The Strange Brew - artist stories behind the greatest music ever recorded

Doctor and the Medics had one of the unlikeliest number ones of the 1980s thanks in part to an ambulance their record company sent to Radio 1 and then it spent the next forty years refusing to disappear. Jason Barnard talks to frontman Doctor, Reverend Dr. Clive Jackson, about new album The Optimal Mystic and about pretty much everything else: the A&R man who wrecked Andy Partridge’s snare sound on Miracle of the Age, writing lyrics for The Damned, the failed Welsh snail farm, and getting left off Liverpool’s number one list and putting that right.

Further information

This episode features early mixes of ‘Forever and Ever’ and ‘Dancing In My Hand’ from new album The Optimal Mystic. It is free to mailing-list subscribers via doctorandthemedics.com

Support The Strange Brew

Podcasts also available: John Leckie on XTC and The Dukes of Stratosphear, Matt Piucci – Rain Parade, The Vapors, Paul Cook – Sex Pistols

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post Doctor and the Medics appeared first on The Strange Brew .

The Residents don’t give interviews, so when they have something to say, Homer Flynn says it for them. He is their art director, their spokesperson and part of the Cryptic Corporation that has looked after them since 1976. Eskimo is currently on the road. The 1979 album, with its invented vocals and wind treated as seriously as music, reaches the stage this autumn with inflatable icebergs, projections and five new songs.

Homer tells me how a 20-minute slot at a San Francisco event grew into a full production. He explains why the first costume idea, a giant silver Christmas ornament with a top hat, was talked out of existence by costume makers, and how the eyeball that replaced it became The Residents’ symbol. We also get into the Mole Show and the Emulator sampler, the Freak Show comic and CD-ROM, the 100 archive boxes Hardy Fox kept, and The Lonely Wound, the new Residents album Homer says is in its final stages.

Further information

The Residents website, Eskimo Live

Support The Strange Brew

Podcasts also available: Wolfgang Flür – Kraftwerk, Robin Scott – M, Rat Scabies (The Damned) and Chris Constantinou (Adam Ant), Tim Arnold and Kevin Godley

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post Homer Flynn – The Residents appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Fairport Convention made a £5 profit from their first gig, at St Michael’s Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967. About 30 or 40 people turned up, and the band had printed the tickets and hired the hall themselves. Simon Nicol, whose house gave the group its name, was a professional musician at the age of 16.

Here Simon talks as Fairport embark on their autumn 2026 UK tour, a seated acoustic run that includes village halls and social clubs, and for the 60th anniversary shows in May 2027.

Nicol grew up in North London, where Ashley Hutchings lived just down the road and his father was Pete Quaife’s doctor. He saw the Kinks play their last gig as the Ravens and their first as the Kinks two weeks later. Fairport’s own break came when Joe Boyd watched them support Pink Floyd at UFO and signed them, though their debut single, “If I Had a Ribbon Bow”, sank without trace. Judy Dyble then left and Sandy Denny arrived, and Nicol says she “made a huge impression musically and personally”. The band made What We Did on Our Holidays, Unhalfbricking and Liege & Lief within 11 months, a stretch that also included the May 1969 motorway crash that killed Martin Lamble. Reflecting on those 60 years, Nicol explains why Fairport have remained active while “not a tribute band to ourselves”.

Further information

Tour dates and tickets from fairportconvention.com

Support The Strange Brew

Podcasts also available: Simon Nicol (2023), Ric Sanders, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Chris Leslie, Iain Matthews 

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post Simon Nicol – Fairport Convention’s Early Years appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Geoff Downes and Chris Braide talk about Trauma, the new Downes Braide Association album, and how the project has evolved since the first DBA record in 2012. They discuss the difficult circumstances behind the record and the hope that runs through it.

They also trace how DBA began, and how bringing in Dave Bainbridge (guitars), Andy Hodge (bass) and Ash Soan (drums) has expanded their sound. They explain why making the records they wanted, with no A&R department steering them, has been essential, and how Roger Dean’s artwork has shaped their identity.

Along the way, they cover the David Longdon recordings drawn from the archive for Trauma and other collaborators, including Marc Almond and Andy Partridge. They also discuss how DBA sits alongside Geoff’s work with Yes and Asia and Chris’s songwriting and production career.

Further information

Downes Braide Association – Trauma

Downes Braide Association website

A dinner for David Longdon with Geoff Downes in London, 6 November 2026

DBA podcast tracks

Support The Strange Brew

Podcasts also available: Annie Haslam & Jim McCarty: The Story of Renaissance, Inside Kate Bush’s Never For Ever, Alan Parsons on Pyramid, The Beatles and Pink Floyd

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post Downes Braide Association appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Deep Purple play their last show of this run on 19 December in Mexico City. After two weeks at home for Christmas, Gillan goes straight back into work with the band, before leaving their Nashville sessions three days early to rehearse for a twenty five date speaking tour built around the practice that gives it its name: filling gaps with nonsense words until the real lyrics catch up.

Gillan covers The Javelins, Episode Six’s German club circuit, joining Deep Purple, the new album SPLAT!, Jesus Christ Superstar, the Ian Gillan Band and a year with Black Sabbath he still calls the longest party he ever went to. He also describes Ritchie Blackmore rejoining the band on stage for Smoke on the Water, and how a broken guitar string at the Lyceum turned into a stage habit he still uses today.

Further information

Talking Gib’rish tour
Deep Purple official site
Ian Gillan online

Support The Strange Brew

Podcasts also available: Nick Simper – Deep Purple, Chris Slade – AC/DC, John Coghlan – Status Quo, Michael Schenker

This podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google apps and all usual platforms

The post Ian Gillan – Deep Purple appeared first on The Strange Brew .