From 500 Podcasts to Radio 1: DiS meets 101 Part Time Jobs (Part 2)

21:31Giles Bidder:the big thing that i've learned from working with artists and being around people that are obsessed with music is the levels of empathy are different like if you actually think about it some of the people that never talk about music and are kind of like constantly demonizing things like i can't imagine nigel farage going home and putting on a record and feeling like his life feels enriched by listening to it. Whereas Sean or Terry Wogan or like all of these incredible people, you also felt like if you tripped over in the street, they'd be trying to catch you. For sure. Because their levels of I can feel what's going to happen.

22:13Giles Bidder:The warmth. It's that sense of shared humanity, which like what makes radio so special sometimes, it's that they're just talking to me. and also the everyone is welcome and the the kind of things where i've struggled when i've tried to listen to quite specialist radio is i felt kind of like i don't know if this feels like unfamiliar and uncomfortable and like just want someone to either gently hold my hand and pull me onto the

22:42Sean Adams:dance floor even though i felt a bit reluctant to go yeah or to go okay if you don't if you've never heard this kind of music before this is what's going on here yeah i think it is the point of like communication is to like it's to for people to feel less alone yeah um i don't know my mind goes to like cricket journalism which i think is hilarious because like they managed to say something in three paragraphs that really could have taken a sentence to say but that's like kind of the point of it you know it's like that's like test cricket i love test cricket when it's on it's not on enough but i want to sit down and like work through it and like be like i feel part of it's like a good book you know there's i think that's what um life moves so quickly now that if you can find things that put you in that flow state where as stuart lee says time is passing when you can find those things good hold on to them yeah the stuff that you're doing it and it's dark and it was two o 'clock in the afternoon when you

23:44Giles Bidder:started it yeah and you're like probably needed a toilet about an hour ago and i've been so deep

23:50Sean Adams:in concentration um but and there's so much i you know just to end on that point i think it's so important because so much of life doesn't um tell you that you need that yeah you know what i mean like most things in life don't tell you to take some time for yourself or to find the things that make you feel seen or loved or um you know um maybe i'm being a being a bit vulnerable here but like one of my um one of my languages of love is like the human touch that's not to mean i'm desperate or needy but i know it makes me feel seen when like someone gives me a big pat on the shoulder like i like that and i think we all have those needs and like talk about this is super vulnerable you know i remember being at school and like you know i've always been like quite vulnerable and like quite open but um you know i think life kicks that out of you because you're just trying to fit in you don't want to you're trying to not let people call you a weirdo give them a reason to call you that yeah you're trying to just like just go under the radar not get picked

24:58Giles Bidder:out like that's a pretty boring way to live it's it's also like the autistic masking that goes on when you can't show up as your full self and then the people where you don't feel dysregulated being your normal weird self like that's why neurodivergent people flock together like and these are things i've been learning over the last few years as i've been going like understanding why my brain works yeah the operating system that my brain has it's not the same as everyone else's yeah and you're trying to make sense of it yeah and i think you sort of answered my question in a very roundabout way there where actually the way you've gained resilience and consistency and this is my takeaway is you've been able to enter that flow state you've been able to set and i guess maybe finding a sense of purpose yeah that's not there in a part-time job of

25:51Sean Adams:making coffees or i think that's part of it you know like it goes definitely goes back to finding that purpose as a 14 year old playing in a youth center being like wow this is cool and then realizing nothing really touches that feeling and i had to sort of recreate that feeling which is now 101 the sense of belonging that i haven't had since i was a kid you know since i was 10 years old i mean i've got a i've got a niece who's nine years old if i saw if i knew that she was going to be like sent away to like live basically in like have you seen steve it's on Netflix the school that I went to that I that I boarded at it was like Steve but with that but without people with um such like mental health um I think you say magic powers I've not seen it so no but it but it was like um you know I felt like outcast you know I felt like uh I needed I needed connection you know I needed connection and actually I've kind of turned that into don't sound like a wanker but like that's sort of like everyone has a superpower everyone has something that they can like, that it's down in their well, in their gut.

26:55Sean Adams:Like I've managed to, I've been lucky. I feel very fortunate that I've like put a couple of the experiences that I had that really affected me, really, really affected me into this project. And that's kind of given me the resilience to it. I mean, also, like I was on universal credit and I needed to give myself a job.

27:15Giles Bidder:Well, that's the thing. It's like you can make your own jobs, but I'd imagine not to one thing I noticed was when artists that I was a fan of recognised the stuff that I did was important and like to have like

27:33Sean Adams:Do you think you needed that validation? No That's not a leading question like it's fine if you do need validation

27:39Giles Bidder:No I don't think it was that I think it was oh like I remember the Stereophonics mentioned my fanzine and it was like uh-huh like it was just it was so surreal that not only had they like vaguely remembered me they'd also remembered the name of my fans yeah and like and it was like that felt different to i mean i was constantly like told i wasn't very good at loads of different things and like there was definitely and but it's that feeling belonging to like a bigger community and like when when we interviewed bjork once she was like oh yeah i read john and sound all the time i was like that's that just like broke my brain i was like you've made some of my favorite things i've ever listened to and we're one of your your bookmarks like that just feels straight like and i don't know how to make sense of it but i think when you want to get inside of the speaker like if that makes sense like that sense of there's a whole world in here that i want to be a part of and it was something you said earlier that's made me kind of like okay actually that's probably one of the things that kept me going through the points where it really didn't make sense to keep going

28:54Sean Adams:you're part of that world it's a huge thing for 101 that we contribute to the society the culture that we love whether that's good music whether that's comedy, whether that's connection in a live environment as long as everything we do in some way contributes to the culture that we're like that we're from and that we love olivia and i yeah because olivia grew up in the northeast was going to shows um who ironically couldn't be here today because she's got other part-time jobs she's doing so much yeah uh like that kind of feeling that kind of sometimes intangible feeling that's quite difficult to put into words actually i mean um for me it's like the feeling of like standing outside the Astoria or something waiting to get into the gig or um like getting to getting down into like a club night at the la2 or something that's the uh something about that feeling i'm trying to recreate and that to me is contributing to the culture like bringing other people's voices stories and experiences like and like for you that's feeling of like you're in that world but i think you've got to question it as well you've got to question like i do try and wake up every day and whatever happened before i'm not really thinking about i'm like what could i do today obviously tomorrow is going to happen next week's gonna happen next year is going to happen but i what if what am i going to do today what's my job today and i really that's almost been like an accident as a result of that's been an accidental kind of um thing that's happened with this project is that it somehow allows me to do that and i'm very grateful because that's such a rad feeling to be like, I'm not going to do the same things I did yesterday.

30:36Sean Adams:The word rad is massively underused in society. Yeah, I mean, you know, there will be people who will be like, why is he saying rad? But I'll also say stoked, and maybe I'll say gassed.

30:45Giles Bidder:You are wearing a Thrasher t-shirt, it does make sense.

30:47Sean Adams:Yeah, and I know, do you know, I quite like the fact that wearing a Thrasher t-shirt is a bit on the nose, thanks to Justin Bieber in 2015, but actually, Thrasher magazine, have you read it? I think I did when I was a kid. I was more into BMX than skateboarding. It is an amazing magazine. My issue came through this morning. I subscribed to it. It's about$80 a year. This is the t-shirt that came with the magazine. It's the single most inspiring thing behind 101 part-time jobs. The writing is so funny and kind of serious in equal measure in a weird way. Don't know quite how. But this is the human thing again.

31:22Sean Adams:It's like you can't really define humanity.

31:25Giles Bidder:What makes a magazine brilliant, what makes radio brilliant, it is the things that people are building and the fact that the team of people like when i was 15 i must have written to ride magazine and dirt magazine because they were based in dorchester which was like 20 minutes away for work experience and i must have written some like every month um and because you cared yeah and it was just like this is my dream job yeah because i was like i wanted to be like a um like a photojournalist like a surf photojournalist and my career advisor was like that's not a job And I'm like, no, look, there's all these people whose job it is in the byline.

32:02Giles Bidder:Like, I was like, when I'm older, I want to work for National Geographic. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew that the visual storytelling and the art of journalism, because I guess I didn't feel like, oh, I'm going to be a news journalist or something. It was like, and then when I found my obsession with music, it was like, okay, I can express my visual world in my head through writing. And anyways, this is about you.

32:27Sean Adams:No, but I like it because you care. Yeah. And I think that is the most radical action you can do in a world where you've grown up to be like, oh, you know, oh yeah, that's cool. A bit flippant, a bit cold, a bit icy. You know, all the cool kids at school, you know, a bit like, oh, whatever.

32:43Giles Bidder:Or now it's like you're being cringe. Yeah. Because you care too much.

32:46Sean Adams:You're cringed, but you're free, as Yassi Salek says. But I think just caring is the coolest thing that you can do. And like caring about where you put your money. caring about what you put your interest into caring about friendships and family caring about yourself but all of that stuff is more important than what you're told in life it's caring where

33:08Giles Bidder:you put your time work money because i i think time is such a precious thing and i'm very aware that someone might have sat and listened to this for an hour now like that's that is like heartening to think two of us waffling on like i think this has been a really interesting chat and i think there's loads of things people can take away from because their thing might not be making a podcast their thing might be making bread yeah good on it it it might be making seven hour long youtube mixes yeah it might be this is a good point actually it might be spray painting some a

33:44Sean Adams:beautiful mural it's like there's this weird like phenomenon that when you are in a social place and you're like oh this is what i'm doing yeah this is what i like of course it's normal for someone else to be speaking to you be like oh this is what i like but there is a level of weird competition there that's creeped into kind of like um regular kind of perceived wisdom um oh this is how you communicate like let other people do their thing you do your thing and you should only really hang around with people that don't make you feel bad for doing what you're trying to do yeah and

34:23Giles Bidder:being obsessed with it because i think it comes back to that idea of value as well that we talked about right at the start the sense of like people don't pay for podcasts i mean they can pay to be a patreon yeah like on yours and they can pay to subscribe to our newsletter i've i've done doesn't

34:38Sean Adams:really exist but yeah but him i don't really put any effort into our patreon because i can't give i wanted it all to be available to everyone yeah exactly so i can't those people are paying it forward yeah so people are contributing because they like it and i don't really advertise it too much because i don't really want to come cap in hand yeah where because it's really the artist

34:57Giles Bidder:that should be getting like i'm i'm a member of a few different like i really like a uh youtuber podcaster called habituation room francesca forentini and like i'm part of her patreon and the main thing that's in it is people sharing news stories that she might find interesting people suggesting guests and people just feeling like they're part of it yeah and the best thing is you get a notification when a new episode drops because you don't rely on the algorithm and like to me that is the best thing that patreon does yeah there was a really good interview that taylor lorenz did with like the guy from is it pamplemousse whatever it's called the guy that started patreon if they were in a band and it was like this we're like we're creating this whole new fan club model and people took the piss out of them and they made it work um but he talked a lot about the simple act because you can subscribe to freeze for patreon and get notifications and in a time where i don't want another email like i don't know why i'm running a newsletter for that reason like i have a toxic relationship with email because constantly people want to pitch me stuff right and opening up my inbox is like a to-do list i'm never going to get through i like your

36:02Sean Adams:newsletter. I like Pop Bitch. Those are my two main newsletters.

36:14Giles Bidder:This episode of the Drowning Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Cobus, the platform that pays artists four times more than the industry standard, that has high quality audio, that has human curation, which as a human curator is something that I truly value over the kind of algo slop that you get on some platforms. You can really hear the difference. I know lots of places talk about the audio qualities and as soon as I moved across it sort of felt like I was rediscovering music which is one of the platform's slogans. If you're worried about your playlists you can use Soundiz. It's a really good tool that's part of the sign-up process when you join Cobuzz.

36:54Giles Bidder:It just transfers everything across. If you'd like a free trial of this platform that's independently owned and made for music enthusiasts, head to drownedinsound.org forward slash playlists, where you can hear not only our playlists, but get a free trial. You can also find these details in the show notes to this episode. And now back to this episode of the Drowned in Sound podcast, brought to you in partnership with Cobuzz.

37:28Giles Bidder:so let's end on a last question then i'm sure you get asked this all the time especially from 16 versions of 16 year old versions of ourselves yeah how do you start a podcast and what are your big tips know what you're trying to say and who you're trying to speak to

37:49Sean Adams:whatever that means learn how to edit video or audio and be consistent

38:00Giles Bidder:because I think learning how to edit makes you think differently when you're talking you did a couple of things earlier where you paused, realised you'd not phrased it right and knew that I could cut out the bit where you said something else and if I leave that in that or if I take that out it's going to change how the listener experiences this section of the

38:21Sean Adams:podcast yeah yeah you do change that experience I mean I think for um depends how you want to do it and how like tight you want it to be but classic example is like do you edit out the ums and the r's well it probably depends on how many ums and r's there are I do way too many of them but they're natural it's nice it's like when you hear someone on the radio stumble that is more human than them

38:40Giles Bidder:being a robot also my adhd means that sometimes when i'm trying not to interrupt when i eventually do interrupt it's normally with an um and i've like and i've only learned this about myself

38:52Sean Adams:from listening back to the podcast yeah you do you do learn a lot about the way you talk i remember editing the first couple of episodes took me like a day each for a 45 minute episode like a full

39:03Giles Bidder:day was that also because it took you half a day to really want to sit and listen to your own voice

39:08Sean Adams:It's part of it. I still get that now. I have to do like, what do they call it? Eat the frog? Lick the frog? Eat the frog. Whereas I just don't think about it. Just open up the project and go and like catch yourself off guard. I still need to do that. Yeah, because I would still rather be watching TV and drinking tea.

39:24Giles Bidder:I think the procrastination, especially when sometimes you've interviewed someone and you're thinking it's a really good interview and you're a bit like, I don't want to sit and listen back to it in case it wasn't as good as I thought it was.

39:37Sean Adams:I don't get that because it's like it is what it is. Yeah. And usually it's the opposite of me. Usually I'm like, oh, is that a bit crap? And I listen back and I was like, well, I can make it sound good. Yeah. I mean, what I like about that is you have no control, which probably comes back to the whole like job identity life thing is that like we are taught that we have like control in our lives. Like maybe it's like a subconscious idea. you know i'm talking about like ucas i'm talking about gcse's i'm talking about later on like if you're i didn't do a masters but i do teach people in masters but i didn't do one myself i didn't even go to uni so right but like i feel like people go to uni and i am brushing broad strokes here but people do those kinds of things because it's like something you can explain people accept you for being a student um and you have a control like there's the sense of control over it i'm a student i have control over my life no one people don't traditionally move to london

40:38Giles Bidder:with a 500 pounds overdraft and a job that's going to pay them about 50 pounds a week yeah living on a futon in a tiny bedsit in south london absolutely terrifying and so i would um

40:50Sean Adams:what i like about 101 is that i don't really even though i'm should be in control of everything there's definitely like a good 30 of the whole projects that like and i'm talking about the interview, obviously, I can't control that. I can't control the way, the exact way that I word a question. I can't really control the way I react.

41:10Giles Bidder:I mean, I wrote some questions down. I didn't word.

41:12Sean Adams:I mean, I think that's what the best interviews are. The best interviews, it wouldn't make sense if I gave you an answer about something and you moved on to the next question and weren't reactive to what I said. You have to be somewhat reactive. I think that makes a usual conversation. I also think if you have the same conversation, you can interview someone twice and you will never have the same conversation twice you know if you speak to your pal or like your family or whatever you speak to them once every two days on the phone like you'll never have the same conversation twice and you don't think about what you're talking about most

41:42Giles Bidder:of the time i think i can't remember who it was that i heard say it but being a great interviewer is being a great listener and you have to pay attention and know like there's a couple of things you said earlier and i could have pulled the thread on it i was a bit like do you really want to talk about that is that like is that relevant is that interesting to the audience and again like as the like the act of being an editor you're like oh i'm really curious to ask more about that but is that going to go too far off topic i think there's so many different things like that where your brain is like you're trying to like okay i'm holding the listener here i'm holding what you're saying here and somewhere in the middle i'm processing it and working out where the venn diagram is where it's decided to and often i think i found as an interviewer over the years like listening to when someone gets excited about something like i interviewed sin vincent once and we were backstage at the barbican and i don't know why i remember it so vividly it was wasn't filmed or anything so it's like and we sat down it was meant to be a 20 minute chat and we When I asked her a question about, she said something and I was like, oh, does that mean you've done your Malcolm Gladwell 10 ,000 hours?

42:57And she was like, no, let me add this up.

42:59Giles Bidder:And she's got a piece of paper out and she tried to count it. And I heard the story of her career through those 10 ,000 hours. And it was so interesting. I was like, can we just do this? Like, can this be the interview? It was so, so, so, so good. And it's like, I interviewed Sharon Van Etten once she started talking about being a tour manager. and like probably there and then i could have come up with your podcast concept because i was like i want to hear artists talking about the stuff that got them to the bit where they were and like she'd been the press officer at um badabing beirut's label okay and she was like oh yeah you used to get emails from me i was sharing it badabing that's like funny i was like you've just made tramp that's just like blown my heart to pieces and put it back together again and the so that's a good lesson as well that people do different stuff and like

43:51Sean Adams:life does go on like this moment of conversation isn't the finite end of either of our lives now i've got you on whatsapp hopefully well thanks so much giles uh is there anything else that you want to leave out on the field no um i did want to say i think projects like projects are fun and cool and it takes a lot of time to work out what you're trying to do and i think we probably don't give ourselves generally speaking a lot of people don't give ourselves time to let the vision actualize itself and we live in the time of turnstile they've been a band for 15 years and they've just released their fourth album and we live in a time of fontaine's dc that have been a band you know they've been a band for quite a few years i mean every band we listen to now i think alex g is probably a better example than fontaine's in that like alex g has been like chipping away at that iceberg like writing these tunes i love that quote that he said to a in a magazine interview where he says that writing a song finishing a song is like oh another one on the scrap heap like i love that idea and the idea of 101 i had the idea probably 10 years before i started it and give yourself time.

45:10Sean Adams:You know, I think that's...

45:13Giles Bidder:You also spotted the idea and you ran with it because I spotted the idea when I was like, oh, that's really nice to hear Sharon talking about being a tour manager. Sorry, Sharon, I'm talking like she's my friend. But it's spotting those things and feeling your way through it and being consistent with it. Yeah, and allow yourself to do that. I think the biggest challenge I've had with this podcast is i've not really been clear on what it is and i've been just like allowing it to just emerge yeah like do allow it there's there's this great um book called emergent strategy and it talks about fractals and like the way like i can't really explain it because it's quite a complex book but essentially it's just allowing stuff to emerge yeah like it set a very simple premise don't set the goal and then things can grow i think the world changes around you as you

46:09Sean Adams:do things as well yeah i love the facts there's 10 of me that doesn't quite know what i'm doing yeah and that's the experimental thing i think you need that i think you need that that makes it fun makes it curious um but the world changes around you and it allows you to kind of like

46:27Giles Bidder:slightly pivot to the to what's around you and that is the last word pivot well live and i want

46:35Sean Adams:like ultimately you know everyone should be able to live a life and have a roof over their head people should have time for themselves through projects people should feel like they can communicate with each other and be part of something bigger and speak to their neighbor like that's what i think about all the time and i think that does make a happy life no it does it that makes a good a good value of a good quality of life thank you giles of course thank you appreciate you

47:08Giles Bidder:that episode had lots of things in it that i didn't envisage we were going to talk about and didn't expect we would talk about but i'm really glad that we did i feel like episodes when the guest sparks me to share things often feel quite different. It feels less like extracting and more like a conversation, which is obviously what a great podcast can be. I really love that this was almost like a meeting of the Sean Keaveney Fan Club as well. Sean is such a wonderful broadcaster and if you're not familiar with his output, I would really recommend having a little delve in and seeing when he's live on Community Garden Radio, which Giles produces.

47:51Giles Bidder:I think humanity was a topic we discussed a lot more in that episode than I was expecting, but I should have predicted given what Giles' podcast is about and the types of conversations he has with people. I think that the dignity with which he is allowing artists to have space to talk about who they are outside of the music and hopefully helping audiences understand the value with music. That means that when you do buy a t-shirt or a hoodie or a vinyl or a CD, especially directly from the artist or from their band camp, what a difference that makes. When you make the ethical step away from streaming platforms, even the ones that pay well and give your money directly to the artist through their Patreons and places like that, you are making quite a big difference to often people not losing money when they're on tour but sometimes giving them the strength to step away to dedicate more time to their music and to their art to make more things that we're all going to love and also to sustain as a band like even just before recording this outro I was just reading about a band I saw that I really really loved at festivals last year and I was planning to put in my tips for this year a band called The Pill they're really young great punk band really funny songs as well as being kind of very on the nose and they've called it a day like one of the bands decided they didn't want to carry on they were just about to go out and do a kind of 10-day tour of the UK and this keeps happening like and it's not to do with anything beyond the fact that if this was your job you wouldn't be able to not do it but if it's a choice then there are ways to step away I don't want to make suggestions just about that band but it's symptomatic of seeing artists kind of appear be really great and then them not even get as far as the debut albums um happens a lot over the last 25 years of drowning sound i've definitely seen that happen way way way more than you'd expect you also see people like leaving bands just before they kind of go out and start making it it's like often it's the leap of faith or been there done that before and it didn't work out so they kind of don't kind of stick around um i mean even with some of the biggest bands in the world you've always got those like other band members that were like founding members of the band i really like that giles was so open with who he is and why he's doing what he's doing i thought some of his advice there to like the 16 year old versions of ourselves um was really helpful if you're thinking about starring a podcast which was one of the reasons why i wanted to have a chat with charles that was kind of going to be the main point um but i noticed that he hadn't done many interviews and i know that his listeners will really want to get to know who he is a lot more and i really wanted to get a better sense of who he is and what makes him tick um so yeah i hope you enjoyed that episode of the drowndon sound podcast brought you in partnership with kobuz there is a playlist of artists featured on 101 part-time jobs that we've put together.

51:00Giles Bidder:So if you go to drowndingsound.org forward slash playlists and you can listen to that over on Cobuzz. I have been Sean Adams. This has been the Drowning Sound podcast. You have been you. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.