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Sure Fire Indie Dancefloor Filler
155 Plays6 months ago
Do you want a step-by-step guide on how to write a sure-fire indie dancefloor filler?
A bona-fide hit? A tune that captures the zeitgeist?
Look elsewhere, my friend. Here at the This Are Johnny Domino podcast we pride ourselves on delivering the finest brotherly ramblings and lo-fi arsing about. But for information on how to write and record a "hit", maybe try doing the opposite of what we did. But y’know, success can come in many forms, so why not come along for the ride?
Including:
- Fear and Loathing in Great Yarmouth
- The big JC returns!
- The weirdest backing vocal ever
- Christmas quiz!
- Spotify Wrapped
Related audiovisual material is available on the This Are Johnny Domino blog.
Visit the Johnny Domino website
Connect with Johnny Domino on Facebook and Instagram
Podcast artwork by Giles Woodward
Edited by Steve Woodward at PodcastingEditor.com
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Transcript
The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" - Popularity and Critique
00:00:00
Speaker
Coming out of my cage and I've been doing just fine. Gotta, got ah gods to be down because I want it all. It started out with a kiss. How did it end up like this? It was only a kiss. It was only a kiss. Now I'm falling asleep and she's calling a cab while he's having a smoke and she's taking a drag. Now they're going to bed and my stomach is sick.
00:00:27
Speaker
And it's all in my head, but she's touching his.
00:00:53
Speaker
Hello. Hello. Hello. Season's greetings. Season's greetings. a Joyous Noel. God blesses everyone. Hello Bedford Falls. Hello. Happy Christmas. Happy New Year.
00:01:08
Speaker
Did you hate reading those lyrics? ah No. No, I didn't hate reading those lyrics. Why would I hate reading those lyrics? Because it's your Achilles heel, which is Mr. Brightside. By the killers. By the killers. Yes, it was. A tale of jealousy, paranoia and heartbreak.
00:01:25
Speaker
You've been on that lyric website again, haven't you? I have. I've been on songmeanings.com again. Song Meanings. And there's lots of diverse interpretations of that song, that's for sure. It's a very popular song, you know. I'm aware of it. Very popular song. It is the UK's third biggest streaming song of all time. Wow. And the longest charting single in the UK single was Top 100. Ever. Ever. Ever.
00:01:51
Speaker
That's mad. It is. And I hate it. I know you do. I hate it. We've talked about this before. I know, I know, I know. But I don't. God, and what do you think about it, then? It's quite exciting. And, you know, it's nonsense, like all great pop songs. and It's about whatever you want it to be about. It's vague. Well, it is. ah According to SongMeans.com, there's loads of meanings about it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's one of those things is vague enough for you to be able to put whatever meaning you want onto it, I believe.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, possibly. 20 years old. 20 years old. Man and boy. But you know what? I've been digging deep. There are many different cover versions of it as well. I did not know that. There's a really good one by Paul Anker. Really? Yeah. And Kelly Clarkson did one as well. Well, yeah, Kelly Clarkson does do a great cover version. I've got a lot of time for Kelly Clarkson.
00:02:52
Speaker
yeah Yeah, well, she's just a passable version of Mr. Brightside, that's for sure. And then there's one that I really, really hate by someone called Charlotte Campbell. And she does a kind of like the quiet I think it's piano kind of and female. you know like It's like the ah what I like to call the Love Island version yes of it. It's like they play it in one of those shows you know about like relationships and things. like Is it a be a montage of people looking at each other over the fire pit? Yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's that kind of music.
00:03:31
Speaker
And it made me think, what would be the most ridiculous song to make a Love Island version of? Wow. That's a question, isn't it? Like something really... Eddy Sandman. Eddy Sandman would be good, yeah yeah. If we're talking Love Island, yeah. Yeah, like a real like emotive version of something. Yeah. There's an engagement opportunity right there.
00:03:57
Speaker
sweet you know you could do it cool somebody could do it i'm not going to do it because i hate that song anyway welcome to the this are johnny domino podcast wait a second wait a second we still i still want to ramble some more about i go and ramble on the killers yeah brandon flowers is a mormon you know who he's got like exciting religious beliefs He takes no drugs, no alcohol, eats healthily, no smoking. yeah But smoking is mentioned in his breakout hit, Mr Brightside. So I think that's a bit hypocritical, right? You know, it's all about like sex in it. And that line that I hate, the one where he's
00:04:40
Speaker
but she's touching his and the in the rhyme scheme, it's clearly meant to be Dick, right? But then it goes to his chest now. And everybody sings along to that. And it makes me want to kill people. Anyway, I think we need to change the subject because this is not a positive start. No, it's not. Come on. Let's let line it up. Hey.
Introduction to Johnny Domino Podcast
00:05:05
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for the This Are Johnny Domino podcast, episode number 40, 4-0, the last one of 2024, the year of our Lord, 2024. Thank you for joining us. The point of this podcast is myself and my brother Giles talking about songs that we recorded up to and over 30 years ago, the memories that pop up relating to them, the memories that evade us relating to them,
00:05:33
Speaker
And we just argue the toss about stuff to do with music, really. We do. We do. Yeah, this is going to be the last one of the year. I don't think we'll do another one before new year, will we? I doubt it, mate. Unlikely. I doubt it. We've got lots to talk about today. Many, many, many, many things. I think we should go straight into the first song. Yes. Now, ordinarily, we do talk about songs written by our old band, Johnny Domino. This is by our old band previous to Johnny Domino. That was a band called The Millers.
00:06:07
Speaker
I think we have featured them maybe once before on on the past episode. and We did talk about the fact that we recorded some demos at a studio that was set up for young people and people who are out of work in Mansfield. It was a great studio and it cost about 25 quid to have a whole day in professional recording studio, so we did a couple of demos there.
00:06:29
Speaker
As a result of those demos, we had some interest from a record label in Norwich. Sunny Norwich. Sunny Norwich, called Wild Club Records, famous for releasing records by Catherine Wheel. Shugay's scene kind of also runs really. i That was what was happening at the time. Yeah, and the people at Wild Club Records, I think it was mostly run by a man called Barry Newman.
00:06:54
Speaker
He paid for us to go into recording studio and we recorded I think 14 songs in total over two sessions and they never got released.
Recording Memories with The Millers
00:07:05
Speaker
It was cracking fun though, wasn't it? record oh we had a good Before we go into like the yeah the downside of it, we had great fun recording these in a studio in Great Yarmouth, which was like just off the seafront really. yeah and We slept in the studio, didn't we? We slept on like little foam mattresses in the studio.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, there's a big sofa in there as well. Yeah. And Hammy, Richard Hammerton, who was the engineer and owner of the studio. Was it called Purple Haze? I don't know, man. Something like that. It was something like that. Anyway, he had a massive German Shepherd dog. He did. That was in the studio. So we've got some photos of us walking it on the deserted seafront at Great Yarmouth. Off season. Yeah. God, it was so off season. Hammy was a bit like a giant German Shepherd dog as well, wasn't he? He was a good lad.
00:07:54
Speaker
He was a lovely, lovely old chap. yeah Not old, i actually. He was a lovely chap. He was a good bloke. He had lots of stories to tell about his time in various bands and I think he quite enjoyed working on our sessions. so Well, you he's definitely hid it if he thought we were annoying or our music was crap. He was a very good his job in that respect. That's professional engineering. That's professional, yeah.
00:08:20
Speaker
But yeah, it went pretty well. We we enjoyed doing it and we're going to play one of the songs and then have a bit of a chat about it. This is a song that we recorded called Joey Knows What He's Done. And we're in now very much our intense young men mode at this point. Weren't we, Steve? Oh, God, yes, absolutely. Can I just say one thing that Hammeh, he very much indulged my my desire to basically record about a thousand guitar tracks. It was kind of our be here now without the cocaine and success. But it sounds a bit like we're on cocaine possibly. We were on something.
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah, chips and bouncy. Yeah. And it's quite a noisy, noisy tune musically. And lyrically, ah I don't know what it's about, really. But and Joey obviously knows he's done something. It's one of those really kind of, oh, I'm so weird kind of lyrics that you write, I suppose, perhaps at that age. And I don't really know what Joey's done.
00:09:28
Speaker
it's never really disclosed in the song i don't know he may he may have committed some kind of crime he may have taken some some drugs of some sort he may have split with his girlfriend he's done something a bit bad he might have just forgot to and in his english literature homework who knows
00:10:58
Speaker
Magikarp is magical!
00:13:47
Speaker
That was Swerve Driver with the track, Joey Knows What He's Done. Now, I know for a fact that at least one person who listens to this podcast will be shouting at you. There may even be two people who are involved. You've put on the chat thing, Twat's Garden, the ballad of Lonesome Joey. I don't remember anything about that song. I'm presuming that was the song that you think was based No, it's absolutely what it was based on. it was absolutelys It was explicitly based on it. Well, go on. Explain the link. I can't remember it. That's what this podcast is about. You reminding me about stuff that I forgot. Okay. um Twat's Garden was a joke band that we were in. Myself, Chris Smith. Hi there, Chris. And Rich Barker, Dickie Barker, Dickie Rock.
00:14:36
Speaker
and previous guest of the podcast, Spoon, Noops, Granth Poubertuat and many, many, many other names. And there was a song called The Ballad of Lonesome Joey. It was a rip off of Hey Joe, effectively. It's about a boy who's found out that his girlfriend has been cheating on him, so he decides to get his gun and go down to see his old lady.
00:15:02
Speaker
kind of messing around with another man, that kind of thing. Oh, I see. Yeah, exactly. And that's what it's, the whole thing is, oh, Joey's got a gun, he's going out tonight, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I'm not going to go into the lyrics because... Okay, but I get it. So it's about that. Okay. Well, yeah, the whole thing was ripped off a Twat's Garden song. Well, that's good, because it makes me like it a bit more, because that song that we've just listened to is quite humourless, really. Oh, yeah. And I think that's my biggest problem with it really. And I own quite a lot of the stuff that we recorded this time. It was very kind of humanless without any kind of sense of irony. It was just taking itself a bit too seriously. It was self-consciously important. it was We are doing something important. This is good for you. Get it down your neck. It's musical fibre. yeah And not in a good way.
00:15:55
Speaker
It would have been good if we'd planned this podcast better to actually play the Twat's Garden song. Yeah, I think the professional people who are involved. Could we not like bleep out some of the lyrics?
00:16:06
Speaker
You know what, I'd need to have a listen to it again and remind myself. I think it's one of the least explicit Twats gardens. we could We could just bleep some bits. That would make it even funnier. Well, I always do love a bit of bleeped house swearing. It's one of my favourite things. Surely me. I think it's funnier than swearing. Exactly. If I could have a bleeper, that'd be brilliant. If I could walk
Challenges in Recording Sessions
00:16:26
Speaker
around with a bleeper.
00:16:27
Speaker
But yeah, um Edge Bass. Edge Bass. It's got Edge Bass. Now, that was something that Hammy was very, very keen on. And one of the best examples of it is on Nirvana's Nevermind album on a song called Breed.
00:16:44
Speaker
Has that got edge bass? Now that's got edge bass, I mean it's absolutely lousy with edge bass that track is. Explain what edge bass is. It's a way to kind of have a very, very distorted and fuzzy bass part, but the notes aren't lost. It's kind of an impersonation of distorted bass, but you keep the notes so it's very pure. I think it pretty much gets rid of most of the actual original signal of the bass and just yeah yeah synthesizes the sort of us. Yeah, on the first session that we did as the millers in Great Yarmouth,
00:17:20
Speaker
There's only one track of the ten songs that were recorded. There's only one track that doesn't have the edge bass on it. It became part of our sound. Well, it became part of Hammy saying, this sounds good, stick it on everything. And it does really take over a lot on some of the tracks. I think, to be honest, on something like that track, it probably works quite well just because it makes it quite throaty and low end. But it's got a It's got an edge to it. Hence the name, Edge Base. Talk us through some of the sounds that you were making there. Did you you remember sort of what you did? It's unbelievable. I think there's a bit, it's probably
00:18:04
Speaker
A double track is like my mains kind of guitar part. There's at least one track where I'm shouting into the pickups, possibly for the entire length of the song. There's probably a track using a little toy gyroscope that makes the strings vibrate.
00:18:26
Speaker
There's just a lot of noise and there's higher versions of the same chords. There's just a lot of guitars and you know, and Hammy would just go, do you want to do another one? I'd go, and because I was just, you know, I was in a room and he was, you know, he was stroking my ego.
00:18:45
Speaker
He was and you know, what else am I going to do? I mean, the studio I've got, it's all paid for and we were staying there overnight. So all your vocals got recorded at night. Oh, yeah. And I really, I really pushed the vocals way too loud. I mean, I'm not going to pass the blame on some other people, obviously. But, you know, why did no one tell me to like, maybe just sing it?
00:19:09
Speaker
dial it back a little bit, because that's not how I sung the song. No, it it was weird. You bellowed all the songs. Yeah, horrible. and ah the The demo sounded so much better. Yeah, and there's a lot less guitar on it. Yeah. And it never came out as an album, did it? It never came out. and It never came out as an album. And we did we did a gig in Norwich, and yeah we sort of did quite a few gigs around, and we thought, oh, this is going to happen. yeah the The album's going to come out.
00:19:38
Speaker
It never did. and Over time, we became more and more paranoid and you know distance of time is a great thing. and We listened to the album more and more and realized, what have we done? This doesn't sound that great. More and more, we thought Barry had just kind of like gone, didn't like it.
00:19:58
Speaker
Well, I remember at the time we did get word back through possibly Hammy the second time we went because we did 10 tracks and then and he he asked us to go back and record another, like ah another bunch of four songs. And I think Hammy said that Barry had said that we'd gone too far.
00:20:17
Speaker
Oh dear. And being kind of smart arsy kids, one of the songs we recorded at the second session was a song that we basically wrote in the studio and one of the chorus lines was, are we going too far? Did we go too far though, Steve? Well, well, well.
00:20:34
Speaker
friend of the podcast, Jock, ah Brian Price, the Archdeacon of Pop. The guy who drummed on that track. The guy who drummed on that and he was the guy who wrote the fanzines and he was also the guy behind sending out demo tapes that we'd recorded to various labels, including Wild Club. I spoke to him at the weekend and he said, when asked about whether Barry hated the stuff that we'd recorded, he said this.
00:21:03
Speaker
I got in touch with him when he got in touch with me one way or the other through the magic of Facebook. And I i apologize. I said said, look, I'm really sorry. We totally fucked those recordings up. I'm so sorry. He was like, no, he didn't. He said, I really liked them. He said, if I could have put them out, I'd have put them out. He said, circumstances were beyond me. I couldn't do it. He said, I would have put them out. So he actually he liked the recordings.
00:21:28
Speaker
and The rest of us had more senses. They were not the best, the commons. There you go. Wow. So Barry quite liked it and it could have come out, but it just, one of those things, it just didn't happen.
Musical Evolution and Influences
00:21:45
Speaker
So it wasn't... That blows my mind. That blows my mind. For all these years, I've thought Barry just hated it. It turns out he did hate it. He did. And if he'd had the money, he would have put it out. Yeah.
00:21:59
Speaker
That's crazy. Isn't that bonkers? I mean, how do you really feel about those recording shows? Because I know you've been listening to them recently. I don't hate them. I mean, in a way, I'm quite glad they didn't get released m because I don't think that's the best stuff we ever did. But I don't hate it. It's no longer the kind of music I really like. But it's all right for what it is, I suppose. And this you know there's some quite good playing on it.
00:22:27
Speaker
you know I don't know. I mean, a lot of music from that period, and I'm not that keen on, you know, I mean, you know, things like Catherine Wheel and stuff, you know, and Swerve Driver and the ilk, that kind of thing, you know, that's kind of what we were doing. And it's like, you know, it's not really what I'm into anymore.
00:22:49
Speaker
I think at the time we were we were quite into stuff like Bitch Magnet and Fagasi and you know these American bands and I think in our heads we were thinking oh we're going to do something that sounds like Fagasi but I think it sometimes it ends up sounding more like The Wedding Present.
00:23:07
Speaker
You know what I mean? There's something that we kind of missed what we were aiming for. I don't imagine we're the only people that ever tried to sound like Fugazi and then kind of didn't quite manage it. Well, like the wedding present for what? It's quite hard to yeah sound like Fugazi. But yeah, I mean, at least we were like trying. And I don't know, I think it's we gave it a go. And yeah, I quite like it. It was all right. I quite like listening to it. Just then I thought that was cool.
00:23:33
Speaker
cool I like the line, I'm looking down on the town where I grew up, the lights are on. That's the only image in the song that I really like. That is a direct quote from the Twice Garden song. Yeah, that's I like that. It's a bit river's edge. It's like driving up to the lightning tree and and so being all moody.
00:23:57
Speaker
I think I think a lot of it is very rivers energy as well. Because again, that was a film that we got out of the video store fairly regularly. There you go. Edginess. It's the Johnny Domino podcast. Give it a chance. The next song we're going to listen to is a song by Johnny Domino, but it's a weird kind of mystery song. It's it's well, it's a song that I've got no idea when we recorded it. And the more I listened to it,
00:24:27
Speaker
The less idea I have of even whether we record it on a four track or on an eight track recorder, it's very, very odd. I'm pretty sure that all four members of Johnny Domino the live band are playing on it, but it is completely instrumental. I think Mark, Jim and myself play keyboards on it. I play guitar, you play bass.
00:24:52
Speaker
It's got my drum machine, but it's also got Mark's drum machine on it as well. So I've have no idea. I think in a filing system that we've been using, it's been tagged as something from 1997, which would call it a four-track recording from around the time of our first album. But I'm increasingly unconvinced when it's from. And I know you've probably got no idea when it's from either.
00:25:19
Speaker
No but i do I listened to it the other day and I liked it though so that's why I wanted to include it. yeah it's It's quite a lovely kind of relaxing bit of instrumental and I really like the middle bit so yeah give it a listen. I think it's quite Christmassy as well.
00:29:02
Speaker
It is is really nice. What interesting thing were you laying on there? Well, it was just you mentioned the middle bit that you really liked. And I must have really liked it as well, because I used it in loads of different songs.
00:29:14
Speaker
and And one of the first times I used it was in the spring of 1994 in a song called Pass the Controller, which is not a particularly great song, but it does feature a middle eight bit, which just sounds like this.
00:30:02
Speaker
So we recycled the chords. Oh yeah, I mean, you know, they're not probably the most original chord change in the world, but I was obviously quite pleased with them because I used them a lot. It's good to recycle.
00:30:15
Speaker
I think it is. I mean, it's all good. We should all be doing more. and i was doing i like It was Christmasy. It was Christmasy. Yeah. Here's a Christmas cracker joke. Knock knock. Who's there? Hawaii. Hawaii who? I'm fine. How are you?
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah, good. Right. Was that recorded on four track? The instrumental, I have no idea, because there are at least, I think there's three keyboard bits. There's the kind of arpeggiated bit, that's probably me, on like an electric piano bit. And then there's this kind of weird whoopie chords, and there's very drony keyboards. I think there's at least three keyboards on it. But, you know, Jim wasn't averse to playing a keyboard. Hey, Steve.
00:31:07
Speaker
Did you know that there is a Hollywood feature film being made about a man sitting in a room recording music on a fourth track? No, I did not.
Appreciation of Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska"
00:31:18
Speaker
Did you not know about that? No, what is it? It's called Deliver Me From Nowhere and it's based on a book of the same name by Warren Zane and it's about Bruce Springsteen recording Nebraska.
00:31:32
Speaker
Oh, yes. Yeah. yeah and now heard that is in it's Yeah, it's being shot at the moment as we speak. I'm quite excited to see it. It's a good Bruce Springsteen album. I think it's a great album. I love it. But it's recorded on Fortrac, wasn't it, famously? he He kind of like just locked himself away in ah in ah in his bedroom. Yep. In December 1981, actually.
00:31:57
Speaker
And he he started recording on 17th of December, and he finished recording the album on January the 3rd. So over the Christmas period, he recorded in Nebraska. And it's got some great songs on it, it's got great sound, and it's just all on 4-track.
00:32:11
Speaker
yeah And I think it's probably one of the best four-track albums ever. Maybe it's the only good four-track album, I don't know. but Well, well whoa hold hold there. you know We liked some stuff that we recorded. um I mean, the thing is, he was I think he was really into suicide, wasn't he, at the time? As in the band's suicide. i think he was quite I don't think he was happy either, though. I think he was going for quite a bad time. He was going for a pretty bad time.
00:32:36
Speaker
Did he write Born in the USA for that? Is there a version of Born in the USA that was... something it was not nice I don't think so. I'm sure there's some there's some kind of link between it, but I think he did try and record them with the band, and then he just kept going back to the four track tape, so he basically said, just put this out. Oh wow, okay. Yeah.
00:32:58
Speaker
It's got loads of good songs on it. One of my favourites is Highway Patrol Man. That's a tune, yeah. That's a song that makes me cry. And it's about, it's about brothers, isn't it? It's about the relationships. Yeah. Well, I remember reading about that in, um, what is it? Mystery train. The grail Marcus book is kind of one of those things that makes you think, well, maybe Bruce Springsteen isn't shit because at the time when you're hearing and born in the USA and all that so kind of crap, you're kind of thinking, well, Bruce Springsteen shit. And then you listen to
00:33:34
Speaker
was see Some people might like it. Yeah, absolutely. yeah But yeah when we are smart ass indie boys, then we're not going to be into it. But yeah, eventually you go, actually, this is actually a really good album. But I'm interested to see how they can make a film about a man sitting in his room recording an album on Fortray. What if he leaves his alcohol and his cotton buds and he can't clean the tape heads and he he has to send out for a degausser.
00:34:04
Speaker
to demagnetise the heads and then maybe he's got the wrong tape, maybe he's only got ferric tapes and he needs to go... Oh, there'd be a lot of swearing if it was about you. Chromium dioxide, yeah, well there is. You'd be swearing at that point. You'd have to use the bleeper for that. And then maybe his power adapter gets knackered. Oh, yeah. Break some strings. Maybe he runs out of tea. The struggle is real. Well, I don't know. Anyway, it'd be good when it comes out. Yeah, looking forward to that. It'd be good.
00:34:51
Speaker
Oh, yes. We probably will argue about something pointless. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I think that's kind of the whole point of the podcast. Right. Next song is a song by the band Formation of Johnny Domino from the fourth a studio album called Solid Ground. And it's a song called You Are My All. And you have a recorded introduction by Jim. I do.
00:35:18
Speaker
Giles, not so long ago you asked me what the lyrics to You Are My All are about and because I'm such a people pleaser for you, I've listened to that song dozens of times and I've spent hours rummaging at the back of my memory shed just to bring you this explanation.
00:35:39
Speaker
Essentially, the song is about friendships and about positive relationships with the oar being a pretty bad metaphor for that in a kind of oar paddle, being up creeks or not kind of way.
00:35:57
Speaker
Throughout the lyrics, I recall that I attempted to include subtle and not so subtle references to people that I knew or people that I still know. yeah With it being 20 years after the fact, they're so subtle in most cases that I honestly can't remember who they're about. but i mean It's not American Pie, but there are a few little references in there.
00:36:22
Speaker
The only one that I can remember is about my old mate Jen and and that is the inky little frog. reference, which refers to a tattoo. And the fun fact is that Jen's mum was a contemporary of Andy Partridge of XTC. They went to school together in Swindon back in the day. And according to the man himself, the song When You're Near Me, I Have Difficulty, is about Jen's mum. That's pretty cool, unlike the reference to Jen in this obscure song.
00:36:56
Speaker
Probably the other thing worth saying about the lyrics is that the idea that I had is that I wanted to write a kind of a dance song. So sort of a, you know, the twist or the locomotion or something like that, which it was probably for the best that that idea got completely abandoned, but there are a few words in there that were reworked, sort of the remnant of that, and and they the sort of the get up, stand up, go down on all fours bit. And the other thing to say about that is,
00:37:28
Speaker
there are songs that from time to time I get a little bit obsessed with and listen to on repeat and in this case the song that I was listening to obsessively was Walk the Dinosaur, Was Not Was, and which is kind of that's not really a dance song but it was it was kind of reinterpreted as a dance song and and I think those lyrics there kind of reference Walk the Dinosaur a little bit So that's basically it. I mean, I could talk about the recording and the use of compression, et cetera, et cetera. But I'll leave that sort of thing up to Stephen Giles. There you go. You are my all. Ta-ta.
00:43:02
Speaker
He's a funny bugger, isn't he? He's a funny bugger. I miss him. I miss him. I've been talking to him quite a lot, actually.
Rediscovering Laura Branigan
00:43:10
Speaker
ah We've been sharing our our love of various music, one of which being the ah track Self-Control by Laura Branigan. Yeah, you've been on a bit of a Branigan tip, is what you told me. Yeah, it's a great song. Yeah, you've got Self-Control, you've got Gloria, what else?
00:43:29
Speaker
Well, ah just that's it. That's all you need to know. That's fine then. As long as I'm not missing any deep cuts. yeah You don't need to go anywhere anywhere else. But he did tell me that the track self-control is actually a cover version. The original is by somebody called RAF or RAF.
00:43:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It's like an Italian Euro pop type song. It's very good. It's very good. I'll put it in the links. Excellent. Now I remember at the time we were writing songs for Solid Ground.
00:44:01
Speaker
when we were trying to write new bits of music, a lot of it was jammed out as a band. And I think, didn't we used to choose two bands, say, this plus this? And I think... Yeah, it was a way of coming up with ideas, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. Can you remember what that one was? Let's mish together. Yes, I do. It was Prince.
00:44:23
Speaker
because it's kind of meant to be a bit funky and captured beef art. It's that kind of trying to do something feel a bit funky, funky, but then sort of being a bit off kilter as well. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed listening to that. I enjoyed listening to that. I particularly enjoyed the keyboards and I can imagine Mark sucking his cheeks in when he's playing his keyboards and he's all getting a bit Nick Rhodes. A bit Nick Rhodes. It's another one of those songs where I wish we'd recorded with a drummer.
00:44:53
Speaker
because we played it live and it sounded pretty good. I think it would be a good song to do a Love Island version of. Oh, you could do it a piano ballad version of it. You know what? That would horrifically probably work quite well. Interesting. I might have to have a bit of a play around with that for a future episode.
00:45:15
Speaker
During Johnny Domino's time as a band and releasing music on physical formats, we used to get quite wound up if people said that we sounded like Cable, Darby's big hitters of the indie scene. Is this the first time we've ever mentioned Cable on the podcast? I'm sure we must have mentioned them before. Because we've mentioned them when we talked about the practice room. We used the practice room. Yeah, the stinky rehearsal room, the bakery. Yeah, yeah.
00:45:40
Speaker
yeah Now, at the time, I was friends with Darius and his now wife. I went to college with Catherine. Hi there, Catherine. I don't know if you're listening or not, but hello if you are. you know I used to hang out around their house and I heard their demo recordings when they were getting ready to record their album When Animals Attack with Kramer at Noise New York. Not jealous at all.
00:46:05
Speaker
Now I hate cable for that reason. For that reason and that reason only. They're annoyingly nice people. They're absolutely the loveliest people. Have you heard a song of theirs called Whisper Firing Line? Yeah. Here's a bit of You're My All, as just heard. Here's Whisper Firing Line.
00:46:37
Speaker
There's the bit of that there. You know, let's let's do a mash-up of them.
00:46:47
Speaker
Which one came first though? Oh, by about seven years. That would be the cable song. yeah so wom yeah We used to get really quite angry if people said that we sounded like cable, but the more I got to know Darius, it was basically the fact that we had the same record collection. How many gigs did we do with them? we did A few, quite a few. We did at least one gig with them, and might have been there one of their last gigs in Derby, and I'm pretty sure their first ever gig was supporting the band The Millers who were on early on in the in the episode. Their first gig, they supported us, they brought all their mates down, they went down really well in front of their mates, they finished their set,
00:47:37
Speaker
them and all their mates left. And then we did a set to the few people that we brought. And that is the way to do it. Bad etiquette. Oh, don't be silly. This is how it goes. Interesting. The way the influence flows between the two.
00:47:55
Speaker
I'm smoking my chin. It was nice to hear from Jim though, wasn't it? It's lovely. It was very nice to hear from you. If anybody else we used to hang out with wants to send us a message, that'd be grand. Always happy to hear from people, especially if there's a song that they want us to talk about that they have particular fondness or memory of. I think we might have to listen to some cable.
00:48:17
Speaker
in one of these podcasts, maybe. I think that would be good. Right.
Christmas Music Trivia Quiz
00:48:22
Speaker
Steve. Yes, mate. Steve. What? You know how it's Christmas. Yeah. It's quiz time. Okay. Quiz time. Go on.
00:48:35
Speaker
So Steve, I've got a bit of a quiz for you, right? There's a couple of rounds, a couple of rounds, but I thought, you know, as it's Christmas, we'll have a few, a bit of a fun quiz, right? The first bit of the quiz is name the artist, right? So I'm going to give you the name of the song and you're going to tell me the name of the artist. You ready? In the run up to this, can I just say, I always do really, really badly at these things.
00:49:00
Speaker
Carry on. Here we go. ah You'll get this one. All right. Who had a hit with the song, Jump? Van Halen? No, Chris Cross. Who had a hit with the song, One?
00:49:14
Speaker
This is bloody QI, the music quiz, isn't it? Because I'm going to go. know this well Well, it was either Metallica or U2. Oh, don't ruin the game. There you go. Sorry, I'm OK. OK, next one. Who had a hit with the song Atmosphere? Joy Division. Russ Abbott. Right, Russ Abbott. Right, OK, next round. You got one on that round because you bloody ruined the quiz. Right, OK, round two.
00:49:41
Speaker
hu Which year was Band-Aid the Christmas number one? 1984 or 2004. Oh, you got it. You got it. So you've got two. You've managed to get two. Next, here we go, right? Complete the title. All I want for Christmas is you. No, it is you by you two. You didn't get that one. Right, OK. And final question. This is very you two heavy, this quiz.
00:50:12
Speaker
big fan of you too, and Bruce Springsteen, apparently. Right, here we go. This is the last question. In the Morecambe's Wise is Christmas Show, 1971, Eric Morecambe plays piano really badly with the conductor Andre Previn. Which piece of music do they play?
00:50:30
Speaker
It's Greig by Him and Him. It is! It's Greig's piano concerto. I think you managed to get three there. So you got half right. So you did quite well. That's pretty good to me. Thank you. I'm sorry if I ruined the yeah the joke.
00:50:47
Speaker
Happy Christmas. And to you. Happy, happy Christmas. And God bless us one and all. Shall we listen to another bit of music? Yes, please. Now, this is, again, not really a Johnny Domino song. Occasionally, when we were younger, sometimes we would go to the pub, sometimes we'd go out dancing, sometimes of a Friday night, we would stay in and form a band and write a song.
00:51:15
Speaker
And this is an example of a song that we did in those circumstances. This is a song called Surefire Indie Dance Floor Filler.
00:52:13
Speaker
are are is it go
00:53:26
Speaker
yeah know
00:53:32
Speaker
a
00:54:30
Speaker
I lost my hair, what I wanted my life
00:55:16
Speaker
Much hilarity was had, wasn't it Steve? with eyes that and We amused ourselves to death right there. That is recorded on a very old four-track. It was a Texon 4x4. This is the famous four-track that often didn't have four tracks. It often wouldn't erase the tracks that you were recording over. There is so much hiss on that one. And there's a lot of stuff going on with the dynamics on that song. Sounds like you've remastered it, Steve.
00:55:46
Speaker
I had to go at it, but I tried to get it a little bit more all at one level. I might have gone overboard. um love no he so it's all right It's an ironic stab at the loud, quiet aesthetic oh yes that we loved. That absolutely did love.
00:56:01
Speaker
on that recording that is you singing a bit, me playing loud guitar, Albert's on bass, then Jock is playing acoustic lead guitar and doing one of the strangest backing vocals ever committed to tape. Well it's like a weird segment isn't it? It's a very peculiar bit. What did he say again? A hula hoshna, a hula huhi. Now I remember Jock recording that And I sent him a message saying, where did that backing vocal come from? And again, spoke to me at the weekend. Let's have a little listen to what Jock had to say about that particular lyric.
00:56:43
Speaker
What do you need to know? ah I need to know where the hell the line of hula hushna, hula huhi came from. Well, it's actually a hula hushna. Ah, hula huhi. Sorry. an extra ian and And it stems back to our days as kids in Glasgow and a really, really rocky little um estate called Metzel, where we lived.
00:57:09
Speaker
We were 10, 11, 12-year-old kids, and i hung about with some kids who were like a couple of years older than me. But the the key that we all had was we were all into two-tone. We were all massive madness specials, the beat selector fans. Basically, we couldn't play instruments. We wanted to be a band, obviously, as you did at that age. yeah do it because we just didn't have the resources or anything like that. So basically, we would get around each other's houses, we'd put the records on and we'd just fucking just jump around the bedroom. We were Teddy Hall, we were Suggs, we were Chad Smash.
00:57:50
Speaker
I obviously realised I could play drums around about that time and I would hit things and stuff and hit things in time. Other people would kind of like hit tennis bats in time and strumming time, literally with tennis bats, that was our guitars. It's like, where do we go from here and start writing the wrong songs? We tried to write songs but we didn't have any instruments to write songs with. So we're just kind of fart about and just going to do stuff and we could play along to. And then there was a kid called Smithy, Stephen Smith, just one day out of absolutely nowhere. He was like, I've got this great backing vocal, I've got a great little line for you. We're like, go on then, go on then. He was like, hola hoshina, hola hoo.
00:58:37
Speaker
really but right We're all just like, well, it's a bit homeless, it's not really yeah
00:58:48
Speaker
You know, he's like, that was great, he's great. Oh Lord. And he was just like, and he was shaking from left to right as he sang it. And it was, we were like, okay, fine, fantastic. Yeah, whatever. I think it was instantly forgotten about until about 10 years later when I remembered that, you know, madness, spaciousness, fine, fine. Oh Lord, it's not all of you. Fucking.
00:59:15
Speaker
There you go. And there is the story of Ahula Hashna, Ahula Hui. Yeah. And you know, if you didn't like that story about a bunch of kids jumping around in a bedroom,
00:59:30
Speaker
in the 1980s in Glasgow to some two-tone music, then you're you're listening to the wrong podcast, aren't you? You're very much in the wrong place. But you may, if you did enjoy that story, then you may may be pleased to to hear that there is a forthcoming major motion picture about the young lads of Glasgow jumping around with tennis rackets, writing songs. It's called a hula a hula huhi,
01:00:00
Speaker
colon, the movie. It's got Timothy Chalamet in it. Absolutely. he's ah He's an enigma. He's a chameleon. He can do anything. He can do anything. He's going to play a young Brian Price, a dreamer. I washed my hair, whap. I wadded my tights.
01:00:18
Speaker
see that source was carried on my sort of power I think there were, you see again, I worry that this may not reflect well on us, but I think a lot of our feelings for this particular group came from resentment that they didn't find us attractive in any way.
01:00:37
Speaker
But there was a particular type of posh indie girl. Maybe they weren't just girls, but there were particularly posh indie kids who used to... They kind of people said, oh, you must meet Jeremy. He's my best friend and he's a tramp. You know, it's that kind of thing. And I don't think that's necessarily something that young indie girls did, but... That's exactly the kind of girls that I used to fancy. Yeah, exactly. And they would have no interest in you whatsoever. Whatsoever.
01:01:06
Speaker
Me or Orham, Albert. Or Albert. Certainly not me. Certainly not Albert. He was doing a very good job there. His voice sounded great on that. He's like our very own Mark Lanigan or something, isn't it?
01:01:20
Speaker
I was listening to it earlier today and I thought he is channeling some kildos, very much so, yeah. It's great. Ironically, Jock always did quite well with the types of girls who wore strap ties and had tramps for best friends. Jock always did very well. He did. So that is the podcast.
01:01:41
Speaker
Thank you very much. Are we going to choose some songs to go on the compilation, which is the o ostensibly the point of the podcast, or are we just going to choose them all later? Shall we? I would like to include the Surefire indie, whatever it's called. I can't remember. Surefire indie dance floor filler. That was great.
01:02:05
Speaker
And it's not going to win us any new fans, but I think it's ah it's very representative of our aesthetic. It's a particular period of the aesthetic, definitely, yes. Yeah. I think that sums up how we are now, really. What do you reckon?
01:02:22
Speaker
Well, I like the ah the instrumental one. I think it's very sweet. I like that a lot. ah I unironically like it a lot. Yeah. And You Are My All was quite powerful, wasn't it? It was quite powerful. Yes. When we do get around to selecting songs for this volume, maybe we should listen to the live version.
01:02:42
Speaker
Oh yeah. But I don't know, think drums. Jeremy knows what he's done. It's like, it's too, I don't know, it's too up itself. It's too loud. It's too, you're you're just shouting at people. Stop it. There's too many flaming guitar tracks as well. There's like no space anywhere on that track. It's just too much. It is literally too much. We literally went too far. Yeah.
01:03:07
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The This Are Johnny. Hold on, hold on a second. I've just thought of an end bit. Because you know what we haven't done? Let's face it, right, every podcast about music probably mentions it. It's time to talk about Spotify wrapped, I think. It's the most magical time of the year when a corporation tells you what you are.
01:03:33
Speaker
Yeah. Fabulous. Yeah. I thought I enjoyed it. Can I briefly talk about my Spotify wrapped? You know what it told me? I would love you to. I'd love you to. My Spotify wrapped told me that I don't listen to Spotify very much, seeing as one of my top artists of the year was Taylor Swift, of whom I listened to one album on one day, but she remained one of my top artists.
01:03:59
Speaker
Oh, there you go. Not a huge amount of insight there. I enjoyed the um feature this year where it made you think into a podcast. Did you like that? Hated it. I thought it was quite good. Mine was quite detailed. It's got some great moments. Yeah. Okay. Let's unwrap this. Welcome to your 2024 Spotify wrapped deep dive.
01:04:21
Speaker
We're your hosts visiting from Google's notebook LM and wow, are we excited for this musical journey? Right. Let's just jump right in.
Spotify Wrapped and Unlikely Favorites
01:04:29
Speaker
Let's talk about your top artist. Yeah. Who took the top spot? I'm ready to hear all about it. You spent a solid 328 minutes with Johnny Domino this year listening across 24 different days. That's some serious dedication. Yeah. That puts you in the top 4% of his listeners. Amazing. I feel like I got to check out some Johnny Domino now.
01:04:48
Speaker
Oh, you definitely should. And get this, you even had a four-day listening streak. Wow, four days straight of Johnny Domino. I wonder what it was about his music that kept you coming back for more. Maybe it was just the right soundtrack for that week. I mean, who knows. But it's really cool to see that kind of connection with an artist. And, you know, Johnny Domino's got a pretty interesting history. He's actually linked to that whole counterculture folk scene in the early 60s, like that Bob Dylan vibe.
01:05:14
Speaker
Oh, I did not know that. Since why I love these deep dives, you always learn something new. Right. He has got a very, very interesting backstory. How's Johnny Domino? Has he? Has he? Has he? Wow. Wow. That's brilliant. Yeah. The kind of thing that that makes me feel a lot better about the oncoming AI revolution that is not quite there yet.
01:05:38
Speaker
I know, but I find that I think it's we're going to look back on these days and and enjoy the the sort of crapness of the ai the early AI. Because when it gets good, it's just going to be boring. Yeah, I think if this was a dystopian science fiction film, there will be a hard cut to 20 years in the future. And I'm being tortured by a computer saying, so you laughed at us for getting your poxy little band confused with a made up blues singer. What did you think? You called your band a person's name.
01:06:09
Speaker
could happen yeah I mean, there's a lot of good stuff in your Spotify wrapped. Is there more? Well, one of my favorite bits is later on. Let's not forget that legendary May listening session with Chuck Berry. Oh yeah. Maybe you even caught a live show. That would have been amazing. Wouldn't it be?
01:06:26
Speaker
It would have been amazing to have seen Jim Carrey. It would have been really amazing. I mean, I think I would have heard about that. Yeah. Very rises from the dead. That's like a dream I had in May, in between listening to Johnny Domino all the time, apparently. I don't know. I think maybe I left it on like overnight, you know, just playing the album on repeat. Maybe I did that a couple of times.
01:06:51
Speaker
Is that how you listen to Johnny Domino all the time as well? It's not that you're a complete rampant egotist trying to get the figures up. Yeah. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought this would make a good feature in the podcast. Is that what you thought? That's why you were doing it. You thought ofve you had a vision of your Spotify wrapped.
01:07:10
Speaker
I've enjoyed the wrapped season and I enjoyed looking back. my I listen to Spotify quite a lot and I like to listen to Spotify a lot while I'm drinking Ribena. What other thing products can I endorse? I really do like Ribena.
01:07:26
Speaker
If Ribena would like to send us Ribena, that'd be amazing. ah But yeah, Spotify, I have been listening to a lot of stuff. I went through early on in the year, you you'll probably remember this, I was a bit obsessed with them country music, yeah kind of 1950s, 1960s country music. And one of my top artists was the singer Dick Curless. Have you ever heard of Dick Curless? Dick Curless. Dick Curless, yeah.
01:07:55
Speaker
That's a name that I would remember. Dick Curless, right, was the man. What you need to do is you need to just look now at the ah cover of the album, The Long Lonesome Road ah by Dick Curless. He's there in his black suit. He sat on his guitar case in the middle of the road with an eye patch looking very intense.
01:08:24
Speaker
Very, very, very intense. Very intense. I'm looking at it right now. He's an incredible looking man. I think that's a brilliant cover. And Dick Kerless is a mad singer. He's a singer that does something that I don't think I've ever heard anyone else do in such an extreme way. He goes from the kind of high, lonesome, yodel almost kind of vocal, and then just like really clunky gear shift into really, really low.
01:08:53
Speaker
Right. And at this point, I'd like you to just include a ah clip for in illustration purposes of the song. I ain't got nobody. and i think
01:09:42
Speaker
Anyway, I think, you know, I think get into some Dick Kerless. He's my top, top pick. Here's your top pick. He's my top pick for Spotify route. You know, when you you were listening to Dick Kerless, what inspired you to start getting to him? Did you catch a live show?
01:10:01
Speaker
but When did he die? Yeah, a long time ago. Oh man. A long time ago. All of my friends are dead. Johnny Domino aren't they? No, they aren't. They're still going at the moment and we're still making this podcast. We're still. So there's hope yet. That's it really for today. I haven't really gotten much else I wanted to say. We'll see you in the new year. Thank you very much for listening to us. Yeah. Love you Steve. Love you bro.