Marco Pirroni’s moment in the sun was big, lucrative but incredibly short. It was under a year from Adam & the Ants’ first hit to their last and immediate break-up. Adam, he remembers, was the perfect writing partner – driven, intensely competitive and with “a pathological fear of only being Number 2”. He’s got no regrets, hasn’t had to do day’s work since, and looks back here at …

… being the first band writing songs for the video age

… “you can’t confuse fans buying records with love, it’s nothing personal”

… Telstar, Fireball XL5, Roxy Music and the “moon-stomping hits of Slade”

… playing covers of songs they didn’t like with Siouxsie at the 100 Club: “punk rock and my part in its downfall”

… Adam’s “Shakespearian tirade” at the legal meeting with Rolf Harris when he sued over Prince Charming and War Canoe

… Malcolm McLaren’s jukebox: the Flamin’ Groovies, Alice Cooper, the Troggs, “songs that weren’t very good”

… “we stopped being a punk band or a pop band or a glam band – or any sort of band at all”

… never tour America when you don’t have a bank account.

Order ‘Your Money Or Your Life’ here: https://tr.ee/P2_qxNZ6jC

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The Specials have officially disbanded, bowing out with a swansong album recorded in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral in 2019. Horace Panter looks back at the first shows they played - when Jim Callaghan was still PM! - and the rigours of mastering ska when some of the group thought it was “old man’s music”. Along with …

… the dignified way for any band to retire

… the 2-Tone tour of 1979 – “like a school trip with no teachers”

… bonding with Terry Hall over comedian Ken Platt: ‘I won't take me coat off, I'm not stoppin'!"

… the day Jerry Dammers came to rehearsal with Prince Buster’s Greatest Hits – “for all your rebellious needs!”

… the poignancy of playing in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral when you start the set with an air-raid siren

… seeing the Faces and Mott the Hoople, “once in my school uniform”

… the sensory overload - “The space! The volume!” - of Led Zeppelin at the Albert Hall when you’re 15 and from Kettering

… “strange to think few people under 60 have ever seen the Specials”

… the bassist he pretended to be when posing in the mirror

... the Bilzen Festival in 1979 “when the chain-link fence was broken down and I came offstage like I was walking on air”

… and creating the 2-Tone look with ex-Mod tonic suits

Order ‘Live From The Cathedral’ here: https://shop.thespecials.islandrecords.com/

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As this week’s news hurtles over the net, we sort the aces from the double-faults. The final score …

… Madonna, Shakira, Chris Martin and World Cup 11-minute half-time overload!

… how many Stones albums were “the best since Exile On Main Street”?

… Kevin Rowland’s heart-breaking songs about Life’s Third Act

… 10 good reasons to miss the Nineties

… Country & Western is about travelling through the vast geography of America. “Go 200 miles in Britain and you fall off the edge”

… Florian Pilkington-Miksa, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond: rock’s real (or invented?) double-barrelled names

… how “travel and never arrive” is the new entertainment experience

… plus Sly Stone’s Babies Makin’ Babies, the comforting cry of “Gambo’s in the building!” and birthday guest Patrick Butler.

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We first saw Kevin in ‘77 wearing jodhpurs onstage with his art-punk band the Killjoys! He’s formed a new version of Dexys, made an album, starts a tour in October, and looks back here at central moments in his life, some recent ones so huge and affecting “that I put them to music” and they’ll be performed as a drama in the first half of these upcoming theatre shows. This touches - in vivid detail - on bands that inspired him, repaired relationships, a health crisis, what it took to be a singer in the first place and what’s requires now to put the show back on the road, along with …

… memories of music before the Beatles

… playing Jim Reeves and Ricky Nelson in a social club band in 1975 “after the bingo”

… the touching shift of power in his relationship with his 102 year-old father: “he was like a child again, he needed me”

… Roxy Music on Top Of The Pops, “I couldn’t believe you could be avant garde AND commercial”

… life on the Top Rank circuit supporting the Specials: “you learnt not to play at an audience but play for them”

… making Searching For The Young Soul Rebels in ten days with producer Pete Wingfield dancing in the studio

… “Come On Eileen doesn’t belong to me anymore”

… the alarming spectacle of an ‘80s Hear & Now package tour and what it taught him

.. the song he wrote for his grandchildren (one of whom is 31)

… a possibly terminal diagnosis in 2024 and “like Wilko Johnson, the relief I felt”

… and the Tim Buckley song he just recorded without knowing who wrote it!

Order the new Dexys album ‘Love’ here: https://dexysofficial.lnk.to/love

And tour tickets here: https://dexys.tmstor.es/Live

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This week’s penalty shoot-out of news sorts the surefire hits from the over-the-bar misses. That final score again …

… what Morrissey’s only gone and done now

… when your logo’s worth than your songs

… Taylor Swift’s wedding and how Sly Stone got there first

… do musicians care about awards?

… Divine Comedy, Jonathan Richman, Fountains of Wayne, Zappa: why are ‘humorous’ records so divisive?

… happy 200th birthday Stephen Foster, the man who invented the pop song!

… and cover versions of his songs you’ll know - Hard Times Come Again No More (Dylan, Springsteen, Emmylou Harris), Beautiful Dreamer (the Beatles), My Old Kentucky Home (Randy Newman), Oh Susannah (James Taylor), Camptown Races and many more

… why comic actors are funnier on TV than in films

… the delicious melancholy of songs about going home

… when did musicians ‘go pro’? Did the Clash or the Faces consider themselves ‘professionals’?

… Oasis, New Order, the Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, Corrie, Man City/Man U, the Smiths: why is Manchester Feud Central?

… plus Margot, Jerry & the take-away curry, and birthday guest Guy Constant.

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The blistering heat of 1976 burnt various things onto the memory – standpipes, strikes, Entebbe, ‘Confessions’ movies, Jeremy Thorpe – but most of all the records that became its soundtrack, some of them revolutionary, others begging for extinction. John L Williams captures the moment in ‘Heatwave: the Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point’ and a paints of picture of a country on the brink of a vast pop-cultural shift. We talk to him here about …

… violence at gigs and football and on Derek & Clive albums

… dumb people pretending to be clever (prog rock) and clever people pretending to be dumb (Ramones)

… the rise of Joan Armatrading in the days before ‘identity’ marketing

… how ‘funny’ t-shirts were the memes of their day

… when Tom Robinson saw the future in Scarborough

… “mainstream culture gave you things to both love and hate”

... how Rock Follies featured an imaginary Blitz Club where people danced in military uniforms

… Andy Summers (with Kevin Ayers) and Stewart Copeland (Curved Air) on the same bill a year before the Police

… why anyone with a Sensational Alex Harvey Band scarf got a wide berth

… Time Out’s headline: "It's the Buzz, Cock!"

… Tom Waits, aged 25, unconvincing hobo-hipster

… and Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Emmanuelle and the lowest point of the Radio One Roadshow.

Order copies of ‘Heatwave’ here: https://tinyurl.com/2kudc6xr

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Nige Tassell fell in love with the literary allusions of Prefab Sprout when at school and his new book ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ tells their unique and inscrutable story – and involves some delightfully off-road “deerstalker” investigation. You’ll find self-sabotage, square pegs in round holes, the eternal pressure to have hits, and a devoted portrait of ringmaster Paddy McAloon that leaves you convinced there’s never been anyone quite like him before or since. This sparks off in a million directions, these among them …

… the lure of bands who'd clearly been to the library and were unlikely to have a huge hit

... Paddy’s stoic defence of their name

… his distaste for “diary songwriting” of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen

… Jesse James, Elvis, Hey Manhattan: the obsession with the romance of America

… the archive of unrecorded songs (one box labelled ‘For Rod Stewart’)

… how the success of The King Of Rock ‘N’ Roll came to haunt them

… the inconceivable moment they appeared on the National Lottery with Bob Monkhouse and Mystic Meg

… pop tribalism on the school bus

… the dreadful circumstance that lead to I Trawl the Megahertz

… Paddy’s visual transformation from tousled pop star to hermetic semi-reclusive Gandalf

… and the fate of the Steve McQueen motorbike.

Order ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ here …

https://linktr.ee/newmodern_books?lt_utm_source=lt_share_link#566128608.

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Tapping the barometer of news to see what’s blistering or stormy, which this week includes …

… “The Man can’t bust our music!”: the crimes and misdemeanours of Clive Davis

… the single biggest change in our lifetimes

... when did musicians become ‘artists’?

… Johnny Marr’s guitar habit

… unlimited cash and what we’d spend it on

… Madonna smoking at Paris Fashion Week hoping someone would try to stop her

… why Dave doesn’t own any Arista records

… which five Paul Simon songs became film titles?

… a Prime Minister who loves ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ by Big Thief!

… 56 year-old takes annual Dark Side of the Moon test: “and I still don’t like it!”

… are there more registered songwriters or lorry drivers?

Plus the biopic boom and birthday guest Andrew Stocks has a senior moment.

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