Cheap tickets, warm beer, draughty halls and refectories, a whole new cobbled-together rock circuit was born in the ‘60s for an audience who watched and listened intently. Which allowed the music to take a different route. Paul Sexton spoke to the Who, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Costello and many others to piece together ‘Rock Goes To College: the Campus Music Scene That Shaped A Generation’ and talks to us here about the fans and amateurs who ran it and the lost world of motorway caffs and Ford Transits, stopping off at …

… Hendrix, Fairport, Free, Queen, Dire Straits: tales of the campus gig foot-soldiers

… no security, no lightshow, no seat, no stage: how the idea of live entertainment changed in 50 years

… Pink Floyd not being allowed front-of house in Top Rank theatres without a tie

… the Stranglers and the Damned refusing to play college shows “unless townies were allowed in”

… the “chart clause” - £50 extra if a band’s in the Top 3!

… the Stones playing an Oxford ball

… bands market-researching songs before recording them

… why Leeds could afford the Who and Leonard Cohen

… what Harvey Goldsmith, Paul Conroy and Chris Wright learnt from booking bands

… why Wings chose the college circuit

… and the arrival of DJs and disco that put a nail in the college gig coffin, “a golden age with nothing like it before or after”.

Order ‘Rock Goes To College’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rock-Goes-College-campus-generation/dp/0008722412/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.EWpbXfJjfIq6DOGDGU8HMQMTbZ6fxtMSFJLLqnswcYo.7mGYWOOBglb6F5p42gs88d1lJ0uLxzWS4w3W0vPrwN0&qid=1775764128&sr=1-1

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

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It’s polling day for this week’s news and these are the stories that got our vote …

... Pussycat Dolls, Meghan Trainor and how ‘Blue Dot Fever’ is wrecking ticket sales

… how can you judge a songwriter with eight collaborators?

… Dylan’s ‘Judas’ moment 60 years later

… is everything becoming binary: thumbs-up or thumbs-down?

… Grandmaster Flash, Augustus Pablo, George McRea, Tangerine Dream and the times brand new music was invented

… when certain dances got you arrested

… Alice in Sunderland? See You In My Drums? Shadows’ song titles rebooted

… the hilarious self-positioning of the NME critics’ poll

… plus jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and thrill of imagining the sound of acts who were never recorded.

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mass commercial nightlife began in a Japanese Pleasure Garden in 1657 and it’s blossomed ever since – via Victorian Vauxhall, cabaret Paris, jazz-driven New Orleans, flappers, speakeasies, moonshine, Studio 54 and the rave palaces of the 21st Century. Imogen Willetts tracks its riotous evolution in ‘Up All Night: A History of Going Out’ and wonders if the invention of the iPhone has burst the balloon. She talks to us here about …

... the Tango, the Can-Can: dances that got you arrested

… how bourgeois French ‘slummers’ found a taste of danger

… the heady allure in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens as an escape from Victorian squalor

… how Anita Berber’s chloroform ballet shocked and delighted Weimar Berlin

… when dancing was a mating ritual and the impact of Dating Apps

… democracy on the dancefloor: the unrepeatable mix of punters and celebrities at Studio 54

… and how the invention of the electric light got people going out and the iPhone made them stay home

Order ‘Up All Night’ here: https://www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/imogen-willetts/up-all-night/9781399617093/

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.