The Horslips Podcast

CPI Archive 2009: In a special extended interview, Andrew Hamilton, chat Johnny Fean about the rise, fall and eventual reformation of Horslips.

Johnny Fean was the first kid in Ireland to hear The Supremes. The year was 1961 - Kennedy was in the White House, a fledgling RTÉ was getting ready for its maiden broadcast and, in the small townland of Rineanna, something special was brewing. Factories were being built; factories which needed workers and workers who needed homes, shops and family. The Clare goldrush had begun. The Feans were one of dozens or maybe hundreds of families who made their way to Shannon in 1961. They came in search of a new life and found exactly that. Foreign investment meant foreign children and, for a teenaged Johnny Fean, this meant a vast melting pot of music. “My dad was a great jazz fan and he had a lot of recordings - a lot of 78’s and old recordings. Because he worked in the airport, he used to get a lot of records from the pilots coming in from America so I had access to a lot of great stuff. I was the first-born in the family and the very early days would have been me listening to the likes of Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole as a baby,” says Johnny.

CPIArchive2009D · #110 The Horslips Podcast

The Spider John Koerner Podcast

CPI Archive 2009: On a balmy summer evening in 1959, John ‘Spider’ Koerner first turned Bob Dylan onto folk. Andrew Hamilton chats to the legendary American about life as a musical maverick and being a blues man in a folk world.

There were never fans inside the Ten O’Clock Scholar. Even in August, the Minneapolis heat would besiege the walls of the grotty student haunt, mingling and scheming with the whistling steam of endless coffees, bewitching all who entered with the twin lures of free love and marijuana. To those inside, the sun-stricken world would slowly dissolve and melt, almost becoming translucent under the weight of heat, noise and smoke. It was in this den of 1960’s Americana, that John ‘Spider’ Koerner first met Bob Dylan. Koerner, an engineering student with a talent for folk and blues riffs and a voice built to frighten, liked the young Dylan - and slowly began to introduce him into his world. Starting, of course, with the music. “I had no idea about music or anything until I went to university in Minneapolis. I was there for a year and a half as an engineering student. A friend of mine invited me up to his house to listen to some music and it was folk music. He had a few records and could play himself and it was really interesting. He loaned me his guitar and a folk music book and somehow, within a few weeks, I was able to play a few tunes. That was the beginning of it,” says Koerner. 

CPIArchive2009D · #109 The Spider John Koerner Podcast

The Red Stick Ramblers Podcast

CPI Archive 2009: Andrew Hamilton talks to Linzay Young, fiddler and head vocalist in Louisiana Cajun and swing band, The Red Stick Ramblers.

Along the clay banks of the Mississippi River, just south of Baton Rouge, the catfish still burrow in the mud. Encased in their silt-walled fortress, four sets of razor teeth await anyone - opportunist fisherman or farmer - who fancies a cheap meal. Yet for those who get lucky, the taste of the catfish is sublime. In an odd way, this treacherous standoff between man and beast is analogous to the world of Cajun music. Both wild and beautiful, comforting and dangerous, it’s something even the most experienced of musician can’t quite control, even if she wanted to. “I grew up in the Cajun area of Louisiana and I was instilled with a pride and an appreciation for the culture and the music since I was very young. It’s not just the music, it’s the whole way of life - the hunting, the cooking, the family, all of it. My folks were all country people, very very traditional and everywhere we go we try and instil a feeling of that into people. We try to let people know that it’s not just the music - it’s a whole way of life that we life,” says Linzay.

CPIArchive2009D · #108 The Red Stick Ramblers Podcast

The Clive Barnes Podcast

CPI Archive 2009: Andrew Hamilton chats to Clive Barnes about burning his musical influences and the lap-slide guitar that saved his life.

The 1990s were the decade of the Irish singer-songwriter. From Paddy Casey and David Gray (he’s wishes he was Irish, you know) to the Devlins and Damien Rice, this cult of whinging Paddies - each crawling over the other to be first to share his broken feelings with the gushing public - almost took over the world. It was a musical bubble, inflated by ego and endless hot air, pumped to within an inch of good taste. And when it finally popped, there would be no soft landing. Yet for a time, the youngsters of Ireland abandoned the rock bands which had served them so well in the past, trading their distortion pedal for a harmonica and a hard luck story. In 1999, right at the peak of the singer-songwriter mania, Clive Barnes had already smelled a rat. After trying, and failing, to make an impact doing what everyone else was doing, he decided to call it a day. He left Dublin broken, and returned to his native county to regroup. A sailor, cast on the rocks by the beguiling whingers, destitute and depressed, ready for a new way home. “I had been playing on the whole singer-songwriter scene for a while and for some reason all of that just didn’t sit too well with me. I was just getting worse and worse up there. I was pretty much destitute so I decided to move back to Wexford and have a think about things again,” says Clive. 

CpiArchive2009c · #107 The Clive Barnes Podcast

The BellX1 Podcast

CPI Archive 2009: Ahead of the launch of his second solo album, Andrew Hamilton chats to BellX1’s Dave Geraghty about the value of sunshine and the highs and lows of going it alone.

Nothing can grow without sunlight, but in the dark there is space for much to fester. From the dark recesses and hidden corners of his ultra-moody debut album Kill Your Darlings, Dave Geraghty has emerged anew, ready to step into the light. After spending much of 2007 recording in a long forgotten sub-suburban lair, the BellX1 man decided to take a different tack when putting his latest album, The Victory Dance, together. “The first album was pretty much put together in this little room that I was renting out. It was underground, there was no daylight and the toilets kept backing up. It was pretty grim and it didn’t bode very well for nice, sunny, bright energies to be flowing,” he says. “But this was totally different. It was June, we were in this lovely gaff with this great flowing lawn out the front and a river running right down beside the house. It was beautiful. And that did add to the album. I think this time I was able to share in the joy of making the record. 

CpiArchive2009c · #106 The Dave Geraghty Podcast (2009)

The Stereo MCs Podcast

CPI Archive 2009: Before the Chemical Brother and Fatboy Slim, there was Stereo MCs. Andrew Hamilton chats to Nick ‘The Head’ Hallam about birthing an entire genre and the battle with PolyGram Records which almost ended his career.

1992 was the year of Stereo MCs. After conquering the UK, and with their third album Connected selling hand over fist, the fathers of British electro hip-hop crossed the Atlantic and were welcomed with open arms. But all was about to change. The sale of Island Records to PolyGram had brought an end to the world’s first great independent record label, but it had also called a halt to the gallop of Stereo MCs. The band was too edgy, too different for PolyGram - and in the blinking of an eye their career was to enter freefall. “America was amazing. We went there so many times and played many weird gigs. I remember playing a lowriders show in Los Angeles with Hispanic people in cars jumping in the air. There were loads of Spanish rappers on the bill with us. We did some weird shows but it always worked for us somehow. It was interesting, exciting. But then it all went a bit pear-shaped, just when Island sold out to PolyGram,” says Nick.

CpiArchive2009c · The Stereo MCs Podcast

The Lightning Seeds Podcast

CPI Archive 2009: Band member, producer, solo artist — Ian Broudie has done it all. Andrew Hamilton chats to the brains behind The Lightning Seeds about the different strands to his musical bow and the conflicts that live in his musical machine.

Over 10 months, spanning 1978 and 1979, Liverpool punk band, Big in Japan, produced one EP and wrote just seven songs. As news of their breakup filtered out across Merseyside, there were no tears. In fact, few in the music fraternity batted an eyelid. Yet, it was the most important event in Liverpool’s music history since the formation of The Beatles. Big in Japan were the typical band that launched 1,000 bands: a super-group in reverse, as John Peel might have said, and from their numbers, decades of music would be forged. There was Budgie, later of The Slits and Siouxsie & the Banshees; Bill Drummond who went on to form The KLF; Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood; and Ambrose Reynolds of Nightmares In Wax. And then, of course, there was Ian Broudie. Along with his solo records and work under the name The Lightning Seeds, Broudie continues to launch band after band through his work as one of Britain‘s most sought after producers. In recent years, people like The Coral, The Subways and The Zutons have all received a point in the right direction from Broudie. “Producing is always a collaborative process and it’s different every time. I know that sounds vague but that’s what makes it so great - that’s why it’s an art form. That’s why I love it, I suppose. I’m a music junkie, me, I’m always listening for that new song that you just can’t stop playing and I always wish I was in that band. That’s always been the inspiration for me, both as a producer and as a record-maker myself,” he says. 

CpiArchive2009c · #104 The Lightning Seeds Podcast