Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast The Counterforce with Aug Stone

Talking to Brian Alan Ellis about KISS, KISS, more 80s hard rock, KISS, his writing, House Of Vlad Press, and more KISS. Check out his latest collection, The Errors Tour. I have never laughed harder at a book

https://houseofvladpress.com/brian-alan-ellis

https://www.instagram.com/depressedwriterasshole/

https://x.com/brianalanellis

An excellent conversation with Kyle Seibel about writing, performing, perseverance, and his killer new story collection Hey You Assholes

https://www.instagram.com/kylerseibel/

https://x.com/kylerseibel

https://bsky.app/profile/kylerseibel.bsky.social

https://www.clashbooks.com/new-products-2/kyle-seibel-hey-you-assholes-preorder

Great conversation with The Church frontman about his many projects, what he wants from music, and new album The Road To Tibooburra

https://www.instagram.com/stvklby/

https://www.thechurchband.com/

I had a freakin' blast chatting with the Powerhouse of ROCK that is Conan Neutron. We covered just about everything in this marathon session, and his latest Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends record, The Way Of The Neutron, is great, one of the best records I've heard this year

https://neutronfriends.bandcamp.com/album/the-way-of-the-neutron

https://www.instagram.com/conanneutron/?hl=en

https://www.neutronfriends.com/

https://x.com/conanneutron?lang=en

https://bsky.app/profile/neutron.bsky.social

https://lnk.bio/neutron

A real pleasure to finally chat to Tim Lane, author of Your Silent Face and Phil's Siren Song. Talking books, music, Joy Division of course, the brilliant 80s bands that soundtrack his novels, and much more

https://www.yoursilentface.com/

https://www.instagram.com/inlovewithplaid/

https://augstone.substack.com/p/the-counterforce-no-41-books

A fun chat with filmmaker Bobby Miller about his debut novel, Situation Nowhere, in which a new energy drink is causing folks to explode. Talking books, film, comics, and more

https://www.bobbymillertime.com/

https://thebobbymiller.com/situationnowhere

https://bsky.app/profile/bobbymillertime.com

https://augstone.substack.com/

A pleasure to chat with Goolkasian, Heather Morgan, & Adam Wade about the first Replaced By Robots mini-album. A psychobilly/surf-rock cheerleader freak-out heralds three killer new wave tunes. Plus Goolkasian tells a good Cars-related Elevator Drops story. And much more...

https://replacedbyrobots.hearnow.com/the-experiment

https://replacedbyrobots3d.bandcamp.com/album/the-experiment-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF_oA01satw

https://augstone.substack.com/

I had a great conversation with Ali Smith about music, writing, photography, punk ideals, rock n roll adventures, and her excellent memoir The Ballad Of Speedball Baby

https://www.alismith.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@mommaloveAli

https://www.instagram.com/mommaloveali/

https://www.instagram.com/speedballbaby/

FB: Ali Smith Photo

https://augstone.substack.com/p/the-counterforce-no-56-ali-smith

Psyched to chat with one of my favorite pop stars, TheBabeGabe (BLACKSTARKIDS), about her new solo career and first single and video, PSA. Honored that this is her first solo interview

https://www.instagram.com/ughthatsgabe

https://x.com/_TheBabeGabe

https://bsky.app/profile/thebabegabe.bsky.social

https://thebabegabe.bandcamp.com/album/psa-single

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_vjpYHxQxM

https://augstone.substack.com/

Hopefully one of your new favourite bands, Chemtrails are great rock n roll, with good lyrics and an infectious glammy stomp to boot. A fun conversation with Mia and Laura from the band

https://adoseofchemtrails.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/chemtrails_band/

https://pnkslm.com/pages/chemtrails

https://augstone.substack.com/

Talking John Frusciante, Kurt Vonnegut, music, writing, and of course his new book Horse Girl Fever with Kevin Maloney

https://kevinmaloney.net/

https://x.com/kevinrmaloney

https://www.instagram.com/kevinrmaloney

https://www.clashbooks.com/new-products-2/kevin-maloney-horse-girl-fever-preorder

https://twodollarradio.com/products/maloney-kevin

https://augstone.substack.com/

Always a blast to chat with Lily & Alex from Fightmilk. No Souvenirs is one of the best albums of 2024

https://fightmilkisaband.bandcamp.com/album/no-souvenirs

https://x.com/fightmilkband

https://www.instagram.com/fightmilkisaband

https://bsky.app/profile/fightmilkband.bsky.social

Excellent read from their label boss Giles Richards https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/nov/27/i-set-up-my-own-indie-label-from-brexits-brutality-to-the-joy-of-diy-music-heres-what-i-learned

Aug Stone chats to Kimaya Diggs about her lovely songs and the challenges of making music these days

https://www.kimayadiggs.com/

https://kimayadiggs.substack.com/

https://kimayadiggs.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/kimayadiggs/

https://augstone.substack.com/

Aug Stone chats to one of his favourite authors, Steve Aylett, about his dazzling and hilarious new book, The Book Lovers

https://www.steveaylett.com/

https://augstone.substack.com/p/the-counterforce-no-51-bauhaus

Aug Stone talks to the man behind Glass Records, David Barker, who has brought much excellent music into the world by the likes of David J, The Jacobites, The Pastels, The Jazz Butcher, Spacemen 3, The Perfect Disaster, and even a mini-LP by The Replacements

https://glassmodern.bandcamp.com/album/glass-remade-remodelled

https://glassmodern.bandcamp.com/

https://glassredux.bandcamp.com/

https://glassminiature.bandcamp.com/

Aug Stone chats to one of his favourite songwriters, Mikey Georgeon, about Mikey's recent The Middle People album, his adventures in Athens & Georgia (the OG ones), the art of making moments, and much more

https://mikeygeorgeson.com/

https://themiddlepeople.bandcamp.com/album/revenge-of-the-killjoys

https://www.alldonebykindness.com/

https://www.instagram.com/mikeygeorgeson/

https://augstone.substack.com/

Aug Stone chats with author John Patrick Higgins about David Coverdale, P.G. Wodehouse, The Smiths, and of course his new novel, Fine 

https://johnpatrickhiggins.blogspot.com/

https://www.saggingmeniscus.com/catalog/fine/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/johnpatrickhiggins/

Twitter: https://x.com/JohnnyMuggins

Aug's Substack: https://augstone.substack.com/

Aug Stone chats with Lou Mathews & Jim Gavin about the funniest books they know, Lou’s new novel Shaky Town on Jim’s new publishing imprint Tiger Van Books, Los Angeles, Thomas Pynchon, Lodge 49, and a whole lot more 

https://www.tigervanbooks.com/shaky-town 

https://bookshop.org/books/shaky-town/9781735303802 

https://twitter.com/tigervanbooks 

​

Aug Stone talks to Mikey Georgeson about his new record Simply The Best, dressing up, trusting the creative emergent process, felt intensities, fortuitous ice cream vans and other cosmic coincidences, David Bowie, & much more  

https://www.mrmikey.net/ 

http://mikeygeorgeson.com/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mistersolo 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeygeorgeson/ 

Aug Stone chats to Rachel Love about her first ever solo album Picture In Mind, getting the Ramones’ autographs, ping pong, Dolly Mixture, and much more  

https://rachellove.bandcamp.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/racheldollymixture/ 

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Aug Stone chats to Lana Bastašić, the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature winner, about her debut novel Catch The Rabbit, visiting the places James Joyce lived, the works of Vladimir Nabokov, Yuz Aleshkovsky, Aglaja Veteranyi, Magda Szabó, Per Petterson and many other authors, tips for writing, Bosnian curse words, and much more 

https://lanabastasic.com/ 

https://restlessbooks.org/lana-bastasic 

Aug Stone talks to Møtrik’s Erik Golts & Dave Fulton about their new record MØØN: The Cosmic Electrics of MØTRIK, Krautrock and other cosmic grooves, ‘circus music’, and a whole lot more 

Pre-Order the album - hthttps://pocp.co/motrik

https://motrik.bandcamp.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/motrikband 

https://www.instagram.com/motrikband/ 

https://www.jealousbutcher.com/ 

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Aug Stone talks to Philip Jeays about his excellent new album Blossoms & Bicycles, Jacques Brel, David Bowie, the importance of songs meaning things and much more.  

https://philipjeays.bandcamp.com/ 

https://www.jeays.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/PhilipJeays 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwwoi3AFPh_QAvBzpYMB8rA 

Aug Stone talks to author and comedian Mike Carlon about Van Halen, 80s pop culture, his new book The Ruin Of Souls, and much more  

Mike’s site - mikecarlon.com  

Uncorking A Story podcast - MikeCarlon.com/podcast  

All socials: @uncorkingastory  

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Aug Stone talks to prolific psychedelic popster Anton Barbeau about his new album Oh The Joys We Live For and a whole lotta pop music  

http://www.antonbarbeau.com/ 

Twitter: @antonbarbeau 

https://bigstirrecords.com/anton-barbeau 

Aug Stone talks to author John Higgs about his excellent new book, William Blake Vs The World. There’s A LOT of talk about Blake. And a bit about Iron Maiden too.

https://johnhiggs.com/ 

https://uk.bookshop.org/books/william-blake-vs-the-world/9781474614351 

https://twitter.com/johnhiggs/ 

Aug Stone talks to Ari Neufeld & Dominic Appleton of the London dream pop/space rock band Breathless about the 30th anniversary reissue of their Between Happiness And Heartache 

http://www.tenorvossa.co.uk/pages/Breathless.html 

Aug Stone talks to Belgian artist Brecht Evens about his excellent new book The City Of Belgium, his ideas about color and composition, endless discos, a ‘very spectacular, amusing & exciting bout of psychosis’ in Tokyo eight years ago, his next 500 page book, and much more 

http://www.brechtevens.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/evens.brecht/ 

https://drawnandquarterly.com/city-belgium 

Aug Stone talks to Amelia Fletcher & Rob Pursey of The Catenary Wires about writing letters to The Cure, doing a gig with Vaginal Davis in LA, starting a record label in this day and age, their new album Birling Gap with its songs of modern paranoia, coming to recognize change, frozen relationships, the state of England, 80s discos, and much more 

http://catenarywiresband.com/ 

https://catenarywires.bandcamp.com/album/birling-gap 

https://twitter.com/catenarywires 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unxfeREtlb4 

Aug Stone goes through the new Fightmilk album, ‘Contender’ with Lily & Alex via Dollywood and other theme parks, ‘maritime narratives’,  New Order lyrics, favourite Pulp albums, loveable otters, and much more  

https://fightmilkisaband.bandcamp.com/album/contender 

Twitter: @fightmilkband 

​

Aug Stone chats with writer Reggie Chamberlain-King and Swan River Press publisher Brian Showers about early 20th century Irish clergyman, linguist, writer, & early radio broadcaster Conall Cearnach, Swan River’s recently published collection of Cearnach’s work ‘The Fatal Move & Other Stories’, the Irish discovery of America, and much more 

Swan River Press site - http://www.swanriverpress.ie/ 

Buy ‘The Fatal Move’ - http://swanriverpress.ie/title_fatal.html 

Buy ‘Uncertainties Vol. 5’ - http://swanriverpress.ie/title_uncertainties5.html 

Twitter: @SwanRiverPress 

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Aug Stone goes over the long and interesting career of The Real Tuesday Weld with Stephen Coates as he brings things to a close with a trio of final albums  

https://therealtuesdayweld.com/home 

https://www.facebook.com/therealtuesdayweld 

https://twitter.com/realtuesdayweld 

https://www.instagram.com/realtuesdayweld/ 

Aug Stone talks to Andrew Shaw of The Silent Academy about the nature of memory, Star Wars, Eastern philosophy, his new book coordinates, and much more 

https://www.silentacademy.com/ 

Twitter: @silentacademy 

IG: @thesilentacademy 

Aug Stone talks to Ben Siddall from The Lodger about their comeback after a decade, new album Cul-De-Sac Of Love, the song ‘Different Drum’, many many rock and pop bands, and much more 

@thelodgerband 

https://www.facebook.com/thelodgerband 

https://www.instagram.com/thelodgerband/ 

https://album.link/i/1552769015 

Aug Stone chats to author Peter Bebergal about his new book Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots Of Dungeons & Dragons, his own D&D games, psychogeography, music, and a whole lot more 

Twitter: @peterbebergal 

IG: @peter_bebergal 

http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/appendix-n/ 

​

Aug Stone talks to Norwegian guitarist Hedvig Mollestad about her killer new album Ding Dong. You’re Dead, motherhood & her ‘Maternity Beat’ project, Black Sabbath, a Two Ronnies sketch, and much more 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HedvigMollestadTrio/ 

Twitter: @HedvigMollestad  

Instagram: @HedvigMollestadTrio 

Buy the album: https://boomkat.com/products/ding-dong-you-re-dead 

Aug Stone talks to author Steve Aylett about his new comic Hyperthick, the legacy of Lint, why he finds hens so hilarious, seeing ideas as shapes, treating the reader with intelligence and respect, Trickster archetypes, stand-up comedy, and much more 

https://www.steveaylett.com/ 

Twitter: @steveaylett 

Aug Stone talks to graphic designer, comics artist, and author Rian Hughes about his mammoth new book XX, punk rock, unique London nightclubs, book cover vs album sleeve design, and much more  

Twitter: @rianhughes 

https://www.devicefonts.co.uk/ 

https://celestialmechanic.bandcamp.com/ 

Aug Stone talks to The Jangling Man himself, Martin Newell, about his upcoming reissue of The Off White Album, the new record he’s just recorded, writing a libretto for Rip Van Winkle, his thoughts on The Kinks, Slade, and White Reaper, the cluelessness of ‘the music biz’, and much more  

Twitter: @Cleaners_Venus1 

https://thecleanersfromvenus.bandcamp.com/ 

https://capturedtracks.com/artist/martin-newell/ 

Young Southpaw talks to musician and raconteur Mark Reeder about his film B Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989, putting on Joy Division’s only Berlin gig, illegal punk rock shows behind the Wall in East Germany, and much more 

https://mfsberlin.com/ 

https://markreeder.bandcamp.com/ 

Twitter: @markreedermfs 

IG: @ markreeder.mfs 

https://www.youngsouthpaw.com/ 

Young Southpaw: You were Factory Record’s man in Berlin? 

Mark Reeder: Well, I knew Joy Division, I knew Ian Curtis even before he was in a band. Rob Gretton, who became their manager, was a DJ at one of the clubs in Manchester. I used to work at a record shop and I’d supply these DJs with all their records, make suggestions and stuff. And when Joy Division actually made their first single, they came into the shop and asked me if I’d put it in the shop and sell it, which I did, of course. An Ideal For Living. So I knew the people who were involved, and I knew Tony Wilson as well. He’d come in every Saturday evening and ask me to put some records aside, any cool ones. So I got really involved with them. And when I moved to Germany, the first thing Rob Gretton said was ‘can I send you some records and you can send them to the radio stations and maybe we’ll get some airplay? You never know, we might get a gig.’ And no one was remotely interested (laughs) in this miserable band from Manchester. They didn’t care. We didn’t get any reaction at all.  

YS: And you put on their one show in Berlin. What was that like? 

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE TO FIND OUT  

Young Southpaw talks to Dutch artist, Hanco Kolk, about his new Meccano book, Billy Wilder films, his soundtrack choices to suit his different working methods, and much more 

https://hancokolk.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/hancokolk/ 

https://www.youngsouthpaw.com/ 

Hanco Kolk: When I’m sketching, it’s different than when I’m inking. When I’m sketching I need to clear my head. There’s this little voice in my head that says ‘you’re never gonna be there. You’ve fooled the public for 30 years but now it’s over.’ So I have to have real loud music, just to put those ideas out of my head. But when I’m inking it’s just nice lines so different music, soundtracks mostly. I love Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone soundtracks. It has to be a bit theatrical, it has to be big. But when I’m sketching it could be hardcore rap, or metal, or anything. Anything that keeps my blood going.  

Young Southpaw: What have you been listening to recently? 

HK: A Dutch artist called Spinvis, who is a bit arty but his production is fantastic, his songs are great, and I really love his music. Sometimes you have music that you feel under your skin, like ‘oh yeah, this feels good’. This is that kind of music. He’s also a friend. We met when I was doing artwork for him. Apparently he always wanted to be a comic artist and I always wanted to make music so we live each other’s dreams. What I liked about him first time we met was I was working on artwork for a song of his that is really melancholic, a deep and poetic song, and he came in and took his guitar and made a carnival version of it. Someone who takes himself not too seriously, I love that. That’s how we became friends. Sometimes I draw live onstage with him and the band.  

Young Southpaw chats to Aussie indie pop legend Mark Monnone about dressing up as KISS, the Lost & Lonesome Recording Co.’s incredible output, getting cassettes from the rubbish tip, his favourite albums of all-time, The Lucksmiths, and much more 

@MonnoneAlone 

https://lostandlonesome.bandcamp.com/ 

Mark Monnone: When I met the guys in The Lucksmiths in high school, I really clicked with them. Even though musically it was probably a little bit different than what I was listening to. But it was getting together with people who were quite, I guess, organized and really keen to rehearse and just write songs as much as possible. Up until that point I was basically playing covers and trying to write a few of my own songs, but when I met Marty Donald in high school, he just had notebooks upon notebooks full of lyrics. And I was captivated by that whole aspect. I didn’t realize that people were actually dedicating all their free time to sitting around writing songs. So that was a turning point. 

Young Southpaw: What stuff were you listening to then? 

MM: Oh man, just like your mixed grab bag of teenage boy stuff. Jimi Hendrix, The Ramones, Rolling Stones, basically bands with great back catalogues that you could dive into. I was really into Creedence. The Kinks. A lot of 60s stuff. Whereas Marty was listening to more 80s indie pop stuff. A lot of The Smiths and Lloyd Cole. So that was interesting, being opened up to a different world of music as well.  

YS: Do you remember the first song you ever wrote? 

MM: Uh yeah (laughs). Ok so, when I was in about Year 7 or Year 8, through my sister again, I started listening to Midnight Oil. I’m not sure how much you know about Midnight Oil in the States but...  So when I was about 13, 14, I sort of fancied myself as a bit of a political activist (laughs) and I got really into what Midnight Oil was espousing - land rights for indigenous people and nuclear disarmament, things like that so...I didn’t really understand the mechanics of it all, I just had this real surface level passion to fight the power. And I started writing a fair few horrible (laughs) sort of anthems. They were pretty terrible. I mean I’m sort of embarrassed to even tell you that much. I think the lowest point, and my friends bring this up occasionally, was one song that was called ‘Butcher Baker Uranium Miner’ (laughs) and it was just really horrific.  

https://www.youngsouthpaw.com/

Young Southpaw talks to Peter Coviello about his upcoming book ‘Vineland Reread’ and the wonderful - very funny and very prescient - world of Thomas Pynchon’s novels 

Twitter: @pcoviell 

Buy the book - https://cup.columbia.edu/book/vineland-reread/9780231185219 

Peter Coviello: As you know, there’s a certain kind of dude who would, like, push Pynchon on you, you know? As a dude who knew a lot and had a lot of information and things like that. And those were not always my dudes. So I was sort of wary. You know what I mean? There’s a certain quality of a very dude-ish delectation around Pynchon that was not really my thing. And so you’re heard of him because you’re in school and you’re reading things, but then after graduation a clutch of my friends had moved to Chicago, I’d moved away and I came back and I got to see them. That was a tremendous joy in the way of being 23, and seeing your friends that you haven’t seen for years, so you’re drunk all the time and you’re just very happy to see each other. And what I realized with this set of friends - John, Laura, and Enrique - is that they’d all been reading this one book. And that book was ‘Vineland’. They were just delighted by it in the way like the way that you’d be delighted by a record. They just wanted to talk about it, and they wanted to fight about like what track was coolest, and I was like ‘alright’. So the first Pynchon I read was ‘Vineland’, which was shattering to me not because I understood it or anything, I just thought it was so funny. There hadn’t been a book I’d read where I had laughed so hard and so self-endangeringly, I thought I was going to rupture something internal. After that I read ‘The Crying Of Lot 49’, which, of course, is smaller and easier to digest and funny. And then I went back to ‘Vineland’. And then it lifted off from there. But ‘Vineland’ was really my first immersive experience. And it was with a handful of other people and that was a way to stay close to them. It was totally like how you fight about a record when it came out. And this was 1994, we had lots of records to fight about, 23 years old as we were. 

Young Southpaw chats with writer Jeremy Allen about his excellent upcoming Serge Gainsbourg biography, Relax Baby Be Cool. We talk about his meetings with Jane Birkin, Anna Karina, and Mick Harvey, amongst others, for his research. There was so much to cover it us took 38 minutes to get to ‘Je T’aime...’ 

https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Jeremy-Allen/Relax-Baby-Be-Cool--The-Artistry-And-Audacity-Of-Serge-Gainsbourg/25438425 

twitter.com/jeres 

instragram.com/jeremiad 

Jeremy Allen: He was so musically voracious, and acquisitive. He stole from everywhere. And for me, it’s probably that point, from writing about Serge, that I really got into jazz, and I’ve been getting into reggae more. It’s almost like Serge is the touchpoint and I’ve gone further into some of the stuff that he got into, that I probably should have got into before, really. Everything he did really, he kind of stole from black music and Frenchified it. Jazz, to begin with. Then he goes through his rock n roll period, he gets quite into the yé-yé writing, and he does it in a quite cynical way, actually. I guess the only time when he’s sort of listening to white music is when he’s copying swinging Carnaby Street, which is coming from America anyway, coming from rock n roll and rhythm & blues and all that sort of thing. Also, he made an album called Percussions where he ripped off a load of drum beats from Olatunji, this famous Nigerian drummer. It was very naughty because he didn’t credit him or tell him, but he built songs around his rhythms. And then he does reggae... So he did this throughout his career, stealing from black music. And from classical music - Chopin, Ravel, Dvořák...  

It was very meta, very Dada-ist. I don’t think many people had done that in music at that time. If you listen to a song like ‘Contact’ by Brigitte Bardot - just listen to that song! - it was made in 1968 and it’s like techno thirty years too early. It’s incredible, it blows my mind! You just think ‘wow’, he’s looping, and he’s playing with musique concrète. He was working with Colombier at the time, who had been working with Pierre Schaeffer, I think, so maybe that was where that influence came in. Serge was brilliant at finding people to work with. That’s a real gift. Bowie had it, Madonna for a while, though maybe not so much in recent years. But it’s a real talent in itself to find the right people to work with. But Serge also made all this great music, all this varied music, and right at the center of it was him so he knew what he was doing.  

Young Southpaw chats to comedian and Whose Line Is It Anyway? star Greg Proops about late 70s concert adventures, life in London, Glasgow audiences, AC/DC, James Bond, and much more 

https://www.gregproops.com/ 

https://twitter.com/gregproops 

https://www.instagram.com/proopdog/ 

https://www.youngsouthpaw.com/

Greg Proops: I saw AC/DC in 1978. My cousin Donny and I drove down to San José. They weren’t headlining, if you can believe this. It was Ronnie Montrose. Ronnie Montrose with Gamma, this was after he was in Montrose with Sammy Hagar. AC/DC was the middle act, and that’s who we went to see. We dressed up at my house and I still have pictures of us, Polaroids. I found them again in my garage during the beginning of the containment, cause I was going through everything. We’re being total idiots in the pictures and I’m wearing like a tweed jacket and a long scarf, and Donny’s got a ruffled shirt on. So on the way down we’re smoking weed and Donny goes ‘let’s just pretend to be English the whole time and see if we can fool those motorheads’. And I’m like ‘I’ll do it’. So we get there, we put on these cod English accents, and everybody’s talking to us and asking us about England. And we’re just lying, right? (adopts British accent) ‘oh yeah, Brighton, yeah, it’s great’. So that was 45 minutes in line of just pretending. And because we looked so fruitopian, everybody was like ‘ok’.  

So AC/DC comes on and they were just sensational. They’re one of the best rock outfits. The first time I saw The Clash, The Ramones, and AC/DC were the most straight ahead fury. And really good. Bon had no shirt, the tightest jeans in the world, tennis shoes. Angus came out with the schoolboy uniform, the whole thing, with the bag and everything. And of course that’s shed, one by one by one. And there was no chanting ‘Angus’ in those days but we knew who he was. And the part of the show that blew everyone’s minds was, one, their attack. Phil, Malcolm, and Cliff in the back, then Bon up front with Angus as satellite. And they came at you. Angus never stopped banging his head. At a certain point you’re like ‘you must have brain damage’. So then Angus and Bon disappear from the stage and it’s just the three of them banging away. And everyone’s like ‘huh? what has happened?’ Cut to - great commotion towards the front of the stage. He had a sneaky cordless guitar with a radio transmitter, which was like unbelievably high tech in those days. This is the 70s. And Bon is carrying Angus on his shoulders like a child, and Angus is furiously headbanging, screaming away a solo, and he comes right through the crowd. Like the circus, like vaudeville. And people were just like (screams) ‘YES!’  It was the most awesome thing. Better than pyrotechnics. There were no flash pots, nothing. They were a straight, stripped down band with crappy lighting. And it was really exciting. Cause they’re rock n roll. And then Ronnie Montrose came on and we split. To show our contempt for him never being able to follow how awesome AC/DC were.  

So cut to the 90s, I’m drunk and I’m in England. I come home late and we’ve just gotten cable. They didn’t get cable until the 90s in England. So now we’ve got all these channels, and there was one channel that just showed old shows. And I’m kinda high, I’ve come home from a gig, I turn on the TV and it’s AC/DC from 1978, at a U.K. university. And as I watch, I realize I saw this set. It was very exciting.  

..... 

Greg Proops: When I was seven, I had to go to Sunday School that year for some reason. My mother got a notion that it would be real important for me to get some churchin’. They bought me a little navy blue suit, with a white shirt and this clip-on tie. I’d wear it to church with dress shoes. And then when church was over in the afternoon, I’d go ‘can I keep the suit on? I just need to wear it for the rest of the day.’ Then I’d get my Star Trek tracer gun and (sings James Bond theme), all around the apartment building, in the pool, just shooting other kids with the tracer gun. But when you have the suit on, my small mind equated James Bond, Sean Connery, the suit, the gun, it was what you could aspire to be as a seven-year-old. A friend of my dad’s bought me the James Bond kit, this attaché that opened up, a knife came out one end, then there was a radio that turned into a machine gun, and a camera that turned into a Luger. That was pretty hot stuff.  

Young Southpaw: What’s your favourite Bond theme? 

GP: I’m partial to ‘Thunderball’, only because it’s not popular and no one ever plays it. The words are kinda weird, but I love how Tom Jones sings it. I think the two best are Shirley Bassey ones - ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Diamonds Are Forever’. ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ is a classy little song. I was glad they brought her back a bunch of times, that was great. The other one I really love is ‘License To Kill’. Because it has nothing to do with Bond at all, it’s just so awesome that they got Gladys Knight to do it..... There’s a curry on Dean Street in London that we always ate at, right around the corner from Whose Line’s executive offices. It was cheap and shitty, and we’d just guzzle beer because it was open late, the only places you could get beer late in the those days. I think the only record they had was the album of ‘License To Kill’. Cause every 15-20 minutes you heard ‘License To Kill’. And the first time we went there, my English friend Paul pointed out to me that on every single chorus Gladys Knight goes ‘I’ve got a license to kilt’. So have a listen, cause I’m pretty sure she does.  

Young Southpaw chats to Henry Kaiser about his phenomenal new record A Love Supreme Electric, Coltrane & Miles, Thomas Pynchon, guitars on Antarctica, and much more 

https://henrykaiser.bandcamp.com/ 

https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-love-supreme-electric-a-love-supreme-and-meditations 

https://www.youtube.com/c/CuneiformRecords/videos 

https://www.youngsouthpaw.com/

Henry Kaiser: I really got into music in high school. I think it was the San Francisco music scene, the kind of live gigs we could go to. We could go and see all kinds of great Indian music at the Ali Akbar College Of Music, go to all-night concerts of Indian music. We’d go to The Avalon, Winterland, and The Fillmore and see amazing things. Amazing bills that Bill Graham would book, where he’d put on B.B. King, Charles Lloyd, and Love, something like that. So I just got to see a lot of music, there was underground radio, there was non-commercial radio. I heard 20th century classical music, experimental music. And I fell in love with enjoying music as a consumer in high school. I didn’t start playing guitar until I got to college. Got a guitar in 1971. November 1st. Then I became a producer instead of just a consumer, slowly. 

Young Southpaw: Was there something in particular that made you want to pick up a guitar? 

HK: Three experiences that happened in the same week made me want to pick up a guitar. I heard an album called Topography Of The Lungs with Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Hann Bennink, and I could identify - like Derek Bailey was talking directly to me with his guitar. And I went to a really great John Fahey concert, in a high school auditorium where he played for three hours, played his whole repertoire. And then right after that, I went to a Captain Beefheart concert at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Fred MacDowell was opening. This was before The Spotlight Kid was released, and they played that material. And Elliot Ingber, ‘Winged Ell Fingerling’, guitarist who has also been in The Mothers with Frank Zappa, played the best, most exciting, moving guitar solo I’d ever heard in my life on an instrumental called ‘Alice In Blunderland’. And I went out and bought a guitar the next day. And I still have that guitar. It’s a black telecaster. Actually, I just made a video show about my first three guitars that went up on Thanksgiving. It’s at the Cuneiform Records YouTube page. It’s called ‘A Thanksgiving For Guitars’.  

Young Southpaw chats with sunshine pop maestro Louis Philippe about his new record ‘Thunderclouds’, his backing band The Night Mail, the legendary él and Humbug record labels, and much more, with LP offering great insight into his creating such wonderful music.  

https://louisphilippe1.bandcamp.com/ 

http://www.louisphilippe.co.uk/ 

@PhilippeAuclair 

Young Southpaw: Your press release calls the album ‘the autumnal side of sunshine pop’. Which is a great phrase.  

Louis Philippe: It’s not mine (laughs). Or maybe it was, I can’t remember. 'Autumnal' was actually a good word, I think, to choose for the record.  

YS: I know I associate certain bands and albums with certain seasons. Do you find that yourself?  

LP: Yep. If you say ‘autumnal’, The Clientele are very much a band that I associate with that season. With the spring, I would associate like Roger Nichols & The Small Circle of Friends, which is something which is a little bit niche but there you go. The Meters would be summery. Because obviously you would go for The Beach Boys for summer, yeah, but not all of the Beach Boys are summer, some of the Beach Boys are actually winter. Some of the more experimental stuff. But yes, I associate music with seasons. I wouldn’t go straight into thinking ‘oh yes, of course, this is a January record. This is a March record’. But yes. It’s not forcing to associate a record or a type of music with a time of the year. Not at all. And autumn for some reason seems to be more evocative than other seasons, when it comes to music. I think it’s because in pop there’s always a solar, a sunshine element. But most great pop - I’m not saying my record is great, it is great, but that’s not what I’m saying - there’s an element of melancholy and nostalgia. This is like the leaves turning, and the days shortening, and a different kind of warmth. So yes, I suppose that autumn really fits in very well with my idea of pop.  

YS: Evokes twilight as well. 

LP: Yep. Actually there’s even a song on the record which is about twilight. The song ‘The Mighty Owl’, which is the owl of Minerva, which only comes out when it gets dark.   

(listen to the end to hear ‘The Mighty Owl’)  

Young Southpaw talks to American ‘English eccentric’ Anton Barbeau about ABBA, memories of lost songs, the bird lifestyle, meeting Graham Chapman, and so much more. 

Listen to new record ‘Manbird’ at https://antonbarbeau.bandcamp.com/album/manbird 

http://www.antonbarbeau.com/ 

https://antonbarbeau.bandcamp.com/ 

@antonbarbeau 

Young Southpaw: What made you fall in love with music as a kid, do you remember?  

Anton Barbeau: Well, yeah, back to The Beatles. My parents had five or six Beatles records, plus John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ when I was growing up. I was born in ’67, about a month before ‘Sgt. Pepper’ came out, so I’m sure I was hearing Beatles before I was even born, and I’m sure I heard ‘Sgt. Pepper’ when it was first out, even though I was only a wee baby. But yeah, The Beatles. My earliest memory is crawling around through my parents collection, trying to find the one that had ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’. That was my favourite song, from age zero.  

YS: You get compared to Robyn Hitchcock, Julian Cope, and XTC a lot. Are you fans of those guys? 

AB: Oh, I am, very much so. Huge influences. It’s funny cause I’ve sort of found ways of connecting, if not directly to the artists, to those who have worked with them. So that’s been a funny little part of my career story in the past few years. I had a band in England called Three Minute Tease, which included Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor who were in The Egyptians and in Soft Boys. And I’ve also worked with Kimberley Rew. We did a gig once, Three Minute Tease, Andy, Morris, and myself, with Matthew Seligman, who we lost earlier this year to COVID. He sat in with us as well. So that world, the Robyn Hitchcock world, is definitely something I’ve dipped more than a few toes into. Robyn’s a huge influence as a songwriter. Maybe not so much anymore, because I went through the period of, when upon discovering his music it made perfect sense to me. It was sort of the idealized version of what I wish, of what I was trying to do, or something like that. So I aspired to that. These days, like I said, it’s ABBA and Fleetwood Mac. But Robyn Hitchcock’s a big influence. And XTC of course. I did end up working with Colin Moulding, on a couple things. That was wonderful. I supported Julian Cope on dates on his 2011 and 2012 tours and that was amazing! That’s a dream come true.  

Young Southpaw talks to Amelia Fletcher & Rob Pursey of Heavenly, Swansea Sound, The Catenary Wires (and many more bands) about Spinal Tap, mix tape mishaps, wearing togas, and much more.  

https://swanseasound.bandcamp.com/releases

https://thecatenarywires.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/heavenlyindie/

Young Southpaw: I was going to introduce you and list your bands but there’s like an infinite amount and they just seem to keep proliferating. So what ones are currently active? 

Rob Pursey: The main one is The Catenary Wires which is the two of us, recently joined by Andy Lewis who plays bass, Fay Hallam who plays keyboard, and Ian Button who plays drums. And all of those people have other musical lives as well, a lot of them more celebrated than ours. We’ve done two LPs and we’re just about to do a third one, nearly finished recording it. And then there’s Swansea Sound. This is a band that emerged during lockdown. What happened was I’d written some songs that were too fast and sort of punky really for The Catenary Wires, cause The Catenary Wires is a fairly melancholy outfit (Amelia laughs) 

Amelia Fletcher: We’re very melancholy.  

RP: And also I sing in The Catenary Wires and because my voice is low, I make any song sound melancholy even if it is fast. So we got in touch with Hue, who was Amelia’s friend more than mine because she sang in The Pooh Sticks back in the day, and Hue was the singer in The Pooh Sticks. And I thought he might wanna try singing it. And he did. He recorded the singing on his phone in a cupboard and sent it back to us and it sounded great. So we mixed the songs on the basis of that. And then put the first single out a few weeks ago. And there’s more in the pipeline. 

AF: There’s also one called European Sun, which is our friend Steve. Who writes great songs and didn’t know how to record them so we effectively arranged and recorded them for him. And then there’s Nancy Gaffield & The Drift.  

RP: It’s just The Drift. At the moment it’s got Nancy Gaffield with it but it won’t always.  

AF: Nancy Gaffield is a poet, and we basically do semi-improvised stuff, influenced by the rainy Kentish countryside in the background.