Political Beats

Scot and Jeff discuss The Strokes with Christopher Scalia.Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Christopher Scalia. Chris is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (But Probably Haven't Read), a perfect Christmas gift for your favorite person. Find him on X at @CJScalia.Christopher’s Music Pick: The StrokesThe Strokes emerged at the beginning of the 2000s with a sound that felt both familiar and bracingly new. Drawing on punk, garage rock, and even classic new wave, they stripped things down to tight guitars, propulsive rhythms, and songs that valued economy over excess (at least for a time). Is This It quickly became a defining album of its era, with tracks like “Last Nite,” “Someday,” and “Hard to Explain” setting a template that would influence an entire wave of bands that followed.In this episode, we walk through the band’s discography from start to finish, looking closely at how their sound and approach evolved over time. We move from the focused urgency of Room on Fire to the more expansive ambitions of First Impressions of Earth, the occasional experiments on Angles and Comedown Machine, and the late-career recalibration that arrived with The New Abnormal. Along the way, we also talk about the personalities and dynamics that shaped the band’s output, from Julian Casablancas’s distorted vocal style to the tight, interlocking guitar work of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. You'll better understand how The Strokes’s career actually unfolded. Why some records landed immediately, why others took longer to be reassessed, and how the band managed to remain relevant without simply repeating themselves. In the end, this is less about hype or revival and more about what remains when you line the records up and actually listen.The Strokes’s story is also about timing and context: arriving when rock music was bloated, polished, and often self-serious, and offering something leaner and more immediate in response. That initial impact cast a long shadow over everything that followed. This episode tries to sort out how much of their legacy rests on that first run of songs, and how much comes from the quieter, sometimes messier work of sticking around and continuing to make records on their own terms. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Scot and Jeff discuss Van Halen with Sean Trende.Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Sean Trende. Sean is senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His new podcast with co-host (and fellow Political Beats guest) Jay Cost, is Stubborn Things. Find him on X at @SeanTrende.Sean’s Music Pick: Van HalenWait, haven’t we covered Van Halen before? Indeed, we have. Way back when on Episode One. This is a complete re-recording of that show, giving these guys the coverage they deserve. At the beginning, frankly, we weren't exactly sure how the show was going to sound. Now that we’ve figured things out, Van Halen gets its due.Few bands rewired rock ‘n’ roll the way these guys did, and fewer still made it look so fun. From the moment Eddie unleashed the lightning bolt that is “Eruption,” the landscape of guitar playing, and rock music itself, changed forever. In this episode, we set the stage for the band’s rise, the L.A. club days, and the swagger that defined their early sound.We start with the raw, unstoppable energy of Van Halen and Van Halen II. Then it’s into the darker edge of Fair Warning and the pop-metal perfection of 1984, complete with “Panama,” “Hot for Teacher,” and the synthesizer-powered “Jump.” Then David Lee Roth leaves and ends our story.No, of course not! We explore the band’s bold reinvention during the Sammy Hagar years, when albums like 5150, OU812, and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge pushed Van Halen into new sonic territory and to the top of the charts again. Songs like “Best of Both Worlds,” “Love Walks In,” and “Right Now” proved the band could evolve while still keeping that unmistakable Van Halen spark.Along the way, we dig into the stories behind the music  some of these are big fun) and examine how the band’s combustible chemistry created not just drama, but brilliance. And we talk about the lineup changes, tours, reunions, breakups, and makeups. Gary Cherone even gets a mention.Join us as we explore the thunderous riffs, the outrageous personalities, and the sheer fun that made Van Halen one of rock’s most iconic bands. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Scot and Jeff discuss Iggy Pop & the Stooges with Dominic Green.Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Dominic Green. Dom is a historian and columnist, and he used to be a musician. He is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and a columnist for the Washington Examiner and Jewish Chronicle. Check him out on Twitter at @DrDominicGreen.Dominic’s Music Pick: Iggy Pop & the StoogesLooooooooooord! When Dominic last joined us on Political Beats, to discuss the great U.K. band The Jam, we declared it to be in some ways one of the most necessary episodes of the show ever. (It was.) He has chosen to return to us this month with another one of the most necessary shows we have recorded, a deep dive into the true foundations of punk.Did "punk" music begin with the Sex Pistols in 1976? With the Velvet Underground in 1966? No. Whatever else you may think punk should be, or whatever else it evolved into, the true musical spirit of punk begins with the Stooges' 1969 debut album, a record of such throbbingly feral loudness, rage, and inarticulate energy that it seemed like the sound of cavemen bashing upon logs. And yet the Stooges -- led by Ypsilanti, Michigan's own James Osterberg, better known to the world as Iggy Pop -- were both primitive and neo-primitivist simultaneously: maybe the first band whose garage-rock aesthetics were both authentic and also an intentional artistic proposition. Iggy Pop -- working with the Ashton brothers and later James Williamson -- sought to strip rock and roll to its rawest, most inchoate essentials, and succeeded so wildly that an entire subgenre of music reveres him as their founding father.And then, of course, there's his work with David Bowie in the late Seventies, where both men creatively resurrected themselves. Buckle up for a brisk roller-coaster of an episode, folks -- embrace your lust for life. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Scot and Jeff discuss the second part of Tom Waits’ career (1983-2011) with Damon Linker.Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Damon Linker. Damon is a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and publishes a Substack newsletter titled “Notes from the Middleground.” Follow him at @DamonLinker on Twitter.Damon’s Music Pick: Tom WaitsWe sail tonight for Singapore and we’re all as mad as hatters here. Yes, Political Beats finishes its two-part celebration of the career of Tom Waits, rejoined by doughty boatswain Damon Linker as we pilot our way to unknown musical seas. Tom Waits had a fine career up through the year 1982, when he finished work on the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart. But we're talking about the man primarily because of what happened afterwards, when he became more than just a down-and-out jazz pianist with the voice of a Babadook. Waits met script supervisor Kathleen Brennan on the set of the film and fell in love, marrying a year later. (They remain married to this day.) Proving herself the anti-Yoko Ono, Brennan then alchemically helped to raise Waits’s music to an entirely new level of excitement and experimentation. His lyrics ideas become weirder, and more vivid. His ballads become infinitely more heartfelt (most of them are secretly addressed to Brennan). And his arrangements become a world of their own: Tom Waits begins, in 1983, to create glorious junk sculptures out of sound, using uncharacteristic (often minimalistic) instrumentation to create music that nobody has heard before.Through such landmarks of the 1980s and 1990s as Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Bone Machine, and The Mule Variations, Tom Waits transcended his balladeering origin -- without ever leaving it entirely behind -- and created a body of work famous for its eccentric, compelling, and deeply influential series. Once you get past the fact that he has a voice like the sawblades of a lumber mill, entire worlds will open up to you. Click play and clap hands! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Scot and Jeff discuss the first part of Tom Waits’s career (1973-1982) with Damon Linker.Introducing the Band:Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Damon Linker. Damon is a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and publishes a Substack newsletter titled “Notes from the Middleground.” Follow him at @DamonLinker on Twitter.Damon’s Music Pick: Tom WaitsThere’s a world going on underground, and Political Beats is here to explore it, in all of its seedy, alcohol sodden, and extremely performative oddity. Yes, its time to begin a journey into the heart of Saturday night, as we explore the career of Tom Waits, one of the modern musical era’s most notably stubborn, and brilliant, eccentrics. It may be difficult to explain the charms of a wrecked-voiced jazz pianist sketching portraits of the dissolute Los Angeles nightlife of the mid-1970s, but during this first part of Waits’s career -- when he climbed out of the Laurel Canyon rock scene to carve his own unique furrow as an affected beat-poet drunkard -- the man’s albums speak for themselves.During the second half of this two-part Political Beats retrospective, the gang will explore the fearless (and endlessly influential) art-rock musical turn Waits took during the 1980s. And there is true continuity between both phases -- at the end of the day, Tom Waits has never forgotten how to write a beautiful, memorable piano melody. But for now, settle in for a trip as far away from “rock and roll,” in some ways as Political Beats has ever traveled outside of Willie Nelson. Prepare to settle in with a drink and a smoke in a jazz lounge at 1:00 a.m. The night is only just getting started. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.