The James McMahon Music Podcast

This episode originally aired on January 26th, 2022.
Watch this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaUIeKjfOW4&t=1773s
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And so to the Season 1 finale of Shame!
When I started this podcast, I did it for three reasons. One, because I have my own experience with shame, and, at various points in my life, I’ve been gripped by it. This podcast was me working that out, episode to episode – and it’s helped. Meeting other people who’ve had the experience of being shamed, or who carry shame about from something that happened in their lives. It’s helped me find new perspectives – and, as my guest on this episode describes as being the 'cure' for shame – empathy for other people.
The second reason is that I'm a journalist. I’m fascinated by people and psychology and I’ve always thought that as a writer, you write – or in this case speak – about what you know. As I say, I know shame. But the third reason is this – I find this world we’re living in too cruel, too unforgiving, too siloed... and I wanted to find people who felt the same way too. My tribe so to speak. On this front, the podcast has delivered too. I’d like to take this moment to thank anyone who has appeared on the show, has left a nice review, has shared an episode or two... but most of all I’d like to thank Jon Ronson, who I’m speaking to today.

Back in 2015, my fellow journalist Jon wrote a book that had a great effect on me. It’s called So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. I’m a fan of Jon's work. Have been for years. And I’ve tried to follow the teachings I’ve gleaned from that work – value people over polemic, be curious of others and the world around you, pursue truth and tolerance. But that book in particular blew my head off. It might have even saved my life.

We go deep on this episode – the audio is a bit scratchy in places. Jon’s voice too, the result of a long day doing press for his new podcast series Things Fell Apart, for the BBC. As of yesterday, January 25th, that series is available to listen to wherever you get your podcasts – it comes highly recommended, and, at the time of broadcast, is the most salient thing I’ve heard on the 'culture wars' that are raging around us.
I love all the episodes of Shame to date – and don’t worry, we’ll be back with Season 2 at some point – but this one is really special to me. I’m so grateful to Jon for taking the time.
Shame is a Spoook Media production. Spoook is also a record label, a promoter, a shop, a Substack - it's many things. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter. And please do Like, Review and Subscribe - it actually really helps people find our podcasts!
Watch the series trailer here: https://tinyurl.

• Twitter - @jamesjammcmahon
• Substack - https://spoook.substack.com
• YouTube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Vf_1E1Sza2GUyFNn2zFMA
• Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/jamesmcmahonmusicpod/

When Michael ‘Moose’ Thomas left Brit metal superstars Bullet For My Valentine in 2016, he did so frustrated at a perceived lack of creativity within a band he’d been a member of since their formation back in 1998. It was a brave, but terrifying decision.
And yet you can’t keep a good drummer down, and a year after Moose’s new band Kill The Lights marked their arrival with debut album The Sinner, the group - featuring Throw The Fight's James Clark, Still Remains' Jordan Whelan, Threat Signal’s Travis Montgomery and behind the drum kit Moose himself – have a blistering – yeah you heard! – new single, 'Broken Bones', and a plan for building something new, from the grass roots up. Good bloke is Moose, and it was an absolute pleasure to learn a bit more about what comes next from one of the nicest dudes in heavy rock.

• Twitter - @jamesjammcmahon
• Substack - https://spoook.substack.com
• YouTube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Vf_1E1Sza2GUyFNn2zFMA
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Knocked Loose, the American hardcore band from Oldham County, Kentucky, are one of a small number of rock bands who might genuinely claim to be the most exciting band on the planet.
They’re one of the most interesting too. Hardcore might be the vessel they’ve chosen to music making, but it's not the ultimate destination. This has never been more apparent than throughout their ambitious new EP, A Tear in the Fabric of Life, out now on Pure Noise and a record that sees the band doing new things, in skill ways, that you’ve never heard them do before.
I’m really happy with this chat with vocalist Bryan Garris, he’s not a man I’ve heard interviewed much – and whenever I have heard him speak, he verbalises his thoughts in a fairly unique, quite languid, thoughtful style. But I think we got to some good places together. Over half an hour or so we talk grief, loss, therapy... but also just how ridiculous the music press can be. Our chat made me understand a band I already liked a lot more – which is kind of the point of all this, is it not. Dang I cant wait for that band to hit the UK next year.
The James McMahon Music Podcast is a Spoook Media production. Spoook is also a record label, a promoter, a shop, a Substack - it's many things. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter. And please do Like, Review and Subscribe - it actually really helps people find our podcasts!

• Twitter - @jamesjammcmahon
• Substack - https://spoook.substack.com
• YouTube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Vf_1E1Sza2GUyFNn2zFMA
• Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/jamesmcmahonmusicpod/

Bob Mould really needs no introduction. He was one third of US punk pioneers Hüsker Dü – arguably the very band (with a respectful nod to Black Flag) that ploughed the furrows for every independent band that followed. He was the fulcrum in brilliant post-grunge types Sugar. And in and between both, he’s released a string of brilliant, and often alarmingly eclectic solo records. He’s as close as I’ve got to a living musical hero, and so I was hella nervous about this chat. You know what? I think things worked out just fine.
Bob even indulged me and let me – a pro-wrestlng fan – ask him a bunch of questions about his tenure in creative at the late, sometimes great, sometimes awful - but normally brilliantly so - much missed World Championship Wrestling. Wild that. Even if you’re not a fan of wrestling, I think you’ll find much to enjoy in this episode. We talk about Bob’s most recent collection of new songs, 2020’s Blue Hearts, his plans for 2022, Trump, Regan, social media, mental illness, and the batshit harpsicord solo on Sugar’s 1992 hit 'Hoover Dam'. I can’t believe how easily nerves mutated into absolute joy. I loved doing this interview – and I hope you love, or at least like listening to it.
The James McMahon Music Podcast is a Spoook Media production. Spoook is also a record label, a promoter, a shop, a Substack - it's many things. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter. And please do Like, Review and Subscribe - it actually really helps people find our podcasts!

• Twitter - @jamesjammcmahon
• Substack - https://spoook.substack.com
• YouTube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Vf_1E1Sza2GUyFNn2zFMA
• Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/jamesmcmahonmusicpod/

Firstly, have you joined the Substack yet?
If you’re of an age, and you came to that age sometime during the mid-to-late 90s, and you’re a fan of punky indie rock, and you read the music press – NME, Melody Maker and Kerrang! – each and every Wednesday, maybe you listened to the Evening Session on BBC Radio One, perhaps you were a barfly at your local toilet venue, maybe nothing mattered more to you than Reading Festival and the pre-bourgeois Glastonbury... well, chances are your entry point to music was London five-piece Symposium, who burned brightly for a few years and then imploded, skewering into groups like Hell is for Heroes and Paper Cuts.
Well, quite amazingly, Symposium are back, with a Greatest Hits – Do You Remember How It Was? 1996 – 1999, available on streaming platforms now – and a one-off live show at London’s Islington Assembly Hall on November 17th, 2022. And I do remember how it was. And it was largely great. But messy. And chaotic. In way both brilliant and bruital. And so what better time than now to connect with singer Ross Cummins and bassist Wojtek Godzisz to ask what went wrong all those years ago... and what has appeared to go right now.
And where I can find an Animals That Swim t-shirt in an extra large.

• Twitter - @jamesjammcmahon
• Substack - https://spoook.substack.com
• YouTube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Vf_1E1Sza2GUyFNn2zFMA
• Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/jamesmcmahonmusicpod/