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Martin Bandyke Under Covers for December 2022: Martin interviews Mitchell Cohen, author of Looking for the Magic: New York City, the ‘70s and the Rise of Arista Records.
Looking for the Magic is a cultural-historical remix, a fresh perspective on how Arista Records reflected its place and time, New York in the 1970s and early 1980s. Through interviews with dozens of artists and executives, music journalist Mitchell Cohen goes inside the business of making and marketing music during this vibrant and diverse period. Under Clive Davis, rock, pop, punk, jazz, R&B, disco, cabaret and Broadway were all represented on Arista. The label sounded like the city it was at the geographical center of.
From its inception as a new entity built on the pop and soul foundation of Bell Records, to groundbreaking artists like Gil Scott-Heron and Patti Smith, to revitalized legends like the Kinks and Aretha Franklin, up to its launching of its biggest star, Whitney Houston, Arista Records’ story has never been told like this. Looking for the Magic covers the wide scope of the label’s roster: its giant pop successes (Barry Manilow), its dedication to cutting-edge jazz (Anthony Braxton) and its embrace of rock royalty (Lou Reed, the Grateful Dead).
Mitchell Cohen has written about music and film for Creem, High Fidelity, Film Comment, the Village Voice, Musician and Phonograph Record. He began working at Arista Records in the late ‘70s as a publicity and advertising copywriter and then as one of the label’s A&R executives.
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Presenting Alfred Hitchcock Presents #49 - Jonathan
Presenting Alfred Hitchcock Presents is a podcast dedicated to examining each episode of the original "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television series, show by show in chronological order. In this installment, Gil wants to know how his stepmother, Rosine, managed to murder his father, Jonathan. Little does he know that he had something to do with it himself.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers for November 2022: Martin interviews Lesley-Ann Jones, author of The Stone Age: Sixty Years of The Rolling Stones.
On 12th July 1962, the Rollin’ Stones performed their first-ever gig at London’s Marquee jazz club. Down the line, a ‘g’ was added, a spark was lit and their destiny was sealed. No going back.
These five white British kids set out to play the music of black America. They honed a style that bled bluesy undertones into dark insinuations of women, sex, and drugs. Denounced as ‘corruptors of youth’ and ‘messengers of the devil,’ they created some of the most thrilling music ever recorded.
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What Scares Us - Episode 5: The Orphanage
"A hugely catastrophic bummer of a story."
Join us for a deep dive into The Orphanage, a 2007 Spanish gothic supernatural horror movie directed by J.A. Bayona. In this episode: We visit Tomas' Office of Child Trickery, Matt marvels over mid-2000s lens flares, and Christopher invites us to his next Spanish orphanage-themed party.
If you like what you heard today and want to let us know you can email us at WhatScaresUs@aadl.org. And for more episodes check out https://aadl.org/whatscaresus.
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Presenting Alfred Hitchcock Presents #48 - Crack of Doom
Presenting Alfred Hitchcock Presents is a podcast dedicated to examining each episode of the original "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television series, show by show in chronological order. In this installment, Mason Bridges has always been an honest man...except once when, thanks to poker, for a few hours, he was a thief. But when is a thief a thief?
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers for October 2022: Martin interviews Dennis Duncan, author of Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age, by Dennis Duncan
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book―it’s just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history -- a New York Times Editors' Choice Book -- hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In Index, A History of the, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past.
Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Duncan uncovers how it has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office, and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists’ living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and―of course―indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart―and we have been for eight hundred years.
Martin’s interview with Dennis Duncan was recorded on March 10th, 2022.
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What Scares Us - Episode 4: The Fog
Join us for a deep dive into The Fog, a 1980 supernatural horror written and directed by John Carpenter and co-written and produced by Debra Hill. In this episode: We get a nighttime delivery of stomach pounders, encounter some very polite ghost pirates, and listen to the smooth voice of local hot mom Stevie Wayne.
If you like what you heard today and want to let us know you can email us at WhatScaresUs@aadl.org. For more episodes, check out https://aadl.org/whatscaresus.
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What Scares Us - Episode 3: The Bad Seed
"Are you going to brain one of us?". Join us for a deep dive into The Bad Seed, a 1956 psychological thriller directed by Mervin LeRoy and based on the novel by William March. In this episode: We dunk on Christine, discuss the dangers of roller skating with sandwiches, and look for stick bloodhounds near the scuppernong arbor.
If you like what you heard today and want to let us know you can email us at WhatScaresUs@aadl.org. For more episodes, check out https://aadl.org/whatscaresus.
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What Scares Us - Episode 2: Alien
"I don't know what I'm looking at but it's creepy and gross". Join us for a deep dive into Alien, the 1979 sci-fi horror classic written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett and directed by Ridley Scott. In this episode: We imagine the Alien in tighty-whities, play Pigs Crossing, and reminisce about Suncoast Motion Picture Company and The Great Movie Ride.
If you like what you heard today and want to let us know you can email us at WhatScaresUs@aadl.org. For more episodes, check out https://aadl.org/whatscaresus.