EP.267 - RICHARD AYOADE & FRANK BLACK (LIVE)

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin.

Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk.

Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

My name is Ad Buxton, I'm a man.

I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

Hey,

how you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buxton here. Just me today.
Rosie is at home, dozing in her dog basket in my wife's office. Her favourite place to be, other than by my side, of course.

She's already been for a walk today with my son, Nat.

And it's a cold day, so...

Seemed a bit mean to get her back out again.

Despite the coldness, it's a beautiful Norfolk afternoon on, as I speak, the last day of November, 2025.

The authentic sounds of the countryside.

Sky incredibly clear and blue, there's not a single cloud up there. It's lovely and still and quiet.
It's a Sunday.

Only the sound of

birds.

The odd gentle

freezy breeze.

That's cold. But fresh.

And of course the sound of a middle-aged guy doing his podcast intro. How are you doing, podcats? Hope everything's not too bad wherever you are.

But look, shut up Buckles, tell me a bit about podcast number 267.

Okay, this one includes a small selection of waffle helpings from the live podcast show that I did at the London Palladium in March 2024.

when my guest was British writer, director, actor and comedian Richard Iawade.

I played a very small section of that night's show on the podcast that I did with Richard earlier this year.

But there's a couple more bits for you tonight, also including my other guest that evening, a significant musical figure in both my life and Richard's life, Frank Black, front man of alt-rock legends Pixies,

and in his solo capacity the man responsible for many of my favorite songs of all time. I've done a Spotify playlist

for you musos out there in in case you're not familiar with Frank Black's solo stuff.

I love it. Maybe sometimes even a bit more than the Pixies.
Oh god, now I'm going to be thrown into Alt-Rock jail.

I have also included in this podcast a chunk of chat that I recorded with Frank Black the day before the Palladium show.

And that was recorded in his dressing room at the forum in Kentish Town, where Pixies were playing that night. They were doing Bossa Nova from 1990 and Trompe Le Monde from 1991 back to back.

And in that short dressing room chat, you will hear me talking Frank through the arrangements for the Palladium show the following night.

I have met Frank, real name Charles Thompson, okay, Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV to give him his full name, a few times. He was in one of our vinyl justice segments on the Adam and Joe show.

Joe and I also made a video for the song Dog Gone by Frank Black and the Catholics in 1998.

You'll find a link to that in the description. And since then we have stayed in sporadic contact.
Frank is a big comedy fan.

He especially likes a lot of British comedy and I'm pretty sure that when I mentioned to him that Richard Iowadi was going to be my guest for the live show, that was a big part of

him agreeing to come along and be my other guest and play a song from one of my favorite albums of his, Teenager of the Year.

And maybe because he enjoyed his experience on the Adam Buxton podcast live show so much, he returned to the Palladium earlier this year, 2025, to play Teenager of the Year in its entirety with the original band.

that recorded that record as part of the album's 30th anniversary celebrations.

If you heard my podcast with Irish musician C-Mat earlier this year, then you would have heard me talking about going to see that show, the Teenager of the Year show,

and how much I enjoyed it despite some disruptive behaviour from some of my fellow middle-aged rock guys.

But let's return to the palladium now to join myself and Richard Iwadi on stage for some Wes Anderson chat with reference to the AI Wes Anderson memes that did the rounds in 2023 for which people used AI image generation tools like Mid Journey, Dahl-E and Stable Diffusion to make trailers for films like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter as if they had been directed by Wes Anderson.

Then I talked to Richard a bit about music with both of us revealing which records by our favorite artists we were initially dissatisfied with and took back to the shop.

Then I'll be back to say a few words before my Frank Black dressing room chat, but right now, in front of a live audience at the London Palladium in March 2024, with Richard Iwadi, here we go.

Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that.
Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat.

Yes! Love, love,

love,

love, love, love, love,

love,

love,

love,

love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.

Are you a crier at all?

A crier. Yeah, do you cry? Is there any chance you could cry? cry?

I haven't yet. No, am I crying? I don't think I'm a huge crier.
I mean, I grew up in Ipswich, so there's much to be sad about.

But you learn to hold it in.

Okay, so it's unlike. I'm not going to probably get you to a place where you start weeping on stage tonight.
I think it could be intriguing to try. All right.
I'll bear it in mind. Yes.

But listen, Wes Anderson, working with him on Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, that must have been amazing.

Wes Anderson has come into the public consciousness in the last few years even more so because of the memes that popped up in the age of AI-generated imagery.

It's interesting, he can never quite be captured by any of these things because there's something just so inhumane about these.

And I find his films very humane and very restrained. Was that the first time working with him on that that you had met, or had you met before?

He, when the film Submarine came out in America, he very kindly presented a screening of it in New York with Ben Stiller because Ben Stiller knew Wes Anderson and Ben Stiller had been a producer on Submarine.

So that, through no merit, it was given a very kind

screening by him. So I'd met him then, 200, I don't know, 11 or something like that.
And what's it like?

Just in general. Yes, what's it like? Well,

he's extremely well prepared, so he has what he calls a cartoon of the film, which is an animated storyboard of everything that's going to happen.

And he's not one of those directors who films everything from lots of different angles and then pieces it together in the edit.

More or less, everything he films is the shot that it's going to be used and it's precisely got

it's a very pleasant set, very kindly spirited, collegiate and he he's worked with the same people for a long time so they're incredibly adept and yes it was a completely unearned joy.

And then how do you feel about the conversation around him, especially post the memes and stuff, now that he's become a kind of symbol for something fairly superficial, i.e., just almost like an Instagram filter?

Yes, in a certain way, I think with someone like him, you're penalized for your originality because you can't really do memes about non-original people because you wouldn't recognize them.

As they show, they never quite capture what he does exactly. But I don't think they're sort of terrible.

They're sort of people enjoying having their own version of some aesthetic in the same way that every band wants to be the Beatles, but they're not quite the Beatles.

The criticism of Wes Anderson, though, is that he's easy to parody because all there is is the visual style.

There's not enough meat underneath. Yeah, I don't.

Deal with that. Deal with that.
Yes, I don't think there's a kind of.

I don't think.

Okay, I'll deal with it.

I don't think there's a straightforward separation between style and substance in that style is the substance. Okay?

The form

is the message. I think McLuhan has dealt with this.

And, well, I don't think there's any separation in the same way that

the meter of a poem, you just go, it's all just dumpty-dumpty-dumb. And I actually find his films really emotional because they're restrained.

Especially in there's a moment in Rushmore when finally the Jason Schwartzman character and Bill Murray's character make up, and he offers him one of his merit badges from school and the two different ones.

And it's, I think, one's either attendance or punctuality. And Bill Murray's character just goes, I'll take punctuality.
And it's one of the most moving moments in a film, I think.

And yeah, I'm an unabashed fan. I watched Rushmore on the weekend with my daughter.
She's 15.

And I think it was the first film for as long as I can remember that she actually sat through and really enjoyed. Yeah.
It was great fun.

I liked it much more as well than I hadn't seen it since it came out. Yes.
And I think I didn't get it really. When it came out, I was too distracted by,

but no one would do that.

You know what I mean? Right, yes. No one would behave, no one would tolerate such a

blow up the Death Star.

It's too hard. See, that's different, though, because as soon as you've got space and lasers and helmets

and robots, then you can do anything goes. It's a totally different emotional playing field.

But then, when it's stuff you can relate to, when it's people in a high school, when it's superficially recognizable things going on, then my rational brain locks in and I need everything to be like it would be in life.

You know, I I feel reassured when um someone shows that they're making something and feel hugely uh worried when someone expects me to believe that this is actually real.

So it would be it'd be very strange if you uh had not in any way addressed the fact that we're sitting here talking to one another and just pretended this was a drama.

That would be one of the most tense things that you could ever witness. So I quite like things where they face the audience and they sort of

go, This is a film, and this is for entertainment purposes. And

I like old Hollywood films where people speak faster than anyone could possibly speak and live in houses that are impossible for people to live in, and huge ceilings and gowns.

It doesn't sort of bother me. Yeah.
No,

I think I'm just quite unimaginative. No, I sort of I almost think I'm so suspicious that I I feel reassured by someone going, It's okay, we're pretending.
And I go, Okay, that's good. Yeah.

It just takes me ages to appreciate things. I think I remember everyone going on about how great Rushmore was when it came out.
And I just thought,

is it?

That tends to be my response to most things, that people are very excited about.

Yeah.

Oh God, another thing that's way better than anything I'll ever do.

Yes, too much.

Also, it can be sort of overwhelming seeing something as well, because you have an idea often of what you want a thing to do.

And you're just thinking, this isn't doing the thing that I want the thing to do at all.

This is doing some other thing. Yeah, exactly.
Or you sort of think that you know what it wants to do and you think, no, you're doing it wrong.

If I was doing this thing, which I could easily if I wanted to,

then I would do it like this and you've gone and screwed it up.

That's the danger.

Richard, music. Yes.
Can I ask you this? I've written down here, why is music so important? Feel free to be quite sincere and I might cry. That is...

Because to be serious,

you and I are, can we say nerdy?

I think regardless of whether we say that or not,

that's the objective reality we're dealing with. Yes.
I think a lot of people would imagine I love David Bowie and he is close to my heart as far as musical heroes go. David Bowie, yes.

Who would be the equivalent for you? Is it Maskis?

Jay Maskis is pretty well up there as my favourite guitarist.

As Bowie, I mean, Bowie is, I mean, Bowie's pretty amazing.

Were you very emotional when he died? Were you swept up in the wave of emotion?

Yes and no. I was in myself.
I felt actually no, yes and yes. Yes.
Yeah. So in a sense, yes.

Yes. On the one hand, yes, and on the other hand, on both.

Yes. It was a yes.

Well, my dad had died three weeks before.

Didn't mind about that too. No, of course not.
I was fine with that. He was very old.
And he didn't make Hunky Dory.

Exactly. Lest we forget.
He didn't even come close. No.

I mean, his early stuff was good, but the later stuff, it was indulgent, it meandered. What's the most upset you ever got about a musician dying?

I found myself when Bowie died because we live past Brixton and cycling through and seeing the people out on vigils and it was quite an emotional thing I'd say Bowie dying. Yeah, I'd say

yeah, maybe Bowie. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm just trying to get you to do the Bowie voice, that's all.
Oh yes.

That's what we want. I wonder if Xavier ever stood on this stage.

I think he must have.

Indulged in in a bit of superlatitude theatricality

here in the west end of London with the London boys.

Now he's with the London boys.

Okay.

One thing that I remember very fondly from watching Snub TV, this show, which was fantastic.

I think you can still find bits of it flying around on YouTube, but was watching Pixies, seeing them on Snub TV, and they filmed a video where they were just jumping across some rocks very slowly.

Yes, yeah, I remember that. And they married it to one of their tracks.
And it was around then that I had gone into a branch of W.H. Smith's on the King's Road.

And I go into WH Smith's, and they are playing Come On Pilgrim by Pixies. Okay.
Because you're a Pixies fan as well, right?

Yes, I mean, they're amazing. Trompe Le Monde was the first, so I started at the end, and I distinctly remember hearing that they'd broken up, and I just was, I honestly felt, I just got the C D.

You can't do that. I've just got into you.

It's almost like you have your own consciousness and lives. You bastards.
You can't.

But then when I played the music, when I was out of the context of W.H. Smiths,

I was quite intimidated by it. I just thought I've gone above my pay grade here.
You felt safe in WH Smiths, as do we all. And then outside of Smith's, it's dangerous.

Yeah, because I was listening to this kind of thing. So here's a clip from around that time: Pixies on Dutch TV, and a very short blast of what they sound like.

What does your mother think about your music? She's very, very proud.

You don't want to sleep after setting my loins on fire, girl.

That's a cool because I'm being tired. I've been tired.
I'm inside.

I'm inside.

I'm being tired. I'm being tired.
I just thought it might be a bit too much for young Buckles, who basically had only just come out of the Thompson Twins phase.

And then I was dealing with that,

and I took it back.

Stop it. Yeah.

I'm going to say something that I haven't said out loud before.

I took back pod by the breeders.

I couldn't cope. It was too much.

I'd gone, I'd traveled.

I'm from Ipswich.

Okay, this needs to be, and I traveled down to London to buy it.

And I just couldn't cope with it. I actually ended up going back to the same shop to buy it again.
That was one of my most traumatic record purchases.

And then then I realized I was wrong and went back. And the only other really terrible experience,

I bought Hatful of Hollow by the Smiths, vinyl,

got it home from a second-hand shop. I'm going to tell all this story.
Some of it's going to be in reverse, like Memento.

So I bought the vinyl, took it back, played it, all first side, very good, turned it over, country and western music.

And I went, this is defective, this is not good. Went back to the shop, the secondhand shop, handed it over and said, there's a problem with this record.

It's only half Smith's, which is 50% insufficient.

And then he took it and said, okay, thank you very much. Well, this is the original factory pressing of Hatful of Hollow.
That's what they do. They press it on one side and on any old kind of junk.

And then the other side will be Country and Western. So I'll keep this, and you can have your two pounds back.
Oh,

is that really true? Yeah.

Oh, you dick.

I know.

Yes.

Yes, please.

Yep.

Yes. Hey, welcome back.
So, that was a couple of moments from my on-stage chat with Richard Iwadi.

And by the way, if you're wondering why I don't just play the whole recording from that live show, it's because there was a lot of video elements that wouldn't really work for audio only.

And I think we did have a few technical problems that night as well, which interfered with some parts of the recording. Some of the music that we recorded was a bit distorted.

And also with the Pixies songs,

two of which Frank Black played with Richard. There's rights issues that means I can't play them in full.

If you're curious to see how Richard and Frank Black sounded together, though, you'll find links in the description of today's podcast to a couple of video clips that I just filmed on my phone from the brief rehearsal that Frank and Richard did a few hours before the show.

The first song that they played in front of the audience that night was Hey by the Pixies, which hopefully

I'll be alright just playing you a short clip of. This is one of the bits that wasn't too badly distorted.

So this is Frank Black on acoustic guitar and then Richard coming in with his Joey Santiago electric guitar parts.

Rocky Richards.

There you go. So that gives you an idea of what they sounded like on the night playing the Pixies stuff.

But the day before the podcast show, I had met Frank Black in his dressing room at the Forum in Kentish Town, where Pixies were playing that night.

And I recorded our short chat with me talking Frank through how the podcast show at the Palladium might work.

As you'll hear, one of the subjects that I thought we might discuss was the intersection of music and comedy.

However, hearing how Charles felt about comedians who make music that isn't just straightforward musical comedy didn't really encourage me to tell him that I myself had been recording my own album.

He was very diplomatic, and I know that he absolutely loves people like Tim Heidecker and Matt Berry who make music, but I got the impression that he wasn't altogether convinced that people like me having a go at music is a great idea.

I'm a big fan of Richards. I've seen most of the programs and things that he's been associated with.

My kids are all big brick comedy fans. That's it, cool.
Yeah, well, he's a very nice guy, Richard. I like him.
Yeah, I would imagine.

But he's a big music fan, and he, you know, he went up on stage with Dinosaur Jr. the other.

Yeah. Played with them.

That's funny. He's my neighbor, the Jay.
Oh, yes. Four doors down.
That's funny. And yeah, he was in one of Richard's films called The Double.

Anyway, so I'm kind of thinking in terms of it being a little bit theatrical and

same to Richard.

I want to ask him about music anyway. He loves music.
He's directed a lot of music videos.

Show a couple of clips. He's directed videos for Arctic Monkeys and Vampire We

and Breeders Clip recently. So we show a few clips of those

and then I say, I know you're a Pixies fan, I am too. We exchange Pixie, how did you get into them and that kind of thing.

And then I say to him, can you play any? And he's like, well, I can play the riff to hay. So he has a go at that.

And I say, are you going to sing? He's like, no, I'm not. I can't sing.
Are you going to sing? I was like, no. And then,

exactly.

So I sort of, at that point, I get you out. If that's not to ensure you.
Yeah, yeah,

And then you just sort of play it through, and he'll play along with you. And then I was imagining you'd come down, sit with us.

I guess I was thinking we could talk about when we first met, talk about my dad a little bit. I have a clip of you and he sitting and chatting about wine in 1998.

And then I found some of the rushes of the video that we did with him. I forgot that he learnt Dog Gone, so he could sing it.

And the audio is not very good because we didn't have him mic'd up or anything. We just wanted to use the lip sync.

But he's out there in the middle of the street with cars rushing past singing Dog Gone in quite a nice way. So I was going to show a short clip of that.
Oh, yeah, sure. You got to do that.

And then a bit more chat. I thought we could talk possibly about like funny music.
What would you talk about in that case? Like, do you like funny music? I do.

And I think that there are people that do it well.

And I think that there are people that love it so much,

and it's almost like they're in some kind of a dilemma between doing it for real

and also

still trading in on their comedic sensibilities, right? And so they're kind of very in-between. You know what I mean?

I find that a lot with Tim Heidecker. He wants to be in a band, you know, he wants to do the thing,

but because of his station,

he's not quite allowed to. And so he pushes it right to the thing and like where you almost get to the point where, like, well, is this still comedy music or are we just doing music here?

You know what I mean? Yeah. And like, I, and I feel like that sometimes they don't even know.

Or it could be that they're not confused, but his audience, me or whatever, is watching, well, I've just spent the last half hour laughing at your comedy and now you're playing this really beautiful music.

Like, you know, I'm already in a certain mode, and so I'm kind of like trying to find the funny and the thing that you're doing, and maybe you're not even trying to be funny, you're trying to just be musical.

Anyway, it's an interesting thing.

I think actors, of course,

it's the same thing, you know, and it's the same thing with me, right? Musicians who maybe they like the idea of like, oh, acting and

being something in front of a camera, you know, and on a stage, I understand being on a stage, and you see them and and you just go, oh,

oh, don't do that. Wow.

You really can't act, you know? And it's more than anything, I end up having a lot of respect for people when they're,

you know, so it's easy to say,

to watch someone's performance, a comedic person, and say, oh, I didn't find that very funny. You know, I like this old stuff better, right?

And I guess what a lot of people don't realize is how difficult it is to be funny, you know, and they just have no clue or how difficult it is to act.

Well, you're just up there saying words, right? I remember, what's his name?

Fight Club. Oh, yes, David Fincher.
David Fincher. He called me up and said, I know you're not an actor, but doing this film about the Zodiac Killer, you know, and you...

have a physical resemblance to the Zodiac Killer. Would you read for it? You know, no pressure.
I said, fuck it, all right. So, like, I went and saw an acting coach, right, for an evening.

Just was like, I have to read this thing tomorrow. I don't know what I'm doing.
Like, give me your best two-pointers or whatever, you know.

I went and bought the killer's boots at the Army and Navy supply store because he was ex-Navy. And he, I said, well, he would have worn these navy boots or whatever.

And I tried to be a method actor for five fucking minutes, you know? So I got the boot, the navy boots. And I went down there and

David Vitcher was there, his producer, they were very nice. Oh, we know you're not an actor.
It's fine. All you have to do is just read.
We just want to hear your voice. Just read.

And literally, it was like,

and it was just like, I couldn't speak. I couldn't finish a sentence.
I couldn't,

I'm sorry. And I completely fell apart in the most pathetic way.

I wasn't even trying to act. I just wanted to get through the lines and I could not do it.
But I knew part of the reason was because it was a lot harder than I realized.

And I didn't have a cocky attitude about it. I knew it was, I wasn't an actor, but I thought, well, I could read.
I know how to read and to speak.

I can do that. No, the whole context of it and everything, you're trying to read through this script while they're reading the other part, whatever, could not do it.
Could not do it. It was laughable.

But musical comedy, I guess, is probably my station as a muse musician performer guy or whatever that when i am confronted with musical comedy yeah or whatever um

i

i'm probably a lot more

not judgmental whatever but i'm like the wrong audience to kind of totally feel that. Someone else who's not a musician and not a comedian,

they look at that and they're just like, oh my God, two things that I love going on at the same time. But then if you're a musician, you start to go,

it's kind of like if you were to go observe, you know, a musician try to be funny and be a comedian. You would go like, oh, I really love your music.
And, oh,

yeah, that didn't really feel like the perfect time to say, actually, Frank, I've been recording some songs too. But right now,

we are going to head back to the London Palladium on the 19th of March 2024. Frank Black has just sat down after playing Hey with Richard Iawadi on guitar.

As you'll hear, my own Frank, my eldest son, was in the house that night too. He'd helped me play a couple of jingles, as he did a few times on that podcast tour.

And he stayed on that night as a stage hand.

It was lovely to have him there, despite the potentially awkward moment of witnessing his father confessing to his musical hero, hesitatingly, that he may have, well, kind of named his son after him.

Back at the end for a bit more waffle, but right now, back to the palladium with Frank Black. Or is it Black Francis or Charles Thompson? Let's find out.

Now.

How should I refer to you? Because you have many aliases.

How do you wish to be referred to on stage tonight? You got Frank. We'll do Frank because your son is Frank too, right? Well, you know,

the honest truth is that he's called Frank kind of because of you.

I mean,

it helped that it was a name I liked anyway. You know what I mean? If your name was Turdface,

I still would have liked you, but I wouldn't have named my son after you. So it all, the stars aligned.
So yes, Frank, thank you so much for coming along tonight. Oh, it's been a pleasure.
And

it's this. Do you always play here at this place? This is yes.
This is where I try stuff out, and then I do the main shows at the O2 generally.

I find them impersonal, so this is like a sort of fun indie night for me.

There's

Frank

on time. You can mind that.
Great work, Frank.

That's good.

That's good. I think you can get one more bend in it.

Hey, thank you, Frank.

On his way.

Now, we've met before, Frank.

Yes, yes. Do you remember when the first time would have been? I think you turned up at my house

in Los Angeles

on 22141 Londelia Street, West Hills, 91302, I think. There you go.
Just came to me. Dressed as policeman.
Yes. To go through your record collection for vinyl justice.
That's the one. Yeah.

And you improvised the theme from Beatles About.

I did?

You hadn't heard of it, but you started saying, oh, watch out, Beatles about, oh, watch out, Beatles about.

I was very pleased. And you also gave us some screaming lessons

because on my 50th birthday, my wife had a surprise party for me, and she had assembled some of my musical friends who had rehearsed a load of songs that they knew I really love.

And one of the songs was Debaser.

And I stripped my throat out so badly. And I had a few shows that week, and I had to cancel them because

I had screamed my way through the best birthday I ever had singing Debaser. Can you give us an example for people unfamiliar with that track of what we're dealing with here? The shouting in it? Yeah.

Yeah, it's just like,

you know, it's just a lot of, you know. How do you sing like that without immediately stripping your throat out? Well,

the guy that taught me how to shout was my neighbor, and I used to deliver flowers for his flower shop. He was from Thailand.

His name was Bob Samban Suk and he used to be in a Thai band back in the day. I guess his day would have been in the 1960s, I'm guessing.
So

I used to deliver flowers for him but he knew that I liked the music. Did you ever deliver flowers? No.

I mean once to my wife on her birthday, but it was just the once.

It's a terrible job because about one out of every five or six deliveries, you got to go around to the funeral home. Oh, yes.
You know how they deliver flowers at the funeral home?

You have to find a secret door that's unlocked because you don't get a signature. You have to look for a room with flowers in it.
And sometimes you don't find the room with the flowers in it.

You find other rooms. And it's very stressful.
Oh, man. So I don't recommend it for anybody.
But anyway, Bob,

I used to deliver flowers. He knew I liked the music, so I brought over my Beatles book to his studio and he said, we did

pick a Beatles song and he knew I liked the Beatles and we did O Darling in his little home studio. And he said, sing it like you hate that.
You know,

I don't want to say the word, but it was a bit frightening for me. I was only about 14 or so, but he taught me how to to shout.
And so I'm very grateful to Bob wherever he is today.

After our time in Los Angeles, when you were very welcoming to us, and it was very exciting meeting you after listening to your music all those years and then suddenly flipping through your C D collection and finding like, oh, he's got a lot of the same stuff as me.

That was very satisfying. There was lots of Ramones and there was Beck was in there and Donovan was in there and all this sort of stuff that I didn't necessarily expect you to have.

But it was good. And then, a couple of years later, or maybe just a year later or something, we met when you were in a band called Frank Black and the Catholics, and it was 1998.

And we were doing our show, The Adam and Joe Show, and we had an idea that maybe we could get you together with my dad, who was part of our TV show, Nigel Buxton, aka Bad Dad.

We thought we'd sit you down just in Joe's flat in Exmouth Market. And that's as far as we got as far as planning it.

And we just sat you both down. My dad had a bottle of wine that he was chugging away.
And he was there in his suit and tie, aged 74 years old. And what did you make of it?

I just figured that's how you did it over here in England, you know,

with your dad and wine and all that. And so I just kind of went along with it, and it seemed fine.
He was a very nice man, as I recall. I loved it because he was on his best behavior with you.

Because I think he knew how much you meant to me. So, whereas normally he only had bad things to say about pretty much everything that I really liked.
What are you listening to?

What is this loathsome music you're listening to?

But then you turned up, and suddenly he was all soft and excited to be there. By the way, this footage never saw the light of day because it was mainly my dad talking about wine and

some of his favorite roads in France.

That's a Netflix special now.

Anyway, and then years later when I got married, sorry, this is just me talking to

Frank Black about all the nice things he's done.

Memory.

But when I got married, 2001, you were in town and I went to your rehearsal studios and you sang a song for my wife. My wife.

And it was from maybe my favorite album in the world, which is your album Teenager of the Year, one of your solo records. And you sang a song called Calistan.
It's a great song.

I was wondering if you might sing that tonight. It would be my pleasure.

See See how the cow stand goes now. Okay.

Been a while.

So far, so good.

I took three days to drive down one street.

Radio on

tune to the big fleet

Invisible planes are cracking the the concrete.

That's just what some people say.

Hey, hey.

I put down my blanket on cigarette butt beach.

Saw the old man, he was doing okay.

He'd making his last stand on old bottles and cans

around there, Calistan Way.

Hey, hey,

it used to be 16 lanes,

it used to be Hua Wang,

it used to be Messican,

or used to be a Spaniard Nueibo,

yeah, it used to be Navajo,

or used to be Yippee.

I

don't know

halfway point

I wouldn't influence the weather when I got wheezy.

I play some pachinko, I play parcheesi

in St. Anders

making it breezy

in the valley of tar that once was LA.

Hey, hey,

and my best friend, he's the king of Karoke.

He struck up a chord and he took it away

Out of the pan

and into Japan

Around there Calistan Way

Hey hey

There used to be 16 lanes

Used to be Huan Wang

There used to be Mexican

used to be Mexico

Yeah, used to be Navajo

It used to be Yippie

I

don't know

Kalistan

Just a

typical wedding kind of a song, you know.

I love it.

And then we drove down. I'm just going to carry on talking about my life.

We ended up honeymooning in California and drove up Route 1 and listened to that. Anyway, thanks, man.
Pleasure.

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Continue.

You hear the collapse if there's nothing in it, it, you ask yourself, woohoo,

hey, welcome back, podcast. That was Charles Thompson, aka Frank Black, playing the track Calistan, one of my favorites from Teenager of the Year.
Live on stage at the London Palladium in March 2024.

Thank you so much to everyone who came along that night. It was a lovely audience, I remember.

It was the first show of that podcast tour last year and it was lovely to have Richard there and Frank Black and very exciting to see them both play together and enjoy each other's company.

Me and Richard sat dewy-eyed watching Frank Black playing that lovely version of Calistan, a song that we both love. And the fact that my own Frank was there too.

he's also a big fan. I'm very grateful to everyone else who helped that night, too.
There was Seamus, my producer. I'm grateful as well to Becca Bryers,

who helped me out wrangling the live recordings,

and

also to all the people at Crosstown Promotions, especially Richard, Ben, Annalisa, and Phil, and everyone at the Palladium that night. Thank you all.

Wow, it's really a very beautiful afternoon here.

I'm down near the road now. You can hear the traffic.

But I can't see it from where I'm standing. All I can see is a

field with gently swaying

wheat beginning to grow.

Autumnal trees over in the copse that I'm looking at.

This is the last podcast I'm putting out before Christmas. In a few days, I'm meeting Joe and we're going to record our traditional Christmas podcast.
Keep it low-key this year, face-to-face.

Last couple of years, we've done the Christmas podcast in front of a live audience at the Royal Festival Hall.

But this time, it's old school. That episode, of course, will be with you on Christmas Day.

Speaking of Christmas Day, I pre-recorded a show the other day with Deb Grant who co-hosts the new music fix daily with Tom Ravenscroft on Six Music.

But I believe she's sitting in for Lauren Laverne a few days over Christmas

and I don't know exactly when the show that I recorded with her is going to go out but it might be Christmas Day. Anyway look out for it.

The format was that we were playing each other a selection of songs that were new to the other person

and talking about why we liked them. I got quite emotional at one point.

But it was so nice meeting Deb. I hadn't met her before.
I loved the songs that she picked for me. It was fun playing her, the ones that I picked for her.

And I hope you will enjoy it. So look out for that show.
around Christmas on Six Music.

Speaking of getting emotional,

don't worry, I'll try and keep a lid on the wobbly voice. But talking to Frank Black there

about my dad

and doing that doggone video, which is a really happy memory. It wasn't stress-free making the video, but I really love the result.

I love the fact that my dad ended up being part of the Frank Black musical universe. Anyway, it's, as I speak, exactly 10 years since he died.

This is the kind of day he would have loved as well.

Very beautiful but cold.

Like my wife.

Oh, come on. Look, that was in case you're listening.
That was a joke. You're very beautiful and hot.

I think she'd hate me saying that even more.

But yeah, ten years.

I was already doing the podcast.

But

a lot of other things were very different.

Since then,

I have talked about him a lot.

Written about him in two books, particularly in Ramble Book

and also a bit in I Love You Buy.

But as regular listeners will know, he pops up a great deal in my conversations with my guests.

And I think about him all the time. I think about mum all the time as well.
But it's different.

Dad relationship, that's a weird one.

It's not a competition, though, is it? I finished audiobooking Anthony Hopkins memoir the other day.

I really enjoyed it. It's read by Kenneth Branner.

I mean, I guess I knew Kenneth Branner's a good actor, but

he knocks it out of the park. I suppose he is doing an Anthony Hopkins impression.
And the first couple of minutes I was a little bit worried.

But actually, it's really good and not too extreme. He just does a brilliant job.

And there's a lot of really moving stuff in there. I read a review that said, oh, it's quite melancholy,

this book. I suppose it is, in a way.
It's a lot of stuff about

mortality and regret and

sadness over decisions that Anthony Hopkins made in his life and challenges that he's faced, personal challenges.

Lots of very interesting stuff about the craft of acting as well. He's one of my favourite actors, I think.

I'd recommend it if you like his stuff.

But there's a lot of,

you know, dad angst in that book. As there is in, I guess, most memoirs, isn't there? I don't think anyone's relationship with their dad or either of their parents is ever totally straightforward.

I was lucky in so many ways. with my parents and what they did for me

and yet you know, you're always feeling like you could have been closer, you could have done things differently, you're angry at this, you're resentful at that, you're regretful at the other.

And you miss them badly when they're gone and you wish so much that you had another chance just

to sit down and tell them what you've been doing and ask them what they think about

what's going on in the world and ask all the questions you never asked and give them a hug and say thank you I love you

but of course the truth is that if you could

they'd be exactly the same and you'd probably have an argument or it'd just be a bit awkward like before

I don't know anyway if you're listening and you're in a similar spot

If you're in the process of saying goodbye to your dad, or maybe you have done recently, well, I'm sorry and you'll be alright there's actually a few rewards on the other side of it let me tell you

but

in good ways and bad ways it never quite goes away

hey come over here hey

good to see you thank you so much for listening

And for coming back.

Have I said all my other thank yous? Thanks to everyone at ACAST. Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork.

Thanks to Seamus, Becca Bryars. But thank you, most of all,

for coming along. And until next time, we share the same Sonic Space.
Maybe on another episode or maybe on Christmas Day. Please go carefully.
It's crazy out there.

And in case it's useful, I love you. Bye!

That was a long Frank Black one.

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