The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 56: Soul Music Pt 3 (Gyrate As You Wish)

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 3 of our recap of “Soul Music”.* Bat! Out Of! Hell!*Yes, Joanna knows she meant Kirsty MacColl, not Kate BushFind us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Hyde Park - Wiki Waltzing Through Europe | Dance and ‘Folk Devils’8 moral panics in music that no one talks about anymore - BBCA History of Heavy Metal by Andrew O'Neill - GoodreadsNoisy and Annoying - Speakers Corner TrustChuck Berry - Johnny Be Good - YouTubeMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Yeah, that's cold coffee. Fantastic. Lovely. It was I was very excited when it started raining last night and went and did the standing outside on my balcony or anything. Yeah, I was in the garden. That's nice. We were both outside at once going, oh, lovely rain rain, lovely little rain, good petric or smell, very strong. And but yeah, then I'll wake up this morning and it was steam.

So yeah, it's just gone. Fug, I did it's bad enough, like, OK, hot and sunny. I quite like, although I made the mistake of doing all my gardening yesterday when it was stupidly hot and sunny. How much gardening could you do? I had quite I bought a bunch of plants to and I was repossing things. And then a lot of the plants I bought died because.

Neglect. Yeah. I left the rain day. Yeah. That's fine. I don't all my plants are dead. I'm not judging. I'm just. Yeah, I'm just very bad at keeping them alive. It's really annoying. My rosemary died. I'm so sad. My rosemary died. I kept that rosemary.

Actually, I've kept I've killed rosemary before. It drowned. I think it drowned. It was it. It's not like it was a it was a full fledged bush. It like it didn't need looking after. Yeah. So I think just the rain this spring just killed it. Yeah, that's for me. True. Mine's yellowing a little bit. So I think I might.

I have to look at the soil that's in and because it needs like it doesn't want tons of water. No, he's out. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the drainage is decent. I might make some perlite into the soil. I forgot to buy basil again. I want a basil plant. Oh, I want to go to the market on Saturday.

I might stick one of my waitries as well. I'm also I've planted some fenugreek seeds. So I'm going to see if that grows. I'm quite excited because getting fresh fenugreek is a pain. What a sentence. I don't know what I would do with fresh fenugreek. Should I have any use it in a curry? Ah, OK.

It is that very, very, very distinct smell of an Indian restaurant. That's fenugreek. Oh, OK. Oh, Matthew. Yes. No, I have nothing. OK. Yeah. Right, obviously. But yes, OK. Yeah, same thing. Different names. Maybe not completely the same thing,

but like similar sticks. Yeah. Quite enough. OK. You know, I'm quite proud that I've managed to make my rosemary survive because it was one we had bought a bunch of her plants at the cinema just before the first lockdown. So I took it home with me. Oh, I remember that. Yeah, it looked like it was going to die.

Yeah. And I've managed to somehow revive it. And it's still alive every year later. Fantastic. Most of my other plants are dead. But that one's like I really hate that I'm so bad with plants. Like everything else about we screams which burn her. And then it comes to plants and it's like, oh, I know, never mind.

Yeah, I don't know. It's one of the to be good with plants. I feel like you either have a knack for it or you have to spend so much time like learning what plant needs what. And I know maybe if you like grow up gardening, you know, some of this stuff. But yeah, I mean, I feel like if I did more than just shove them

in the ground or in pots and hope for the best, I might do a bit better over here as the time. Yeah, I think I briefly went down the rabbit hole of the gardening subreddits and I'm still in the pictures. But yeah, I was in those two. Actually, I don't think I didn't not rejoin for any good reason. It was just when I started a new account, I forgot. Yeah, they're quite nice.

Art ones. Yeah. I like seeing other people being good at things I'm not good at. Yeah, the gardening Facebook groups are quite vicious. Oh, yeah. No, I wouldn't. Generally, you stay away from Facebook groups, especially for hobbies, foodie Facebook groups are bad places. Yeah, I don't know what it's about Facebook. It's like fucking bickery.

That's like Twitter seems to encourage large scale harassment. Yeah, Facebook seems to encourage just fucking vitriolic spats. Yeah, I just I feel like people I think it's the whole you are behind a keyboard and you forget that there is a person on the other side. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. But it's something about the way they're set up as well. But it's that the UI makes a big difference because you just don't get that kind of constant fucking bickering on like on Reddit even.

Like obviously people do bitch, but it's not on every subreddit. It really is quite community dependent. Yeah, I mean, the foodie subreddits are like that. It is constant bitchy and bickering. But the profit dickheads get downvoted usually. I think that's part of it. Yeah, well, I think honestly part of it is Facebook doesn't have like a downvote feature. You can hangry react or sad react.

But I know Twitter has that thing where it's like, oh, reveal content. They might have a fence of content. But I have I would say nine times out of 10, it gets it wrong. And it's just a perfectly inocuous comment or a gif or something. Sometimes it's like you can kind of see where the filter picked it up. And it was like if there wasn't a space there and instead the spaces were there, then there might be a slur or like sometimes it's just a swery. I think sometimes its users get flagged as being potentially inappropriate.

Right. OK, I would really love a proper peek under the hood of how Twitter's algorithms work. And I think it's probably one of those things like staring into the void where you just kind of lose all all of your senses. Kind of, you know, Lovecraftian Eldritch Horrors. Yeah, yeah, it's algorithms. Look, I understand the algorithms are a thing. I'm not still not 100 percent sure I could fully define the word. No, but I can use it in a sentence like I can.

So it's fine. Yeah. As long as no one calls my bluff, we're good. And I can spell it. Bluffs listeners, they call my bluff. Listeners never call our bluffs. We bluff a lot. There's no need for that. No, that's not what this podcast is about.

What is this podcast about? Oh, soul music, part three. Oh, fuck, I didn't write it previously on. OK, I'll make it up on the go. It'll be fine. Right, I'm going to pull up your notes from last week. I told you I'm shit today. Fuck me. Well, I literally forgot to go to a dentist.

I haven't done that since we did the proper in person emphasise, and even then, like, he would be there. So I'd be like, oh, yeah, fuck, and just write one. Hold on. Do you want to write one quickly? Yeah, maybe I'll write one when we go make a coffee. Yeah, do you want to make coffee and then do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, we'll make a podcast.

We'll make a coffee, finish the work I didn't do yet, make a podcast. Hello and welcome to The Two Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we're reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Dispelt series one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan and I'm Francine Carroll. This is part three of our discussion of soul music. Yeah, I'm not sure why I went a bit, Matt Berry, there. We're going with it.

Soul music. Soul music. There we go. Excellent. The emphasis in a weird place. Obviously, soul music. Part three. Sorry. We're doing well so far. I'll let you start. My loud.

Thanks. No, it's on spoilers before we crack on. This is a spoiler like podcast, obviously, heavy spoilers for the book we're on. Soul music, but we will avoid spoiling future events in the Dispelt series. And we are saving any and all discussion of the final Dispelt novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you dear listener can come on the journey with us. In a stagecoach too fast around dead man's corner. I thought you were going to go with the flying motorbike, but fine.

Oh, yeah. Now that could have worked. Never mind. It's what happens if I just let myself go with things. I miss the flying motorbikes. You miss 100% of the flying motorbikes you don't ride? Yes, exactly. Even if you miss the flying motorbikes, you'll end up among the wreckage

at the bottom of the cliff. Francine, would you like to go with the flying motorbikes? Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on Soul Music? I mean, I'll try. Previously. On Soul Music. Music with Roxyn takes the Mended Drum and Nankmorpork by Storm. The eldritch canaries of the unseen university raise red flags for Ridcully,

and he consults the younger wizards, who for some reason aren't the ones acting like teenagers. Susan Strudels does swing the scythe. Death can't forget. Dibla dabbles in music management and the band go off on tour, but not without paying a short visit to the street of cunning artifices. And what is that orangutan building? I didn't add that bit in until right this second because I just remembered I forgot a point. Excellent, well done.

Right. Well, this time on Soul Music, and I apologise because it's a very long summary, a lot happened. Okay, I'm just going to meet myself and drink an entire diet cake because I'm enjoying it. Yeah, probably. Dibla ponders in Death's study as Dibla chats in Chalkie's office and prepares to send the band on tour. He interviews potential musical maestros and books in supporting acts for the upcoming free festival as the band set off. Death climbs out of the riverank into which he was so unceremoniously thrown,

and finds himself with Foul Ol' Ron and his ragtag bunch of invisible misfits. Cleat in his fury at the free festival sends assassins after the band with Roxyn. The band arrive in Scroach, the show goes on, and afterwards a depleted buddy narrowly avoids assassination with the help of Susan, who attempts to warn him of his fate. Meanwhile, the rat runs for the raven and drags him to Death's domain in the hope of acquiring assistance from Albert as they fill him in on Susan's serious decisions. As the band head for Sidopolis, Crash and the gang attempt to sound test with Dibla, but they don't quite have what it takes. They do, however, have a leopard with hearing difficulties. The band rocks Sidopolis before being politely asked to abandon the city in a hurry,

and Albert heads for the disc with a scamp 19 days left on his timer in the hopes of discovering Death's whereabouts. The band play Stolas and once again leave in a hurry. They make it to Querm and get in for the show with some help from some clever taxation. Meanwhile, Albert follows Death's footsteps to Clatch and then the mended drum, and Susan follows her parents' footsteps to the past and witnesses their untimely demise. Dibla has ideas and the band head back to want more pork as Ridcully and Ponder prepare to attend the festival in the hope of dealing with dungeon demonic entities. The band make one last stop at the street of Cunning Artifices before heading to Hyde Park for the festival. At the festival, Dibla checks the substantial profits are loaded in the cart,

Claude and Cliff give Buddy his mended harp, and before the band can really start, Buddy plays one last quiet song and breaks the audience's hearts. As the music with Roxanne begins, Ridcully prevents Clete's latest attempt on Buddy's life. The wizards watch on with the help of the University Omnoscope and Death is roused from his life as an invisible. The band skip an encore in favour of jumping into the cash cart and heading for Querm. The bone wrap finishes rousing Death who goes looking for a horse to ride after saving an incapacitated Albert, and in place of ghastly things from the dungeon dimensions, Crash and the supporting band appear. In the cellar of the University, the wizards come across the librarians project,

a strange two-wheeled creation ready to ride. Death takes it and the deans jacket and follows the action. A deadly chase ensues as Buddy and the band race for Querm with the musicians killed, Susan on Binky and Death as a dark rider follow. The band's cart crashes and Susan almost saves them as Death's bike begins to break. Susan and the band find themselves lost in the music before being thrown away. Death arrives in time to face the music and on the day the music died, Buddy makes it live again as Death sets the world to rights with a single finger snap. After the post-festival riot, the support band and Rick Kelly wake and swear off rock for life

as the events of the last few days become a bit hazy for everyone. Death takes Susan back to school and sends her to bed as if she was never gone. The following day at the end of the term, Susan learns there's a new bloke working down the chip shop and they'd swear he's elvish. Finally, Death resumes his duty. Very good, well done. Yeah, I stopped breathing like five seconds into that. Yeah, now I saw that. Just let your oxygen return to your extremities and we'll carry on.

Good old theatrical lung capacity. Absolutely useless in every other scenario. So, helicopter and loincloth watch, we have got a loincloth mentioned and I noticed it this time. You didn't have to write it down for me. Cliff is wearing a loincloth and therefore excited young ladies won't have a lot to tear off him. And motorbike, I take it, is the helicopter? Yeah, motorbikes are filling in for helicopters in this. I feel like they've got a lot in common.

It flies at one point. Also, for just other little bits we're keeping track of, I wanted to note this joke because obviously the whole million to one chances come up nine times out of ten thing. And Ridge Cully is explaining to Ponda that everything is going to be fine. A pocket full of decent spells and a well charged staff will get you out of trouble nine times out of ten. And how many times have you had to rely on them, sir? As well as Mr. Hong and the business with the thing in the worst as wardrobe, nine times so far. And it worked every time, sir. Yes, there's no need to worry.

That did make me laugh a lot. That is one of my favorite exchanges. Again, it's the wizard's dialogue. I have to say it's sad. And we had another little knobby and colon moment as well, just with the for no reason. Why do you back teeth fit together? And death drives his money by through the gates. Yeah, I really like the little knobby and colon asides in this one. So, so quotes.

Both of our quotes are quite late on. I think mine is actually first because our page numbers are a bit weird. Yours is at the climax, isn't it? I believe so. Well, go first anyway. OK, cool. Modo straightened up and paused to admire his rose bed, which contained the finest display of pure black roses he'd ever managed to produce. A high magical environment could be useful sometimes.

Their scent hung on the evening air like an encouraging word. The flower bed erupted. Modo had a brief vision of flames and something arcing into the sky before his vision was blotted out by a rain of beads, feathers and soft black petals. He shook his head and ambled off to find his shovel. Little, little reappearance of our favorite stoic gardener like I see. I see it just take a couple of centuries to get that back to normal there and off. I am. I did put him in characters, but literally I need someone to talk about that scene

because I really like Modo's nonchalant reaction to everything. I also really liked the there's a few beautiful little one line of metaphors in here, but their scent hung on the evening air like an encouraging word. I thought it was particularly similar. I did also not my quote, but I noticed it in case you didn't. There's another good line about a half moon. Which one's that? This is one of after the one of the gigs when Susan comes to find Buddy.

Would it be nice if there was a full moon or even a crescent? A full moon would have been better. There was just a half moon, which never appears in romantic or occult paintings, despite the fact that it is indeed the most magical phase. Now that's just good play for that somehow. But yeah, that was one of the things we picked this one in. Yeah, that's one of the little bits we like in general. And the other metaphor that I nearly used was that when God is playing the trumpet

and it's something like it made a sound like black velvet burning in a lightless room or something like that. Oh, now I want to listen to black velvet again. I thought you were going to say now I want to set fire to some black velvet and the lightless room might go for it mate. All for the aesthetic. Entirely for the aesthetic. I don't want to set fire to it, but velvet is expensive. Yeah, it's expensive.

Anyway, yeah, sorry, what was my quote? This is near the end. Massa exploded into being. Apparently is chaos, but in fact is a chord. The ultimate power chord. Everything altogether streaming out in one huge rush that contained within itself like reverse fossils, everything that it was going to be. Very good.

Do you want to read out the opposite bit as well? Death appeared not to smile. He brought his hand down on the strings. There was no sound. There was instead a cessation of sound. The end of a noise which Susan realized she'd been hearing all her life. The kind of sound you never notice until it stops. The strings were still there are millions of chords.

There are millions of numbers and everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord. Music is just noise. That's another thing we've kind of brought up a few times, isn't it? The something of the out of the other end of the something. Yeah. Thank you.

Defining the presence. Yes. The nerd is the opposite of sober is one of the ones he uses that I like. The through dark and out the other ones come up a couple of times with. Like dark not being the absence of light. There's something else, isn't there? Yeah. And obviously the big bell, big Tom, whatever his name is.

Yes, the bell that rings silence is old Tom. Old Tom. Thank you. Cool. All right. Well, I've dragged out the quotes long enough. Sorry. We put about five in there. Thanks. Let's start with the invisibles, which is what I've. The groups, the books somewhat dubs and I've continued to dub the sort of

miscreants that hang around by the river that death falls in with and death becomes Mr. Scrub. And we've met some of these individuals before. We've had foul old Ron. And his smell. And his smell. Coffin Henry, who earns his money by not going anywhere. People organizing important social engagement sent him anti-invitations

little presents of money to assume he wouldn't turn up. Arnold sideways, who's got no legs. And would grab people by their knees and say, have you got changed for a penny? Oh, nice. And then you have the duck man. He's got a duck on his head. It's fine. Cool.

I enjoy them. They are nice characters. They are. I thought it was very touching moment, especially when they got affected by the song. Yes. All of the, you know, screaming through your soul, rock and roll songs and they didn't have that to tap into. The heartbreaking soul stuff was. Yeah, the saddest, like a battle flag managed to reach them.

And that was, that was very sweet. And then who else? We haven't got a lot of new characters, but I'll be someone to talk about. You've got Albert. Who we haven't talked about much this book. He doesn't have a lot to do. Like all he does, he, in this section,

he goes looking for death, gets knocked out. And then death finds him and saves him. Yeah. He's the damsel in distress. It's nice to have a damsel in distress. He's a very, very, very old man. Yeah. But it's his life timer that I find interesting.

He sort of let things dwindle away doing odd jobs here and there. And he's just found himself with only 19 days left. And he still goes to try and fix everything. Yeah. And then breaks his life time. Yeah, breaks his life time and kind of loses his last 19 days. So I guess he's stuck in dust domain now. Hmm.

Yeah. We've got to address that later in the series, haven't we? I'm sure it will come up again. Yeah. Which is part of why I wanted to highlight it here. Yeah. Because we are going to spoilers. We're going to see death again.

Yeah. Because we haven't had a book without him yet. And then you're putting Mr. Scrubb slash death. Well, I like, you know, he adopts this persona as part of this group. And manages to and starts begging with them and manages to be just sufficiently intimidating enough that one of the boys from the supporting band realized they should probably be nice and

give him some money. Do you know what Mr. Scrubb is that referring to any single? No, I don't. I think it's just meant to be, you know, it's a word. It's mildly funny scrub. Yeah. It's not a horrific word.

That doesn't need to go on the band words list. But the lion, Mr. Scrubb blinked again and death stood up that moment where he really comes back to himself. I thought it was really impressive. Yeah. Yeah. We've seen him.

We've seen that he can kind of become another person. Yeah. The same way he became Bill Dore. And I don't think he's become Mr. Scrubb quite as intensely as he became Bill Dore. No, it's more like a little holiday, wasn't it? I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a good line. But it's nice to see him have that transition and accepting responsibility. Yeah. Yeah. He realises, all right, shit's going down, clearly. Yeah.

He really does know the duty is there when it all comes down to it. Sometimes it takes him a while to get there. And initially he was going through a lot in Reaper Man. He's had a time. Yeah. We're not going to judge our favourite anthropomorphic personification. I don't know. It'd be extremely foolish of us.

Yeah. Judge not less to you, what's it? It's not really a character but the bike. Nearly a character. It's got a life of its own, for sure. It's definitely got a life of its own. I love the idea that the librarian had rock and roll. And apart from his brief career as a keyboardist,

really decided this went with it. Yeah. Like this also needed to exist in a universe that had music with Roxxon. Yeah. A part of the magic kind of took the librarian and said, you can do this. You're dexterous enough. Yeah.

It's scary enough that you can just go and take people's cartwheels and they won't. Yeah. It was junk, but as it stood in the flickering glow, it had a dark organic quality. Not exactly life, but something dynamic and disquieting and coiled and potent. Yes.

It's a lovely description. I mean, I'm not a massive motorbike geek, although I do like, A, I love the Dean's enthusiasm. Oh, yes. It follows on from what I was saying last week that I really love how much the Dean gets caught up in these, especially in books like this and like moving pictures, how excited he gets about everything.

I'm sad that he won't get a go on it. I'm very sad he won't get a go on it, but it's the way he's the one looking at it going, well, it's got to go. Yeah. That's what he's meant to be moving. But he does also describe it as a triumph, which is a very famous British made motorbike.

Ah, there we go. They do cars as well. Cool. We had a friend with a triumph. He had a rocket three, which I went on a couple of times. He was a terrible person, but the bike was very nice. Yes. No, I used to live with him.

So I remember that sound at 5 a.m. My ex stepdad also had a triumph, Thunderbird, which is another very nice bike. Again, terrible, maybe bad people have triumphs. Yeah. Listeners, right in. If you have a triumph and you're not a terrible person, we're always happy to have more date points.

Well, if they're listening to us, they can't be all that terrible. Oh, I don't know. I feel like most of our listeners are better people than us. So we just need to find people on our level. Yeah. I mean, it's not that I've got the bar is pretty low. Pretty low.

Right. Yes. We've gone past my day. We've discussed everything I want to say about my day. Oh, yeah, buddy. I'm just kind of focusing on Susan's journey. But this week, I like with buddy's journey, you know, where he was really quite passive in the last section,

understandably, because he's been taken over by the music. He, his awareness and coming background to being the other protagonist of the story. Cause I'd say him and Susan are fairly 50, 50 on there. Protagonism. Yeah. You got a lot more from Susan. Yeah.

You got a lot more like narrative from Susan, but you get maybe a lot more of the plot from buddy. Yeah. I think you get more of Susan's like internal monologue. Yeah. Although she's not doing loads here until you get, she's mostly, she's trying to save buddy. And then she gets her role in the big climax,

but in the rest of the section, she's not really doing a lot. Speaking of protagonist. I thought I was having as I was reading it was in all these, what happens when thing happens, but it's the lack of a kind of effective antagonist is quite notable. And so in quite a lot of practice books, there's definitely a bad guy, like in lots of ladies as the elves in the, the, the.

In God's guards, it's the dragon. Yeah. Whereas in these ones, it's the chaos, I guess. Yeah. The entity. Yeah. But then there's always like a little bad guy in that. Hate.

Yeah. You've got like Mr. Cleet in this one. The minor weasley, greasy antagonist. Little rat got killed by the rat death. I always like when the bone rat gets sent after someone. Yeah. One insult.

Love it. That is just death throwing shade. Absolutely. Yeah. Back to buddy. Sorry. You do occasionally get start getting snippets of his in a monologue here, which we didn't get in the last section.

You go after the gig. He's sort of really realizing that he feels dead after these gigs. He feels so alive when he's on stage and afterwards there's nothing left of him. Yeah. And he's slow realization that he's the, he's just the catalyst for this music, but he's still got this arrogance alongside it when Susan tries to

save him and he just won't listen to her. And he's like, oh, you must just be one of those groupies or a muse. Yeah. It doesn't really matter what you're saying. Like at the moment anyone else challenges him on something he's realizing for himself. He kind of dives back into the music and puts it up like a wall

around him. Yeah. And especially that pride as well is something that kind of goes with what I was saying last week is that he's somewhat in that character mold, the Victor and Tepik and. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And sees himself as slightly separate.

Yeah. And when you get to later on, when he finally realizes that he can't actually play the guitar and that's where he kind of accepts, okay, this is the last gig and then I've got to go. There's nowhere else I can go from here. And it takes him getting his heart back to really confront that within himself. And I like that.

It's not even really hubris, but that finally putting the pride down and instead accepting the one thing he is really good at, which he wrote a beautiful song on the harp. Yeah. And it's kind of, it's not even just accepting that because that seems like he really just wanted to do that the whole time, didn't he? Yeah.

I don't care anymore. Like I finally got to do that one thing. I mean, his original plan was to be one of the most famous bars ever lived, but. But he got to play that in front of all those people. So he kind of got, he got to do that. He got to be the famous Bard. Yeah.

He got to do his big thing. Yeah. I did say right at the beginning with the Elvis jokes that we would mention that the big culmination of the joke around his name, which is that people keep saying he looks Elvis as in, he looks like Elvis and right at the end, he works at the chip, chip shop. Yeah.

There is a famous Cape Bish song called there's a bloke who works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis. And I think perhaps it's made a few jokes about Good Omens. That's what I'm thinking. Good Omens definitely has a couple of Cape Bish. What's this? Oh yeah. Well, you've got Elvis working in the burger place in Good Omens,

but that's, I don't think that's because of the Cape Bish song. I think that's because there are lots of conspiracy theories about Elvis being alive and working in a burger restaurant. Okay, cool. But I think that might be why the Cape Bish song has the name. I don't know. I can't imagine it'll be any other reason. Yeah.

Although it is Cape Bish. So who knows. Let's never try and understand the interventional workings of Cape Bish. God, I love wondering how it is. Oh, me too. And running up that hill. Yeah.

So I run it because in real life, I really hate running up hills. And Roswell and Kites. Yeah. God, it's a bad book. God, it's a good song. Fucking Heathcliff. No, I'm not going to try and see that. No.

I'll tell you what, in the shower on my own, I think I do a pretty good rendition, but I will just clam up with humiliation as soon as I try and note. Oh, actually, going back to... When there's enough room for the dance. Oh, you've got to do the dance if you do it. That's an alone song for a reason. That's a special alone time song.

Going back to death, there was a whole thing I forgot to talk about, which is his big emotional moment. Once he has returned to himself and this is... And he plays the empty chord and then gets... But he's starting music off again. He snaps his fingers and things sort of go back to normal. He almost gets the opportunity to do what he couldn't do for Morson Isabel. Yeah.

He couldn't save them, but here he could reset history because something else had come in that wasn't supposed to be there. That kind of allowed him to fix everything. Yeah. Actually, I'm going to revisit Susan really quickly as well, just to say that she comes across as more of a... Well, she's always been the teenage girl, but I think in this section she gets to be a teenage girl.

She gets to yell at her granddad, this isn't fair. And then obviously she gets a little crying on her own moment then. I like her more in this section because she's acting like a teenage girl. She's allowed to be... Yeah, she's allowed to be a teenage girl again because granddad's back to fucking fix it. Yeah, she gets to put... And because she makes death happy by saying his swing was nice

and giving him a little kiss on the skull. Yes, that bit was very sweet. But yeah, I know that... I really like Susan's teenage girl moments and there's something about the scene right at the end when it's the end of term and she's walking through town with her mates, eating chips. Yeah, they're becoming a vague movie, isn't it?

But also, like, do you remember walking around town with your mates and chips and talking about boys? Absolutely. I never got asked out by a guy with a mountain. I'll say that. Well done, Jade. No. It's got a lovely glacier there, you're on.

I was trying to remember the fucking name. Yeah, but she quite likes the boys or may saved up enough for his own bridge. Yeah. And sometimes it's hard to be a woman. Which also, I enjoyed that reference. I'll go more on the music references later. God, you must have a fucking page full.

I was picking them up here and they were in everywhere. So God knows what you'd be finding. I've got a few. I haven't written down literally every reference because... Well, no, you may as well just read the end of the book, then. I'm just going to read the... This is now just an audio book rather than a podcast. Don't sue us.

We're not licensed. Anyway, locations. Yes. I'm going to start with the Stow Plains and... Cabbage. Little town of Scrooge. Cabbage everywhere. Lettuce or cabbage in this one?

Cabbage. Cabbage. 53 types of cabbage and 81 types of bean. With an odd pointless village-shaped space out. Very much in the realms of badass where there exists, so that there's not an embarrassing expanse of map. Yeah. And it's something I really like when fantasy books do,

and they don't always do it, which is remembering to include the boring bits in the world-building. Yeah. But he fleshed it out enough to make it cut, like the three old men sitting outside the livery, and then the three young men talking about how they're going to get out of here one day, but like obviously they're going to become the old men.

It's a really lovely, tiny little scene, but it's something that always bugs me in fantasy books. We've got all these huge, rich cities and castles, and it's the only time you learn when the food is coming from is when a young farmer boy realized this is true destiny, because he was a prince all along. Yeah, yeah. So when they stop to set fire to an inn on the way or something.

Exactly. So I like it when a fantasy book just has like, this is the big agricultural area, and it supplies a lot for the cities. Mainly cabbages. Largely cabbages. And of course it has towns because villages do spring up, because everyone needs somewhere to live and meet up and go to the pub.

Yeah. And it's also quite nice as a sort of timeline placement. And this is almost a pin I'm dropping to come back to in a much later book, but the Discworld books sort of, you start with like Color of Management like Fantastic and it's sort of almost at medieval-ish times fantasy. And you see the world of the disc grow at varying rates, and it's never meant to set in one time the parallels around

world history, although obviously certain books parallel certain things. But we'll meet a very different sort of village that would exist in more of a Victorian era or in a later book, but that exists for a similar reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I can't say any more with that. It still wouldn't be a major spoiler, but it is a spoiler.

So anyway, yeah, so I like that. I like remembering to put the boring parts of Fancy Well-Building, and like I like Tolkien because I will quite happily read pages on the agricultural systems of these lands. No. Yep. I can't talk about it. Actually, we're hosting a Discworld podcast for unseen.

I feel like nerd goes without saying. From the boring to the very not, we have the weird bedroom of Death's Domain. I just thought it was quite sweet. Susan goes back to Death's Domain and ends up peeking into what was Death's bedroom. And that he's put in all of these details because he's picked up this idea of what a gentleman's bedroom should be.

So he's got pomade and hairbrushes, because that is what a gentleman would have on his dressing table. Absolutely. And he has a large four-poster bed, but he's not bothered to make it comfortable because obviously he doesn't sleep in a bed. Yeah, you get the idea that somehow just making a statue representation of whatever the thing is is easier for him.

Yeah. And it's just, I don't know, I think it's a very sweet detail about him that he puts these very human touches into it. And I know we've talked about it before, but there's something about the bedroom in there. Sorry, my foot's gone to sleep. There's something about the bedroom and the creating a personal intimate space that doesn't need to be seen it by anyone else

and still making it that human. Yeah. I like the bit at the end where it's like, I'll keep your room exactly as you left it. Oh, thank you. A mess. Honestly. Honestly, you could have picked up a bit.

It's so much better when you read it in like the crystal of a dead voice as well. A mess. Oh, I'm so excited to talk about the animated soul music because Christopher Lee. Yeah. That would be pretty good. Next week.

Yes. Next week. The best. Bonus. Bonus. Bonus out of the blue. And the other location I want to talk about was Hyde Park. The location of the three festival, the three festival,

the free festival. Yes. I can speak. A parallel that even I could spot without. Yes. So for anyone who's not aware on the, on the round world in London, there is a rather large park called Hyde Park.

And large fairytale. Once upon a time. On the round world in the city of London, there was a Hyde Park. It's spelt with a Y in London. And large free concerts have often been held there. Live Aid was at Hyde Park. And so Hyde Park in Ang Moorpork.

It's not because people can hide. It's because a Hyde was once a measure of land capable of being powered by one man with three and a half oxen on a wet Thursday. That is obviously not quite the same on the round world. But a Hyde was an old English, spelt with an I was an old English land measurement. And it was the amount of land that could theoretically support one family.

Right. Okay. It's Anglo-Saxon heeds. The root word comes from family. Okay. And it's, so it would be, I can't remember the exact amount of acres because it's sort of varied across different times.

But Hydes were generally used as measurements of land in the Doomsday Book. So just post-normal invasion. And is this why Hyde Park is called Hyde Park? Or is it different? It's a Hyde Park. The name comes from the manner of Hyde. But it is believed to have the same root as Hyde as a land

measurement. But that's why it's spelled differently because it's based on the manner nearby. Because it was a series of manners around the area of London. Yeah. If you go back long enough, kind of eyes and why is it almost interchangeable in a lot of things, isn't it?

Before standard spelling cropped up. So it makes sense that one stuck one way and one stuck the other. But it would be that measurement would then be used for like how many hides you had would be, how much tax you would pay, how responsible you were for the upkeep of things like bridges, how many people you'd have to throw at the army. As in let join the army. Yeah, yeah.

Physically. Trebuchet across the countryside. Just punting the peasants. Punt the peasants. But London Hyde Park also for international listeners and maybe some UK listeners, I don't know, it was also interesting for having one of the most famous speakers corners. Which is designated places for people to go and.

Yeah, things. Yeah. Yeah. And it's quite famous for being sort of a protest space. It's very near Buckingham Palace. With the new authoritarian laws that we've now passed in the UK, I expect they'll be clamped down on soon. Yeah, I wonder how that's going to affect speakers corners because

they're almost sanctioned. So speaker spawners are a bit like a satyr square and ink more pork is where people can go or there's a very famous speakers corner type scene in Monster Python and the Holy Grail. Yeah, I did. I don't think so. Trying to shut it down, but it's a, as a protest spot, I imagine it'll be more heavily regulated.

Yes, I am curious. Yeah, sorry. Our country is going into a whole totalitarian disaster at the moment listeners. It's great. It's fun. Do check out the Amnesty International noisy and annoying campaign.

We're trying to get some amendments. We will make a note to link it. Yep. We're trying to get some amendments to this horrific bill that's being passed because one of the laws and it is that protests can be shut down for being noisy and annoying. I was listening back to one of our year or so ago episodes the other day and the one where you, we kind of fervently hope that

Boris Johnson would just kill off his horse near the end of the book. And that just doesn't seem to be happening. So I guess we will have to do the political campaigning stuff instead. Yeah, we did hope. We were optimistic a year ago. Anyway.

Yeah, that was all I had for locations. Little bits. We liked. Do you want to start Francine? Do you want to talk about gardening? Yeah. It's another little callback to Good Omens almost. It's just when Susan is looking around for where Albert should

be and he's not. She finds a few books around this paper, whatever, but one of the books was Gardening in Difficult Conditions, which I just thought was adorable. It's the, am I imagining? Well, first of all, I was imagining just trying to figure out a gardening book about, you know, being in the desert or something like that and trying to apply it to being in

literally death's domain. And then I was imagining a kind of play on what they did in Good Omens with the gardener's question time with the whole. Yeah. So I've got like fish raining from the sky. Is that good for my roses? But in death's domain kind of thing. It was like, so yeah, today we have a, we have a, we have a

Mr. Albert who seems to have a problem with linear time not existing in his garden. So Keith, what do you think about that? Jasmine, I think, flourishes in those conditions. Jasmine doesn't seem to be particularly constrained by the realities of linear time. It's perfect for a garden outside of reality. Exactly.

So, yes. Anyway, that little tangent of my brain amused me for some time. So I put it in here. Excellent. That amuses me too. Something I really like is, we mentioned earlier, but the swing. Speaking of death's garden. Yes.

Death's logic of it should hang from the two stoutest branches. So we'll take half the trunk out. This is how things end up happening when I do them. Yes. I go through this same logic thing, like, especially no stick because with that, with coding where I've started as well, I've started with the same logic thing.

I've started with the same logic thing. Like, I've especially noticed it because with that, with coding where I've started as well as the tutorial, like the lessons I'm doing, obviously, I'm now trying to branch out and to making stuff for myself by going, okay, well, these are all the things I need to happen. And so I'll do, it's very much like my writing process where I will get everything out onto the page

and then go back and clean it up afterwards. Yeah. For coding. Yeah. No, I have ended up with, like, I'm making a very, very basic space invaders. Oh, fun. The main thing to practice my,

I really want to get into the games industry. I'm starting small. I quite often end up with pages of code where it works, but I have very much taken out the middle six feet of the tree. Yeah. Yeah. And it's with anything like, I just find it very painful to take that step backwards

as clearly death is. Yeah. Yeah. That's something I have to force myself to do sometimes. I was like, okay, look, no, I started wrong here. And I need to work out what went wrong exactly and try again because I can probably duct tape this together. But for goodness sake, why would I?

I have it with this pieces as well. I remember there was a play I was working on and it was just a two-hander, but I was working from the point of how would I stage this and how would I stage this based on not needing a stage hand, but these characters need to go on and off stage. The setting needs to change. Things need to change on stage and their outfits need to change.

And I spent so long writing the play around that structure that then I realized what I really needed to do was write the play. Yeah. No, that's good. Yeah. Yes. No.

Unfortunately for both of us, we do seem to share that. Look, we get to the end. Bulldozer approach to logical thought. We'll get there. We always eventually end up vaguely in the right place, sort of. We get a podcast out every week. Well, quite so. That's why it's always so much easier to edit other people's work, though.

Yeah. Or at least leave it overnight before I try and edit my own writing. Well, it's why the post-its happen. And there are so many in every book because I do the Bulldozer approach of note everything and then I can edit my notes down when I write the episode plan. And again, as we're recording. Yeah, that's.

It's working. But goddamn, that seems like the hard way around. It is, but I know no other way. I've tried to just be more efficient. And what I have ended up with is this. It's fine. It's good. Anyway, at this point, you can't give up because then you won't have the post-its.

Yeah. No, I really like the aesthetic that I've got going now. So yeah, so I enjoy the swing and death logic because I find it very relatable. Indeed. And the little bit I liked, and this was nearly a big talking point, but I don't really have a whole lot to say on it, but I like the foreshadowing into the full circle moment with Deadman's Curve and.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I should have been there a moment and see. I could have, yes, I could have done something and coming full circle to see the rest of that conversation with Susan. Yeah, for sure. That's very satisfying. And I really like within that conversation, Susan thinking, well, I've got to say it or I'm not human.

And it was the I could go back and save them. Yeah. And she knows that she can't. She knows what the answer is going to be, but she feels like if she doesn't just put those words out there, then she's lost something essentially human about herself. Yeah. And then slightly later in the book,

it did kind of reiterate that you can choose immortality or humanity. Yeah. She chose humanity and then crying in bed for Susan. No, for Susan. Anyway, yes. So I enjoy that. Oh, and the other moment, the, when the boys are getting asked for autographs by a troll who is also wearing a loincloth,

because he fumbles in his loincloth. Oh, he does. He does multiple loincloths. What a day. Oh, what a day for Johanna. What a day for me. Didn't have to imply any loincloth. No negative loincloths here.

Anyway. But when he's having the autograph moment and he's doing that, oh, and it's not for me. It's for my boy. And it just reminded me, because we just covered Strasser. And there was the moments where the main character, whose name I've already forgotten, we just covered this book, Francine.

It begins with a K. Kim. Kit. Kat. Kim. I think Kim. I'm going to sit with you. No, it's not Kim.

I know. The main character is asked to autograph her book by multiple people and all of them do that. It's not for me. It's for. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like this is something that he's put in enough times

that it must be a thing. If you are asked for autographs, that you are often asked for autographs with a follow-up of, but it's not for me. For sure. Kin. Kin. I was closest.

I'm giving that to me. You win that one. Yeah. Kim's not very fancy. I like, but I like the idea that Terry Pratchett has put this in as a has, and it's just like that when you're asked for autographs and everyone does this and it's like, do that.

That one's maybe not relatable. Yeah. That's not a hugely relatable human experience. Yeah. I do like his, his slightly miffed stories about book signings and things. They're always fun in this little keyboard. There are some very funny stories.

There's lots of funny ones, especially Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. He's writing about Good Omens and the, both the battered have obviously been dropped in the bath, held together by elastic bands, copies, and the very creepy kept in a special box with brains on it copies. Like, oh, come on guys. There's a,

where you've got the Terry Pratchett on Neil Gaiman and Neil Gaiman on Terry Pratchett, the little interviews at the end of some paperback copies of Good Omens. Yeah. And I just remember Neil having a little joke at the end of his and, oh, and at book signings, make sure you bring like your rattiest copy of the book because Terry really loves it.

And it's obviously like him just being a little bit of a dick. Yeah, absolutely. Cause I've seen a forum postiles where Terry says like, I know Neil Gaiman said that, but please also like buy books when you come to my signings. Cause that's what they're for. Yeah. And then, yeah, obviously the big one is,

it's all the references and things I liked. Go on Joanna. Go on, go. Show me your favorite references. One of my, I'm not even being that nerdy about it. No, I know what you said. There's so many fucking references.

It's not like we could skip over them. No. A couple of the kind of more general ones I like is Cliff talking about how he wants a heart shaped quarry. Cause it's very much a thing of rock stars having heart shaped swimming pools. Sure, sure, sure. And Claude keeps redecorating the hotel rooms.

Yeah. I'm assuming something with rock stars normally trashing hotel rooms. Oh yeah. See, I was expecting in the end that it would turn out that God was an interior designer instead of a musician at heart. And that bit never came. No, I think it's just a play on the fact that normally rock stars

trash hotel rooms. Yeah. God is very thoughtful, I suppose. There's a great Blues Brothers moment when Mr. Keith and Mr. Cleat and the other guys from the musician's guild are waiting for the show to start and they're doing that. No, we're fine.

We're within our rights. Anyone want a hot dog? Hot dog? Hot dog? Right. That's four. And it's the orange whip scene from Blues Brothers when they're racing for the band to start in this palace ballroom.

The beerware. Claude says something about, oh, they'll want to know about that cart I pulled out of the swimming pool. Was that another kind of subversion of rock stars driving swimming pools? Or was that a Blues Brothers moment that I'd forgotten? No, I think that's like rock stars throwing TVs out of windows into the swimming pools and that sort of thing.

God tidying up instead. Yeah. Which I like that as a little detail about God. He likes to tidy up. There's so many just good little things to build up a character in so few words. And then obviously the kind of big Blues Brothersness of the car chase.

So they get out of the gig and they get out of there. But I really like the tonal shift that you go from. It's very Blues Brothers. They're getting out of the gig with all the money and into the car and running away to Querm. And the musicians Guild following them. And that's all very much the car chase in the Blues Brothers. And then you've got death on the motorbike and it becomes

spat out of hell. Yeah. And that tone just as the cart goes over the dead bands curb, you get that massive tonal shift. And it is clearly very bad out of hell. Yeah. Also leads to like this is probably one of my favourite cover designs of the Josh Kirby ones.

Oh yeah? Yeah. Death on the motorcycle. It's very simple for a Josh Kirby designer, isn't it? It is. Death ones are the best ones actually, aren't they? Because Reaper Man's my favourite. Reaper Man's a beautiful one as well.

I think he's with the death ones, it's a single character usually interacting with something taking up the whole page. Obviously there's the details in the back, like the back cover has the rest of them in the cart. Oh yeah. I've got the wrong edition for that. Yeah, you've got the sort of new edition that just takes bits of the Kirby designs.

Yeah. Like with this with death, there's lots of little hand drawn stars around him and you sort of got, you can see more balk underneath. Little bats. And yeah, the bats. And yeah, so it's this big batter of hell thing of, and I never see the sudden curve until it's way too late.

I nearly sang it there. I resisted the edge. Oh, shame. Never see the sudden curve until it's way too late. And I'm dying at the... Sorry, no. I was going to try so hard not to sing this episode. You can't sing bass out of hell and not do an 80s Powerball.

I know it's not total eclipse of the heart, but... Anyway, when you get too far into other metal, you can't come out again. That's not even that. It's like, what is it? Glamrock? Is that what it is? Meatloaf?

No, I wouldn't say this Glamrock. Is it just metal? It's early metal. It's an 80s rock. Hair metal. No, that's not right either. There are so many different types of metal. I'm very sorry, everybody.

I'm going to go with 80s rock for this one. Okay, cool. Oh, although recommendation of the week, actually, because we've been talking a lot about music and history of music and the various things we don't know. Andrew O'Neill, who I've mentioned on this podcast before, is a friend of the friend of the pod, Mark Burroughs. Friend by association of the pod.

Has an amazing stand-up show and a book, History of Heavy Metal, especially in the stand-up show, which I'm pretty sure you can get online. I've got it on DVD because it was like a Kickstarter thing. They give a full PowerPoint presentation on the history of heavy metal with a full band. And I'm not the biggest metal head in the world,

but it is hilarious as well as being obviously very interesting. So yeah, go check out, and the book's great as well. So go check out Andrew O'Neill, History of Heavy Metal. If I can get online, I certainly will. Either in video or paper form. I don't think you can get it injected directly into your bloodstream or anything. Not yet.

They know a lot more about the different kinds of metal than we do. Yes. And then yeah, other silly little references. Lots of fun band names we've got. We're certainly Dwarfs. Yes. They might be Giants,

which is one that I think gets referenced from this book the most. Surely, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just a nice, almost everyone will get that one. Yeah. Although weirdly, they might be Giants. A lot of people have heard of them, but they're still a bit of a cult band, and they definitely were when this was out.

I didn't hear of them until I was in my 20s. The first time I heard of them was because they did the Malcolm in the middle of the in June. Oh, did they? All right. Well, I knew that. I remembered seeing they might be Giants and the credits. Ah, good.

So yeah, but apart from that, I didn't really listen to them until I got into my 20s. They were never quite mainstream, but they're very good. And I do recommend going and listening to some songs. Yeah. Can't keep Johnny down and Istanbul, not Constantinople, probably my favorites.

Birdhouse New Soul obviously is always a classic. Birdhouse and New Soul is such a great song. Although I once went to a play. It was like our long one-man show. It was a really good play. I was doing, they had the play, and then they had some short minute-long performances afterwards, and I was doing one of the minute-long ones.

But the opening to the play was just him sitting in the office chair. Is it all the audience came in and sit down with Birdhouse on your soul on repeat? Oh, well, he sort of lip synced along to it. Not like in a full-on lip sync performance, but like, you know, as if you just sat around singing along to a song.

And then it ended up featuring in play. It was a very good play. I wish you could remember what it was called. Anyway, yeah, sorry. I keep going off on these wild tangents. That's okay. It's a day for that. I think I might have taken my afternoon medication twice.

So frankly, it's a miracle we're anywhere. Right, we're in a podcast. Other band names are Suck. I'm assuming is a reference to Kiss. Yeah. Other band names Suck. All bands should be called We're Certainly Dwarfs from now on. What was the one they said they really liked

about fabric? Sarap Tisha's Fabric. Yeah. What's that meant to be? The Velvet Underground. Oh, cool. Oh, not an actual name they have, but obviously there is a leopard with hearing difficulties,

which is a reference to Deaf Leopard. Oh, fuck me. Did you not get that one? No. I've got a slight protective layer over a part of my brain that deals with these things. There's a Deaf Leopard front scene. Well, so there is.

Goodness me. We were literally talking about watching Deaf Leopard Live last week. Yep. I was too caught up in the idea that they were going to try and make it into trousers. Okay. That made me concerned for a cat's welfare

at the same time as expecting me to get a partner. All right, fine. Who else? The Whom? Yes. Very grammatically correct half an hour. Yes. The Blots.

So machinings are a reference to the ink spots. Yeah. I'm more aware of because of the Galaxy Radio playlist. Thank you for all that. Lead balloon also. I'm assuming as a reference to Led Zeppelin. Yeah. So those are the ones I wrote down.

The ones I like. And the song that Buddy plays on his harp. Oh. I obviously can't speak. I can't pronounce Welsh, but it's Shawnee Boddar. And I'm not sure how well I'm saying that. But it's Shawnee Boddar is Welsh for be good.

So it's Shawnee. Oh, Shawnee be good. And there's a bunch of other references in the book to the song, Shawnee be good. There's Buddy talking about growing up in a harp surrounded by mud. And I can't remember, I can't remember the lyrics to Shawnee be good perfectly,

but that's, Okay. It almost a direct quote from the song. And there's another line as well, but I've not written it down. Cool. Cool. Nice.

God loves the little references that he threads throughout these things. So yeah. So we'll talk more about the Shawnee Boddar in that moment, but before that, would you like to talk about gyrating Francine as we go on to our bigger talking points? Oh, I suppose so.

I suppose I could. A little bit of gyration. Talk to me about gyration. Very sorry. Very sorry to have to talk about gyrations on natural gyrations at that. Oh, I've got pearls. I can clutch them.

Oh. Yes. This is barely related to be honest, but I like it. When they get to querm, the mayor has kind of made up excuses to not let them play. Yes. Like they cause a ruckus.

And the music with rocks in represents a public nuisance is proven to be interest to health and morals and cause a natural gyrations of the body, which just obviously just makes you think of the myriad public moral panics about various types of music. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Elvis is definitely the,

the one he was only filmed from the waist up because of his the hips. Yes. Yeah. Cliff Richard was another one who got told off about hips. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Cliff Richard, of course, was, you know, very sexy in the 60s, whenever it was 50s, 60s, 60s, 60s, got me 60s, got me 50s. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, all of that rock and roll stuff. A lot of it was because of race mixing. Yeah. Especially in the US.

I'm assuming here as well, but, you know, it's the big US segregation stuff. I like hairspray. If you've seen hairspray. Yeah. So that's stuff not to overly simplify a massive issue, but that's what I do. But yeah, when I was looking this up,

I just thought you might enjoy the fact that it goes all. I think he knew this anyway, but it goes all the way the fuck back. And I found a little moral panic about the waltz from the 1800s where in Southern Sweden, so this is a Swedish source from 1809 from a newspaper. Oh, no, I'm sorry. The newspaper in 1801.

If you, my lady, want to avoid embarrassment and stay away from the dances that put you in danger, the waltzes are such a group. Not only because their circular movements are the most harmful, they are also the most indecent and immoral. I want to ask any male if he can have the same respect as before for a girl when he has seen her waltzing. Even less can he who waltzed with her have any respect for her.

It was well done by Goeth, when he let Werther say that whatever will happen with love, the girl who he loves should never waltz with somebody else. Excellent. Apparently there was some talk about the waltz basically being an upright version of rolling down a hill in an embrace. I don't know what kind of truth that has to anything. I've been waltzing wrong, clearly.

I know. But the really funny bit is this tone has just been kept up through the centuries. I found a bit of moral panic from, I mean, obviously there was a whole satanic panic thing, and it kind of came handed out on metal, back masking, the idea of like ACDC having satanic messages if you played their music backwards,

and then that transferred into reality when some metal bands started doing that. Which always reminds me of one of my favourite Bill Hicks jokes, which is, I can't even remember the band he's making fun of, but some terrible pop, very, very poppy boy band. And he just said, oh, New Kids on the Block. I said, oh, you know, if you play New Kids on the Block records backwards, they sound better.

One of my favourite ones was, there's this whole article from the BBC, which has eight ones from various points, which I'll link along with the Swedish thing. But being Crosby's distracting rism, the worry apparently was that work in factories might become so caught up in the giddy rhythm that they'd bang their tools in time, risking not only damage to the tools,

but potentially causing a decrease in productivity. I know. You've got, oh, yeah. And then, you know, various throughout the ages, all the way up to 2008, the Daily Males. Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo. Speaking as a former emo kid. They weren't wrong.

No. This made me the creature you see before me. Before you. I mean, Russia even had a bill banning, like, emo clothing in various, like, public buildings and stuff. And so it had to be this whole thing where they had to define emo clothing as separate from the other genres. So it's like they had this whole fucking Tumblr argument

in Russian government. Anyway, I fucking love music, moral panics, you know, apart from the fact they're quite often rooted in racism, racism, whatever, but sexism, all of that good stuff. But it's funny in retrospect, kind of. I do think one of the best recent musical modern panics has to be Ben Shapiro specifically's reaction to the song Wet House Pussy.

Oh, yes. Wet ass P word. And then everybody's reaction to Lil Nas X. Yes, which are the Monterey video is so good, though. Lockdown did give us two fantastically explicit. Music videos. And those reactions are a massive intersection of homophobia, sexism and misogyny.

Yeah. You know me, if there's anybody in our group that could be called a bit of a prude, it's me, but I am well up for all of those existing. Also, that'd be said here, I fully support people gyrating in any fashion they wish. Just don't wish to be a part of some of it. Yes, please feel free to gyrate as you wish.

However, make sure you have the consent of surrounding people. And for goodness sake, don't waltz if you want to be taken seriously. See, I've always thought I could do a pretty passable waltz, but now I'm very worried that I need to incorporate more hill rolling. Yeah, yeah, we're going to have to look into this in a bit more depth, I think.

I'm just about say, well, now I'm very worried that men won't take me seriously. Yeah, that's why I'm worried men won't take me seriously. Not the fact that I'm five foot five baby faced and unfortunately give off huge manic pixie dream girl vibes. You do, but you're adorable. Fuck you. I meant that in a loving way.

Fuck you, rackets. Effective. The point is, no one should take me seriously. I can't take me seriously. Seriously, when the context demands it. Yeah, do you want to have a serious conversation about music then? Oh, God, I guess.

I wanted to bring us full circle to the first episode where I was talking about the music that made you want to ascend on steps of fire. And I am going to make a playlist of what we talked about and what listeners sent us. But I want to look at the opposite here, which is Johnny be good or the only but obviously Johnny be good itself is not a particularly sad song.

Oh, OK, good. Because if I got that reference, I would have listened to it before the show, but I didn't decide. Yeah, no. I think it's just the name is meant to be a reference, but the actual song itself is described in these very beautiful. Isn't it weird that considering like my re-throughs

of these are quite off, quite focused on trying to find obscure things to pick out. Yeah. That I just my brain just skips over fucking some titles like me. Like that's probably a reference. I think it's not the thing that your brain stores. Yeah, I guess.

Yeah. It's like it's like I didn't even think about looking up what that meant. It's like, yeah, that sounds like a well-spoken song. Yeah. I'm always curious when he uses other languages because there's quite often some funny puns him, especially in like the cod Latin.

I always have to ask for your help with the cod. I can't do it on it. I don't know why my friend distorts on it. I can't. But there's a really nice quote about the song that Buddy plays. It was sad music, but it waived the sadness like a battle flag.

It said, the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive. I think it's a really lovely description of this song that leads to everyone hugging and crying and you and me about brother and thinking of foam. And I'm just wondering if you can think of any songs that do this for you in some way. Yeah.

The slightly more upbeat one. I've got my very small list as here comes the sun, the Beatles. That's very melancholy to me. Yeah. But at the same time, upbeat, it gives me a little bit of a dichotomy of emotions, which is always fun of a morning.

And then the two, I'd say, they're like definitely melancholy-ish ones. Suzanne, Leonard Cohen. Oh, yeah. And Swing Life Away by Rise Against. Oh, that's a good song. I haven't got a huge list, but there's a few songs that have varying versions

of this effect on me. And I struggled to pick a Leonard Cohen to put in there because there were too many. Yeah. God, I love Leonard Cohen. Yeah. Ouch, my heart always thinks Leonard. Oh, that voice.

But the bit where he's talking about how the song is all about thinking of home and missing it reminded me of this really beautiful little Amy McDonald song, Caledonia. Oh, yeah. And it's like a bonus track on her. I don't know if the album's called This Is The Life, but it's the album that has This Is The Life on it.

Yeah. And it's, I'm not Scottish. I've never even been to Scotland, apart from once when I was a year old by accident for like an hour. My mother was in Newcastle. She had me in the car shoes. You didn't run off, yeah.

My mother was in Newcastle. She was very stressed and went for a drive. She had me in the car. She was more stressed than she realized and accidentally drove to Scotland for a bit. Are all of your anecdotes involving a mother who doesn't travel like this? We didn't always end up in Scotland.

On the Chicago was last week, yeah. It's actually in for next week, no. Yeah, so that song just makes me incredibly romantically wistful for a place I've never been. That song from Brave makes me feel like that for Scotland. Yeah. Which is even worse because it's like a Disney song.

Oh, the Disney songs have horrible emotional effects on me. I deliberately didn't put Disney in here because, you know, I try and keep some for near of, maybe I could be cool if you squint in the right light, but no, obviously Disney songs make me feel all kinds of ways. I managed to keep Disney out of it. I didn't entirely keep musicals out of it. Ah, go on.

What else have we got? Adelweiss, if we're putting musicals in there, it's definitely my life. Again, I'm just not with you on sound and music. What else is there? Amanda Palmer has a couple of really beautiful songs that do this, but one that's wrong to mine is Machete, which is a really amazing, epic song about grief

that I really remember looking up. Either the demo version or the album version, but it's a very good stick headphones on, and it pulls you all the way through the emotional bringer and out the other side. And it's a nice sing-aloud torch song. Ah, cool. My go-to shower song,

which also very much falls in this category, maybe this time from Cabaret. I just started listening to that recently, ever since the Shits Creek episode. Yeah. Because it's sad, but it's optimistic. Everything has gone wrong for me so far, but maybe it can work out this time.

Maybe I'm still worthy of this. Liza Minnelli's version or a different version? Liza Minnelli's version. I love the movie version of Cabaret. I will watch it repeatedly. Oh, we should do that as a movie now at some point. It's very surreal. I always forget how many Nazis are in that film.

Oh. It's not pro-Nazi. Yeah, no, I guessed it. Why do all my favourite musicals have Nazis in them? And yet I'm still not a big fan of this kind of music. What can you do? It's got Julie Andrews and defeating Nazis in it. There's no hope for it if you don't like it by now.

It should tick all of my boxes. I think I just had to watch it. Too much association. Molotov Cocktail Dress is a really beautiful song by Dan versus the world. I highly recommend everyone goes and looks up. It's very sweet, little piano, but it's also very raw. Everything has been very tough, but I'm feeling brave anyway. What else did I write down?

One of these days by David Ford, which is just a super depressing, but very sweet song about eventually feeling better. It's got the sort of nice... One of these days maybe we'll pass in the street and I'll ask how you're doing and hope you're all right. And it's this sort of... Things aren't okay now, but they will be. To hell with the world is my David Ford emotional song of choice.

Oh, To Hell with the World is also a good one. It's a bit more, like, fire you up than, yeah. Yes, I generally recommend David Ford to listen. It's kind of listen to some David Ford. He's very good. I always forget he exists for a while, then suddenly remember and binges entire back catalogue repeatedly over a week. Motorcycle emptiness by Manic Street Preachers. Ah, yes, good.

It's got that amazing kind of wailing, sad guitar in it that I really enjoy. I wish I had a harp song that I could add to this list. I was trying to think of harp songs, but, you know, I don't listen to a lot of music with harps in. We do have a harpist listener, I know, at least one. We do have a harpist listener. Yes, hello, Molly. Hello, some good harp songs to make us feel sad things.

Yes, send us emotional heart songs. And then this is probably just another angry, sad song. I like singing really loudly, but you ruined everything. You stupid bitch from. You stew. It's, it's, there's nothing hopeful or optimistic. You can't sing it in normal volume. No, that's another shower song because you've got to belt it.

Yeah. And I, I didn't sound check. I did a burst of sound check. I did not do a belting power. No, no, no, no. We can't, we can't cope with that. Um, I forgot one, which is better daughter brackets or son. And I've forgotten the artist, which is why I didn't read it out.

But, uh, they played at the end of the Nanette stand up. And, oh, yeah. Oh God, that's one of the songs that when I listened for the first time, did make me like cry. But I love these big torch songs that are optimistic in their sadness. Yeah. Yeah. They're not wallowing songs.

They are embracing it. This all sucks. Let's see. Yeah. Yeah. And this kind of brings me around to, I wanted to tie into this with, um, it's really rare when we record these,

we actually talk about the last lines of the book because we do them as Nautro. Yeah. But I really love the last lines in this somewhere in some other world, far away from the disc world. Someone tentatively picked up a musical instrument that echoed to the rhythm in their soul. And it's this lovely thing reading this, but I don't think we talk about a lot.

Obviously with Discworld Pratchett's parodying fantasy, and you can see in that that he really loves fantasy. It's very gentle. I'm doing this because I love it parody. But when you get into, not every time he parodies something other than direct fantasy, but especially, I think with this, with the music, and I think to a certain extent,

except being pitched with the movies, you can really see how much he loves that thing. Like you can see in this, that he genuinely loves music and not just that he knows a lot about music and is able to reference lots and lots of bands, but that he loves music and the emotional effect it has on someone. Yeah. And the power of rock and roll and what it can do to you emotionally.

And I really love seeing that in this book. I think it makes for a, in a sense, more enjoyable parody than something like Weird Sisters, which is, yes, let's play with Macbeth, but it's not quite the same. It's not a parody, isn't it? Not a parody. And I think moving pictures did it to a certain extent

of what movies do for people and how they caught up in it. But this is the first one, I think where I really felt like he really cares about it. Come and enjoy this with me. Yeah. This feels like someone's showing you something they love. And I think that makes it such a really lovely book. Yeah, for sure.

Agreed. And with that, I don't think I've really got much else more to say for it. No. Have you got an obscure reference for me? I have. I have. It mentions at some point,

I think it's now being called on it, standing at the Diasil gate. And I was like, what's that word? It looks up and it is another word for term-wise, pretty much. So it's a clockwise, right, Sun-wise is another word for it. So it's kind of the opposite of like, Widdishans is anti-clockwise.

Yeah, exactly, say. Apparently it comes from very far back, like the same root word as like Dexter. So it's like right-handed as well. But apparently in Wiccan rituals and that, it's used with this spelling, D-E-O-S-I-L. From the Gaelic, it's usually D-E-A-S-I-L, or variations thereupon.

Yeah. So I just thought that was interesting, considering he uses Widdishans and turn-wise. So I'm guessing he'd be using it in the sunward sense rather than right, because right doesn't make sense, yeah. Yeah. It's the directions the disc moves in.

Yeah. So sunward and clockwise, I didn't really think about it, but because sun dials were the first kind of clocks around these areas. And the fact that it went that way, that's why clockwise and sun-wise were interchangeable for it. Yeah. Yeah. Look at us learning things.

Would it... Oh, this is a very stupid question. Would it go the other way around in the other hemisphere? I don't think so. No. No, that doesn't make sense to me. No. No.

Okay, cool. Good. Right. You know, when you're saying something and it's kind of like, oh, no. No. Oh, my gosh. 90% of what I say, yes,

the fact that we have a podcast is a miracle. Oh, gosh. Every time when it's the facts from an episode, it's just me cringing at my own dumbassery. Oh, really? I was listening to that episode from a year ago, and that's because someone referenced that they'd been catching up on that.

Oh, yeah. And I was like, yeah, it's good. But yeah, I think when I've left enough time in between, I quite like just listening back to snippets of our conversation, like, ah, we're fun. Yeah, no, I don't... I am exaggerating. Yeah.

I don't really hate it that much. Obviously, I enjoy making the podcast, and I don't think I'm that bad, but I enjoy being self-deprecating. Oh, of course. I very rarely listen back to our old episodes, to be fair, because... I don't listen to big chunks of them often,

but just the soft opens sometimes. I do like kind of going back and seeing what mood we were in that day. It's a nice little time capsule of, especially last year. Yeah. Oh, look at that. Yeah, I don't hide the grumps as well as I try.

And we do try. I think that's probably everything we can say about the books or music. I don't think we've missed anything even slightly important, but if we have, do let us know listeners. We are coming back next week, though, with a bonus episode. Yeah. We are going to talk about the Soul Music animated series.

This was a six-episode... Fuck me. You can maybe watch six episodes for next week. I thought it was another movie. No, they're like 20-minute episodes. It's like Weird Sisters. All right. We did that in one episode as well.

Okay. It's the same length as a movie, but it's cut into 20-minute episodes. Okay. Well, you know, I don't perceive time well. Okay. This is what you like. You like watching lots of representative things.

No, you're quite right. Sorry. Francine's Panic Over. We're going to watch the Soul Music animated miniseries and do an episode on that next week. So I recommend trying to get ahold of it and watching it. If you can. It is a bit tricky to get ahold of,

and obviously we don't endorse just going on YouTube and watching it, but... I was going to say asking for a friend. Can I find it online? Because I haven't bought a DVD or anything. We're not going to link to it online in the show notes. Okay. It's also quite hard to get a copy of the DVD,

so if you are going to try that, I recommend eBay and... Is it from the same studios that did the With Sisters? It is from the same studios. Yeah, they don't do a thing. No. So, yeah, we won't link to ways you can get it, that they don't devolve paying for it. Sure, you can work it out yourselves.

We have absolute faith in you, listeners. So, yeah, so we're going to be back next week to talk about the animated Soul Music in a fun little bonus episode, and then we'll be back properly in July to discuss some interesting times. Yes. However, in the meantime, dear listener,

you can follow us on Instagram, at The True Show Mickey Freight, on Twitter, at Mickey Freight Pod, on Facebook, at The True Show Mickey Freight. You can join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f. You can email us your thoughts, queries, castles, albatrosses, and snacks, The True Show Mickey Freight Pod, at gmail.com. You can support us on Patreon,

patreon.com forward slash The True Show Mickey Freight, and exchange your hard-earned pennies for fun bonus nonsense, and we've got lots of bonus nonsense coming over the next couple of months, including a shiny new episode. We have plans. We've got a new episode of Down the Rabbit Hole

coming at the beginning of July, in which I shall give a PowerPoint presentation on clowns. Oh, you're doing PowerPoint as LA. Excellent. You've raised the bar now. I feel like, I feel a bit competitive. And if you sign up on Patreon, I hate it when you get competitive with me.

You just go so all out. I really am not going to because I don't have time. And if you do sign up on Patreon, you can also go back and see any of our previous bonus content. You don't only get the stuff that's come out after you've signed up. Good to know. And in the meantime, dear listener, it will never die.

It's here to stay. Existence is pain. True debt.