Podcasts · Word In Your Ear

New Nick Drake tapes, Bob Marley’s masterpiece and the Coldplay ‘kiss-cam’.

21 Jul 2025 · 1 h 01 min · Episode 788

A rain-splashed, dub-filled, cash-scattering foray into this week’s news and events which happily lands upon …

… meeting Maddy Prior – a Prior engagement? – and the time Steeleye Span showered their audience with £8,000.

… hearing Nick Drake’s demos on a narrowboat in the pitch dark a few hundred feet below London.

… Steve Miller’s cancelled tour, absurdly blamed on the weather.

… who’s older, Lulu or the King? Kim Wilde or William Hague? Neil Tennant or Andy Fraser of Free?

… Bob Marley at the Lyceum in 1975 – the confidence of their pace, the heft of their sound, what the audience wore. And David’s backing vocal on No Woman No Cry.

… the ugliest group in history – “they make Crabby Appleton look like the Walker Brothers”.

… an imagined duet by Rick Astley and David Cameron.

… is Bob Dylan the Tommy Cooper of rock and roll?

… David Ackles and the curse of “the greatest album ever made”.

… the Coldplay ‘Kiss-cam’ clip – “either they’re having an affair or just very shy”.

… the crackle of crime at ‘70s gigs.

… how someone could have seen the opening night of Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush and – 50 years later - Bob Marley at the Lyceum.

… why aren’t there still fanzines with names like Ptolemaic Terrascope?

… and birthday guest Gianluca Tramontagna claims Bob Dylan is neither sage, seer or prophet but an immensely comic “song and dance man”.

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