I Wanna Jump Like Dee Dee Giles Sibbald

Send us a Text Message.I met up with my old friend John Robb over the UK May bank holiday weekend. He was in London talking about his birthday, sorry life and career (!).For those who don’t know John, he formed The Membranes in the early 80’s and he’s an author whose writing about music and the future I admire hugely – and his talk was called “Do You Believe In The Power of Rock N Roll?”.So, do I? Well, in a lot of ways, yes. Music, art, poetry and dance remain the number one threat...

Send us a Text Message.My first experience of censorship in music came with the battle between the Dead Kennedys and Tipper Gore’s PMRC (remember the “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” stickers?) which culminated in the obscenity trial in 1985/6 over the artwork for DK’s record Frankenchrist. I don’t know if anyone remembers but the board members of the PMRC were a bunch of white power brokers funded by Coors Beer, who also just happened to be big supporters of….. Ronald Reagan. The el...

Send us a Text Message.If I were to create a mixtape (it’d have to be an old school cassette cos that’s probably the last time I made one!) for Amanda and her music life, it’d probably open with The Undertones’ Family Entertainment with the classic line “Got To…Keep it In the Family”. I mention family not so much to talk endlessly about the quite rare band structure of her band, Bad Mary – in her words “a band family and family band” - but to segué clumsily into some of the questions tha...

Send us a Text Message.You know when you hear a song or a collection of songs that literally make you shiver? Songs that could make you cry at how effortlessly beautiful they are. Another thing that interests me is the neuroscience of how some pieces of music can transport me to a time, a place, an older version of me, a perhaps as yet unseen version of me, how they can seem like my constant companion that’s seen my life, the very depths of me, the heights of me, how I can go back to the...

Send us a Text Message.What’s been intriguing me today? Reality. What is it? Is there “a” reality or is it all subjective and determined by our own perception, prediction and interpretation. I think it's a word - like so many others - that has been hijacked – you see it used in order to dogmatically defend belief systems or stances and this plays into our susceptibility to certain narratives – we hear that phrase “well this is my reality” at the expense of those who are experie...

Send us a Text Message.As regular listeners will be painfully aware, I’m no fan of genres. I can hear the groans already….here he goes again getting on his soapbox…yes, well, you know you gotta reinforce the message, right! I do believe that genres are obsolete to the point of being dangerous, created by an industry to keep people in their lanes, to reinforce “rules” and stereotypes of who should be playing what music - and to make it easier and cheaper to market. The good thing is that there...