The Blindboy Podcast - Gaslight Parsley

Episode Date: December 20, 2017

Northern Soul, Cheap speed, Rave Music, Literature Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

9 weeks at number one. Nine weeks at number one. Nine weeks at number one in the podcast. Chats. Cause of you cunts. Cause of you cunts. Cause of you cunts. Cause of you cunts. Chats. Nine weeks at number one.

Nine weeks at number one. Nine weeks at number one in the podcast. Chats. Cause of you cunts. Cause of you cunts. Because of you cunts. Because of you cunts. Because of you cunts. Oh, Bola, Bola, Buss.

Bola, Buss. That was nine weeks at number one on the podcast charts. Because of you Cunts. And that song was written by, well it was a collaborative piece. That song was written by Christy Moore, Billy Corgan from the band The Smashing Pumpkins, and Japanese pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, all three of which are very big fans of this podcast and they got together during the week despite different time zones and they got together on a Skype meet up

and together they wrote that song and they sent the sheet music to me via carrier pigeon and I merely recorded it They wrote that song. And they sent the sheet music to me. Via carrier pigeon. And I merely recorded it. And they wrote that song. For ye cunts.

Because we are nine weeks. At number one. On the podcast charts. Because ye've been togging out. Ye've been liking. And subscribing. And leaving lovely, beautiful reviews on the podcast. And for this, I am

grateful. It keeps this alive. It allows for your weekly podcast hug. Last week, we had a very gentle meander down memory lane last week we had a very gentle meander down

memory lane where I spoke about the author Yorty O'Hearn two times in a row and how Yorty inspired me to create a mulled cocktail in his name and this mulled cocktail

it's not quite mulled wine, because mulled wine, is for silly boys, because like I said, the alcohol is gone, so this, your Tia Harn mulled drink, is about,

having a mulled experience, while also, getting that lovely, that lovely chemical slap, from alcohol, and lots of you, have been making, your Tia Harn, and sending me, photographs been making your dhern and sending me photographs

of your attempts your efforts on twitter and it's been very amusing fair play to you and there's one uh business in limerick an italian restaurant called lacucina centro and i know the manager craig he's a sound guy and he's actually making your dhern and giving it to the patrons of this restaurant in henry street in limerick so fair fox i'll be calling in during the week for my yortlea harn mulled drink for some reason i've started off the podcast this week with a very odd rhythm where there's a strange pausing between my words and i don't know why maybe it's because at the start of the podcast there was a song and I'm trying to keep in beat with that

rhythm. Maybe I have an Alsatian in the room and he barks between my sentences and I've merely edited out his barks because they are too offensive for your ears. So I'm going to try and get back to a more relaxed flow now in how I talk.

This week's podcast is going to be about music I think. Going to make it about tunes because you know how much I love music. You know, music to me is like having my soul wanked by God. My first ever musical purchase was about at the age of three or four my first independent purchase I received five pounds from my uncle Noel Noel is from Tipperary and he greets people by stepping on their toe

kneeing them in the bollocks and giving them a headbutt at the same time in unison that's what he does that's what Tipperary people do but Noel gave me five pounds which was very generous when I was a child and I was born into a house of tunes and there was different music playing there was a bit of David Bowie a bit bit of Madonna, Bob Dylan that type of crack

but at a very very young age a toddler I took a shine to the music of T-Rex Mark Boland I don't know why well because he's an unbelievable songwriter the man's capacity for melody was unbelievable and also I had a bit of a dinosaur obsession, so it was quite convenient that my favourite singer was in a band called T-Rex. I remember marvelling at the synchronicity of that. Around the same age that I became aware of my own reflection in the mirror. So that's how young I was.

So I took Noel's F Fiverr to Todd's. Which was a place on O'Connell Street in Limerick. One of my brothers took me. And I bought the greatest hits of T-Rex. And fuck me did I play that. Non-stop. Children of the Revolution. Ride a White Swan.

Non-stop I fucking wore it out. In fact on my first day of school. I got. I suppose what you'd call an anxiety attack. I couldn't fucking stand school on my first day. So the teacher had to play. My Mark Boland CD in the class. So that I would stop.

Crying. And I cried so much that I vomited on a young man called Raymond's leg, Raymond is now a guard, but my love of music grew until I got to about, I was about eight or nine and the older boys, the older boys out on the road, Limerick, the Baldies, they were listening to a mixture of Guns N' Roses and The Prodigy, and when I heard The Prodigy for the first time, like I'd never had music like that in the house, because it was mostly rock music and folk in my house,

there was no electronic shit, when I heard The Fucking Prodigy, my head exploded, my world exploded, It was mostly rock music and folk in my house. There was no electronic shit. When I heard the fucking Prodigy, my head exploded, my world exploded. I'd never heard anything as violent and as frantic in my life, as electronic, as industrial. So I went out and I bought Music for the Jilted Generation.

Unbelievable album, start to finish, by the Prodigy. Incredible. Unparalleled to this day. And I had a shitty Casio keyboard and at about 10 years of age I knew I knew I had to start making tunes

I knew I had to start I was interested not just in listening to music but I was interested in how music was constructed how music was made and I would get my Casio keyboard and play the demo sounds and the demo beats and the drums and the synth noises and using a cassette recorder would try my very best to record certain sounds and to overdub them and create tunes and it was very difficult and Jesus Christ I wish I'd been born 10 years later so that computers were a thing and that music software that you could

get on computers were a thing because I was wasting my time for fucking years trying to make rave tunes out of a Casio and a cassette player but you will hear the fruits of that labour in our song Dad's Best Friend. I made the music for Dad's Best Friend in jeez I'd say nearly only a day or two days but it didn't really it took me several several years since I was a child fucking around with that Casio to get that violent

prodigy hardcore fucking rave metal sound into a track and that's what that's what dad's best friend is that's the payoff of all those years

trying to sound like Liam Howder the prodigy his dad's best friend and fuck it they put it into Trainspotting they put that song in the Trainspotting soundtrack Trainspotting 2 and guess who else was on that album

the fucking Prodigy and holy fuck did I want to go back and give 10 year old me a hug Jesus Christ but

we'd all kind of listen to Rave you know there was Prodigy Orbital Fourth Dimension bands like that

and we'd wear baggy jeans such brands as Joe Bloggs and Petromotion and when you got to about 11 and you were looking at the older boys and they were smoking fags and drinking cider the best boys were the ones who could rave dance and rave dancing

was just weird it was just strange cause like there'd be these lads going around they were teenagers like they were older than us but they'd be hard fuckers like really fucking hard bastards you wouldn't look at them sideways and they'd be scrapping and fighting the whole time.

Except when they rave danced. You had these lads who were very reserved and very masculine and very macho. But then as soon as someone pressed play on the boombox, they would do this bizarre rhythmic shuffling with their feet which was a thrill to watch and this was rave dancing this is what this was and it was quite effeminate you know and it was very expressive to see these hard bastards who five minutes ago just threw a glass lucas aid bottle at a bus and now they're all rave dancing and smoking fags and taking turns in the middle

of the circle to see who can do the best rave dance and they'd big baggy jeans and baggy hoodies and their feet flying a million miles an hour shuffling around on the ground and I just always thought it was bizarre and I used to practice rave dancing in my bedroom then in my socks

and I used to just wonder where the fuck does that come from where did that come from in Limerick how did all the boys in Limerick decide we're going to be hard cunts except when rave tunes are playing and then we're all going to gather around in a circle

and shuffle our feet as fast as possible and I grew up and it left me until on YouTube a couple of years ago I saw what's called Northern Soul Dancing and it was

it was from like Manchester and Sheffield in the 1970s and it was these lads with baggy flares and they were they were dancing in 1972 the style of dancing shuffle dancing that I had seen in Limerick in the early 90s the rave dancing and I was going what the fuck's going on here that this english dancing from 1972 ended up in limerick in like 1995 1996 what what the fuck is this about so i got my mind going mad because that's the type of uh synchronistic and correlative that's not a word that's the type of correlation that excites my mind and keeps me awake at night so then of course I started reading about Northern Soul and listening to Northern Soul

music and it brought me down a very oily and long wormhole which I will now indulge you in Northern Soul the phrase refers to both a type of music and

an entire culture. The northern part is, it's from the north of England, right? Now I'm not great on my English geography, because you're not great on Irish geography lads but the north is like I don't know Manchester, Liverpool

around that, that area above London and below Scotland on the left hand side usually so this thing happened in the north of England it's really strange where very very obscure soul music from Detroit and Chicago became massively, massively popular in the late 60s and early

70s. Like, it was so bizarre, I just had to learn about it and listen to it. To give an idea of what Northern Soul sounds like because I can't really, I can't play any examples on this podcast unfortunately because it's iTunes. If I play music that isn't mine it'll get flagged and get taken down. So fuck it, a couple

of weeks ago we managed to talk about Caravaggio without any visuals. So we're going to talk soul music without any music. And if you want, you can go and listen on YouTube as well. Pause the podcast. So the type of soul music I'm thinking of, you want to be thinking of Diana Ross and the Supremes. Songs like Baby Love, right? That's the Motown sound. That comes from Detroit.

Motown means Motor Town, the Motor City. Key to the Motown sound, right, when you listen to the likes of, like I said, the Supremes, listen to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, you hear a very mechanical rhythm. This music is from the early to mid 60ss but you hear a very mechanical rhythm. You hear the sound of a tambourine on the beat. And to understand that music from a kind of a socio-cultural point of view, you have to look at what Detroit was a heavily industrial city post World War II industry mainly making cars the motor city and a huge amount of black Americans

left the southern states of America for the larger industrial cities for a couple of reasons when black slaves became free in the southern states free is in inverted commas there the white ruling class introduced a series of laws called the jim crow laws and the segregation period was introduced i I spoke about the Jim Crow laws a couple of podcasts back. They were based on the penal laws that were brought against the Catholic Irish in the 1800s. So it wasn't very pleasant being a black person in the southern states of America during segregation because the vast majority of your rights were taken

away, such as education and land ownership and such. So quite a lot of black people said fuck this, I'm heading up north, there's jobs in Chicago, there's jobs in Detroit, I'm going there. Now African American culture, music is a huge part of it. So if you listen to the blues music and soul music and gospel music of before the 1950s, you'll notice that quite a lot of it is acoustic. The likes of Son House and Robert Johnson, it's just acoustic guitar blues. So what happened is that when the southern black population moved up north to the factories, they had disposable income for the first time ever

because they were working in factories getting jobs. So they started to play in clubs. Instead of, whereas in Mississippi, you're playing to about seven people in a tiny little box you get to Chicago you're playing to a hundred people so the music became electrified electric guitars became a thing because they're louder but what also happened and that's the blues but we'll say the gospel singers the church goers of Mississippi when they got to Detroit that's when soul music became a thing and soul music

essentially it takes the gospel tones and the gospel melodies of church music but when brought into the poor slums of Detroit and Chicago the themes of the lyrics stop being

about God and they start to become about relationships and sex, the themes of the lyrics stop being about God and they start to become about relationships and sex. So the Motown sound, the sound of Diana Ross and the Supremes, the sound of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, it's very mechanised. Listen to that tambourine. It sounds like machinery. It sounds like the people that were, the black people that were working in the factories every day, clink, clank, clonk, in this perfect mechanic rhythm, that this got mixed in with the soul and gospel tones to create the Motown sound, this very mechanised dance sound where the focus is on, not the kick drum but on the snare beat with that tambourine but the thing about the Motown sound is that Motown it was run by a fella called

I believe it's Barry Gordy who was a very very clever businessman and Motown wanted domination of the charts in America which meant appealing to white people so Motown wanted domination of the charts in America, which meant appealing to white people. So Motown music is actually quite mainstream. I'm not knocking it. Some of the best pop songs ever fucking written were by Holland Dozie or Holland for the Supremes and for Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and a few others.

Fucking Stevie Wonder came out of Motown as well. But Motown was mainstream it was softer to appeal to a white audience but then you had other artists from much more kind of obscure labels

and this type of soul music was only really it was artists black artists trying to sound like Motown but the only people that liked that were other black people and in America there wasn't a lot of money in that so this was essentially failed music it was it would it was these failed soul tracks that for some bizarre inexplicable reason became very popular in the north of England in the

mid 60s and early 70s sometime after when they were released in Detroit and Chicago and I would rack my fucking brains day and night going why the fuck how did this happen why

someone give me a reason what kind of happened i'll get to that in a minute the north of england similarly was very very industrial like detroit and like chicago you had a huge working class population working class whites and their jobs were basically work in the steel mill, work in the coal mine. Your jobs are mechanised, you're surrounded by coal. You're surrounded by dirt, by noise. You're surrounded by machines. So that was my first inclination as to why the people of the north of England were uniquely found a liking in this music that

really shouldn't appeal to them at all this was a music made for a black population in Detroit and Chicago yet it is making sense to somebody from Manchester from the slums of Manchester I do believe that it is the the commonality of music, the heart of it coming from mechanics and coming from industry, that that was the common theme that made the Northerners fall in love with this music. But then another thing I looked at. So, first off, the phrase Northern Soul was coined by a record shop owner in London. It was coined by a record shop owner in London. He coined this phrase because on Sundays when there was a match on in London and some of the teams, the football teams were down from the north of England,

he just noticed that the northerners from like Manchester or Newcastle were looking for very, very strange Motown records or very strange and rare records from Detroit and Chicago. He couldn't understand it, so he just called it Northern Soul. The thing is, with these cities in the north of England, there was a huge amount of coal production. This is before Maggie Thatcher shut down the northern coal mines to have a more London-centric economy.

But there was massive massive production of coal now over in Detroit in Chicago they needed coal for their fucking factories to work so the north of England who had an excess of coal. Started to export coal. By the ship load. To Chicago and to Detroit. They'd load up the ship. At the docks in Newcastle. Or wherever.

The ship would leave for America. And then it would unload all its coal. In Detroit or Chicago. When you unload a ship. That has been full for all its journey. or Chicago when you unload a ship that is has been full for all its journey that ship needs a ballast, it needs to be weighted

down on the way back because you went over with a certain amount of coal you can't go back with that coal gone or the ship will sink so they needed to fill it with an equivalent amount of weight but it turns out in Chicago and in Detroit, so

many soul records were being made that they were essentially rubbish. And the records that didn't sell, the records that were considered failures, were packed up in boxes and on the docks of Detroit when the ships were going coal ships were going back to the north of England they were filled with fucking boxes and boxes

of failed vinyl records to weigh the ship down to give it balance so then the ship would arrive back to the north of England. The records would be taken out and just simply thrown as rubbish on the docks of Manchester or the docks of Liverpool. This would have been the early 60s. At that time, cafe culture and beatnik shit was quite popular. So enterprising owners of coffee shops in northern English towns,

they had jukeboxes because kids loved jukeboxes. But buying records was expensive if you owned a cafe. So a lot of the owners would go down to the docks and find these boxes of rubbish records, take out the vinyls and fuck them into the jukeboxes. So the kids of Northern England in the poorer parts would go to their local cafe, they'd be looking for Elvis, they don't have Elvis, but they do have Gloria Jones or Jackie Wilson who were fucking essentially failures, they were failed artists, they were nobodies and the kids of Newcastle

and Liverpool in the late 60s and early 70s started to hear very very obscure and weird soul music and got a taste for it so eventually what started to happen is these

kids from the north of England would go to their local youth centres. And someone would throw on a Northern Soul record. Now if you're wondering what Northern Soul looks like, or sorry, sounds like, and you want to get a flavour for it. Just pause the podcast, go onto YouTube and find Gloria Jones' 1965 version of Tainted Love, which is a song you'll know well. But this was a failed song. It was supposed to be nothing. So anyway, these Northern English kids

started to listen to these tunes. The thing with Northern soul and what separates it from Motown, it was dance music. It was a couple of BPM faster than Motown tunes because it was for dance halls in America. So when you heard these tunes, you had to start dancing, which led to a very bizarre style of northern soul dance in the likes of manchester

and wigan where it's it's kind of like almost break dancing before break dancing very quick shuffling of feet spinning and high kicks some say that the northern soul dancing actually comes from bruce lee's kung fu films that would have been in the cinema at the time. The same boys and girls who started Northern Soul would also have been in the cinema looking at Bruce Lee. So they would do Bruce Lee's impressive kicks and spins and incorporate this into a dance. While dancing to. Detroit. And Chicago.

Soul music. So eventually they'd all get together. And to listen to this music. They would have what's known as an all nighter. And this is 1972 now. No fucking. No rave music. No nothing.

So all the northern soul kids would go to a giant dance hall of which of course didn't have a liquor licence so there was no drink being served and they'd start to dance all night to Northern Soul records and dance was the unifying theme the spins and the shuffles and the kicks and they'd wear very baggy flares

to allow the dancing to happen and of course they took an awful lot of drugs. In particular there was a drug called bronchipax which was an over the counter cough suppressant. The main ingredient of which is ephedrine. You may know ephedrine as pseudoephedrine. It's in Sudafed. Crystal meth is made from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. So all these kids were taking speed essentially. That's what it is, it was poor man's speed and staying up all night dancing like lunatics to Northern Soul. It also started kind of a DJ culture thing. The whole point of Northern Soul is that the tunes that you were playing or the tunes you were listening to, they were rare as fuck.

They couldn't be in the charts. And this kind of started an early DJ culture. White label. White label is when a DJ is playing a tune, but they cover the label on the record because they don't want anyone knowing the name of that tune so they can have it. Real pre-internet shit, you know. This couldn't happen nowadays because you'd have the internet. Everyone would have a Northern Soul playlist, of which I'm sure they exist.

So you had this mad dance into drugs, staying up all night. And then you had this DJ culture and record swapping in the early 70s. And then it kind of fell out of popularity, Northern Soul fell out of popularity until kind of another 10-15 years later

when another type of music emerged from Detroit and Chicago house music and techno music in the early to mid 1980s with artists like Frankie Knuckles. Again the emphasis this time around is not on the snare but it is on the kick drum. Electronic beats and of course it's no surprise that this style

of mechanized rhythmic industrial, industrial, cold music comes from Chicago and Detroit, because they're industrial cities, just like with soul music and Motown. So it would be of no surprise still that in the early 1980s, the cities in England that started to enjoy house and techno were the cities of the north. Manchester, the opening of a club called the Hacienda, which was founded by the members of New Order,

was the first place in England to play Chicago house, to play Acid House and to play Detroit techno. So, at the start of this, you know, I was talking about rave dancing in Limerick in the early 90s. Well rave culture is a direct result of the northern soul culture of the 70s. The north of England, they already had this culture of dancing, shuffling your feet, staying up all night on drugs, going to a club and not needing drink. It laid dormant in the consciousness for about 10 years until Detroit Techno came along and Chicago Acid House and then it was reborn again in a new generation. So that rave dancing that I was doing in the early 90s, the feet shuffling shit,

it's because of coal ships in the 1960s that accidentally came back with a bunch of obscure Chicago and Detroit soul music and that eventually turned into lads in limerick shuffling their feet listening to the Prodigy.

But I tell you what I love the most about Northern Soul is that it is an art form that celebrates failure. The music of Northern Soul, they were failed records. They were test pressings. They were demos. They were one-hit wonders. they were demos they were one hit wonders they were singles that were supposed to do well sold 10 copies and then you're left with a warehouse of 10,000

and they failed and then found success in a new part of the world for very different reasons and that's what draws me towards Northern Soul I don't really listen to a lot of Northern Soul. I'd be much more of a commercialised Motown man, but I do enjoy this,

the very healthy kind of attitude around failure that is present within that culture, and it's something for all of us to consider, because from those failures came, you know know a hugely influential music if you listen to the music of the Smiths for instance a Manchester band you will hear the influence of Northern Soul

you hear the happy Mondays you know there's Northern Soul all over that even Paul Weller even though he's from London his band the Style Council you know listen to a song like

Shout to the Top by the Style Council Northern Soul all over it and then of course that Northern Soul culture which led to Rave Culture started the Acid House movement in the UK it started breakbeat hardcore

it started jungle music the prodigy can all trace their roots back in my opinion to northern soul music and that great celebration of failed music and failed records failure is a brilliant brilliant thing if I look at we'll say my own career

any successful piece of work I have it's because of several failures that have gone before in my experience you don't learn from success you learn from failure and there's only one real failure to be honest as far as I'm concerned the only real failure is not doing something because you were scared of failing. That's the only actual failure. But if you try and put effort into something, a project, whatever, make a bollocks of it, then there is a success in that because you tried and you can learn from that in future. Like, I don't know, about six years ago, we got a pilot, a television pilot on Channel 4.

And I was very young, and I'd never written a half hour of TV before. So it was quite experimental. And I tried my best, and to be honest, I'm not particularly happy with that pilot looking back. And it didn't get commissioned. Now, it didn't get commissioned because the commissioner left for another channel it wasn't because it was shit but in my opinion i'm not happy with the work but when i look back at it every fuck up that i made in the writing process i have recouped several times over in experience and i'll never make those mistakes again because I made them once

and it informs my creative process you know there'll be that book I wrote there the gospel according to blind boy that book is scarred with past failures and they've healed and grown stronger to turn into successes soace failure in your own life. Is what I'd say to you. Embrace failure. There's nothing wrong with it. If you're involved in anything creative. You must recognise that failure is a necessary part of the creative process.

It's a given. So. To use the cliche. Feel the fear and do it anyway. But. Don't look back. Don't look back with regrets, don't look back with saying I didn't do something because I was scared of trying and I was scared of failing, so I just didn't bother doing it, it's better to look back on a bunch of failed projects than to look back on nothing, do you get me, y yart so that was a 36 minutes sojourn into the history of northern soul music i hope you enjoyed

it um i touched a little bit on house music and techno because i didn't want to get too deep into that that's for another podcast and it's a whole different, it's a whole different type of history, how we said disco music went from post disco, went to electronic house and rave tunes, via Italy as well, that's another podcast which I'm going to get into at some point, because I'm very passionate about that subject. We're going to take a small break now for an ad, for an advert, which you may or may not hear. And as usual,

what I do each podcast is I'm going to leave a pause for an advert and I'm going to play my Spanish clay whistle, my ocarina. So here we go for the ocarina, which you may or may not hear, or you might hear an advert. It's a lucky dip. I'm going to place the ocarina

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That was the ocarina. I'd like to thank everybody at this point who has started contributing to this podcast's Patreon page. Last week I started a Patreon. You can find it at patreon.com forward slash theblindbuypodcast and Patreon is, if you enjoy the podcast and you're liking it, if you want you can contribute a small amount of money to the podcast, whatever you want and this helps me to keep it going because it is a lot of work.

But if you don't want to contribute and you can't afford it. That's fine. That's no problem. The podcast isn't going to go anywhere. It's just nice to have patrons to see people appreciate it. And to give me a euro a month or whatever the fuck. So thank you everybody for doing that. I'm going to bring back a feature of

the podcast that I haven't visited in a couple of weeks now, where I read out some of Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world. I read out his tweets as your drunk limerick aunt, who has had a few too many West Coast coolers. And the interesting thing about Trump's tweets, I think he's legally not allowed to delete them now that he's president. I think it's some type of obstruction of the public record if he as president deletes a tweet. So he just has to leave them up. So this is your drunk limerick aunt on a Saturday night at two in the morning. You foolishly called over to her house because you want to see how she's getting on. And she's been on the West Coast coolly.

Theresa May, don't focus on me. Focus on the destructive, radical Islamic terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We're doing just fine. You go. The only people who don't like the tax cut bill are the people that don't understand it are the obstructionist democrats that know how really good it is and do not want the credit and success to go to republicans crooked Hillary Clinton

is the worst and the biggest loser of all time she just can't stop which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years. You absolute goal,

you fucking wagon. Big win today in the House for the GOP tax cuts and reform. 2-2-7-2-0-5. Zero gems. They want to raise taxes much higher. But not for our military. Anyway.

Why would Kim Jong Un insult me. By calling me old. When I'd never call him short and fat. Oh well. I trust so hard to be his friend. And maybe someday that'll happen. So there was your weekly dose of. Donald Trump's tweets as your drunk limerick aunt.

Each week I like to also recommend a new musical album for you to listen to. Not songs but an album, an entire body of work. Last week I recommended Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan. A fucking fantastic album which is

literature in my opinion. This week, you know, because most of the albums have been from the 60s and 70s. Now, the reason being is that the 60s and 70s, that was the time for fucking albums, because singles weren't even really that much of a thing back then, you know. People went out and bought albums. They were important. It was a full body of work. It was a piece of art. You bought it on vinyl. It was a full body of work it was a piece of art you bought it on vinyl it was massive the artwork mattered it was a full product you'd listen to it for a year you cared about it it wasn't disposable like it is now but people are still coming out now

with decent albums so i recommend something contemporary and there's an artist called Jameson spelt JMSN and he came out with an album in 2014 called The Blue Album which again it's kind of it's R&B orientated if you don't like R&B music

you mightn't like it but I fucking love the album because it mixes elements of trap music with beautiful string arrangements and great songwriting. So Jameson, the blue album, JMSN. You'll get it on Spotify. Lovely start to finish album, which I think you might enjoy if that's your cup of tea.

It's pop, but kind of clever pop. So I'll answer some of the questions that you've been asking me on Twitter at Rubber Bandits. Few people asking what's up with Mr. Chrome? Where is Mr. Chrome? If you come to

one of our gigs, a Rubber Bandits music gig you'll see Mr. Crumb because what he likes doing is dancing and singing that's his shtick, dancing and singing and he doesn't really tug out for the other stuff

he's not that interested, he's not interested in the internet stuff or anything like that so if there's singing and dancing to be done Mr. Crumb will be there he spends most of his time in Malta where he's doing a PhD on the Maltese falcon Fionn Cleary asks

do you have any book recommendations? em I suppose I do I don't do a massive amount of reading em because I'm just far too fucking busy, so I don't get to read as much as I'd like, I mainly read non-fiction because I can dip in and out of it, you know, but as regards giving hours and hours of my time to a novel,

I just don't have that anymore, I'm too busy, I would recommend, I suppose you could call it a novella, because it's only about 50,000 words. It's called The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind, which, it's a very interesting book. It's a very interesting book about a man and a pigeon. And Patrick Suskind is a phenomenal writer. I think he writes in German originally, but it translates quite well to English I also enjoy his book perfume um perfume the story of a murderer it's called they made it into a film a few years back actually and it is the best adaptation from a book to a film that I've ever seen because I read the book first and then I watched the film and I felt it's it looked on screen exactly as it looked in my

mind's eye at the time but the thing with perfume perfume is a book and it's all about smells the major sense in that book is the olfactory system which is great on paper you know the way he describes smells and stinks and nice smelling things and bad smelling things so give perfume by patrick suskind a crack it's a longer book and then if you want a shorter book have a crack at the pigeon he's a great writer and buy my own book the gospel according to blind boy my collection of short stories which would have a bit of a Patrick Susskind influence in it in how I described smells um I just I like writing about smells because I think smell smell triggers memory and emotions more than anything else smell number one music second smell, sometimes when you get a smell on a very unconscious level,

it can deeply emotionally take you back to a time that you associate that smell with. And you can never quite put your finger on it, but you really feel the emotion. You really feel that sense of nostalgia. And smell is unique like that. And for me me that's why when I write a book the goal for me when I'm writing if I'm writing a short story is

I want you the reader to immerse yourself in that world as quickly as possible I want you to forget that you were sitting in the room that you're sitting in now and I want you to live in the world that I am painting for you and I use detailed descriptions of smells

to do this I find it a very immersive experience I'm going to begin writing book number two soon I'm waiting for 2018 to happen I just feel I can't start writing book two until 2017 is over so once 2018 happens I'm gonna sit down and very calmly and slowly begin the process of flow where books come out of me I'm not gonna put myself under pressure and I'm gonna try not to book number two will be slightly difficult I'll tell you why. Because of feedback, right? And positive feedback can be just as dodgy as negative feedback as a creative person. About 100% of the public who've read the book have been very, very happy with it and they love it and they enjoy it. You'd have heard a bit of it at the first few podcasts I read out a couple of short

stories the reviews have been about 70% very positive as well I've had one or two negative reviews but my opinion with these negative reviews they came from literary circles right and the literature world and the art world they um some of it is bollocks not all of it some of it is bollocks and the way that the art world and the literary world defend bollocks is by making it appear to be impenetrable and something that cannot be understood or appreciated by the average person on the street. It uses very solemn and serious language to prop up what is objectively horseshit.

When a person wears a bag on their head and acts and looks like a clown, because I'm a clown, when a clown walks into'm a clown. When a clown walks into an art space or a literary space it is very threatening to the guardians of that space because that exposes the fundamental absurdity that has been defended by solemnity. So of course I'm going to get dismissive reviews from literary critics. Everyone who wasn't a literary critic, they didn't feel threatened,

so they actually quite liked the book. And other artists, actually, yeah, I'm being unfair here now. Literary critics were not welcoming to my book, but actual artists, proponents of literature, did like the book. Kevin Barry, who's probably the best writer in the world today. If I said to anybody, Kevin Barry is the greatest writer in the world,

a lot of people would go, yeah, I agree with that. Kevin Barry loved the book, so that's all I need to know. He's a proper artist. And the director of the Abbey Theatre, he loved the book. He's an artist. But regarding critics, there's something else at stake. And that goes for the literary world and the art world. They need to prop up their hallowed, elitist and religious space

with a very solemn and reverent attitude towards the art. Because if you strip that away and you start pulling your pants around your ankles or you start putting a bag in your head, then that whole system falls apart. But I'm quite happy to antagonise that system. I enjoy antagonising that system. And I enjoy rattling cages.

And I will continue to rattle cages of the literary world because I'm a socially engaged artist and I don't want art to be out of the hands of anybody. I think that art should be appreciated by everybody regardless of your education, regardless of how much you know about art. Art should be democratised. This bullshit of art being out of reach

and you're not smart enough to get art that just services capitalism that just services high prices as far as I'm concerned. Now you might be listening and thinking blind boy are you not just defending yourself from negative criticism? No I'm not um negative criticism is one thing it's fine Some people just don't like what you're doing, and that's good. And I would suggest if you're creating something, if someone doesn't like your work, say to yourself, this person thinks my work is shit.

In this person's world, my work is shit. And that's fine, because in another person's world, it's not shit. Most importantly, in my world, I like what I write, I like what I i do so i only have to impress myself and in your world you know if you if you're an artist or if you're doing anything creative at all the only person you have to impress is you at the end of the day that is all that matters and if you do a good job at that, other people will, they'll get a horn off the authenticity of that, and then you'll have a successful work, but don't create for other people, it's a losing game,

and don't change what you do as a response to someone else not liking your work, and that doesn't mean response to criticism sometimes people can make genuine decent points about what you're doing but try not to please other people with what you're doing only aim to please yourself you must become responsible for your own your own kind of aesthetic autonomy you know what i mean like i said some of the reviews i got from the literary critics they they were agenda driven it'd be like be like me reviewing a tom waits album and spending the whole time complaining that the guitars were a bit too gritty or complaining that he's not a very good singer or reviewing the album that i gave to you last week blood on the tracks by bob dylan listening to this album and choosing to complain that he's not as good a singer as Prince,

sure anyone can do that, lads. That's not decent criticism. That's critiquing art based on your own personal aesthetic boundaries. It's not about critiquing art on the terms of the artist or what the artist themselves want it to convey. But having said that, writing the second book is going to be difficult. Because, first of all, I have to try and not take negative criticism on board. But even more difficult is not taking positive criticism on board. That's the tough one.

I didn't write book number one by thinking about an audience. I wrote it in a state of flow. I was writing it for me. What is the book that I would like to read if I wasn't write book number one by thinking about an audience I wrote it in a state of flow I was writing it for me what is the book that I would like to read if I wasn't me so for book two I'm going to have that struggle so I just have to try and get straight into flow

and not think about other people like what's the main example there's two stories in my book that would not have been my favourite stories, but they are other people's favourite stories. There's a story called Ten Foot Hen Bending,

which is a very raw portrayal of what it's like to have an anxiety disorder, but it's also fan fiction about the actor Sam Neill because why the fuck not and this for me would have been one of my least favourite stories but it seems to be the one that it's the favourite story from the people from the book

or who read the book and that freaks me out because I'm going oh shit this story that I didn't think was the best is what other people like and then I said to myself do I even know what good is so I said dismiss that thought because that's unhelpful

I have one goal for book number two like I said I use smells a lot in book number one so I want to get out of that sense the sense of smell and maybe try to describe things using different senses either touch or sound and see what that does the cliche is visual

descriptions visual descriptions are grand but you know we see with our with our literal eye with our lens but with good good writing, I think, what world can you paint using the other senses, the senses of touch and the senses of sound and the senses of smell, the senses of taste? These are the little curveballs that will draw a reader onto the page, in my opinion. Nelly 15 asks,

are you ever going to have guests on the podcast Blind By? Yes, I will actually, because I'm just after launching the live Blind By. Yes I will actually because I'm just after launching the live Blind By podcast tour which I didn't think would be that popular but it turns out it is. We've got two dates in the Sugar Club in Dublin now that are sold out for March looking at introducing a third and there's a few other dates around the country that I'm going to announce. And for these live podcasts I'm a bit nervous about them to be honest I'm a bit nervous because

this podcast is about the podcast hug it's about the warm relaxing space that I can give you and I'm worried in a live setting will I still be able to maintain that warm feeling? Maybe not, but I'll try my best. But I do think for these gigs, the smartest thing to do is to bring a guest on board. Rather than having me just talking to an audience. I don't know, would that work in a live setting? You need to have interaction with the people in front of you. There needs to be a bit of give and take. There needs to be a bit more crack when it's live. So

with guests, I think that'd be a good idea. What I want to do regarding guests, I don't think I want famous people. What I'd like to do is every village or city or town in Ireland that I visit for a live podcast, I'm going to see about getting a local character on as the guest. A local historian or something, or a sports player, or a butcher. Just interesting people. And what I'm going to start doing is that before I announce these gigs, And what I'm going to start doing is that before I announce these gigs,

I might ask you, the listeners, to suggest people who might be good to have as interviewees on the podcast. And I think that'll be a lot of crack. We'll cross the bridge when it comes to it. If the interviews start affecting the podcast hug, we'll find a way around it. Maybe I'll do one half of the podcast in my studio as a huggy podcast and then the second half can be the live part so it won't affect your hug you can listen to it on in a different environment or a different setting you know jeff carwin asks what do you think will overtake aisle as the earth's most precious resource natural or artificial my hope would be that we stop relying on kind of natural resources

altogether, unless it's wind or solar, unless it's completely renewable and it doesn't take from anything. Observing the world right now, I think what the people with money are treating as the natural resource is property. Countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Dubai, they know that their oil is going. They're aware of this. So there's two things that they're doing. Dubai are basically turning their entire country into a tourist resort. That's what they're doing.

They want the longest bridge in the world. They want the highest building. That's international tourism. That's what they're doing. They want the longest bridge in the world. They want the highest building. That's international tourism. That's what they're doing once the oil goes. But they're also heavily investing in property in capital cities. In London, for instance, there's entire towers of flats, luxury flats that nobody will ever live in.

And it's just somewhere for rich cunts to put their money so that appears to be the natural resource i don't know can you call property a natural resource it's a resource that's what's happening right now um i don't think that we need to rely upon aisle the way that industry would make us believe i don't think that at all i mean are you telling me? You know, I've got a fucking iPhone in my pocket and I can talk to somebody on a video link around the world in two seconds and we can't find an alternative fuel to oil.

Bullshit. I think wind power and geothermal energy and, you know, hydrogen fuel cells, that's something to look into. I do believe that oil is harsh shit and is just being used to prop up some rich people that are still left. That's a particularly hot take. That's a boiling, boiling hot take that you are free to disagree with. To be honest, I'm in a little bit of a rush.

I'm in a small bit of a rush. Can you hear my cat screaming? No, she's gone quiet as soon as I drew attention to her. I'm in a small bit of a rush this week because I have purchased a seaweed bath for a dear dear friend in a spa in Limerick and I have to join them in a seaweed bath for a relaxing and a relaxing hour in a seaweed bath I hope it's fucking warm because I don't associate seaweed with being warm, I associate seaweed with being fucking freezing out in a

beach in Clare and getting a wallop across the face with a dead fucking octopus that's what I think about seaweed so I'll report back next week. On whether the seaweed bath. Was a pleasurable and relaxing. Aesthetic experience. I like to keep the podcast going for about.

An hour fifteen. An hour twenty minutes. I think that's a good time. But this week lads. I'm going to wrap it up at around an hour if that's all right with you I'm gonna have a possible surprise next week I'll say nothing but um look after yourselves look after yourselves Christmas is coming up next week um look after your mental health if Christmas is a

difficult time for you and I would say for 50% of people it is difficult not everybody gets along with their families you're going to be going having Christmas dinner you might have a brother or a sister or an aunt or an uncle that you don't just get along with

let's just say there's a lot of history there and some of their comments can be very triggering for you they can make you feel insecure they can make you feel angry you can read into statements that they make you can read malice into their statements but it doesn't exist as a result of the pre-existing history that you have what i will say to you and give this a go give this a go because you will come out the stronger person at the other end if there is somebody in your family who you are you're anxious about christmas dinner because they're going to be present you're angry that anxiety is you're afraid of the emotion it brings up in yourself. You're afraid of the insecurity it brings up in you, the anger it brings up in you. It's not them, it's yours.

First off, take ownership of that. And then this is the tough part. Try and have genuine compassion for that person. Even if they say something shitty to you even if they go back on their bullshit in inverted commas you know even if they have a few jars and they say something hurtful genuinely try and have in your heart compassion and love for them and when if they do something that is shitty try and see that behavior from a point of view of their heart rather than if even if their intention is to hurt you try and see their behavior from the point of view of their own heart and have compassion for that be cautious that how you express this compassion is not passive aggressiveness

be cautious that you don't like I don't know your aunt has been an asshole or your brother has been a dickhead be cautious that you don't go say to yourself well I'm going to be an adult

they can throw a tantrum if they like but I won't be an adult I'm going to be an adult and I'm not going to speak to them that is passive aggression let them do their thing let them do it and try and feel love and compassion in your heart towards that person and understand this is very important when somebody in a public setting says something mean to you or makes a slight or tries to belittle you even though you feel hurt and you feel insecurity nobody around you thinks that

in fact it's the person who made the shitty comment who looks like a dickhead not you for receiving it and the hurt and insecurity that that might bring up in you that's yours hang on to that have compassion for yourself have compassion for the aggressor okay if you do that successfully actually try and do it you will grow as a human being that will raise your self-esteem that will raise your self-confidence and that will improve your own personal mental health journey everyone has their problems lads and a lot of people express their own hurt by being aggressive to other people so don't you be that person and if someone else is that person to you be compassionate around it okay and do that for yourself do it for you it also benefits them but mostly that benefits you okay yurt have a lovely pleasurable christmas and i'm going to talk to you next week

um go on to the patreon patreon.com the blind boy podcast if you want to give a few quid if not it doesn't matter try and buy the book the gospel according to blind buy let's not forget this podcast is still a promotional tool for me to sell that book until christmas is finished and then i can go on to writing the second one buy the book if you want if you don't want to that's fine and recommend the podcast to a friend leave a nice review of the podcast and subscribe to it. That's all I can say. I'm going to go and have a dip in a seaweed bath with a dear friend.

I might report to you next week if it's pleasurable. Go in peace, lads. Go in peace. Have a lovely week. I'm going to be back same time next week. Eeyart. I love you. party led by Rishikesh Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets,

visit tso.ca.