Pop, Collaborate & Listen

S04E02 East 17 ’Walthamstow’

Get out your stupid hats and prepare to be "sung" at by a load of teenagers from East London. Yes, it's been a while since we've done a full on 'pop' album but here we are with one of the biggest boy bands in the UK in the 90s and their debut album 'Walthamstow'. Containing their hits 'Deep', 'House Of Love' and 'It's Alright' as well as quite a lot of utter nonsense, we dig in to see how this bad boy sounds 30 years after release. It's quite something.
But as well as marvelling at how East 17 maintained a career we discuss bands like Dinosaur Jnr and Belly; Dave effuses about one of his all time favourite albums 'Slip' by Quicksand; and Krister reveals that he still has absolutely no idea how to pronounce Einsturzende Neubauten.
Check out our ongoing Spotify playlist of our choice of songs from each of the albums we do an episode on (we put three East 17 tunes on here this week if you can believe it - THREE), the standalone playlist for this episode featuring all the tracks we chat about including the singles rundown, follow us on Facebook and/or Twitter for extra stuff and nonsense and head to our website for links to all of the above and more if you need to.

S04E01 Little Angels 'Jam'

WHAT THE HECK? Yes indeed, it's the first episode of Season 4! We've finished with the music of 1992 and are casting it off like a bootleg T-shirt that you bought outside the gig but then lost all of its backprint and one of its sleeves after just one wash.
And here we are looking down the barrel of a very exciting 1993 with so many amazing bands and new genres appearing almost weekly, a brand new world. So obviously we're starting this journey off with Little Angels and their album 'Jam' which it turns out, no really, got to number one in January 1993. I know.
It's a band and a genre that both of us thoroughly ignored at the time so neither of us had any clue what this was going to sound like - well I mean, that's not strictly true but you know what we mean.
But along the way we do get to chat about other bands like Apache Indian, Jesus Jones and The The so that's always a treat. All of these acts, as well as the entire Little Angels album, are included on this episode's companion playlist.
As usual follow us on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram and check out our website for more links to stuff. And don't forget our ever-growing Spotify playlist of at least one song from each of the albums we chat about.

S03E21 Sugar 'Copper Blue' Bonus Episode

Another bonus for you to wrap up season three - this week we're doing a listener's choice of Sugar's 1992 debut album 'Copper Blue'. Both Dave and Krister remember this from the time but haven't revisited it in many years so it's all very fresh to our ears.Thanks to everyone who has listened along the way this season, we will be back with Season Four as soon as we can manage, seeing what delights 1993 can throw at us. Fingers crossed for some absolute quality, eh? Surely it couldn't be a year which sees number one albums from artists like 2 Unlimited and Cliff Richard, could it?As always, check out our Facebook, Twitter and website for more info and links to various things.

S03E20 BONUS EPISODE - Mr Bungle 'Mr Bungle'

We're back with a very special bonus episode and you can interpret "special" any way you want. At the behest of a podcast listener who donated a far too generous amount of money to our paypal link we are covering an album of his choosing. It's possible he chose this particular one because he is a massive fan and knows that Dave is as well or it's possible that he knows how much Krister was likely to absolutely hate it. Who knows, it's a proper mystery.
 
Either way we hope you enjoy listening to us discuss this one but since the album is definitely an acquired taste and the episode is easily one of our most self-indulgent ones to date we won't mind if you skim this one or have to give up before the end. Although we'd much prefer if you didn't obviously. Have fun!

S03E19 ABBA 'Gold'

Merry Christmas! Ho Ho Ho! Etc! Welcome to our festive themed special all about ABBA 'Gold', their Greatest Hits which was released in 1992 and became one of the best selling albums of all time. We've got a very special guest helping us out on this one in the form of comedian Sean McLoughlin who is a big ABBA fan, as is Krister. However, Dave fucking hates ABBA. Like really hates them. So we decided to do this special and take on the forms of Christmas joybringers, trying to convince Dave that he's just being an ABBA grinch and should let them into his life at this time of goodwill and wonder. How successful we were in that task, you'll find out soon enough.
Massive thanks once again to Sean for joining us on this one, it was an absolute treat to have him on, he's genuinely one of the funniest comics around today so do check him out when live gigs start happening again. In the meantime you can hear his comedy album 'Support Act' on Spotify and watch his hour long special 'Hail Mary' on Youtube. Honestly, we cannot say enough good things about this guy and we hope you enjoy him on this episode as much as we did recording it with him. Oh, and go ahead and follow him on Twitter as well, why not.
There's a playlist of all the ABBA songs as well as the various other cover version, remixes and top ten singles we chat about on Spotify for you to check out. Or why not enjoy some Christmas holiday listening with our ongoing Best Of The 90s (Albums That We Have To Listen To) Playlist which is actually pretty damn good. Stick it on shuffle while eating leftover sprouts and trying not to doze off on the sofa. 
We'll be back with Season 4 as soon as we can in the new year but until then happy Christmas from all of us as PCL. Cheers!

S03E18B Best Albums of 1992 Special - Part Two

Here's the second part of our rundown of our top ten albums of 1992 for you. Probably not a lot of surprises in here but you simply can't argue with some of these choices - so many great albums! Thank you again to all of you listeners who sent in your own top five lists to us - you can see them all here on our website.
And thank you as well to our lovely guest contributors to this episode: Darren who had previously joined us on our Def Leppard episode; Si Sharp from Beat Rehab who was on our Beastie Boys Special; Stephen and Remfry from the brilliant Riot Act podcast; and comedian and host of the We Are History podcast, Angela Barnes.
As you will hear on the episode we've put a track (or two) from each of our album choices into a Spotify playlist which is obviously pretty damn wonderful. We hope to have a special Christmas episode out before the end of this year but if you don't hear from us again beforehand, have a brilliant Christmas and New Year!

S03E18A Best Albums of 1992 Special - Part One

Well we've done all of the UK number one albums of 1992 so as is now customary we're rounding up this season with a two-part episode of our own choices of what we reckon the best albums released that year were. Or our personal favourites at least - some of our choices probably wouldn't make any other proper Best Of list.
We've also invited some special guests to drop in with their favourites - on this episode you'll hear from: Andy Copping, the man who runs Download Festival and has been booking live acts in the UK for more years than we care to imagine; Rich Wilson, stand-up comedian and the podcaster behind the Insane In The Men Brain and Insane In The Fem Brain podcasts; and Carla & Zoe from Number One Rerun podcast who are another pair of podcasters looking back at pop culture from the past who love a terrible joke just as much as we do.
We also asked our listeners for their top five lists before we recorded this episode and we've put up all the submissions we got on our website so you can see the sort of stuff that everyone else is into.
This is part one of our top ten, the next episode will be our proper top fives so look out for that, but in the meantime enjoy this one and feel free to get in contact and tell us just how wrong we are about our choices.

S03E17 Bon Jovi 'Keep The Faith'

It's Bon Jovi's big return after their 80s heyday - Jon Bon Jovi has cut off his big hair and the band has decided to go for a "more mature" sound in this post-grunge world of 1992. Great. Dave was a big fan of these guys in the 80s while Krister was a lot more ambivalent and had never heard this album before listening for the show. 
But in between talking about Bon Jovi's more grown-up attitude and divergence from their poodle-pomp reputation we get the chance to mention albums by Ice Cube and Dr Dre and singles by the likes of Charles & Eddie, Wrexxx n Effect and U2 among many others.
As always, you can listen to this episode's companion playlist featuring the whole Bon Jovi album and all the other songs we chat about on Spotify and hit us up on our Facebook and Twitter if you so fancy.