Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Damping down the wildfires of rock and roll news this week we focus on the following …

… Oasis, Taylor Swift and Coldplay and the new age of Winner Takes All

… did Bob Dylan write a song with Gene Simmons, advertise lingerie or appear on a telethon with Harry Dean Stanton?

… movies that need making eg the Molly Drake Story, the Rock And Roll Mitford Sisters (Pattie, Jenny and Paula Boyd)

… surely what makes the rock business ‘unfair’ are the people spending the money on it?

… is the Golden Age of TV over?

… Paul Weller’s magnificent Find El Dorado and the songwriters he’s rebooting - Willie Griffin, Bobby Charles, Duncan Browne, Eamon Friel

… a JR Hartley moment: Brian Protheroe taking his grandson to watch his album being re-mastered at Abbey Road

… ‘Programmes made for older viewers always have a lot of green in them’

… will we ever get another comedy record?

… why did we love Succession, Breaking Bad, the Queen’s Gambit and Six Feet Under yet have no burning desire to ever watch them again?

… how 200 Go-Betweens box-sets came with books from the late Grant McLennan’s library signed by Robert Forster

… ‘Never glad confident morning again!’

… new acronyms – RIYL, anyone?

… do any new TV comedies merit an Xmas Special?

... plus the Trump Awards, main character syndrome, Black Pudding Bertha (the Queen of Northern Soul) and birthday guest Ed Newman on box-set addiction – “this way madness lies!”

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