Longtime Ago people

Tag: rock

  • The Count of Lanzarote

    When I sit down with Rhys, I’m taken straight back to that long, hot summer of 1976, and the surreal first day at Bembridge School when only two pupils turned up to class. That odd little set‑up forced an instant friendship — a mix of mischief, loyalty, and a world where tastes form fast and memories stick. For anyone who loves coming‑of‑age stories, school nostalgia, or the way music bonds people, this conversation shows how one tiny moment can steer decades. The jokes about being “second in a class of two” land because they’re true, and they frame a bigger point about identity, belonging, and meeting the right person at the right time.

    The heart of our chat is music discovery — especially the shock of late‑70s punk rock crashing into the soundtrack of parents’ records. We move from chart‑toppers to the deeper stuff that becomes yours: first singles bought with pocket money, first album obsessions, and the thrill of hearing The Jam hit number one. There’s a brilliant snapshot of British youth culture: Radio Luxembourg under the pillow, taping the Top 40, swapping chapel hymns for Sex Pistols lyrics, and that moment when one band makes you abandon the respectable path of learning instruments properly. It’s a rich dive into 1970s UK music, punk history, classic rock, and how musical taste evolves.

    But the stories widen beyond the records into the life that music sits inside. Rhys’s background brushes up against famous names through chance and graft: Beatles encounters in Bembridge, fitting floors for high‑profile clients, and a day spent watching Madness record while a job ran massively over, I wonder why! That blend of hard work and proximity to pop culture feels very British, and it highlights something important: you don’t have to be a performer to live close to art. We talk Live Aid, gig memorabilia, and the way concerts become personal archives — emotional markers in a life.

    A major modern turn comes with Monster Radio Lanzarote, the community station Rhys helps run — built on personality, not playlists. He talks about taking over after a friend’s illness, growing the presenting team, paying royalties, following broadcast rules, and using an app to reach listeners around the world. For anyone curious about online radio, FM community stations, or building audience engagement, there’s gold here: interactivity, requests, giveaways, and the charities that make a station part of daily island life. There’s even a nod to pirate‑radio history and the enduring romance of DJs with aliases.

    The most human moment comes when the laughter gives way to grief and resilience. Rhys talks openly about the losses his family has carried, and the way his mum continues to show up with warmth and energy. That honesty reframes everything: music isn’t trivia — it’s how we cope, remember, and reconnect. By the end, the conversation turns reflective with a question every listener can steal: if you could play one song to your youngest self, what would it be — and what would you want that kid to feel? We close with festival tears, a Boomtown Rats moment, and pure Walkman wonder, tying the whole episode to one truth: the songs we keep are the stories we keep.

  • Ziggy To Blackstar: How David Bowie Shaped A Generation

    When I sat down with Rupert, I found myself returning to a simple truth: David Bowie isn’t just an artist who makes music, he’s someone who rearranges your sense of time. That idea runs through our whole conversation. We start with that first electric jolt of hearing Space Oddity on the radio, and the life‑altering flash of seeing Starman on Top of the Pops. From there, we trace a path from teenage bedrooms and borrowed records to a shared language of style, friendship and risk. Bowie’s songs were never just hooks or textures; they were permission slips. Wear the colour. Change the hair. Try the other door. That sense of permission grew into a habit of curiosity that shaped choices far beyond playlists and posters.

    The 1972 eruption of Ziggy felt like a cultural gear change, but what Rupert and I kept circling was Bowie’s restless method. Reinvention wasn’t a stunt; it was a craft. The whole Ziggy cycle showed how character can become a container for ideas, while the American pivot of Young Americans reminded us that influence always runs both ways. Then came the Berlin years, where Low and “Heroes” turned the studio into a kind of laboratory, a place where silence and signal mattered as much as chorus. Those records still sound modern because they carve out space. Eno’s textures, Fripp’s wire, the pulse of Always Crashing in the Same Car — they evoke cities, rail lines, and the mind’s widescreen on cold mornings.

    We also talk about how Bowie’s choices seeped into daily life. Station to Station didn’t just play at parties; it edited how we walked into a room. The fashion cues — short hair, a neat shirt, a cigarette with a European name — telegraphed focus. Then came the 80s pivot: Let’s Dance, a clean‑lined pop engine that put him on stadium walls and in living rooms that had never bought a Bowie record. Whether you see those years as peak or compromise, they proved he could command the middle without dulling the edge. And Live Aid compressed that charisma into minutes — a reminder that presence is an instrument.

    There’s a tender thread running through all of this, too: the way songs become companions you carry into trains, kitchens and quiet moments. The late works sharpened that intimacy. The Next Day rekindled the spark, but Blackstar is the masterstroke – restless, cryptic, and generous with its final truths. Hearing it on release felt like receiving a coded letter you somehow understood. Mortality glints through Lazarus without melodrama; the band’s jazz angles keep the mind alert while the heart reads between the lines. Bowie’s integrity under pressure – his refusal to trade mystery for ease – remains a model for how to work when time is no longer abstract.

    Choosing five tracks is impossible, of course, but the impulse to choose is revealing. People reach for Life on Mars? when they crave wonder, for Rebel Rebel when they need friction, for “Heroes” when they want to stand a little taller. Others dig into the deeper cuts — Joe the Lion, Some Are, Always Crashing in the Same Car — because Bowie rewards attention with new rooms. His catalogue hides these doorways in plain sight, and every return visit redraws the map. That’s the durable gift: a body of work that keeps us curious, honest, and just a bit brave. In the end, we keep coming back because the songs keep finding ways to meet us where we are — and to walk a step ahead.