Hello friends! I trust you’re all very well indeed. Apologies for being slow today - I am enjoying another day off work, and taking things nice and easy (or as nicely and as easy as it is possible to do when in sole charge of a five-year-old, a two-year-old and an epileptic Shiba Inu…). My plan had been to kick back and get stuck in to The Luminaries, a veritable brick of a novel, which I started after devouring Eleanor Catton’s most recent book Birnham Wood while I was travelling for work last week. Currently, I’m on page 16 (out of 832). But they have been 16 very enjoyable pages, and I look forward to getting back to the rest of them just as soon as I’ve finished this week’s OneTrackMinds newsletter.
And we’ve lots to tell you about, as always. First up, a gentle reminder that our March shows are coming up very soon (26th and 27th at Wilton’s Music Hall), and that tickets are selling very nicely indeed. We’ve just started our big social media campaign to get the word out to everyone who might like to come along to one of the loveliest venues in all of London and spend an evening with five wonderful storytellers, as they share stories about the songs that changed their life.
Our guests include Alice Vincent, Doon Mackichan, Amy Key, Russell Davies and former Home Secretary Alan Johnson. I know it, you know it - it’s going to be great. So come and join us. And tell all your friends!
Oh, by the way, we joined TikTok! Yes, that’s right! And yes, it is a little baffling. And yes, it is also a little embarrassing that us two forty-somethings are trying to be down with the kids. But we thought we’d try it. Follow us, if that’s the right thing to say! We’re @onetrackmindsshow. And we borrowed a pretty definitive clip from our last show on Feb 3rd from Jack Garrett for our first ever video. (Vid? Tik? Tok?)
Some other things we wanted to tell you about this week:
It’s very possible that you’re already very familiar with musicologist Cole Cuchna and his peerless podcast Dissect. The premise is simple - each series, Cuchna takes as his subject a famous album, and then breaks it down track by track in the most incredible detail. I first came across the show about five years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the first season on Kendrick Lamarr’s epic Hip Hop opus To Pimp A Butterfly. Since then, he’s gone on to ‘Dissect’ albums by Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Tyler The Creator, some of which I dipped into, most of which I ignored by virtue of not being that ‘into’ any of those artists. However, the most recent season, which finished up last December, looks at one of my very favourite albums of all time, Radiohead’s 2007 record In Rainbows.
Now, I’ve listened to that record a lot over the years (I may even have an OneTrackMinds story in my locker about one song from that album…), but it turns out I’d never listened to it anywhere near as actively as I should have. Cuchna’s beautifully nerdy analysis is absolutely eye-opening, and whether or not you’re a Radiohead fan, you will find much to enjoy over its 11 episode season. The episode about the album’s seventh track Reckoner is probably one of the greatest single podcast episodes I have ever listened to. Yes, that sounds like the worst kind of hyperbole, and you might be right to dismiss it as such - but I urge you not to. Listen to it and you will be struck dumb by the awesome power of music - indeed, art as a whole - to make the world a better place to live in. It’s quite astonishing. Here’s Radiohead performing the song live From The Basement…
It was our good friend Josh McNorton who tipped me off about the In Rainbows season of Dissect, so credit where it’s due. To return the favour, Josh has just started a new Substack, called Soundtracks To Adventure, and it kicks off with a 41-track playlist of some of his very favourite songs. Well worth your time.
Other OneTrackMinds Alumni have been keeping themselves busy over the last few weeks. Two of them teamed up for ITVX’s new Covid drama, Breathtaking - Prasanna Puwanarajah directing (and co-writing with Jed Mercurio) a script based on Dr. Rachel Clarke’s hard-hitting memoir of being on the frontline of the first wave of Covid. It’s a tough watch, but an incredible reminder of the bravery and sacrifice of our NHS workers. Strong recommend!
The London Improvathon is coming back to Wilton’s Music Hall in a couple of weeks (Friday March 8th). It’s an insane 50-hour back-to-back improvised soap opera, running from Friday evening, through the night, and then through another night, finishing up on Sunday March 10th. It features several former OneTrackMinds storytellers, including Ruth Bratt, Lucy Todd, Pippa Evans and Adam Meggido (who is also directing the whole thing), and it should be a whole lot of fun. You don’t have to stay for the entire duration (that would be crazy!), but instead you can pop in for as many hour-long episodes as you can stomach. Tickets are here.
Our lovely friends at WOMAD are gearing up to make their full lineup announcement this Thursday. You can keep up with their news here.
Right, that’ll do! We’ll be back next week. Don’t forget to follow us on TikTok (!) and to tell everyone you know to buy tickets for our March shows. We wouldn’t want you to miss out…
KB.