Inspired by the fact I start each morning walking my dog Bella while listening to podcasts, I was curious to find out what my friends and colleagues were listening to while in lockdown…
I had so many responses, that I’ve put everyone’s replies in alphabetical order by surname. Here’s part 2 of “Favourite Podcasts of the Music Industry”. You can find part 1 here.
Amy Little – Music & Label Services Manager – West One Music
I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts and weirdly none of them are music based. I think the theme throughout is interesting conversations with interesting people. Or is that just the essence of a good podcast?
- Happy Place with Fearne Cotton
- WTF with Marc Maron
- The Adam Buxton Podcast
- How to Fail with Elizabeth Day
- Walking the Dog with Emily Dean
- Bryony Gordon’s Mad World
- The Guilty Feminist with Deborah Frances-White
- Off Menu with Ed Gamble & James Acaster
- RHLSTP with Richard Herring
- Feminists Don’t Wear Pink with Scarlett Curtis
- Under The Skin with Russell Brand
And a new one I’m looking forward to:
- Grounded with Louis Theroux
I’m not much of a podcast listener, but my recommendations would be:
- Have You Heard George’s Podcast? by George The Poet
- Distraction Pieces Podcast with Scroobius Pip
- The Commons Library Podcast
Tanya Mellotte – Songwriter, vocalist & producer
Podcasts:
Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review (BBC Radio 5 Live)
Hanging Out With Audiophiles (Jamie Lidell)
The Archers Omnibus (BBC Radio 4)
Albums:
Cornershop – England is a Garden (Ample Play Records)
Richard Dawson – 2020 (Domino Recording Co)
Careerist – Weird Hill (Pizza Pizza Records)
Savak – Rotting Teeth in the Horse’s Mouth (Ernest Jenning Record Co)
Keith Millar – Nation Manager (Northern Ireland) – Help Musicians
I tend to use podcasts to take myself away from my day to day work in music and burrow into my other interests.
Music:
- The Irish Music Industry Podcast
- Elevate Music Podcast (Help Musicians’ inhouse music and wellness podcast)
- CMU’s Setlist Podcast
- Nialler 9 Podcast
- ATL Introducing: Real Talk
- Folk & Lore (NI musician, Andrew Farmer interviews NI creators of all kinds against a backdrop poetry, landscape & song)
Music-adjacent:
- The Blindboy Podcast (top rated Irish podcast by Blindboy from Irish hip hip absurdist group, The Rubber Bandits)
- Mad Notions Podcast (NI Musicians, Nathan O’Regan & Son Of The Hound discuss life as musicians & urban legends music in full on comedic fashion)
- Andy That’s In the Bonnevilles Podcast (Andy from NI rockers The Bonnevilles discusses music & politics)
Non-Music:
- Stuff You Should Know (Josh & Chuck exhaustively discuss randomly chosen topics each week, educational)
- Comic Geek Speak (comicbook news and reviews)
- Fatman Beyond (director/nerd, Kevin Smith, and writer, Mark Bernardin discuss movies, TV, comicbooks, etc)
- Lore (unsettling stories of weird history & folklore)
- The Irish History Podcast
- The Paul Kirtley Podcast (outdoors & bushcraft)
- The Comic Conspiracy (comicbook podcast from a comic shop in California)
- The Chauncey DeVega Show (US left-wing political commentary)
- Stegman & His Amazing Friends (comicbook creators talk comics)
- iFanboy (comicbook reviews/discussion/interviews)
- The Iain Abernethy Podcast (Practical application of karate & karate training)
The podcast I’m involved in is comicbook-related – I’m associated with a local comic shop here in Belfast called Coffee & Heroes in Smithfield Market – every week the shop owners, Alan & Vicki; local comic writer, Roddy McCance and myself review recent releases, preview upcoming books, spotlight favourites in our bookclub or interview creators (search: Coffee & Heroes Podcast, we’re on Spotify and all over).
Mark Millar – Music Journalist – XS Noize
- Tea With Me by Shane Todd
- Phil Taggarts Slacker Podcast
- Best Of Belfast
- The 500 with Josh Adam Myers
Harriet Moss – Managing Director – Manners McDade
I’ve been working on my Italian in this time, and trying to do a good few exercises on Duolingo every morning to start the day. Coffee Break Italian is a great podcast for this too. I’m missing Italy so much and thinking of everyone there, and of course didn’t manage to get home there for Easter as I usually would, so there’s some comfort in hearing it spoken, and it’s a lovely casual podcast.
I guess my podcast isn’t musical as I’m still listening to so much music for work in lockdown – lots of creativity in this time meaning new music from our composers, or delving into old favourites! Which is why we’ve started Album of the Week & Score of the Week on our socials in this time – I highly recommend checking them out.
The only podcasts I regularly listen to are Sam Harris’s ‘Making Sense’ which features great guests and is particularly good to fall asleep to at night!
Also I think Adam Buxton is funny without trying too hard and I like his homemade jingles. Other than those two, I mostly listen to comedy and science programmes on the BBC – my favourite being Cabin Pressure by John Finnimore.
Simon Platz – Managing Director – Bucks Music Group
The only podcast I am listening to is Jonathan Pie… I dip in to many others but not on a regular basis….
Ryan Vail – Musician/Composer/Producer
Favourite albums during lockdown:
- St Germain – Tourist
- Portishead – Dummy
- Peter Broderick – It Starts Here
- Max Richter – Blue Note Books
I regularly listen to the brilliant Bob Mortimer and Andy Parsons podcast Athletico Mince and Club Parsnips. In fact comedy in general is my lifeline during lockdown. Hawksbee and Jacobs Clips of the Week on Talksport is always good for a giggle.
To be honest, I’m obsessed with audiobooks, so I can recommend several of those…
- Nomad by Alan Partridge – faux autobiography
- Me Moir by Vic Reeves
- Ayoade on Ayoade by Richard Ayoade
- I regress by Matt Berry
- 21 lessons for the 21st century bu Yuval Harari
- Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Sheridan’s favourite podcasts.
I’m looking forward to checking these out in the coming weeks, but in the meantime here’s a few that I’ve been enjoying.
- Men in Blazers – My favourite podcast has nothing to do with music or news. Roger Bennett and Michael Davies broadcast from the ‘crap part of Soho’ New York and the ‘crap part of West Hollywood’ Los Angeles. Their humorous take on life & sporting life in the USA and UK is inspiring and refreshing. This weekly pod centres on the English Premier League. At the moment during lockdown Rog is doing a daily pod. I used their tee-shirt for my banner image! #GFOP Great Friends of the Pod
- The Daily from the New York Times – a really well crafted deep dive into a daily topic…I like to start my dog walk with one of these.
- Mad Notions – Sometimes I just crave a bit of Northern Ireland banter and Mad Notions from Derry-based musicians Nick McCullagh and Nathan O’Regan just cracks me up. Their recent pod with Derry band The Wood Burning Savages frontman Paul Connolly had me in stitches. It does come with a parental guidance warning!
I also like to dip in and out of three music podcasts…
- Soundtracking with Edith Bowman – she always asked the right questions.
- Song Exploder – They breakdown mostly pop songs into their elements and how they were composed and have featured the occasional television theme tune. A fascinating one was the ‘House of Cards’ theme by Jeff Beal.
- Score The Podcast – Lovely composer interviews, the one with composer Hildur Guðnadóttir is excellent.. And finally…
So if you’ve got this far, you’ve never listened to a podcast and still don’t know where to start. This podcast was my ‘gateway drug’ into podcasts and it has now become a classic (with really good music by Daniel Hart, Matt Ginley, Heldado Negro and Trey Pollard).
You need to listen to about three of the episodes and then you will be hooked…enjoy!
S-Town from Serial and This American Life
Thank you to everyone who contributed and my wife for introducing me to the world of podcasts.
The tee shirt used in the banner image on my Moog keyboard is from the Men in Blazers Baldmart store.