The April Podrophenia is a rockin' rollin' conversation' with bass player Chris Constantinou. From his early days with Drill and touring with Slade, travelling the world with Adam Ant, playing Live Aid, working with Chas Chandler, Annabella Lwin, The Dandy Warhols, The Wolfmen.... right up to latest projects The Mutants (Wilko Johnson, Norman Watt-Roy, Wayne Kramer), One Thousand Motels (with Rat Scabies) and Rude GRL & CC it's all there!
Including stories you'll have never heard or read anywhere else! Plus a playlist of tunes from across his varied career.
Something to lively up your playlists - the Soundr Hour - Cover Stars....
60 solid minutes of uptempo covers: disco refits, funky reduxes and latin reworks - all contained herein. From Steely Dan to Rod Stewart, from the Average White Band to Ashford and Simpson - they all get rung and respun with fruity new versions...
Rockers, rollers, new romantics and old romantics - settle in for Podrophenia's Love-in podcast. Where Piley, Lord Hastings and Mondo will be pleasuring your lugs with two hours of tuneage - themed around, hearts, flowers and Champagne.
There'll be a Valentine's quiz, love songs rendered to 8 bit Sega style editions, and smoochy tunes played on a tuba.
And a live a 'performance' of three eighties hits on a 1982 Casio VL Tone keyboard......
Podrophenia the letter Y - is up for download: Chris Constantinou joins us covering his career from playing Live Aid with Adam Ant and Top of the Pops goss' - to The Mutants, The Wolfmen and his new 1000 Motels project with Rat Scabies, plus new Clash covers with @itsrudegrl
From the Podro playlist Lord Hastings, Piley and m'self spin in tracks including funky reggae, Toussaint's buried treasure and a non-skippable Yoko track also the only Roxy Music track written by their drummer. Dig in and download
Brace yourselves as the Podrophenia/Harbour Bazaar team up takes a road-trip through the trippy periphery and fractured fringes of Rock 'n' Roll: Ian Pile Ian Pope Steven Hastings and m'self relay tales of shocky horrors ( murder, mystery deaths, drug casualties) from Jerry Lee, Skip Spence and Peter Green, the Beach Boys, The Beatles and Joy Division and rogues gallery of others...
Bringing light to our shade, we're joined by special guests Kev Daintree Ray Morgan , Jo Overfield and Rob Glazebrook with a bulging diary of events and festivals...
Was this the incident that got Dave Gahan on the long road to ruin - find out in Podrophenia..
The Lectro edition of Podrophenia is now up for download – with guests Lloyd Price of Massive Ego and Barry Cain ex-Record Mirror punk reporter and former Flexipop boss..
Wherein you’ll hear new tunes from Massive Ego and Barry's twin-fisted tales of Rat Scabies transatlantic raffle, Dave Gahan bothered with dead bodies and bananas (not at the same time tho), Ian McCulloch being a grumpy bunny and how Zodiac Mindwarp killed of Flexipop...
Plus a couple of exclusive Flexipop editions of Depeche and Marc Almond tunes
For further reading you can grab the Flexipop Annual here, and buy tickets for the upcoming Flexiparty..
And check in with Massive Ego here...
Download hereabouts or stream below
Two weeks of polite digital bustling and some shuffling of email exchanges between industry types, personal assistants and Vive Le Rockers have finally staked us a date for an interview with the high priest of Goth Rock and overlord of the ebony underworld - Peter Murphy. Featuring as part of a hefty retrospective in support the Bauhaus back catalogue, an overview of his solo years.and spotlighting his current '35 years of Bauhaus' tour,
The time-slot is sorted and 'Skype call' red-ringed on the calendar: Sunday 12th May, 7pm GMT
Someone in the know had advised me 'tread carefully he can a bit prickly'. A subtle check with his PA the day before - 'anything I should avoid' (alluding to his meth-based DUI arrest) gets me a 'No we're all good' reply.
So, Sunday 12th May, 7pm GMT. 'Skype call'
I'm settled in with three pages of deep-reaching, heavily researched questions. Dial up, click, connect - and we're away with the tomb-like tones of Peter Murphy a'rumbling from the laptop..........
ME: How's the tour going
PM: Are you calling from London
ME: No Southend
*connection drops - the Skype's gone out*
PM: - This will probably happen again. Oh I used to come there as a child. So....
*connection drops* ( he knows, you know)
ME: I was thinking, for some additional perspective on the piece - of bringing in noir/horror authors (Cathi Unsworth and Syd Moore both Bauhaus fans) for their memories and experiences of the band
PM: Who's writing the piece you or them
ME: Oh, I am
PM *snapping* I am neither a horror nor a noir artist' - says the artist currently touring '35 years of Bauhaus' his debut single being Bela Lugosi's Dead, and star of the bite-night pics The Hunger and Twilight - I think we're done here
*Drops the call. Click. Gone* Time 7:05 GMT
A kick in the Skype. Press eject and give me the twerp
.
It could have been my imagination, a fault on the line perhaps, or even some rogue electronic crackle - but I'm almost certain I heard a crack of thunder, a puff of sulphur smoke and the manic flapping of bat wings as Count Murphy made his exit stage left?.
Either way, bagsy I get to review his new due-soon solo album please..
It seems fitting that after two years and 24 posts, as Dear Diary reaches it's last entry - so we finish on King of the Blingers, Jimmy Saville who also bowed out with a closing coda this year. Light on entries but heavy on celebrations (three birthdays, Christmas and New Year's Eve) - a couple of moments to note include...
My First Concert: Adam and the Ants at Chelmsford Odeon (13th) - as we've mentioned previously an absolute skull-cracker of a gig, during the brief transitional shift when Adam was slowly shedding the hardcore of mohicans and kilted fans that had dragged around behind him as the shadowy Ant People - before the pre-teen/ Televisual crowd massed on the now cavalary jacketed Adam (with newly installed songwriting team-mate Marco Pirroni). The Chelmsford audience for this date was a sweaty swell of ructious skins and punks snarling, scrumming and thumping lumps out of each other at stage front, to a point where Adam had to stop the performance midway through one number - to bark at a hot-spot of rucking punks/skins..
The Shadow of The Damned: from the earliest Dear Diaries well May 79 - the as it happens (not in the Jimmy Saville sense) output of those first-past-the-post(s) punks have been rendered and recorded with regular entries. December 80 sees The Damned at their most dynamic - a one off Christmas curiosity single - There Ain't No Sanity Clause and the widescreen genius of double LP The Black Album.
Not surprisingly my second gig and follow-on to the Ants outing was The Damned at the Lyceum 5th July 1981 for their fifth anniversary gig with a setlist supporting the Black Album (details here)..
Now and then: all singles bagged December 1980
The Quinn Martin style epilogue: If, back then, some anonymous bod, had told me 'in 2011 you'll write the sleevenotes and interviews for Marco Pirroni's latest album (The Wolfmen - Married to the Eiffel Tower), and rattle off 8 pages of overviews and interviews for a magazine cover feature on The Damned' - it really would have scrambled my teenage brainwaves. In fact it scrambles my middle aged brainwaves now..
I mean, really, who'd a thought?
So that's it chums - we're all done with Dear Diary. If you've been in from the beginning, a huge thank you is due for sticking around - if you've been a dipper-in or occasional grazer of these scribbled bits - a tip of the titfer is due to you too.
What's next - there's a new monthly motif possibly lined up for 2012. A magazine based take on vintage times - but more on that in Jan. So until then, have yourselves a hoot for hogmany, a knees-up of a New Year's Eve - and I'll catch you next year x
The singles list is fairly sprightly, but beware the album chart - a giddy mix of nutty comps, new wavers and A O R-tists
September seems to be the month for horses and house parties - not at the same time obvs!
I say 'parties', they were actually more of a - buy some cider (Triple Vintage/ Merrydown) from the old dear at Unwins and get it down the hatch at a friends house - type tear-ups.
For Hayes's socials, while the parents were out, the top-loader stereo -shaped and weighted like a mahogany block with wooden stalk-like legs - would be lumped down from upstairs for some music to booze to in the front room.
Horses: I'd chosen horse riding as a PE option but couldn't get on with it. The blooming things were typically either rearing up Lone Ranger style, or stopping for a steaming, streaming gusher of a comfort break. For extra curricular activity, we'd nip along to see J. Mowatt and mate Hayley Bill (not her real name, we added the surname for chuckles) daring a ride on Tempest. A flighty nag who was several hands too high for a 'rider' of my casual calibre, and why after being given a giddy-up slap on his back-end, Tempest shot off like a thundercrack, throwing me out of the saddle - but because of one foot still trapped in a stirrup, dragged me behind like a sack of old spuds, bouncing across the tree roots and muddy bumps. I was black and blue for days after.
And photos too, (Michael) Hayes, (Jackie) Calvy and myself (with new bow tie) doing a photo booth squeeze at Southend Bus Depot (27th) - and Ye Olde School Photo taken on the 22nd
M.Hayes - top row, 3rd from left. Me - next row, 5th from left. J.Calvy - bottom row - 4th from left
Records collected this month are: The Plasmatics, The Damned, more Spizz, more Splodgeness and Dead Kennedy's Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables - most which had been ear-wigged from late night listens to John Peel....
A teaser trailer for next month's diary doings - where the entries are expanded in a Silvine notebook..
I haven't a clue who the 'weird girl' that follows me home is, or why I hide in the garage from her. And how about that! LOTR at our school!
The sort of Hi Tech Hi-Fi and graphic a go go system used to pump up the volume for most of my 80s 12" s.
Following on from last weeks Purple Nasties post, I've clipped and compiled twelve snippets from retro electro eighties tracks - 12" versions have been used where available - so, just how many can you pick out?
