Crossed Channels with Tony Fletcher and Dan Epstein cover art

Crossed Channels with Tony Fletcher and Dan Epstein

Crossed Channels with Tony Fletcher and Dan Epstein

By: A monthly podcast on which a Yank and a Brit clash and connect over music from both sides of "the pond".
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Join music journalists/biographers/musicians/Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Brit) as they debate and discuss the different ways that certain major bands and artists from their respective homelands have been received on the other side of the pond. In the process, Dan and Tony compare and contrast their own experiences as obsessive music fans growing up in the US and the UK.

tonyfletcher.substack.comTony Fletcher Art Entertainment & Performing Arts Music
Episodes
  • Jive Talkin' About The Bee Gees' Main Course

    Jive Talkin' About The Bee Gees' Main Course
    Oct 29 2026
    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit tonyfletcher.substack.comWelcome back to the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the “Yank”) and Tony Fletcher (the “Limey”) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond. And this 33rd episode definitely finds us clashing more that connecting.Dan returns to the podcast after last month’s unexpected absence, during which his fill-in was no less than Grasshopper from Mercury Rev. At his suggestion, we’re tackling one of the best-selling groups of all time: The Bee Gees and the 1975 album that brought them back into the mainstream: Main Course.Born on the UK’s Isle of Man, and raised in Manchester before their family emigrated to Australia in 1958, brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb began performing live together in 1957, when Barry was 11 years old and his twin younger brothers were on the verge of turning eight. After releasing their first single in 1963, the trio went on to sell hundreds of millions of records worldwide, and rack up nine #1 singles in the US — a number only surpassed by The Beatles and The Supremes.One of those chart-toppers, 1975’s “Jive Talkin’,” returned the Gibbs from commercial oblivion after several years in the wilderness. It hailed from this episode’s subject matter, Main Course, which spawned two other major US hits: “Nights On Broadway,” which peaked at #7, and “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)” — or “Love (Be Tender With My Fanny),” as Dan prefers to call it — which reached #12.Produced at Miami’s Criteria Studios by Arif Mardin — who had recently helmed the self-titled second album by Scottish funk-soul ensemble Average White Band — and influenced by the funky sounds coming out of Miami at the time, Main Course sent the The Bee Gees in a new, dancefloor-oriented direction, one marked by Barry’s newly discovered flair for falsetto singing. The album reached #14 on the Billboard 200 (their highest-charting US LP since 1968’s Horizontal), selling over half a million copies by year’s end, and put the group on a course that would eventually lead to Saturday Night Fever’s multi-platinum success.Will Dan sufficiently make a case for the album’s enduring greatness, and convince Tony to put his Saturday Night Fever baggage aside and judge the album on its own considerable merits? Will Tony find listening to Main Course as excruciatingly painful as Dan found his forced march through the post-reunion James catalog in Episode 12? And which Bee Gees single will Tony actually cop to owning? Tune in to find out!As always, the first 10 or so minutes of this episode are free for all to hear. But to listen to this episode in its entirety, along with all of our previous complete CROSSED CHANNELS episodes, just sign up for a paid subscription to one of our Substacks — or, better yet, sign up for a paid subscription to both of them! tonyfletcher.substack.com danepstein.substack.comBy doing so, you will not only get a new episode of CROSSED CHANNELS every month in your inbox, but also receive other exclusive posts from each of us, as well as full-time access to all the good stuff in our respective archives. Plus, your monthly paid subscription will allow us to afford our monthly post-recording repast over at one of our many fine (or at least decent enough) Asian eateries!Remember — CROSSED CHANNELS, unlike most podcasts, does not take ads; we value your intelligence too highly to subject you to that sort of thing. And if you are already a paid subscriber to one or both of our Substacks, THANK YOU. We appreciate it more than you can know! (And please feel free to leave your reactions to this episode — as well as suggestions for future topics — in the comments!)Theme music in this episode is Blue Diamond Fire by Dan's music project The Corinthian Columns.
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    12 mins
  • Mercury Rev’s Grasshopper on conquering Europe – while remaining strangers at home.

    Mercury Rev’s Grasshopper on conquering Europe – while remaining strangers at home.
    Oct 1 2026
    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit tonyfletcher.substack.comWelcome back to the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the “Yank”) and Tony Fletcher (the “Limey”) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond. Dan had an enforced absence for this episode; fortunately, we had already arranged for a first ever special guest to join us in the studio.Mercury Rev formed in the late 1980s around the State University in Buffalo, on the northern edges of New York State, after Grasshopper, a local resident and guitarist/clarinetist/saxophonist, met burgeoning singer and guitarist Jonathan Donahue, who had been born downstate in Kingston Hospital. The group’s early 1990s albums Yerself Is Steam and Boces were celebrated for drug-influenced freakout abandon, gaining the group a foothold in the UK due to the act’s successful hunt for a label there.However, following a major line-up change that trimmed Mercury Rev down to a permanent core of Donahue and Mackowiak, their 1995 album See You On The Other Side, for all that it was more composed and musical, highlighting Donahue’s beautiful falsetto, failed to catch on during the UK’s manic Cool Brittania period, and American audiences continued to prove resistant to the group’s charms. As such, and despite landing a new deal with a new record label, V2 in England, the duo approached what would become their 1998 opus Deserter’s Songs as “a last-ditch effort.”Instead, the album - which embraced an almost symphonic approach to arrangements while streamlining the group’s melodies, resulting in a dreamscape rock music with little by way of easy comparison - won instant accolades in the UK press, whose collective and individual critics’ charts Deserter’s Songs largely topped at the end of that year. Videos by Anton Corbijn helped solidify the group’s artistic appeal (see the Catskills-shot “guerilla video” for “Goddess on a Hiway” below), and consistent touring accompanied by equally ecstatic live reviews resulted in Deserter’s Songs going top 40 across Europe. Yet despite good press in the States and the presence on the album of The Band’s alumni Levon Helm and Garth Hudson, both Catskills residents at the time, Deserter’s Songs failed to connect widely in the States.In this special episode, Grasshopper discusses all of the above and more: why the group got thrown off Lollapalooza 93 and a subsequent Dinosaur Jr. tour, the truth behind him supposedly checking into a monastery for five months, why the mass breakthrough of Deserter’s Songs in the UK proved such a surprise, the reasons for the belated US success of their 2019 album Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited, whether the Catskills are truly “cosmic,” and why the group never played in Kingston itself until a local festival appearance at the Old Dutch Church in 2022.As always, the first 10 or so minutes of this episode are free for all to hear. But to listen to this episode in its entirety, along with all of our previous complete CROSSED CHANNELS episodes, just sign up for a paid subscription to one of our Substacks — or, better yet, sign up for a paid subscription to both of them!By doing so, you will not only get a new episode of CROSSED CHANNELS every month in your inbox, but also receive other exclusive posts from each of us, as well as full-time access to all the good stuff in our respective archives.Remember — CROSSED CHANNELS, unlike most podcasts, does not take ads; we value your intelligence too highly to subject you to that sort of thing. And if you are already a paid subscriber to one or both of our Substacks, THANK YOU. We appreciate it more than you can know!tonyfletcher.substack.comdanepstein.substack.comTheme music is "Blue Diamond Fire" by Dan's musical project The Corinthian Columns. (Tony's main musical project is The Dear Boys.)
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    14 mins
  • Unlocked! The Who Take on US and Win, 1967-69

    Unlocked! The Who Take on US and Win, 1967-69
    Sep 3 2026
    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit tonyfletcher.substack.com

    In this 19th episode of CROSSED CHANNELS, we flashed back to 1967, the year The Who played their first North American gigs. The band’s inaugural US performance took place on March 26, that year, where they promoted “Happy Jack” — their first real US hit — with a brief but brutal set as one of a dozen or so attractions on Murray the K’s “Music in the Fifth Dimension” show at midtown Manhattan’s RKO Theater.

    But while no one who saw their Murray the K shows (a nine-day stint during which they performed up to five times a day) would ever forget the experience, The Who would make a greater and more lasting mark in the US with their show-stopping appearance that June at the Monterey International Pop Festival, their grueling two months on the road spent opening for Herman’s Hermits at fairgrounds, auditoriums and stadiums across North America, and their quite literally explosive performance that September on CBS Television’s The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

    The band’s hard graft paid off, earning them their first US Top 10 hit with “I Can See For Miles,” which reached #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 that November. But even as The Who were slowly muscling their way to stardom in the US, they seemed in grave danger of fading away in their homeland. “I Can See For Miles,” which peaked at #10 in the UK, was their poorest-selling new single of original material in over two years, and their brilliant 1967 LP The Who Sell Out only reached #13 on the British album charts. Sounding woefully out of place amid the changes in the UK pop scene, the band’s three 1968 singles — “Call Me Lightning,” “Dogs” and “Magic Bus” — wouldn’t even manage to crack the UK Top 20. Throw in the massive debts the band had accrued by regularly trashing their equipment onstage, and The Who were in deep trouble…

    However, as we discuss, The Who’s burgeoning popularity in the US not only helped to keep the band afloat during this uncertain period, but also set the stage for their breakthrough 1969 album Tommy and the band’s legendary appearance at Woodstock. “If it wasn’t for America there would be no Who,” says Max Ker-Seymer, a friend of the podcast who has seen The Who in concert over a longer period than anyone still attending their shows… and we’re very much inclined to agree.

    Given that The Who’s 1967-1969 visits to North America also included such infamous incidents as Pete Townshend’s bad acid trip on the flight home from Monterey, Keith Moon’s raucous 21st birthday party at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan, and the concert with The Doors at New York’s Singer Bowl that inspired Townshend to write “Sally Simpson,” there was no shortage of material for Dan and I to touch upon; indeed, this nearly 90-minute episode could have easily stretched to nine hours.

    CROSSED CHANNELS can be heard both on our Substack pages or via your preferred podcast app. In previous episodes we have discussed everyone from Siouxsie & The Banshees to Parliament, Sweet to Otis Redding, The Jam to The Ramones, The Clash to Blondie, Kate Bush to the Raspberries - but always with a transatlantic angle. Fully paid-up subscribers to either Dan Jagged Time Lapse or Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith get all the 31 episodes, plus our exclusive previously unpublished interviews and access to all the archives all of the time. That is danepstein.substack.com or tonyfletcher.substack.com.

    Remember: neither our podcast nor our published posts take any form of advertising. We rely totally on your support.

    And all this for the price of a vegan iced chai latte at the going rate in Bed-Stuy (Do or Die), Brooklyn.
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    1 hr and 24 mins
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