Love is the Message: Dance, Music and Counterculture Love is the Message podcast

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the full thing and a whole lot more, go to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod.



In this patrons-episode Jeremy raises a devil’s horn salute to the gods and demons of heavy metal. He explores the etymology of the genre term, excavating its shared roots with acid rock, and explaining how heavy metal compliments our story here on LITM. With reference to Easy Rider and the misconceived ‘end of the ‘60s’, we hear about how biker culture, the legacy of the blues and changing regimes of accumulation contributed to the anguished intensity expressed in the music of Led Zeppelin, King Crimson and Iron Butterfly. 



Jeremy also explores noise, feedback and distortion as the new aesthetic tools of metal, questions why people in the late 60s would want to explore occult and black magic ideas, and finishes with a deep dive on Black Sabbath, asking: was heavy metal an expression of the blues for white guys who’s dad’s worked in the car factories of Birmingham?



Join us next time for pt. 2.



Produced by Matt Huxley.



Books and Films:

Easy RiderRobert Walser - Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music



Tracklist:

Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild 

Blue Cheer - Summertime Blues 

The Who - My Generation (Live 1968) 

Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused 

Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love 

King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man 

Iron Butterfly - Easy Rider (Let the Wind Pay the Way) 

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath 

Black Sabbath - Paranoid 

Black Sabbath - War Pigs 

In the final episode of our three-parter on punk, Jeremy and Tim stick a pin through their ears and make their way down the Kings Road for the release of Anarchy in the UK. We hear about the mercurial Malcolm McLaren, Situationism, Symbolism and SEX in discussion with the Pistols project. We uncover why John Lydon knows what he hates but not what he wants, how a prime-time curse word scandalised Britain, and ask who wasn’t at the Manchester Free Trade Hall the night the Sex Pistols played.



Elsewhere in the episode we dig deeper into what constituted punk as a structure of feeling, contrasting authenticity with irony and asking: how serious really is all this? With Blondie, John Waters, Rimbaud, the Mercer Street Arts Center and Patti Smith. Never mine the bollocks, here’s Love is the Message…
Produced by Matt Huxley.



Tracklist:New York Dolls - Personality Crisis

Patti Smith - Horses

Blondie - X Offender



Books:Frith & Hall - Art into Pop

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the whole thing and much more besides, visit Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod



Earlier this month UNESCO added Berlin techno to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, a register to recoginize and safeguard important traditions, practices and expressions. This news was met with consternation from music fans over how this honour completely overlooked the birthplace of techno, Detroit. For this patrons-only episode, Jeremy and Tim react to the news by pulling out a dozen or so of their favourite Detroit techno cuts to discuss.



We hear about the ‘Belville Three’, post-Fordism, Alvin Tofler and the relationship between Chicago and Motor City. The guys dwell on the aesthetic of coldness and futurity that characterised much of the Detroit sound, folding in the Panthers, jazz and unidentified flying objects into records from Underground Resistance, Carl Craig, Drexciya and Theo Parish. Plus, we hear one of the first records Jeremy ever bought, memories of squat parties past, and a de rigour David Mancuso cameo.





Tracklist:Model 500 - No UFOs Rhythim Is Rhythim - It Is What It Is R-Tyme - R-Theme Underground Resistance - The Theory The Martian - Star Dancer K-Hand - Starz Innerzone Orchestra - Eruption Innerzone Orchestra - Bug in the Bass Bin The Aztec Mystic - Jaguar Drexciya - Birth Of New Life Carl Craig & Pepe Braddock - Angola (Carl Craig Mix) Theo Parish - Falling Up Innerzone Orchestra - People Make the World Go 'Round

In this episode we continue our trio of episodes on Punk by examining some crucial mid-70s proto-Punk antecedents. Via the lean funkiness of Dr Feelgood Jeremy and Tim explore the interesting British formation of pub rock, with its R’n’B roots and distinct danceability. This leads to a discussion on the slipperiness of Rock’n’Roll as a term and its tensions with ‘rock’ proper. We also hear an early influence on Post-Punk and meet the influential Stiff Records at its foundation. In the second half of the show we make a second encounter on the show with the Ramones, and ask: what were they really up to? Authenticity, performance, historiography and hagiography all come under the microscope as we lead to the first definitively British Punk record: New Rose by The Damned.Join us next time for Blondie and the Sex Pistols.Produced and edited by Matt Huxley.



Tracklist:Dr Feelgood - She Does it RightDr Feelgood - Keep it Outta SightNick Lowe - So It GoesThe Ramones - Blitzkrieg BopThe Saints - (I’m) StrandedThe Damned - New Rose

This is an excerpt from a patrons-only episode. To hear the whole thing and a huge number of other conversations, head to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod.

In this patrons episode Jem and Tim once again share what’s been on their turntables recently. We hear two tracks - one contemporary and one not - from the UK Asian Underground, along with a consideration of the cosmopolitan aesthetic of artists like Bally Sagoo and Nitin Sawhney. Tim reflects on trips to the WOMAD festival and digs into trip hop while Jem shares a powerful Qawwali cut. Elsewhere we hear Swedish afrobeat, extremely psychedelic roots reggae, free love, a compilation for Gaza, Messages from the Stars and more…





Tracklist:
Nitin Sawhney - Charu Keshi RainNora Dean - Angie La LaBally Sagoo - NoorieMorelo - Promise (from ‘For Gaza’ comp by Planet Turbo Records)The RAH Band - Messages from the StarsOrgōne - StrikeNusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Shamas-Ud-Doha, Badar-Ud-DojaOlumo Soundz - Sunday JumpJune Jazzin - Shine Your Brightest Light



Books:

Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk, Ashwani Sharma (Eds) - Dis-Orienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music 

Welcome to Series 6 of Love is the Message! We hope you enjoyed the series of conversations with writers and academics that comprised Series 5, but now we are returning to our usual format to examine a watershed year: 1977. 



In this first episode we are unpacking Punk. What is it? A musical style, a subgenre of rock, a fashion sensibility, an attitude, a structure of feeling? In the first of three shows on Punk, Jeremy and Tim unfurl a general genealogy of the term as we build towards the release of Anarchy in the UK in two episodes’ time. They discuss where the term came from and how it was codified; the importance punk placed on realness and spontaneity; and contrast Punk’s nostalgic and avant garde modes. 



Tim and Jeremy make reference to three bands not immediately thought of as Punk - The Seeds, The MC5 and The Stooges - to uncover what musical work was taking place in the late 60s and early 70s that could be viewed as proto-punk, and use these bands to show the problems of rock historiography in recounting the history of Punk. And, this being LITM, we of course spend some time untangling the Punk vs Disco dichotomy. 



We hope you’ll join us as we continue our long march through the 1970s and beyond!

Become a patron at patreon.com/LoveMessagePod.



Produced and edited by Matt Huxley.



Tracklist:
The Seeds - Pushin’ Too Hard
The MC5 - Kick Out the Jams
The Stooges - Funhouse