Martyn Ware: Electronically yours (Ep. 207) with Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy

Radio host, journalist, producer and DJ, among others, Martyn Ware received Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy in the 207th episode of his 'Electronically yours' radio show, streamed on August, 8th 2024.

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THE INTERVIEW

[Martyn]

Hi, it's Martin here, Electronical News as always. Today's guest is a very, very interesting woman who has been in the music business a long time, but she's coming at it from a slightly different direction. Her name is Colleen Murphy, otherwise known as Cosmo.

Her DJ name is Cosmo. She's American, but she lives in the UK now. She calls herself a musical selector, DJ, radio host, and a curator and an audiophile.

And she's, I suppose, most famous for Classic Album Sundays, where they do a playback of a famous album and comment on it. She's really good. She's done stuff for BBC Six, Sounds of the City, Radio 4, Turntable Tales.

She's a lover of music, a lover of bringing people together in a community to appreciate good music and good sound. She's also a prolific remixer. Roisin Murphy, The Rapture, Fat Freddy's Drop, Beardy Man, Candy Stanton, Chaka Khan, etc, etc. Here she is, Colleen Cosmo Murphy.

[Martyn]

Tell us about growing up in Massachusetts.

[Colleen]

Well, growing up in Massachusetts, it was a great place to grow up, actually. I grew up in a small town, a very small suburban town just outside of Boston. And although the town was quite normal, it was great for childhood, but once I came of age to, say, 12, 13, I started to feel a little bit trapped, and mainly it was because of music.

Luckily, I grew up with a lot of great radio because Boston had some very progressive, album-oriented AOR radio stations, and they also had a lot of college radio stations because Boston has the most colleges and universities in any city of the U.S., possibly in the world, I don't know. And so I was turned on to a lot of different kinds of music, like hearing Brian Eno on WBCN, on Oedipus' show Nocturnal Emissions. I would have heard Heaven's Seventeen on that show. I would have heard New Order. I would have heard Zymox, all sorts of great 80s bands, and earlier, you know. So that was really good to have that, and that's really what got me started into collecting records before I even started working in a record shop.

[Martyn]

Are you an only sibling?

[Colleen]

No, I have a younger sister who's not as much into music. I have a lot of aunts and uncles. I'm a big Irish Catholic Murphy clan, and they were all in the same town, and my dad was the eldest of six, so one aunt was eight when I was born.

The next uncle was 10, then it was 12. So there was this big Murphy clan, and I used to raid my aunts' and uncles' collections. So my aunt was into Elton John and David Bowie and Peter Frampton, as you can imagine, in the 70s.

I had another aunt who was into Bitches Brew by Miles Davis and Kate Bush. She was really heavily into music, and then other uncles that were into Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles. So I would borrow all of their records.

[Martyn]

Oh, you're very lucky to have that as a background. You're also very lucky to be Irish. I've got an Irish passport as well. I'm a quarter Irish.

[Colleen]

Really?

[Martyn]

Well, actually, I think it's a quarter. Both of my grandmothers were from Ireland, born in Ireland.

[Colleen]

Where?

[Martyn]

Yeah, so hence I've got an Irish passport. I'm very proud of my Irish heritage.

So am I.

Not quite as strong as yours, probably.

[Colleen]

Well, that's just one side of the family. Actually, my grandmother was English. She was a war bride. My grandfather was in the Navy during World War II and was stationed in Plymouth. So a lot of my family, even my father went to school in Plymouth for a little bit. Then the other side is the Scandinavian side.

All right.

I can't claim 100% Irish ancestry despite my name.

[Martyn]

What a beautiful combination of genetic traits. Thank you. The Scandinavian and the Irish. What more could you possibly want?

[Colleen]

Vikings and Irish.

[Martyn]

Yeah, come on.

You're not a fight boy. Yeah.

Well, you know what they say about the Irish, basically. They fucked their way around the world, didn't they? It's called Irish imperialism.

[Colleen]

Yeah, exactly. Love it.

[Martyn]

They were a big Irish empire, but they're, shall we say, more of a soft power landscape.

That's a nice, eloquent way of putting it.

So how did you, I mean, obviously you loved music from an early age and you loved vinyl from an early age.

[Colleen]

Well, vinyl was the only option, really.

[Martyn]

Yeah, of course.

[Colleen]

I mean, my parents had an 8-track and then I later got a cassette player, but vinyl was really the main option.

[Martyn]

You made your own mixtapes and stuff.

[Colleen]

I made loads of mixtapes. I started making them when I was 12. I even have a couple here somewhere. And I think that's how I started programming. I started doing that at the age of 12 and then at 14 I started on my high school radio stations, which was a 10-watt station, and I did that for four years. So I really got into programming.

10 megawatts, 10 watts.

10 watts. Yeah, just 10 watts. It went to the borders of the town and everybody else had kind of top 40 or classic rock shows, but I didn't. I had very different shows.

[Martyn]

Were you in development? Were your stuff more eclectic, would you say?

[Colleen]

Yes. Oh, absolutely. I had a very open ear. I did a show called Punk Funk and Junk with my friend Mary Caruso, which was exactly what it said. It was early electro, early hip-hop, but also punk because I was really into that, both post-punk, punk. I mean, I hate using all these genres, but it's just a simpler way of kind of describing it.

I don't know where Nina Hagen falls, but I loved her. I had a show called Strawberry Alarm Clock, a morning show, because I was getting into that Paisley pop sound and the 60s pop, but it was very eclectic, and it was also referencing the fact that I worked at a record shop called Strawberries. I started there when I was 16.

  So I was a real obsessive, and yeah, it was kind of strange.

[Martyn]

Did you use to do the equivalent of doing mixtapes for the radio then?

[Colleen]

No, I did the radio live, and I did mixtapes for myself and for friends, so I'd copy them. I ended up getting one of those double cassette recorders.

[Martyn]

Right. And then live DJing, when did you start doing that?

[Colleen]

Live DJing really came out of college radio. So I went to New York University and was lucky to get in with scholarships, but I also had, what did they call them? I got paid to also work at the radio station.

Not very much, not with all the hours I put in, but it was one of the biggest college radio stations in the country because we were in New York City. Our transmitter was in the Bronx. We broadcast to all five boroughs, Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey, and plus all the bands were there, so they would come through on their promo tours, and this is the 1980s, before Nirvana broke and changed American radio forever.

This was the only place where you could hear this music. Some of the bands graduated, like R.E.M. and U2 graduated to more kind of album oriented rock stations, but we were the purveyors of fine music throughout the 1980s, and Nick Cave would come through the studio, Shea McGowan would come through the studio, Bjork would come through the studio, everybody did because there weren't any other radio outlets really for them to do interviews. So it was a really great experience, but we did a lot of events throughout New York City.

So I DJed at CBGB's like record can team when they started.

Oh, I'm really jealous.

Yeah, that was really fun. I also played at Mars, you know, on the roof of Mars, which was a really cool club on the west side, a highway area.

[Martyn]

Have you ever been to Danceteria? Are you too young for that?

[Colleen]

No, I didn't, and then really I started getting into dance music more. I think Danceteria was closing right around the time I moved there. I moved there in 86, and I know the garage closed in 87, it was before I ever went.

I used to go to Palladium and places like that to dance, but it was really in 1991, really when I started heavily going to other clubs, like dance music clubs and really immersing myself in that world.

[Martyn]

I've done quite a lot of interviews with people from the dance scene, and particularly in New York. I'm fascinated with all that, because to us in the UK, or to me in Sheffield precisely, before I moved down to London in 81, it was a thing of unimaginable charisma, really, I suppose. And the eclecticism of the music that was coming out of that time, because I was always a big soul fan, non-soul fan, but also a fan of the kind of proto-punk stuff that came out. So actually when punk first started happening in Sheffield, we kind of regarded it as a little bit old hat, actually. Right.

[Colleen]

Well, I think the Brits are usually further ahead musically than the Americans when I talk about the majority of the population.

[Martyn]

Yeah. Well, I don't know about that, but the other thing that we could never fully grasp, and I still have a little bit of a problem with it, is the complexity of the kind of radio ecosystem of America, and the segmentations of the market, and the kind of genre-based radio stations. There was no equivalence of that in the UK.

[Colleen]

Well, this is why I'm saying that I think the majority, when I look at the British population, they had kind of a more expansive ear, and I think this is true with Europe too, especially with music, Black American music. I mean, we take a look at the jazz musicians that had far more success over in Europe than the UK, and this still happens as well with Black bands, like Sister Sledge or Nile Rodgers. They're much more popular here than they are in the US.

The USA, you have to remember, the number one radio format is country, and I like some country music. I'm not putting down that. There's some great country music, but it is the number one radio format, and then it's like top 40 and classic rock, classic tunes, and because it was so formatted as well, sometimes white artists wouldn't be played on radio stations that were Black-run, and vice versa, or MTV.

I think they weren't even featuring Black artists. Everything was so segregated, sometimes racially and musically as well. The thing that I think has really broken down a lot of these barriers is actually online radio. Now, I'm a terrestrial radio fan. I love broadcasting on FM airwaves. It's what I love to do, but the whole onset of online radio has certainly made things a lot more competitive in some ways, but people really have to be on their A-game and turning people on to new stuff as well as maybe playing some old favorites.

[Martyn]

Yeah, I think so. I had a fantasy because I've done quite a lot of sound installation work in the last 20 years.

I know you have, yeah.

[Martyn]

And I've had a fantasy for a while about, in fact, I looked into it seriously at one point, about buying a big, or buying some time at least on a big shortwave transmission that could actually go worldwide.

That's amazing, that'd be fun.

I just love the sound of shortwave radio so much.

[Colleen]

I do too. We had one when I was growing up. We used to go to a place called Shop Aquatic, which was part of Martha's Vineyard sometimes.

Ted Kennedy story famously there around that time. I was going in the 70s, and we had a shortwave radio that I used to play around with. It was a lot of fun.

[Martyn]

Those big, powerful shortwave transmitters, buying time is so insanely expensive.

[Colleen]

How much is it?

[Martyn]

It's a lot of money. If you were going to do an hour's radio show-

A lot of hounds.

It would cost you, to get a decent strength of signal that could actually transmit around the world would probably cost you $10,000 an hour.

You're joking.

Yeah, because it's just not, it's only used for propaganda if you think about it. Yeah. Shortwave is only really listened to nowadays by pretty much either specialists or people in third world countries.

[Colleen]

Right.

[Martyn]

If you want to do a worldwide propaganda station, it's normally paid for by the government, right?

Right.

Anyway, so I looked into, I thought, surely there must be a cheaper way of doing this. I looked into buying-

[Colleen]

Do some British musical propaganda.

[Martyn]

We need some of that. Well, you know, I've had some-

[Colleen]

Prove to our government that the events in the music industry is a huge part of the British economy and they should be treating us better.

[Martyn]

Oh, by the way, I don't know if you've done any advocacy for artists' rights or British artists' rights, or what I have. I was on the board of the Ivers Academy for like six years and then the British Artists Coalition before that. I'm a little bit disillusioned with all that stuff now, I have to say.

It's a bit depressing because they don't seem to get anywhere. The British government don't seem to appreciate art in general, actually, but they don't seem to appreciate the economic benefits of music. I mean, I've told this story a couple of times, but I'm sure you're conversing with it. There was a time in the mid-80s where 13 of the top 20 singles in the Billboard charts in America, top 40, were UK-signed artists.

[Colleen]

I know this because I grew up listening to it. I was 14 in 1982. I was a keen advocate and embracer of the Second British Invasion, as it was called then.

[Martyn]

Right, yeah. I think the year I'm looking at it, probably a little bit later than that, but it was George Michael was massive then.

[Colleen]

Even in the early 80s. Honestly, the cultural export, the cultural musical export in particular, of Britain is so great. And I'm not even talking just about America.

[Martyn]

But why don't they dig this? Why don't they understand, just from a pragmatic point of view?

[Colleen]

That's what I'm wondering. It became very clear during the pandemic when events were closed first and the last to reopen. And I do like football, but the fact that the, was it the World Cup or the European Cup, in June 2021, thousands of people were allowed to gather in stadiums and all of the festivals that we were booked for got cancelled.

Oh, right, okay.

And you just think, oh, so 15,000 people or 3,000 people in a field is more dangerous than tens of thousands of people in an arena? And they just, I guess the Tories know that a lot of us musicians don't vote for them.

[Martyn]

Let's dig a bit deeper here.

I think that's all it is, right? Let's just say it.

The Tories aren't enormous fans of young people. They're not, they don't understand or like the rebellious nature of art in general, but music in particular. They see it as some kind of rallying call against conformity. I think it's actually pretty similar in America as well.

Oh gosh, yeah.

But this is destroying our cultural landscape. And I know you are a big advocate for audiophilia, which I am as well, obviously. I mean, I've spent 45 years doing it. But I'm not an obsessive about the finest, finest, I don't have to have, you know. I'm quite...

[Colleen]

More pragmatic than crazy.

[Martyn]

Yeah, more pragmatic, yeah. But I do care.

Me too.

I do care about the, shall we say the ecodiversity of the musical system. And I think we're losing that now and everything becomes more homogenized. Ironically, even though there's more people making music and putting it out into the world than ever before.

I saw a quote from that dick, Daniel Eck, from Spotify this morning. He was saying, oh yeah, he was referring to music as products. And now, you know, he's almost implying the subjects of what he was saying in this quote was there's too much product out there now. And I think they're leading the idea that people should just take it down off their servers or they should take it down off their servers after a certain period of time because it's not relevant anymore. I'm going, what the fuck are you talking about?

[Colleen]

Oh my gosh. I mean, it's interesting because I have, you know, one thing with these streaming services, I mean, obviously how they treat artists is despicable. So I'll lead with that.

But what I wanted to say on the other side of things, so my daughter is nearly 20 and she grew up with almost all of popular music at her fingertips.

Yes, of course.

And it's very interesting too because, you know, when I was growing up and you were growing up, you either had to hear something on the radio, you had to hear it at a friend's house or you had to own it.

You had to own a physical copy. And I'm not saying one's worse or better or worse, by the way, I'm just making the differences because there's advantages and disadvantages to both. The advantage to having all the music at your fingertips, of course, is that you can have a very expansive knowledge of music from a very early age, which my daughter did growing up in a musical household, I suppose.

So I do see a good thing with streaming services if they pay their artists greatly. And I think this is also a problem with the major labels as well, though, because I believe, from my understanding, that Spotify is doing deals with the labels themselves.

[Martyn]

Do you want me to tell you the inside joke on this shit?

[Colleen]

 Yes, I think we should tell people. People need to know.

[Martyn]

I was involved in the, you know, inner sanctum kind of negotiations and lobbying with Spotify. In fact, one of the key representatives of Spotify came to talk at a meeting of artists because some of the artists were freaking out at the Ivers, and they put the word out and they had a huge number of people coming. Could have been Fischoff's college.

I can't remember. There were about 200 artists in the room, a lot of high-profile people. There was me and Nick Mason on the stage.

[Colleen]

Oh, Nick's last guy.

[Martyn]

Sandy Chor.

[Colleen]

Oh, wow.

[Martyn]

Yeah. A lot of different areas covered. Laura Mvula.

Oh, cool. She's great too.

And various people, anyway, lots of different areas covered. And the bullshit he was coming out with just frightened me, and this was 12, maybe 15 years ago now. And so anyway, we dug a bit deeper and we found out that the major record labels in particular were approached at an early stage by Spotify and said, look, we obviously need your catalogue to make this work. We want it to be the go-to place for streaming. Spotify, I'm talking about now. There are others, of course, but let's talk about Spotify. We need your catalogue.

How can we get hold of your catalogue? And they just said, well, if you give us a share in your business, so Spotify gave them a percentage.

[Colleen]

Of their overall business.

[Martyn]

Of Spotify, right? Okay. On the basis that they would sign an NDA, so they couldn't divulge to either the artists, auditors, the general public, that there was a vested interest in them acquiescing to Spotify. So we don't know. I still don't know. We don't know what the percentage is because it's under NDA, right?

[Colleen]

How can that preclude auditors? Surely auditors should be able to get around that loophole because it would be a legal demand.

[Martyn]

They can demand to see the end result, if you like, which is all the corporate payments.

Okay, but not the contract.

But not the contract. I suppose, ultimately, you could deduce from that what the hell was going on. But the thing that Spotify do is they change the royalty rates all the time.

So it's impossible to go, well, 0.000001 cent multiplied by X gives you an equation if you fill it in because they change it all the time. And the bigger artists, because I went up to Nick Mason after this meeting, which was riotous, by the way. People were up in arms and said, Nick, look, we need somebody very high profile. I mean, I'm not high profile yet. To stand up against this land grab, essentially. And I said, Pink Floyd, you're one of the biggest rights holders on Earth in terms of the amount. And he said, yeah, it's kind of difficult because our business manager has done a special deal with Spotify. Right. So what they do.

[Colleen]

Well, because they also, Pink Floyd.

[Martyn]

Under NDA. Right. So what they do is they hive off the big players and go, right. We'll give you a better deal, a proper deal. But you're not allowed to talk about it.

[Colleen]

Right. Yeah. And I know there was something of Pink Floyd as well about the sequencing that originally when these streaming platforms came out, they didn't want their albums to be resequenced by the end user. So they wanted it to be streamed...

[Martyn]

Right.

[Colleen]

Apparently. It's sad, isn't it? It is sad because it's really the larger artists, the bigger artists are benefiting. And you find this also with collection societies, like whatever monies are unclaimed gets divided up and it goes to the big songwriters, the big publishers.

[Martyn]

Exactly. It's not right.

[Colleen]

And it's not right. It's not right. It should be going to the smaller publishers. It's so difficult to make a living in music now if you are not a major artist. Because you're not making money selling product, as they call it, but you're not making money selling records.

Now touring is so expensive, especially with Brexit.

[Martyn]

Yeah, it's all gone. I mean, we're just about survival with MSMT because we do a lot of festivals and touring. And we can make a bit of money out of that. But I mean, I won't even, I can't tell you. I just got my publishing royalties for the last six months. I don't know where you can go with it. I mean, I could probably have a holiday for a week in Ireland. That's about it. But anyway, let's talk about cheerful stuff.

[Colleen]

Let's talk about cheerful stuff. These discussions are important because I just want to say one more thing about this. When people think about how important music is to them, they really need to kind of think about this with their hands in their pocket because it costs about four to five pounds to go out and have a coffee.

Right now. And you could be buying even digital songs, like a few of those, or that's part of an album. So it's really important to support your favourite artist.

[Martyn]

It definitely is. Now the main way that people do that is by buying merch for vinyl at the event or online. In fact, with MSMT, we made a conscious decision to never release any new material on digital platforms at all. So now we only release new material on vinyl.

Wow, that's cool.

Well, it's cool, but you don't make much money out of it.

[Colleen]

But you wouldn't make any money to help the streaming services anyway, so what's the point?

[Martyn]

Exactly. So what we're now in the process of doing is creating collectibles over a period of time, which will increase in value. I quite like the Wu-Tang Clan thing with the one million pound single album.

[Colleen]

Yeah, I do, that was clever.

[Martyn]

That's really good, man.

[Colleen]

Very clever.

[Martyn]

That's probably worth a lot more than a million dollars.

[Colleen]

It probably is now, yeah, exactly. And it's just a big F you to the music industry.

[Martyn]

Exactly.

[Colleen]

And to show what hype is as well.

[Martyn]

Yeah, yeah. So, right, so what I love about you is you've got a portfolio career, which actually you've always aspired to that, it seems to me. But a portfolio career is actually, in a family ironic way, is now the way that most people have to make money out of the music industry. What do you think about that?

[Colleen]

Well, the thing is, as a woman DJ, almost every woman DJ that I know that started when I started had other jobs, because you had to. Yeah, yeah. We almost didn't even, I never even, when I started DJing and became a professional DJ out in clubs and places, I still didn't think that, it took me a while to jump off that cliff and take the risk of not having a job. So I worked in record shops, I ran a record pool, I did marketing for major record labels, I produced syndicated radio shows. I did a lot of other things.

I also, my taste has always been very wide. You know, I started working in a record shop when I was 16, and the beauty of that was that everybody I was working with, they weren't there for the money, because there was no money. They were there because they were obsessed.

And so I had, you know, my assistant manager was the jazz devotee and turned me on to Charles Mingus, like the Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, which, you know, when I was 16, or there was another guy that turned me on to the Electric Prunes, and then someone else was into the remixes, someone else turned me on to good Bruce Springsteen, because I was a bit of a snob, and he said, oh, there's some good Bruce Springsteen albums.

So I got turned on to so much stuff, and I've always had a very open ear. And not just in my private life, but also in my professional life. Classic Album Sundays, as you know, you know, we feature albums from all areas of the musical spectrum.

And even as a, you know, I started on college radios playing, all my radio shows have been very different. It was very hard for me to reconcile this for a very long time. I saw myself as two different individuals.

There's Colleen, yeah. Colleen who did like all the music business stuff, Colleen Murphy, who did Classic Album Sundays and could talk about other kinds of music, and then DJ Cosmo, who just played clubs and, you know, did radio shows that was focused on dance music. And then I realized that I couldn't be two halves. It wasn't, I guess, the overused word right now. It wasn't authentic. It probably wasn't fair to myself as well.

And I don't fit into the cookie cutter DJ thing. Sometimes I wish I did because I think if you had a very easy to digest brand and this is what you are, it is easier for people to understand and comprehend. And I confuse people. But I think also that it's, that the fans that I do have are so great because they understand me and they like that eclecticism. They want to learn something new as well as hear something that they know.

[Martyn]

So if you were running a... Well, there's two things I want to dig a bit deeper on. One is your... Let's just stick with the second one first. When people employ you to be a DJ, say for a festival, do they know, do you discuss what you're going to do or do you just turn up and they trust you?

[Colleen]

I turn up and they trust me. I've been doing this for... I mean, I've been in the music business for over 40 years, professionally DJing for 35.

I think they should trust you, yeah.

Yeah, but the thing is, is I do always think about who is there. I'm not there to show off and show how great a train spotter I am. I mean, in certain situations, that's what the situation calls for. But when I'm on a festival stage, it depends on if I'm opening up for Chic. I know who the audience is.

[Martyn]

Yeah, yeah.

[Colleen]

I'm not going to start playing, you know, Black Flag records. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I just... or Big Black. I just noticed Dean Albany has passed away. You know, I understand who my audience is and also I understand people bought tickets.

[Martyn]

Yes.

[Colleen]

So I'm not saying...

[Martyn]

You're an entertainer. Come on.

[Colleen]

Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying... I'm an entertainer, but also a musical curator and a musical educator. Yes. And I try to squeeze all of those into my DJ sets. So maybe you'll hear a few songs that you know. That's great. I don't see an issue with that.

[Martyn]

No.

[Colleen]

I don't see why that's a problem. But I also might play some things that you don't know, whether it's new, something that's breaking, or something that's old. And that's kind of always how I have been.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah. I think of these kind of musical stepping stones of people like, oh, I know this song, and they get into it, and it makes them feel good.

And maybe it also builds up a relationship between you and the dancer or the listener saying, hey, you can trust me. Here's a common ground here, but let's go here now. You know, I do mixes sometimes for people that are very obscure, and I like that stuff too.

And I listen to some train spotter DJs because I'm train spotting. And I'm trying to figure out things I don't know. But I find a lot of it is people playing things that aren't even that good, but they're rare. And that's the difference that I have. I don't agree with that. I think a song has to stand on its own. And you need to judge it for the song rather than, oh, this is 200 pounds.

[Martyn]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's the wildest situation regarding a DJ set that you've ever been involved with? Would you say, like, for instance, an unusual set of circumstances?

[Colleen]

Okay. It was very early on. It's when David Mancuso first asked me to play one-on-one with him at his loft party on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. And it was maybe 93. So just over 30 years ago. And I didn't know David that well. I had had him up on my radio show. I had been going to the loft, but I'm not the kind of person that starts yakking away to the DJ or musical host while they're playing. I'm not that type of person.

I'm actually less extroverted than that. And I had a lot of respect for him, too. So he had been up at my radio show. We had gone out once, talked about music, really were getting along. And then he just turned around and said, will you play some one-on-ones with me? And I was pretty floored, number one, because I respected him so much. I also respected the dance floor and the dancers. And I knew they knew their stuff. But the other things that were surrounding this was David's sound system. And he, we're talking about audiophilia. This is where I first really got into it. I had studied sound at NYU. I had been recording and producing radio. Yeah, I edited on tape. I mixed radio shows. I was an engineer and that side of things. But I didn't know about the playback side. So the fact I had heard about these moving coil cartridges called Koetsus that he was using, I mean, I didn't even know the difference between moving magnet and moving coil at the time, but I knew that if I whacked it, that it would have to be sent to Japan and would cost far too much money to repair because David had no money at that time.

[Martyn]

So you were nervous about that?

[Colleen]

I was nervous about that. I was nervous about there's no headphones. You were using a Mark Levinson M01 preamplifier, which is a classic audiophile amplifier. It's called cult status. And it just has a phono one and a phono two. There's no headphone jack.

So you have to know your records. You have to cue this $2,000 at that time. You know, moving coil cartridge by eye, no back spinning, and hoping you're on the right speed, hoping it's the right cut.

That's difficult.

It was difficult. Now, I only played four songs that time. But I did well enough that he asked me back. But that was the biggest... Oh, gosh, I was the most nervous for that more than anything else.

[Martyn]

Outside your comfort zone, perhaps.

[Colleen]

Yes, it was. But it was a start of a great mentorship and friendship as well. So I'm forever grateful for that.

[Martyn]

So I'm forever grateful for that. And what's your favorite set that you ever played?

[Colleen]

I can't even... I have no idea. I just can't even... Because I really try to make every set like that. And it's really something that's important to me that I bring positive energy and the life force of music to every single thing that I do, whether it's a radio show, a club gig, a private party, or a classic album Sunday's event. I want to feel uplifted, and I want everybody else to feel that way. And so really, that's my mission.

[Martyn]

That does pretty much chime with what we always say to each other in Heaven's 17. We say, look, sometimes you're going to be playing to 100,000 people. Sometimes you're going to be playing to 100 people.

They all deserve a show.

100%.

So do it.

Yeah.

And okay, what's the biggest number of people that you played to?

[Colleen]

I think about close to 8,000 or something around that, like at a big outdoor festival. It was a big outdoor festival in Italy. But again, maybe 8,000 to 10,000. Some of the clubs, there were a few thousand. I used to play at this club in Red Zone in Italy. It was called Red Zone, and it had 6,000 people there.

You know, I have to say, I think it's easier to play for a larger crowd than for a smaller one.

[Martyn]

And the reason why- I remember- Yeah, sorry. I was going to say, the reason I think is because when you perform into a huge audience, the behavior of the crowd is different. It's like a big, benign entity. I often characterize it as a kind of big, dumb cow. It's not going to get really over-the-top excited. Maybe some people at the front. But it's also going to be kind of- it's not going to be hypercritical, probably.

[Colleen]

Yeah. And there's enough people that are into you there that the spirit kind of keeps going. Whereas a small crowd, like the first gig I played in Italy, no one knew me. Fair enough. They shouldn't have. I mean, there's no reason for them to know me, quite honestly. I think there were like 10 people there, but I kept them on the floor all night. That was the hardest gig I've ever done because I kept them on the floor, cheering, dancing.

There you go. In a club too, not like a little room. And that was the hardest gig, but I also knew I'm a professional now.

[Martyn]

Have you met Anna Matronik?

[Colleen]

I have. She's wonderful.

She's lovely, isn't she?

She is great. I've been up on her radio show as well.

[Martyn]

Have you?

[Colleen]

She's another keen musical sports DJ.

[Martyn]

Have you ever done any DJing with her? Because she's DJs too, actually.

[Colleen]

I should, yeah.

[Martyn]

Yeah, she had me up on her Radio 2 show. Oh my God, what a bill that would be. You two together. My God. Frying them to death. You do a lot of remixing, right?

Yes.

You've had a lot of success with that stuff. So how did you get into that? Was it just something you did one day or was it something you pursued?

[Colleen]

Actually, yes. And actually, I wasn't even asked to remix. I was asked to produce an original tune. So it was the late 1990s and I was still working at Dance Tracks and there was a very great soulful house label that I really loved called Suburban and this guy Tommy Musto was behind it. And they were always really great vocals on key and paid off key vocals. Great keyboard playing, great bass playing, some live instrumentation.

And it was kind of like the same kind of sound on a lot of these records, but they're all really good. And he came into the store one day and said, I want to release your first record. I had actually started songwriting already.

[Martyn]

Right.

[Colleen]

I had gone through a breakup and was writing lyrics and melodies. So I had a song ready to go and it's actually just been reissued with remixes, strangely.

Cool. What's it called?

So that one was called She. The song was called Loneliness.

It features Alison Crockett. I know all the things I've done wrong. It was overly wordy, but I had a great teacher. Then I did another record with a guy named Danny Wang, which was a bit more electro, kind of quirky, keyword oriented. Then I started my own label, Bitches Brew, and was able to do a lot more there in terms of original productions and sometimes remixing things that we had signed. Really, I stopped doing it for a while. I did one for Fat Freddy's Drop around 2014. Then Classic Album Sundays was taking off and my focus just went to that.

[Martyn]

Yeah.

[Colleen]

But right at the beginning of the pandemic, I had read this book called The Artist's Way, which a lot of artists have read. It was becoming clear to me that I wanted to make music again, but I didn't really want to do original music because I didn't have the time or my own studio anymore. I was more into remixing. I had heard this Roisin Murphy song, Murphy's Law, and I thought, it has my name all over it.

[Martyn]

Roisin. Yes. Probably my favorite contemporary artist, actually.

[Colleen]

She's great. She's such a great artist. We asked, and she was really into the idea. That was after a long break. It was my first foray back into remixing. The thing that I'm really pleased about is that I get to do a lot of different kinds of things.

I could mix bands like A Certain Ratio or Joe Goddard from Hot Ship and go more into a different sound than maybe some of the other artists like Lady Blackbird or Secret Night Gang or some of the more soul-oriented groups. I've also done a lot of down-tempo remixes that are quite dubbed out or kind of very beautiful. Like Jacob Gurevich, who is a guitarist. I did one for him. Phenomenal Handclap Band and Phil Meissen. I've done a lot of different types of remixes. The way I look at it is that I don't have, again, a cookie-cutter imprint. I hear the song. If I don't hear an idea that I feel either lifts it more or is a drastic rearrangement, then I don't do it. If I have nothing to offer, I don't do it.

[Martyn]

I've been doing quite a lot of remixing together with my colleagues over the last two or three years. Mainly for friends, actually, but some of it's turned out incredibly well. I couldn't have prayed better myself. It's like you have to feel inspired by the raw material and you have to take a different view on it. You look at it through a different lens. My ambition is that when the artist hears it, that they are surprised. If they're not surprised, then I've done something wrong.

[Colleen]

Absolutely. Also, if you can't improve upon it in your own head or rearrange it, sometimes it's just perfect as it is. I'll just say, there's nothing I can do and add to this that I think is going to make it any different or better. I think this is the perfect encapsulation of this song.

[Martyn]

I agree completely. Another thing that I was doing research on you, your love of narrative in songwriting and music, which is something I share with you. I really miss writing content for songwriting, largely. I like story songs. I like to be included in a kind of... I like to be invited into a secret world of the story and feel like I've discovered it for myself.

Absolutely.

It's made up of that stuff, I don't think.

[Colleen]

Bob Dylan really helped change the fabric of pop music by going into these stories and narratives and not just singing about love songs and really inspired so many musicians. One of my favorite songwriters is Joni Mitchell. She's just another level in terms of lyrically, phrasing, unique melodies, guitar tunings, you name it. Country music, actually. Good country music has some great narratives. If you look at Chris Christopherson, some of the great songwriters, Jimmy Webb.

[Martyn]

Jimmy Webb, yeah.

[Colleen]

Great songwriting. Hal David and Burt Bacharach.

[Martyn]

Oh my gosh. That's amazing.

[Colleen]

I mean, they're classic songs for a reason that have stood the test of time. I hear both sides now. Joni Mitchell and the version she did in her 50s because I'm in my 50s, is better than the one she recorded. She wrote a song that was beyond her years. She was in her early 20s and then she performs it in her 50s and then she just performed it again recently in her 70s and brings so much more to this song. I mean, a great song can make you cry. A great song can make you laugh. A great song can make you cry from happiness.

And, you know, lyrics are really important, even if they're impressionistic. They don't need to even make literal sense.

[Martyn]

Well, they don't. They don't. And, I mean, I always say to people, you only have to look at MacArthur Park, for instance.

[Colleen]

Someone left the cake out in the rain with a great opening line.

[Martyn]

Jimmy Webb's the master of metaphor, right? And there was one English song that he wrote and he was 17 when he wrote it.

[Colleen]

It wasn't by the time I got to Phoenix, was it?

[Martyn]

Oh, my God. So many of his songs make me cry. He's brilliant. Anyway, it's my favourite song. So, tell me about your... Let's dig a bit deeper into the audiophile aspect of it. So, do you go... When you agree to do a gig, are you very picky about what system is?

[Colleen]

Yes. I have a tech writer. Luckily, my husband's my manager in advance and does all that stuff for me. But I always have a rotary mixer. There's some mixers that I just absolutely love and there's some mixers I won't name, that I don't love and won't use. And, yeah, the turntable, if I'm doing vinyl, the turntable setup is very specific. I get very angry when I see subwoofers underneath turntables. That's not a good idea.

[Martyn]

Who thought of that?

[Colleen]

Oh, there's a cattail.

[Martyn]

Yeah. Come on, Vito. Say hello. He's running away now.

[Colleen]

Oh, hello.

[Martyn]

Oh, cute. Oh, my gosh, very cute. But he always appears on every podcast. At one point. He's like, I'm not paying enough attention, right?

[Colleen]

But going back to what I said before, I always do a sound check as well. Unless I'm, if I'm doing only digital and it's a festival, and you know with festivals, only the big bands get sound checks, like you guys. We don't get sound checks. And fair enough. So now I'm tending to do a bit more digital when it's on stage. Because, you know, I don't know if there's going to be dancers dancing around and it just becomes a nightmare situation.

And I did do it for a while. But, you know, it's generally, I always do a sound check. And it's really important because you identify the problems. You also figure out how loud you can go or how the system is EQ'd. Because I like the, well, I like the EQ different than a lot of other DJs. I don't like a lot of sub-bass taking up the sonic spectrum.

[Martyn]

Right.

[Colleen]

Because it eats it all up.

[Martyn]

Yeah.

[Colleen]

And also you can't listen to it for that long.

[Martyn]

That's right.

[Colleen]

And I am also very careful of volume. And I'm also very careful of not going into distortion. Because these are all things that really irritate people without them even knowing it.

[Martyn]

I have to tell you, and if this ever happens again, I'm going to give you a call because it was fucking incredible. We were sponsored, Illustrious was sponsored for about 15 years by Bowers & Wilkins. And as you know, great audio equipment. And, but they've been moving over the years. There's less money in selling speakers and stuff like that. Because less people are into hi-fi, unfortunately. And they're moving more into like Zeppelins and headphones and all that stuff. Anyway, but they had one last big push on selling hi-fi. And they basically, what they did was they put the world's biggest hi-fi, as far as we know, I'm pretty sure, in the...

Was it Womad?

No. Oh, they did Womad as well. No, this was in the atrium of the British Library.

British Library, yeah. Yeah, I remember that.

Did you go to any of it?

[Colleen]

Yeah, and I used it.

[Martyn]

Oh, you used it?

[Colleen]

It's a modular system. Oh, did you? Yeah, it's a modular system as well. I mean, the acoustics in the atrium of the British Library are very challenging.

[Martyn]

Yeah.

[Colleen]

But it's a very good system. It's modular. And they've used it for... They used it at Womad. They've used it... They did use it at Primavera. I think they're interested in using it again, by the way. So maybe you need to keep speaking. Oh, right. Cool. I just saw some of them.

[Martyn]

I saw some of them.

[Colleen]

The power of the world is yesterday.

[Martyn]

Yeah, as a lover of... As a lover of HiFi myself, the thing that really frightened me about it was, it was like a million pounds worth of quadraphonic in this case. Brian Eno had done an installation the week before, and I was doing one based around recordings of Delia Derbyshire and I did a soundscape, an immersive soundscape. But then after it, as part of the event, the Moog Ensemble, I don't know if you know who they are, Will Gregory, Goldfrap, and Adrian Utterly from 47, did a gig. And as you know, the synthesizers can have an incredible dynamic range and can be, in the wrong hands, quite dangerous through a PA, should we say. And I'm going, this sounded like the world's loudest hi-fi. And I'm going, if the wrong frequency hits are put out through this hi-fi, could actually deafen people, for sure.

[Colleen]

Well, it's also interesting, too, with Sonic, I remember when I first got a pair of KlipShorns. We had bought some KlipShorns to do a party with Dave and Mancuso here, and two ended up at my house. And I started listening, and I had a pretty crappy amplifier, actually an integrated pre and power. And a CD Walkman, that's all I had, I didn't have anything else. So I literally had these two huge KlipShorns. But I started listening to my records again and hearing it on the system.

And then I started upgrading the system, you know, my husband and I, it's kind of crazy what we have. But in any case, what became apparent was some of the stuff that I had loved on a crappy hi-fi was really challenging on a great one. Well, it's exposure to irritation. Yes, you could hear the problem. So like, you know, and I find this as well, because when I'm working in a studio, you know how it is. Sometimes you want to add a little distortion to a keyboard sound or to a drum sound, because it gives it a bit more gravitas and push.

But I'm very careful about overusing that, because I just heard it done so badly. I've also heard distortion because of the recording levels were wrong, or the mastering wasn't good, like all the different aspects. But what did happen is like the things that were, you know, recorded properly, mixed properly, mastered properly, impressed properly, would just shine. And it was like, oh my gosh, I am feeling this in a way that I've never felt before. But you do hear the mistakes, you hear. And that's a challenge, too, because there's a lot of great music.

I mean, I love punk rock, and I don't expect that to be a hi-fi, you know. And there's a lot of Jamaican music, too, that was recorded kind of quickly, people coming in very quickly, they're doing sessions. And maybe some of it's great, like those great producers, like Joe Gibbs stuff just always sounds amazing. But there are some that are just like, oh gosh, that sounds like it was just done really quickly without checking the levels and the singer's distorting.

[Martyn]

And I've got a funny story for you. So I think it's funny. I was recently doing some remastering of some early HEM 17 stuff, and I was introduced to a mastering engineer, a very famous mastering engineer called Barry Grint, who works at Ayr, Ayr Lindhurst, and lovely guy. And he happened to have, we were listening through to our stuff, but it all sounded great. I said, what have you been working on recently? Because we got on so well. He said, well, I've got a repurposing of Oasis material from like the early 90s, a remastering and reissuing. And he said, it sounds terrible technically. I mean, beyond terrible. And he played it for me on his system, which is like the most accurate thing you could imagine. It's got like 128 bit mastering and everything. The sound colors are incredible, everything. So it exposes every limitation. And he played it for me. And of course, he played it to me before and after he'd done this thing, and you would not recognize it.

So I now understand that a lot of material, I'm not giving Oasis a kicking or their producer. It's just that there is so much technology now that can actually mitigate against the worst excesses of recording in the past, particularly analog, actually, strangely enough. Everything I ever made sounded fantastic, by the way.

[Colleen]

Of course it did. Of course it did. That goes without saying, Martin.

[Martyn]

They can't improve on it. No, but I mean, for instance, this is all a bit technical, but the massive improvement in either software or hardware, multiband compression, for instance, multiband limiters. It sounds very dull, but I assure you, it will make a mix from decades ago blossom into something incredible, if it's adjusted correctly.

And you need to know what you're doing. Obviously, it's a very specialized field. So the reason I mentioned it is because I've got a big problem with automatic, you know, with one shot, press a button, mastering.

[Colleen]

And especially for vinyl. Because vinyl, it's an actual, I went to almost all of my vinyl mastering sessions for my label. And the one that I didn't was screwed up. And it was my fault because I didn't go. It was too much bass.

Whenever there's too much bass on a record, it just hogs it all up and there was no dynamic. But I learned just by sitting there and just asking questions and learning about sibilance and learning about, you know, how they EQ everything and how, as you go in further into the record and how they had to change EQ on that, it was really enlightening. And I do suggest to anybody who is pressing records, whether you're a label owner or an artist, that you go to your mastering sessions. You can learn so much, so much, especially when you're doing your mix.

[Martyn]

To, I mean, I cannot understand why they would allow people to just let some stranger do it. That's how strong I feel about it.

[Colleen]

Yeah. I request certain mastering engineers, actually.

[Martyn]

Yeah. I mean, mastering engineers are trust because there are many correct answers to any particular questions. So there is a subjectivity to it.

[Colleen]

The same with good sound, too. I mean, you get to this kind of audiophile level, but there's some that like a more colored sound. Like I do love Klipschorns.

I can hear the horns, you know, but I also love the transparent sound of the Bowers and Wilkins 800 series. So it's like there's differences and sometimes different music and sound has a better kind of situation. I mean, for instance, like if you're using valve amplifiers and horns, jazz sounds amazing.

[Martyn]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One more cautionary tale. I remember in 98, just for people in general, because I've thought about it, when Strongroom decided to, yeah, Strongroom Studios in Shoreditch. I used to do a lot of stuff with it. I did Trent Dalby's first album there.

[Colleen]

Oh, okay.

[Martyn]

Well, partly is there and mastered it there. And yeah, anyway, so yeah, there was a, they sent me a note one day saying, we've got a guy coming over from America. We're re-equipping all our studios with 5.1 and he's going to show you what the possibility, you know, creative possibilities are of 5.1.

Is this for a recording studio?

[Colleen]

Yeah.

[Martyn]

Strongroom Recording Studios, yeah. And they were going absolutely straight in, no messing about. This is the future. We're doing this. So their main room went in there and had a demo and this guy played, he'd got hold of some of the multi-tracks of some very famous albums. So one of them was, I think it was The Eagles, Hotel California.

And he's going, listen to this. It sounds like you're in the room with them while they're playing it. And I'm going, well, basically what they've done is separate all the instruments into different spaces. And fair do's, they'd managed to make it sound that way. But I'm going, it didn't sound charismatic anymore. It sounded like a trick.

I know what you mean.

It didn't feel stuck together anymore. It didn't feel like a performance. It felt like it was showing off something.

[Colleen]

Yeah. I mean, this is the whole argument that was used. So the stereo mix of Sgt Pepper to the mono mix. And the mono mix has so much more power. And the original stereo mix, they're playing around with stereo. They throw the vocals. No one does this anymore. You don't throw the vocals onto one side, maybe backing vocals, but you never throw a lead onto one side. Drums are usually center.

There's certain things that you do in a stereo mix that just make it sound more cohesive, but they were experimenting. And it's true. I mean, sometimes the sound becomes too wide and the soundstage is too wide. It doesn't sound like a band anymore because you wouldn't hear a drummer over there and a saxophonist behind you. It can be fun, though. It can definitely be fun. And it can be a lot of fun and sound great and psychedelic.

[Martyn]

Yeah, that's right. So the other thing is this DJ contacted me because I do a lot of immersive sound stuff. And he said, I used to work in radio DJ. I've retired now, but I've just been going through my stuff in the attic and I found a whole bunch of quadraphonic eight track cartridges.

Quadraphonic eight track?

Yes.

[Colleen]

How is that? Oh, I get it now. They'd have one. They'd have the four. I got you.

[Martyn]

It's a special machine. Yeah. All right. With different outputs on the back. Connects it up differently. And I said, well, look, have you got the machine? I can digitize these for you. And I said, well, then we can put them into our studio. I've got an immersive studio. So I took this collection. He gave me about a dozen of them. And most of them, this was really experimental times when people hadn't been doing commercial distributed sound.

So there was one that was like a three eight track cartridge set of Emerson, Lake and Palmer live, right? And it was like, it sounded terrible. When he came to Keith Emerson doing his electronic, doing his synth solos, he's going, it's like all of a sudden, it's like wandering around the back of the room and the rest of the band is in the front here. And I'm going, what the fuck is going on here? It doesn't work. Very interesting, though. So there's a whole bunch like this. There was some soul acts, there was Days of Future Past, I know you like.

[Colleen]

I love that album.

[Martyn]

I've got that in quadraphonic.

[Colleen]

Do you? That was my first favorite album. That was my first favorite album.

[Martyn]

I read that. Yeah.

[Colleen]

Yeah. I love that.

[Martyn]

The one that worked and it was the least famous was a guy, a composer called Morton Subotnick, who was one of the earliest electronic music experimenters. Built his own machines, built his own synthesizer.

[Colleen]

Where was he from?

[Martyn]

I think New York, actually. Morton Subotnick. After I finish this, I'm interviewing, part two of an interview with him, so you'll be able to hear it on my podcast.

[Colleen]

Oh, good. Okay, great.

[Martyn]

He's a legend, this guy.

[Colleen]

Is he part of the Lamont Young, Terry Riley, that whole kind of group?

[Martyn]

They were his contemporaries. Yeah. One of these eight-track cartridges, quadrathonic, was a piece that he created called Pulse, was it, or something? And he got it completely. It was electronic sounds moving around, popping up here and then. It sounded 10 times better than anybody else has attempted it because the people from the traditional rock field obviously saw it as a gimmick rather than a creative tool.

[Colleen]

Right. So they're crowbarring something they've already done into that format, whereas he was writing for that format. He was creating for that format and using it.

[Martyn]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Colleen]

Right.

[Martyn]

We're near the end. This has been amazing.

[Colleen]

We've not even got to- You haven't talked about my compilation yet, Martin.

[Martyn]

No, no, no, no.

[Colleen]

Why have you got to plug? Tell me. I got to tell you about my Balearic Breakfast, three compilations coming out on Heavenly. Basically, it's from a radio show I started on Worldwide FM during the pandemic. But when Worldwide FM, which is Giles Peterson's radio station, took a pause, I thought I had built such a community. It was like also a request show or streaming the show live on Mixcloud and people were chatting and meeting each other. I just thought I wanted to keep it going. So it's now a radio show with no radio station. It's just on my Mixcloud. I stream it live every Tuesday morning, 10 to 12, British Summertime or GMT. People join in the chat from around the world, literally from around the world. So it's a whole community as well.

So even when I go DJ, I was just DJing in Athens a few weeks ago. There's a bunch of people, you know, Balearic Breakfast family there, as we call them. But I started a Jeff Barrett from Heavenly Recordings asked me to do a compilation and I suggested, let's do Balearic Breakfast.

Now we're on the third volume. There will be a number four. Avoiding the major labels. So we are not licensing anything from majors. I'll come up with two or three kind of obscure tracks that go for quite a bit on Discogs because it's a vinyl pressing. And there's no digital downloads. Then I play a lot of newer artists or artists that are putting out their own music and can't afford to put out vinyl because it's so expensive. So I, you know, go on to Bandcamp and find, you know, the songs that I've played and liked. And if it's not on vinyl, you know, then we reach out to see if we can license it.

[Martyn]

I'm a big fan of community in general. Completely dovetailed with my political beliefs. I think we need more community. And I think I really admire what you're doing. I think it's fantastic and more power to your elbow. All right. Stupid smash hits type questions now. Okay. What's your favorite film?

[Colleen]

Oh gosh. I mean, it's terrible to say, but Spinal Tap. I was like, should I do like Vim Vendors to the End of the World or Wings of Desire is another one. Apocalypse Now. I mean, I could go all this way. The first one. I don't know. Probably because I memorized it. That and like the, in high school, we had like the Holy Grail and Spinal Tap, you know, or like two that we just quote all the time.

Say, read book.

Oh gosh. This is going to be Russian. It's either going to be War and Peace or Anna Karenina. Because I could read them over and over again. There are so many books that I love. Oh, James Baldwin though. He's another one of my favorite writers.

What's this famous?

The Fire Next Door, Giovanni's Room. Oh gosh.

[Martyn]

The great thing is talking about community. What I've learned through doing these podcasts is this is people's favorite part of the whole thing. We could talk for hours, but they love going down rabbit holes based on people's tastes because they understand the artist's intention better, you know.

And the tips that people interview like you give are really valuable to people, you know. You need recommendations. So, yes. Favorite TV show, past, present, anything.

[Colleen]

 You know, The Good Wife. I remember watching that a few years ago. I couldn't believe how good it was.

[Martyn]

Yeah.

[Colleen]

Honestly. And that's strong women characters as well. I just started watching a Ryan Murphy, a new Ryan. Oh, I think it's Ryan Murphy called Feud. The first one, it was before the pandemic and it's Susan Sarandon starring as Betty Davis and Jessica Lange. Oh, I love Susan Sarandon. Oh my gosh. You got to watch this. It's Betty versus Joan Crawford. And Jessica Lange plays Joan Crawford. In any case, the new one is about Truman Capote and the Swans.

I don't know if you read that book. I read this book a while ago. He had befriended all these New York socialites and then kind of turned on them and told the world their secrets. And it was terrible. But the cast, and again, it's older women actors, which is so great and so great to see. Demi Moore is even in it. Molly Ringwald. I know. You haven't heard that name since the John Hughes films. But there again, Jessica Lange is in it. But the acting is phenomenal. Great scripts.

And another one that I've been really, I need to get Apple TV is the Morning Show. Speaking about strong women characters, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, believe it or not. I mean, it's incredible. Incredible stories about a news team, a really high, a morning show, basically, on a major network. It's excellent.

[Martyn]

Wow. Favorite DJ? That's a tough one. I know.

[Colleen]

I would just say in terms of a living DJ, somebody I still respect and admire greatly is Francois K. He's another one of my friends and mentors. And I just love him because he's always looking ahead. And he is truly eclectic. And he is a technical pioneer as well. And a great friend.

[Martyn]

That's great. Favorite musical artist? I know it's incredibly difficult.

[Colleen]

This one I can't do. I mean, there's so many. It's difficult to say. I'll just say Joni Mitchell because I said her before.

[Martyn]

Okay. What do you think the best sounding album you've ever heard?

[Colleen]

Oh, gosh, there's so many. You listen to those old Frank Sinatra albums on Capitol. Oh, my God. The microphones they were using.

[Martyn]

And the preamps and the valves.

[Colleen]

And the preamps and the valves. It is divine when you get an original pressing on something like that. Because of all the valves. Because they're recording with valve equipment. But there's also some great, great reissue labels, too. Like, what's his space in Iowa. Chad Haslam. Quality Pressings. And they do a lot of double 45.

And like Jeff Buckley's Grace. That's another one that's on a different label. I think it was called Org. There's some really good audiophile labels as well that will get the masters and the stems and remix and then remaster and press beautifully. But yeah, those old jazz recordings. You know, you think about Rudy Van Gelder was recording stuff in stereo as early as 1958. He was recording everything in stereo as well as mono. They really were painstaking with the actual recording. And it's just sublime.

[Martyn]

Okay. Music that makes you cry.

[Colleen]

I guess both sides now. Joni Mitchell, Little Green, Joni Mitchell. There's quite a few of them, I guess. Yeah.

[Martyn]

Okay. Final question. What's your favorite synthesizer?

[Colleen]

Oh, my favorite synthesizer. I love the Nord. Right.

[Martyn]

Interesting.

[Colleen]

Which one? I don't know the numbers or models, but whenever the Nord one is the one, I just find so many fun sounds on that. And whenever I'm kind of a little bit stuck.

[Martyn]

You've got a Nord, yeah?

[Colleen]

I don't. I work out of somebody else's studio.

[Martyn]

Okay. I was going to say, I was contacted by one of the Nord marketing people, I think, saying, oh, would you like some Nord equipment? And I'm going, why not? I'm going, sure, why not? I get given stuff a lot and I do a bit of endorsement. And then they said, but look, I know Nord really well because a lot of the people I work with use Nord and they bring it on tour and blah, blah. It's all very rugged and very good for live and everything. Yeah. Sounds are good.

And I said, but if I'm going to incorporate it into my live rig or into my studio, I don't want to be taking it back after three months. Exactly.

[Colleen]

Now you need it.

[Martyn]

Right. I know I'm not, I'm not bothered about trying it out and you get some free publicity and they went, oh, we don't give anything to anyone. We're going, bye-bye. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So thank you Nord for the offer, but it wasn't the right offer.

So that's it. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. It's been a joy.

[Colleen]

It really has been a lot of fun. It's great to see you again.

[Martyn]

And it'd be great to see you in the flesh at some point. I'd love to be your DJ as well. So if you're in town doing anything, I mean, I'm in Marylebone, central London. If you're ever doing anything in central London, give us a shout and I'll come down and say hello.

[Colleen]

Absolutely. Well, maybe we should do a Heaven 17 album for Classic Album Sunday sometime. Oh yeah, well, I'm up for that shit.

Okay. I'm riding it down. I'm riding it down on my Lyft.

All right, darling. Thank you so much, Martin. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Okay. Me too.

Bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

[Martyn]

Colleen, what a lovely person. Really interesting, exciting, eclectic, good-hearted person who's interested in creating engagement and happiness for people through her DJ work, radio work, and many other things that she does. If you want to email me, email me on electronicallymartinwithay at gmail.com or please consider contributing to my Patreon site, patreon.com stroke electronically hours to keep this going advert free. Doesn't it irritate you when there are ads on all those other podcasts? It does me. Advert free, totally independent.

I can say anything I want. Boom. There, I did it. And free to the public. Yeah. So if you appreciate it, there's a vast back catalogue to go through as well. And I'm starting to put them out on video as well, as many as I can from the beginning on our YouTube channel. That's it for now. Have a great week. Another great guest next week.

[Colleen]

Bye!