Word In Your Ear

Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1. Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.  Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. hace 20 h

    Natalie Merchant returns playing ‘Mother Goose as an 18th Century feminist’

    Natalie Merchant joined 10,000 Maniacs when she was 17, had a long and successful solo career and then began teaching children in New York State. Realising the value of rhymes and theatre, her adaptation of Mother Goose (played by herself) was expanded into a multi-media performance with 150 four-year-olds and recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She even made most of the costumes. And she’s never had an audience reaction as enthusiastic and emotional. It’s a magnificent project to give children experiences that modern life rarely affords “right down to the thrill of seeing people play real instruments”. She talks to us here from her New York home about ‘Cabinet Of Wonder’, along with …   … her first stage appearances, aged seven   … scanning record collections and thinking “if they don’t have a copy of Nico’s ‘Chelsea Girl’, we can’t be friends!”    … how improvising lyrics got her into 10,000 Maniacs (“who I wanted to call the Tunda Bunnies”)   … seeing Styx, the Cars and the Clash playing ‘Combat Rock’   … how she and her daughter grew up in homes without TV   … and the threat of future education run by avatars.    The Cabinet of Wonder website: https://cabinetofwonder.org   And the multi-retailer link for the album: https://cabinetofwonder.lnk.to/album Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Natalie Merchant returns playing ‘Mother Goose as an 18th Century feminist’
  2. hace 2 días

    The Proclaimers know the exquisite delight of your songs being sung in football stadiums

    The Proclaimers have only had a handful of hits but they’re songs that have kept expanding for nearly 40 years. And the World Cup was a reminder of how far they’ve reached. Craig and Charlie Reid talk to us here about first adventures onstage, talent shows, the tour circuit, the new album ‘You May Offend’ and …   … the moment the Proclaimers took off   … first records bought in Woolworths in Fife (including the less-than-prophetic World Cup anthem Easy Easy)   … the fraternal voices of the Everly Brothers   … seeing Joy Division supporting Buzzcocks and feeling “the heat and charisma” of Ian Curtis   … the unique way they write songs   … getting royalties when your hits are sung in televised football stadiums   … their first gigs playing Stones, Kinks, Clash and Pistols covers plus a Talent Show in ’77 on a bill with “a lassie singing Scottish ballads and possibly a performing dog”   … recording at Rockfield and the ghost of Bohemian Rhapsody   ... their new video imagining John & Yoko as they might be today   … how easy it is to offend Gen-Z   … and hitchhiking 60 miles to see Hibs and writing ‘The Joyful Kilmarnock Blues’ about it.   Order ‘You May Offend’ here: https://proclaimers.lnk.to/youmayoffend Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Proclaimers know the exquisite delight of your songs being sung in football stadiums
  3. 19 ago

    Martin Simpson’s 60 years on the folk circuit ‘making people cry for a living’

    Martin Simpson got backstage when he was 15 and met Jimmy Reed and Big Joe Williams and it changed his life forever. He’s been on the folk circuit ever since, still at the top of his game and with the wealth of knowledge and experience reflected in this extremely entertaining podcast. His ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ album celebrates 50 years since his first record and he’s on tour in September. And talks to us here about …   … his operatic Dad born in the 19th Century   … the message carved with a knife on the door of the Bodmin Trad Music Club    … hearing Paul Robeson aged four and thinking “I want to make people cry for a living”   … ‘60s folk circuit snobbery and its disdain for “foreign songs”   … signing Big Joe Williams’ walking stick in a space between Bob Dylan and Joan Baez   … memories of Alex Campbell, Matin Carthy, Dave & Jo Ann Kelly and “that swarthy bunch of lunatics from Hull, the Watersons”   … the Nun & Ice Cream Cone, the Frog & Afterbirth: imaginary pub venues cooked up with June Tabor   … being managed by Tony Secunda, “an extremely unpleasant human being”   … “the only damage you can do to a folk song is to not sing it”   … supporting Steeleye Span and the night cash rained from the heavens   … Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right, These Days by Jackson Browne, Mississippi John Hurt and other songs that never let you down onstage    … second-lining at a New Orleans jazz funeral: “the slow drag and the racing return”   … and how folk songs travel abroad and evolve.     Order copies of ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ here: https://martinsimpsonmusic.com/pre-order-the-new-album/   Martin Simpson tickets here: https://martinsimpsonmusic.com/ Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Martin Simpson’s 60 years on the folk circuit ‘making people cry for a living’
  4. 18 ago

    The Shadows and the chequered tale of the first British rock’n’roll band

    The Shadows were the strongest brand in British pop, adored and widely imitated. When they went out of fashion, no-one wanted them to change. Bob Stanley salutes their enormous influence and creation of the guitar hero and unravels their rapid post-Beatles decline in his superb new book, ‘The Shadows: the Definitive Story’. And talks to us here about …    … Hank and Bruce arriving in London aged 15 when the 2i’s coffee bar was a labour exchange and a social club   … entering a talent contest won by a Malayan opera singer   … the magic of cowboy culture transported to British suburbia and their four cartoonish stage names   … meeting Jacques Tati at the Paris Olympia and being asked to write a song for his upcoming movie   … the rapid post-Beatles crash – bow-ties, panto and Cliff announcing his Christianity   … “being thrown through a mangle twice a night by Arthur Askey in Stockton-on-Tees is not why they joined the music business”   … getting Hipgnosis to design their album sleeve while stuck playing Batley Variety Club   … the return of instrumentals with Albatross and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly   … when Hank was asked to join the Move   .. the Swedish vogue for “barbed wire groups”   … and Neil Young’s ‘From Hank to Hendrix’ – which everyone assumed was about Hank Williams.   Order copies of Bob’s book here: https://tr.ee/rSilFTJwfO Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Shadows and the chequered tale of the first British rock’n’roll band
  5. 14 ago

    Elliott Smith, his life, his afterlife and the friends who believed in him

    A sense of melancholy hangs over the music of songwriters whose lives were tragically short – Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Eva Cassidy, Judee Sill - and we’re left knowing very little about them. Jamie Fisher, writer and New York Times researcher, discovered Elliott Smith 12 years after he’d died and contacted 40 of his friends and fellow musicians to build a picture of him for her memoir Nobody Broke Your Heart. She looks back here at his background and ascent from the Portland club circuit to the Oscars, and touches on …   … the emotional impact of first hearing his music walking round Central Park in Lockdown   … “goofy, stubborn, wildly smart, addictively listenable”   … early life in Omaha and Texas (and the telling tattoo on his arm)   … the shy collegiate kid reading Dostoevsky who thought promotion was “distasteful”   … how a singer-writer broke through in Portland during the Grunge boom   … rejected stage-names - Johnny Panic, Elliott Stillwater-Rotter - and the pivotal moment when Steven became ‘Elliott’   .. his sense of humour – “a garbage truck passed him and he said, ‘there’s my ride!’”   … the archive of unreleased recordings she’d heard   … the Oscars appearance and signing to DreamWorks and Nirvana’s PR   … the root of his eventual unhappiness   … “he would have been more shielded if he’d been in a band”   … and his expanding legacy and adoption by Gen-Z.   Order ‘Nobody Broke Your Heart’ here: https://www.roughtrade.com/product/jamie-fisher/nobody-broke-your-heart-an-intimate-biography-of-elliott-smith Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Elliott Smith, his life, his afterlife and the friends who believed in him

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Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1. Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience.  Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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