Argument In My Brain PRE-RELEASE

"Heartbreaking and hilarious, Waylon Bac is a cunning songwriter and a tinkering mad inventor.." Andrew Wagstaff - Brum Radio / Lost In the Supermarket/NME

"The Beautiful posthumous songs of a naive psychopath who took six random shoppers with him"- Julian Barratt the Mighty Boosh

If I Could I Probably Would PRE-RELEASE

Nervous Breakdown. Debut EP. Music for people with no illusions left to hide behind.

Nervous Breakdown

Nervous Breakdown PRE-RELEASE

"Heartbreaking and hilarious, Waylon Bac is a cunning songwriter and a tinkering mad inventor.." Andrew Wagstaff - Brum Radio / Lost In the Supermarket/NME

So Much Love PRE-RELEASE

After last week's emo disaster-thon Andrew and Tim veer back on to safer ground - half-remembering things from the past, rock hard pizza, plugs for the shop - when they are joined in studio by Very Important Person Mike Nothing.

Mike joins Tim for the pilot of the new BBC Sunday night show 'Round Anglesey with Tim and Mike' while Andrew opens up the Van Halen Time Capsule and unearths a Sausage Revolution.

Featuring for the first-time-online (and possibly the last time) songs by The Fizzy Corporation, The Peasants are Revolting and All Aboard the Eggbasket, this is one for the ages. Well worth sticking with for the bit where, after exactly two hours, Mike Nothing decides he's finally had enough to drink and just walks off to get an Uber. A masterclass in broadcasting.

s01e30 - V.I.P. and the Van Halen Time Capsule (featuring Mike Nothing) 123

s01e30 - V.I.P. and the Van Halen Time Capsule (featuring Mike Nothing)

Hatebomb by Paintbox

Uncool at school and majorly moping over the girl next door, Wolfmania’s world is turned upside down when it gets bitten by some radioactive chat. Instantly imbued with a freewheeling chemistry and uncanny comic timing (our jingle sense is tingling!) but touched by tragedy, Wolfman and Timpsy learn that with great gags come even greater laffs.

In an out-of-character 2h 11m of stuttering sincerity, the boys pay humble homage and trembling tribute to Marvel maestro Stan ‘The Man’ Lee, and at least one of them watches Sam Raimi’s swing-o-rilliant first Spider-Man movie all the way to the end.

But that’s not all! (That’s not even nearly all.) Timpsy titillates us and dishes the dirt on the Dater’s Handbook, while Wolfman takes a swing at the twin evils of toxic masculinity and the flu bug. 

Plus! Be More Like Robert! Social Shout-Outs! Dingle Debenham-North! Greater Omaha! The Swimming Dead! The Snüffel! Möttley Cerrütti! Sick! Sick! Sick! Wolfmania Late Night! Data's Handbook! Celebrity Pedalpast! The Claudio Clapper! Norway! Dead-Eyed Stuart! Casper Mattress! Spielberg, McCartney and Lee! Stop Going On About The Universal Bloody Ear! Fact Splat! Enchantment Under the Sea! Pep Music! The Leech! Macho Man Randall Savage! And very special musical guests StanBand! The Ramones! And My Glamorous Australian Wife! Is it long? Listen bud. We've got radioactive blood.

Parental warning! This week's show comes with a PG-13 rating. The Dater's Handbook is pretty electric, there's an un-caught eff-bomb about 1h 45m in and someone says 'vagina' while talking about modern art. 

Tech Splat! This week's episode is exactly the same length as the 2002 film Spider - Man, and can be played alongside the film as a fancy blu-ray commentary track extra. You know, if you want.

Thwip!

s02e04 - Spider Hyphen Man (2002)

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller have launched a new podcast to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They will chat regularly about cricket topics – hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects.

In the first, they anticipate the imminent joyous arrival of Wisden Cricketers Almanack, all the more joyous for recalling the most glorious English summer of cricket in living memory. They guess at its nominees for Five Cricketers of the Year and the Wisden cricket book of the year. They share memories of the notable cricketers who died, including Bob Willis, the great West Indians Basil Butcher and Seymour Nurse and, especially, their personal friend, Abdul Qadir, the Pakistani genius who reinvented legspin bowling. They also recall Gary Sobers scoring his last Test century with a monster hangover. They constantly exchange the esoteric facts beloved of cricketers, including Bhutan’s astonishing win over the might of China. In the present crisis, when cricket is banned, they wonder if illegal cricket matches will be played in secret and imagine the easy tactics the police could use to suppress them.

Oborne & Heller on Cricket - Episode 1

Oborne & Heller on Cricket - Episode 4

I've been agonising over whether it would be a good idea to do my Hospital Radio show in the current climate (would it be in terrible taste? Do we really need a weird fake Hospital Radio show, now that all radio is pretty much all radio is hospital radio?)

Well, yes it probably would be, and no, we almost definitely don't, but you know, I've only really got the one act - and it was either this or an Instagram live concert, and nobody needs any more of that right now.

Here then, is my actually-much-more-heartfelt-than-you'd-think lockdown rockdown tribute to our keyworkers and up yours to the virus. It's Episode 8 of West Midlands Hospital Radio - Smells Like Quarantine Spirit. 30 massive bangers and several days of 'hilarious' sit-down 'comedy.' Stick with it...

If you like the show, please tell a friend. Or, alternatively, bang some pots and pans out of the window on Thursday evening. I'll know it's me you're thanking....

Cheers!

West Midlands Hospital Radio - Episode 8 - Smells Like Quarantine Spirit

Nothing ever changes

West Midlands are a gang of weird pop magpies cranking out high-concept, no-budget DIY death rock from a dank room on an industrial estate, round the back of PC World. 

Their songs chart the decline and fall of a rapidly decaying musician, dropped by his label, forgotten by fans, and forced to return to his childhood home in the Black Country to confront his demons – some of which, it turns out, are actual demons. It’s sort of a documentary. 

Cosmic Scouse super producer and legendary Windmill soundman Paul of Sound provides the music, former Winter Olympics’ singer Andrew Wolfman plays the unknown frontman.

Live, the band are bolstered by a gang of serious heads who transform West Midlands’ lofty ideas into an often hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking festival-ready rock show that’s long on stagecraft, self-loathing, and big songs. BBC Introducing called them, “The best live show I have ever seen.” Joyzine magazine thought them a “ridiculously addictive stone age riot… weird music for weird times,” while Kurt Vile just called them, “Genius.” 

The band takes the last 50 years of West Midlands music as a jumping-off point for their sound (and the reason for their name).  

It’s all there: the Hammer Horror heaviness of Black Sabbath, the chaotic post-punk clatter of The Swell Maps, the grubby grebo rock from that weird six month period in the nineties when Stourbridge was the new Seattle. 

There’s a decidedly Dexy’s “whoa-oh!” here, a whiff of Zeppelin’s spooky village mysticism there, and more than a nod to the plate-eyed after-party poetry of The Streets and the Brummies-on-a-yacht pop swagger of Duran Duran. In the background, the dull throb of a secret rave rolls off the Clent Hills in the distance. 

This is pop music for music nerds, by music nerds. The musical proof that comedy equals tragedy plus time. Hard art by high friends in low places. It’s not for everyone, but it might just save your life.

s01e30 - V.I.P. and the Van Halen Time Capsule (featuring Mike Nothing)

West Midlands

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