The Blindboy Podcast - Jocking Constance Wop

Episode Date: June 27, 2018

Anatomy of an Irish Salad. 2pacs favorite drink. Body Image . Morning Depression Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Namaste you cunts. Welcome to week 37 of the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first time listening to the podcast please go back to the start. This week's poem has been submitted by British actor Charles Dance, who is an avid listener to this podcast. And Charles sent me a poem that he was adamant that I read out. And the name of Charles Dance's poem is Damaged Gander Handler. I am the damaged gander handler. I am the Damaged Gander Handler. I am the Damaged Gander Handler. I work in a goose factory. And I handle damaged ganders.

Cramped ganders hurt their necks. Cramped ganders fight other ganders. I don't love my wife I'm the damaged gander handler I handle damaged ganders I feel empty when I wake up I'm a gander

damager I hurt male geese thank you very much to Charles Dance for that beautiful poem I look forward to seeing you in some things it's usually with this podcast I try not to I try not to set it

in any specific place and time because I want people to be able to you know you can happily now go back to podcast number one if you want to and it doesn't feel dated or specific it's just

you can listen to them whatever you want kind of like This American Life do you know that's what I like about This American Life podcast I can go back to 2014 and listen to a random episode and it's grand This American Life. Do you know? That's what I like about This American Life podcast. I can go back to 2014 and listen to a random episode. And it's grand. I enjoy that.

But. Yeah. It's. It's the middle of fucking summer. Right now. It's June. And it's boiling hot it is ridiculously warm

in Limerick so warm that I can't not mention it because it would be disingenuous so

apologies if you're listening to this in December 2018 or whatever but yeah, it's fucking roasting,

it's roasting hot, and we've a weird old relationship, with the weather, in Ireland, like this year's been fucking extreme, because we had mad fucking snow, up to March, and now there's been a heat wave,

for the past two weeks and I'm not complaining about it it's gorgeous it's lovely I was there gigging at Body and Soul Festival over the weekend and fucking hell it was like being at a festival in France

it was perfect Irish festival weather I've never seen that in an Irish festival it was brilliant that lovely dry I've never seen that in an Irish festival it was brilliant that lovely dry heat and you get those gorgeous dry, there's clear fucking warm dry nights that's what it is now, a very very hot

dry night and the sky is clear and you can gape up at the moon and there's a moisture hanging up high do you know and that moisture from the ground obviously that's what I like about the hot weather it robs the

moisture off the ground says come on up here into the air for a while you prick but the moisture is hovering in the air and when the light cuts through it in the evening it excites new spectrums of sunlight that you're not privy to at other times so fuck me there was this gorgeous peachy purple sky the other night

and the wonderful fucking that smell of summer grass which which i recently learned actually it's chlorophyll that's specifically the smell of grass in summertime is specifically the smell of the chemical chlorophyll. Which is... The fuck is chlorophyll? Chlorophyll is the chemical in a plant that makes it green. And I believe it's responsible for photosynthesis. Which is how plants make food from sun. There's a bit of junior sort of science for you.

But it's roasting. And. Yeah we're weird with weather here. Weather dictates. So much of. Irish discourse. You know. There's so many things that I've often wondered.

Like. For a while I was going. what is the story with us with irish people and binge drinking because we do we drink a lot you know it's not that we necessarily drink that frequently but when we do drink we tend to drink to get drunk whereas when i'm over in fucking spain now this heat that we have here now in june that's nothing that's like march in spain spain right now is ridiculous last year i went over to cardoba in spain to write my book in fucking august for the month and it was very foolish a very foolish thing to do first off I arrived there there's no Spaniards because they've either indoors or they fucked off down to the beach so it's just me wandering around

a very very hot ghost town it was 38 degrees and I'd gone over to write that write the fucking book it was so hot that when I took my laptop out in certain cafes the laptop would just shut down such was the heat and my phone was shutting off in my pocket so I got an Airbnb as well and I stayed with a Spanish family and they hadn't a word of fucking English

and I stayed in a room with stayed in a room with no with no windows jeez that was a bit dark actually Stayed in the room with no. With no windows. Jeez that was a bit dark actually. Yeah I only got to Spain in like fucking February.

Spain in the summer can go fuck itself. But yeah. When I watch the Spanish drinking. They don't even drink pints of beer. They have these small little glasses called canas. And I'm like what are you at lads. First off the beer is dirt cheap. Like if you want a pint it's only two quid in Spain.

But. They drink these tiny canas. So one day I was. Went up to. I was asking for fags as well. When I'm in Spain I'll smoke fags because they're so cheap. I can't not. But.

I asked a lad for a light. I need a bit of English. And I said to him what the fuck. Can you tell me why you're drinking these tiny little glasses of beer. And he was just saying if we had a pint. It'd be warm in two seconds. It's rotten. So they just go through these little small glasses of beer.

As well as that being hammered drunk is not very pleasant when it's hot so I often wonder is drinking and our drink culture related to our shit weather the fact that it's always cold or freezing but then I look at like the likes of you know European countries

that are equally as cold as us, and they are able to sensibly consume drink, so it's not the fucking weather. It's just a cultural thing, an excessive attitude we have towards alcohol that's bred into us from a young age. We tend not to drink to simply enjoy the drink. We like to drink to get drunk.

This is why i enjoy cocktails because if you listen to this podcast you know that i'm a huge fan of cocktails what i love about cocktails is i tend not to get absolutely shit-faced on cocktails because number one they're mad expensive they're like fucking 14 quid. And number two, a properly prepared cocktail, there's an element of theatre and presentation to it, you know? You'll spend an hour drinking a well-prepared cocktail, sipping it gently and genuinely, mindfully appreciating every single little sip because it's so well well prepared the fuck am i getting at what am i trying to talk about yeah irish weather and how it relates to the

irish personality right we have uh in our culture in irish culture we tend to celebrate shame quite a bit you know and this is reflected in the mental health crisis in the country it's obviously okay the government aren't doing enough to help people but also we can have a bit of a predisposition towards bleakness and i would trace this to the dominance of the class that the historical cultural dominance of the catholic church specifically my hot take is confession from a very young age young young Irish people, what is it, started about seven years of age, were told to go to confession.

And what confession is, basically, is you get a seven-year-old child and tell him to go into a wardrobe with a stranger and tell the stranger your deepest, darkest secrets.

Search for the sin. it's the worst part seven year olds don't even have sins but we are told to search for them but when you tell the priest your sins

the priest doesn't speak to you about them the priest doesn't kind of get you to reflect on your sins to understand why I shouldn't even be using the word sin

your wrongdoings we'll say, maybe if you hurt another person the priest just hands out punishment in the form of penance do a lot of Hail Marys there and that doesn't, from a mental health

conversation perspective, that's fucking terrible. Do you know? You go to a good counsellor, and a counsellor will be non-judgmental. And they'll ask you open questions, whereby it's like, you explore, you know, why are you treating this person in your life badly or why did you say this mean thing or whatever this thing that you need to come to me about that's what a counsellor will do

a priest will just go say this magical prayer to Holy Mary a lot of times as punishment and that I feel has led to an Irish culture of when we experience a sadness we punish ourselves.

Because it's in, it's a cultural thing that's been handed down from the church. But the other boiling hot take I have about Ireland and shame relates to the weather. Right now, it's incredibly warm and hot and it's beautiful and it's so unexpected that we as Irish people we don't even know how to deal with it like when a blast of hot weather comes no one's prepared do you know it always comes out of nowhere and you're like ah for fuck's sake I didn't buy shorts or I have no sun cream. Or I'm not comfortable going around the place with my top off. I should have planned for this.

I don't have the right clothes to wear to go outside. Bollocks. That's the Irish attitude towards a bit of sun. But there's also an anxiety. When sun happens in Ireland. We can never enjoy sun because the nature of Irish weather means that when you get a decent blast of sun here

you know well that a week later there will be torrential rain you know that fucking rain that slaps down out of nowhere out of the skies and you can smell oil the ground just rain that slaps down out of nowhere out of the skies and you can smell oil

the ground just it has this summer rain smell that smells a little bit oily one summer I grew so obsessed with this smell that I had to find out what the fuck it was and it has a name it's called Petrichor

and it's bizarrely they only discovered Petrichor and it's bizarrely they only discovered Petrichor in 1964 and how long has the ground been smelling like oil after rain and only in fucking, that's like three years before the Beatles released Sgt Pepper

and scientists decide, oh we'll find out what the smell of oil, that ubiquitous human experience we'll find out what the smell of oil that that ubiquitous human experience we'll find out what that is in 1964 you pricks like but it's called petrichor and what it is is certain plants right they when it's pure dry right when the plants aren't getting any water at all, certain plants exude an oily substance from their leaves, right, and this then, the oil goes down into the clay-based soil and rocks normally, and it's absorbed into it, right, and then when the rain belts down, the oil is released, it's down the oil is released and that's what that wonderful oily aroma is when the rain comes down after a dry spell and this is very familiar to Irish people we know that smell and this is my

my hot take on the Irish um our obsession with shame and self-flagellation i think there's an environmental uh aspect to it when we get a bit of decent weather we can't enjoy it because we know that it is going to be followed by the inevitable punishment of rain and i think after years and years of this environment that we have grown to become a shameful people. It's not just Catholicism. Maybe when Catholicism came in to do its thing, it found a people that were perfectly suited to its ritualistic levels of shame and self-flagellation because our weather was already doing it to us oh lovely gorgeous weather ah but it'll rain tomorrow though won't it and it'll all be gone

and with the rain brings a drop in temperature and it'll be cold and we'll be there looking at your watch it's July and it feels like November and I think that's

I think that has led to our culture of self flagellation so I used to hate doing the fucking Edinburgh festival as well Edinburgh festival comedy I've done it about three or four years but it starts in the middle of August and you'll be there usually with Ireland June is class July is very wet

and then August kind of gets its act together a bit it's half wet half fucking hot but it's generally warm when I had to do the Edinburgh Festival it's like cutting fucking summer short for a month

going to Edinburgh in August is like downloading yourself into the middle of October When I had to do the Edinburgh Festival, it's like cotton fucking summer short for a month. Going to Edinburgh in August is like downloading yourself into the middle of October. It's a very grey place. And it has a... It has a fog. It has a type of fog that's unique to Edinburgh. Which they refer to as the... The hargh. I've only ever heard Scottish people say

the word but they have a word for this it's like you wake up in the morning in Edinburgh and all of us you go outside your door and you're living in a cloud and you can't really see two feet beyond you and it's bizarre very strange it is nice actually because there's a

moistness to it, it's like being in a mister but the yeah the scots have a word for it and i've never seen it written down i've only heard it pronounced by people from edinburgh who i can't understand at the best of times and they call it something like the ha ha i don't mind gigging in london in the summer l summer London can get nice and hot although anytime I've done like a lot of gigs in Soho Theatre with the Bandits in London like in July or something I'm always subjected

to the British obsession with Pimms and Pimms is fucking rotten and I don't even know what Pimms is it tastes like Ribena's ball sack and they mix this red Pimms drink with I think sparkling lemonade or whatever

and then they fuck a lot of cucumber and apples into it and it's not pleasant and the British people drink it and it's a cool refreshing drink but there's nicer drinks in the hot weather. And I think, if I was to psychologically analyse, culturally analyse what PIMS is, it's a colonial thing.

The British, you know, this is the one thing that we'll never understand about British people is, or not British people, but British British culture they're a colonial empire and the colonial empires are always in competition with each other I think PIMS exists because the Spanish another massive colonial empire they've got sangria sangria is fucking lovely it is gorgeous there is nothing wrong with sangria it is nectar of the gods but the brits because they're a colonial empire they won't reduce themselves to drink culturally will not reduce themselves to drinking sangria because then it's like sure we can't do that that's what the spaniards do and they're the competition like uh i've spoken before about the explosion of gin

consumption in the industrial revolution in london one of the reasons gin became popular william of orange was a dutch man he became the king of fucking england he brought jenever which is gin with him and gin became kind of the national drink of England because they were like don't drink brandy that's what the French drink another colonial empire so I think Pimms exists in Britain

to combat or are in opposition to Sangria because the Brits are too proud to drink Sangria which is a much nicer drink than fucking Pimms but my hot weather drink of choice is most definitely sangria and around Christmas I gave you a mulled wine recipe called a Yorty Ahern so I'm going to give you the summer equivalent of my sangria

recipe and yeah what I usually do I make a lot of it now i make a you know those giant fucking you get them in heatings you know those giant big glass mason jars right they hold about six liters and they've got a little tap at the bottom i have one of them and i make sangria in that right not on my own obviously i'll invite the boys over because i'm not drinking five liters of fucking sangria but what i do basically is here's the beauty of sangria you don't have to spend money on the ingredients right you can buy get two bottles of red wine now you can reduce the fucking the proportions if you like but this is my recipe two bottles of red wine now you can reduce the fucking the proportions if you like but this is my recipe two bottles of red wine go into aldi or lidl um or and the thing about this you could this is this

is your excuse to buy the the five euro red wine which is generally unpleasant and acrid tastes like bent nettles but with sangria you can buy the 5 euro wine. Or if you want splash out and spend the 10 euro wine. Two bottles of red wine. Right. Then one cup of brandy. And you don't have to fork out for the fucking brandy either. Get the brandy in Aldi or Lidl.

Cost fuck all. I think it's 11 quid for a bottle of brandy there. Then cup of orange juice. Sugar to taste. And cut up like limes. Lemons. Few apples. Whatever you want.

And mix it around well. Leave it sit. Okay. And. If you're feeling adventurous. Throw in a few fucking sticks of cinnamon. That can make it fun. But here's the thing.

Don't be tempted to fuck the ice into the large vat of sangria, because that will affect its candor and its taste. Instead, have the ice in the cup. So you pour out the sangria and have the ice in the cup, and that way the watering down occurs in the glass. Also, if you're very bold and you want to have a bit of crack, half fill up the fucking cup with sangria and then fill the other half with cava,

which is, they're mine Prosecco. Prosecco's for goals. Cava is where it's at. Prosecco's for girls. Cava is where it's at. Cava isn't popular, you see. Prosecco's popular, so because Prosecco's popular, you can get it everywhere, and most of it is shite. But Cava is Spanish sparkling white wine.

It's not very popular, so generally it tends to be quite good quality, and it's only a tenner. Top the other half up with Cava, you like i uh i'm not being sponsored by aldi or little i just think it's a good place to buy drinks sometimes they were selling bottles of this stuff called alize before over christmas now alize if you're a fan of tupac or Dr. Dre you will remember Alizé was very popular in hip-hop in the mid-90s so you can't buy it in Ireland you cannot buy Alizé in Ireland but Aldi for whatever reason had a special on Alizé around Christmas so I bought about about 12 bottles of it so I have

a load of Alizé and the reason i bought it basically was holy fuck here's this drink i've been hearing about since i was 14 i have to buy it because tupac has a cocktail called tug passion he even has a song about it which is one part alize one part cristal now cristal can go fuck itself so i was mixing Alizé and Cava to make Thug Passion wasn't really that nice and it's unnecessarily strong but I did it interesting fact about

my particular personal collection of Alizé of which I have about 7 bottles left I think Aldi were selling it because this particular batch was going out of production right Alizé is it's passion fruit, liqueur, with brandy in it, right? And in 90s hip-hop, brandy was very popular. Hennessy was Tupac's order drink.

Hennessy was huge in hip-hop. Brandy stopped being that the other thing as well Alizé wasn't it didn't come out it wasn't pitched as a hip-hop drink what Alizé is is it's like um it's not far off American Buckfast it's a cheap strong fortified sweet drink that was sold in poorer neighborhoods in america so it was popular with fucking rappers because you know they came from poor areas so when rappers started to get money they were like oh we have a lot of money we must start drinking champagne now so tupac was drinking champagne going i'm to be honest i'm only really drinking this because i know it's expensive but it's not that nice i grew up drinking alize which is lovely and sweet and passionfruity i'm gonna mix the two

of them together but alize very quickly figured out that it was the drink of choice in the hip-hop community and then it started advertising itself as such but something happened in hip hop French kind of Cristal and Hennessy stopped being popular in hip hop

now I can tell you why Cristal Champagne stopped being popular because around 2005 Cristal Champagne stopped being popular. Because around 2005, Cristal is an incredibly expensive champagne, French Champagne. And the lad who was the managing director of Cristal around 2005, was asked in an interview,

how do you feel about all of these rappers who are shouting about Cristal in every single song because in the mid 90s early 2000s Cristal Cristal Cristal every rapper had Cristal in their song and the lad who was running fucking Cristal said we don't really want their business what can we do about it I'm sure Don Perignon would love their business. And the rappers were very, very offended by this because they perceived that comment to be racist. It was like, you fucking posh cunt. We're forking out 250 quid a pop on your French champagne

and we're giving you free advertising all the time and you have the balls to turn around and say you don't want to be associated with us because of our blackness and the fact that hip-hop is urban um so there was a boycott against chris dahl in the hip-hop community and jay-z very very clever businessman led the fucking boycott and then jay-Z started his own brand of champagne. Can't remember the fucking name of it. Can't remember the name of Jay-Z's champagne. But he doesn't need my advertisement.

But Jay-Z's a clever fucker with advertising. Like put it this way. Three months ago. Jay-Z was in a restaurant. And he bought a table of people. I think. It was about 20 bottles of his brand of champagne and the bill came to 100 grand and the tip on the bill

was 20 grand so Jay Z tweeted a photograph of his 100 grand bill and the 20 grand tip 120 grand and on the bill was how many ever bottles of his brand of champagne he bought and it was the most clever advertising I'd ever seen.

Effectively, what he'd done there is he'd spent 120 grand on an advert that went globally massively viral. He could have spent millions on an advertising campaign for his fucking champagne, but instead what he did, he bought 120 grand's worth of it in a restaurant, shared it and it went viral because you and me are like look at this mad cunt dropping a 20 grand tip and 100 grand fucking wow and that went viral but Cristal stopped being popular in the hip-hop community after that don't know why Hennessy stopped being popular. But anyway. Why is my particular bottles of Alize unique? Because it contains brandy in it.

After Hennessy stopped being popular. Vodka became the new thing. The new drink in the hip hop community. Because of Puff Daddy. Puff Daddy has a brand of vodka called Ciroc. And he's been pushing this since about 2005. So vodka is now the cool spirit in the hip-hop community. So if you were to buy Alizé now in America, the brandy is no longer in the recipe.

It's passion fruit and vodka to keep up with hip-hop trends. Well, I've got six bottles of old, possibly gone-off Alizé that still has brandy in it so i'm one of the few people in the world that when i decide to crack open my alizé and have it with my sparkling champagne or sparkling cava i'm drinking tupac's actual recipe which contains brandy alizé so fuck you man interesting vodka fact where we're on the subject. There's no such thing as good vodka. Vodka is industrial grain alcohol and water. That's what it is. Whether it be Smirnoff or Stolichnjof or whatever the fuck, they're all the same, right? But there's one brand of vodka, Grey Goose,

which is 60, 70 quid a bottle, for no fucking reason, other than incredibly clever marketing. And it was the success of Grey Goose that made Puff Daddy go, I need to launch Ciroc. Look what these Grey Goose cunts are doing. So the history of Grey Goose, it was a yank,

and this yank is also responsible for jagermeister being popular in the 90s jagermeister was this really weird german harbitonic spirit that only all german men drank and this american dude brought jagermeister to america mixed it with red bull which had just come out in the mid-90s and pitched it to college kids and invented the Jäger bomb and that's why Jägermeister became popular because of this dude so the next thing he did was he looked at what's the cheapest alcohol I can buy vodka it's just industrial grain alcohol mixed with water and he looked at in culture what was considered to be expensive with liquor and he reckoned for the american audience anything anything fucking french so what he did is he

studied the packaging of wine the best wines are in their own little wooden case with straw and the best wines come from France so Conti gets fucking industrial alcohol from wherever mixes it with French water has it bottled in France and serves the Grey Goose vodka

in packaged in fucking wooden boxes with hay and charges 60 quid for it and that's what people are paying for when they get grey goose and they did they got a professional taster to try and taste the difference between grey goose and just industrial alcohol and water they couldn't taste the difference i heard that on some podcast that i listened to and i can't remember what it is so sorry for not crediting every week I hope that this is not the podcast

that some person decides to this is the one I'm going to listen to first, this podcast I swear there's other podcasts that are very informative and have structure and purpose like a couple of weeks ago I did a two part podcast

on the history of disco and techno loads of structure. Not this one. Here's my other favourite summer drink because loads of people were asking me on Twitter. They were just saying, have you any summer drinks because I really enjoyed the Yerty Harn mulled wine you have as a Christmas. I like to drink sparingly um it's called a hemingway daiquiri which i only recently discovered and it's fucking gorgeous and in order to make this you need to be able to get your hands on a bottle of maraschino liqueur luxardo which can be hard to get you've got to find a good off license basically what it is is it's cherry liqueur, right, so,

do it up in a blender with a bit of ice, if you like, into a blender, few cubes of ice, a shot or two of white rum, okay, again, nothing wrong with Aldi's rum, it's only 11 quid, Aldi white rum, shot of fucking white rum then one shot of fresh grapefruit juice, half a shot of fresh lime juice and then a quarter shot of this cherry

maraschino liqueur and then a spoon of sugar if you like fuck that into the blender and you get this icy, slushy grapefruity, cherry concoction Fuck that into the blender. And you get this icy. Slushy. Grapefruity. Cherry. Concoction.

Called a Hemingway Daiquiri. That is utterly gorgeous. And it's way nicer than a normal Daiquiri. Normal Daiquiri is. White rum. Lime juice. And Cointreau. Which is a bitter orange liqueur I'm 20-25 minutes in

I'm not sure I know what the podcast is about lads I think what I'm getting to I think I know what I'm getting to there's another aspect of Irish summer culture that every one of you are going to fucking remember if you grew up in a house where your ma did the cooking

my ma did the cooking in my house there is something known as the Irish salad okay one day a year maybe two days a year when it's boiling hot roasting hot

every Irish mother turns around to the children and says a year, maybe two days a year, when it's boiling hot, roasting hot, every Irish mother turns around to the children and says, it's too hot, I'm not cooking a dinner. I'm not cooking a dinner today, it's too hot, it's too much effort in the heat, and it'll make the kitchen hotter, you're having a salad. Most people are sickened by this information, when your ma says it to you, you're having a salad most people are sickened by this information when your ma says it to you you're getting a salad because irish salads are fucking rotten i don't know where the

irish salad came from but it's composed it's not even a fucking salad what it's composed of is a cold boiled egg a boiled egg that's made cold and cut in half. Boiled egg. Thick sliced cheddar cheese. Slices of cold ham. A slice of tomato. Not even nice tomatoes. And if you're lucky. A bit of coleslaw.

Which would have been the only nice thing on the plate. And that's what happens. Once a year your ma turns around and says it's too fucking hot you're getting an Irish salad and

do you know what it doesn't matter because you're kind of too hot to eat at dinner anyway but you're there with a fucking boiled egg a lump of cheese

and cold ham and coleslaw and a tomato I think this podcast today's podcast is the Irish salad podcast, because it's too fucking hot, it's boiling, it's roasting, and I had an idea for a podcast, something that I was going to investigate and do a bit of research on. And give you a big hot take. And tell a big investigative story.

But it's too fucking hot. It's too hot. So today's podcast. Is an Irish salad. Where I've ranted for 27 minutes. And what I'm going to do. Because. It's too hot to cook dinner. I'm just going to answer questions that you've

given me. It'll still be entertaining. You'll still get your podcast hug. It's just this particular podcast is going to be about everything and nothing. All at once. God bless. So Tommy asks. Blind by. What genre of music. Are the music to songs like. Buddies in Boston. And Double Dropping Yolks with Eamon de Valera.

And how long into your career. Were you able to produce beats like that. What Tommy's asking there is. There's two on the rubber bandits album serious about men one song is called buddies in boston that's dubstep i made that in 2011 and dubstep was quite hot at the time and i was listening to dubstep so i just was like i'll throw a dubstep song on the album make the hipsters happy i'm not crazy about that song i like the lyrics to it but it is quite dated double dropping yokes with emin de valera that's something i still enjoy to this day and i said it on twitter last week after I released the two disco podcasts if you listen to the song

Double Dropping Yolks how I structured the music it follows the history of house music it starts off with a fourth of the floor 808 and Lindrum beat

then it turns into which would be like 1981-1982 house music then in the middle of the song I bring in an instrument

known as a TB-303 which is acid house music that's 1987 and then the song finishes off with

breakbeat hardcore style which is like the Prodigy circa 1992 so double dropping yokes with Eamon de Valera which is a rave song about taking ecstasy with the ghost of Eamon de Valera former president of Ireland it's beat the structure of it follows the history of electronic music and I did that to benefit me I didn't think in 2011 that I'd have a podcast

where I could speak about the history of disco music and to be honest in 2011 with the followers we had the Horse Outside followers they wouldn't have given a fuck so I made it I made the structure of it the history of electronic music

to entertain myself purely and then 8 years later I'm able to tell you and hopefully someone will appreciate that so it doesn't matter, I like it but I do like that song, that still bangs and I don't think it'll day it either because I stuck to principles of

classic principles you know what I'm saying, whereas Buddies in Boston you can't play that now, that's's fucking dubstep what the fuck is dubstep it's gone dubstep actually are interestingly people don't want to pretend that it doesn't exist like if you look at the like grime music in britain is very popular at the moment but like how did the history go it went garage UK garage

then UK garage turned into grime around 2006 and then grime turned into dubstep and then dubstep was hijacked by Americans and became very embarrassing

and now grime is cool again but most people pretend that dubstep never happened because dubstep is so uncool we associate it with.

American teenage gamers. You know. How did I. How long was I able to produce. I was producing about five years. Before I made that. Like. I said before about the song.

Dad's best friend. I made the beat for Dad's Best Friend in nearly an afternoon nearly two days but to be honest I was ten years perfecting the electronic kind of rave sounds before I could get to the stage

where I could make a song like that in two days I was four or five years learning audio production and music and instruments before i got to produce or make anything that would be resembled professional you know so there's a huge huge amount of work gone in and luckily i learned to produce from a young age i started producing at about about 15, 16. So when you're that age, you can be feverishly passionate about whatever it is you're doing to the point that you neglect every other aspect of your life. I was messing with beats seven, eight hours a day.

I can't do that anymore now because I have tinnitus in my ears. So if I spend too long producing a tune, maybe two, three hours, I'll just have a horrible ringing in my ears for the rest of the day. Morgan asks, Have you noticed your listening figures dropped due to the World Cup being on? I know I'm listening to football-based podcasts more than ever. Yes, I fucking have. There's been a slight dip in listeners since May about one or two percent and

I thought it was the summer I thought that you know it happened specifically at May so I think a lot of my listeners who would be listening in college are I've quite a few listeners actually in fifth and sixth year of school when that ritual of like we use podcasts usually as a distraction a comforting distraction you know a lot of people listen on their way to work or their way to college and it's this distraction from the stressful thing in our life job or education that we don't like doing and a podcast can provide a moment of solace but in summer there's a slight dip in listenership because people are out there enjoying their lives. Which is a good thing.

But ironically last week. I was like. Wondering. If I'm getting a dip in listenership. Then. Other podcasts must be getting a little dip in listenership too. So I contacted. One of the lads from Second Captain's podcast.

Which is an Irish sports podcast. And I said to the boys. Have you experienced a bit of a dip at all? And they said, no, the fucking World Cup is on you stupid cunt. We're experiencing a rise and I didn't think of it because I know nothing about sports and I don't even

I don't even know the World Cup is on. Like I see it trending on Twitter, that's it. But I haven't seen one World Cup game and it's freaky as well like because like soccer and I called it soccer as well on Twitter and a British person took umbrage with me calling it soccer but I explained to him Irish people call it soccer because our national game is called Gaelic football so that's the first sport Gaelic football it's ours soccer is secondary so we don't call soccer football but yeah I went on to Twitter

and I like I woke up and I saw the top trending things and the two top trending things were Iran and Saudi Arabia now when I wake up in the morning and I see Iran Saudi Arabia trending I shit my fucking pants because I don't have soccer on the brain. So when I saw Iran and Saudi Arabia trending I'm like fuck they're finally after doing it. One of them's after nuking the other and this is why they're trending and I got a very intense blast of anxiety waiting for my phone to refresh to find out that nuclear war had finally broken out between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It didn't. There was a soccer match.

Aidan asks, Hi Blind Boy. I wake up feeling like my life is inadequate in the mornings. Is morning depression real? Yeah, that's a cunt um sometimes i get that not often sometimes i'll wake up and and you wake up out of bed and the first thing you wake up with is this you know it's like you rise into the world and you're out of the the comfort of sleep and you're back into your existence and this heavy sad weight just comes over my body and I feel sad

and now before when I had bad mental health issues when that would happen that moment that moment of arising and waking into the world with a feeling of sadness that would be enough to ruin my day because my brain would say all right you're after waking up sad now oh everything is meaningless great you're gonna have a shit day so i still wake up very occasionally with that feeling and it's rotten it's horrible to wake up out of bed and all of a sudden to go oh i'm sad but i challenge it through practice i challenge that in the fucking moment usually when that happens to me personally it's when i'm if i'm going through a period where i don't have a sense of meaning in my life for me that usually means if i go about a month or six

weeks having done nothing creative because creativity is very much for me personally a cathartic um aspect of my behavior that gives me great sense of personal meaning okay so what i'd say to you aiden is is i don't know what's bothering you i haven't a clue but if you're waking up with this random sense of sadness I would wager that you're struggling for a sense of meaning in your life so work on finding that

sense of meaning but as well if a sense of meaning isn't what's causing your upset a good thing to kind of counteract the sadness and this, you know, inadequate feeling of life, confront it directly by saying to yourself, suffering is an inevitable part of being alive.

Feeling inadequate is an acceptable and inevitable part of being alive but it doesn't have to be the truth do you know what I mean whatever feelings come up in yourself around your own inadequacy test them

in the moment against the true reality of it do you know what evidence do you have that you're inadequate you can't be fucking inadequate and i'll tell you why aiden and i've said this a million times before you have intrinsic human value and it's the same as mine and it's the same as anybody else's you have value as a human being and your behavior does not define your value as a person

so whatever inadequacy you feel it's as a result of some aspect of your behavior when i wake up feeling like that usually it's the aspect of my behavior that has me feeling inadequate is i'm not being creative i'm not living up to my potential i'm not doing that thing that gives me a sense of personal meaning many many years of self-reflection i know that that's what would have me waking up that way ask yourself what what is your thing that has you feeling that way and do not define your value as a human being by an aspect of your behavior because it's inaccurate it's untrue it's harsh shit and treat it like a bully treat that feeling in the morning as a bully you're waking up beside a version of yourself that knows all of your fears, all of your insecurities. And you're waking up beside yourself and that devil on your shoulder wakes you up and says, Ha ha, getting up are we?

Going to take on the day, going to be happy. No, no, no, I'm going to remind you. Treat that aspect of yourself as a bully and what you do is no bully what you're saying to me there you're describing aspects of my behavior and they do not define my value as a human being so piss off and you can't guarantee yourself a happy day but what you can guarantee yourself is a rational day to live your day based on the sadness of that morning is irrational but the rational approach is to challenge the negativity against reality and i've just said it no aspect of your behavior can define

your value as a person so go about your day and and and sometimes as well yeah this is another thing i'll say to myself when that happens in the moment i'll say it to myself i'm not fucking letting this little pang of sadness to make the rest of my day sad I'm going to really really put some effort today into enjoying some shit no matter what it is if that means getting up

and the cup of coffee you have or the cereal enjoy it in a mindful fashion it's very hard to entertain that type of negativity when you've got a lovely bowl of porridge or muesli or a decent cup of coffee and all you're doing when you consume it is focusing on how nice it is focusing on that first sip of coffee and how tasty it is and making that the only thing you concentrate on and the lovely

sensation of freezing cold milk on your fucking muesli and the few bits of raisins you might find or whatever or whatever you like for breakfast focus solely and entirely on that when you eat it and bring those little bits of joy into your mind and into your body and that mindful practice could be enough to shake away that negativity you wake up with you know that's just my take on it i know nothing else about you that's what i would do if it was me give it a lash and if that's not working for you then look at your options with you know can you access counselling maybe you need to take

a trip to your doctor that's just me being sensible there now yart it's 50 minutes in so we're going to take an ocarina pause what this is

is this podcast is hosted by an app called Acast. And Acast insert digital adverts at the start, in the middle and at the end. Some people hear the adverts, other people's don't. It depends on your geographical location.

So what I like to do is I play a Spanish clay whistle, my ocarina, for a gentle amount of time. And if you're lucky, you'll just hear my ocarina, for a gentle amount of time. And if you're lucky, you'll just hear the ocarina. And if you're not lucky, you're going to be sold some stuff. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to

guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at Toronto rock.com. On April 5th, you must be very careful. It's a girl witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all you know. Don't the first stone man. I believe the girl is to be the mother.

Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. What's not real?

Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. That was the ocarina pause after the ocarina pause i mentioned some things such as uh how this podcast is supported this podcast is supported by you the listener if you enjoy the podcast if you like listening to it every week i do this five about five hours of content a week completely for free you know you're listening listening to this for free as is your entitlement but if you want to support me and my life and the effort that goes into making it

what i suggest is you can go to patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast and you can donate me the price of a pint or the price of a cup of coffee once a month do you enjoy my podcast enough whereby if you met me you'd go i'll buy that brick of coffee if that's how you feel go on to the patreon account and kindly donate me the price of a coffee once a month if you don't feel that way that's fine you don't have to you can continue to listen for free it's a very egalitarian model very fair model of supporting this podcast i think everyone gets the same service but i'm appealing to your sense of kindness and generosity as well because some people can't afford to be generous but if you can't afford a fiver a month

throw it over here for the crack because i really really appreciate it and it makes a massive massive difference to my life and i think that's it's a very fair exchange for me doing five hours a month to get a fiver off you. If you can't afford nothing, or if you want to do both, also suggest this podcast to a friend, especially if you're not living in Ireland. Suggest the podcast to a friend, put it on your Twitter, put it on your Facebook, your Instagram. Get me some more listeners that would be class and if you're using iTunes rate and review and subscribe to this podcast that really really helps too because this podcast has been it's been number one in the chart every single week since it's come out not consistently number one but at least one or two days a week it's number one and that's because of shares listens

but also reviews and ratings so i really appreciate that too thank you um barry asks i have a question about quentin Tarantino for you blind boy he's been on record talking about his writing process at the beginning I'll stick it here too just in case he basically Tarantino basically rewrote scenes from films he liked

for an improv class until he started accidentally adding in dialogue that didn't exist before. Do you reckon this is true form of flow or is it bullshit? Yeah, I'd fucking 100% believe that. So what Barry's asking there is that Quentin Tarantino and how he writes his films, he would actually lift scenes from other films, films that he admired and he would

edit their scripts until eventually he's dealing with his own original content i'd 100 believe that i think it's rem not 100 sure on this but i think the band rem started off in a garage as a kind of a covers band between friends and what they started doing was for the crack they would get I think it was Beatles chords so they'd get like the chords of a Beatles song

and put like the lyrics of the Beach Boys over it and mixing those two things together they ended up with something that was different and original so then Michael Stipe turns around and says why don't i do my own lyrics over it and why don't we mix things up now i'm not a hundred percent that was r.e.m i think it was but they started off that way mixing the beatles and fucking the beach boys but i'd 100 believe that about quentin tarantino tarantino is first and for as a filmmaker he is first and

foremost a fan of films tarantino worked in a fucking video shop he was obsessive he wrote the script to reservoir dogs while working behind the fucking counter of a video shop and tarantino his work exemplifies post-modernism in cinema right i speak about post-modernism and modernism a lot but when i say post-modernism in cinema a post-modern film is a film that is 100% aware that it has an audience a post-modern film knows that there's no point kind of pretending it's creating a film for an audience that are culturally and visual visually aware of what a film is how a film is supposed to work aware of tropes things like that and pulp fiction right what makes pulp fiction so kind of fun and groundbreaking when it came out in 1994 there's a genre of writing called pulp fiction in the 1950s writers used to

they used to make these kind of like comic books they were sensationalist stories right that were sold the reason they were called pulp is because they were printed on the cheapest possible pulp paper and it was very cheesy stories were written on this pulp fiction that you'd buy for like a penny and the stories were usually about sex and there were certain tropes. Like one trope in. Not Pulp Fiction the film. But in the genre of Pulp Fiction from the 50s was. The boxer that throws a fight.

And gets chased by the mob. That was one story in a Pulp Fiction novel. Or the gangster that has to date. His boss's wife. And not have sex with the wife. But then he does. Another story would have been the pocket watch smuggled from war. So the film Pulp Fiction, Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

He literally took these stock stories from 1950s pulp novels. from 1950s pulp novels and stitched them together in a very self-aware post-modern fashion to create the film pulp fiction as we know it it's an incredibly self-aware piece of work that intertwines with these cliches but post-modernism basically it gets cliches, right, mixes them right beside each other to create something new. It comes from a technique that was pioneered by a group of postmodern artists called the shitsuationists, not the shitsuationists, the situationists from the 1960s. The situationists had a technique called detournement, it's a French word, where basically you get two separate things things an image and a word or whatever stick them together and see what new meaning is created from a random effect that's how

the film Pulp Fiction is made let's get the boxer throws a fight story and let's put that right beside the fucking mobster has to take the wife of the gang leader out on a date let's put them all beside each other mix them together see how they interact and can it form something new and ironic and it fucking does and there's loads of little tropes as well in pulp fiction like john travolta's as well as that it's another thing that makes Pulp Fiction so self-aware and aware that it has

an audience is that it has a non-linear time structure Pulp Fiction knows that the audience understands

how film structure works because the audience knows that first act second act third act which is usually

set up conflict resolution because an audience in 1994 going to the cinema is so entrenched in watching movies their whole lives tarantino figures i can fuck with this structure and they'll still be able to they'll be smart enough to stitch it all together themselves and that's how it works because it's very non-linear how the story is told he's also consciously playing with tropes one thing that used to bother tarantino about films is in movie world nobody ever went to the toilet and this used to bother him when he was in the fucking video shop. Watching loads and loads of films. He was going.

Did anyone ever need to go for a piss or take a shit? So. He writes into Pulp Fiction. John Travolta's character. Is. He's looking for. Butch Vig. Who's Bruce Willis' character.

Bruce Willis is in the jacks taking a shit. No. John Travolta's taking a shit. Bruce Willis is in the jacks taking a shit no, John Travolta's taking a shit, Bruce Willis is in the kitchen, John Travolta in the process of taking a shit decides, I'll just leave my machine gun on the counter here Bruce Willis finds the machine gun

John Travolta emerges from taking a shit and Bruce Willis kills him so Tarantino got his moment there, he got to go, not only has one of the characters, in my film, done something as human,

as use the toilet, but it is central, to how that character, is killed in the film, so, I'd 100% believe, that Tarantino, was mashing things up,

and taking, pre-existing, fucking, films, and rewriting dialogue and I would suggest as well if you're if you're anyone is stuck in creative block do that introduce that into your process there's nothing more terrifying than a blank page take a piece of work that already exists do you know I'm writing a short story at the moment in my new book and it's not really consciously, but after kind of getting into it,

I realise it's an exact cross between John B. Keane's The Field and The Human Centipede. And I'm mixing the two of those genres with a bit of originality in there, you know, to create something new. David Bowie used to use this as a technique. He borrowed it from the poet and writer William Burroughs who ironically, Burroughs

who had a heroin addiction Burroughs is a serious post-modern writer he used to write pulp fiction novels in the 50s under a pseudonym to pay the rent and to pay for his heroin addiction Burroughs used to, when he was doing his own work that he'd put his name to

used to use what's known his own work that he'd put his name to used to use what's known as a cut up technique Burroughs would write loads and loads of diaries or whatever get the diaries, go at them with a fucking knife, cut them up, take out whatever bits rearrange them, put them together to create new

pieces of work and David Bowie borrowed this technique from William Burroughs especially during his cocaine period at the mid 70s when david bowie was made um the album diamond dogs i know for a fact 1974 was written using the cut up technique where bowie had tons and tons of lyrics he'd cut them out of the paper arrange them beside each other to make songs so that's an example of how the cut up technique can work someone whose actual name is jesus or i assume jesus is asking me blind boy what has been your experience with body image issues if any and do lads talk about their insecurities amongst themselves?

Firstly, lads do not talk about body image issues at all. Do lads have body image issues? Fucking hell yes. I can only assume it's far worse now for lads that are in their late teens and twenties now. I can assume it's worse. And the reason I say this is when I was a teenager, only certain lads went to the gym. Usually lads on the rugby team or whatever like that, they would go to the gym. But lads going to the gym when I was in sixth year it was exceptional behavior maybe two or three

lads now every young lad is going to the gym because of instagram because they want to have their six-pack or whatever for instagram so i'd imagine body image is a much bigger issue for young lads today but lads don't talk about that if If Jesus Christ, like within the roles of lads peer groups, if you came out to a group and said, I'm conscious about my ears or my nose or my weight, you'd be relentlessly slagged. Relentlessly. Because this is seen as a feminine activity.

You'd be called gay. So lads do not talk about that but i've no doubt that lads are very very worried about privately about their image and about what they look like not as much as women because the pressure from culture and the media for women to look a certain way is far, far larger than it is on lads. But there is a pressure on lads to look and be a certain way. One thing that's highly triggering for lads is

height. I know that. Lads hate it. Hate it. When they hear girls say that they're into lads that are... Like I saw a very funny tweet the other day was gas now in fairness but it was a girl said i like my lads like i like my nose

six one and jesus there were some very bothered lads underneath that lads hate here in that height is it is it an attractive tenet. But lads, a girl will be attracted to a lad who isn't physically attractive if his personality is good. It doesn't happen as often the other way around. So lads have it easier but there's still pressure. My experience with body image, I struggle a bit with my fucking weight to be honest after horse outside i had like six months to finish and release the rubber bandits album right so for six months i literally only focused on making the album I didn't leave my house I was so busy I didn't cook my own meals

so I was having takeaways delivered and I put on two stone in six months I was in my early twenties so it was having come out of my late tweens having come out of my late teens when you're tweens, having come out of my late teens, when you're fucking 19, you can eat battered sausages every day of the week in your grand,

but once you hit fucking 20, forget about it, you have to start actually watching what you eat, so I'd put on two unnecessary stone, and it was fucking awful, like I really didn't enjoy it, and I'm not shaming anybody, but wait on them,

some people are comfortable with how they look. If I have unnecessary fucking weight on me. It's not comfortable. Physically. Right. I don't have flexibility. You get tired easier. It's draining.

I fucking hate having excess weight. But I also have quite a slow metabolism. So. I try very hard. I fucking hate having excess weight, but I also have quite a slow metabolism, so I try very hard, I fucking jog 10 kilometers three times a week, I fucking lift weights to maintain a healthy weight, I could have be completely fucking ripped and have a six-pack, but that would mean literally not enjoying my life. Like, Monday to Friday, I will watch what I eat and exercise, but come Saturday, I absolutely want to have a feed of cans and maybe a hangover pizza. I love doing that, and I'm okay if that means that I have a bit of dad bod.

I'm okay if that means I have if that means that I have a bit of dad bod I'm okay with that for me again it it's I try not to entertain the body image side of things I exercise for my mental health and I exercise for my physical health for energy for flexibility uh to stay feeling young to stay feeling mentally healthy like exercise is brilliant for my fucking mental health i'll get up straight in the fucking morning when i when i go for a run i get up in the morning i don't eat anything and i run 10 kilometers on an empty stomach um and i fucking love it and it's very energizing and it prepares me for everything that day if i happen to lose fat as a result of that i look at that as a positive consequence but i do not get up in the morning and say i'm running 10k to burn x

amount of calories and to lose x amount of weight because i used to do that i used to exercise go to the gym and diet with specific physical goals and what happens is again you're basing your i was basing my my motivation in an external factor and when you do that you end up obsessing about external things and the most healthy way to engage in exercise you have to do it to enjoy the process of it. I get up and jog 10 kilometers because it feels fucking orgasmic. It feels amazing. I'm always proselytizing running on this podcast. Running is incredible and so is lifting weights.

If you're just starting it, it's horrible. It's supposed to be horrible lifting weights and running for the first 6 weeks is fucking disgusting your body is going what are you doing sham because your body still thinks you're a caveman

if you put on 2 extra stone and you're a caveman your body is going brilliant man you're not dying this winter because come September when the harvest is gone and you're a caveman, your body is going, brilliant man, you're not dying this winter, because come September, when there's no fucking, when the harvest is gone or whatever, and shit's frozen over, I'm eating your belly, and we're going to be grand, so your body rewards you for getting fat, but like, so when you start exercising, your body's going to resist it, it's going to be very painful, not enjoyable, and you're going to go why do people do this but after a while after about six weeks you end up i think it's when you start

getting good at it when you're in the gym one day lifting weights and you feel i'm getting good at this or you feel results in your body same with running when you're like i'm getting good at this then the reward chemicals start coming into the brain and i swear to fuck a 10 kilometer jog for me it's it's it's like saying to myself i get to i get an hour on the xbox now do you know what i mean i love it i fucking love it i absolutely it, and I'm doing this five or six years, but the reason I'm kind of explaining it is, I remember looking at people who run or go to the gym and thinking, fucking wankers, they're just showing off, they, I don't believe them for the second that they enjoy it, they're just narcissists and they're

happy that they look good, that's not the case, when you get good at exercising it is one of the greatest, the most rewarding feelings in the world and it will not solve any mental health issues but it will definitely prepare you and improve the quality of your life without a doubt it can't not you're flying endorphins all over your body do you know jesus that's 70 minutes there lads all right i'll leave you go have a bit of compassion for yourself a compassion for other people and enjoy the gorgeous lovely weather and next week because it's going to be pissing rain

I'm going to be back on with a well thought out structured podcast about a specific thing and I know what that thing is I just haven't put the research in yart Hjärt. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first

ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.