Political Beats

Scot and Jeff discuss The Apples in Stereo with Jack Butler.

Introducing the Band:

Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Jack Butler. Jack is deputy editor for Free Expression, a new newsletter about politics and culture from the Wall Street Journal opinion page. Previously he was submissions editor for National Review Online. You can follow him on Twitter/x @jackbutler4815. And unless you're a 2:30 marathoner, you probably can't follow him in real life — unless he lets you. 

Jack’s Music Pick: The Apples in Stereo

Get ready for sunshine melodies, fuzzed-out guitars, and pure pop sweetness, because we’re diving into the colorful world of The Apples in Stereo. On this episode, we walk through the band’s discography album by album, tracing how Robert Schneider and company blended psychedelia, power pop, and a DIY spirit into a signature sound. You might not be familiar with the band (yet), but you know the influences -- The Beatles, ELO, XTC, Pavement, Guided by Voices, The Beach Boys.

We travel from the lo-fi charm of Fun Trick Noisemaker to the "space disco" feel of Travellers in Space and Time. Along the way, Scot takes the proper time to pay tribute to an all-time favorite album, New Magnetic Wonder, and we discuss the unorthodox ways the band found its way into children’s programming. Plus Hilarie Sidney gets her due as an excellent and underrated singer, songwriter, and drummer. 

Schneider’s interest in science, space, and sound influenced the band’s later work specifically, with conceptual elements and unconventional recording approaches shaping their music. New Magnetic Wonder even touts Schneider's invention of a new musical scale: the "Non-Pythagorean scale" (he’s now a mathematics professor at Michigan Tech University, so it all makes sense in the end). 

Throughout the years, the band kept pushing forward without losing a sense of wonder and experimentation that defined their earliest work and refined their ability to create hooks and melodies that lodge inside your brain for weeks at a time. And you can’t tell the story of The Apples in Stereo without diving into the world of the Elephant 6 Recording Company, the loose collective of like-minded musicians that helped spark an indie-pop movement in the ’90s. Jack takes the lead in describing this element of the show.

This episode is a celebration of melody, creativity, and the joy of making something delightfully strange. It’ll fill you with energy. Can you feel it?

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Scot and Jeff discuss Deep Purple with Ivan Pongracic.

Introducing the Band:

Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Ivan Pongracic, William E. Hibbs & Ludwig von Mises professor of Economics at Hillsdale College. Ivan has a career nearly as storied as Deep Purple’s -- a 1984 immigrant from the former Yugoslavia (Croatia, specifically), an accomplished professional surf guitarist, and now economics professor at Hillsdale.

Ivan’s Music Pick: Deep Purple

Get your jackhammers out boys, it’s time to carve the story of rock into a mountainside. Yes, Deep Purple went through many evolutions during their career (which still persists to this day), but what they will forever be synonymous with -- in the best possible way -- is bone-crunching, riff-driven hard rock. 

The gang -- Ivan and Jeff especially -- argue that Deep Purple was in fact the platonic ideal of whatever it is we’ve come to apply the broad label of “hard rock” to over the past half-century: compulsively driven, secretly smart music that combined steady beats and metallic shredding with formal (and often British-inspired) commitment to structure and hooks. Deep Purple may have gone through a goofy -- and shockingly interesting -- embryonic phase as Vanilla Fudge-like pop crooners, but when they finally emerged with Deep Purple in Rock (1970) they created a template that legions of bands would slavishly dedicate themselves to imitating (not least of all Spinal Tap, whose story is largely theirs, remixed). 

You know them from “Smoke on the Water.” Maybe you’ve heard that song about space truckin’ ‘round the stars. What we’re here to prove to you today is that Deep Purple is so much more than what you might have casually heard. In their unpretentious, hard-driving way, they provided the matrix of countless bands that followed after them, and all for the better. Click play and become the speed king you always wanted to be.

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Scot and Jeff discuss The Strokes with Christopher Scalia.
Introducing the Band:
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Christopher Scalia. Chris is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (But Probably Haven't Read), a perfect Christmas gift for your favorite person. Find him on X at @CJScalia.
Christopher’s Music Pick: The Strokes
The Strokes emerged at the beginning of the 2000s with a sound that felt both familiar and bracingly new. Drawing on punk, garage rock, and even classic new wave, they stripped things down to tight guitars, propulsive rhythms, and songs that valued economy over excess (at least for a time). Is This It quickly became a defining album of its era, with tracks like “Last Nite,” “Someday,” and “Hard to Explain” setting a template that would influence an entire wave of bands that followed.
In this episode, we walk through the band’s discography from start to finish, looking closely at how their sound and approach evolved over time. We move from the focused urgency of Room on Fire to the more expansive ambitions of First Impressions of Earth, the occasional experiments on Angles and Comedown Machine, and the late-career recalibration that arrived with The New Abnormal. Along the way, we also talk about the personalities and dynamics that shaped the band’s output, from Julian Casablancas’s distorted vocal style to the tight, interlocking guitar work of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. 
You'll better understand how The Strokes’s career actually unfolded. Why some records landed immediately, why others took longer to be reassessed, and how the band managed to remain relevant without simply repeating themselves. In the end, this is less about hype or revival and more about what remains when you line the records up and actually listen.
The Strokes’s story is also about timing and context: arriving when rock music was bloated, polished, and often self-serious, and offering something leaner and more immediate in response. That initial impact cast a long shadow over everything that followed. This episode tries to sort out how much of their legacy rests on that first run of songs, and how much comes from the quieter, sometimes messier work of sticking around and continuing to make records on their own terms.

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Scot and Jeff discuss Van Halen with Sean Trende.
Introducing the Band:
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Sean Trende. Sean is senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His new podcast with co-host (and fellow Political Beats guest) Jay Cost, is Stubborn Things. Find him on X at @SeanTrende.
Sean’s Music Pick: Van Halen
Wait, haven’t we covered Van Halen before? Indeed, we have. Way back when on Episode One. This is a complete re-recording of that show, giving these guys the coverage they deserve. At the beginning, frankly, we weren't exactly sure how the show was going to sound. Now that we’ve figured things out, Van Halen gets its due.
Few bands rewired rock ‘n’ roll the way these guys did, and fewer still made it look so fun. From the moment Eddie unleashed the lightning bolt that is “Eruption,” the landscape of guitar playing, and rock music itself, changed forever. In this episode, we set the stage for the band’s rise, the L.A. club days, and the swagger that defined their early sound.
We start with the raw, unstoppable energy of Van Halen and Van Halen II. Then it’s into the darker edge of Fair Warning and the pop-metal perfection of 1984, complete with “Panama,” “Hot for Teacher,” and the synthesizer-powered “Jump.” Then David Lee Roth leaves and ends our story.
No, of course not! We explore the band’s bold reinvention during the Sammy Hagar years, when albums like 5150, OU812, and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge pushed Van Halen into new sonic territory and to the top of the charts again. Songs like “Best of Both Worlds,” “Love Walks In,” and “Right Now” proved the band could evolve while still keeping that unmistakable Van Halen spark.
Along the way, we dig into the stories behind the music  some of these are big fun) and examine how the band’s combustible chemistry created not just drama, but brilliance. And we talk about the lineup changes, tours, reunions, breakups, and makeups. Gary Cherone even gets a mention.
Join us as we explore the thunderous riffs, the outrageous personalities, and the sheer fun that made Van Halen one of rock’s most iconic bands.

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Scot and Jeff discuss Iggy Pop & the Stooges with Dominic Green.
Introducing the Band:
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Dominic Green. Dom is a historian and columnist, and he used to be a musician. He is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and a columnist for the Washington Examiner and Jewish Chronicle. Check him out on Twitter at @DrDominicGreen.

Dominic’s Music Pick: Iggy Pop & the Stooges
Looooooooooord! When Dominic last joined us on Political Beats, to discuss the great U.K. band The Jam, we declared it to be in some ways one of the most necessary episodes of the show ever. (It was.) He has chosen to return to us this month with another one of the most necessary shows we have recorded, a deep dive into the true foundations of punk.
Did "punk" music begin with the Sex Pistols in 1976? With the Velvet Underground in 1966? No. Whatever else you may think punk should be, or whatever else it evolved into, the true musical spirit of punk begins with the Stooges' 1969 debut album, a record of such throbbingly feral loudness, rage, and inarticulate energy that it seemed like the sound of cavemen bashing upon logs. 
And yet the Stooges -- led by Ypsilanti, Michigan's own James Osterberg, better known to the world as Iggy Pop -- were both primitive and neo-primitivist simultaneously: maybe the first band whose garage-rock aesthetics were both authentic and also an intentional artistic proposition. Iggy Pop -- working with the Ashton brothers and later James Williamson -- sought to strip rock and roll to its rawest, most inchoate essentials, and succeeded so wildly that an entire subgenre of music reveres him as their founding father.
And then, of course, there's his work with David Bowie in the late Seventies, where both men creatively resurrected themselves. Buckle up for a brisk roller-coaster of an episode, folks -- embrace your lust for life.

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