[music] Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the Editor-in-Chief of Current Affairs magazine, and you may hear the joy in my voice today, because I am talking to someone I admire greatly and wanted to talk to for a long time, and who has been a friend of the Current Affairs podcast for a long time, but it has never been on the Current Affairs podcast inexplicably, I don't think. So he is Mr. Danny Bradley, and those of you who have been listening to us for a long time may remember that Danny's songs used to appear semi-regularly back when we were more of a variety show podcast, and less of a serious interview program as we are today. We had a lot of Danny Bradley's wonderful satirical songs. Danny is also a writer. He writes for the skeptic. He lives in Liverpool, which we're going to talk about the wonders of Liverpool, and he's going to sell us on his virtues. Danny Bradley, welcome to Current Affairs. Oh, thank you very much for having me, Nathan. It's wonderful to be here. That's quite an introduction. So the way that I first encountered your work, as I believe, you set me a wonderful song that you had done called Deplatforming Blues. Well, maybe you could describe Deplatforming Blues to us. Sure, yeah. This was not long after I discovered Current Affairs magazine for the first time, and I wrote a kind of a Delta Blues guitar thing, which is a music in which the artists do a lot of complaining, and so I thought about how funny it would be if some of the most you know, platformed and moneyed people in our media landscape today were to write a kind of a woe-is-me Delta Blues song about how hard it is to not be invited to a prestigious university to talk about race realism. So I wrote a kind of a bluesy number called Deplatforming Blues, and I emailed it in to you as a reader and a fan, really. But yeah, and that's the first time that I got in touch with you. Well, as you say, usually, yeah, usually the complaints in blues songs are relatively justified. It's a lament from people who have nothing, and then what little they have taken away from them, everything goes wrong, and the blues is very beautiful. So as you say, there's this delight in listening to this, you know, I think it's a kind of a composite character who narrates your deplatforming blues and various what we might call Peter Sonian archetypes. That's right. Yeah, as if not being invited to university is a structural kind of oppression. Yeah, and when I first listened to it, the funny thing was when you said to it, I thought, "This can't possibly work." And then I listened to it, and it was so delightful, it's so good, and we'll just insert a clip of it. So let's just play a clip of it here for our listeners. I loved it so much. And then after that, you did a number of hilarious songs for current affairs, a couple of which we're going to revisit, including the great unreleased classics that we've never got to. And you did Buttigieg the Musical, which is incredible, many musical about the life of Pete Buttigieg at his time when he was being hailed as the next big thing for the Democratic Party. Fortunately, he slipped a little bit into obscurity since being stuck in the Department of Transportation. Yeah, that's right. Although I've heard a few people over here saying that they like him again. I mean, in the UK, you know, so yeah, I know, I think he's coming back. I think he's, you know, yeah, he's just a sawkin dream, isn't he? But I want to start, before we get to some of the songs that you did for current affairs, the satirical stuff, I want to just talk about music generally. You are kind of a funny thing is that the main thing you do is not satirical songs about Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. That's right. Yeah. Well, I'm a full-time, you know, a working musician here in Liverpool, and I play normal music. And I mean, I write music and I perform, you know, in bars and stuff during the week. That's my job. But I have a kind of a theater background a little bit. I mean, I've been in shows and I've toured a little bit doing some sort of, you know, quirky projects, theater stuff. And I've done a little bit of comedy before as well. And so I've basically spent the last, you know, 15 years of my life accruing a large amount of recording equipment at home just so that I can kind of make as many sounds as possible so that when somebody writes to me and says, Oh, we need a kind of a, you know, we need the Seinfeld theme tune. But as if it were a banjo hillbilly thing, I can go, yeah, I can do that brilliant, no worries, you know. And so I have the kind of facility to record stuff at home. And so I record my own music, you know, my own kind of normal songs as well from home. But very occasionally, I had done some sort of wilder, you know, more theatrical kind of recordings and stuff. So that kind of perfectly put me in the position to do some, some stuff like this for current affairs. You sent us a sea shanty at one point, a lullaby, a funk song. You know, every conceivable genre seems to have been covered in the Danny Bradley. There's kind of an electro pop song. That's right. And it kind of helps that I have been in funk bands. I've been in lots of different sort of musical outfits, you know, throughout my life. And so I have a kind of a feel for, even though many of those styles are not my main thing, or even the things that I listen to, very often. But I do kind of have a feel of how they're supposed to sound. And some of them really lend themselves towards various styles of parody, you know, but yeah, I do my weekly activities are not parody based. They're just driving around with a guitar in a car, just playing gigs and stuff. Parodies tricky, because you have to get it. Well, one of the things, you know, we do in magazine form, kind of what you did in an audio form with these songs. And in magazine form, we actually have had we've kind of struggled with parody sometimes, because if you make it too good, you've lose the elements of parody. There's like a line where we actually had recently our graphic designer who is an amazing graphic designer. I used to design the stuff myself, and now we have a professional. She designed something that was so close to the real thing, that it was no longer parody. It was just like, it was the thing. And I did this before the last issue. I did this parody of the New York Times book review section, where I made up fictitious books and wrote reviews as if it was the New York Times book review. And I don't think it quite worked, because you just look at them and it's just like, well, yeah, these could be in the New York Times book review. We didn't exaggerate sufficiently. So we've had to go back and I had to tell our designer, like, could you make this kind of worse in a way? Or could you make it more cartoony? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it's funny how, I mean, something that people always say about, you know, various kind of comedy groups, especially in the UK, I'm thinking about, you know, like the mighty bush and people like that is they do a lot of musical stuff. But the thing that everybody says about them is that they, the musical forms that they parody, they embrace them and then surpass them. So you love them. It's not like they're not skewing anything anymore. They're taking the norms of the, they're taking the conventions of the form and then doing something with them. And then you, you love it. It's no long, that's not really parody anymore. It's kind of, it's something else. It's almost like, it turns into love, you know, it turns into a loving rendition. But that doesn't really work so well when you're trying to do something about, you know, Pete Buttigieg or, you know, there's very little loving that I feel like I have to say about that. So yeah. Now, I, one of the things I wanted to ask you a little bit about was we, obviously, are leftist publication. And we think, and leftists think a lot about ownership, who owns what now you play a lot of folk music. And one of the things that you mentioned in the discussion notes for this, for the conversation we had today is that folk music of the kind you play is quite interesting from a leftist perspective, because it's a kind of music where it's collectively owned, right? It's publicly owned, a lot of it. A lot of the songs are, are sort of collective inheritance in a way that defies what we think of as this very strict copyright regime that the music industry rigidly enforces, where there are like lawsuits over, did you steal five notes from a Marvin Gaye song? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And that's why, I mean, the music that I love the most is folk music. In particular, the music that I tend to play the style that I find myself in a lot is it tends to be this kind of British folk revival movement, the second sort of British folk guitar thing that was happening around the 60s. And yeah, it's definitely, it's true. It's one of the things that makes it one of the most amazing, just sublime, marvelous kinds of music for you to get involved in, because it does belong to you. You know, it belongs to everybody, whether you want it to or not, it's yours. You know, and so if you're playing something, and somebody says, Oh my God, you know, who's is that song? You can say the correct answer to that question is yours, if you want it. Like, you can change a little line here, you can rearrange the verses, you can tell a different story. Sometimes some of my favorite folk songs, they are, you know, a story, but they contain very little, he said, she said, in them, they just sort of spoken things. And so you can rearrange them and tell a different story if you want to. And then people do, and they have been doing for hundreds and hundreds of years, sometimes thousands, like, you know, I mean, there are just hundreds of verses to this song. They go by 50 different names, and they all overlap, and they all have tropes that, you know, interact. It's just endless fun to discover a new folks or a folk song that's new to you, and then start pulling on that thread and going, Oh my God, look at all these, you know, I actually went recently to Cecil Sharp House in London, which is the British sort of archive of folk. It's a sort of a library for folk songs. And you can just start pulling books off the shelf and leafing, you could spend a whole, I mean, you know, I spent hours there just kind of pouring over so many different renditions that you didn't even know existed. And you're part of just a tradition you handed on to the next person. It's beautiful. And then we, as I said, we can contrast that with a different model of musical ownership, the sort of capitalist large record company model, where that police is, as I understand it, my right about this, that I seem to remember that the record industry literally like police's music to the point where if you're playing stuff, then they have ways of like trying to monitor, they were trying to monitor like even stuff that's played live or played in coffee shops for a long time to try and make sure they're getting paid for it. That's true. Yeah, it's often the case when I'm traveling around the UK playing even small shows. Sometimes they ask you to fill out a form at the end of the show, or even before the show, saying what's your setlist? And you have to write what you're going to play. And I sometimes don't have a setlist ready before that. I'm sort of like, well, I think I'm going to play. I might do those things. I might do a new song. It's bizarre. I think, I mean, legally, I believe that that's what all of the venues should be supposed to be doing, you know, legally. But sometimes people might not. And that's also fine. But folk songs are fine, because nobody owns those. So it's all bets are off. You can just, you can do a folk song and nobody, nobody hounds you. And I've any time that I've performed or released a folk song, that's never an issue. That's one of the things that makes them so attractive is that, I mean, I've looked into what it takes to cover, release a covered song that somebody owns that there's copyright stuff, you know, around. And it's just such a nightmare in terms of having to pay, you know, every time it's, it's played and stuff. So I tend to, I'm lucky in that I'm an independent artist. I'm not on a label or anything. And so a lot of that noise, you know, anytime it's in the news about Marvin Gaye's, there, it's melody being stolen and stuff. I look at that just as if it's kind of a bonfire happening in the distance, like, Oh, Jesus, I don't know. I don't know how people deal with that. I was just looking at barbusinessowner.com advice for bar owners. Unfortunately, and it says the music you play in your establishment needs to be licensed. Unfortunately, for the bar restaurant owner, you neglect to research the laws pertaining to playing music in your customer space and just turn a device on and play what you want. You open your business to legal claims by music rights holders, such as ASCAP. ASCAP and VMI representatives are sent around to bars the restaurants posting as customers to stay for up to several hours, making notes on what songs you've played in your establishment, either live or recorded, then they check up on your music licensing system to see if you're using a music service that already pays the licensing royalties. If that was meant to do not have a licensing agreement or build a minimum of $750 per song played. Yeah, that's pretty insane. I think I don't know for sure, but it's often the case. I mean, at least in the UK, I don't know if this happens in the US. But when I go to restaurants or bars and stuff and they're playing stuff through the house PA that isn't live, it's often piano instrumentals of popular songs. And I get the feeling that that's the very thing they're trying to subvert when they when they do that. I don't know if that does submit or maybe it just makes it harder to catch them or something, but yeah, it seems like a really, really scary circus to try and navigate. You know, one of the things we did was that we had the episode of the current affairs podcast, a wild hack that was about about actually about the Marvin Gaye Ed Sheeran lawsuit. And you know, one of the things I kind of argued in that was that while copyright can be good for artists in music, it can be kind of an absurdity to try and even figure out to try and assign ownership of a piece of culture, right? Because it's such a collective thing because, you know, the Beatles are ripping off Chuck Berry, who's ripping off Louis Jordan, who's ripping off, you know, whatever jump blues artist came before him. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's wild. How do you delineate? Like, how do you, I mean, I have no idea. And I also think that, I mean, you know, without making comments about particular artists who are popular right now, I also kind of think that the simpler or the more repetitive or the more formulaic your music is, the closer it's going to sound to other people. And I kind of feel like the less effort you put into your songwriting, you know, I've heard things before where there's been some kind of dispute between two very popular songs. And I listened to them and I go, well, they kind of are the same, but you know, like, nobody owns DGA B minor, like, this is just everyone's doing this now, like, where's the line between stealing that nobody owns, you know, chords. Yeah, it's crazy, because you, you know, yet formulaic pop music, but still has to be original enough to non spark a copyright lawsuit. Well, look, we've talked here about the wonders of the folk tradition and how much you love it. And we may have gotten our listeners kind of excited because you hate talking about music without listening to music. So I think I have to ask you Danny, whether you can play or something here that you particularly like to illustrate what you were talking about before, a, you know, a song that has been passed down that you like and embraces your own. Maybe you could give us something because you have brought your guitar here today. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, there's a folk song, a very sort of famous folk song called our captain calls all hands. And it's a beautiful song. And it got kind of, I remember it seemed to find a kind of resurgence around the Iraq war period, because it's a folk song that tends to be about a soldier who is leaving for war and his family don't want him to leave. But he's kind of drunk, you know, ideologically on this idea of sort of valor of something that he's fighting for. But as I said before, there's very little, he said, she said in it. And so you can kind of rearrange the story to sort of, to tell a different story. And you, you know, it needn't be just about, you know, falling in love with some kind of warped idea of, of war, but it can be about how you needn't fall in love with distorted ideas of capitalism or of God or of, you know, I mean, it feels like there is a kind of a beating socialist heart underneath this, this folk song. And so I've done a little version of it, and I'm, I'm likely gonna release it on my next album. But here it is anyway, it's our Captain calls all hands. [Music] [Music] Our Captain calls all hands. I'll wait tomorrow. Leave an knee behind. In grief and sorrow. What makes you go abroad fighting for strangers. When you could stay at home free from all dangers. While you courted me a while, just to deceive me. And now you have my heart, you need to leave me. You fell upon the floor like one was dying. The house was filled with grief, sighing and crying. I drove you in my arms, my dearest two. So stay at home with me, and don't be cruel. Drive off your brandy tears and leave off we've been. How happy we shall be at our next meeting. He says grieve not for me, for I am away. Into eternal life where love is flowing. But put note your trust above my dearest brother. So now if you should love, love one another. [Music] Thank you Danny. That was lovely. What did I ask you this? Tell us in your opinion what is it that makes a great song. What is it that makes for a great timeless song? It's something where these are timeless emotional struggles that everybody has. What makes a great folk song, even just melodically, I feel like when there's a melody that just rolls round and round. I feel like you could hear that melody over and over again and never get tired of it. It's a very peculiar business, what makes for a song that lasts. And words like truth and authenticity come to mind. And I was thinking about them in regard to parody songs as well. And I was thinking also what makes a good parody work, what makes satire work. And one of the things that makes it work or makes it succeed is obviously the satirical songs that you do. It's totally different from the song that you just like there, which is very beautiful, very moving. And while people may be moved by Buttigieg, the musical or the Biden ramble. You know, what makes a song look great seems to me to also be capturing something that is true very precisely. Like really getting like satire. I mentioned earlier the way that when I was doing these New York Times book reviews, I was really trying to like get a deep understanding of what is it that determines what goes in the New York Times book review. And to do your satire, you often have to do like a lot of research and really immerse yourself to make things feel true. Yeah, that's right. And I feel like sometimes for doing musical parody, I mean, I can speak to that. But I really feel like finding the perfect genre for a thing that you're trying to parody. Sometimes things just go really well together. And I feel like the song that I did for Current Affairs magazine called "Libertarian Lullaby", that felt like a song that the sort of dreamscape bedtime story thing of a boss or a managerial person just saying, "Just close your eyes. It's okay. You don't need to join a union. Don't worry. Like, I'm just going to put you to bed. No need to wake up. Don't worry. That just kind of fits so precisely. And it feels so true. It's like the spellbinding effect feels so true. And so capturing a truth in that way feels really essential to satire. Okay, we got to let our listeners listen to a bit of the libertarian lullaby, I think. So I'm going to put this on because I want to hear it again. It's been a little while. Okay. Well, people can listen to the full version on the SoundCloud playlist that we will link. But a couple of things come to mind listening to that. Go back to what I was saying before. First off, the rhymes of "In a bottle you'll pee with set up GoFundMe's and trees and refugees are really, really nicely done." But secondly, I think what I was saying is when you do good parody or good satire, you really have to get into the mind of the person that you're satirizing, and you really have to kind of empathize in a certain way. It doesn't work if you don't actually understand what they would really say. I mean, these are kind of the real arguments, like the non-aggression principle you mentioned in there. You got to kind of know libertarian political philosophy in order to parody libertarian political philosophy. Yeah, the more you know about it, the sharper your parody is going to be. Otherwise, it's just kind of insulting. I mean, it's fun to insult people too, but like, it's better if you, the more you know about it, the better the parody is going to be. And I sometimes feel that the reason why a lot of, say, impressions that people do of Donald Trump kind of leave me cold is that they tend to not really, it may just be impossible to empathize with Donald Trump. And so all parodies of him might just not really take hold in the way that you want. But many of the impressions that people do about Donald Trump, they tend to not want to climb inside, you know, who Donald Trump is. And they tend to want to just insult him because it's very tempting to do that. He deserves it. But yeah, it's much, much more effective and better. And it's more true to really understand what the other person is doing. Because I mean, it's kind of, I feel like I remember reading something in current affairs magazine about how to respond to an argument most effectively by really responding to their best arguments against you by not hiding from it. And you know, I feel like there's, it sort of seems like there might be a parallel, like, the best way to make an argument yourself is if you fully understand everything that they're going to say, everything they have said, everything they're probably going to try to say. You know, if you just know it so well, they can't get you because you've, you know, you've already done all the work. You know, you've mentioned there that one reason why liberal parodies of Donald Trump might not work is because insufficient empathy. You know, Donald Trump, there's certain aspects of him that you need to see from the inside. I also think that one reason why conservative comedy is kind of infamously unfunny is because they don't really get the thing. And like, if you don't understand, so for example, conservatives don't really understand the distinction between liberals and the left. They just don't get it. It doesn't make sense to them. So if you don't understand these things, you can't make fun of these things well because ultimately it's not going to ring through. And the best humor, like, strikes us in part because you go, that is so perfectly true. Yeah, that's right. And I feel like maybe, you know, I feel like I've seen some conservative comedy. I mean, it doesn't, you know, do anything for me, but I could sort of see that, you know, they've maybe carved out a small audience that just likes it when they insult, you know, liberals or the left, which they conflate all the time, but ultimately it just isn't as rewarding an experience. Like, I feel like, I mean, I don't know, I feel like you could, I could conceive of conservative comedy that really, really understands the left and maybe point some things out that we should maybe listen to. That would be good, but I haven't heard it. I mean, you know, if it exists, I haven't come across it yet. I don't think it's unfunny because, you know, the usual thing that's said is, oh, well, punching down versus punching up. I don't think actually that's why that's not my explanation for it. I actually think they could do it. There's plenty to make fun of from the left, obviously. Yeah, that's right. And I think it was, I think it was Chris Rock, who came up with that punching up and punching down thing, which is funny to think now because there's a lot of his comedy now, which you could sort of say has been, you know, punching down in some of the worst. In some of the worst ways. But yeah, that's not really, isn't enough of an analysis really to talk about what makes it work. But yeah, I'd be delighted to see it if there was a really brilliant conservative comedy out there that just properly points something out. You're listening to Current Affairs. Current Affairs is a nonprofit left media organization supported entirely by its readers and listeners with no corporate backers or advertising. We depend on your subscriptions and donations. If you're enjoying this program and you're not a monthly subscriber already, please consider becoming one at patreon.com/currentaffairs. And if you are a podcast subscriber, check out everything else Current Affairs offers, including our flagship print magazine, which comes out six times a year and is loaded with beautiful art and insightful essays. We also offer a twice weekly news briefing service that will keep you up to date on everything happening in the world and the stories you won't find in your morning newspaper. You can sign up for those at currentaffairs.org/subscribe. And if you just want to help us keep building independent progressive media because you understand how vital that project is, go to currentaffairs.org/donate, where you can read more about our work and make a monthly or one-off contribution. Current Affairs is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and donations are tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. Now back to the program. You probably like the Philoaks song "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" which I think is just such a classic. I don't even know what genre you'd put that. I guess it's satire, but it so perfectly captures the thing that he's trying to make fun of. Absolutely. That's such a great example of it. And that's actually an interesting example because I know some people who talk about Philoaks being, you know, it's not really, is he a musician? He's more of a, you know, there's a famous story about Philoaks. I don't know if you've heard about Bob Dylan and Philoaks where Bob Dylan, this may be apocryphal, I don't know, but there's a story where Bob Dylan apparently kicked Philoaks out of a limousine. And by saying you're not a musician, you're a journalist. Get out of the, you know, you're a journalist, you're not a musician, you know. I like it tremendously. I feel like "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" is just, I mean, especially that final verse, the whole "I wore every conceivable pin." But now, you know, I went to all the socialist meetings, I wore every pin, but now I'm older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in. It's just like utterly, many of the other verses are quite dated with the references to the, you know, the D.A.R. or whatever and stuff, but that final verse is... You know, some of them aren't, because he says his liberal says, "I read the new Republican nation." Oh. Yeah. Some of them really, you're like, "Wow, that holds up." Yeah, that holds up pretty well. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, that final verse, just, I mean, it's just so exacting and precise. I mean, I, you know, I love it. You know, we actually, one of the several current affairs songs that never got made was an updated version of "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" that was to do with the 2020 election cycle. And I have a list somewhere on my phone. I wrote about three or four verses for it, which I quite liked at the time, but we never, I think that was during the beginning of the pandemic and other stuff kind of took hold at that time. Took precedent, so we never got around to doing it. But maybe we will, who knows, you know. Do you have them accessible or... Oh, man. I don't know. Yeah, I might do. I feel like that song is the ancestor of a lot of what you did from your affairs. That's right. Genealogical. I have one here. Yeah. I'm trying to see if this is the best one. Yeah. Oh, I like this one, actually. Well, one of the verses for the updated "Fill Oak" song at the time was "Let's not separate into factions. This squabbling can only malign. We both want our side to gain traction. I'll be right with you on the front line. But don't you commit me to action? I'd rather watch "West Wing with Wine." So, "Love Me, Love Me, I'm a Liberal." Yes. Wonderful. Wonderful. I was hoping we might get a West Wing something in there. Yeah. He said that the Democrats should nominate a Republican for VP, didn't he? Well, yes. This was the crazy thing is that we've all been, you know, current affairs has been hammering on Aaron Sorkin the West Wing for many years. Luke Savage wrote a great article on it. I also run on something. I felt like Luke Savage did not hit the West Wing enough, so I wrote another article on the West Wing for current affairs, and Aaron Sorkin. And then I wrote one about Aaron Sorkin's terrible Abby Hoffman movie, and I was like, "We've been too harsh on Aaron Sorkin." And then he said, and then he came out in "The New York Times" and said, "You know who the Democrats ought to nominate? Mitt Romney!" An appeal to principled conservatives. If such a thing exists, I don't think Mitt Romney is a very good example of that. But yeah, I remember listening to the podcast episode on the Chicago 7 film, and it was amazing. There was a clip that came out of Aaron Sorkin talking about why he did that film. Have you seen it? Where he says, "I forget who it was now. Was it Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg or somebody who did that film? I forget who somebody like that oversold of the film, perhaps who made it." But Aaron Sorkin said that he had never heard of the Chicago 7 before being asked to make a film of them. He just said yes. He was so sort of stars, you know, his eyes were so star-struck. Yes, of course I'll do that. And then he quickly, finally, you know, read about who Abby Hoffman was. Like, it comes across Aaron in the film. It really comes across. Well, his idea of Abby Hoffman, I seem to remember that in the film, you know, Abby Hoffman is just like stirring monologue about how, you know, Americans believe in free speech and, you know, Lincoln would have wanted. And he was like, "Abby Hoffman was like one of these guys who spelled America with three Ks in the middle." That's right. Yeah, he says he makes Abby Hoffman say, "I love our institutions. I just think that they're occupied by some very bad people right now." I want to play a little bit for our listeners of one of my favorites, which I thought deserved to be a chart-topping hit, frankly, that you did for us, which was people need to think back to coronavirus days and you did this pop song for us, which was a little out of the usual Danny Bradley. Well, as we say, you're very flexible. You can do pretty much anything. But this was, we might not die, maybe. And this was a parody of government coronavirus advice. And the government of Vietnam had famously done this really cute kind of PSA with a catchy song on offering coronavirus advice and why you should wash your hands and why you should wear a mask and just be careful not to infect other people. And the United States government, by contrast, was at that time giving -- I mean, we're under Trump at that point -- just ludicrously contradictory advice. That's right. And Boris Johnson was the same at that time. There was a press conference he gave where the advice literally didn't -- people left that, you know, that bit of viewing saying, "I don't understand what I'm supposed to do and what I'm not supposed to do. Go to work if you can go to work, but don't go to work if you don't need to go to work. Who doesn't need to go to work? What does that even mean?" So I want to just play a bit of "We might not die, maybe," here. To go back to something that I've been hitting on, I'm still fascinated by the process of what it takes to make satire. Because I do it every day for coronavirus, like in our magazine, we're commissioning ads, but I don't know what we're doing. I haven't sort of analyzed it carefully. But one of the conclusions that I've come to over time is you really do have to capture some essential truth. And often an unspoken truth, you have to identify something. And this is true with comedy generally. You are identifying things that people know but don't say. And it's also true with our most successful articles. So when I wrote about Jordan Peterson, that was one of our biggest articles. And one of the things people always say about the articles that get popular at coronavirus is, "This was the thing I knew but had never heard articulated well." Yeah, absolutely. That's so good. Yeah. Well, I relate to that in that I don't know. I mean, I actually didn't go to music college or, you know, I mean, I don't really know how to do any of this. I just sort of recording it. I don't know how to do a pop disco song or a musical about Pete Buttigieg. I don't know how to do that, but I sort of know what I like and stuff. And so I just kind of try. But yeah, I feel like something that, you know, if you can get across something that somebody really, you know, somebody knows sort of in their bones, but they just haven't had anybody say, you know, quite as well or as pithily or as succinctly before. It's so, you know, and it's incredibly satisfying. In the same ways, when you hear somebody do that, or if you're reading, you know, the current affairs, Jordan Peterson article, it's so satisfying to hear somebody say something you've been feeling. It's very satisfying to do it as well to go, oh, I think I think if I nail this that I've just done it. Like, that's exactly, you know, it's hard to do. But I feel like if you really, really, if you have an idea and you just nail it, it feels so satisfying to make that come across. So one of the reasons that I think we enjoy music is that it helped you feel understood through good music, these things that are just swirling around in your head, these emotions that you have these thoughts you have that you wish someone could put into sound or words. The music does it and it creates this incredible feeling of connection to another person. Absolutely. Yeah. You just, you feel less alone and you feel, I mean, I felt that way, I think I may be up perhaps even said as much when I first wrote to current affairs with my with that first song, whereas I think that was back in 2018 or 19 or something. And it sort of felt like we were still on the boon of all of those people like my lawyer and opolis and Jordan Peterson and stuff. And I knew I had some people in my life who began to like those people and it was like horrifying. But I mean, I feel like my experience with those people is the same as a lot of people's, especially the kind of academic types where, you know, I'm not, I'm just like a fucking musician. I don't know. You know, and so I listened to like someone like Jordan Peterson, I'm like, I don't like it, but maybe he's right. I don't know really, you know, I don't, I don't, something about this feels really rotten to me and I can't put my finger on why. And then when you come across a 12,000 word article that's really funny that just like lays it all out. It's so, you know, it's like hearing a great song or something where you just feel, you just feel less alone, you know. But one of the things, by the way, you've been blocked by Jordan Peterson on Twitter, I believe. That's right. And I'm prouder of that than my undergraduate degree. And I didn't, the criticism I made was hilariously mild. I think he's just has a very thin skin or perhaps somebody else is managing his tuition account. I don't know. No, I think he does it all himself. Yeah, I can't even really remember. I think I just, you know, he was doing, he just did what he normally does, which is just put some kind of like quasi academic incoherent sort of just jargon speak out there and I just made fun of it a little bit. And he blocked me straight away and no word of a lie. There is a tiny picture frame in our bathroom wall of a screenshot with it says Jordan Peterson blocks you on Twitter. So, you know, and one of the things about the, the deplatforming blues is that, you know, when we talk about these of capturing something that is very true, that mixture. What you're managing to convey with something like that, they end up being funny is this, this level of petty grievance that is really important to understanding what's wrong with someone like that. And I think that satire is important because it is another way. It's another route to doing that thing that the 11,000 word article does, which is helping people to articulate something. And what a song like that helps, I think, to put into to make more clear is how funny it is that someone can have such trivial problems and yet be so aggrieved. That's right. It just feels, I mean, when they just like invoke Stalinism and stuff like, you know, I mean, you don't realize when you hear them talk, it seems ridiculous, but you don't realize how offensive like, I mean, it's just like insane that they're charging like 50 grand speaking fees or whatever and like they're complaining as though, you know, and so yeah, I feel like the form of Delta blues, you know, the whole woke up this morning and, you know, people in my life have died or my job is, you know, like you have real things to complain about. But doing that, but being a sort of a Harvard professor, tenured, you know, respected academic winner of, I don't know, you know, all these sorts of things. It just feels like the perfect way to just put that light over it, you know, it feels like the perfect way to view those kinds of people. And when they talk about, they always talk about the Chinese cultural revolution. I mean, Christopher Rufa has a book called America's Cultural Revolution. And I'm like, I always go like, you realize that during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, like the rivers ran with blood. Okay, you're rich. You're all rich. You have millions of people who buy and read your books. You have the best lives of anyone in human history and you're comparing it to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Because someone asked you to use their correct pronouns. That was Peterson's original grievance was that trans women were asking him to call her she. I mean, I know, yeah, it's insane. But I think luckily, I feel like we might have spoke about this once before, but I feel like, you know, back in like 2015 or 2016, most of the people, or many, many of the people who liked someone like him. I think that they were kind of, they would say things like, Oh, well, I'm not sure about everything, but he just, he's, you know, he just talks about compelled speech. That's not good. You know, all that, whereas now there's just no denying how vicious. I mean, you know, I listened to his interview, Jordan Peterson's interview with Kyle Kalinsky, which was a really frustrating interview as well. But they, he says something like, if you could snap your fingers and make transness disappear or something or like erase, you know, gender transition off the face of the planet. Would you do it? And Jordan Peterson like pauses for 10 full seconds, like thinking about it. And then goes, I don't know. That's a really tough question. You know, it's just impossible to deny. I mean, you know, people knew it back then. But now it just feels impossible to deny that this is, you know, that guy's kind of discredited himself, which is rather pleased by, and a number of figures we interviewed someone who was a former fan of his on the program a few months back, who was talking about his journey out of the Peterson cult. Listen, I want to change the subject. I want to talk to you about Liverpool, because this is where you live, and you are a Liverpool booster. I want you to tell us why. Well, yeah, I mean, I live in Liverpool and I'm not from here, but I moved to Liverpool in late 2015. And I was born in America, but I grew up in East Yorkshire in the UK and went to school there and stuff. But I just visited Liverpool maybe two or three times. And I don't know, just something, the walls were just like buzzing when I was when I was there. And it wasn't just to do with all of the music that has an incredibly vibrant, you know, music culture, as you can imagine. But there's just this thing where complete strangers just look after you in Liverpool. The first week that I was there, a guy let me ride the bus for free because I was lost. People would just like cook for me. Like, you know, I really, I'd never actually felt like, you know, felt at home in a city before, as much as I do in Liverpool. It's the most radical city in the UK by far. I happened to live about 40 steps away from our local communist bar. There's a big red star above the door. And I went to a poetry reading there a couple of years ago. And there are various kind of radical people just showing up reading poetry. And Jeremy Corbyn turned up with a backpack full of poems. And he just was reading some stuff as well. Like, it was just a marvellous, like, it really does feel like this little haven in the UK. I just will never, ever get bored of it. And, you know, when you walk down the street in Liverpool on a Friday or Saturday night, and you just see all the people, like, crossing the street with guitar. And they've just done a show. They're going and doing a different show. People often move to New York City because they have some idea about 60s Greenwich Village, you know, a femoral, cultural ephemera. And I feel like Liverpool actually is like that in real life. Like, it just feels like, yeah, I could talk about Liverpool all day. And I think you've sold a lot of people on it there in a short span of time. You sent me some great stories like counter protesters against the fascists playing the Benny Hill theme at them. And that's right. Yeah. In 2016 or something like that, some far right people tried to come and have a rally in Liverpool and they barely made it off the train station before the counter protest, which dwarfed them by 10 or 20 times over. Just chased them back to the train station and somebody brought a huge boombox and played the Benny Hill theme tune, which if people don't know, it's there. You know, that is the most... That is the most Liverpool thing ever is to say absolutely no to the far right, but to do it with such a sense of humour as well, you know, that's exactly what Liverpool is. Well, do I have to ask you, do you have a song that is that either you've done inspired by it about it or that it's from it that you could do for us? I certainly do. Yes, I have a song that's on my album. It's not a parody song. It's more of a normal song, but it's a little bit... It's a light-hearted thing. Liverpool is very famous for being a very, very popular stag and hen town to American listeners that's Bachelor and Bachelorette parties culture. Liverpool is, of course, very close to Ireland, so there's a lot of Irish hen parties that come over and it seems like Liverpool might be the place where Irish people come over to be debauched for a weekend and then go back home and leave those memories in Liverpool. However, when I used to go busking an awful lot in Liverpool early on a Sunday morning, because if you go busking in Liverpool early on a Sunday morning, you will see all of those hen parties, the Bachelorette parties, who are a little worse for wear now. They're moving a little slower. They're a little bit, you know, hung over and they're limping back to the train station to try and get home and you feel like it's your responsibility to play soothing music for them in their time of hardship, so this is a song about that. [Music] Well, yesterday's war is all over the floor. Plastic cups on the ground out last in all the ups and the downs. And the broken birds don't feel too bold in the morning. There's a healing hurt in the morning. [Music] Well, most of the night was mostly a fight, but now blinded they are bested by the line of the name. And the sunlit curve is a fatal blur in the corner, guiding the way back to home turn. And I see out a line, did I leave my phone behind? Could you fill the blanks in my mind? I'm alive, but I'm dead and my feet have gone red. Could you kill the dank in my head? And tell me again what I said? [Music] They're hobbling about, they're aching out loud, the sorry sounds emerge, floating around they hope lets her. And the half dead crowd won't be too loud as they pass by, limping away from last night. Well, we've talked about music as a way of conveying emotional truths. We've talked about music as a way of illustrating important points about politics through satire. I think we've seen there an example of music as a way of taking a little photographic snapshot of people in a place and time. I wanted to talk about what other use of music. We've only wrapped up here, which is another song you did for Kurt Affairs, unreleased for perhaps good reason. In 2021, I was laid off from my job as a columnist for The Guardian. And you kindly wrote a song for the occasion. That's right, yes. Well, if the word is allowed to be said on the podcast. We're not on the radio, so I'm fairly sure we can do whatever we want. Terrific, yeah. Well, I wrote a song and sent it to Nathan called Fuck The Guardian. And it's a jolly old dissection of The Guardian. But I feel like I remember the time you had said that the email you received that laid you off from The Guardian was had the subject, private and confidential. And so I sent you the song as an attachment, and the attachment was called private and confidential. So don't share this with anyone. I think enough time has passed. I would like to share it. If you don't mind, I would like to share a little piece of this lovely song because it was such a... It was very kind thing to do to me for me at a moment that was, you know, I wouldn't say devastating, but definitely annoying. Yes, yeah, fully annoying. Well, how exciting, yeah, the first airing of Fuck The Guardian. Unappreciated Danny Bradley Classic Fuck The Guardian. So I'm going to play just a little clip for this for you here. Oh, nice. Oh, beautiful. I had to listen to that whole thing. Yeah, it's just fun to make a horrific language really catchy and sprightly. I'm always interested in like how you can make sound funny. So first off, there's sophisticated Chomsky and media analysis in the lyrics. But then there are also things that make me laugh like just the way the backing vocal does the word Fuck. It's so good. And bringing in the accordion. Fuck. Fuck. It's so good. And you must have listened to some Spike Jones in your time. You know, who did these old, in the 1940s, did these kind of novelty records. And they're still quite funny. They managed to make the use of sound very funny in a certain way. And the Bonzo Dog Band did the same thing where like the use of sound is actually quite funny. Like there's the lyrics. And then there's the production, the construction of the song where you can actually incorporate audio jokes. Yeah, absolutely. Just the sound of the plosives and things. It's like a kind of slapstick in a way, you know, I mean words can be funny just in and of themselves. But also I think about sort of what those kinds of sounds make me think of, which is that when I hear the choir singing the word Fuck, I think of like a kind of a almost like a something on the Simpsons where it's just these like chorus, you know, or maybe even in like the film Hercules, the chorus of, you know, the Greek chorus just singing the word fuck in a really like charming cartoony way. You know, that's really fun. I hadn't forgotten because I hadn't listened to that so I don't think it's 2021. I've forgotten that actually you pack into my God, you pack into that a lot of very real analysis of, I mean, there's some hyperbole in there, but very real analysis of what the problem is with the Guardian as an institution. And you talk about you cite very specific examples like the way they informously treated Jeremy Corbyn, the coverage of trans issues. And, you know, you have people might have missed this, the use of, is it the bridge that's this far or no further? I don't know. I don't know music. Yeah, the bridge or the middle eight here, for sure. This far and no further. Which is a phrase Chomsky uses, I believe, to describe the function of liberal media, which is that they look like they're dissent, but what they do is they set the outer boundaries of how far you can go. Yeah, and make it seem like, you know, within those parameters, you can have a lively debate and it makes it, it makes it look like a debate is, you know, is being had. And there are lots of lively debates that happen in the Guardian, but there are some things you can't, there are some things you're not allowed to talk about very much. I mean, as you found out, the hard way. Yeah, I was fired over a tweet for megafun of US military. Israel, incidentally, people don't know, they can read about it. Now, you've been self-deprecating in the course of this interview and saying, oh, well, I'm just a musician and whatever. But if people read your articles in the skeptic, I think that they will understand that you also are a deep researcher. You are someone who understands that we have to make real serious arguments based in the evidence. And so I think that, okay, we've all enjoyed fuck the Guardian, it's been fun. But what I encourage people to do is note. And the same thing when they're reading like the dumb ads in current affairs, right? The dumb fake ads. And we put some really stupid ones in there. And there are some that are just stupid. And we have fun around here. But there are points. Yeah, that's right, there are points. Yeah, I used to, I mean, I used to feel like in some of the songs that I did for current affairs, it kind of felt like it was kind of fun to, I mean, I'm thinking of like in the Buttigieg, the musical one, or maybe the Biden song. It kind of felt like almost as if the task was to kind of condense a current affairs article about those things in a sort of joyful audio, vibrant, you know, sort of form. I mean, current affairs magazine is such a vibrant looking and feeling magazine. And so if you can do a song that sort of catches that in an audio way that feels really lively and stuff, but pack it with all the same, you know, research if you can. You know, I mean, there are no footnotes, I mean, in a song in the same way. So it's not the same as, you know, researching something for a book or anything like that, of course not. But it's fun to really try and fill it with as much, you know, real stuff as you can. I'm not going to play on this program, Buttigieg, the musical, because I think that our listeners should listen to the entire thing, which we will like, I don't think you should listen to the important you should go through and listen to the full Buttigieg, which is pretty brilliant. And then you should look at to see what Danny is saying here. I wrote this long article, one of our most popular ever called All About Pete. There was a review of his memoir that was 9,000 words. And, you know, Danny does in a four minute parody musical, what I do in 9,000 words in that essay. So there is this real kind of interesting, like, two roots to the two roots to the same thing. All right, well, we got a close here, but I was hoping you could play us one more song. And I was hoping maybe if I could make a request, it would be your latest IDW kind of send up of the, the Peter Sony and archetype, which you recently debuted to a live audience and was very well received. I guess I watched the video. Yeah, I, yeah, this is a song that I feel like would, you know, it's exactly the kind of song that I would record for current affairs magazine. I can hear lots of tiny violins and sort of melodramatic, you know, piano, melancholic piano ballad stuff. But yeah, this is, this is just a kind of a, it's a song for a certain type of guy out there who listens to these people and just, and just can't. Yeah, can't, can't understand why people keep breaking up with him or why people, you know, it's just like why, you know, anyway, yeah. So I'll play this one as a, as send off. I am a hopeless romantic. No, I just don't understand it. Why will no one give me a chance? Why do they spurt my advances? Why do women keep breaking up with me? I read Jordan Peterson. Don't they read Jordan Peterson? Why do I end up so hot sick? I follow all the pickup artists. They know what the weight of the heart is. But it doesn't seem to be working. Hello? Can I get you a drink? I hate Amber Heard. She's a fucking liar. I spend all day on my phone watching the trial. That's very normal. Why do lying women never get hella countable? No, I'm not saying that the whole me too thing wasn't okay, but maybe today they've swayed a little too far. The other way, oh no. Another one walks away. Why do all my relationships never stay? The wage gap is bullshit. Hello? Very nice to meet you. Here's a trans joke. Why are you walking away? Was it something I said? Hello? How do you do? I'm fine, thanks, so I think Black Lives Matter is why are you walking away? Why does this keep happening again and again? Why do nice guys get treated so mean? I like long walks on the beach and crying about the war on masculinity. Ain't I sweet? Why don't you want to be with me? Why don't you want me? Now I'm a lion, I'm a pillow, buying my crypto. Bating over round your table, looking at my window. I love me some self-help gurus, killing it on YouTube. Tech dudes selling some Silicon Valley voodoo, playing Joe Rogan, over and over. Hearing Ben Shapiro saying facts, not emotions, living in the moment. Reading all the stoics, but when I say a reading, I'm skimming like Tylopes, learning about vaccines. From my yogi, turns out you don't need 'em. If you're young and you toe, be sure I'm a ganglage. And I'm angry, but my room's clean, my room's clean. I washed my balls for you. 'Cause a pop psychologist told me to. He's my idol, I'm entitled, I am. A boy, I'm a lost boy, I'm a lost boy, I'm a man. A boy, I'm a lost boy, I'm a lost boy, I'm a man. Now can't you see that finally you've all achieved equality now fuck me? Thank you Danny. Thank you for that Danny. Once again, I think we see that you have to sort of inhabit the head of some pretty repellent people in order to portray them accurately for the purposes of good good parody. That's right, yeah, you just gotta put them in the light of why, why does this keep happening again and again, you know, but yeah, that's a fun song to do live. It's actually I think the only sort of parody song that, you know, kind of a current affairs parody song that I've actually like tried live and it's sort of, it works quite well just as one guy singing on a guitar. 'Cause it's a very, something about it being very lonely, you know, kind of enterprise, it sort of works somehow, you know. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, as I said, I feel like I can hear lots of Tony violins, you know, self-regarding kind of production. Well, listen, Danny, you've done so much wonderful music, you played us a track off your album, which is small talk songs, right, and you've got more coming up. See, people should go to in order to see your live dates, your website, probably, which is dannybradleymusic.com, do I get the right? That's right, yes, and I date it very infrequently, but whenever I can, I also have, you know, an Instagram and I mean, everything is Danny Bradley music on everything. You know, I really, I have to thank you, 'cause I don't, I don't do, I've never done like a podcast where people, I had people ask me things about me and stuff. So this has been really, it's been very peculiar and fun. So thanks so much for having me. Yeah. Good, good. It's been peculiar. That's right. That's what we were in for. That's a good spice. Just the right hybrid of the two. No, well, I mean, I just, I just love your stuff. You've done so much cool stuff for Curtis Fairs and I, you know, we couldn't play even all the unreleased tracks today. So people, but you have a playlist on SoundCloud of all of them. And people can also buy your tracks on your website, which they should, 'cause support independent musicians. But if people want to go to your SoundCloud, they can listen to the full, the full playlist of great Danny Bradley Curtis Fairs classics. That's right. Yeah, I have more than one place under, I think it's called Current Affairs Commissions. You know, they, I feel like there's maybe like, you know, 14 or 15 of them to make a good, you know, make a good album. No, that's right. I mean, unfortunately, the one's about Joe Biden now that he's being memory hold. That's right. People forget who that is. That's right. Yeah. But who knows Pete Buttigieg might rear his ugly head at some point. So, you know, but a lot of them hold up well, like the, there's one about the police called Bad Apple Pie. People should listen to the Court Pack Funk is a lot of fun. That means tested C-share team, which I believe is another technically unreleased. That's right. Yeah. And also the one where I feel like the production matches that the tone was when you asked to do a kind of stuff. But what's the song? We just start the fire song about 2020. You were like, can we have one of those, one of those pop songs that are like a quick list of everything. One of those songs about, about everything that's gone wrong in 2020. And that works quite well as a depressing, but fast paced pop song. Yeah. That's called, how was your year? I believe. How was your year? So if you want to be reminded, what happened in 2020, you got the whole, you got the whole list. Another example of good research makes good satire. And if you'd love to live in 2020, check out Danny Bradley. If you want to live that, you can go. You can do one of those for every year probably, so much bullshit. But I love that we just see is to send you like ridiculous demands like that. It was great. Yeah. Oh, by the way, could you do like, we didn't start the fire, but about now? Yeah. Or a catchy disco song about the pandemic. Yeah. Those are really fun. I mean, you know, I do, I've, you know, throughout the pandemic, I did do a lot of just home recording, you know, work. I got like commissions to do podcast jingles and things like that. But the current affairs songs were always the most fun things to do because they were just wild and just, you know, brilliant to even see if you could pull it off. Like it was, you know, it was always such a fun challenge. Yeah. Our artists also feel a little bit that way about when we send out our commission's list and it's just got just ludicrous. There's just ludicrous things in it. And so they have a ton of fun doing stuff. Like a planet of the manatees was one we had recently where we just sent. Could you do a two page spread that depicts an entire vast world inhabited only by manatees? Our artist Ellen Birch did that and she did a brilliant job of planet of the manatees. Well, it's just the best. And you have other comedy songs that I haven't even heard. Yeah. Well, I'm part of a small, I have some friends in Liverpool that we occasionally do just sort of alternative comedy nights where it's like, you know, sketches and things, you know. And so that's something I do just like, I don't know, like four times a year just when my friends are getting together and do that. And I have maybe an album's worth of kind of live comedy songs, but they aren't political. They're utterly stupid. Ah, I love the utterly stupid. The more utterly stupid the better. Okay. Well, Danny Bradley, wonderful musician and writer. I love the, as I said, people should check out your writing as well as your music because your stuff in skeptic is really, really good. And really in the current affairs spirit of debunking bad arguments. And they should check out both your serious music and your silly music. Thank you for joining us on Current Affairs. Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's been so much fun. [music] The Current Affairs podcast is a product of Current Affairs magazine. If you are not subscribed to Current Affairs magazine, visit currentaffairs.org/subscribe today and get our glorious print edition. The Current Affairs podcast is released regularly every week on patreon.com/currentaffairs. Thanks for listening. [music] (upbeat music)
