INTERESTING DRUG PODCAST

About “Interesting Drug”

An hour long arts and music podcast playing music related to the arts and with commentary from Adrian Slatcher on what’s going on in Manchester and beyond.

This web page will archive the links and track listings.

And if there’s anything that you think I might like – particularly where there’s an audio element or that’s more unusual, D.I.Y., obscure, avant garde – then drop me a line at adrian(dot)slatcher(at)gmail(dot)com.

Episode 6 – Xmas Edition (Listen Here) 

With a focus on the Basquiat show at the Barbican, this episode looks at the interface between art and music – between uptown and downtown – in early 1980s New York City.
“Four Saints in Three Acts” was an avant garde opera with an all black cast from an earlier era – Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson’s piece was performed in 1933 – and is currently being showcased through contemporary photographs of the performance at the National Photographer’s Gallery.  A run through of other recent cultural events – Ice Cream for Crow as part of Beefheart weekend in Liverpool, Protomartyr live at the Deaf Institute, and the Royal Northern College of Music’s New Music NW festival are all given a mention.

Blondie/Fab Five Freddy – Yuletide Throwdown
Gray – Drum Mode
Kid Creole/Coati Mundi – Que Pasa/Me No Pop I
Thelonious Monk = Bemshi Swing
Virgil Thompson (Composer) – Four Saints in Three Acts (Overture)
House of Bedlam – from The Book of Matthew (More here)
Trio Atem – House of Mazes (More here)
Protomartyr – Don’t Go to Anacita
Neil Young – Revolution Blues
Cheggars Plays Pop

 

Episode 5 (Listen here)

Lots been going on in Manchester from the Literature Festival – and Manchester being awarded UNESCO city of literature status – to the Buy Art Fair and Manchester Contemporary, always one of the highlights in the art calendar; which also saw pop up performances and coincided with the launch of Paradise Works.  Art and books coincided with Joanne Moorehead’s “The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington”. I’ve been to see music legends Adrian Sherwood and the Dream Syndicate, and read Paul Bowles’ classic “The Sheltering Sky”. So quite a varied line up for this latest arts and music podcast.

Creation Rebel – Quante Jubila
Dream Syndicate – Out of My Head
Captain Beefheart – Dali’s Car
Joanne Moorehead – On Leonora Carrington (Full interview here)
King Crimson – The Sheltering Sky
CMMC – Where do the ducks go? (Full piece here)
James Davies – Stack (Full piece here)
Siouxsie and the Banshees – Fireworks
Georgian Choir – Psalm 53 (Aramaic)

Episode 4 (Listen here)

A couple of weeks ago I saw Sven Helbig perform his Pocket Symphonies at HOME with Manchester Camerata with visuals by Chris Paul Daniels – here’s what I thought. More artistic obituaries – John Ashbery and Walter Becker, two great chroniclers of the American condition – died on the same weekend. Next week I’m seeing Chris Krauss talking about her Kathy Acker biography, so remembering one of my favourite writers. With nuclear brinkmanship back in the news I also look at the honourable history of nuclear war songs from the sixties and eighties.

Sven Helbig                        Gone
Sven Helbig                        Urban Perfume
Steely Dan                          Babylon Sisters
John Ashbery                     They Dream Only of America
Kathy Acker                       The adult life of Toulouse Lautrec
Jefferson Airplane            Wooden Ships
Barry Maguire                   Eve of Destruction
Wah!                                   Seven Minutes to Midnight
Kate Bush                           Breathing

Episode 3 (Listen Here) 

A Yoko Ono special focusing on the reissues of her iconic early 70s albums and looking at the long career of this remarkable artist, singer and icon. Plus obituaries for some recent departed stars and reviews of shows at Henry Moore Institute, Tate Liverpool and Turner Contemporary.

John Denver – Picking and Grinning time
Glenn Campbell – Wichita Lineman
Tuxedo Moon – Nazca
Yoko Ono – Why?
Yoko Ono  – Approximate Infinite Universe
Frank Zappa / John Lennon / Yoko Ono – Scumbag
Al Hansen – Car Bippy Piece
Beck and Friends  – All Tomorrow’s Parties
Adrian Slatcher – Reading from Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit
Yoko Ono – New York Woman
Kurt Schwitters – Die Sonata un Urlauten
Patti Smith – Piss Factory

Episode 2 (Listen here)

Its “Festival Season” as Adrian Slatcher’s poem begins the 2nd episode of “Interesting Drug” Manchester’s new arts and music podcast. With Manchester International Festival coming to an end we review one of the festival highlights HOME’s “Returning to Reims” as well as mentions for the Manchester Street Poem and the closing event Ceremony. But its not all about MIF. The musique concrete pioneer Pierre Henry died recently, and we pay tribute, whilst three Icelandic experimental/innovative poets come to the Other Room this week, and Manchester-based artist Rachel Goodyear has a major solo show on at the New Art Gallery Walsall. Should books have soundtracks? Well David Gaffney references plenty of music in “All the Place I’ve Ever Lived” his new novel set in West Cumbria, and we also give a nod to the “Small World” exhibition at PS Mirabel which opened as part of Manifest.

Adrian Slatcher – Festival Season
Francois Hardy – Tout les Garcons et Les Filles
Gil Scott Heron – Whitey’s on the Moon
Pierre Henry – Le Voilee D’Orphee
Jack Underwood & Vala Thorods – Poem
Gavin Briars – Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Underworld – Cowgirl
Rachel Goodyear/Sam Weaver – A Line Fractured into a Thousand Aberrations
Bob Dylan – Corrina Corrina
Teardrop Explodes – Tiny Children
Unknown Lithuanian Band – Blue Monday

Episode 1 (Listen here)

The first episode coincides with the Manchester International Festival and focuses on acts and music that are playing this year, or have done in the past including Kraftwerk, New ORder, Lets Eat Grandma and John Adams.

Also I talk a little about David Bowie and “The Man Who Fell to Earth” soundtrack, MANIFEST arts, Ruby Tingle and David Keenan’s “This is Memorial Device”.

New Order – Elegia
808 State – Pacific
Kraftwerk – The Robots
John Adams – Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Lets Eat Grandma – Deep Six Textbook
Arcade Fire – Abraham’s Daughter
Stomu Yamashota – One Way
Ruby Tingle – Hide
This Heat – 24 Hour Loop
Einsturzende Neubauten – The  Garden