Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, today we're taking a step back from
Speaker 1: our usual broken record content to take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into the making of the music rich score of another
Speaker 1: show up Pushkin, Bad Women. The first season of Bad
Speaker 1: Women focused on reconstructing the lives of the five women
Speaker 1: killed by Jack the Ripper. Now the second season is
Speaker 1: out and the centers around a murderer every bit as
Speaker 1: terrible as Jack the Ripper, the so called Blackout Ripper.
Speaker 1: I speak with sound designer Pascal Weiss and jazz guitarist
Speaker 1: Ed Gackin about how they evoked to the atmosphere of
Speaker 1: the time nightclubs and jazz bars and wartime London nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two. We listen to the songs Pascal and Ed
Speaker 1: recorded for the new soundtrack and talk about their process
Speaker 1: for creating them, and at the end they treated us
Speaker 1: to nice performance. Here's my conversation with Pascal and Ed
Speaker 1: and check out Bad Women season two. Hello, Hello, Justin
Speaker 1: Pascal here, who's the composer, sound designer? And I made
Speaker 1: so I kind of got the band together for the
Speaker 1: Bad Women's session. Pascal was playing trombone, It's playing guitar.
Speaker 1: I'm now talking about myself in the third person like
Speaker 1: James Brown. Thanks so much for doing this. Guys, appreciate
Speaker 1: it not at all. Pascal. Maybe you want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about Bad Women for sure. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: Bad Women is the second season of a podcast which
Speaker 1: began explaining and understanding the lives of Jack the Rippers victims.
Speaker 1: And it was very much a refocusing of that story.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a story that's now what over a
Speaker 1: century old, but even in my youth terrified me and
Speaker 1: I was a continent away and you know whatever, eighty
Speaker 1: two hundred years removed at that point, but infamous serial killer, yeah,
Speaker 1: who starked London streets and took women of the night
Speaker 1: as victims. Right, Well, that original series was really alongside
Speaker 1: an incredible book called The Five written by the presenter
Speaker 1: of the show Bad Women, Halle Ribinhold, And this book
Speaker 1: completely refocuses this story of Jack the Ripper. It rests
Speaker 1: that obsessive attention on the killer himself, which of course
Speaker 1: has created this this incredible how kind of put it,
Speaker 1: Here's a boogey man story that people endlessly pick over
Speaker 1: and get very obsessed with the idea of who he
Speaker 1: might have been and all the rest of it, and
Speaker 1: what happens is that the victims who had interesting lives
Speaker 1: are just completely overlooked, and it's become a sort of
Speaker 1: comfortable way to kind of write off some of the
Speaker 1: victims of saying, you know, well, you know they were
Speaker 1: sex workers, and there's almost a hidden kind of wink
Speaker 1: they're saying, you know, there there were somehow morally, you know,
Speaker 1: we could abandon them, but actually they had really interesting lives.
Speaker 1: And what Halle really wanted to do with the book
Speaker 1: and then with the podcast that came after it is
Speaker 1: just rebalance that whole tale. Let's look at the women,
Speaker 1: Let's look at the amazing and interesting lives, what they
Speaker 1: had to deal with, and let's stop obsessing with the
Speaker 1: idea of, you know, Jack the Ripper and who he
Speaker 1: may or may not have been. And of course, one
Speaker 1: of the most in some ways shocking revelations you get
Speaker 1: when you dig into the story in those terms, it
Speaker 1: is that central piece of information that almost everyone carries
Speaker 1: around about Jack the Ripper, I that his victims of
Speaker 1: prostitutes turns out to be completely untrue. They weren't. That's
Speaker 1: the sort of set up in Bad Women season one,
Speaker 1: and in season two there's some DNA. From that that
Speaker 1: gets carried forward. We are talking about a killer, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about a killer of women, but we moved
Speaker 1: now to blitz era London and the killer is an
Speaker 1: RAF officer, and again the focus is very firmly on
Speaker 1: who were the women, what were their lives like, and
Speaker 1: what was it like, you know, existing as a woman
Speaker 1: in those times. You know, you're helping with the war
Speaker 1: effort and you know, very difficult for people to imagine
Speaker 1: or conceive of our heroes, you know, doing anything so grotesque.
Speaker 1: So again we've ported from Victorian London through to blitzerer
Speaker 1: London and we're dodging in and out of clubs in
Speaker 1: soho and hence the more jazz themes that come up
Speaker 1: in the show. Right, So season two were in World
Speaker 1: War two era London and a Royal Air Force officers
Speaker 1: the killer, and of course the theme that continues on
Speaker 1: from season one is refocusing the framing of the story
Speaker 1: from the killer to the women who had their lives
Speaker 1: taken from them, exactly giving them something back, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and understanding you know, the times they lived in and
Speaker 1: the particular pressures, because you know, all of that gets
Speaker 1: lost when you spend your time obsessing over forensic or
Speaker 1: otherwise details of you know who, say, Jack the ripple
Speaker 1: was whatever. You know, this stuff just gets lost, it
Speaker 1: gets swept away, and so in many ways it's it's
Speaker 1: much more interesting because it gives you a really interesting
Speaker 1: snapshot of how lives were at the time and the
Speaker 1: journeys people made, particularly women in this case. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a very useful refocusing, I think. So that's sort
Speaker 1: of what you guys are tasked with soundtrack, which is
Speaker 1: an interesting I don't know, that's an interesting opportunity, interesting proposition.
Speaker 1: What was the first thing you did when you realized
Speaker 1: you were going to be making music for this new season.
Speaker 1: Whenever I start a project like this, I have this
Speaker 1: romantic idea of taking long walks and planning and really
Speaker 1: kind of devising my strategy and sort of coming up
Speaker 1: with a grand concept. And then inevitably what actually happens
Speaker 1: is life catches up with you and you just crash
Speaker 1: in there and you get on with it. I'm a
Speaker 1: great believer in dumping myself into the middle of it
Speaker 1: and fighting my way out, you know. Yeah. Ye, with
Speaker 1: bad Women in this season to in particular, there's there's
Speaker 1: quite a strong sense of place, I mean in the
Speaker 1: lucky position of also looking after the sound design on
Speaker 1: the show. And that's really interesting and it's one of
Speaker 1: the things that's afforded to a degree by podcasting. There's
Speaker 1: a certain flexibility, you know, the work patterns are not
Speaker 1: so ironed out perhaps as they are in other industries,
Speaker 1: so there isn't a sort of separate sound design department.
Speaker 1: I am that as well, So it really means that
Speaker 1: I can think about the sound design and the music
Speaker 1: as a as a whole. I can get things to
Speaker 1: sort of talk to each other. Actually, what I really
Speaker 1: started to think about first was what's London going to
Speaker 1: sound like at this time? And didn't want to throw
Speaker 1: away the DNA of the music from the first season,
Speaker 1: you know. We wanted that sense of kind of linearity
Speaker 1: of keeping some of the tonal work, you know, from
Speaker 1: the first show and bringing that forward. So it's really
Speaker 1: about trying to understand the kind of fabric of sound
Speaker 1: that's sort of soho and some of the places that
Speaker 1: we're diving in and out in the show would have created.
Speaker 1: So actually, I think my first port of call was
Speaker 1: to start with some sound design elements, you know, let's
Speaker 1: get the place alive. What do these clubs sound like?
Speaker 1: And it throws up a really interesting conundrum really, because
Speaker 1: you know, a restaurant in nineteen forty two wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: sound a whole lot different to how a restaurant would
Speaker 1: sound now. But how do you somehow trigger in people
Speaker 1: that the concept that they're being taken back in time?
Speaker 1: And in that sense, I think it's really interesting that
Speaker 1: one of the best ways to kind of fool people
Speaker 1: in that environment is to try and make the sounds
Speaker 1: almost appear to have been recorded back then, so slightly
Speaker 1: degrading them, giving that sense of that vintage sense, and
Speaker 1: I think it's really it helps people be tricked back
Speaker 1: into that time. But going to the sort of music
Speaker 1: side of it, it became quite clear quite early on,
Speaker 1: when you know, looking at the scenes where in these
Speaker 1: bars and clubs of Soho of the time, that jazz
Speaker 1: was going to form a part of this the music
Speaker 1: they would be listening to down in these clubs, the
Speaker 1: jazz scene of the time, which you know ed will
Speaker 1: speak more about. But in an environment where you're working,
Speaker 1: as we say, sort of in the business yet in
Speaker 1: the box, looking standing out a computer or sitting at
Speaker 1: a computer and devising this sound using a lot of
Speaker 1: virtual instruments and electronic instruments. It quickly became apparent to
Speaker 1: me that, you know, we really needed something real and
Speaker 1: human and alive and with all the cracks and the
Speaker 1: fractures and the mistakes and the looseness and the vibe
Speaker 1: that that would have. And that's when we cooked up
Speaker 1: the idea that if we could manage this, can we
Speaker 1: record some tracks that would have been relevant to the
Speaker 1: era and try and thread that through the show. And
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we did it. Yeah, the music turned
Speaker 1: out great. Ed. Can you tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about the jazz clubs of World War two era? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So it was, you know, an interesting time nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: One of the big bangs, if you like, in European
Speaker 1: jazz was the Django rein Hot Club of France thing,
Speaker 1: you know him and Stephan Grapelli and all those amazing
Speaker 1: kind of gypsy players that were part of that scene.
Speaker 1: Can you play a bit of what the Jangle Rhinehart
Speaker 1: sound is. He's got a huge guitar. Is that not
Speaker 1: what Jingle would have used? Jango played an acoustic guitar,
Speaker 1: and mccafery acoustic guitar, which we did play on the
Speaker 1: sessions as well, myself and Christian the other guitar player.
Speaker 1: We're playing them on the sessions, but I can sort
Speaker 1: of have a go on this big arch stop. So
Speaker 1: basically in the Hot Club of France traditional setup you
Speaker 1: have in Django's original model, you'd have two rhythm guitar
Speaker 1: players who'd be doing this sort of thing, and then
Speaker 1: you'd have you know, melody stuff going on on top.
Speaker 1: And that was a huge thing in Jango was arguably
Speaker 1: the first kind of European jazz start, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Obviously the music is American and mostly African
Speaker 1: American and always led by America, and Django Rynot was
Speaker 1: the first European really to make a kind of any
Speaker 1: kind of impact on the world of jazz, and he
Speaker 1: was huge in the UK. The Hot Club of France
Speaker 1: toured a lot in the UK and actually in at
Speaker 1: the outbreak of the war, I believe they were over
Speaker 1: here and Django and the rest of the band, his
Speaker 1: brother and his cousins, the guitar players, they all fled
Speaker 1: back to France and Stefan Gropealli got stuck in London,
Speaker 1: so he was in London for the duration of the war.
Speaker 1: And then of course in America in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: forties you had the beginnings of the bebop revolution, Charlie
Speaker 1: Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and all those people, which was
Speaker 1: the next sort of big seismic shift in that music.
Speaker 1: It didn't come as quickly to the UK because there
Speaker 1: wasn't like now obviously we have so many channels to
Speaker 1: access music and internet and whatever. And in the early
Speaker 1: days of that music, it was American serviceman who would
Speaker 1: bringing bibot records over to the UK, and so you
Speaker 1: would have heard records in London clubs, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: there would have been people that were kind of playing bebop,
Speaker 1: but late thirties early forties in the UK would have
Speaker 1: still been much more rooted in the swing swing era,
Speaker 1: which is you know, again that kind of four to
Speaker 1: the bar jingle kind of style and then you know
Speaker 1: or I've got rhythm, you know, whereas in America and
Speaker 1: the bebop thing that was starting to become more harmonically
Speaker 1: complicated and so you'd get more so, you know, the
Speaker 1: music was changing very fast in America and in Britain.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there was a slower adopting of
Speaker 1: the more advanced harmonic and rhythmic and melodic concepts that
Speaker 1: were coming out of the bebop thing. Right with Bebo up,
Speaker 1: they were trying to really deconstruct the chords in an
Speaker 1: interesting way. And swing would have just been let me
Speaker 1: take the Scrocman song I've Got m and make it
Speaker 1: rhythmically interesting. I guess I would say, yeah, totally, and
Speaker 1: also you know, adding extra chords to it, extending the harmony,
Speaker 1: which was a big part of the bebop thing. And yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, there were people there was a base
Speaker 1: play called Coleridge Good who was from the West Indies
Speaker 1: who came to Scotland. Actually first came to Glasgow in
Speaker 1: the thirties, So this is before the wind Rush, which
Speaker 1: was the big emigration into the UK of Caribbean people
Speaker 1: in the fifties. So Coleridge came to Scotland in the
Speaker 1: early thirties to study engineering and he was a bass
Speaker 1: player on the scene in Soho at that time, early forties,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a brilliant book called bass Lines about
Speaker 1: his life as a jazz musician in the UK. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was certainly playing kind of swing and bop and
Speaker 1: what then would have been popular music, you know, because
Speaker 1: the swing that was the thing with the swing era stuff.
Speaker 1: It was the pop music of its day. It was
Speaker 1: the hip parade music of its day. People at Benny
Speaker 1: Goodman and those guys were Glenn Miller, you know, they
Speaker 1: were the kind of pop stars of their time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think London at that time there would have been
Speaker 1: a lot of different influences going on, the start of
Speaker 1: the Caribbean influence, the start of bebop, the swing big bands.
Speaker 1: People at Ellington had toured in Britain from kind of
Speaker 1: the twenties on woods. So yeah, I think London was
Speaker 1: a you know, probably quite an exciting, exciting place to
Speaker 1: be as a musician in the early forties. What about
Speaker 1: the electric guitar when was that? I mean Charlie Christian
Speaker 1: was the first big kind of electric guitar star who
Speaker 1: was one of the thirties forties. Yeah, Christian died and
Speaker 1: I think forty two is really he was like twenty
Speaker 1: five or something. He played in Benny Goodman's small band
Speaker 1: and he was arguably the first kind of proper bebop
Speaker 1: guitarist and there's a bunch of bootlegs of him playing
Speaker 1: at Minton's, which was the kind of hot house laboratory
Speaker 1: of the bebop era, or all the musicians when they
Speaker 1: finished their gigs at the Savoy and Places would head
Speaker 1: to Minton's, to Minton's Playhouse and play after hours and
Speaker 1: fillowing its. Monk was the house piano player there, and
Speaker 1: Joe Guy would turn up on trumpet. And there's these
Speaker 1: amazing bootleg recordings. It was some guy who was like
Speaker 1: an audio enthusiast, brought in a i think some sort
Speaker 1: of eight track, a real to real thing, and just
Speaker 1: stuck it on the table and there's this incredible record. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're so brilliant, and it's Charlie Christian really sort of
Speaker 1: ripping it up on standards things like Topsy and Honeysucker
Speaker 1: Rose and stuff like that, and him just really going
Speaker 1: to town on it and kind of extending the jazz vocabulary.
Speaker 1: And there's a chin called swing to Bop which is
Speaker 1: based on Topsy, which is an old standard, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can just you can hear him kind of
Speaker 1: rewriting the rule book as he's playing. It's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1: That's great. So how did you guys got about picking
Speaker 1: the songs for what you guys were going to do
Speaker 1: for the podcast. There's a kind of standard repertoire for
Speaker 1: those hot club bands, which is a lot of jango
Speaker 1: ranuc tunes and a lot of swing tunes from the era.
Speaker 1: But because we were in sort of nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: we wanted to try and reflect a bit of the
Speaker 1: what we've just been talking about, the slight bebop influence
Speaker 1: and the swing influence, sort of Benny Goodman small band thing.
Speaker 1: So I've got a band called Prophets the Swing, who
Speaker 1: were myself and three other brilliant musicians. We've got Marcus
Speaker 1: Penrose on bass, Ross Hughes on clarinet, tenor and baritone
Speaker 1: who's playing on the recording, and Christian Miller, who's an
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible guitarists. You've sort of drawn the short stroll
Speaker 1: with me justin unfortunately, so I feel a bit like
Speaker 1: Angers Young in ac DC. Someone at once asked Angers Young,
Speaker 1: you know his brother Malcolm Young, who was in a
Speaker 1: CDC as well and wrote a lot the tune. Somebody
Speaker 1: once asked Angers Younger, you're the best guitarist in the world,
Speaker 1: and he said, made I'm not even the best guitarist
Speaker 1: in a CDC, and I'm sort of a bit like that,
Speaker 1: So you've got the shortst of me. Christians absolutely Brillian,
Speaker 1: but they're fantastic musicians. And so we kind of went
Speaker 1: through a lot of swing era tunes of work with Pascal.
Speaker 1: A lot is very old pow and so myself and
Speaker 1: past talked about basically things with different atmospheres, because when
Speaker 1: you're doing soundtrack for something, it's not just about how
Speaker 1: pretty the tunes are or how strong the melody is whatever.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're trying this sounds obviously you're You're trying to
Speaker 1: do something that evokes a certain feeling as well, and
Speaker 1: that will advance the narrative and support the emotional beats
Speaker 1: of the story. What's the first song you landed on
Speaker 1: that sort of fits the emotional tone of the episode
Speaker 1: but is also reminiscent of the time. I think It
Speaker 1: Had to Be You is the first one that we
Speaker 1: kind of felt. It's really well known It had to
Speaker 1: Be You. People who don't even know jazz stuff know
Speaker 1: it because it's been used in so many movies and
Speaker 1: adverts and stuff. But it's such a beautiful. It's a
Speaker 1: lovely melody and it's kind of wistful and a little
Speaker 1: bit kind of melancholy at the same time, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's got that lovely, kind of ambiguous
Speaker 1: feel to it, and that was a I think the
Speaker 1: man I love as well for similar reasons. You know,
Speaker 1: minutes for really interesting. You know, Ed has a lot
Speaker 1: more knowledge than me about this sort of particular era
Speaker 1: of music, but it was quite interesting when he was
Speaker 1: sending me tracks. Quite often, you know, a track will
Speaker 1: have a very particular kind of introduction that may or
Speaker 1: may not really relate to how the rest of the
Speaker 1: tune pans out. And I remember you sent me a
Speaker 1: Django Dark Eyes thing and it and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: with the subject matter of the podcast, yeah, it's important
Speaker 1: that we get this sense of you know, clubs and
Speaker 1: people having a great time and swinging about in nineteen
Speaker 1: forties London. But you know, the central current of this
Speaker 1: podcast is about a very awful series of murders and
Speaker 1: about some pretty bleak lives and situations, so we had
Speaker 1: to kind of keep half an hour even though you know,
Speaker 1: my underscoring is more takes care of that side of
Speaker 1: the podcast. But I remember when you played me the
Speaker 1: intro to Dark Eyes. It had this sort of incredible
Speaker 1: kind of dark, exotic kind of feel, and it's really
Speaker 1: it's really interesting how an introduction to a tune can
Speaker 1: then just sort of bed unced out of the way
Speaker 1: and then the band kind of kicks. It's an interesting
Speaker 1: tune that because it's it's basically the Gypsy it's kind
Speaker 1: of the unofficial gypsy anthem, and you'll know it's really familiar.
Speaker 1: It's the one that goes it's really famous, and it's
Speaker 1: again it's one of those when you play it in
Speaker 1: gypsy hands, I've got the right guitar for it at all,
Speaker 1: but when you play in gypsy bands you play it
Speaker 1: a kind of up like that. But as Pass said,
Speaker 1: because it has inherently got this kind of major minor,
Speaker 1: slightly ambiguous, melancholic, slightly almost sinister quality to it, we
Speaker 1: did a thing where we did lots of bringing out
Speaker 1: the kind of and then it just it floats down
Speaker 1: in a much more ambiguous place. Yeah, that's beautiful. Well,
Speaker 1: it had to be. You was the first track that
Speaker 1: you guys landed on, so we should listen to that.
Speaker 1: This is your guy's moundition of it. Who initially wrote
Speaker 1: the song? And who would you say had the most
Speaker 1: famous version of it? She sure? Who wrote it early on?
Speaker 1: M most famous version? That's hard, isn't it? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I mean everyone, This is one of those
Speaker 1: standards that everyone's done. I suppose for people. Probably people
Speaker 1: now it's probably Harry Connick actually, because he did that
Speaker 1: version of it for the movie when Harry Harry out Sally,
Speaker 1: which is huge, you know. Yeah, so it's probably Harry
Speaker 1: will have what he's having exactly. It might be work, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, what's incredible about these tunes is
Speaker 1: you know, and this again I'm stating the obvious here.
Speaker 1: Why are they called jazz standards? You know? But the
Speaker 1: malleability is extraordinary. The way you can you can take
Speaker 1: a tune, imbue it with you know, upbeat, care free romance,
Speaker 1: and then you can choose to play it in a
Speaker 1: way that completely undercuts that and the quick and dirty
Speaker 1: twigs that have sometimes used in soundtracking. Is is really
Speaker 1: time stretching music or recordings of music, particularly on the piano.
Speaker 1: I did this quite a lot in Season one of
Speaker 1: Bad Women. You know, you time stretch the whole thing
Speaker 1: out and then and sync it in reverb and essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, even very optimistic sounding harmonies suddenly start to
Speaker 1: kind of swim around yea, and develop a much more mysterious,
Speaker 1: dark undertow. And it's just, yeah, it's a testament to
Speaker 1: how these tunes can be pulled around and they survive.
Speaker 1: You know, this sophistication in the writing. You know, we
Speaker 1: were myself from Pascal but got a little thing that
Speaker 1: the little arrangement of Lady be good to play for
Speaker 1: you today, just to two us as a due out,
Speaker 1: and we were looking at some Ellington things and other stuff,
Speaker 1: and especially with Ellington, like the harmonic stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: the chords and the relationship between chords and melody and
Speaker 1: rhythm is so complex and so sophisticated, but not in
Speaker 1: a flash showing off, do you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like the tune sounds so beautiful and so simple.
Speaker 1: It's only when you try and play them you're like, god,
Speaker 1: this is really hard, you know, because they sound so gorgeous.
Speaker 1: That's why Ellington was a genius arrangement. You know, him
Speaker 1: and Billy straight and you know they were just both
Speaker 1: straight incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean we you know,
Speaker 1: things like take the atrean when you've got you know,
Speaker 1: big sort of major chord and then the second chord
Speaker 1: has got this slightly crunchy Yeah. I mean he's just
Speaker 1: you know, and and a lot of the composers of
Speaker 1: that era. I mean Ellington obviously being in my opinion,
Speaker 1: the pre eminent jas composer of all time. We'll pre
Speaker 1: eminent composer of all time. But you know, lots of
Speaker 1: those guys who were writing music then Colporter and the
Speaker 1: Gershwins and stuff. It's like, yeah, there's a there is
Speaker 1: a real sort of sophistication to the harmonic material that
Speaker 1: just makes it endlessly open to reinvention. You know, absolutely, well,
Speaker 1: let's listen to your rendition of it had to be
Speaker 1: You for Bad Women season two and I m N
Speaker 1: I NE that was great, Thank you. We'll played sax
Speaker 1: On that. That's Ross Hughes, who's absolutely brilliant. Ross is
Speaker 1: another old friend of him myself and Pascals that we've
Speaker 1: both worked with a lot, who's a brilliant composer and
Speaker 1: arranger and absolute i mean a proper multi instrumentalist. Most
Speaker 1: of us we always refer to him as the real musician.
Speaker 1: He's the real musician, isn't it. Yeah, And it's funny.
Speaker 1: Like most musicians, we will play a couple of things,
Speaker 1: but we get kind of weaker as the circle goes out,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Whereas Ross is absolutely you know,
Speaker 1: he's a fantastic clarinet player, beautiful saxophone, all the woodwinds.
Speaker 1: He is a great piano player, he's a lovely bass player.
Speaker 1: He's a you know, absolute multi instrumentalist. Well that's great.
Speaker 1: I mean, such a sultry tune. And I think for
Speaker 1: people listening who haven't heard Bad Women yet, it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting for them to hear how that was yeh in
Speaker 1: the show. I mean it's I think with all of these,
Speaker 1: while we knew there was a certain function, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes we just we needed tunes to step up and
Speaker 1: be danceable and and and give off some of the
Speaker 1: you know, the difficult optimism of the time. Though. I
Speaker 1: was always when we were discussing, said of how to
Speaker 1: play them, I was always trying to push them towards
Speaker 1: the ambiguity and the melancholy if it was in there
Speaker 1: in the yeah, yeah, and it resonates with the stories
Speaker 1: that we're hearing. You know, these are the episodes a
Speaker 1: litted with romances that go astray and you know, and
Speaker 1: even the concept or something like oh lady, be good.
Speaker 1: You know, it strikes a big resonance with the way
Speaker 1: women were being treated and talked about out and dealt
Speaker 1: with in those times. So it's yeah, if we that
Speaker 1: level of ambiguity, which I think does come through in
Speaker 1: that take. And I should say, you know that we
Speaker 1: were not after utterly perfect camera ready takes. If you
Speaker 1: see what I mean, that's I'm happy when you've got
Speaker 1: me in the band life. Yeah, I'm mashing up spontane yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be yeah, you know, necessarily perfect record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that fitted the music of the day, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's the thing like we you know, I'm
Speaker 1: you know, so reverent about that music and about the
Speaker 1: those tunes and that time and when you talk to
Speaker 1: older musicians, they had no idea that this stuff people
Speaker 1: would still be playing this stuff fifty sixty, one hundred
Speaker 1: years later, do you know what I mean. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that strikes it a really interesting you know,
Speaker 1: the very broader theme in audio. You know, this idea
Speaker 1: that we've we have perfected things and then had to
Speaker 1: find ways of reintroducing error and imperfection. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: which is a of a broader, bigger philosophical point, but
Speaker 1: it is. It's really important. This stuff doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: some ultra polished studio session that's dumped into and I'm
Speaker 1: a nightclub and and really, I mean a ridiculous and
Speaker 1: extreme example of that is um oh Johnny O, which
Speaker 1: we didn't We didn't record fully at all because what
Speaker 1: happens is about eight pars into it, a bomb drops
Speaker 1: on a club. So I literally had It's like the
Speaker 1: guys just started playing and I just walked into Okay,
Speaker 1: a bomber's dropped one, you can stop. You know. There's
Speaker 1: an extraordinary scene where it's saying, you know, I knew,
Speaker 1: I knew the sound design had already done it, and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, I just need to hear you start
Speaker 1: this tune because a bomber's going to drop. So you're
Speaker 1: saying this group is not like the Titanic ship goes down.
Speaker 1: Could have done that. Yeah, there's not that level legging
Speaker 1: it for the exit mate, absolutely straight? H What was
Speaker 1: the next towing you guys settled on? Think after that,
Speaker 1: it might have been Diner actually, which is a really
Speaker 1: old standard Diners one that you're here on early Hot
Speaker 1: Club of France records. Django and Stefan Grappelli recorded that
Speaker 1: tune a lot of times. Yeah Lewis did it, Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean it was a real It was again, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of massive pop hit of the day, um that
Speaker 1: got reinvented by jazz musicians. You know, trying to get
Speaker 1: yourself into that mindset of this being pop, you know,
Speaker 1: it requires a real I wish it stretch of the
Speaker 1: imagination and that, and you know it certainly the bebop movement,
Speaker 1: you know, was occupied a very you know, now it's
Speaker 1: become this really rarefied thing that's taught in. You know,
Speaker 1: I went to university. I did a jazz degree course.
Speaker 1: It was just like that movie Whiplash, but less overrated,
Speaker 1: and so I did. I did that and it was brilliant.
Speaker 1: I mean we had we had we had amazing teachers
Speaker 1: and you know, they was brilliant and incredible musicians and
Speaker 1: it was a really interesting experience. But they talk about
Speaker 1: this themselves, the idea that that stuff is now taught
Speaker 1: in sort of conservatoires and whatever, and you know, it
Speaker 1: was total it was complete outlaw music. It was rebel
Speaker 1: music of the time, do you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It wasn't in any way socially acceptable, and the people
Speaker 1: that played it were viewed by you know, sort of
Speaker 1: the media and the establishment of the forties, as in
Speaker 1: the way that gangster rappers were were viewed in the nineties,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, they were viewed as these
Speaker 1: kind of scary, you know, ghetto people that were heroin
Speaker 1: addicts and would you know, corrupt your children. You know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean very unfairly obviously, because they were you know, studious,
Speaker 1: incredible musicians. But you know that, and that's that's so
Speaker 1: hard to reach back and try and try and kind
Speaker 1: of imagine that sentiment now because you know, now sounds
Speaker 1: so sort of in some ways refined and yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and in the way that hip hop has become very
Speaker 1: much pop music now. You know, when we were kids
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties, it wasn't and now it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's completely kind of mainstream pop. So it's
Speaker 1: you know, the same thing happens again, doesn't it. If
Speaker 1: we're being honest, I'm sure jazz musicians, especially in the
Speaker 1: b BA, we're probably more ill behaved. Some of them
Speaker 1: were completely some of them were Some of them, I
Speaker 1: think we're very nay boys and girls. Weren't they check out,
Speaker 1: you guys version of the old standard dinah and nothing
Speaker 1: and nothing and nothing and got down and then then
Speaker 1: I go and you don't and then I three endings
Speaker 1: with a prize. When I was listening to that really
Speaker 1: reminded me of something that I remember talking to the
Speaker 1: band about on the day. And again it goes back
Speaker 1: to this idea of creating music that sounds like it's
Speaker 1: belonging in a particular space and a place. I remember saying, now,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it was on this tune, but
Speaker 1: it kind of it's relevant anyway. I remember saying, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to imagine that you're playing and there's people
Speaker 1: around you making a hell of a racket. I remember
Speaker 1: saying at one point, you've got to play as if
Speaker 1: people are basically ignoring you, and then everyone's about musician,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, yeah, it's like it's trying to
Speaker 1: get that that spirit in it because you know, I know,
Speaker 1: having played you know a bit of weddings and you
Speaker 1: name it, you know, when the way you play it
Speaker 1: just to the crowd to a degree, and so I
Speaker 1: really wanted to try and occasionally, you know, get that
Speaker 1: feeling of the band about to maybe fall apart. It doesn't,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel so in that apart from that little
Speaker 1: end bit, which is really nice, it's like it's more
Speaker 1: or less like they've they've kind of given up thor right,
Speaker 1: come on, let's get a drink. No one's listening, you know,
Speaker 1: And I really I love that. I love that about
Speaker 1: it because that felt very important to me to you know,
Speaker 1: from the point of view of getting it to sit
Speaker 1: right under you know, because I'm thinking, I'm what I'm
Speaker 1: going to put over the top of this, which is
Speaker 1: a shame on one level because I'm covering it with
Speaker 1: people drinking and talking and you know, the sound of this,
Speaker 1: that and the other. But on another level, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: about how can we how can we make this really
Speaker 1: sit right in the dramatic situation, and yet another level
Speaker 1: that that feels like the appropriate place to be. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I say, listening back to that, I won't listen to
Speaker 1: that tune for a little bit. And Marcus the bass
Speaker 1: player Marks Penrose absolutely stirling job of holding everything together.
Speaker 1: He's like mummy basically, he's amazingly Yeah, he totally is.
Speaker 1: You sort of clinging to mar because he's got such
Speaker 1: a strong rhythmic drive and he's so brilliant reforms. He's
Speaker 1: always absolutely right on it, you know, that idea of
Speaker 1: fighting too for the audiants. I feel like it's something
Speaker 1: that's last, you know. I think that's sort of why
Speaker 1: jazz is sort of regarded in the sort of rarefied
Speaker 1: air now, this idea that it's to be played and
Speaker 1: you know, with with with with with, you know, an
Speaker 1: audience who's deadly quietly clap after the solo. You have
Speaker 1: to clap after the solo. It's like, well, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: you should earn yeah, you know, and maybe and maybe
Speaker 1: you should earn that. I was always fascinated by the
Speaker 1: Jazz Cafe in London. I'm going I'm talking about it
Speaker 1: twenty three years ago now, but I remember when it,
Speaker 1: you know, when it was done up. They had this
Speaker 1: on the wall above the stage. They had STFU during performances.
Speaker 1: Thanks yeah, and that meant shut the fuck up during performances.
Speaker 1: And it's like that that's an interesting vibe together in
Speaker 1: a jazz club. You know what, the ffer in Brixton.
Speaker 1: If you're ever in London, justin you have to go
Speaker 1: to the f for a tavern in Brixton because there's
Speaker 1: an incredible set of musicians who play. They're led by
Speaker 1: a guy called Alan Weeks, who's a British Caribbean guitar
Speaker 1: player who played in loads of reggae bands in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and incredible jazz guitar player. And they
Speaker 1: just set up in the corner of the pub and
Speaker 1: they just play and it's this kind of it's brilliant.
Speaker 1: It's a proper sort of raucous gig where people come
Speaker 1: to drink and dance and to have a good time.
Speaker 1: And you know, and they play all these tunes. They
Speaker 1: play all the old standards and all that stuff, but
Speaker 1: they also mix up. We're playing scar tunes and reggae
Speaker 1: things and James Brown and kind of funk stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's just it's really interesting how they Yeah, they absolutely
Speaker 1: they've got great integrity as musicians, but they absolutely make
Speaker 1: it accessible as well. And I think that's a yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's he's strangely tangentially related to that is the
Speaker 1: business of doing music within podcasts. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: there's almost always a voice happening in a podcast for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons, and that voices bang center center stage, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's like if you were writing music for a
Speaker 1: film or even for like a radio drama or something,
Speaker 1: it's conceivable that you would have the stage to yourself
Speaker 1: for a little but that really very rarely happens in
Speaker 1: a podcast. You might get you might get a little
Speaker 1: sniff of it when you when the narration at the
Speaker 1: top of the podcast makes way for the theme, and
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. It's a really interesting challenge that about
Speaker 1: how to make music that will that can coexist with
Speaker 1: a speaking voice that is pretty much always there. And
Speaker 1: so I do remember, you know, there's a times when
Speaker 1: people were doing these sort of amazing solos and I
Speaker 1: just thought, that's great to having the cane, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to need a sort of slightly paired yeah, something
Speaker 1: less interesting you need, and it sounds awful to put
Speaker 1: it in those that's the job. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the same you're dead right podcast
Speaker 1: even more so than other things. But even when you're
Speaker 1: scoring music, for theater or film or whatever. Sometimes a
Speaker 1: really interesting bit of music is the last thing you need.
Speaker 1: So I think that's why, you know, the Jewels music
Speaker 1: or whatever, those iconic things that are just like two
Speaker 1: or three notes, you know, are so brilliant because they
Speaker 1: underpin the emotional and the narrative beats of the story
Speaker 1: in such a great way. You know. Yeah, they exist
Speaker 1: in the in the spaces around and yeah, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of really fascinated by how music is absorbed in these
Speaker 1: sort of situations. I mean, honestly, it would. You would
Speaker 1: be horrified if if you took some of the keys
Speaker 1: out of you know, the shows and just listen to
Speaker 1: them in absolute isolation, because they're you know, they're designed
Speaker 1: to work alongside a voice and and and the listener
Speaker 1: kind of goes in and out of it that they're
Speaker 1: not they're not locking onto it. So I don't know
Speaker 1: why I thought of that, just because we were talking.
Speaker 1: We ended up in that area of you know, people
Speaker 1: talking over music. But it's an interesting kind of correlation.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we should play the Gershwin tune next.
Speaker 1: You guys did a version of Man I Lived anything
Speaker 1: you want to say about it before I play no,
Speaker 1: I think if you play it and then we can
Speaker 1: play it. Yeah, and then because particularly as it will
Speaker 1: stick it back in my head. Yeah, okay, let's give
Speaker 1: a listen. What two two three? Oh yeah, we're both
Speaker 1: playing acoustic guitar. And that's actually you hear that. That's
Speaker 1: sort of taste. H h nice performance, very nice. That's
Speaker 1: very That's brought back some really interesting memories to me, actually,
Speaker 1: because you know, we spoke a little bit about the
Speaker 1: idea of reintroduced sing fragility and error, and that was
Speaker 1: a really good case of that, actually, because i'd heard
Speaker 1: the Billy Holiday version of that tune and I really
Speaker 1: wanted to capture that sense of kind of just this
Speaker 1: idea almost that you would start, you would go to
Speaker 1: sing or speak and it might it just might not
Speaker 1: come out. It might not work, you know. And I
Speaker 1: remember when on the first take, you know, Ross, who's
Speaker 1: playing the clarinet on that, you know, just gave this
Speaker 1: beautiful but very sort of confident performance, and I was like,
Speaker 1: can you know, can you possibly sort of play that
Speaker 1: as a little bit more as if you know this
Speaker 1: just might not work, you know, can you can you
Speaker 1: make it much much much more fragile and I think
Speaker 1: he really nailed that. And yeah, and again you know
Speaker 1: that ending that was completely spurred the moment I was
Speaker 1: sort of on my feet and thinking, actually, could be
Speaker 1: quite interesting to have the band just kind of dissipate
Speaker 1: and end up just on the bass. And so so
Speaker 1: that's you know, it's a real case there of kind
Speaker 1: of thing thinking from an underscoring point of view in
Speaker 1: terms of where this is going to end up. That's
Speaker 1: just a quick idea that I had and thought might
Speaker 1: be useful. But it's interesting because it makes it makes
Speaker 1: that ending a very particular and thing, you know, definitely
Speaker 1: challenged with this sort of loneliness and the yeah you know,
Speaker 1: yeah that's solitary voice. It's like, yeah, but it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was an interest. It just really reminded me of
Speaker 1: that of trying to get to that level of almost
Speaker 1: breaking down basically good instincts, because it really felt that way,
Speaker 1: and I think it really was a nice performance for
Speaker 1: that songs. Yeah, and you know, a testament again to
Speaker 1: how all these tunes can be clothed in so many
Speaker 1: different ways. There's a way of playing that that makes
Speaker 1: it sound bulletproof. Absolutely, Yeah, and you can play that.
Speaker 1: There's a Frank Vaniola, amazing American guitar player really kind
Speaker 1: of up tempo version of that that makes it sound
Speaker 1: really sort of joyous and you know a real sort
Speaker 1: of celebration. But yeah, when you play it like that,
Speaker 1: and again, you know, props to Marcus Penrose, you know,
Speaker 1: the bass playing, and that's so beautiful because you know,
Speaker 1: it's a hard role being a bass player in a
Speaker 1: band like this where there's no drummer basically because obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, normally in a if it's a piano trio
Speaker 1: or a bigger band, the bass player and the drummerre
Speaker 1: locking together and you know, the bass players underpinning the
Speaker 1: harmonic movement and the melodic things, but they're also you know,
Speaker 1: reinforcing with the drummer the rhythmic drive the tune. And
Speaker 1: without drums or percussion, you know, that role is basically
Speaker 1: like Marcus on his own a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes if I'm if myself or Christian are
Speaker 1: doing the you know this the very strict for in
Speaker 1: the bath and you know that's slightly different, but obviously
Speaker 1: we were sort of dropping in and out of doing
Speaker 1: that on the tune, and yeah, Marcus really kind of
Speaker 1: keeps that keeps the game alive, you know. But that's
Speaker 1: really it's really valuable though, because drums against speaking voice,
Speaker 1: you have to work quite hard just to find the
Speaker 1: right spaces you have to whereas this band in that
Speaker 1: format can you kind of just sit underneath the voices. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And because we were trying to keep it kind of
Speaker 1: you know, we weren't slavishly trying to recreate Jango run
Speaker 1: a bit gun to me, yeah, but you know we
Speaker 1: were we were trying to do something with that sort
Speaker 1: of setup. So, you know, two guitars, bass, and then
Speaker 1: various leads read instruments. What happened? That would have been
Speaker 1: what a pretty standard set up in a Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean the Django the hot club thing is said early
Speaker 1: as two rhythm guitars, one lead guitar, doll bass and
Speaker 1: then usually violin or later clarinet and saxophone. You know,
Speaker 1: So the lack of drums was that what fed that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's a very European thing. Again.
Speaker 1: I think it because you know, Django and those guys
Speaker 1: were coming out of Yeah, and they were coming out
Speaker 1: of playing what we now think of as kind of
Speaker 1: gypsy folk music, do you know what I mean? Where
Speaker 1: it was a lot of a lot of guitars, a
Speaker 1: lot of symbol on violin, so it was mostly stringed
Speaker 1: instruments really, you know, so I think that's where that
Speaker 1: came from. And then of course he was, you know,
Speaker 1: hugely influences everyone who's ever tried to play jazz. It
Speaker 1: was and still is by Lewis Armstrong, you know, so
Speaker 1: he was taking some of those rhythmic and melodic ideas
Speaker 1: that Lewis Armstrong was playing on trumpet and literally transposing
Speaker 1: them to the guitar. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The last number,
Speaker 1: you guys did I found a New Baby? I know
Speaker 1: from the Bend rendition that has great I mean probably
Speaker 1: I was had a flying solo flight, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Charlie Christian guitar solos. Yeah, how did you guys
Speaker 1: land on this one? Well, again, we were just trying
Speaker 1: to think of other things that were popular at the
Speaker 1: time that a lot of bands would have been playing,
Speaker 1: and again, things with this sort of interesting harmonic sequence,
Speaker 1: because again I found a New Baby's got that as
Speaker 1: a lot of those tunes have got that slight thing
Speaker 1: where it's kind of you know, minor dominant and resolves
Speaker 1: to this kind of pretty major thing, you know, So
Speaker 1: it's got again, it's got both both elements, and I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of the things Ed was brilliant
Speaker 1: at in terms of you know, because I bow to
Speaker 1: his much greater knowledge of this area of music, but
Speaker 1: he completely locked onto the fact that even when we're
Speaker 1: in doing an up temper number like this, it had
Speaker 1: to contain that little seed of ambiguity. There's a little
Speaker 1: little element of pain, you know, and he was very
Speaker 1: good at sparting tunes that would carry that or I
Speaker 1: just have a little bit of grit in the oyster.
Speaker 1: I suppose you can say harmonically, at least let's listen
Speaker 1: to your guys version, I found a new baby before
Speaker 1: we get out of you all to come Yer might
Speaker 1: have present happened letting nothing better then the one key ending. Nice? Nice, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I do I love a one key ending.
Speaker 1: I should say, there's like, there's there's there's this that's
Speaker 1: of sea of music that you know, we could have
Speaker 1: picked from. And I know that Ryan, our glorious executive producer,
Speaker 1: had this huge playlist he'd so imbibed the music of
Speaker 1: the era. I mean, he actually sent me the playlist
Speaker 1: on Spotify, and it was it was horrific. It was like, literally,
Speaker 1: I think if I had started listening to it when
Speaker 1: he sent it to me, I would be way past
Speaker 1: retirement by the time I got to the end of it.
Speaker 1: But it was a testament to just how much he'd
Speaker 1: kind of soaked up this music, and he basically I think,
Speaker 1: brought the goalposts in and said like this is this
Speaker 1: is the kind of tune, and this is the area
Speaker 1: we need to be in, which is so you know
Speaker 1: that and that for us is brilliant, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a lovely thing to do to be able
Speaker 1: to play that music not in a kind of trying
Speaker 1: to slavishly recreate what's gone before, but trying to keep yeah,
Speaker 1: like you say, this sort of emotional and narrative beats
Speaker 1: of the show going while still trying to actually orner
Speaker 1: that music. Because particularly, I mean, at that point Ryan
Speaker 1: was across the who's the exact producer on the show
Speaker 1: and the rider and everything else. He's across the whole
Speaker 1: kind of narrative ark of it. So there are things
Speaker 1: I just didn't know about the show that he would
Speaker 1: be able to kind of lead into so he definitely
Speaker 1: he basically dumped us in the right ballpark and then
Speaker 1: let us play around. And well, you guys mentioned you
Speaker 1: have a live rendition of a song you can do
Speaker 1: for us. Yeah, together for you this afternoon, just sei undead.
Speaker 1: We thought, you know, be deaf not to Yeah, we
Speaker 1: should do something I didn't play on the sessions. So
Speaker 1: now you get exposed to my get trombone a little bit.
Speaker 1: What are you guys going to do? Do the old
Speaker 1: Gershman standard Old Lady Bid, which I believe it is
Speaker 1: from a musical. I'm not sure some long forgotten Broadway show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's see what happens. Can you count as in? Please
Speaker 1: edward A one two, one, two, three four, The greeting
Speaker 1: maybe by SKYL and D. Thank you so much and
Speaker 1: music is beautiful, Thank you, Justin