Speaker 1: Pushkin Hi, Bad Women listeners is Alice here. One of
Speaker 1: the great joys of working on this show, aside from
Speaker 1: researching and writing about the lives of the women, has
Speaker 1: been finding out about nightlife in nineteen fourties London. We've
Speaker 1: worked with contemporary musicians to help bring the bars and
Speaker 1: clubs of Soho and Piccadilly to life. Our sound designer,
Speaker 1: Pascal Wise and one of those musicians, Ed Gocken, were
Speaker 1: recently invited onto the Pushkin podcast Broken Record to talk
Speaker 1: about their work. We thought you might want to hear
Speaker 1: that conversation and some of the tracks played in full.
Speaker 1: It's a great listen enjoy. Hello, Hello, Justin Pascal here,
Speaker 1: who's the composer, sound designer and imed So I kind
Speaker 1: of got the band together for the Bad Women session.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Pascal is playing trombone, edsplaying guitar. I'm now
Speaker 1: talking about myself in the third person. James Brown, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for doing this, guys, appreciate it. Not at
Speaker 1: all patica. Maybe you want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about Bad Women for sure. Yeah. Well. Bad Women is
Speaker 1: the second season of a podcast which began explaining and
Speaker 1: understanding the lives of Jack the Ripper's victims, and it
Speaker 1: was very much a refocusing of that story. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a story that's now what over a century old,
Speaker 1: but even in my youth terrified me, and I was
Speaker 1: a continent away and you know whatever, eighty two hundred
Speaker 1: years removed at that point. But infamous serial killer, yeah,
Speaker 1: who stalked 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 Ribbinhold. And this book
Speaker 1: completely refocuses the 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 boogie 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 were there were somehow morally,
Speaker 1: you know, we could abandon them, but actually they had
Speaker 1: really interesting lives. And what Halle really wanted to do
Speaker 1: with the book and then with the podcast that came
Speaker 1: after it is just rebalance that whole tale. Let's look
Speaker 1: at the women, Let's look at the amazing and interesting lives,
Speaker 1: what they had to deal with, and let's stop obsessing
Speaker 1: with the idea of, you know, Jack the Ripper and
Speaker 1: who we may or may not have been. And of course,
Speaker 1: one of the most in some ways shocking revelations that
Speaker 1: you get when you dig into the story in those
Speaker 1: terms is that that central piece of information that almost
Speaker 1: everyone carries around about Jack the rippert Ie, that his
Speaker 1: victims of prostitutes turns out to be completely untrue. They weren't.
Speaker 1: That's 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 Blitzerera
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, with Bad
Speaker 1: Women in this season too, in particular, there's there's quite
Speaker 1: a strong sense of place, I mean, in the lucky
Speaker 1: position of also looking after the sound design on the show,
Speaker 1: and that's really interesting and it's one of the things
Speaker 1: that's afforded to a degree by podcasting. There's a certain flexibility,
Speaker 1: you know, the the work patterns are not so ironed
Speaker 1: out perhaps as they are in other industries, So there
Speaker 1: isn't a sort of separate sound design department. I am
Speaker 1: that as well, So it really means that I can
Speaker 1: think about the sound design and the music as a
Speaker 1: as a whole. I can get things to sort of
Speaker 1: talk to each other. Actually, what I really started to
Speaker 1: think about first was what's London going to sound like
Speaker 1: at this time? And didn't want to throw away the
Speaker 1: DNA of the music from the first season, you know,
Speaker 1: we wanted that sense of kind of linearity of keeping
Speaker 1: some of the tonal work, you know, from the first
Speaker 1: show and bringing that forward. So it's really about trying
Speaker 1: to understand the kind of fabric of sound that sort
Speaker 1: of Soho and some of the places that we're diving
Speaker 1: in and out of 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: will 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 London? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was, you know, an interest in time nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two. One of the big bangs, if you like,
Speaker 1: in European jazz was the Django Reinar Hot Club of
Speaker 1: France thing, you know him and Stephan Grappelli and all
Speaker 1: those amazing kind of gypsy players that were part of
Speaker 1: that scene. Can you play a bit of what the
Speaker 1: Jangle Ranhart sound is. He's got a huge guitar. Is
Speaker 1: that Natward Jingle would have used. Django played an acoustic
Speaker 1: guitar and mccafery acoustic guitar, which we did play on
Speaker 1: the 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 archtop. So basically
Speaker 1: in the Hot Club of France traditional setup you have
Speaker 1: in Django's original model, you'd have two rhythm guitar players
Speaker 1: who'd be doing this sort of thing, and then you'd
Speaker 1: have you know, melovy stuff going on on top, and
Speaker 1: that was a huge thing in Django was arguably the
Speaker 1: first kind of European jazz star, do 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 ry them guitar players, they
Speaker 1: all fled back to France and Stefan Gropelli got stuck
Speaker 1: in London, so he was in London for the duration
Speaker 1: of the war. And then of course in America in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen forties you had the beginnings of the
Speaker 1: bebop revolution. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and all those people,
Speaker 1: which was the next sort of big seismic shift in
Speaker 1: that music. It didn't come as quickly to the UK
Speaker 1: because there wasn't like now obviously we have so many
Speaker 1: channels to access music and internet and whatever. And in
Speaker 1: the early days of that music, it was American serviceman
Speaker 1: who would bring in bibot records over to the UK,
Speaker 1: and so you would have heard records in London clubs
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there would have been people that were
Speaker 1: kind of playing bebop, but late thirties early forties in
Speaker 1: the UK would have still been much more rooted in
Speaker 1: the swing swing era, which is you know, again that
Speaker 1: kind of four to the bar jangle kind of style
Speaker 1: and then you know, do I've got rhythm? You know,
Speaker 1: whereas in America and the bebop thing, that was starting
Speaker 1: to become more harmonically complicated and so you'd get more so,
Speaker 1: you know, the music was changing very fast in America
Speaker 1: and in Britain, I think, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: slower adopting of the more advanced harmonic and rhythmic and
Speaker 1: melodic concepts that were coming out of the bebop thing.
Speaker 1: Right with bebab they were trying to really deconstruct the
Speaker 1: chords in an interesting way, and swing would have just
Speaker 1: been let us take the Scrocman song I've Got nam
Speaker 1: and make it rhythmically interesting. I guess I would say, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And also you know, adding extra chords to it, extending
Speaker 1: the harmony, which was a big part of the bebop thing.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but you know there were people. There was
Speaker 1: a bass player called Coleridge Good who was from the
Speaker 1: West Indies who came to Scotland. Actually first came to
Speaker 1: Glasgow in the thirties, So this is before the wind Rush,
Speaker 1: which was the big emigration into the UK of Caribbean
Speaker 1: people in the fifties. So Coleridge came to Scotland in
Speaker 1: the early thirties to study engineering and he was a
Speaker 1: bass player on the scene in Soho at that time,
Speaker 1: early forties, and he wrote a brilliant book called Basslines
Speaker 1: about his life as a jazz musician in the UK. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was certainly playing kind of swing am 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 thereuld have been a
Speaker 1: lot of different influences going on, the start of the
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, Christian died and I
Speaker 1: think forty two was really young. 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 guitarist,
Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of bootlegs of him playing at Minton's,
Speaker 1: which was the kind of hot house laboratory of the
Speaker 1: bebop era, or all the musicians when they finished the
Speaker 1: gigs at the Savoy and places would head to Minton's
Speaker 1: to Minton's Playhouse and play after hours and throllowing its.
Speaker 1: Monk was the house piano player there, and Joe Guy
Speaker 1: would turn up on trumpet and there's these amazing bootleg recordings.
Speaker 1: It was some guy who was like an audio enthusiast,
Speaker 1: brought in i think some sort of eight track, a
Speaker 1: real to real thing, and just stuck it on the
Speaker 1: table and there's an incredible record. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: so brilliant, and it's Charlie Christian really sort of ripping
Speaker 1: it up on standards, things like Topsy and honeysucker Rows
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and him just really going to
Speaker 1: town on it and kind of extending the jazz vocabulary.
Speaker 1: And there's a chuin called swing to Bot 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 once asked Angers Young,
Speaker 1: you know his brother Malcolm Young, who was in ac
Speaker 1: DC as well and wrote a lot of the tune.
Speaker 1: Somebody once asked Angers Younger, you're the best guitarist in
Speaker 1: the world, and he said, made I'm not even the
Speaker 1: best guitarist in a CDC, And I'm sort of a
Speaker 1: bit like that. So you've got the short stro of me.
Speaker 1: Christians absolutely brilliant, but they're fantastic musicians, and so we
Speaker 1: kind of went through a lot of swing era tunes.
Speaker 1: I've worked with Pascal a lot is very old Powell,
Speaker 1: and so myself and past talked about basically things with
Speaker 1: different atmospheres, because when you're doing soundtrack for something, it's
Speaker 1: not just about how pretty the tunes are or how
Speaker 1: wrong the melody is whatever. Obviously you're trying this sounds
Speaker 1: obviously you're you're trying to do something that evokes a
Speaker 1: certain feeling as well and might and that will advance
Speaker 1: the narrative and support the emotional beats of the story.
Speaker 1: What's the first song you landed on that sort of
Speaker 1: fits the emotional tone of the episode but is also
Speaker 1: reminiscent of the time. I think it had to Be
Speaker 1: You was the first one that we kind of felt.
Speaker 1: It's really well known it had to Be You. People
Speaker 1: who don't even know jazz stuff now it because it's
Speaker 1: been used in so many movies and adverts and stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's such a beautiful It's a lovely melody, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of wistful and a little bit kind of
Speaker 1: melancholy at the same time, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's got that lovely, kind of ambiguous feel to it,
Speaker 1: and that was a I think the man I love
Speaker 1: as well for similar reasons, you know, I mean it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. You know, Ed has a lot more knowledge
Speaker 1: than me about this sort of particular era of music,
Speaker 1: but it was quite interesting when he was sending me tracks.
Speaker 1: Quite often, you know, a track will have a very
Speaker 1: particular kind of introduction that may or may not really
Speaker 1: relate to how the rest of the champans out. And
Speaker 1: I remember you sent me a Django Dark Eyes thing
Speaker 1: and it, and of course, you know, with the subject
Speaker 1: matter of the podcast, yeah, it's important that we get
Speaker 1: this sense of you know, clubs and people having a
Speaker 1: great time and swinging about in nineteen forties London. But
Speaker 1: you know, the central current of this podcast is about
Speaker 1: a very awful series of murders and about some pretty
Speaker 1: bleak lives and situations. So we had to kind of
Speaker 1: keep half an hour that even though you know, my
Speaker 1: underscoring is more takes care of that side of the podcast.
Speaker 1: But I remember when you played me the intro to
Speaker 1: Dark Eyes it we had this sort of incredible, kind
Speaker 1: of dark, exotic kind of feel, and it's really it's
Speaker 1: really interesting how an introduction to a tune can then
Speaker 1: just sort of be bounced out the way and then
Speaker 1: the band kind of kicks out. Yeah. Now it's an
Speaker 1: interesting tune that because it's it's basically the gypsy it's
Speaker 1: kind of the unofficial gypsy anthem. And you'll know it's
Speaker 1: really familiar. It's the one that goes it's really famous,
Speaker 1: and it's again, it's one of those when you play
Speaker 1: it in gypsy hands. I've got the right guitar for
Speaker 1: it at all, But when you play in gypsy bands
Speaker 1: you play it a kind of quite up like that.
Speaker 1: But as Path said, because it has inherently got this
Speaker 1: kind of major minor, slightly ambiguous, melancholic, slightly almost sinister
Speaker 1: quality to it, we did a thing where we did
Speaker 1: lots of bringing out the kind of and then it
Speaker 1: just it floats down in a much more ambiguous player. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. You're listening to a special crossover episode of
Speaker 1: Bad Women and Broken Record. There'll be more chat and
Speaker 1: more music after this short break. Well, it had to
Speaker 1: be you was the first track that you guys landed. Answer,
Speaker 1: we should listen to that. This is your guy's condition
Speaker 1: of it. Who initially wrote the song and who would
Speaker 1: you say had the most famous version of it. She
Speaker 1: sure who wrote it early on? Most famous version. That's hard,
Speaker 1: isn't it? I mean, I guess, I mean everyone, this
Speaker 1: is one of those standards that everyone's done. I suppose
Speaker 1: for people. Probably people now it's probably Harry Connick actually,
Speaker 1: because he did that version of it for the movie
Speaker 1: when Harry Harry Sally, which is huge, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's probably Harry will have what he's having exactly,
Speaker 1: it might be, I think, I mean, what's incredible about
Speaker 1: these chains is you know, and this is again I'm
Speaker 1: stating the obvious here. Why are they called jazz standards?
Speaker 1: You know? But the malleability is extraordinary. The way you
Speaker 1: can you can take a tune, imbue it with you know, upbeat,
Speaker 1: carefree romance, and then you can choose to play it
Speaker 1: in a way that completely undercuts that and the quick
Speaker 1: and dirty twigs that have sometimes used in soundtracking. Is
Speaker 1: is really time stretching music or recordings of music, particularly
Speaker 1: on the piano. I did this quite a lot in
Speaker 1: Season one of Bad Women. You know, you time stretch
Speaker 1: the whole thing out and then and sync it in
Speaker 1: reverb and essentially, you know, even very optimistic sounding harmonies
Speaker 1: suddenly start to kind of swim around and develop a
Speaker 1: much more mysterious dark undertow and it's just yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a testament to how these tunes can be pulled around
Speaker 1: and they survive, you know, the sophistication in the writing.
Speaker 1: You know, we were myself from Pascal, but we've got
Speaker 1: a little thing that the little arrangement of Lady be
Speaker 1: good to play for you today, just to as a
Speaker 1: due out. And we were looking at some Ellington things
Speaker 1: and other stuff, and especially with Ellington, like the harmonic stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, the chords and the relationship between chords and
Speaker 1: melody and rhythm is so complex and so sophisticated, but
Speaker 1: not in a flash showing off, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's like the tunes sounds so beautiful and
Speaker 1: so simple. It's only when you try and play them,
Speaker 1: you're like, god, this is really hard, you know, because
Speaker 1: they sound so gorgeous. That's why Ellington was a genius arrangement.
Speaker 1: You know, him and Billy straight and you know they
Speaker 1: were just both straight incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we you know things like take the atrean when you've
Speaker 1: got you know, big sort of major chord and then
Speaker 1: the second chord has got this slightly crunchy yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean he's just you know, and and a lot of
Speaker 1: the composers of that era. I mean Ellington obviously being
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the pre eminent jazz composer of all time.
Speaker 1: We'll pre eminent composer of all time. But you know,
Speaker 1: lots of those guys who were writing music then Colporter
Speaker 1: and the Gershwins and stuff. It's like, yeah, there's there
Speaker 1: is a real sort of sophistication to the harmonic material
Speaker 1: that 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 mute,
Speaker 1: m h that was great, thank you. We 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 thought with a lot. He'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's 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 yes 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, it resonates with the stories that
Speaker 1: we're hearing. You know, these are the episodes a litted
Speaker 1: with romances that go astray, and you know, and even
Speaker 1: the concept of something like, oh, lady, be good. You know,
Speaker 1: it strikes a big resonance with the way women were
Speaker 1: being treated and talked about and dealt with in those times.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, if we that level of ambiguity, which
Speaker 1: I think does come through in that take, and I
Speaker 1: should say, you know that we were not after utterly
Speaker 1: perfect camera ready takes. If you see what I mean,
Speaker 1: that's I'm happy when you've got me in the band life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm mashing up, yeah, Yeah, it's not going to be yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, necessarily perfect record. Yeah. And that fitted the
Speaker 1: pop music of the day, you know. I think that's
Speaker 1: the thing like we you know, I'm you know, so
Speaker 1: reverent about that music and about those tunes and that time.
Speaker 1: And when you talk to older musicians, they had no
Speaker 1: idea that this stuff people would still be playing this
Speaker 1: stuff fifty sixty one hundred years later, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's like, yeah, I think that strikes
Speaker 1: a really interesting, you know, the very broader theme in audio.
Speaker 1: You know, this idea that we've we have perfected things
Speaker 1: and then had to find ways of reintroducing error and imperfection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, which is a bit of a broader, bigger
Speaker 1: philosophical point, but it is it's really important. This stuff
Speaker 1: does sound like some ultropolished studio session that's dumped into
Speaker 1: and I'm a nightclub and and really, I mean a
Speaker 1: ridiculous and extreme example of that is um oh Johnny O,
Speaker 1: which we didn't We didn't record fully at all because
Speaker 1: what happens is about eight pars into it, a bomb
Speaker 1: drops on a club. So I literally had It's like,
Speaker 1: the guys just started playing and I just walked into Okay,
Speaker 1: a bomber's dropped on. 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 is going to drop. So
Speaker 1: you're saying this group is not like the Titanic ship
Speaker 1: goes could have done that. Yeah, there's not that level
Speaker 1: legging it for the exit, mate, absolutely straight. 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 it requires
Speaker 1: a real I wish it stretch of the imagination and that,
Speaker 1: and you know it certainly the bebop movement, you know,
Speaker 1: was occupied a very you know, now it's become this
Speaker 1: really rarefied thing that's taught in you know, I went
Speaker 1: to university. I did a jazz degree course. It was
Speaker 1: just like that movie Whiplash, but less overrated, and so
Speaker 1: I did. I did that and it was brilliant. I
Speaker 1: mean we had we had we had amazing teachers and
Speaker 1: you know, they was brilliant and incredible musicians and it
Speaker 1: was a really interesting experience. But they talk about this themselves,
Speaker 1: the idea that that stuff is now taught in sort
Speaker 1: of conservatoires and whatever, and you know, it was total
Speaker 1: It was complete outlaw music. It was rebel music of
Speaker 1: the time, do you know. I mean, it wasn't in
Speaker 1: any way socially acceptable, and the people that played it
Speaker 1: were viewed by you know, sort of the media and
Speaker 1: the establishment of the forties, as in the way that
Speaker 1: gangster rappers were were viewed in the nineties, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, they were viewed as these kind of scary,
Speaker 1: you know, ghetto people that were heroin addicts and would
Speaker 1: you know, corrupt your children, you know, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: 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 the way that hip hop has become very much
Speaker 1: pop music now, you know, when we were kids in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, it wasn't and now it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's completely kind of mainstream pop. So it's, you know,
Speaker 1: the same thing happens again, doesn't it. If we're being honest,
Speaker 1: I'm sure jazz musicians, especially in the B bar, were
Speaker 1: probably more ill beherent. Some of them were completely some
Speaker 1: of them were not. Some of them I think we're
Speaker 1: very naughty boys and girls weren't they check out, you
Speaker 1: guys version of the old standard dinah and nothended nothing,
Speaker 1: and then got it down and then I go and
Speaker 1: I don't anyone and I three endings with the prize.
Speaker 1: When I was listening to that really reminded me of
Speaker 1: something that I remember talking to the band about on
Speaker 1: the day. And again it goes back to this idea
Speaker 1: of creating music that sounds like it's belonging in a
Speaker 1: particular space and a place. I remember saying, I don't
Speaker 1: know whether it was on this tune, but it kind
Speaker 1: of it's relevant anyway. I remember saying, you know, you've
Speaker 1: got to imagine that you're playing and there's people around
Speaker 1: you making a hell of a racket. I remember saying
Speaker 1: at one point, you've got to play as if people
Speaker 1: are basically ignoring you, and then everyone's about the musician.
Speaker 1: But it's, you know, it's like it's trying to get
Speaker 1: 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: adjusts 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,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, I say, listening back to that, I won't
Speaker 1: listen to that tune for a little bit. And Marcus
Speaker 1: the bass player marks Penrose absolutely stilling job of holding
Speaker 1: everything together, Mummy. Basically he's amazing. Yeah, he totally is.
Speaker 1: You sort of clinging to marcuse he's got it's a
Speaker 1: strong rhythmic drive, and he's so brilliant reforms. He's always
Speaker 1: absolutely right on it. You know, that idea of fighting
Speaker 1: too for the audience. I feel like it's something that's last,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that's sort of why jazz is
Speaker 1: sort of regarded in the sort of rarefied are now,
Speaker 1: this idea that it's to be played and you know,
Speaker 1: with with with with with, you know, an audience who's
Speaker 1: deadly quietly after the solo. You have to clap after
Speaker 1: the solo. It's like, well, maybe maybe you should earn yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe and maybe you should earn that.
Speaker 1: I was always fascinated by the Jazz Cafe in London.
Speaker 1: I'm going I'm talking about it twenty three years ago now,
Speaker 1: but I remember when it you know, when it was
Speaker 1: done up. They had this on the wall above the stage.
Speaker 1: They had STFU during performances. Thanks yeah, and that meant
Speaker 1: shut the fuck up during performances. And it's like, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting vibe in the jazz club. You know what
Speaker 1: the FF in Brixton. If you're ever in London, justin
Speaker 1: you have to go to the F for a tavern
Speaker 1: in Brixton because there's an incredible set musicians who play.
Speaker 1: They're led by a guy called Alan Weeks, who's a
Speaker 1: British Caribbean guitar player who played in loads of reggae
Speaker 1: bands in the seventies and eighties and incredible jazz guitar player.
Speaker 1: And they just set up in the corner of the
Speaker 1: pub and they just play, and it's this kind of
Speaker 1: it's brilliant. It's a proper sort of raucous gig where
Speaker 1: people come to drink and dance and 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 it up. We're playing scar tunes and
Speaker 1: reggae things and James Brown and kind of funk stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's really interesting how they Yeah, they
Speaker 1: absolutely they've got great integrity as musicians, but they absolutely
Speaker 1: make it accessible as well. And I think that's a yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's strangely tangentially related to that is the business
Speaker 1: of doing music within podcasts. You know, it's like there's
Speaker 1: almost always a voice happening in a podcast for obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: and that voices bang center center stage. You know, so
Speaker 1: it's like if you were writing music for a film
Speaker 1: or even for like a radio drama or something, it's
Speaker 1: can see evable that you would have the stage to
Speaker 1: yourself for a little but that really very rarely happens
Speaker 1: in a podcast. You might get you might get a
Speaker 1: little sniff of it when you when the narration at
Speaker 1: the top of the podcast makes way for the theme,
Speaker 1: and it's really interesting. It's a really interesting challenge that
Speaker 1: about how to make music that will that can coexist
Speaker 1: with a speaking voice that is pretty much always there.
Speaker 1: And so I do remember, you know, there's a times
Speaker 1: when people were doing these sort of amazing solos and
Speaker 1: I just thought, that's great to having the cane, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to need a sort of slightly paired Yeah,
Speaker 1: something less interesting you need, and it sounds awful to
Speaker 1: put it in those that's the game, that's the job.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, and I think that's the same
Speaker 1: you're dead right podcast even more so than other things.
Speaker 1: But even when you're scoring music for theater or film
Speaker 1: or whatever, sometimes a really interesting bit of music is
Speaker 1: the last thing you need. So that's why you know,
Speaker 1: the Jaws music or whatever, those iconic things that are
Speaker 1: just like two or three notes, you know, are so
Speaker 1: brilliant because they underpin the emotional and narrative beats of
Speaker 1: the story in such a great way. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they exist in the in the spaces around and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of really fascinated by how music is absorbed
Speaker 1: in these sort of situations. I mean, honestly, it would
Speaker 1: you would be horrified if if you took some of
Speaker 1: the keys out of you know, the shows and just
Speaker 1: listen to them in absolute isolation, because they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're designed to work alongside a voice and and and
Speaker 1: the listener kind of goes in and out of it.
Speaker 1: Then they're not they're not locking onto it. So I
Speaker 1: don't know why I thought of that, Just because we
Speaker 1: were talking. We ended up in that area of you know,
Speaker 1: people talking over music. But it's an interesting kind of correlation.
Speaker 1: You're listening to a special crossover episode of Bad Women
Speaker 1: Unbroken Record. There'll be more jazz and more conversation after
Speaker 1: this short break. I wonder if we should play the
Speaker 1: Gershwin tune next. You guys did a version of Man
Speaker 1: I Lived? Anything you want to say about it before
Speaker 1: I play? No, I think if you play it and
Speaker 1: then we can play it. Yeah, and then because it
Speaker 1: particularly is it will stick it back in my head. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's give a listen. Two three. Oh yeah, we're both
Speaker 1: playing acoustic guitar. No, actually, you hear that. That's sort
Speaker 1: of tasting shut h. Nice performance, very nice. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: very That's rolled back some really interesting memories for me, actually,
Speaker 1: because you know, we spoke a little bit about the
Speaker 1: idea of reintroducing fragility and error, and that was a
Speaker 1: really good case of that, actually, because i'd heard the
Speaker 1: Billie Holiday version of that tune and I really wanted
Speaker 1: to capture that sense of kind of just this idea
Speaker 1: almost that you would start, you would go to sing
Speaker 1: or speak and it might it just might not come out.
Speaker 1: It might not work, you know. And I remember when
Speaker 1: on the first take, you know, Ross, who's playing the
Speaker 1: clarinet on that, you know, just gave this beautiful but
Speaker 1: very sort of confident performance, and I was like, can
Speaker 1: you know, can you possibly sort of play that as
Speaker 1: a little bit more as if you know this just
Speaker 1: might not work, you know, can you can you make
Speaker 1: it much much much more fragile? And I think he
Speaker 1: really nailed that. And yeah, and again, you know that
Speaker 1: ending that was completely spurred the moment I was sort
Speaker 1: of on my feet and thinking, actually, could be quite
Speaker 1: interesting to have the band just kind of dissipate and
Speaker 1: end up just on the bass. And so that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a real case there of kind of thinking from
Speaker 1: an underscoring point of view in terms of where this
Speaker 1: is going to end up. That's just a quick idea
Speaker 1: that I had and thought might be useful. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting because it makes it makes that ending a very
Speaker 1: particular and thing, you know, definitely challeed with this sort
Speaker 1: of loneliness and the yeah, you know, yeah that's solitary voice.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, but it was, Yeah, it was an interest.
Speaker 1: It just really reminded me of that of trying to
Speaker 1: get to that level of almost breaking down basically good instincts,
Speaker 1: because it really felt that way, and I think it
Speaker 1: really was a nice performance of that songs. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, a testament again to how all these tunes
Speaker 1: can be clothed in so many different ways. There's a
Speaker 1: way of playing that that makes it sound bulletproof, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: And you can play that there's a Frank Vaniola, amazing
Speaker 1: American guitar player really kind of up tempo version of
Speaker 1: that that makes it sound really sort of joy us
Speaker 1: and you know, a real sort of celebration. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when you play it like that, and again, you know,
Speaker 1: props to Marcus Penrose, you know, the bass playing, and
Speaker 1: that's so beautiful because you know, it's a hard role
Speaker 1: being a bass player in a band like this where
Speaker 1: there's no drummer basically because obviously, you know, normally in
Speaker 1: a if it's a piano trio or a bigger band,
Speaker 1: the bass player and the drummerre locking together and you know,
Speaker 1: the bass players underpinning the harmonic movement and the melodic things,
Speaker 1: but they're also you know, reinforcing with the drummer the
Speaker 1: rhythmic drive the tune. And without drums or percussion, you know,
Speaker 1: that role is basically like Marcus on his own a
Speaker 1: lot of the time. You know, sometimes if I'm if
Speaker 1: myself or Christian are doing the you know this the
Speaker 1: very strict for in the bathing, you know, that's slightly different.
Speaker 1: But obviously we were sort of dropping in and out
Speaker 1: of doing that on that tune. And yeah, Marcus really
Speaker 1: kind of keeps that keeps the game alive, you know.
Speaker 1: But that's really it's really valuable 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 format,
Speaker 1: 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 you know,
Speaker 1: Django bit a gun to me, yea, but you know
Speaker 1: we were we were trying to do something with that
Speaker 1: sort of setup. So, you know, two guitars, bass, and
Speaker 1: then various lead read instruments that would have been what
Speaker 1: a pretty standard setup in a yeah. I mean the
Speaker 1: Django the hot club thing is said early as two
Speaker 1: rhythm guitars, one lead guitar, doll bass and then usually
Speaker 1: violin or later clarinet and saxophone, you know what. So
Speaker 1: the lack of drums was that what fed that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's a very European thing. Again. I think
Speaker 1: it because you know, Django and those guys were coming
Speaker 1: out of Yeah, and they were coming out of playing
Speaker 1: what we now think of as kind of gypsy folk music,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Where it was a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of guitars, a lot of symbol
Speaker 1: on violin, so it was mostly stringed instruments really, you know,
Speaker 1: so I think that's where that came from. And then
Speaker 1: of course he was hugely influenced as everyone who's ever
Speaker 1: tried to play jazz, It was and still is by
Speaker 1: Lewis Armstrong, you know. So he was taking some of
Speaker 1: those rhythmic and melodic ideas that Lewis Armstrong was playing
Speaker 1: on trumpet and literally transposing them to the guitar. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the last number, you guys did, I found a New Baby,
Speaker 1: I know from the rendition that has a great I
Speaker 1: mean probably outside 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 hell to come to remember it
Speaker 1: have happened? Didn't let better than being the one key ending? Nice? Nice? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I do like a love a one
Speaker 1: key ending. I should say, there's like there's there's there's
Speaker 1: this massive sea of music that you know, we could
Speaker 1: have picked from. And I know that Ryan, our glorious
Speaker 1: executive producer, had this huge playlist. He'd so imbibed the
Speaker 1: music of the era. I mean, he actually sent me
Speaker 1: the playlist on Spotify and it was it was horrific.
Speaker 1: It was like, literally, I think if I'd started listening
Speaker 1: to it when he sent it to me, I would
Speaker 1: be way past retirement by the time I got to
Speaker 1: the end of it. But it was a testament to
Speaker 1: just how much he'd kind of soaked up this music,
Speaker 1: and he basically, I think, brought the goalposts in and
Speaker 1: said like, this is this is the kind of tune,
Speaker 1: and this is the area we need to be in,
Speaker 1: which is so you know that and that for us
Speaker 1: is brilliant, and you know, yeah, it was a lovely
Speaker 1: thing to do to be able to play that music,
Speaker 1: not in a kind of trying to slavishly recreate what's
Speaker 1: gone before, but trying to keep yeah, like you say,
Speaker 1: this sort of emotional and narrative beats of the show
Speaker 1: going while still trying to actually orner that music was
Speaker 1: I mean, at that point, Ryan was across the who's
Speaker 1: the exact producer from the show and the rider and
Speaker 1: everything else. He's across the whole kind of narrative arc
Speaker 1: of it. So there are things I just didn't know
Speaker 1: about the show that he would be able to kind
Speaker 1: of lead into. So he definitely he basically dumped us
Speaker 1: in the right ballpark and then let us play around
Speaker 1: in it. Well, you guys mentioned you have a live
Speaker 1: rendition of a song you can do for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: together for you this afternoon, just Sei undead. We thought,
Speaker 1: you know, would be deaf not to Yeah we should.
Speaker 1: I didn't play on the sessions, so now you get
Speaker 1: exposed to my trombone a little bit. What are you
Speaker 1: guys going to going to do the old Gershman standard
Speaker 1: Old Lady Bigot, which I believe is from a musical.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, some long forgotten Broadway show. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: see what happens. Can you count as in? Please Edward
Speaker 1: A one two, one two three four maybe by SKYL
Speaker 1: and D Thank you so much, and music music, thank you,
Speaker 1: Justin