September 2014

One small step for Word In Your Ear, one giant stride for Monday nights in the pub

September 23, 2014 David Hepworth 0

Last night’s show was our best yet. Thanks to the people at the Islington we managed to get the visuals working and so we we could put on […]

Stevie Nicks biographer Zoe Howe added to our Ben Watt live podcast recording

September 13, 2014 David Hepworth 0

We’re delighted to say that Zoe Howe‘s joining us at our next Word In Your Ear Podcast recording at the Islington on September 22nd. She’ll be […]

A Quiet Word with Ben Watt at the Islington

September 8, 2014 David Hepworth 0

Ben Watt’s worn a variety of hats in the last thirty years: half of Everything But The Girl, solo artist, deejay, producer, club owner and […]

Word In Your Ear

David Hepworth, Mark Ellen and chums cast an occasionally jaundiced eye over the goings-on in the worlds of music and entertainment.

A sense of melancholy hangs over the music of songwriters whose lives were tragically short – Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Eva Cassidy, Judee Sill – and we’re left knowing very little about them. Jamie Fisher, writer and New York Times researcher, discovered Elliott Smith 12 years after he’d died and contacted 40 of his friends and fellow musicians to build a picture of him for her memoir Nobody Broke Your Heart. She looks back here at his background and ascent from the Portland club circuit to the Oscars, and touches on …

… the emotional impact of first hearing his music walking round Central Park in Lockdown

… “goofy, stubborn, wildly smart, addictively listenable”

… early life in Omaha and Texas (and the telling tattoo on his arm)

… the shy collegiate kid reading Dostoevsky who thought promotion was “distasteful”

… how a singer-writer broke through in Portland during the Grunge boom

… rejected stage-names – Johnny Panic, Elliott Stillwater-Rotter – and the pivotal moment when Steven became ‘Elliott’

.. his sense of humour – “a garbage truck passed him and he said, ‘there’s my ride!’”

… the archive of unreleased recordings she’d heard

… the Oscars appearance and signing to DreamWorks and Nirvana’s PR

… the root of his eventual unhappiness

… “he would have been more shielded if he’d been in a band”

… and his expanding legacy and adoption by Gen-Z.