Word In Your Ear

Scanning the baggage carousel of news to see what sets off the alarm, which this week involves …

… Springsteen: why is America’s most American American so quiet about his President on home turf?

… the Seven Ages of Nepo: in defence of Julian Lennon, Joe Sumner and Brooklyn Beckham

… the Robbie Williams story that gets our goat

… why do half the UK music venues make no profit?

… the onstage ‘act’ that did 104 minutes non-stop

… pre-testing EDM singles on the dancefloor

… Four Boys in the Wind! What A Night That Day Was! - foreign editions of A Hard Day’s Night

… in praise of the Latin Playboys

… the mid-‘60s mystery album that outsold the Beatles

… and we name the root of all ills in popular music!

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Fairport tour again in 2026 and are playing their annual Cropredy Convention in August, its 50th year. The rolling Kent landscape behind him, co-founder Simon Nicol looks back at almost six decades in the line-up, the first shows he ever saw and played, why he can’t wait to get back on the tour bus again, and …

… the intoxication of live music – “lost in a moment that’s never happened before and won’t be repeated”

… Count Basie at the Astoria, aged 7 – “the moulded Turkish ottomans! The massed ranks of brass!”

… December 4 1972, the day he left the band (and why)

… “we’ve been self-governing since we were kicked out in 1979”

… the Ravens in Muswell Hill the night they became the Kinks: “frock coats and hunting boots”

… Professor Bruce Lacey, the mad scientist-inventor celebrated in a Fairport song

… Ashley Hutchings’ Little Black Book where band line-ups were assembled: “like an executive chef who chose the ingredients but didn’t wash up”

… playing Mississippi Fred McDowell and country blues in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra

… narrative songs and the “shoulders-down” rhythms on Music From Big Pink and how Fairport found their identity

… finding obscure Phil Ochs, David Ackles and Joni Mitchell songs for early Fairport

… and the first Cropredy in the village hall in 1976: you can still arrive by barge!

Fairport Convention tour tickets here: https://www.fairportconvention.com/gigs-tours/

Cropredy 2026 tickets here: https://www.fairportconvention.com/tickets/
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Miles Hunt is on tour in 2026 – solo, with Vent 414 and the Wonder Stuff - and looks back here at his 40 years on stage, which involves …

… stifling hecklers the John Lydon way: “the exits are clearly marked!”

… what percussion does to your ears

… “when a tout’s selling your £3 ticket for £50 you know you’ve made it!”

… keytars, flat drums, guitars without headstocks: things that are JUST PLAIN WRONG!

… seeing Slade at Birmingham Town Hall when he was 10

… why the Size Of A Cow was “the moment a lot of our audience thought we’d sold out”

… Hunter S Thompson, Charles Bukowski: books that work on a tour bus

… when drummers ‘cramp up’

… and why he won’t perform Dizzy with Vic Reeves.

Order Miles Hunt and Wonder Stuff tickets here: https://thewonderstuff.co.uk/tour/

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Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake is being reissued on Kenney Jones’ Nice Records, along with unheard outtakes discovered when the original master was found in one of his battered old drum cases. He talks to us here – with the compiler Rob Caiger – about the chaotic construction of the Small Faces’ 1968 masterpiece and his mission to “carry on the legacy”. Are you all sitting comftybold two-square on your botty? Then we’ll begin. Among the highlights …

… the Thames boating accident that inspired the album

… booking Stanley Unwin when Spike Milligan turned them down – and the day Stanley invented ‘Unwinese’

… insomniac days in the band’s Westmoreland Terrace
flat

… the value of Marriott’s stage school background: “he could always ham things up”

… hidden treasures on the original tape – “you hear Steve and Ronnie talking”

… the magic of that fragile tobacco-tin artwork

… possession is nine-tenths of the law!

… Marriott’s wall-banging Chiswick neighbours that inspired Lazy Sunday

… “I’m the only one left and want to carry on the legacy”

… other lost Immediate sessions to be released on Nice Records

Order the Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake expanded 3CD set here, direct from Kenney’s Nice Records imprint: https://www.nicerecords.co.uk/collections/ogdens-nut-gone-flake

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A tie-dyed-in-the-wool rock & roll space odyssey to infinity and beyond which stops off this week at …

… why the Dead’s music was “like lighting a match in the wind”

… Ha Ha Harlem! Rebels Without Applause! – Morrissey song or Lenny Bruce comic routine?

… Sting v Sumner & Copeland and what Every Breath You Take makes daily just from streaming

… is Oasis “the biggest exchange of money for old rope in the history of commerce?”

… rock stars in shorts

… John Hartford and his Willie Nelson Sliding Doors moment

… how Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions became the most hi-tech band on the planet

… Rock ‘babes’ in the Bob Weir mould – eg Michael Clarke of the Byrds, Evan Dando and Mark Gardener from Ride

… has anyone made more by doing less than JJ Burnel on Golden Brown?

... plus Warren Zevon song titles, Mary Coughlan in a coracle and the first records we reviewed for money.

Help us to keep The Longest Conversation In Rock going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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