It’s the new normal to talk about ‘crazy times’. But Australia’s just gone into lockdown. We’re all self-isolated now.
Yet it’s an ill wind. Shortly before this podcast was recorded, Sombrero Fallout experienced the single most exciting thing of its life. In the Readers Recommend section of The Guardian newpaper we were featured as the musical podcast to get you through Life In The Time Of the Coronavirus. I can’t say that wasn’t exciting news, off the back of all the absolutely rubbish news. It was!
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/20/readers-recommend-podcasts-to-binge-on-while-youre-cooped-up-in-self-isolation
I have therefore hurried to give you another podcast straightaway. You deserve it – and thank you for all our old and new listeners for your support. What theme might be appropriate, you ask. I’ll answer: songs recorded at home. (This is Part One of two.)
Happily they aren’t all lovelorn ballads strummed on a slightly out-of-tune acoustic guitar (though that’s fine too). Suburban Homeboy by Sparks sounds like an entire orchestra got stuffed into the basement of their house. It also bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1970 England World Cup squad’s memorable number one, ‘Back Home’.
And this is the first episode in which someone I was once in a band with appears. It’s Rajan, the bass player from Maroon Town – on the first excellent track, City Riot. We were in The Gloom Brothers together. Listening to it and comparing it to the remainder of Sombrero Fallout, you can maybe see why we went our separate ways. That, and the fact he knew how to play the bass and I could barely sing.
Crazy times, but we’ve got the music and each other. Stay well, stay happy and stay away from everyone else until all this passes.
Tracklist:
City riot, Maroon Town
Pretty girl, Clairo
Echos myron, Guided by Voices
Day is done, Nick Drake
Happy, The Wrens
We fell in love in October, Girl In Red
Faded from the winter, Iron and Wine
Minnesota, The Mountain Goats
Birds, Neil Young
Spoiled, Infinity Crush
Apple blossom, The White Stripes
Ramshackle, Beck
With my face on the floor, Emitt Rhodes
Suburban homeboy, Sparks