovely album. Elbow's album, I liked.
Speaker 1Matt Berry's Blue Elephant came out this year too, I think, didn't it? Maybe early on in the year. Okay. Yes, there you go. Paul's Holding Up, that's a great record too.
Speaker 3Yeah, it was this year. I had that in my list, yeah. I think that was amazing.
Speaker 2Clark was all right, if you know that one, Playground in a Lake. And Modern Nature, especially in terms of packaging, I think the Modern Nature album was fantastic, if you know them. I don't know, no.
Speaker 1Paul, what about you? What are the ones who.
Speaker 3I really liked the new Crowded House album, Dreamers Are Waiting, it's called. It's their first album for about 10 years, but, you know, I mean, they split up in 1996, of course, and went away and then came back. But it's been ages, I think, since the last brilliant Crowded House album. But this new one is absolutely amazing. Okay, wow. It's a wonderful record, but I don't think it really did anything. It just sort of came and went, but.
Speaker 2Which is odd, given their status, really, isn't it? Well, I know.
Speaker 3I think, I mean, I think lockdown and COVID and all that, they were supposed to tour and then that got postponed and I don't think that helped. But it's a real shame because, I mean, you know, Neil Finn is such a master songwriter and, you know, Mitchell Froome's in the band now. It's a bit of a family thing going on. Oh, right. They've got his sons, Liam and Elroy, in the band. And it's, yeah, it's a wonderfully kind of crafted album, but it's, there's a lot of atmosphere and texture to it. So I'd really highly recommend that.
Speaker 1To be fair, Paul, just picking up on something you just said, isn't that true of most albums? They just come and go very quickly. Now, the turnover is very quick. I think most, certainly most artists that come from, you know, what you would call legacy artists, artists that have been going for a few years, now, their albums come out, the fan base by them, they disappear off the face of the earth.
Speaker 3It's very, it's very depressing. I mean, unless, unless you're sort of Queen's greatest hits, Abergold, Adele, Taylor Swift, or, you know, all these sort of artists, then, yeah, I guess that is the case. And I really sort of mourn the death of the single in that respect because, you know, releasing four or five physical singles from an album, you know, gave an album a lifespan. And you gave it time to breathe. And whereas, it just doesn't, obviously that doesn't happen anymore. And you get a few videos on YouTube, it comes out. And as you say, it kind of disappears the next week.
Speaker 2Everything is oriented towards that pre-order really. And I think that's a real shame because,
Speaker 3you know, in the old days, you might have, you know, one, maybe two singles, you know, and it didn't, it wasn't enough to spoil the enjoyment of the actual journey of a record. But I think if there's too much comes out beforehand, that's very annoying.
Speaker 1I think. Part of the problem, I mean, I had this with the Future Bytes and part of the problem was, of course, it got delayed. so we had to fill the void with something. And I think I ended up releasing four or five of the songs before the album came out. So half the album was familiar by the time people got it. But also I think part of the problem now is the lead time between an announcement for a record and the actual release gets longer and longer and longer. Like, for example, we've just announced the new Porcupine Tree record and it's coming out in June next year and it was announced in October. So what are we going to do? We're going to have to fill that. We're going to keep momentum, fill that time now. And of course, a lot of that is down to the vinyl manufacturing lead times now. So eight months between finishing an album, at least, at least eight months between finishing it and actually being able to release it. That's crazy. It's insane.
Speaker 2Well, the funny thing is my solo album's coming out a week before the Porcupine Tree. It's not been announced yet, but Stephen was mixing and mastering both at the same time. And he was working to a kind of October, early November deadline for both of us to get this kind of late June release. Okay, Tim, another question, maybe? Another question. Okay. I mean, obviously people were asking about our favourite reissues of this year. For me, again, not that much this year. I mean, I think the Jethro Tull reissue programme continued really nicely. Benefit was this year. And I think they've done a fantastic job in terms of the detail in sleeve notes, the detail in imagery and being very generous with presenting the albums that should be plus the extras and live extras. So I think that's been a fantastic year. Fantastic series. And I know you've been a part of this, Stephen. Vinyl, Montgolfier Brothers, 17 Stars. There was a reissue on a small indie label. It's just a beautiful version of a beautiful album.
Speaker 1Paul, what about you with reissues? I know we're kind of pre-empting what I'm sure you'll do on your website here slightly, but. No, it's fine.
Speaker 3I mean, the big one for me was the. This stands head and shoulders above everything else. And that's the Plastic Ono band reissue, John Lennon. I thought that was incredible what they did with that. That record, you know. There was just six CDs of. I mean, normally, to go back to what you were saying earlier on, Stephen, I mean, you kind of think, do you need that much? But because it's John Lennon, because it's his first proper solo album, I mean, it was just incredible, you know. He did 94 takes of the song Mother, you know. And they weren't all on. I was going to say, are they all on there? Christ. No, they weren't all on there. But, you know, that just shows you the sort of.
Speaker 2Only 92 were on there.
Speaker 3Because I always thought of that album as, you know, he went in, he did it. He came out and it was kind of done in five minutes. But, you know, he took his time and he really spent a lot of time and energy on that record. And the way that they presented that particular box set, you know, they just. It was absolutely amazing. They had these things called element mixes where they would go back to the master tapes and if there was some bit of organ that they chose not to put in the original song, they'd bring that up and sort of show you what that sounded like. What could have been but wasn't, that kind of thing, you know. And then they had the raw studio mixes, where it was less polished and they had these evolution mixes, which were like mini documentaries where it went through every stage of the recording process. It started off with the kind of scratchy demo and then ended up with the sort of finished song.
Speaker 1Just to play devil's advocate here and going back to our discussion earlier, is there a lot of that stuff you would listen to more than once, do you think?
Speaker 3Well, I mean, I found myself listening to it a lot at the time. I haven't listened to it for a while because I think it came out back in April. But it's there to sort of dip. And it's such an important kind of record. I mean, that album, it took me years to realise that that album even existed as a sort of teenager. I knew about Imagine in 1971. Everyone sort of knew about that. My dad used to own that record, so we had that in the house. But this kind of missing album, there's no singles in the UK from the Plastic Ono Band album. So it was kind of a weird thing to discover in my early 20s. And I've always loved the rawness of that record.
Speaker 2It's a great album. And I think it's interesting you talk about the raw production that, you know, the Beatles obviously were known for increasingly sophisticated productions, certainly around the 67 period. But the George Harrison, All Things Must Pass, and obviously McCartney. These were very raw albums as well. And it was kind of interesting that the Beatles themselves sort of rejected the ornate, innovative productions.
Speaker 3OK, cool. I just wanted to mention, actually, sorry, Stephen, I just wanted to mention it's halfway housed between a reissue and a new record. But that was the Prince reissue, Welcome to America. And that was a kind of unreleased album that came out sort of in the middle part of this year. And I thought that was just incredible because it was recorded in 2010 between two fairly average Prince albums that came out, which one of them was called 2010 and the other one was called Plectrum Electrum. So this was a sort of hole in the middle. And it's a wonderful sort of organic sounding sort of 70s kind of album. And, you know, it's typical Prince, this genius record, which is sort of has a great theme to it, you know, sort of socioeconomic kind of lyrics. And it was just hidden away. And that was wonderful to see that, I thought.
Speaker 1I agree. Yeah. My kind of idea of a really nice box set these days is one that kind of compiles catalogs. So I really like the box set of the Seafield stuff from the Warp Records, Seafield Records, from the 90s, Rupps and Flex, which came out, which is basically just all of the work they actually put out officially on the label. So there's no outtakes. Well, there's a couple, but very, very little in the way of outtakes or leftovers. It's just a lot of music, which I didn't have, kind of all compiled in a really nice package. And I really like the reissue of Square Pushers, Feed Me Weird Things on triple vinyl, folks, as well. There we go. So proper drum and bass, Tim, not that fake McCartney.
Speaker 2No, I think Square Pusher did actually say McCartney too. I think he put it up there alongside Ferris Sanders, Mars Davis, Eno as being a big influence on his sound. Jim Patton, and I'm sure we can all answer this one. Have you ever bought an album by a band or artist you didn't know purely because you liked the cover artwork and presentation? Oh, I'm sure I must have done.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing, isn't it? That was the other thing about going to a record store, wasn't it? Is that you could sort of, you could pick up the records and see the artwork and sometimes even just the credits, would make you interested in an album, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ooh, Mellotron. I mean, thought you knew. Ooh, Mellotron, let's get that one. Yes, yeah, yeah, certainly. I can't think of examples, but yes, certainly I would have done that in the old, in the olden days.
Speaker 3I think I've done that as well.
Speaker 2Any 23 envelope cover is like, oh my God, I have to own this. And the hypnosis were kind of similar in a way, that there's something quite enigmatic that drew you in. And you are right as well. When you looked at the back of certain sleeves and you saw certain instruments, you know, the dulcimer was that selling point.
Speaker 1Fender Rhodes, Fender Rhodes. If it's a jazz record from the early seventies, Fender Rhodes, yeah, that will always do. Sorry, Paul, you were going to say.
Speaker 3Was I? No, I was just going to agree, really. I, you know, artwork is so important. And that's one of the sad things I think about, you know, online streaming and even with CDs, just that compression of the artwork. Sometimes they'll rejig artwork for CDs. It's not even the proper album cover. So yeah, I'm sure I've done that plenty of times.
Speaker 2I was about to say, what's interesting, sometimes it's some of my favourite artists have got some of my least favourite sleeves. So Blue Nile, for example, you know, remain one of my favourite artists of all time. And I think almost all of their albums are indispensable, all four of them. But I don't think they've ever had good cover artwork. You know, perhaps a walk across the rooftops is atmospheric. And that's about as much as you can say.
Speaker 3Well, that's interesting because I've noticed a trend for basically shit artwork on new albums these days. I don't, you know, whether it's Sting or, you know, whoever, but it's kind of like, they just can't be bothered. It just gets phoned in because they know it's going to be a thumbnail on a, Spotify or whatever.
Speaker 2I think you're 100% right. And I think it also, if you look at advertising on YouTube or a lot of advertising on television, it's infinitely poorer. You know, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, even up to the early 2000s, some of the best creative minds would be involved in advertising because there was a lot of money.
Speaker 1Also, I remember thinking the Talk Talk covers were always very underachieving for me in terms of the quality of the music. I remember it was slightly disappointing. Yes, I agree. You know, I mean, the last two albums basically had the same cover, didn't they? I think Stock and Spirivine. So couldn't they have, you know, such an extraordinary record that he's obviously sweated tears of blood to make and that's the best he can come up with. Oh, let's just have the same cover as we had last time.
Speaker 2But I think, you know, I mean, we know this because, I mean, Stephen and I were managed by Talk Talk's management and I don't think they were interested. So basically James Marsh and the manager, Keith Asperton, they defined the look of the band. And I think it shows because I don't think there's a particular connect. You know, the imagery, I don't mind. I think James Marsh is a fantastic illustrator and the covers work. But I don't think they necessarily work with the music. They seem entirely separate entities. And the same with Blue Nile, I guess, that they just put everything into the music. It's like, okay, that's your job to the design department, Stylo Rouge, or whoever was doing it. Whereas I think you and I tend to, from the beginning, you know, one of the stories that people probably don't know is that Love You to Bits, for example, from No Man, that was, I think, the hundredth image that Carl had come up with, I don't think he'd ever had anything quite as bad as that. But you and I do tend to be quite difficult and quite obsessive when it comes to artwork.
Speaker 1There's no question there are certain labels that still seem to care very much about presentation artwork. I think of that label, Ghost Box, or even, you know, labels like Warp Records that use people like the Designers Republic. But certainly the majors seem to be allocating less and less money to packaging and presentation. Unless, ironically enough, unless it's a big reissue box set. And then they're quite happy to spend the money because they know that the price tag of that box set will justify the extra money they're spending on design and artwork let's have one more one more question maybe tim and then try one more
Speaker 2i'll ask you i'll ask you a really quick question here from jonathan ayala why don't you guys ever mention hip-hop albums is it that you're not familiar with the genre or that you aren't generally fans i think right from
Speaker 1the beginning myself and tim said that we would talk about albums which we are personally invested in you know we're not going to cover musical genres that we're not um we're not we're not familiar with and i think the bottom line is that my neither myself or tim listened to a lot of hip hop music at least the only time i did was in the very early 90s i really enjoyed stuff like tribe called quest and dayless soul but i'm not familiar with that world and i have nothing against it but i just don't know that music i cannot talk with any authority about it so i think it's better to stick with what you know we've kind of stuck with what we know
Speaker 2haven't we tim two degree which hopefully is eclectic i mean for me a little like you i think late 80s early 90s hip-hop i mean for me it was more listening to it from a production point of view i kind of loved the way in which hip-hop artists would mash genres together you know the the sample culture i found really inspiring and often would put really unexpected samples up against one another and in quite an unmusical way you know one of my favorite artists of the 90s was tricky and i think tricky in a way was quite unexpected unmusical but because of that was incredibly innovative because of what he put together in terms of his um soundscapes and samples you know we were very
Speaker 1clear right from the beginning this would be a very very personal perspective on on the music world uh from us yeah yeah although
Speaker 2i think we've missed i mean one of the things again that you know as i think we we often do four-hour broadcasts and miss out an awful lot you know actually we've listened to more than we discuss and often in a given year you know i'm kind of amazed that um say 1992 i realized one of my favorite albums from that year so you know i think it's a really good thing that i've been that was left out and mitchell froome produced recording 99.9 fahrenheit degrees was that it um so it was brilliant did we not talk about that we didn't know we'd forgotten it in the last podcast uh 1986 because there's so much um a certain ratios force which is a favorite album
Speaker 1for me that year we talked about a certain ratio um on another episode at least though didn't we
Speaker 2yeah yeah i think you're right i think sometimes we ignore albums and artists from a certain year because we've already given them too much airtime obviously not the drinking time but the drinking game artists which we've got to mention even if they're not released an album that year we've got to mention it oh robert did this and he did that well he's a bit of a tart he does tend to pop up on a lot of records anyway here toby little this could be a good end question if you want which is um you're both marooned on a desert island bizarrely with a very good hi-fi setup and electricity you can only have one album from each decade from the 60s to the present day but here's the catch you've got to share that album from each decade you don't get to choose
Speaker 1one each wow do we include
Speaker 2like squid game isn't it it's a bit like squid game do we
Speaker 1include paul in this too because it could be tricky to get three okay leave me leave me out well you know
Speaker 2what look paul would dismiss all of the decades and to say right i've got this equipment mccartney 2 mccartney 2 yeah he'd say and i wouldn't blame him mccartney 2 possibly yeah possibly london town he might say press to play no
Speaker 3when i listen to press play part of the
Speaker 2reason i quite liked it as well was because i'd not heard it necessarily can we shut up should we shut up about paul mccartney i mean
Speaker 3yeah we'll have to talk we'll have we'll have to take flowers in the dirt offline because i've got a lot to say about that record
Speaker 1okay listen uh right well tim what we could do let's say we 60s 60s is there an album we can agree on in a silent way miles davis i'll i'll that's my first volley across the bow in a silent way miles davis i was going for scott three or five leaves left piper at the gates of dawn oh five leaves left yeah five leaves left scott three i don't know sketches of spain sketches of spain well only just in the 60s not in a silent way okay let's go with uh five leaves left uh in a silent way and what was the other one you said that i kind of agreed with
Speaker 2oh scott three scott three you prefer scott four don't you i do would
Speaker 1i want to listen to scott walker's voice ad infinitum for the rest of eternity that's the only question i've got i mean i love it i do love it but it could it could become a morning on the desert island when it grates a bit on me do you know i
Speaker 2mean yeah but come on it's not exactly one of the later albums is it you know yeah exactly whereas nick
Speaker 1and miles i could never get tired of those sounds i could never get tired
Speaker 2of those sounds i know you mean and then we're missing out of course so many important albums
Speaker 1we are but this is i'm just shooting from the hip here 70s yeah 70s tangerine dream zite i'm sure you'd agree with me on that that
Speaker 2would not be on my list actually what would we pick from 70s actually what would i pick from that i mean this because again that was a decade that one of the things we're talking about is that we're not going to be talking about the you know from the beatles evolution in the 60s and you think of the 70s and the 80s that the music scene was rapidly evolving with every given i know year the tony
Speaker 1mansell singers with the hilton air swinging in a winter wonderland from
Speaker 21974 okay would you agree with that lonnie liston no lonnie liston smith cosmic echoes actually you know john but then i'm thinking you know god john martin and i always liked his uh one world which was which was always less fated than solid air but i i really like yeah yeah
Speaker 1yeah yeah john martin yeah should we go with john martin one world then i love that record yeah okay let's go with that i can't imagine i would get tired of hearing it let's just say that yeah right 80s k bush the
Speaker 2dreaming would be up there for me i love it
Speaker 1it could grate a bit if you heard it every single day of the rest of your life
Speaker 2couldn't it so it could but then you know i you always quite like that irritation that kind of scratching of the skin color of spring sign of the time parade parade
Speaker 1parade is astonishing i love it yeah uh come on paul you must have an idea
Speaker 3here 80s well i i like tim's idea tim's idea for the dreaming i would probably agree with that let's go with the dreaming then but hands of hands hands it is brilliant too yeah i
Speaker 2love that i think the dreaming i go for because it's for the reason you're saying could you play it again and again and again and one thing is kind of interesting here is that my um my son is now 11 when he was about two he got into the beatles and we just had to play the beatles for years in the car on the cd player in the car you'll be glad to know paul and what was brilliant about this was there was so much detail in the music that it never became tedious so he at one point became quite interested in craft work man machine and i have to say i bored of that after about 10 listens i kind of felt i'd got brilliant album masterpiece innovative but i'd got all i was going to get out of it and i over those 10 listens whereas with the beatles i was finding new sounds new approaches new production techniques and i think that goes for the dreaming that actually the dreaming would be a great choice in the 1980s because it is so dense and so clever and so detailed
Speaker 1i love it i'm happy to go with the dreaming that's a good choice that is a good choice yeah right 90s 90s
Speaker 2silence absolutely so no they're all again there are so many albums like you know songs for drella um no i don't want to read john cale i don't even want
Speaker 1to hear that once i don't even want to hear that once let alone for the rest of eternity on a
Speaker 2desert album it's a material song is a beautiful album i don't want to hear that either scott walker tilt 1995 scott
Speaker 1walker tilt is good um isn't there a laughing stock laughing stock come on okay i'll give you that we can listen to that for the rest of eternity laughing stock no argument
Speaker 2no fights right so we'll have that somebody asked a question of 2016 best year for music ever and strangely a moon-shaped pool and bowie's black star i would put in my greatest albums of all time silence tumble silence from tumble yeah oh black star my god because if you're going to the 2010s if we're not saying black star there's just no debate no i do i like those records i like those
Speaker 1records yeah i like those records uh 90s we're going to go for laughing stock though right laughing stock 2000s can we just lump the 2000s all into one decade because there's only about four albums i've bought since
Speaker 22000 well no i'm still buying quite a lot you know new as well as old but um in terms of older artists 50 words for snow black star um as we say a moon-shaped pool um
Speaker 3i would put aerial oh aerial i love yeah no i'll go with you i agree with you yeah fantastic album
Speaker 1yeah so we've got two miles davis albums and two kate bush albums is that it a talk talk and she's got walker albums as well talk talk
Speaker 3that's that's true that's that's true you can't actually choose kate bush again no can you i don't think i want
Speaker 1i mean i like aerial but i don't think it's it can't surely be the best album of the 2000s
Speaker 2is it 21st century oh god 1990s as well uh the soft bulletin flaming lips i don't want to hear that no i don't
Speaker 1know you're just picking your favorite albums again it's picking your face look at the question tim look at the question which albums can you again fantastic production okay all right what thundercat do you like him i don't know i don't i'm not familiar thundercat you're gonna give me a review now
Speaker 2aren't you no i'd love that well he's he's the george duke for our present day and i mean that in a complimentary way i like george duke
Speaker 1uh mccartney three no i don't know two what albums have come out in the chaos and
Speaker 2creation chaos and creation is a great
Speaker 1that is a good record i've never heard it what albums have come out in the 2000s that we both come on tim what albums have we both raved about together well this is a thing
Speaker 2that we've both raved about that maybe we will get we have because we raised we raved about a lot in 2001 including kid a and amnesiac if we're talking about 21st century albums there is there
Speaker 1nothing that we both agree that we like in the 21st century apart from do you not like black star no i do like it i do like
Speaker 3it okay um what about that album that sting and shaggy made together oh
Speaker 2that was brilliant actually i've never heard it to be honest uh sting the album i was quite liked by him was um the soul cages which i thought was his most experimental expansive and heartfelt album tumbleweed again tumbleweed 1991 steven nothing to do with the 2000s nothing to do with the 2000s nothing to do with shaggy
Speaker 1i can't think of anything in the there must be loads of didn't we do one of the 21st century
Speaker 2years you love that for example i do like that i do like sanders a man in his 80s still making some beautiful beautiful music leonard cohen's last album what an amazing album what a voice
Speaker 1yeah but the thing is with a lot of these records i you mentioned i said i quite like it but to listen to every day for the rest of my life aerial come on aerial kate bush whilst having to look at your fizzog across the other side of the campfire
Speaker 2and it will be both of our fizzogs deteriorating as the years go by come on
Speaker 1things that we both yeah come on what do we both like from the 21st century hundredth window oh love that album oh yes i thought
Speaker 2that was fantastic that you might
Speaker 1hit the bullseye there and i think that's the most underrated album they ever made
Speaker 2i entirely agree with you oh my god we found it massive attack hundredth window and i could
Speaker 1listen to that over and over again and i do listen to it quite often so if you're up for that i'll go with that one don't take it massive attack hundredth window fantastic record absolutely fantastic of course tumbleweed here from paul tumbleweed from paul i i
Speaker 3do know that record and i agree it's a great it's a great
Speaker 1album oh good all right we've we've got a consensus here we've got a consensus um i think that's a fantastic point to wrap things up uh of a chaotic episode that tim will be editing all the all the duff bits out of later on
Speaker 2i'll be editing all of my errors out of later on i'll be editing all of my errors out of later on i'll be editing all of my errors out and keeping all of yours in
Speaker 1obviously yes yeah absolutely as you normally do yeah okay so oh thank you very much paul for joining us i hope you enjoyed it i think it was a lot of fun to have you on it
Speaker 3was a pleasure thanks very much for having me thank you yeah
Speaker 1and if anybody out there doesn't know paul's fantastic website super deluxe edition.com um it's the place to be these days it's where all the hip it's where all the hip kids are
Speaker 2the only place to be isn't it it's where i'm talking i was going to say i was going to go back to an old question that we're talking about oh for goodness sake i'm trying to wrap it up i know you're trying but this is important in a way do younger people like physical and there have been sort of signed shoots of recovery so as i've said you know the book the designs of books the sales of physical books up all good and certainly in in wells the great cathedral city in somerset i've seen young people in their teens going to the secondhand shop buying cds and being excited by it and one of the i only mention it because it was today that monty partner's nephew who is 15 do you know he wants for christmas no an
Speaker 1hmv voucher so we
Speaker 2can buy some cds vandergraft generator
Speaker 1box set vandergraft
Speaker 2generator box set no an hmv that was a good
Speaker 1reissue from this year actually that was a good reissue that was a good reissue yeah you're
Speaker 2right yeah um yeah but that an hmv voucher so we can buy cds well then that's that
Speaker 1sounds very promising that sounds very promising uh let's hope and hope it becomes more than just a you know a few outliers like that it becomes a trend nay an epidemic a younger generation rushing to buy cds a pandemic a pandemic yes thank you a pandemic of cd purchasing and vinyl of youngsters youngsters buying cds listening to this podcast and posting comments on paul's website yeah perfect fantastic thanks guys cheers paul thanks for coming on mate thank you bye-bye merry christmas you you
PodcastTranscript AI