Explore every episode of the podcast No Stairway

Poets and lyricists had long desired to use words that phonetically imitate the sound they describe. Philosophers from antiquity to the modern era, linguists of all schools and several noted East Coast beatboxers have all attempted to capture the majesty of sound in words. However, it wasn’t until three brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma under the band name Hanson had the breakout genre redefining hit “MMMBop” in 1997 that the concept of onomatopoeia was fully realised in song form. Hanson’s song was, of course, wildly successful, being voted number 20 in now long defunct television channel VH-1’s poll of the “100 greatest songs of the 1990’s” - it also notably caused world famous poet Pierre Autin-Grenier to controversially rewrite sections of his celebrated collection “L'éternité est inutile” in order to reflect the now completely transformed literary landscape. Hanson’s keyboard player Taylor Hanson had a particularly strong reaction to his unintended effect on contemporary French poetry and subsequently spent several years in semi-retirement writing knitting patterns for the local parish magazine. He returned to music when convinced by former Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos to form the super group “Tinted Windows” although the eponymous album that followed failed to include any onomatopoeia at all. The band broke up shortly thereafter. In this week’s episode, Carl defends the Bare Naked Ladies, Tim is rendered speechless by the hatred Bill has for Nicki Minaj whilst Bill repeatedly denies that he is clearly suffering from the effects of sleep deprivation. This week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Anm7nKHJB7zSsbu49bPSg?si=1c58448b0ab14cf9 Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7jpkMnK63aozAYu12XlR5r?si=0e5e93814ff54d14 Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2nrwm4oI5R91wMfdj8BVOO?si=5b08e04a2d584e76 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=acf1ca427b7e4999

Learned folk have often disagreed on the origins of the bass line. Today, the daemonic bastard child of the drums and the guitar is the undisputed driving force beneath all of our favourite modern popular songs, but there was a time in the recent past when records were tinny and bland and completely devoid of funk. Some blokes down the pub would have you believe that the bass line was invented by noted Italian guitar manufacturer Oliviero Pigini, who, having had the misfortune of losing both his thumbs in a kneading machine accident as a child, miscounted the number of strings on his new range of guitars in 1946.

The new 4 string guitar was an instant hit amongst less able players all around the world and thus the bass guitar was born. However, that is an old wives tale. The truth is that the bass line was invented in 1879 by Nebraskan fisherman Valentine McConaughy. Valentine had specialised in catfish and trout fishing until a working holiday in the Caribbean caused him to fall in love with bass fishing – so much so that he developed his own range of extra thick fishing line for this purpose. Alas, back home in his landlocked home state there was little call for bass fishing, however, his “bass lines” proved an instant hit amongst local thick thumbed banjo players, and the modern banging donk was just around the corner. Many Thanks, Mr McConaughy and your fat thumbed friends!

In this week’s episode, Bill accuses Carl of being disingenuous about Soft Cell, Tim accuses Bill of being “sublime” and Carl accuses OutKast of being a “bourgeois disgrace”. It’s the usual stuff, on a different day.

This weeks playlists:

Bill's playlist

Carl's playlist

Tim's playlist

It would be facetious for a music podcast to go for any length of time without acknowledging the Beatles - as has been observed many times, the undisputed greatest album of all time is The Best of The Beatles; anyone who tells you different is selling something. With the acerbic lyrical wit of John Lennon, the edgy, genre-defining lead guitar work of George Harrison and the rhythmic dependability of everyone’s favourite Beatle, Ringo Starr, the Beatles reshaped the cultural landscape of the twentieth century. Also, the bass player’s wife made some superb textured vegetable protein sausages. You may think that there is nothing left to be said about the Beatles, but we’re the guys that did an entire podcast on the best way to soundtrack a hangover, so we’re pretty sure we can find something new to offer.

In this week’s episode, Tim doubles down on his controversial opinions about Paul McCartney, Bill blames a childhood of playing in brass bands for his hatred of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and Carl’s hot take for the week is that Ravi Shankar’s tracks are quite good but just a little bit too long. It’s classic stuff.

This week’s Playlists:

Bill

Carl

Tim

The Golden Shuffle

It is easy to forget, in these times of endless drought, burned tundra and an inevitable future when our children choke on atmospheric red dust whilst android overlords decide our reproductive rights, that there was once a time when very small pieces of water would fall from the sky. That’s right, tiny pieces of that miracle fluid would descend from heaven - in older times they called it rain. Rain would then make plants grow - plants are those yellow and brown things on the ground. In the olden days plants were green and would grow and turn into flowers, fruits and vegetables. Seriously, when you write it down it seems very sci-fi, but this was actually how things used to be. Rain happened in other seasons, before the brutal and endless summer that the world is currently enduring. These “seasons” were called spring (mainly rain), autumn (cold rain) and winter (rain so cold it became semi-solid, like a flavourless slush puppy caught in the wind). The commemoration of these mythical “seasons” is the focus of our playlists this week. Of course, not everything went to plan - we blame the heat. Firstly, the fabulous Olivia Newton-John, the patron saint of Summer Nights, passed away whilst we were in post-production and we thus missed the opportunity for a proper send-off. Then, to add insult to injury, Bill admits that Bombay Bicycle Club are shit after all, Tim laments the lack of songs about artichokes, and Carl takes his ability to deliberately misunderstand things to a level which strains credulity. The whole thing is a shambles. This week’s Playlists: 

Bill

Carl 

Tim 

The Golden Shuffle

Billie Holiday’s invention of the phrase “Me, Myself & I” with the song of the same name in 1937, had led her at the time, quite undeservedly, to be described as “The Narcissist’s favourite chanteuse.” However the first person singular has, in recent and perhaps more egocentric times, become a popular and widespread opening to songs of all genres. From John Lennon reading the news today to Bob Marley shooting the sheriff (although I believe Bob was wildly exaggerating his tale of a lawman’s murder for dramatic effect) the opening of songs with “I this” or “I that” now hold the song appreciating public in thrall - and it is these very songs which will be our focus this week. It is an oft forgotten fact, of course, that prior to Ms Holiday, all characters in songs were required, by international law, to have full names and titles - hence such lovable personalities as Mr Bojangles, Mrs Robinson and, of course, Major Tom. This law can be traced back as far as Charles II of England who passed it in order to make the loathsome ballad “Scarborough Fair” illegal. Although the trend in history is for formality to slowly and surely erode over time, I for one can’t help thinking that something has been lost here along the way, and I’m sure we could all agree that banning “Scarborough Fair” would be a welcome bonus. In this episode Carl parades his ignorance of Whitney Houston’s back catalogue, Tim declares he’s “getting into the Monkees” and Bill finally admits that Bruce Springsteen is probably not writing songs for him. This week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6f23SxSCxlNg9HH7DZ4Anh?si=3094f55b3265429d Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/289fz2lP3qiyHkIFaGGVyE?si=3d1f62c39f184d2d Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EyEc5CxNiIuXA7pywkrSw?si=21a024a2be204671 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=735e5fa6009f4d90

Nineties Michael Jackson baiter Jarvis Cocker once asked in song “Do you remember the first time?” The song’s narrator is quick to add that he “can’t remember a worse time” – this is particularly ironic as Cocker’s debut outing with Pulp, 1983’s “It”, is perhaps their worst record. Likewise, only real die-hard fans will attempt to compare the debut albums of David Bowie, Elton John or Prince with the rest of their celebrated oeuvre. However, not everyone makes a hash of things the first time around – I potted a ball from the break with my first ever stroke of a pool cue in 1989. I never saw any reason to persevere with the sport after that, leaving those who witnessed it to mourn my wasted potential ever since. A bit like what happened with the Stone Roses, albeit without the prolonged legal action. This week on No Stairway we’re focusing on the very best tracks which have featured on debut albums – along the way Bill goes big on Britpop nostalgia, Carl thinks better of trying to defend Tim Wheeler’s singing voice and Tim treats us all to a rampant mix of, you guessed it, atmospheric electronica. Just don’t hold your breath for any Bowie or Pulp. This week’s playlists: Bill's playlist Carl's playlist Tim's playlist Golden Shuffle

The Sakoku Edict of 1635 made Japan an isolated state, cutting off trade relationships with most other countries of the world and banning foreigners from entering Japan upon pain of death. Over the next two hundred years, the land of the rising sun would become a place of mystery for the rest of the world, and from this period of isolation it is thought that the West’s fascination with all things Japanese sprang. Indeed, many learned folk trace the first instances of Japanophilia to the 1894 book “Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan” by Greek writer Lafcadio Hearn. In this work Lafcadio detailed many fascinating and foreign aspects of Japanese culture, descriptions of the striking and romantic landscapes of a pre-industrialised Japan, and gave illuminating explorations of the Shinto and Buddhist religions, both relatively unknown to the West at the time.

At No Stairway, however, we understand what truly makes Japan cool - Godzilla, Ninjas and some of the greatest and most insane popular music ever made. Come with us as we explore dubiously named power-pop combos, Super Mario sound-tracking super bands and the peerless genius of Sheena Ringo. You’ll have to use your imaginations for Godzilla and the ninjas, but in all honesty if these playlists don’t invoke images of 300 feet tall lizards breathing nuclear fire on an army of robotic ninja warriors, then frankly there’s no hope for you. Ikimashou!

This week’s Playlists:

Bill's playlist

Carl's playlist

Tim's playlist

The Golden Shuffle

In the first of what could be an on going occurrence of No Stairway EPs, Bill ventures into his self-styled “crying corner” to give you a 60 minute playlist of sadness. A sad song can keep you moving, raise your spirits, or even get you even lower than before you even heard it. Which ever way, Bill has brought you a collection of 11 songs which he thinks will do any of of these, or even all at the same time! Bill’s playlist

Cover versions of popular hits are often much maligned as lesser copies of their more authentic (and therefore somehow superior) original recordings. However, while no sane person would defend the Take That cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, there are exceptions to this perceived rule. For example, the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest winning performance pails into insignificance when compared to ABBA-cadabra’s rendition of “Waterloo'' witnessed by yours truly on a particularly wet Thursday night in Wakefield some time in late 1998. Similarly, almost everyone who has sung a Bob Dylan song with a comprehensive school standard issue nylon string guitar has a better than even chance of out-performing the work’s originator. In 1939 Soloman Linda wrote and recorded a song utilising a traditional call and response structure called “Mbube”. Though it was a pretty big hit in South Africa, it wasn’t until Pete Seeger made a complete dog’s breakfast of the pronunciation of the underlying chant and re-recorded it under the name “Wimoweh'' that we had the solid gold pop classic that is “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, a mere six iterations later. So, were cover versions really inferior to original recordings, we wouldn’t have Timon and Pumbaa - just ponder that for a second and let it sink in. This week we consider all manner of covers, re-imaginings and free-style interpretations of otherwise perfectly decent pieces of original music to finally judge whether the loss of authenticity is a price worth paying for a bit of Disney Magic. This week’s Playlists: Bill's playlist Carl's playlist Tim's playlist Golden Shuffle

Joint winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics, Felix Bloch, famously recounted a walk he took with his doctoral supervisor, Werner Heisenberg, pioneer of Quantum mechanics and himself a Nobel Laureate in 1928. During this walk Bloch remarked that, following his recent reading of Hermann Weyl’s “Space, Time and Matter” it was obvious to him that space was simply the field of linear operations. “Nonsense” rebuked Heisenberg, “space is blue and birds fly through it.” The accepted reading of Heisenberg’s remark is that it is foolish to describe nature in terms of idealised abstractions far removed from the evidence of actual observation. However, at No Stairway, we favour the interpretation that Heisenberg was in fact misunderstanding Bloch’s broader point describing the nature of the physical universe and was merely pointing out that space is whatever is ‘up’. And it is up we go this week, as we venture further than any middle-aged mixtaping podcast has gone before, through the blue bit with birds in it and out into the farthest reaches of the cosmos with three playlists on the theme of ’Space.’ In this first episode of a brand new season of No Stairway Bill recommends listening to Apex Twin when being chased by the police, Carl debuts his beat boxing skills, and Tim shares that he is tortured at night by the sound of his plumbing. Cosmic stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/46zfbtk3WLM9PVMPCnNxhL?si=5ccfd8edee784475 Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02vN6iKHO6NB7LfvCwinmT?si=4b01eacb8689434f Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4WAPJ66ffrgMNhnSdojR1h?si=8276805b02e24a8f The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=edc47d1445c44767

It is often remarked that Santa Claus’ famous red suit was first popularised by the Coca-Cola company in 1931, however many other facets of our supposedly traditional Christmas are much more recent inventions than we might like to think. For example, Santa’s sleigh was thought to have been pulled by huskies before a highly successful but mean-spirited initiative led by Bernard Matthews in 1978 to undermine the then-lucrative Christmas venison market. Likewise the annual excitement for the Christmas number one single was manufactured in the mid-nineties following a disastrous and clearly drunken appearance on daytime television by Mr Blobby. 

It is a little known fact that since 1996, all Christmas number one singles have been written by tax-averse Poundland Elton John impersonator Gary Barlow and then vetted by a committee of luminaries which includes Ant McPartland, Neil Morrissey and noted real estate expert Nicki Chapman. And so we come to the most recent of Yuletide traditions - The No Stairway Christmas Special. 

In this most festive of episodes we take a look at the year’s play listing offerings and formulate our top 5 “ones that got away” from the Golden Shuffle the first time around and then offer up three festivus playlists for each others’ criticism. Bill’s crying corner takes a sinister turn at Christmas as he outs himself as a sprout-hating Scrooge, Carl gives his favourite post-Christmas sandwich recipe and Tim finally breaks Carl’s electronic apathy with a barnstorming 19-minute version of a Bing Crosby classic. 

This Week’s Playlists: 

Bill's playlist 

Carl's playlist 

Tim's playlist 

The Golden Shuffle

Halloween, a contraction of All Hallows’ Eve, marks the beginning of the Western Christian season of remembrance known as Allhallowtide - comprised of Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, it is traditionally a time to remember the dead. Then in 1962 an enterprising young singer-songwriter named Bobby Pickett wrote and recorded a catchy parody single called “The Monster Mash” which topped the US Billboard singles chart that Halloween. What followed appears to be either some kind of mass hysteria or collective social malaise, as ever since the entire world has associated an otherwise little known Christian Festival with werewolves, pumpkins and witch costumes made out of bin bags. This group insanity is our topic this week - as with all popular culture phenomena, Halloween has spawned a great number of tributes in the form of song. So, prepare to be scared silly as we shake, rattle (our chains) and roll our way through the spookiest hits thus far conceived by humankind. Also in this horrifying episode Bill gives a detailed history of his admittedly limited Halloween costume wardrobe, Carl embarrasses himself by getting Ghostbusters confused with Die Hard, and Tim drops the terrifying bombshell that he is a previous winner of an international singing contest. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7u2xkEonxe2ZOLya12mXSO?si=e266c23886464c0e Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7uzvO3LvYbDbNNiR3xoiv3?si=1b0a3f221e664606 Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6QQE0qBFyogTqCK3hKaco6?si=11b7744dd19d41f2 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=6da01f6bf3574f85

To paraphrase the great Dr Emmet Brown, “Words? Where we’re going, we don’t need words” as this week we delve deep into instrumental music. Lyrics, as every historian of music down the pub will tell you, are a relatively new invention - they were first trialled by The Police in 1980 with their masterpiece “De Do Do Do, Dah Dah Dah” and arguably perfected by American Beat-Combo Crash Test Dummies’ wordy 1993 hit “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”. Since the golden age of modern pop lyrics lasted a scant 13 years, we have therefore much ground to cover as we traverse material from before Beethoven’s big comeback to album work all the way up to music contemporary with Paul Weller’s fourth (and to date final) haircut.

In this week’s episode Tim finally identifies the cause of Jazz’s superfluous notes, Bill invents the Drunken-Style of playlist criticism and Carl comes to realise some hard truths regarding his opinions about Post-Rock.

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Di0gCIEOV347Ob5SlbdSt?si=49799cb3b34142aa

Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7DcjdMDYmzq7DpnnVuATwp?si=03e152412d004060

Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2mY9TYpomVyqsUj0nwVF8p?si=868626f658084309

The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=2cfe9ca85050449d

Xenophobia is a perennial problem facing humanity as a species. It would seem one way to tackle this particular kind of small mindedness is to spread far and wide the artistic outputs of all cultures for everyone to enjoy, and thus cultivate a commonality to better aid mutual understanding. And whilst the written word requires either translation or additional work by the reader, we can all tap our feet to the tunes that popular beat combos across the globe are churning out - or can we? For that is our quest this week, to find songs that you probably can’t understand but can love anyway. The risk, of course, is that we find the only music worth listening to is written in the English language and we end up being the official playlisting poster-boys of some hideous totalitarian mix-taping regime. Were that to come to pass, we would of course graciously accept the commission from our narrow-minded overlords but we’d like to think that we would nonetheless attempt to change the system from within, slipping the odd Nusrat Fattah Ali Khan track into our state-sanctioned broadcasts.

Highlights this week include Bill recategorising all of world music into either “Dance Hall” or “Iron Maiden Rip-offs”, Carl risking a double-prejudice by declaring his hatred of French Hip-Hop, and Tim continuing his one-man war against The Smiths, expertly going off-topic to put the boot into Morrissey’s singing voice once again.

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ZrIfAHqlQVDfR3N0GFbJE?si=03c86841892f410f

Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1E5qLEHazQO4hSaXXKJWU6?si=b2f829c2868b4902

Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3BgevJ00G1ZAko2TmK06B7?si=e6e6f6fef6724321

The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=5adbf88426644031

Mixtapes may be a moribund art form, but the B-side is well and truly dead. There are currently fully grown adults, human beings that you know and perhaps even respect, who are sufficiently young to have no idea what a B-side is. These are your bus drivers, your chartered accountants and your compliance managers the world over who have never experienced the joy of preferring the throw-away freebie which used to come as a party favour when you purchased the physical media version of the latest pop banger. This week on No Stairway we dive headlong into this oft-neglected box of audio delights in a search for B-sides which were inarguably better than their more successful and glamorous siblings. Also this week, following a bumper edition of the Mail fun-bag, Bill fires a couple of well-aimed warning shots across the bow of Paul McCartney’s solo work, Carl exposes himself as a secret Eddie Vedder vowel-counter, and Tim doubles down on his hatred of The Smiths, causing a metaphysical debate about whether you can ever truly separate the artist from his haircut. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/507Vem9k08riFFe2qalpKi?si=10d8ae4fd23441e2 Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IbPDWfYMiRVMXEOSByCYU?si=f70cd840323e4407 Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6K2kJD8pYZsubTY1KsRmVt?si=ad3ae32b63e44ffc The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=f8ae60380fc04182

The icing on the cake, the cherry on top, the jewel in the crown - final flourishes have long been held to be the very best things that humanity can experience. This week we ask the question “are albums finished in the same way as cakes or crowns, with the best ingredient reserved until the finishing touch?” The short answer is no - anyone who argues that the best track on Revolver is “Tomorrow Never Knows” is clearly selling something and is to be distrusted. However, if we relied on the short answer here at No Stairway, you, Dear Listener, would be denied the glorious waffle of three supposedly adult middle-aged men prattling on for what seems like hours about the final track on the eponymous album by supposedly Korea’s finest post-rock folk-metal band. Also in this epic episode Tim adds to his ever-growing list of songwriters he hates because of head and/or hair shape, Carl fetishises Patrick Swayze’s pubic hair (yet again) and Bill calls Carl “ghetto” for the first and perhaps only time in his life. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3naQuxxF3YszKByMzU1Lpo?si=6a04823a32434beb Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3XMShGEvTaiV15o6b5MHBs?si=4a3a2abd7d674381 Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Z3eTwRGa9WKjCJZ54BFor?si=74173fb5194f4566 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=998da1a6b8bb4065

Much as one man’s pain is another man’s pleasure, so too is one man’s trash another man’s treasure. This week at No Stairway Towers, we become acutely aware of this as everyone disagrees as to which music is best placed to lighten our mood, to put a bounce in our steps and smiles on our faces - feel good music, it seems, is as divisive a topic as exists on the planet. Bill (of Crying Corner fame) has of course previously defended his dubious theory that nothing makes one happier than sad songs. This is in direct opposition to Carl who, after a misspent decade in the company of Radiohead and early Leonard Cohen, can now only listen to upbeat music for fear of otherwise suffering yet another embarrassing public breakdown. Tim is famously happiest when being a contrarian, so this week puts him in a particularly difficult position. Highlights this week include three Yorkshiremen having an ill-informed discussion of the advantages of living “down in the bayou”, Tim (somewhat inevitably) attempting to quantify human happiness using a spreadsheet, and Bill finally nailing his Dan Ackroyd impression after three decades of failed attempts. 

This Week’s Playlists: 

Bill's playlist 

Carl's playlist

Tim's playlist

The Golden Shuffle

The high water mark for brass instrumentation is obviously the Hovis bread advertisement from 1973 which launched the careers of both Sir Ridley Scott and Antonín Dvořák. Since then, despite a brief renaissance thanks to noted horn blower and record breaker Roy Castle in the late 1980’s, brass has sadly been completely ignored by popular culture. That is until today, as No Stairway turns it’s playlisting attentions to the wonderful world of labrophones, from trumpets to euphoniums, cornets to flugelhorns and all things reed-less and shiny in between. In this week’s raucous episode our gang of blow-hards discuss the frankly scho-wa-do-lally origins of scat singing, Bill makes the seemingly intellectually impossible connection between Marty Feldman and David Lee Roth, and Tim opens the Pandora’s box of Star Trek themes. If any listeners have strong feelings about Star Trek themes, I would encourage them to not listen to this episode. 

This Week’s Playlists: 

Bill's playlist 

Carl's playlist

Tim's playlist 

The Golden Shuffle

Pascal contended that long letters were written by people who lacked the time to make them shorter - the implication being that by eliminating the extraneous material the final product is thus improved. This leads one to wonder, are songs the same? Once the guitar solos, spoken word intros and jazz-harp middle-eights are removed are we left with a superior and more satisfying track? Cue the most intended pun of the year, as our ‘brief’ this week is songs that, either through authorial design or necessity of production, are under two minutes in duration.

Events of note this week include Carl expounding a theory on the origins of club-style singing, Tim detailing an episode of orthopaedic surgery of singular importance in the history of 90’s college rock and Bill’s ability to ignore dodgy lyrics leads to his name being placed alongside Michael Gove’s on the No Stairway watchlist of potentially problematic people. Ironically, this turned out to be quite a long episode - our editor assures us there wasn’t a second of superfluous material that we could in all good conscious lose.

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill

Carl

Tim

The Golden Shuffle

Talk Talk, Television and, of course, Hear’say. It is perhaps an ontological inevitability that musical artists select stage names which reference human methods of communication, given the aural nature of music itself. However, if we were to delve into deeper furrows than mere nomenclatures, would we expose a more fundamental relationship between music and the base human need to communicate? After all, what’s in a name? By any other name Ned’s Atomic Dustbin would surely smell as…well, it’d probably smell the same. It would sound the same too, I’m sure. I’m pretty sure that was Shakespeare’s point, but I’m no expert. Dustbins aside, these are the exact furrows into which our intrepid audiophiles delve this week. Herein, Carl explains his sinister plot to subliminally control Tim’s mind, Bill launches a scathing attack on the modern lyricism of grime music and Tim risks alienating most of our North American listeners by speaking ill of Country music legend, Mr Jimmy Buffet. This Week’s Playlists: 

Bill 

Carl

Tim

The Golden Shuffle

High drama at No Stairway towers this week as a civil war breaks out between the laissez-faire hippy attitude of Carl and the spreadsheet-based rule following to which Tim is more inclined. Thank God for Bill who, true to form and to everyone’s relief, had forgotten which rules we were meant to be following and thus was perfectly placed to act as peacekeeper, referee and international court of playlist justice all rolled into one. 

Once the dust settles and we move into act 2, Tim reaffirms his extreme legislative programme by banning musicals and Disney soundtracks, Carl laments his failure to emulate the noted philosopher Patrick Swayze and Bill regrets, and then eventually comes to terms with, his love for the Empire Records soundtrack. The third act is, as always here at No Stairway, a narrative focused on reconciliation and personal growth. The most notable event is Bill doubling down on his respect for Disney, in direct contravention of Tim’s now subverted expectations. This Week’s Playlists: 

Bill

Carl

Tim

The Golden Shuffle

What is the commonality which binds all the souls of humankind together? Is it the affection we feel for our nearest and dearest? Is it the shared dread we have for the inevitable finality of life? Or is it something else, something more tangible? Is it, perhaps, the 1982 smash hit “Africa” by popular beat combo Toto? Or perhaps it’s just pizza, Toy Story and The Beatles? These are the philosophical questions we ponder this week as we search for songs which everyone loves, regardless of gender, age, race or creed. Herein Bill admits (in a potential medical first) to his “Bon Jovi snow blindness”, Carl beats himself up with the metaphorical stick that is the aforementioned popular beat combo Toto and Tim authors a masterwork to rival Edward Gibbon, but rather than documenting the history of the Roman Empire, he instead complies the definitive spreadsheet inventory of the wedding disco playlists of the western world. Also this week sees the potentially misguided debut of a semi-regular feature where Carl gives a fairly ridiculous mid-podcast poetic reading of a popular song. This week on ‘Pop’s Poetry Podium’ is “Under Pressure” by David Bowie and Queen. If you want this kind of thing to stop please like, subscribe and share No Stairway far and wide. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5IbVNC3rzN8E00wnybD6OI?si=bba7b28b2c9744b9 Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/25xdAHabEPQ18js5YTGB3l?si=d550683c323e436c Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ettWOsjM76DCzZmkiqUes?si=5aa9f8c2af42485a The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=ebf52b8d581c4a15

It is a little disputed fact that the greatest comeback of all time is that of Lazarus, although many learned men give spirited arguments in favour of both Elvis in ’68 and Dennis Taylor in ’85. History will ultimately decide who is right on that one, although I doubt even Lazarus would’ve got out of his chair for that ninth frame. This week we applaud the life of the recently deceased Lou Ottens, inventor of the cassette tape and therefore godfather of the mixtape. Sadly, there’s no possibility of a comeback for Lou, but musical comebacks are thankfully commonplace - herein we discuss Beethoven’s long awaited comeback to symphonies, Tina Turner’s patchy US chart performances and the intriguing comeback sub-genre of Gack-tales. Along the way, Tim describes all of contemporary musicology as narrow-minded thus maintaining his record for controversy in recent weeks. One can only hope that Tim’s comeback from the avalanche of litigation he’s currently flirting with will rival those of both Presley and Taylor before him. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5FDKJnvuxXVU20R7Zu9Z0I?si=fa3b0b81bf1744ef Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/07O2XNTyWg4X6v3997ZoHK?si=a8431fc9e381423b Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4p7nYkx9t0s5JKno4JjkxR?si=da6832aecec64615 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=0dd685f0eae14053

No one can be bothered with this, can they? Opening the curtains is about as far as we’re prepared to go today, I reckon. Whoever volunteers to go down Subway with everyone’s order will forever be a hero, but otherwise we’re all resigned to slowly dying in front of endless repeats of Only Fools and Horses on Gold, yeah? This week, through the gin-soaked fog of middle-aged hangovers, we groggily identify the Wurzles as one of the greatest British folk acts of all time, Carl makes an overly impassioned (and possibly still inebriated) case for the God-like genius of Bette Midler, and Tim half-heartedly promises to find the hidden depths within the music of ZZ Top. Frankly, you can tell we were hungover. At one point, we almost certainly slander Peter Gabriel…

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill

Carl

Tim

The Golden Shuffle

Controversy continues this week as what starts as a mundane and normal dive through the mail funbag descends quickly into a barrage of hate levelled against the darlings of popular music, Pink Floyd, Queen and New Order included. Quite how The Smiths escaped unscathed is a minor miracle. From this undoubtedly un-gezellig beginning we try in desperation to be more welcoming and cosy via the obvious medium of sociolinguistic translation. Conviviality thereby restored, Tim introduces us to the gezellig funk majesty of Luiz Bonfá, Bill takes everyone on yet another sonic trip through his disturbing subconscious (both beginning and ending in Bill’s Crying Corner) and Carl questions Tim’s philosophy of using “Love at First Sight: Australia” to explain all human interpersonal interactions.

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill's playlist

Carl's playlist

Tim's playlist

The Golden Shuffle

Nordic-style slipper socks and wood-burning fires are not mandatory this week, but are highly recommended as part of a fully immersive listening experience.

Controversy this week as Tim calls his semi-professional playlisting reputation into question by deploying a potentially illegal method of sequencing. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, were it not for the distance allowed by cyberspace, it may have ‘got physical’ in No Stairway HQ. Thankfully, the World Wide Web allowed peace to prevail and Bill has calmed down somewhat since. Elsewhere this week, we establish that Carl continues to live, somewhat sadly, in the shadow of the 1980’s as a whole (and of Jean-Claude Van Damme in particular), and Bill explains the internal architecture of his doom spiral work out routine, including both the Harold Bishop power walk and the soon to be feared nine-minute death chase. 

This Week’s Playlists: 

Bill's playlist 

Carl's playlist 

Tim's playlist 

The Golden Shuffle 

So, do your stretches and put your lycra on - maybe even get those Muay Thai ropes around your fists, just in case. You never know when a dog might decide to chase you.

Talent borrows, genius steals, so goes the common mis-quoted phrase. The truth of that particular idea is examined front and back this week as we dive into songs which have been famously sampled by other artists. We also debut our new quasi-regular feature of delving into our mail fun-bag, confronting the shadowy internet figure of ‘Al the Canary’ along the way. Further to this we roundly rubbish the state of contemporary songwriting, Carl reluctantly yet repeatedly calls Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter a talentless thief, and everyone agrees that New Order could save themselves a fortune by singing instead of paying for daft samples of singing.

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill's playlist

Carl's playlist

Tim's playlist

The Golden Shuffle

“Please, Sirs, can we have some more?” you may well have asked. Yes, of course you may, our young Dickensian friends! We have plenty of No Stairway to gorge upon this week as we theme our playlists around food, glorious food, and a drink or three. There’s lots to chew on here as Carl realises that lamb chops are a foodstuff, Tim burns his bridges with his former friends at the “Butty Van” and Bill hints at a dark incident from his past involving some kind of tinned fruit…

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill's playlist 

Carl's playlist

Tim's playlist

The Golden Shuffle

Come join us - waddle on down with a hamburger in one hand and an ice cream scoop in the other and give yourself a well deserved tummy ache.

Here at No Stairway we are often accused of starting well and quickly fading - from P.E. teachers to wives and girlfriends, it has very much been the story of our lives. This week strong openings are our main concern, said the Bishop to the choir, as we investigate the best first songs on albums. In this episode Carl is outed as a luddite, Bill is outed as a Hall and Oates fanatic and Tim inadvertently votes himself out of the Pulp Appreciation Society. Be warned of the usual coarse language - we are an unapologetically warm blooded set of nerds and swear words are often our only outlet.

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3bQxPzd1g7dHXKE93wABbQ

Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6TRm5bCYaKNdes2mRfkI3X

Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0dWEgixmzGdSzqoZOFrYay

The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB

So, if like us, you like starting but are unsure how to finish properly, just press play and see how it goes.

Socrates was once reported to say that “fame is the perfume of heroic deeds”, although quite how this definition explains Kim Kardasian is a philosophical quandary for better men than us. Heroic or not, celebrities of all eras are our topic this week and in particular those of sufficient renown to have been immortalised in song. As we amble down these gilded halls of fame we note the celebrity-inducing properties of public execution, admire The Boss’s brave deployment of a glockenspiel and recount how a chance encounter with a friend of Sean Lennon’s may well have saved Billy Joel’s career. As usual the language we use here is vulgar at best, so please cover any nearby children’s ears. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3vKbSiXcxG2bKNB1pgsPv4 Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1dqdugdPbrDTsF0IRQJuvp Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2UL2EYvcALCC8qQEjveVDC The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB

The power of love is a curious thing; it makes one man weep, but makes another man sing. Of course, what Huey Lewis failed to comprehend is that the power of time travel is even more curious, and that is our subject here today. Herein we apologise for the amount of work involved in listening to the podcast, demonise Nicholas Lyndhurst’s character from “Goodnight Sweetheart” and deep dive into some of Axel Rose’s greatest ever lyrics. As usual, there is lots of crude language from the outset and, somewhat inevitably, we properly spoil the ending of Quantum Leap.

This Week’s Playlists:

Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3XDcxPgwB7fAHDqvLzbFGh

Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40TDBAXhGeDFDGOJLKYUlK

Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Hnx24DdNiXCcVrcLe118c

The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB

So, load up on Libyan plutonium, turn on your time circuits, and accelerate to 88 miles per hour because where we’re going, we don’t need roads.

This week your hosts discuss how to reconcile your loathing of an artist with your love of the great tracks of which even the most egregious creators are sometimes capable. Along the way the boys discuss the horrors of the first Steps album, the complexities involved when trying to enjoy the music of Eminem and marvel (from a sensible distance) at the depth of Tim’s Eurovision Knowledge. If you’re not a Eurovision Song Contest fan, please be aware that Tim’s enthusiasm for that particular enterprise is infectious. Suffice to say, if you walk away from this experience without doing a chicken impression then you may be without a soul. All of this was achieved whilst Tim’s microphone was being rather rebellious resulting in him sounding like he was talking on a telephone from the 1970s. Be warned that there is quite a bit of swearing in this episode, and some undue love for the early solo albums of Rod Stewart. This week’s playlists can be found here: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5XGqS5t0yGpUv8Ts7jzPex Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2uJURFHm9mxjWwQBA6NMYo Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3JTSd1BpmbrfybQdb84Pn6 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB 

In this inaugural episode of No Stairway, your hosts discuss what makes the perfect party playlist. What is a party like around their houses? Well, it transpires that Bill is down with the kids, Tim is actively trying to alienate the kids and Carl just wants to sit the kids down in the corner and lecture them on the failures of capitalism. If they don’t sound like three absolutely riveting evenings, then I don’t know what does. Along the way the boys discuss the enduring charm of Andrew WK, whether Tim’s inescapable narcism is actually that much of a problem and make the very first additions to the Golden Shuffle - the ever-growing greatest non-sequenced selection of music ever made. Be warned that there is some swearing here, and some spoilers for the final episode of the Sopranos. 

This Week’s Playlists: 

Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3e9toUgDBAqqT6xFp2QqPh 

Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0lAByuYH6zmXNYZihjoo2B 

Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4T2WpGkXM5Art84S14uEEQ 

The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB 

So, put on your red shoes and get ready to dance the blues, the trip-hops, the electro-pops, and the Australian glam rocks. It sounds weird but trust me, in context it’s really quite entertaining.