Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Inside Stereolab: Their Story Told in 20 Essential Songs [Episode 367]

Transcript

Inside Stereolab: Their Story Told in 20 Essential Songs [Episode 367] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Speaker 1: I honestly put them right at the top level of bands.
0:04
Speaker 1: I put them up there with like Beatles, Stones, because
0:07
Speaker 1: they're just so creative, like so endlessly, endlessly creative.
0:11
Speaker 2: We're totally bummed rock and roll.
0:15
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll leave you. You're reading little hands as
0:17
Speaker 1: it's time to rock and roll, Rock, Roll up. I
0:21
Speaker 1: totally booked.
0:26
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Booked on Rock the podcast for those
0:28
Speaker 2: about to read and rock. I'm Eric Senach. Before we
0:32
Speaker 2: get started, listeners and viewers get fifteen percent off classic
0:36
Speaker 2: rock merchandise at old Glory dot com with the code
0:38
Speaker 2: Booked on Rock. The link is in the show notes
0:41
Speaker 2: where you can go to Booked on Rock dot com.
0:42
Speaker 2: Just look for my deals and you'll find it there
0:45
Speaker 2: all right. Now, on to our guest. He is the
0:47
Speaker 2: author of Space Age, Bachelor Pad Music, The Story of
0:51
Speaker 2: Stereo Lab in twenty Songs, Ben Card Ben, Welcome to
0:55
Speaker 2: the podcast.
0:56
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be here. How are you doing.
0:58
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. I was telling you you have turned
1:00
Speaker 2: me on to Stereo Lab and that was something you
1:03
Speaker 2: were very happy to hear. So yes, thank you for
1:05
Speaker 2: turning me on to this band's music.
1:08
Speaker 1: Well, totally I think that's such a good band. And
1:10
Speaker 1: you know what it's like, I mean, when you write
1:12
Speaker 1: a book about about something, you kind of assume everyone
1:15
Speaker 1: loves them because they must do. And I've had loads
1:17
Speaker 1: of times where I've you know, been speaking to friends
1:19
Speaker 1: to be like, well, what's your favorite stir labs on them,
1:21
Speaker 1: just assuming they're gonna have an answer, and they look
1:23
Speaker 1: at me kind of I don't know, and I'm very
1:27
Speaker 1: I'm very glad. Can I ask your favorite song? Or
1:30
Speaker 1: is it too early?
1:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I would say, and this is you know,
1:34
Speaker 2: I wish I could be cool and give you one
1:36
Speaker 2: that's like maybe a little more deeper. But uh, the
1:39
Speaker 2: flower called Nowhere, you know, that's the most popular on Spotify,
1:44
Speaker 2: you know Missmodular that that particular album. I love French disco,
1:51
Speaker 2: so yeah, I mean it's as we'll talk about, you know.
1:55
Speaker 2: They they did very up the sound. They tried different things,
1:58
Speaker 2: and it's a perfect perfect name for a group really
2:01
Speaker 2: because it is like they're in a lab and they're
2:04
Speaker 2: creating something and they're creating something new each time.
2:07
Speaker 1: Well, Starry Lab are very good at titles. I think
2:10
Speaker 1: when you look at some of the and that's actually
2:12
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that I use Space Age Bachelor
2:14
Speaker 1: Pad Music as a sort of co title for the
2:17
Speaker 1: book or part of the title for a book, because
2:19
Speaker 1: that's one of their early records and it really describes
2:22
Speaker 1: what they do. You know, You've got the space Age ness,
2:25
Speaker 1: kind of the futurism, you've got the Bachelor padness for
2:28
Speaker 1: the sort of slightly loungey element of it. It's just
2:31
Speaker 1: such a great title, So I thought, yeah, I'll borrow
2:35
Speaker 1: that for the occasion.
2:37
Speaker 2: Well, let's start with the approach to the book. Why
2:38
Speaker 2: did the twenty songs framework feel like the right way
2:42
Speaker 2: to tell Stereo Lab story instead of a linear biography.
2:46
Speaker 1: Well, because basically, when I started off, one of the
2:50
Speaker 1: reasons I did this was because I absolutely love stereot Lab.
2:53
Speaker 1: I've listened to them for three decades. But up until,
2:57
Speaker 1: you know, a few years ago and I started really
2:59
Speaker 1: you know, researching the book, I found it quite hard
3:02
Speaker 1: to pin down in a way, and I would have
3:06
Speaker 1: found it hard to say to you what my favorite
3:08
Speaker 1: Storio Lab album was, or what my favorite song was,
3:12
Speaker 1: or what their best you know era was, or anything
3:14
Speaker 1: like that. And so in a way, part of writing
3:17
Speaker 1: this was so for me, I could work out what
3:20
Speaker 1: I actually thought about stereo lab You know, I'm not
3:23
Speaker 1: going to claim I explained them because that would be ridiculous,
3:26
Speaker 1: but sort of to give me a better idea. And
3:29
Speaker 1: my way of doing that was because you know, they'd
3:31
Speaker 1: be going for years and they've got so many, so
3:33
Speaker 1: many records, I felt a bit, you know, intimidated by
3:36
Speaker 1: the whole idea. So I thought, if I can pick
3:40
Speaker 1: out twenty songs, that for me feels like a kind
3:43
Speaker 1: of very manageable framework. And when you know, it took
3:49
Speaker 1: quite a lot of work to pick out the right
3:50
Speaker 1: twenty songs because also you want to get something from
3:52
Speaker 1: the albums. You do kind of want to tell a
3:54
Speaker 1: chronological tale as well, not strictly, but for me, when
3:58
Speaker 1: I had those twenty songs in and I knew what
4:00
Speaker 1: each of them represented, it was so much easier to write.
4:04
Speaker 1: And it was just like mean, I wouldn't say it
4:06
Speaker 1: fell into place exactly, but it was like, Okay, now
4:08
Speaker 1: I know what I'm doing. You know, now I can
4:11
Speaker 1: write these chapters and it will tell the story I.
4:14
Speaker 2: Think, right, the songs tell a narrative arc rather than
4:18
Speaker 2: like chapters in a novel. They're actually like rather than
4:22
Speaker 2: like you said that you wanted to try to get chronological,
4:24
Speaker 2: but not necessarily chronological, right, I mean, the story itself
4:27
Speaker 2: is yeah.
4:28
Speaker 1: But what I loved about this idea was that it
4:31
Speaker 1: meant you could go forwards and backwards. So for example,
4:35
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, you know, one of the first chapter
4:37
Speaker 1: is about propulsion, and to talk about that, I picked
4:40
Speaker 1: super Electric, which is one of their very first songs.
4:43
Speaker 1: But it also means you can go, in fact I do,
4:45
Speaker 1: go right to the end of the catalog and be like,
4:47
Speaker 1: you know, this counted right to the end. This was
4:49
Speaker 1: kind of important, and then you can kind of bring
4:51
Speaker 1: it back and Yeah, it just gave me quite a
4:54
Speaker 1: lot of freedom to do it, a kind of freedom
4:57
Speaker 1: to write within a framework which I.
4:59
Speaker 2: Like, propulsive is a great word. It is the perfect
5:03
Speaker 2: word to describe it. Yeah, did certain songs un lock
5:06
Speaker 2: bigger stories? Maybe bigger than you expected?
5:09
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I mean I always thought there was kind
5:12
Speaker 1: of a very big story, but like, for example, one
5:19
Speaker 1: song I talk about is John Cage Bubblegum, and I
5:24
Speaker 1: use that in the idea of collage. And I initially
5:28
Speaker 1: thought of collage in terms of one thing that they
5:32
Speaker 1: do in a lot of their songs is they kind
5:33
Speaker 1: of have these different bits in it that sound like
5:36
Speaker 1: almost like different different songs, you know. And that was
5:39
Speaker 1: initially how I was thinking of collage. But then you
5:41
Speaker 1: actually get down to it, you think what does collage mean?
5:43
Speaker 1: And essentially it's an artistic way of like putting different
5:46
Speaker 1: things on a piece of paper. And I think, well,
5:48
Speaker 1: they do that in a lot of different ways, and
5:49
Speaker 1: they juxtaposo juxtaposed things as well, and all these kind
5:53
Speaker 1: of different meanings which were kind of related but kind
5:57
Speaker 1: of not came out. And that's you know, the reason
6:00
Speaker 1: I chose John Cage Bubblegum for that is because I
6:04
Speaker 1: love the way they stick those two ideas to get
6:05
Speaker 1: you know, like John Cage's very serious, you know, composer
6:10
Speaker 1: kind of and bubble Gum. You know, you can think
6:12
Speaker 1: of it as gum or bubble gum music or both.
6:16
Speaker 1: And it's like just a brilliant, kind of a brilliant
6:20
Speaker 1: justuxtaposition that says a lot about them.
6:22
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, the song titles are brilliant.
6:25
Speaker 1: Well, I have to tell you so I had to
6:29
Speaker 1: sign I think six hundred books or something like that,
6:35
Speaker 1: you know, because you know, various shops sell signed copies,
6:39
Speaker 1: and my signature is very kind of ugly, so I thought,
6:42
Speaker 1: I've got to do something else, And basically I found
6:44
Speaker 1: this website that has imaginary stereo Lab song titles. People
6:48
Speaker 1: just made them up right, and I thought, you know
6:51
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do. I'm gonna put my signature
6:53
Speaker 1: and then each of them, I'm going to put one
6:54
Speaker 1: of these imaginary story Lab song titles. And some of
6:57
Speaker 1: them are just brilliant, you know, because I'm trying to
7:01
Speaker 1: think Cloudy Bebop is one that someone came up with.
7:04
Speaker 1: This is like, yeah, that's a perfect Starnough songer. You know,
7:07
Speaker 1: I absolutely love that. Yeah, they're so good with their titles,
7:11
Speaker 1: Yeah they are.
7:12
Speaker 2: They are. Early in the book, you argue that most
7:14
Speaker 2: bands are relatively easy to understand, but stereo Lab almost
7:18
Speaker 2: defies definition. If somebody asks you what kind of band
7:21
Speaker 2: is stereo Lab, what would your answer be, Well.
7:24
Speaker 1: Again, it's really hard. I mean my answer would probably
7:27
Speaker 1: would be read my book, But like you.
7:29
Speaker 2: Know, and listen to the whole catalog, and I think
7:34
Speaker 2: you'll get the understanding that this isn't one there isn't
7:37
Speaker 2: one definitive.
7:38
Speaker 1: Sound exactly you know, like a lot of people think
7:41
Speaker 1: of them as the early sound, you know, those kind
7:44
Speaker 1: of driving guitars, but like for example, electronic music fans
7:49
Speaker 1: tend to prefer their sort of mid period like Dots
7:52
Speaker 1: and Loops, where they kind of did lots of weird experimentation.
7:55
Speaker 1: But then there's like really strong jazzy bits. There's really
7:59
Speaker 1: strong it's the borrow from Brazilian music. There's kind of
8:04
Speaker 1: crowd rocky bits. There's all kinds of different things. I mean,
8:08
Speaker 1: I guess essentially essentially they're an indie band, you know,
8:11
Speaker 1: or alternative, But then I think I make the point
8:14
Speaker 1: it's like what are they an alternative to? You know,
8:18
Speaker 1: and they're sort of a bit of an alternative to everything.
8:20
Speaker 1: And also, you know, calling them an independent band, well,
8:22
Speaker 1: they had a major label contract for half half their life,
8:25
Speaker 1: so you know, technically they're not that. But I guess
8:29
Speaker 1: I guess I'd go for indie band if I had to.
8:32
Speaker 2: Along with the twenty you do choose a song to
8:34
Speaker 2: introduce the book, along with the closing song. It's kind
8:37
Speaker 2: of like a bookend type of thing. Why did you
8:40
Speaker 2: decide to do that? And talk about the songs that
8:42
Speaker 2: you picked why you chose those particular songs.
8:45
Speaker 1: Well, because what I wanted to I wanted to make
8:46
Speaker 1: the point that basically, although I've got this list of
8:51
Speaker 1: twenty songs that I thought about a lot, their catalog
8:55
Speaker 1: is so varied and wide, I could have chosen another
8:58
Speaker 1: another twenty, and if I did it again to I
9:00
Speaker 1: could choose another twenty, you know. And I thought, well,
9:02
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do is I'm going to choose
9:04
Speaker 1: one for the opening chapter, and I'm going to choose
9:09
Speaker 1: one just because it kind of fits its name fits
9:12
Speaker 1: with the opening. So I chose a song called there
9:14
Speaker 1: will be Opening the way We'll be opening, Sorry, and
9:18
Speaker 1: which I chose for its name because that makes sense
9:20
Speaker 1: if you're, you know, if you're doing an opening chapter.
9:24
Speaker 1: And then my point from there was actually this song
9:30
Speaker 1: that I've chosen just for its title. If you look
9:33
Speaker 1: at it, almost everything from Stereo Lab is in there,
9:36
Speaker 1: you know, even even just a random selection. It's got
9:39
Speaker 1: what makes Stereo Lab so so brilliant, and it's got
9:44
Speaker 1: what makes it's got a lot of these characteristics. I mean,
9:48
Speaker 1: it has the sort of driving guitars, and it has
9:50
Speaker 1: the pop melodies and all kinds of different things, and
9:53
Speaker 1: then the last chapter Infinity gol just because I liked
9:56
Speaker 1: lo a Infinity Girl is a song I absolutely adore.
9:58
Speaker 1: And also just in the end, I kind of like
10:02
Speaker 1: the idea of things going on into infinity, you know,
10:05
Speaker 1: like that their future, we know, the Stereo Lab. You know,
10:08
Speaker 1: I don't whether they are still going or not or whatever,
10:13
Speaker 1: their music will go on forever. And I kind of
10:15
Speaker 1: like the idea of us being the Infinity Girl in
10:19
Speaker 1: the title, you know, us going on forever and then
10:21
Speaker 1: going on forever and you know, until the Earth crashes
10:24
Speaker 1: into the sun or whatever.
10:26
Speaker 2: And you did say that the intro the way will
10:29
Speaker 2: be opening is typically atypical.
10:32
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly because it's atypical in many ways, but the
10:40
Speaker 1: fact that it's atypical is typical. If that makes If
10:43
Speaker 1: that makes any sense, I hope that makes sense.
10:45
Speaker 2: It makes sense. I think it's actually the perfect song
10:47
Speaker 2: maybe to start with. If you're going to introduce the
10:51
Speaker 2: music of Stereo Lab, maybe start with that one.
10:54
Speaker 1: Well. Also, when I wrote that opening chapter, they're being
10:58
Speaker 1: reformed for about four years, but they hadn't been playing yet.
11:02
Speaker 1: And then, funnily enough, the tour they did last year
11:06
Speaker 1: and they're still on They're playing it every night, and
11:08
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know, I'm really glad they've they've
11:12
Speaker 1: brought it back. Yeah, it's definitely open with that song
11:15
Speaker 1: if you want to interrupt with the band's a great song,
11:18
Speaker 1: beautiful song.
11:19
Speaker 2: Let's go back to the beginning. The first song is
11:21
Speaker 2: ninety one super Electric and in this chapter we get
11:23
Speaker 2: into the origins of Stereo Lab. Tell us about the
11:26
Speaker 2: origins of the band. The two significant people here are
11:29
Speaker 2: Tim Lane and Leticia Sadier.
11:33
Speaker 1: Tim Gain, yeah, Letitia Sadie. Yeah. I mean, this is
11:36
Speaker 1: one thing I love about about the band because as
11:39
Speaker 1: as a child, you know, I grew up in the UK,
11:42
Speaker 1: and the UK and France have always had a slightly
11:45
Speaker 1: strange relationship, so the very very love hate I think,
11:49
Speaker 1: you know, neighbors, you know, And but I was always
11:53
Speaker 1: a real kind of Francophile as a child, Like I
11:55
Speaker 1: studied French for many years and I liked reading French
11:58
Speaker 1: books and those kind of things. And Letitia's from Paris
12:01
Speaker 1: and Tim is from Essex, and you know, they're the
12:05
Speaker 1: driving force behind the band. And you know, when I
12:08
Speaker 1: was growing up in the early nineties, British people were
12:10
Speaker 1: so snobby about French music, like appallingly snobby about it.
12:14
Speaker 1: You know, it's just like, well, it's all Johnny Halliday,
12:16
Speaker 1: isn't it.
12:17
Speaker 2: You know.
12:17
Speaker 1: This was like pre daft punk and everything. And I
12:22
Speaker 1: loved the fact there was an Anglo French band, you know,
12:25
Speaker 1: that they kind of came together. So he was in
12:27
Speaker 1: a bank called McCarthy, who were this like very politically
12:32
Speaker 1: charged indie band in the eighties, kind of quite see
12:34
Speaker 1: eighty six, And they played a gig in Paris and
12:37
Speaker 1: Letitia went there and they got together and romantically, and
12:42
Speaker 1: then she moved to London to be with him. Later
12:46
Speaker 1: that year. I think it was sang on the last
12:48
Speaker 1: McCarthy album. Then when McCarthy split up, they decided to
12:52
Speaker 1: start at the Stereo Lab. And I just loved the
12:57
Speaker 1: fact that, again one of the the things, one of
13:00
Speaker 1: the things I pick up about them, it's romance, because
13:04
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a typical thing much many people
13:06
Speaker 1: pick up with sterelup. But for me, you know, can
13:09
Speaker 1: you imagine you're in this new relationship, You're in the
13:12
Speaker 1: first flush of love. You know, You've moved to a
13:15
Speaker 1: different city to be with your partner and you're in
13:18
Speaker 1: love and you're in your twenties and it's great and
13:21
Speaker 1: you're in a band together, and I love that idea.
13:23
Speaker 1: You know that the kind of the music flows from
13:27
Speaker 1: that and from that love and kind of from that
13:30
Speaker 1: energy as well. So yeah, it's basically that, you know,
13:34
Speaker 1: they're the key couple, and they've been changing band members
13:37
Speaker 1: all around basically, but they're they're the key d own
13:40
Speaker 1: that are still in it today. Right.
13:42
Speaker 2: Quite a few band members have come in and out
13:45
Speaker 2: over the years.
13:46
Speaker 1: Well, somebody was saying to me, I've forgotten who's someone
13:48
Speaker 1: who I interviewed with, saying, look, if you look at
13:50
Speaker 1: the stereolab Wikipedia, it mentions I think twelve band members
13:55
Speaker 1: or something like that, but they actually had twelve within
13:58
Speaker 1: the first six months. Because it's just going to get
14:00
Speaker 1: gets on rotating and people come in for like one
14:02
Speaker 1: gig or two and there are you know, there are
14:06
Speaker 1: some very important people like drummer Andy Ramsey who's been
14:09
Speaker 1: there with for years, Mary Hanson who's there there for years,
14:12
Speaker 1: sadly passed away. But yeah, it's it's timidly titia the
14:18
Speaker 1: core and everyone you speak to us like it's it's
14:20
Speaker 1: their band. You know you accept that.
14:24
Speaker 2: You compare the song super Electric to a band pulling
14:27
Speaker 2: Excalibur from the stone where they discover their destiny. What
14:30
Speaker 2: core DNA of Stereo Lab does this song reveal that
14:33
Speaker 2: carries through the rest of their career.
14:35
Speaker 1: Well, super Electric is part of the chapter I called propulsion,
14:39
Speaker 1: and I think what it has is it has that
14:43
Speaker 1: one chord drive. It's not just one called but for
14:48
Speaker 1: a lot of it, it's one one kind of card
14:50
Speaker 1: that keeps on on on, chugging and and sort of
14:54
Speaker 1: really great pop vocal on top of that. And I think,
14:59
Speaker 1: if I'm right, I call it's something like what is
15:02
Speaker 1: it textural textural rush or something like that, that the
15:06
Speaker 1: excitement in the music comes not from changing the chord,
15:09
Speaker 1: but from what you can do with that one chord.
15:11
Speaker 1: You know, you kind of keep on going on that
15:13
Speaker 1: one chord, but you change the sound slightly, or you
15:17
Speaker 1: bring another layer on top, or something like that. And
15:22
Speaker 1: that is something they do fantastically, and that it's more
15:26
Speaker 1: typical of early Story Lab. But it's very very typical
15:29
Speaker 1: of those early years. That one chord you lock in
15:32
Speaker 1: and you're just kind of playing that one chord, but
15:34
Speaker 1: it sounds absolutely fascinating, kind of electrifying, a bit sort
15:39
Speaker 1: of Velvet Underground in a way.
15:41
Speaker 2: You're right, yeah, definitely hear the Velvet Underground.
15:44
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, and like Sister Ray, that kind of thing, right,
15:49
Speaker 1: And then when you change the chord, it's I can't
15:52
Speaker 1: believe you change, you know, it sounds like a whole
15:53
Speaker 1: rainbow of meaning coming in. You know.
15:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, the band was incredibly prolific in those early years.
16:00
Speaker 2: You refer to them as a relentlessly propulsive creative force.
16:05
Speaker 2: What was driving that pace? I mean, just the ideas
16:08
Speaker 2: just flowing out of the songwriting process, the two of
16:11
Speaker 2: them together.
16:12
Speaker 1: I like to think it was something to do with
16:17
Speaker 1: their sort of sentimental romantic relationship as well, you know,
16:21
Speaker 1: because it's, like I said before, that excitement of you know,
16:24
Speaker 1: being together and in a new place and you're sharing
16:28
Speaker 1: a house and this and this is your band, and
16:34
Speaker 1: just wanting to make music all the time. And I
16:39
Speaker 1: don't want to say it was easy for them, because
16:40
Speaker 1: that really sounds like I'm underplaying it, but it feels
16:42
Speaker 1: like it was very natural. You know, for the first
16:45
Speaker 1: few years of their life, music just kind of flowed
16:47
Speaker 1: out of them, and you'd have like another EP with
16:49
Speaker 1: four songs, another ap you know, a split single, We're
16:52
Speaker 1: going on tours, We're gonna do this, other split single,
16:54
Speaker 1: and just a vast amount of vast amount of music.
16:57
Speaker 2: Did they write the songs together? Did one of don't
17:00
Speaker 2: come to the table with an idea?
17:02
Speaker 1: Well, it's changed a bit of the years, Like basically
17:03
Speaker 1: Tim would come in with the music and Leticia would
17:07
Speaker 1: do the vocal melody and the words. And it was
17:12
Speaker 1: that way for years and years and years and years,
17:15
Speaker 1: and sort of towards the end, Leticia got a bit,
17:18
Speaker 1: I think, got a bit fed up with with that,
17:21
Speaker 1: and on their most recent album, which came out last year,
17:24
Speaker 1: apparently Letitia's had a lot more to do with the music.
17:29
Speaker 1: They split up as a couple in the early two thousands,
17:33
Speaker 1: but the band kept going for years, and that can't
17:37
Speaker 1: be easy for anyone. I mean, I think anyone in
17:42
Speaker 1: the world will find it difficult to be with your
17:44
Speaker 1: you know, your your former romantic partner in a band
17:47
Speaker 1: when you other people writing songs. So that's no you know,
17:51
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a criticism in any way. But
17:55
Speaker 1: Leticia towards the end, I think was talking a bit
17:58
Speaker 1: about you know, how she wanted more an input over
18:02
Speaker 1: the music rather than just being presented with you know,
18:05
Speaker 1: this is the music that you can do what you
18:08
Speaker 1: like the singing and the melody, but you know, this
18:11
Speaker 1: is how the music's going to be. And yeah, I
18:15
Speaker 1: mean it was almost quite unlikely that to come back
18:17
Speaker 1: with another album. I think I suspect that changing that
18:21
Speaker 1: is that way of working enabled them to make another album,
18:24
Speaker 1: you know, because it was like, Okay, you're kind of
18:27
Speaker 1: freer to do this. I mean. The funny thing is,
18:29
Speaker 1: if you listen to the music Tim made when Sterilaborn
18:34
Speaker 1: hiatus and actually continue to make to day with Kevin
18:36
Speaker 1: of Anti Matter, it sounds so much like Stereo Love
18:39
Speaker 1: without Letitia singing. It's unbelievable. It's really good. It's really good,
18:43
Speaker 1: but it's like, Wow, if Leticia could just sing over this.
18:47
Speaker 1: I feel bad saying it, but it's kind of true.
18:50
Speaker 2: Aside from Tim Gaines writer's block in ninety five, the
18:54
Speaker 2: band did remain consistent throughout the nineties, but difficulties came
18:57
Speaker 2: in the two thousands. As you mentioned, you're writing the
19:00
Speaker 2: book well. Following the death of Stereo Lab vocalist Mary
19:03
Speaker 2: Hanson in two thousand and two and the dissolution of
19:06
Speaker 2: the Gain Sada Romance. It appeared inevitable that Sterio Lab
19:11
Speaker 2: would split the band's creative impulse, floundering on the rocks
19:15
Speaker 2: of personal difficulty, and yet they held on until two
19:18
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, which you mentioned when manager Martin Pike
19:21
Speaker 2: announced the group's indefinite hiatus. In retrospect, was the pause
19:25
Speaker 2: necessary for the band's survival.
19:27
Speaker 1: I just think they couldn't They couldn't go on much longer.
19:30
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a sort of theory. I think
19:34
Speaker 1: it's really unfortunate, but I think we often don't appreciate
19:37
Speaker 1: bands who are in who operate for a long time.
19:42
Speaker 1: And I think towards the end, people were like, oh,
19:45
Speaker 1: it's another story Lab record. Oh you know, well I
19:48
Speaker 1: don't like it as much as Dots and Loops or whatever,
19:50
Speaker 1: but you know they're around, they'll make another record. And
19:56
Speaker 1: I think splitting up what going on hiatus have one
19:59
Speaker 1: you however you want to see it really helped to
20:03
Speaker 1: make people realize what they were missing. You know, it's like, oh, wow, no,
20:06
Speaker 1: this band was really really good, because it was like
20:08
Speaker 1: now you can sort of look back at everything they've
20:10
Speaker 1: done and like, okay, they have made some incredible music
20:16
Speaker 1: and this album that I kind of dismissed because it
20:18
Speaker 1: was their tenth album, is actually really good. And I
20:20
Speaker 1: guess on a personal level they needed it as well,
20:23
Speaker 1: you know, to get out of each other's way for
20:25
Speaker 1: a while. And you know, when you hear them talk
20:28
Speaker 1: about the last few years of the band, they sound
20:29
Speaker 1: a bit miserable frankly, you know, for kind of pretty
20:34
Speaker 1: understandable reasons.
20:36
Speaker 2: One of the songs on the list is also the
20:37
Speaker 2: title of the book Space Age Bachelor Pad Music from
20:41
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three. So what was behind that title and
20:44
Speaker 2: why do you feel it's perhaps stuck with the band
20:47
Speaker 2: more than any other title?
20:49
Speaker 1: It combines there, it's got, you know, the idea of
20:54
Speaker 1: different combining ideas, the idea of collars that I mentioned before.
20:58
Speaker 1: You know, the kind of space a kind of speaks
21:00
Speaker 1: to the future, whereas bachelor Pad is very I guess
21:03
Speaker 1: it makes you think of like fifties or sixties or
21:05
Speaker 1: something like that. And not only did they come up
21:11
Speaker 1: with this brilliant title, they also managed to do it
21:12
Speaker 1: like that record and before it actually like Space Age
21:16
Speaker 1: Bachelor Pad Music, it was the first record on which
21:18
Speaker 1: they kind of introduced these easy listening elements that would
21:25
Speaker 1: go on to be pretty important later on. And yeah,
21:31
Speaker 1: I think that was. That was probably I'm trying to
21:36
Speaker 1: think I did think of another alternative title. I'm sort
21:38
Speaker 1: of blanking on it right now for the book. Yeah,
21:44
Speaker 1: there's another album title that I was thinking of, but
21:48
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it was. Now.
21:49
Speaker 2: In parentheses, you do put retro futurism.
21:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, they they. I mean that's something they that was
21:58
Speaker 1: really important to them, that the idea of Nike. It
22:02
Speaker 1: was futuristic, but it was like kind of that future
22:04
Speaker 1: as seen from the past. If you see what it means,
22:07
Speaker 1: it's like, well, this is what you know the past
22:09
Speaker 1: was going to look like in nineteen in the nineteen fifties.
22:12
Speaker 1: I've remembered the other title I think of, Serene Velocity.
22:16
Speaker 2: Serene Velocity.
22:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great name, which they used for a
22:22
Speaker 1: sort of best of album in two thousand and six.
22:24
Speaker 1: I think it was I really liked that one as well,
22:26
Speaker 1: but no, especially as bachelor Pad Music, it was in
22:29
Speaker 1: the end.
22:29
Speaker 2: Ben Cardo is the author of Space Age, Bachelor Pad Music,
22:32
Speaker 2: The Story of Stereo lab in twenty Songs The title
22:36
Speaker 2: track to nineteen ninety four is Ping Pong. This is
22:38
Speaker 2: used for chapter seven, which gets into the year nineteen
22:41
Speaker 2: ninety four, big year for indie music in the UK.
22:43
Speaker 2: Oasis released their debut album Definitely Maybe, and Blurham unleased
22:48
Speaker 2: their defining statement Park Life, the two albums sitting at
22:51
Speaker 2: number one and number two on the Enemies Albums of
22:54
Speaker 2: the Year list that December. And you're right that you're
22:57
Speaker 2: not sure whether Stereo Lab benefited from or were harmed
23:01
Speaker 2: by the rise of britpop. Was that moment in nineteen
23:03
Speaker 2: eighty four a commercial opportunity for them, or did the
23:06
Speaker 2: britpop wave actually pushed their art and politics sensibility to
23:11
Speaker 2: the margins more Well.
23:13
Speaker 1: This is the fact that the fascinating question for me,
23:16
Speaker 1: because I always thought the britpop was bad for Sterio Lab,
23:20
Speaker 1: you know, because they're with this very hearty band and
23:22
Speaker 1: a lot of the things they stood for, you know,
23:24
Speaker 1: that kind of very international sound, and m just I
23:29
Speaker 1: like Blowing Oasis, you know, it was very very kind
23:31
Speaker 1: of different, very different thing, and Oasis of kind of
23:38
Speaker 1: the anti Sterio Lab in many ways. And I like Oasis,
23:41
Speaker 1: but like you know, Oasis are kind of I said,
23:43
Speaker 1: it's hard to say what most bands are, but Oasis
23:45
Speaker 1: is pretty simple. It's like you know, beatlesy melodies and
23:49
Speaker 1: hard and distorted guitars. You know, beatles meet to sex pistols.
23:55
Speaker 1: And so I initially thought, well, yeah, Sterio Lab must
23:58
Speaker 1: have you know, being hard done by bird britpop. But
24:01
Speaker 1: then actually you look at it, and they had their
24:05
Speaker 1: biggest hits in nineteen ninety four. I mean it's relative,
24:09
Speaker 1: you know, but like Ping Pong was kind of got
24:12
Speaker 1: the edges of the Top forty and the album Males
24:14
Speaker 1: Old yet Quintet I think went Top twenty in the UK.
24:17
Speaker 1: So I actually they did benefit. And I remember because
24:20
Speaker 1: I was, you know, seventeen at the time. I remember
24:22
Speaker 1: at the time like a lot of indie music did
24:27
Speaker 1: become bigger, even if it wasn't britpop. And then again,
24:30
Speaker 1: if you if you kind of think of like the
24:32
Speaker 1: wider definition of britpop, it's like Australia Lab were kind
24:36
Speaker 1: of British, I mean the Anglo French, but you know,
24:38
Speaker 1: kind of British, and they were in London and they
24:41
Speaker 1: didn't make pop music, so it's like, well, they're not britpop,
24:46
Speaker 1: but they're sort of not not brittle pop, if that
24:48
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, particularly at that time.
24:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're more experimental. Yeah, well, Avan Guard.
24:55
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a I don't know if you know
24:57
Speaker 1: the book Miranda Sayer has recently written a book about
25:02
Speaker 1: britpop and the name exactly, and you know, there are
25:08
Speaker 1: chapters about Oasis and Blur and Pulp and you know,
25:11
Speaker 1: the usual people you might expect, but there's also a
25:13
Speaker 1: chapter on Sria lab and she makes the same kind
25:16
Speaker 1: of point. She says, like, basically, they weren't quite britpop,
25:20
Speaker 1: but they weren't totally removed from it either, which I
25:24
Speaker 1: thought I thought was fast and I was glad to
25:25
Speaker 1: see someone sort of agreed with what I was saying.
25:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, the song spark Plug from ninety six. This is
25:30
Speaker 2: the focal point of the chapter on autonomy. Early on
25:33
Speaker 2: they created their own label. Later they signed to Elektra.
25:37
Speaker 2: How did the band view corporate labels. Did labels adapt
25:40
Speaker 2: to their creative vision or did they try to strip
25:44
Speaker 2: that autonomy?
25:45
Speaker 1: Well, apparently, according to according to them, they had one
25:49
Speaker 1: of the most lenient major label album contracts. You can
25:54
Speaker 1: you can imagine it was, you know, it was like
25:57
Speaker 1: post Nirvana time, and everyone was trying to sign indie
26:00
Speaker 1: bands and giving them really kind of good contracts and
26:03
Speaker 1: allowing them to make you know, like Weezer had a
26:07
Speaker 1: major label contract and well you know we so no,
26:10
Speaker 1: I don't mean Ween, excuse me, you know, I mean
26:15
Speaker 1: we did as well, but we you can kind of understand.
26:17
Speaker 1: But like you know, Ween did, and Royal Trucks did,
26:20
Speaker 1: and all these kind of bands and apparently story labbed
26:24
Speaker 1: contracts like do what you like and you record what
26:28
Speaker 1: you like. If we don't put it out in four months,
26:32
Speaker 1: you get the rights back to it. Oh and by
26:35
Speaker 1: the way, if you want to go and record other
26:37
Speaker 1: singles for your own label, you can do that, which
26:41
Speaker 1: is incredibly.
26:42
Speaker 2: It's a great deal.
26:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had this an ar man called Terry Tolkien
26:47
Speaker 1: I think it was, and he wrote he's also passed
26:50
Speaker 1: away Sandy, but there's a really incredible post he's written
26:52
Speaker 1: on LinkedIn about his experience of signing the band, and
26:56
Speaker 1: basically what would happen was he had advised the band.
26:59
Speaker 1: He'd been like, Okay, in your contract, ask for this,
27:02
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, we can't get away with that.
27:03
Speaker 1: You're like, now, just ask that in the contract. So
27:06
Speaker 1: like then the band would bring up the label, and
27:08
Speaker 1: the label would ask him, look, Terry, they're asking for
27:11
Speaker 1: this in a contract, and they'd be like, yes, give
27:12
Speaker 1: it to them, you know. So just they got pretty
27:14
Speaker 1: much what is yeah, Yeah, I mean such a such
27:18
Speaker 1: a nineties thing.
27:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, very anti corporate.
27:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the money apparently helped them to
27:26
Speaker 1: tour more to make the records they wanted to live,
27:30
Speaker 1: you know, So for me it's why not, you know,
27:35
Speaker 1: and the lecturer's got great history as well, you know,
27:38
Speaker 1: see five and the Doors and the Stooges. Yeah, what
27:42
Speaker 1: so it's like, although you know, I mean obviously i'd
27:46
Speaker 1: go into that, they still seem pretty autonomous to me,
27:50
Speaker 1: even even with this, you know, recording six albums or
27:53
Speaker 1: something for a major label.
27:55
Speaker 2: The nineteen ninety nine song people do it all the time.
27:58
Speaker 2: Part of chapter twelve where we get into the creative
28:00
Speaker 2: force that was Stereo Lab. In their first nineteen years
28:04
Speaker 2: until their initial split in two thousand and nine, they
28:06
Speaker 2: produced ten studio albums, three mini albums, and around thirty
28:10
Speaker 2: singles and EPs, the non album work being enough to
28:14
Speaker 2: fill five switched on compilations. How central was creativity itself
28:19
Speaker 2: almost as a philosophy to stereo labs identity.
28:24
Speaker 1: Well, for me, they were always making things, you know,
28:28
Speaker 1: be it music or be album sleeves or you know,
28:32
Speaker 1: collaborating with other people or remixes or doing their label
28:37
Speaker 1: or videos or whatever. And in that particular chapter, I
28:46
Speaker 1: talk actually about Leticia and Tim having a child, Alex,
28:51
Speaker 1: which they did round about then, and I sort of
28:55
Speaker 1: put that as another example in a way of their
28:59
Speaker 1: great creative work. And obviously a child is a very
29:04
Speaker 1: different way to putting an album, but I kind of
29:06
Speaker 1: like seeing it in that in that lineage. You know,
29:09
Speaker 1: it's like we don't created all this stuff, and now
29:11
Speaker 1: we're gonna do the ultimate creation. You know, we're going
29:13
Speaker 1: to create a human human being, which I know is
29:15
Speaker 1: a stupid way to see it, but I quite like
29:17
Speaker 1: to sort of tie in that way, and people do
29:24
Speaker 1: it all the time. Is I believe a song about
29:26
Speaker 1: you know, having children, or of them having a child,
29:31
Speaker 1: And I really like the title because it's like it's
29:35
Speaker 1: kind of very downplaying it because you know, I don't
29:37
Speaker 1: know if you have children, but like it. You know,
29:39
Speaker 1: it's a fantastic thing.
29:41
Speaker 2: I don't, but I could certainly understand it changes your life.
29:46
Speaker 1: It does. And at the same time, people do it
29:49
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, there's millions of children being
29:53
Speaker 1: born all the time, and that doesn't make any any
29:56
Speaker 1: individual birth any less worthwhile. But I think you just
29:59
Speaker 1: have to see is it's part of this wonderful thing.
30:03
Speaker 1: And that's one of the reasons I really really love
30:06
Speaker 1: I really love that song.
30:07
Speaker 2: And now that child is what twenty five twenty about
30:11
Speaker 2: twenty five twenty six years old?
30:13
Speaker 1: Is university? Yeah, ponkst university now.
30:19
Speaker 2: The book Down Rock podcast is part of the Boneless
30:21
Speaker 2: Podcasting Network. If you're a fan of classic rock and
30:24
Speaker 2: classic film like I am, go to Boneless dot lovable
30:27
Speaker 2: dot app to find over twenty great shows there that's
30:31
Speaker 2: boneless dot lovable dot app, or just go to book
30:34
Speaker 2: down Rock dot com the Boneless podcasting network. It is
30:37
Speaker 2: what you want to be Listen with confidence. Chapter fourteen
30:43
Speaker 2: features the two thousand and one song nothing to Do
30:46
Speaker 2: with Me You write quote if you take a step back.
30:49
Speaker 2: Many of their song titles are laugh out loud funny.
30:52
Speaker 2: We've already talked about how much we love these titles.
30:54
Speaker 2: Moogie Wonderland. Anyone how to play your internal organs Overnight,
31:00
Speaker 2: always of carpet, Italian shoes, Continuum, Daisy, click clack. You
31:05
Speaker 2: also say the record sleeves and outrageous musical fusions are
31:08
Speaker 2: frankly absurd, and this perhaps can be traced back to
31:11
Speaker 2: their love of data is the use of humor and
31:14
Speaker 2: irony to expose the absurdity of the modern world juxtaposition.
31:19
Speaker 2: You use that word before as a creative method. Was
31:22
Speaker 2: this approach philosophical as much as musical for stereo ab.
31:28
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean, they're one of those bands
31:30
Speaker 1: that there's obviously a lot of thought behind what they do.
31:36
Speaker 1: You know, they talk a lot about Dadaism, they talk
31:38
Speaker 1: about the situationists, and they talk about lots of political
31:43
Speaker 1: political thinkers, and a lot of their songs are rooted
31:48
Speaker 1: in other writers and that kind of thing. But what
31:56
Speaker 1: I learn, another thing I love about them is you
31:58
Speaker 1: don't need you don't need to understand any of that
32:00
Speaker 1: can literally just enjoy on a very very visceral level,
32:05
Speaker 1: or you can go back into it, you know and
32:08
Speaker 1: pick out all the references. And in fact, when I
32:11
Speaker 1: when I was, you know, first getting into them, it
32:13
Speaker 1: was pre internet era, and so a lot of this
32:16
Speaker 1: was very mysterious. It was like, oh, what's this reference to,
32:20
Speaker 1: you know, and like maybe i'd see a book one day. Oh,
32:23
Speaker 1: it's a reference to that, you know. And I really
32:25
Speaker 1: enjoyed that sort of unfurling unfurling mystery. And yeah, data
32:34
Speaker 1: they've they've talked about quite a lot, you know, the
32:36
Speaker 1: idea of like basically when faced, you know, a group
32:40
Speaker 1: for artists, when faced with the horrors of the First
32:43
Speaker 1: World War, their response is just to make something that's
32:47
Speaker 1: sort of ridiculous in many ways, you know, just to
32:52
Speaker 1: sort of talk about the sheer horrendousness of the situation,
32:57
Speaker 1: that this is almost the only way to respond to it,
33:02
Speaker 1: and that that particular song is based on lyrics from
33:07
Speaker 1: a TV series called Blue Jam, which by some comedian
33:13
Speaker 1: called Chris Morris. And it's a really really, really weird series.
33:17
Speaker 1: It's like there's it's pretty dark. It's but like there's
33:24
Speaker 1: like a sketch which is referenced in the song where
33:28
Speaker 1: someone calls up someone to repair their TV because there's
33:30
Speaker 1: lizards coming out of it. And uh, there's a doctor
33:36
Speaker 1: that just prescribes heroin for everything. It's quite dark. I mean, yeah, yeah,
33:42
Speaker 1: A man called Chris Morris, I think, well, Chrismas, do
33:49
Speaker 1: you know our mandoy Ucci who later worked on Veep
33:53
Speaker 1: and things like that, He was evolved, maybe not on
33:59
Speaker 1: Blue Jam, but with some of Chris Morris's okaying and
34:05
Speaker 1: but Chris Morris was very, very, very extreme and quite dartist,
34:12
Speaker 1: I think in a way, not that I don't think
34:13
Speaker 1: he actually made the reference himself, but like you know, again,
34:15
Speaker 1: it was that kind of absurdity in the face of
34:19
Speaker 1: very serious issues.
34:20
Speaker 2: In two thousand and two, Gain and Sadier's romantic relationship ended.
34:24
Speaker 2: That same year the band, their guitarist and singer, Mary Hanson,
34:27
Speaker 2: died unexpectedly. You mentioned that the song Neon Beanbag from
34:31
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. You write, quote Neon Beanbag doesn't
34:35
Speaker 2: feel like a particularly deep song, with its cheerful rhythm
34:40
Speaker 2: and jaunty brass rifts, but there is a melancholy undertow
34:43
Speaker 2: to its harpsichord trills, a kind of yearning inner voyage
34:48
Speaker 2: through the emotions, which makes sense when you consider that
34:51
Speaker 2: the song has its roots in a dream where Mary
34:54
Speaker 2: Hansen visited Sagier. So a year after this song came
35:00
Speaker 2: out is when the hiatus began too do you think
35:03
Speaker 2: Mary's death in the end of Gain in Sad Year's
35:06
Speaker 2: relationship played a major role in the ultimate end of
35:10
Speaker 2: that era of the band.
35:11
Speaker 1: Well, a lot, I mean people in the band that
35:13
Speaker 1: I've spoken to assumed that when when Mary died would
35:18
Speaker 1: be it. You know, they couldn't continue as a band anymore,
35:23
Speaker 1: you know, because she was absolutely fundamental to it. She
35:27
Speaker 1: was the co singer and one of the most important
35:32
Speaker 1: things about the band was the way in which her
35:34
Speaker 1: vocals interacted with Latitios. It was like a definitely kind
35:37
Speaker 1: of key sure aspect of that.
35:41
Speaker 2: It was it was very unexpected.
35:43
Speaker 1: She was on a bicycle, Yeah, in traffic in London. Yeah,
35:49
Speaker 1: I mean someone who used to go on bike in London.
35:54
Speaker 1: You know. A lot that you know kind of made
35:58
Speaker 1: me think about it. But yeah, and you know, she
36:05
Speaker 1: you can kind of see it would be it's almost
36:09
Speaker 1: logical to break up then. But instead, they apparently weren't
36:15
Speaker 1: very good at talking about their emotions, you know, and
36:20
Speaker 1: they didn't really sit down as a band to discuss
36:22
Speaker 1: it and be like, well, you know, how do we
36:24
Speaker 1: feel about this in a way that would probably been healthy.
36:27
Speaker 1: But like, for example, some you know a lot of
36:31
Speaker 1: the album Modorine Eclipse is apparently about about Mary Hanson
36:36
Speaker 1: and Neon Beanbag for example, as a song that, like
36:41
Speaker 1: I said about Letty should be visited by her in
36:43
Speaker 1: a dream. And actually, what's really interesting about Neon being
36:46
Speaker 1: back for me is I it wasn't a song I
36:49
Speaker 1: particularly liked until I found until I read about this meaning.
36:56
Speaker 1: And you know, I said earlier, generally they're not a
36:58
Speaker 1: band you have to understand you can just sort of
37:00
Speaker 1: go with it. But in this particular instant, knowing what
37:03
Speaker 1: that song was about made like really made it for me.
37:07
Speaker 1: It's kind of one of my favorite of their songs now,
37:10
Speaker 1: just because you can't feel the emotional push and you know,
37:13
Speaker 1: the idea of like, you know, going back to that
37:17
Speaker 1: time of the band and like, you know, the tragedy
37:19
Speaker 1: about it. But she visits in the dream and tells
37:22
Speaker 1: her not to be unhappy, you know, because it's going
37:24
Speaker 1: to be It's going to be okay. And it's kind
37:27
Speaker 1: of I think most people can you know, relate on
37:31
Speaker 1: some level as well.
37:32
Speaker 2: And the final song, I Feel the Air of Another Planet,
37:36
Speaker 2: which was first recorded in nineteen ninety seven released in
37:39
Speaker 2: two thousand. Yet it's your choice to represent the revival
37:42
Speaker 2: of Stereo Lab, who returned in twenty nineteen. This is
37:45
Speaker 2: one of the songs the band played live. And you
37:48
Speaker 2: say this particular song really penetrated your skull. Is how
37:52
Speaker 2: you write well makes the song feel like renewal rather
37:56
Speaker 2: than nostalgia because it was a song that was recorded
37:59
Speaker 2: a while.
38:01
Speaker 1: I think it was basically when I first saw them,
38:03
Speaker 1: when they first reformed, the set they were playing was
38:08
Speaker 1: quite greatest hits, not they had big hits, but you know,
38:10
Speaker 1: it was sort of what you might expect them to
38:12
Speaker 1: be playing, and I really enjoyed that. But then I
38:16
Speaker 1: saw them. The next two times I saw them, they
38:18
Speaker 1: played very unexpected things, like very kind of different songs,
38:23
Speaker 1: including I Feel the Air of Another Planet, and I
38:29
Speaker 1: far preferred it because it was like a lot weirder,
38:32
Speaker 1: and it was it wasn't like, Okay, we have to
38:34
Speaker 1: play the same fifteen songs or whatever. Let's go back
38:39
Speaker 1: into this this catele we have, and let's play this
38:41
Speaker 1: song that you know, we didn't even release when we
38:45
Speaker 1: first recorded, you know, it sat in the vault for
38:47
Speaker 1: a few years, and let's make it as good as
38:51
Speaker 1: the other songs. Let's play it in a way that
38:53
Speaker 1: makes it as important and that's why it kind of
38:58
Speaker 1: represented renewal for me. And also because I like the
39:02
Speaker 1: title as well. You know, simply, you know, another planet.
39:05
Speaker 1: That's almost what like listening to sterid ab is. You know,
39:08
Speaker 1: it's almost like his air from another planet. You know,
39:11
Speaker 1: like this is not earth atmosphere. You know, this is
39:16
Speaker 1: not your usual kind of thing or earth bound music.
39:19
Speaker 1: This is like something different. This is going off into
39:21
Speaker 1: another planet and kind of hearing music there. And I
39:25
Speaker 1: think all of that kind of made me want to, Yeah,
39:29
Speaker 1: maybe we want to sort of use that song to
39:31
Speaker 1: stand for revival and how the reunion worked well.
39:35
Speaker 2: For somebody who's never heard Stereo Lab and they've just
39:38
Speaker 2: listened to this interview and now they want to check
39:41
Speaker 2: the band out. What is the first song you would recommend?
39:46
Speaker 1: In a way, It's so difficult because there's so many
39:49
Speaker 1: different things. In a way, I'm just going to say
39:51
Speaker 1: French Disco, which is probably probably their best known song.
39:57
Speaker 1: I think in the UK it's their best known song.
40:00
Speaker 1: It's it was maybe it's not now the most popular
40:06
Speaker 1: song on Spotify.
40:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, Spotify, it's actually number there's a two or three
40:11
Speaker 2: let's see. No, it's two. It's two behind the flower
40:16
Speaker 2: called Nowhere. Interestingly enough, well that.
40:20
Speaker 1: It was number one while I was writing, and I
40:22
Speaker 1: think in the book.
40:23
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's interesting. Yeah, they have it. They
40:26
Speaker 2: have it as a second on a list of popular songs.
40:28
Speaker 2: But looking at the numbers, it's got the most streams.
40:32
Speaker 2: I think that's what you were saying. I don't know
40:34
Speaker 2: why they would do that, but so yeah, and the
40:38
Speaker 2: technicality we're going to say, yes, French disco is actually
40:41
Speaker 2: it's the most streamed song on here.
40:42
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of what makes her Labs so great.
40:45
Speaker 1: It's got this driving guitars, it's got songs about resistance,
40:49
Speaker 1: it's got a bit of French. It makes for me.
40:52
Speaker 1: It just makes me feel great. Listen to that song,
40:55
Speaker 1: it really does. It's kind of one thing I love
40:57
Speaker 1: about story lab Is is that they are all about
41:05
Speaker 1: not just accepting things. You know, things might be bad,
41:09
Speaker 1: but you don't just have to accept that. You know,
41:11
Speaker 1: you can, you can work, you can do your own thing.
41:13
Speaker 1: You've got power, and that's something that French disco does.
41:17
Speaker 1: You know. The chorus literally goes lazy stamps, you know,
41:20
Speaker 1: and it's like saying you can do something you know,
41:23
Speaker 1: you don't just have to sort of take it, and
41:26
Speaker 1: it sounds and it sounds like that that's a none
41:30
Speaker 1: of the guitars rushing and the energy. It's like, yeah,
41:32
Speaker 1: you can do something, yes, And I don't know. I
41:35
Speaker 1: find that very very inspiring. And I think if you
41:39
Speaker 1: if you listen to that and a Flower Call Nowhere,
41:43
Speaker 1: very different songs but have still something something kind of
41:48
Speaker 1: similar in them, I reckon that's a pretty good introduction.
41:53
Speaker 1: And I mean honestly, if you listen to those two
41:55
Speaker 1: songs and don't like them, then you don't know Stereolab
41:58
Speaker 1: And that's.
41:59
Speaker 2: All right, yes, yeah, Well, last question, what do you
42:03
Speaker 2: hope readers understand about stereo Lab after finishing the book
42:07
Speaker 2: that maybe they didn't before.
42:10
Speaker 1: I would like them, I think to understand what a
42:14
Speaker 1: special band they were, how unusual they were, how there's
42:19
Speaker 1: really no one like them, how important creativity is for
42:27
Speaker 1: them and for us, and to understand there's so much
42:31
Speaker 1: you can go into and there's I mean, I honestly
42:36
Speaker 1: put them right at the top level of bands. I
42:39
Speaker 1: put them up there with like you know, Beatles, Stones, whatever,
42:43
Speaker 1: you I really do put them at that I praise, yeah,
42:48
Speaker 1: but because they're just so creative, like so endlessly endlessly creative.
42:53
Speaker 1: And I guess I'm like people to understand that a
42:56
Speaker 1: band can be weird and have a thousand and one
42:59
Speaker 1: different idea and not have one's sound and yet be
43:08
Speaker 1: sort of perfect, you know, in a way be an
43:13
Speaker 1: incredible band, And I guess it should be an inspiration
43:18
Speaker 1: for us. All. You know, if Sterio Lab can make
43:20
Speaker 1: four hundred brilliant songs and keep making brilliant music, you know,
43:26
Speaker 1: thirty plus years after they've formed, then why can't we
43:30
Speaker 1: Why can't we do stuff? Why can't we be creative?
43:32
Speaker 1: You know?
43:35
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for checking out the Book Down Rock podcast.
43:38
Speaker 2: If you've just found the podcast, welcome. If you've been listening,
43:42
Speaker 2: thank you so much for your support, and make sure
43:44
Speaker 2: you tell a friend, a family member, share on social
43:46
Speaker 2: media and let people know about Booked on Rock. And
43:50
Speaker 2: if you do like the podcast, make sure you subscribe
43:53
Speaker 2: give a five star review. Wherever you listen to the
43:55
Speaker 2: book Do on Rock podcast, Run Amazon, Apple, Iheartspotify, Spreak,
44:00
Speaker 2: tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
44:03
Speaker 2: the full episodes on video. Along with video highlights from
44:05
Speaker 2: episodes on the bookdown Rock YouTube channel. Find it at
44:09
Speaker 2: booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back to
44:12
Speaker 2: the show. So let's talk about the release date of
44:15
Speaker 2: the book, Space Age, Bachelor Pad Music, The Story of
44:18
Speaker 2: stereo Lab in twenty Songs. Tell me if I got
44:21
Speaker 2: to say March twenty in the UK, April twenty one
44:23
Speaker 2: in the US, that's all.
44:25
Speaker 1: Right, I know much twenty in the UK April, Yeah,
44:28
Speaker 1: that sounds sounds great for the US, yes.
44:30
Speaker 2: And people can pre order now if they like, and
44:32
Speaker 2: find it on Amazon all the usual places, right.
44:35
Speaker 1: And people have been have been getting them. I mean,
44:37
Speaker 1: I think although March the twentieth is, you know, said
44:42
Speaker 1: to be the day, I've had people get in contact
44:44
Speaker 1: saying they've got the book. And there's been a few
44:47
Speaker 1: bookshops saying you know that they have one on on
44:52
Speaker 1: the shelves. So yeah, I think you might. You might
44:58
Speaker 1: get it early if you can. And also what I'd
45:01
Speaker 1: like to say is if anyone does read it, I'd
45:03
Speaker 1: absolutely love to know what they think about Stereolab. I'd
45:05
Speaker 1: love to get their feedback.
45:08
Speaker 2: Where can people go to find you to let you know.
45:10
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram? Blue Sky. I've got a sub stack.
45:17
Speaker 1: The lucky thing is because I have quite an unusual surname,
45:22
Speaker 1: it's quite easy to find me. Like if you find
45:24
Speaker 1: Ben card you, it is almost certainly me. I mean,
45:27
Speaker 1: there is another Ben card you. But if you've got
45:30
Speaker 1: Ben Cardi Steridab, that's me and you can find me,
45:32
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm generally I'd loved I'd love to
45:37
Speaker 1: know what people think. I'd love I'd love it if
45:39
Speaker 1: people were like, Wow, you know, what about this song?
45:43
Speaker 1: What about this song? You know, in a polite manner,
45:46
Speaker 1: of course, but I love talking about Stereodap. I love
45:50
Speaker 1: one of my favorite bands. I love knowing what people
45:53
Speaker 1: think about them. I love sharing thoughts about them, and
45:55
Speaker 1: I would generally love to know what people you know,
45:58
Speaker 1: what people think, not necessarily the book, just what I
46:00
Speaker 1: think of what they think of the band.
46:02
Speaker 2: You know, I think that's fantastic. I love people with
46:05
Speaker 2: an absolute, diehard passion for particular artists. I just love it.
46:09
Speaker 2: And we all have that one band that we just
46:11
Speaker 2: we just connect with in a way that's just it's
46:15
Speaker 2: on a level that's above any other. And I love that,
46:17
Speaker 2: and I'll make it easier for those listening. I will
46:20
Speaker 2: put the links to all of those social media sites
46:24
Speaker 2: that you know. They just click on it and they'll
46:26
Speaker 2: find you there. I'll track you down, Ben Cardu, Stereo Lab,
46:30
Speaker 2: I'll find you. So yeah, Ben, thank you so much.
46:33
Speaker 2: This was great.
46:33
Speaker 1: Thank you.
46:34
Speaker 2: Thank you for writing a fantastic book and for turning
46:37
Speaker 2: me onto the music of Stereo Lab. You have just
46:40
Speaker 2: you have just converted this music band and I am
46:43
Speaker 2: now a Stereo Lab band.
46:44
Speaker 1: Oh do you know what that makes my day? Because
46:47
Speaker 1: being able to introduce one person to a band I
46:49
Speaker 1: think is absolutely fantastic makes me very happy.
46:52
Speaker 2: Thanks Ben, thank you.
47:00
Speaker 1: That's it.
47:02
Speaker 2: It's in the books.