List Envy Mark Steadman

Indie music blogger Kamala Adams joins Mark to discuss all things modern indie, and to define what “modern” means.

Kamala’s picks

In order of discussion:

Porridge Radio

Despite Mark’s apparent ignorance, this band did crop up in the previous episode, but he had apparently forgotten. Regardless, Porridge Radio are Kamala’s current favourite band.

Wolf Alice

Initially on first blush, Kamala wasn’t a big fan of Wolf Alice, but they’re a varied band, and eventually they won her over.

Blaenavon

Named after a Welsh town but formed in Hampshire, Blaenavon make Kamala’s list after she saw blown away by their live set.

The Vaccines

They are the band that Kamala thinks of when she thinks “indie”. A good, solid band with a great track record, but probably difficult-to-Google right now.

Courting

Kamala picked Liverpool band Courting as her fifth pick. Highly praised by Anthony Fantano, these lads are ones to watch. Unless you’re reading this in the far future and they’re now massive, in which case, you’re welcome?

Mark’s picks

In order of discussion:

The Corteeners

Mark became of the band circa 2015, and especially enjoyed Concrete Love, although their lack of live chops might make them a less-than-stellar pick as an indie band.

Maxiimo Park

This band might deserve a higher place than Mark initially gave them, but he appreciates the stripped-back sound found in their earlier albums, and their ability to play a decent live set.

Gerry Cinnamon

Mark’s third pick is a solo musician with a strong Scots brogue and a real way with words. Possibly more folk than indie, but as a solo musician with a busker’s feel, he’s a good poster boy for the genre.

Nothing But Thieves

This in-yer-face, high energy band rock a little harder than Mark’s tastes usually allow, but he recognises the importance of his station and so wanted to leave some space for a reasonably well-regarded indie outfit.

Courtney Barnett

This laid-back Aussie pop-rock artist is Mark’s final pick, and something of an enigma since – to him at least – it feels like she’s better than the sum of her parts.

Honourable mentions


Arctic Monkeys
Peace
Slaves
Royal Blood
Fizzy Blood
Spoon
Radiohead


More of Kamala Adams

Kamala setup and writes for The Indie Scene, a blog championing new music, with articles by a number of writers.Special Guest: Kamala Adams.

Mark talks vinyl and hunts down new music to enjoy, with music podcaster Elliott Farrar.

Elliott’s picks

In order of discussion:

Weird!, by Yungblud

Elliott picked Yungblud’s second studio album for the way the artist’s message of “you do you” bleeds through.

Girlfriends, by Girlfriends

Pop punk is back, in the form of Travis Mills and Nick Gross’ project, which may have a limited shelf-life, given Mills’ busy career.

Grime MC, by Joe

Actually released right at the end of 2019 – but near-as-dammit to 2020 – Grime MC makes Elliott’s list for its interesting release, but its honesty and authenticity.

Fake it Flowers, by Beabadoobee

This debut album by Filipino-Brit Beabadoobee makes Elliott’s list for its soulful sound, undercut by rougher guitar riffs.

Foolish Loving Spaces, by Blossoms

Elliott’s final pick was a toss-up between a few contenders, but Blossoms’ 2020 album could not be permitted to slip through the net.

Mark’s picks

In order of discussion:

RTJ4, by Run the Jewels

Mark didn’t know people still made hip-hop like this, and was instantly up for the dirty beats and the smart lyrics.

Women in Music Pt III, by Haim

Mark likes to be taken by surprise, so the variation of songs in Haim’s latest album made this an easy second pick.

Letter to You, by Bruce Springsteen

Mark wanted the Boss for his list, which took him rather by surprise (Mark that is, Bruce doesn’t know about the podcast). Turns out the man’s still kickin’ it, and we must show respect.

Saint Cloud, by Waxahatchee

It’s a lazy Sunday mid-morning, you’ve got a coffee in hand and you’re sat on the sofa listening to some country-tinged indie rock.

Shore, by Fleet Foxes

Mark’s final pick is a band he’s enjoyed since 2008, although dropped off his radar a few years back. Shore has some tracks that feel like a return to that warm autumnal sound he enjoyed.

Honourable mentions


Working Men’s Club (self-titled)
Dream Nails (self-titled)


More of Elliott Farrar

Elliott is one half of the Scratched Record Podcast, which you can find in all your usual podcast places, and which brings indie music artists out of the shadows and into your ears every Tuesday.Special Guest: Elliott Farrar.Links:Samara Ginsberg on YouTubeWonderwall x Smalltown Boy, a mashup by Deco

Guest


Bryony Williams
Your favourite rockstar with a watergun, once compared to a young Fiona Apple.


@bryonywilliams | Linktree
twitter.com





Mark is joined by super-talented singer-songwriter Bryony Williams. Bryony realised she could sing in her early teens, and spent most of her mid-to-late teens honing her craft. At nineteen she was in the electro-pop duo Field Harmonics, and has been recording solo since 2018.

Bryony’s picks

In order of discussion:

Cleaning

Number one – with not so much a bullet as a scented wet wipe – for Bryony, and for so many, is cleaning. It’s a great way to see a problem and eliminate it with extreme prejudice; perfect for those times when you just don’t want to tackle that spreadsheet.

Spontaneous trips out with pals

You’ve got a job to do, and then your friend calls you up and asks if you want to go on a day trip. Are you honestly going back to work, or are you grabbing your keys and heading out the door? At least if the job doesn’t get done today, you can chalk it off to research.

The mobile

Whether it’s watching videos on YouTube or TikTok, endlessly doomscrolling or looking at people impersonating the Simpsons, our phones are several-hundred-pound procrastination engines.

Bingewatching

Any kind of TV binge can be a great way to tell ourselves we’re feeding our souls. And perhaps we are, but maybe crime documentaries aren’t the thing are brain needs right before we’re supposed to write that tricky email.

Mark’s picks

In order of discussion

Over-planning the task

Mark is not necessarily a planner by nature, but make him anxious about a thing, or give him a thing to do that he really doesn’t want to, and watch him plan and research to the nth degree.

Organising and taxonomising

A great example of this is tagging faces and locations in digital photo collections, or fixing the metadata in your music library (if you’re still the kind of person who has one, and doesn’t get all their music from a streaming service). It’s horrifically addictive to a certain brain type.

Putting the kettle on

It could be making a pot of tea, putting on a pot of coffee, or just crunching through a handful of dry roasted peanuts, filling the face is an excellent way to solve a problem – that perhaps doesn’t exist – before you really get down to the task at hand.

Pet-bothering

If you’ve got cats, they probably don’t want your affection right now. They’ll let you know when that sort of thing is appropriate. Dogs are a different story of course, but almost any pet can sense when you’re paying them attention in order to avoid paying attention to the thing you don’t want to be doing.

Honourable mentions


Imagining hypotheticals
Bargaining
Gardening


More of Bryony Williams

You can get a limited edition copy of Bryony’s EP Growing / Fading, and follow her on Instagram or Twitter for more.

Links

Support the podcast
Follow Mark on Twitter
Find more shows from the Outpost
Share List Envy and get rewards
Notion, Mark's second brain
Soulver, the back-of-a-fag-packet calculator

Guest


Ella Gregg
Founder of artist management and development company 321 Artists.


twitter.com
321 artists





Mark kicks off a music mini-season with artist manager Ella Gregg, who’s been supporting emerging music artists since she was a teenager.

Tech has always been an important aspect of Ella’s work, including her early days helping artists get their work played in films or adverts.

Ella’s picks

In order of discussion

Livestreaming

Over the lockdown period, artists have needed to adapt in order to survive, and the ability to livestream gigs has been a lifeline. The fact gigs were no longer bound to a specific geography made them more accessible to audiences that otherwise might not have got the chance to see new artists play. But playing to a camera does bring its own challenges, which Ella can speak to directly.

Multi-participant video calling

We’ve all had it up to here with “Zoom fatigue”, but services like Zoom have been invaluable over the past year, and just as with livestreaming, voice and video over IP have given musicians, producers, and songwriters the opportunity to collaborate with people they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Digital audio workstations

DAWs are an important addition to the modern musician’s toolkit. You can go as simple as Apple’s GarageBand or as complex as ProTools and beyond. Ella picked the DAW as it gives emerging artists the chance to craft a great sound, or at least record a rough demo, without having to pay for studio time.

Music recognition algorithms

If you’re in your 30s, you might remember ringing a number on your feature phone, holding it up to a speaker in a pub or a café for 30 seconds, and then getting a text with the name of the song that was playing. Now, we take services like Shazam for granted, as music ID tech is pretty much built into our voice assistants, but to some of us it still feels like magic. Plus, services like it are incredibly valuable to emerging artists whose music appears on TV or in adverts.

Social ads

Advertising on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can put your work in front of exactly the right people, based on their likes and location. Ella uses social video ads successfully in her business, and has seen other artists do the same.

Mark’s picks

In order of discussion

Loop pedal

Mark picked this piece of kit for its ability to help solo musicians create layered sounds, with something as minimal as a guitar, or with a whole set of instruments being played consecutively.

Handheld SD card recorder

The best ones are made by a company called Zoom (not that one), and give musicians the chance to create high-quality recordings wherever they are, either by using the in-built mic, or by plugging in one or up to four mics.

Music distribution services

Mark was introduced to Amuse a couple of years ago, which is a mobile app based distribution platform that makes it super-simple to release tracks to Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and everywhere else, completely for free.

iPad

Combining a handheld recorder and a DAW, the iPad gives musicians access to a portable multitrack recording studio, combined with the ability to release tracks to the Internet directly from the same device.

YouTube

Although the relationship between creator and platform is often contentious, YouTube has provided a megaphone to a raft of artists who now sell out venues.

Honourable mentions


Collaborative workspaces
Social media scheduling


More of Ella Gregg

You can find Ella at 321 Artists, where you can sign up for her mailing list to get exclusive downloads you won’t find elswhere.

Links

Support the podcast
Follow Mark on Twitter
Find more shows from the Outpost
Share List Envy and get rewards

Guest


Owen Stephens
Librarian. “What else is there to say?”


twitter.com
Overdue Ideas | Ideas linking Libraries, Computing, E-learning, and anything else that springs to mind.





Many people are intrigued by the depiction of their profession in popular fiction, and none more so than librarians, like this week’s guest Owen Stephens.

Owen’s picks

In order of discussion:

Bunny Watson

The TV company researcher and librarian played by Katharine Hepburn in the 1957 film Desk Set is top of Owen’s list for her quick wit and style. The film itself is a story that could be told today, and has perhaps only become more prescient.

Lirael

“It’s better to be a librarian than part of the collection”, so goes the advice given to the librarian in Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series of novels, who uses her place of work as a means of escape and exploration.

Oswald Bates

Played by Timothy Spall in Stephen Poliakoff’s Shooting the Past – because that’s exactly who you cast – Bates fights tooth and nail against property developers intent on turning the stately home that houses his library into a business school.

Tammy Swanson

Tammy II, as she is less-than-affectionately known in the US sitcom Parks and Recreation, is the Deputy Director of Library Services in Pawnee Indiana, played blindingly by Megan Mullally. Although she has broken Ron’s heart on multiple occasions, driven him to distraction and corn rows, the worst thing about her is that “she works for the library”.

Mark’s picks

In order of discussion:

Horace Worblehat

The Unseen University is the school of wizardry in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of novels, games and TV films. Its librarian is an orangutan who once purportedly went by the name of Horace Worblehat, but was turned into an ape via a magical accident in the first Discworld novel, and found that “being an orangutan has certain advantages”.

Mrs Phelps

Mark picked the kind woman at the desk of the public library frequented by Roald Dahl’s Matilda as his second choice, as she was the catalyst that propelled our heroine forwards, allowing her to explore and unlock more knowledge.

Brooks Hatlen

For his third pick, Mark went with the librarian at Shawshank prison, in the Stephen King short story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption from Different Seasons. His [spoiler alert] death is what sets up the expectation of Red’s post-prison life

Joe Bookman

The “library cop” Lt Bookman, played by Philip Baker Hall is Mark’s sitcom pick. His job is to track down “library delinquets” like our hero Jerry Seinfeld. See him in action.

Honourable mentions


Rupert Giles
Flynn Carsen
Evelyn Carnahan
Wan Shi Tong
Twilight Sparkle
Kaisa
Mary from Party Girl


More of Owen Stephens

You can follow @ostephens on Twitter, or find him working on the Folio open source library project.

Links

Support the podcast
Follow Mark on Twitter
Find more shows from the Outpost
Share List Envy and get rewards

Guest


Aaron Conway
Co-host of The Third Wheel podcast.


Aaron Conway | Developer, Designer, one or the other.
The Third Wheel
twitter.com





Whether they cover an entire life or centre on a pivotal moment, biopics are often Oscar fodder, and are frequently conic. In this episode, Mark and podcaster and web developer Aaron Conway get straight down to business, ranking the best biopics around.

Aaron’s picks

In order of discussion:

The Social Network

Aaron goes straight in with the Fincher/Sorkin collaboration that tells the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg up until his court battle with the Winklevoss twins. It’s a top pick for Aaron as it helped pave the way for an interest and then career in tech.

Rocketman

While most biopics arguably strive for some level of accuracy, this Dexter Fletcher musical biopic of Elton John throws realism to the wind, while stillk eeping true to the man behind the piano and the massive glasses.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Aaron picks Scorsese’s Jordan Belfort for its fast pace and storytelling that both beckons you in but also makes you think “can this really have happened?”

Dangal

This big budget Bollywood film tells the story of former wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, played by the director Amir Khan, who pushes his daughters into the world he wished he could have pushed his sons, if he had them.

Marvellous

This might be easy to overlook, but Aaron was taken with this story of the life of Neil Baldwin, which plays with the form by including the subject alongside the actor playing him (in this case, Toby. Jones), as the subject. It’s all very meta. You should watch it.

Mark’s picks

In order of discussion:

Shadowlands

This love story between author CS Lewis and poet Joy Gresham hit Mark right in the feels when he saw this at the end of 2019. It’s a quiet story about a quiet man who was given an all-too-brief glimpse of love.

Stan and Ollie

Although Laurel and Hardy mean increasingly little to younger generations, they’re part of a history we can trace back, and one that bridges the gap between the British variety scene and Hollywood’s golden age.

Hillbilly Elegy

This Ron Howard film, based on a young man’s memoir, is emotional at best and heart-wrenching at worst. A compelling story portrayed by Glenn Close, Amy Adams and Gabriel Basso, that has big and bold characters without drawing lines between heroes and villains.

Lion

Apart from linking nicely to Aaron’s first pick by way of Rooney Mara, Lion is a solid pick for Mark for the gripping retelling of Saroo Brierley’s return to India after he was adopted by a Tasmanian couple who found him in India a thousand miles away from home.

Private Parts

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mark enjoyed a particular radio style growing up. In America, that style was epitomised by people like Howard Stern, and although society has largely outgrown that personality type, there are still some performances Mark cherishes, mostly from Paul Giamatti.

Honouarble mentions

Mark and Aaron discussed these after recording had finished, but they still deserve a mention.


The Founder
42
Ray
Walk the Line


More of Aaron Conway

You can follow @aaronconway7 on Twitter and on Instagram, and make sure to check out his podcast, The Third Wheel.

Links

Support the podcast
Follow Mark on Twitter
Find more shows from the Outpost
Share List Envy and get rewards