Jack L on why AI will make us want to hear more mistakes and see more live gigs

30:17Rawness. And it's hard to put a word on that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But I definitely think in the age of perfection and AI that those little kind of. Yeah. I love what you're saying about play state and all that. I've taught a lot about that in my life. Yeah. Monkeys and just playing and being children and getting into that state where people, where nobody can tell you that you're doing something wrong, that there are no mistakes. No. Just play and have fun. I thought a great example of that was that Beatles documentary, the one, Get Back, where they showed, you know, the one that did like 20 episodes or something.

30:50But in the studio, they were just messing around, were playing old ragtime songs and suddenly they'd be into something else. It reminded me of every studio, which is when you're in a studio practice and stuff, there's a lot of fooling around and messing and then you get into it kind of, but you're in that. But it's the fooling around that's the reason. Well, what did I say? You play music. Yeah. So I say when we have this thing and when we do gift group meetings on a Monday that we go in and we go, let's just spend the first 15 or 20 minutes gossiping and bitching. You know what I mean? There's untold things happening in your subconscious.

31:23I know I have to come in and maybe pitch a few ideas to the guys. Let's spend the first 15 or 20 minutes gossiping. Yeah. And then the meetings are always much better. You know, because because when creativity becomes work, it's a trouble problem. Yeah, yeah. Creativity. Yeah, well, I always say it's serious fun. Serious fun, correct. You do have to have an order. You do, the longer you do it, the more you learn how to structure it, I suppose. As you're playing, you are, there's also the work run. There is a time where you have to sit down and make the thing actually, you know, together. Oh, yeah.

31:55So I always say to people, it's serious fun. I think serious fun is a good way of putting it. Yeah, yeah, serious fun is a good way of putting it. I saw in my notes there that you're old man. I say you're old man because of the song Old Man River. Yeah. He enjoyed singing Old Man River. And you enjoyed singing Old Man River. Well, it's one of those songs, I suppose, that, yeah, it's obviously, it's originally from Showboat, although I think it predates that, Paul Robeson singing it. But he would have known the Sinatra probably version of it. So when I was a kid, I would hear him singing it at sessions and there's that big low note you do in the beginning.

32:33And it was the first time I kind of went, wow. Hearing, it was my first live music kind of situation as a kid. So, you know, that made me fall in love with that song. And it was never one I thought would be a repertoire, but I was playing in Whelan's one night, somewhere early on in my career, and whatever happened, the mic kept breaking or the PA kept breaking or something. I think it was a Paddy's night or something like that. But so I walked out onto the tables and sang at acapella. And that's all anybody was talking about afterwards. And, you know, you're after practicing and having all the fireworks to get, you know, to try and amaze everybody with all the technical stuff.

33:12But it was just back to the basic singing and affecting people. So it kind of became, you know, to this day, I'll sing it now and then at the end of a show or that. And that's where I got it from, from my dad. But I always say they were my first gigs because I remember being a kid and being upstairs and hearing them all singing downstairs, you know, when you were. And it was a flip on the older generation did never did that. You know, they were always out working and stuff, but suddenly you could hear them in the distance having an old sing song. So I don't know, it kind of woke my mind up to the, I suppose, wanting to be wanting to do that.

33:49And I was always obsessed with music and always obsessed with pop culture. like I say and watching Top of the Pops and you know you were just making up your own culture I got in 2015 my grandfather died he was 94 I think and I was very close with him and I was very close to my grandmother I kind of grew up with him a bit on a farm and then he died in 2015 and he used to do Old Man River Did he? Yeah and I remember I held his hand maybe a few days before he died he was up in the bed and held his hand and he was weak and then he kind of he kind of stole himself and he started he started doing it Wow I don't know if it was for me or for himself he used to bring me up to the farm and he'd hold my hand and he'd sing and I love you so Okay the Perry Como classic Yes, beautiful But anyway he'd do this big he was a large man not tall but just big broad and he was able to had this big voice in his chest and he was able to bellow out the Old Man River so he died and then in Waterford and then at the reception I got pissed at the reception and then I said I'm going to do this and I'm not a professional singer so I sing quite well when I'm in character but when I'm Mario it just kind of I haven't got a focus.

35:13I don't know if you understand that concept. So I can sing great as Roy Keane and Bertie O 'Hearn and all this and Jose Mourinho and like the pitch you'd be going your pitch is very good and then you do it as Mario and it's like you're a bit off anyway I gave it everything you know and so then whenever I see things and go down to water they go none of your fucking don't give us any of your old man river but anyway old man river if again listeners if you want to look at YouTube there is an amazing version of old man river which Jack just referred to there there's a few versions by Sinatra but there's one particular version by Sinatra he's on a TV show and he's very mature Sinatra at this stage not old but just peak Sinatra and he does this note which Jack is referring to and I'll just mess around with it and it's like just like it's something like you get a little drunk and you land in jail

36:15that's approximately that's approximately that's approximately the note but basically when you get when he gets down to the second last note you go that's the lowest note anybody can go and Sinatra pulls it out of the bag and he goes below and you're going whoa and when he goes and he does that deep note you're going it affects you it goes into your body yeah well that was the part I was talking about it was the part you were talking about wasn't it it's such an amazing song and it has that big ending too which reminded me of talking about your grandfather when my grandfather was ill and in bed at home we were all I remember we had a sing song with him as well he wasn't far from the end and I remember he got me dad to sing the song that me dad sang on his communion when they brought him around to the houses I don't know what the song was He got your dad to sing He got him to sing the song that they'd sang that he had sang when he was a boy as communion and they brought him around to the houses you know singing songs but just lovely memories so music was always and when my dad he had a lot of ill health in the end and he had a stroke and relearning to talk but when he had the stroke he could still sing so he used to drive around in the car playing Sinatra and singing along to Sinatra, you know, and it was a great way of building the muscles up again in his voice.

37:27So music was always every, you know, whenever I was free, I'd be out with him driving around singing to build the old muscles up in the voice again. And he came back strong as well, yeah. And you do that, don't you, the Old Man River? I do. I haven't done it in a couple of years, maybe, now, but it always features, you know, even you know, I'm doing the two nights in the Olympia the first night is the 27 Club good room isn't it the Olympia love the Olympia and the second night is greatest song so it will feature those songs all songs that I've sang over the years does it suit you the Olympia oh yeah I started doing the Olympia when it was midnight at the Olympia there you go again back to the 90s we would go on stage at 12 the place would be stuffed I mean who goes out at 12 o 'clock now to a gig in fact it's come full circle I'm thinking I was talking to Ian we're going to go on tour next year again and You're bringing back the midnight at the limit No No The other way Morning at the limit No Afternoon Yeah I think This thing of comedy shows going on as a matinee So some people like Jimmy Carr is doing it I know a few people are doing it Joanne McNally is doing it Yeah That they're doing they'll do a double show Yeah They'll do a show at three or four and they'll do a show at eight Yeah And this is for people who want to have it see a show Yes But they want to go out at night Yeah As well Yeah but also I mean it's odd we are the first generation that went to festivals in this country anywhere and so you have an older generation that likes to go to festivals and stuff so i do a great one called the forest fest which is on in july yeah and it's for just that it's it's it's for everybody but it's mostly for people it's you very user-friendly for people who used to go to festivals are a little older now, it's not like two miles wide and four miles long.

39:18So it's a, it kind of caters, but that's a new thing because, you know, we have a whole new generation of people who used to go to festivals that still want to go to festivals. So you kind of have to cater for that rather than the full on rave festivals I suppose that go on elsewhere. We were talking about harmonies there a minute ago, I wrote down a harmony I love, it's a self-harmony, it's the, it's Dolores O 'Riordan singing Dreams which I think is a really cool harmony the end section no the whole thing the whole thing so she sings it two times so she sings it she sings it all my life is changing every day changing us away then in the second all my dreams there's another all my dreams and it's a song about falling in love for the first time and it's like as if she's two sides of herself considering what it feels like to fall in love yeah maybe one side of herself is a little more I'm completely lost in love yeah and the other side of herself is a little more wise yes that's really beautiful yeah she was a bit of a genius well I mean completely because she was so young then too and that was their first band and they were her first songs my god well often their first songs are the good really good ones yeah well she went on to write you know I'd regret what it was too yeah but often the first ones But yeah, to have lasted so long, I mean, she definitely was, you know, and to be quite, I did a tribute to her last year at the Chorus Festival where we did a few songs.

40:49Like the chorus sequences are quite straightforward, three chords and the truth kind of thing. So to have that simplicity and then have that complexity put on top of it, that just is pure genius, you know, just to have melodies that are that, you know, melodies are like folk memories almost. You hear one and you go, oh my God, that's like it's always been. Like the Beatles, it's like it's always been in my brain, that melody. I don't remember first hearing the Beatles. They were just always there, maybe because the radio was always on. It just infiltrated folk memory. And something like that where she's able to write a song like Dreams, which just lasts.

41:31It's eternal, really. I think the Beatles demonstrated what you were talking about there, the play stage, when they were at their best, because they were able to do this, that and the other and they were able to do When I'm 64. You know, they were able to do silly things. They were able to do tributes to the 1920s and, you know, sing songs about the tax man and stuff like that, little semi-satirical things. Yes, yeah. And then they were able to do rock and psychedelic and this sort of stuff, you know. So, Matt, you obviously, you love them. The Beatles, yeah, big time. Did you ever read a book called Revolution in the Head?

42:08I don't think I've read that one I think the best one is Paul McCartney's Many Years From Now is a very good explanation of them and just how much they did in such a short space of time and how everybody has just been trying to top that ever since but because it was the first time there's something about the first time there's an Albert Camus quote that every man's life is a journey back to that first moment when his imagination was first open which is like you know I say I heard my father sing an old man river and went boom you know suddenly my god music can affect you like this you know so in some respect everybody's just trying to recreate that moment maybe where they first were awoken to the magic of the world well if you're lucky you're chasing that moment yeah Revolution in the Head is just a book which is a chronological book right it's a chronological book which traces in chronological order every single song the Beatles recorded who was in on the session who wrote it why it was written what circumstances were it written in how the band were getting on together what was happening in the world at the time and what was happening in the Beatles world at the time so you can start on page one and go to this song but you can also go to the very last page and go to the very last song recorded which probably only two of them would have been at or two or one or two of them three of them at any time yeah well I mean the drama of Let It Be album like even where McCartney released Let It Be Naked without all the overdubs they put on without asking him Phil Spector was brought in and they kind of finished it without him and he's been trying to rectify that.

43:39Thankfully you can see the whole thing about McCartney being that he was the driving force in some reason behind him. He was. The guy who got them to the studio and it's just lovely to see him. He's the guy that kept the show on the road. Yeah, it's nice to see him losing that thing that he broke up the Beatles and all that because there's so many factors. People say, people mess and they go, are you a McCartney man or a John Lennon man? and so I went from being a McCartney man to being a McCartney and Lennon man and now when I'm in my 50s I find myself veering more to Lennon. Yeah, well I was big into Lennon back in the day but I've kind of fought, you know even with that new documentary band on the run which I watched there and you know I remember even Mull of Kintyre is a song from 1980 when I was like, you know I wasn't even 10 so I just, it's another one of those like where did that melody come from?

44:29It just sounds like something that's always it's like you know it's timeless will you go lassie go or something you know it's of that ilk that it's just timeless yeah so his all this stuff I mean melodically you know what's the other one I can't wait another day oh yeah you know until I call you no more lonely nights no more lonely nights so I grew up here in all that yeah that was early 80s McCartney but I always knew melodically it was like wow like just melody is such a hard thing to structure. You can't even structure it. It's something that it's beyond words. It's melody. It's why music. Oh, I love McCartney's thing.

45:11It's more, I'm referring McCartney's melody is, obviously, he's Mozart. Yeah. But like, Lennon is more Beethoven. Lennon is darker. Yeah. And Lennon is, they're like, my, my, mother. Yeah, yeah. The fuck did you do to me? And so he's getting in on your solar plexus and the soul and he's basically all comes down to this thing of peace and love the whole thing why can't we just fucking love each other and that love is the only way he keeps coming back to that that love is the only way the rest is bullshit where's the wheel going around yeah no John Lennon was well plugged in and if you like walk long before it was a thing you know and maybe brought that whole thing to the fore you know with his I mean his Phil Spector recordings as a solo artists are just stunning in themselves, you know.

46:02During the 2000s, I was lucky enough to be able to release albums for the comedy. Gift Grub comedy albums. And I loved comedy albums from when I was even a child. I used to listen to Pete and Dud, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook and I used to hear Billy Connolly albums even and Monty Python albums. In fact, when you were in the 70s and 80s, a lot of households had comedy albums like the Bee Gees. Beside the Bee Gees or ABBA, or your Bruce Springsteen or the Beatles you'd have comedy albums and you'd put them on on the turntable and you'd listen to live comedy I mean Hal Roach from Ireland I'd be listening to him Flanagan and Murphy go into and you'd hear them at the thing crowd laughing and you'd go I'm just listening to this sitting on a couch and I got a chance to release some comedy albums in the 2000s 13 overall and of course just at that time around up till 2009 at least records were selling a lot of records and then it stopped Yes My record sales Looked like a bell curve They started small They went up huge And then they dropped off a cliff Yeah And obviously You This is your living So at one stage You would have sold Plenty of albums as well Yeah And that's good for the That's good for the bank account Absolutely Yeah yeah Tapes even When I first Were they Well tapes and CDs Yeah And so now That's not really the case anymore No I mean So you're Particularly your financial model has totally changed yes but you know I would do things like I kind of you know I've always been I've always been an independent artist who licenses albums out to different distributors and things so you know I would Will you explain to me how that works?

47:47Well I would make the album myself I might just release it at I would do a big release but only at gigs so I'm selling physical copies you kind of and you can also sell them on your website yeah sell them on your website you're selling them physically they're not I have albums two albums on my website that are not available on Spotify and stuff I did a lockdown album and I did an album called Northern Lights which is kind of a Christmas album which I only sell at shows and you can buy them off the website some of the stuff is on YouTube now so it's still possible to physically I'm lucky I have an audience that want the new albums.

48:28Because once you put it out to Digital World, it's everybody else's then. You know, I always say music. Today is a music lover's paradise, but a music maker's hell. Because barista gets paid for making coffee, baker gets paid for making bread, but suddenly music is, which costs a lot of money to make, no matter what way you're doing it, whether you're doing it at home. Do you think that model can be changed or do you think it will be changed? I think it's going to, you know, the music industry is mad because it's always been driven by the technology. Edison at the phone, Graham thought it was going to be for sending audio letters.

49:07He never thought about music, but suddenly music became the thing. He thought it was for voice notes. Yeah, voice notes. Yeah, mad, isn't it? But I think, I mean, with VR glasses and stuff, the whole thing is going to change again. you're going to be able to go into a VR place and I'll be playing for you a gig. Maybe that's where you go, just like I go on Facebook and the whole thing during the lockdown where everybody would go to a gig there. So I think the idea of going to a show or the special kind of thing of being in the presence of somebody will probably change with, but then you have the strange thing that with AI, everybody's going to be an artist because everybody is going to be able to make a song.

49:45You know, people who can't sing will go to their AI. By prompt. Say it with, I want to write a song about my dog. Here's my voice, blah, blah, blah, blah. It'll create the song. Oh, make it more about this or make it more happy, make it more sad. This is what's going on. So everybody's going to have music now. And it's going to be AI music that's created from skimming the internet and recreating stuff. And what do you think of that? Well, I can't hold back the river. It's happening. And in many respects, this time is like in the 90s when the internet was coming and we were all kind of going, well, what's this or is this going to, but I do think it is literally like the horse and cart to the car.

50:27It's that big a leap where when they brought the horse and cart was there and they were trying to sell cars, they were going, no, no, we don't want these stupid cars. And then within a year or two, horse and carts were gone because cars were just so much better. And I think, you know, I don't know, we're going into, there's definitely, it's brave new world territory. It is. I've spoken to this about a few people for example let's say about let's say what you stand on stage and you sing your song and I'm on stage in the Olympia or wherever and I'm doing my comedy and I mean AI is not going to replace that No real things are going to become more important I'm flesh and blood yeah and that might be good for us Absolutely I think people will crave real things I mean yeah reality will become the new thing In other words the idea of saying well did you see it live though will become much more important Yeah and they go yeah I was there so then what's life I was there so the I was there might become really important well that's the thing now isn't it I mean most people go to festivals so they can put their pictures on Instagram it's a so those big gigs which frankly you know a lot of the big stadium and things the sound is awful it's not like being in a theatre you don't it's not no I mean I love open air festivals I love that whole thing you're going back to the pagan want for a festival and go out and in the middle of the summer we go out and we you know and that's more and more important because everybody's so institutionalized now with their phones and everything is corporate.

51:52Everything is marketing. It's just crazy. I mean, we didn't grow up in that. We grew up, there was ads for toys on the TV at Christmas. Now it's just stations and kids being, you know, overwhelmed by marketing people. Battery hens. It's like, it already is. So to have a festival where everybody goes and lets their hair down and they're outdoors is so important, even though, you know, a lot of them are corporate now too, but that's a really important thing I think that happens in the summer still. It's essential for kids to experience as well, you know? Yeah. But, you know, how are you going to fight against the AI?

52:32I mean, you and I, anybody, will be able to come home and go, okay, I want to watch a movie with me and Marilyn Monroe and James Dean in Star Wars and I'm the hero. Yeah, yeah. I mean, how do you compete with that? I know. But yes, people of our age anyway will still want to go to a gig and know what that feels like and experience the thing. Maybe it'll come to a thing there where you can kind of go like, I paid, I paid, we will eventually have less and less fans, but they will pay more and more for their tickets. So it'll be like, I went to see Mario there the other day, right? I paid 7 ,000 quid.

53:12How many people were in the room? it was 40 of us it was 40 of us I mean we're heavy Mario fans right and boy did he deliver a show he spilled his guts out there yeah he got off of this as well at the end yeah he gave us a massage you know well we were paying 7 grand each that's good so we expected nothing less that could be it it could be like that we just give a bespoke but here's I think people like there's the terminology the felt presence of immediate experience that you're at something that's happening in real time and I'm here watching it. Correct. And it's like this, you know, that's what we're doing now.

53:50It's happening in this real time. But, and that's what I've discovered with doing the online gigs during COVID was that people just wanted, I used to do them live and people knew it was live and things can go wrong and that's kind of, that's the live experience. I think there's something in us that craves that, you know, that we still like stuff live, seeing stuff afterwards isn't as stimulating. but it's definitely wildly interesting the whole AI thing oh boy well you've thought about it you've thought about a lot of things actually well like there's here's another good one so you won't be able to believe anything on the internet now the dead internet basically where it's like the National Enquirer I mean they're released all that alien shots and you're kind of going is this one they released or is this an AI thing correct you don't know what's real so local papers local stuff where you know the people okay will become more and more important.

54:44Very well pointed out. Because you'll at least have some idea who that, oh that's your man's It'll literally come back to I trust your man. And I know him. I know him yeah and so there's some there's always these curveballs Isn't there yeah. And things don't always go linear the way you think they'll go. Like I think that with the internet and everything that they thought it would take away everybody's job but then everybody learned how to do the internet and there was jobs in the internet. Yeah, yeah. If you know what I mean. Yeah, well they said. In other words, we all learned how to do internet jobs.

55:18Yeah, yeah. And information exploded. They say it was like the Gutenberg Press when they could suddenly print books and people could read. Suddenly people could question the church or question what they had been told. I mean, when you think back to a time pre-written history that people would just, you know, orally remember stuff, that's fascinating too. I think that's where our love from song comes from that there's a thing where a lot of the old if you had to memorize say It could happen through song but they would have little hook lines even in the Odyssey and everything that would turn the page almost and they're in a lot of the old pre-written word orators would do it.

56:03They'd have these little turns of phrases that would basically turn the page so you would have a thing that would help you memorize it. I think that is why we love hooks from songs. You know, little hooks that stick in your head. Like there's all this inbuilt kind of evolutionary... Have you read Sapiens? The audio book I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It deals a little bit of men in the cavemen singing and the oral tradition and singing. That was going on long before this. I mean, we were on the precipice on the edge of the most... It's like being in Star Wars almost. You know, it's all this mad stuff coming at you.

56:38and it's never, it's a crazy time to be alive. So do you cater for your existing audience or do you seek to build a new audience? Always building a new audience. I mean, every album you release, you kind of might lose people and you'll gain people. And I mean, at the moment, I'm doing some shows that I did that people are always asking me to bring back shows, like the 27 Club, which is all the artists who passed it. 27, which is... And Joplin, Jim Morrison. It's tragic, but it's the history of rock and roll. And that came from doing a podcast, actually, on Lyric FM about the history of recorded song from Edison to the iPod, which myself and Julie Feeney did.

57:19So, and you know, as you were going through it from Edison, then you came to Robert Johnson in 1938, who was the guy who sold his soul at the crossroads and all that mythology. He actually used to rehearse in the graveyard, which is why I think people thought, because he would get the solitude of, so I think that's maybe where that myth came from. But then you had to run in Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, as you said, Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones, Kurt Cobain, Emmy Winehouse. It's just tragic, the old days. At 27, maybe you're hitting some peak at 27 that you're pushing the envelope.

57:49But so I'm bringing that one back. So I just did a tour of the Jacques Brel songs, which I would have been doing back. So it's lovely to go back and do shows that you've done before after 10 or whatever years, because they're new to you again. you know it's interesting yeah and also you've matured well many of the Braille songs I was singing as a young man so I feel like you know more so fit into them has your voice changed when you get older I mean does your like for example the cliche would be that your voice gets deeper yeah my voice probably does has got a little deeper again even as you get older which you're being incredibly deep anyway yeah yeah I mean but you hear that with Sinatra too you can hear all those early recordings yeah of course I mean Sinatra was the first teeny bopper came from Sinatra they were the first the first time pop culture had teeny boppers was with Sinatra and you hear him at that stage and his voice is still quite it almost hasn't broken which when I listen back to Metropolis Blue or one of my early albums it's sometimes or you know early stuff it still hadn't quite matured but now yeah definitely more lower register and I suppose you don't you know you don't have to push so hard all the time that there's a nice balance in between which when you listen to Leonard Cohen or Finbar Fury or somebody like that.

59:07Wow. There's something that comes where there's a, and it's something Sinatra talked about too, where you sing like you're talking, basically. That's the trick, you know. That's the trick and he got very close to that. Yeah, where you're communicating in that way. Yeah, it's phrasing. People always say that, but as much tone, I always think Sinatra, oh, there was like an oak tree or something like that. It just tonally, you knew there was wisdom in there. You knew there was a lived life. And... I mean, very good. There's just, there's something that connects with me. I used to love the way Sinatra was able to say a phrase off the beat, not on the beat, that he'd wait and surprise you.

59:47So you're constantly being, you're constantly being challenged. That's like the fresh thing we were talking about, not mistakes, but just stuff that's off the beat is usually more interesting than stuff that's on the beat. Yeah, he's not on it all the time. He's letting you wait and he's then coming in early or he's putting things together. and you go, ooh, what's he doing with this? But he knows what he's doing. There's an edginess to it. A little bit of an edginess to it, yeah. Finbar Fury you mentioned there. I love Finbar as well. Well, you know, I did the, it was the Fla in Liverpool. Oh God, 2018, Vince Power, God rest him.

1:00:20And I remember Finbar coming out and doing the Lone Buttman's Call and doing his set. And, you know, it was a big festival on the docks there in Liverpool. And it just, the energy just calmed the whole place. but hypnotised him too and you know it was just that kind of but even his voice too just had that had that hypnotizing thing isn't that it it's like he's in the room hell yeah when first I saw the love light in your eye he's great yeah no so that kind of I thought it was very like when I went to see Leonard Cohen that kind of thing he had Agnes Burnell just that's something maybe that you gain as you get on how many gigs do you do a year on a good year or on a big year?

1:01:04I mean, way back when you saw that poster, I mean, I think there's over 100 and something gigs that year, but now I would, I would doubt half that maybe. It depends. If you have an album out, you're just going to gig it till it. I usually gig an album for a year and a half, you know, so if that's happening, you're going to have... And then you take a bit of a break? Yeah, it's mainly at the weekends you're playing, so it's not as hectic. Years ago, you could go play any night of the week, but that's kind of changed as well. But in between, yeah, the whole thing is like an athlete. It's about the rest time as much as anything else because the body just has to recover.

1:01:40And the inflammation of, you know, when you sing and do a couple of nights, your respiratory system's under pressure because it inflames. Like if you run a marathon, you're going to be sore. That's kind of what it's like. I used to get hammered after gigs and smoke my tube. Oh, me too. I'm telling you, I stopped that because I regretted it. and I stopped it because as well because I felt I wasn't doing anybody a favour No there's nothing as bad as being on stage and being hungover No it's terrible Horrible because you're just getting And then you get into the thing of having a few drinks so you're not hungover and then you're into that rigmarole Oh well then depression sets in Then you've got the blues Yeah yeah but you're just trying to outrun the hangover but I remember I recorded a DVD back in the day called Momento on the Olympia and we did two nights and the first night was the run through and of course we all went out on the razz after the success That's the first night and I woke up the next day with a throat infection.

1:02:31So you're getting anti-inflammatories and all that kind of stuff. Performing is, it is a privilege to do it, but it's also... That's why we bow, you know. We bow at the end. Yeah, yeah. It's the giving and receiving of energy from the audience. You know, I always... First of all, I try and do the gig, I suppose. I try and get lost in it myself and that usually translates to the audience coming with you. But it's lovely. I love playing live is like they say, you know, everything else is a pain but to play in live you do for nothing it's just so it's such a nice thing to do yourself and to feel an audience singing along with you a song that you wrote alone in a room you know and then suddenly you have a thousand people singing it back at you it's just such a true if I feel like Gabe Byrne here now if God is at the pearly gates and he comes out to you and he says how are you doing Jack Gale well done Sonny good career now before you come in through these gates you have two songs to sing which songs are you singing Jack so which songs would you have to sing so these are the songs I mean it's an unfair question but you have to answer it give me two today today it could change daily but for my own songs I suppose Rooftop Lullaby is one I've always Rooftop Lullaby really loved performing and has always been evolving and you know of I suppose current stuff I've got a song called Battle of the Hawthorne Trees which I love singing So those are the two Yeah And which male voices Do you love listening to yourself?

1:04:06Me, myself You know I love people like Paul Robeson Because I just love that Big Bellowing voice I love Sinatra You know We can start at the beginning Move along I love people like Eddie Vedder Amazing singer I love Morton Harkett I've always thought He's an amazing singer Sorry again for the YouTube You probably know what I'm going to say What am I going to say? Morton Harkett I don't know Can you imagine what I'm going to say? No? the unplugged version of Take On Me. Yeah, stunning. If you watch that, watch him doing the unplugged version of Take On Me. It's stunning, isn't it? To take a song that's so well known for its big note and to make it that intimate and small and just still have more emotion.

1:04:46I mean, that's the fascinating thing about music. What's funniest about that song is the video of the song because they're in there, they were doing the unplugged and he's there doing Take On Me, you know, and it's real slow. but the camera will go into the audience and it's all women of 48 years of age dying just looking at him going I love you but he had a stunning he had a very odd you know range where he could hit these high notes and emote and I remember hearing people when you were young that could sing like that because I could sing was like wow okay this guy can sing you can sing that couldn't you I'd have a lower register but I can can you do do you still do do you do falsetto yeah I can still do falsetto yeah and a good he's doing a kind of a falsetto there as well yeah yeah it's that it's like it's like you know it's like balancing a butterfly on your finger trying to hold those little notes it's a very delicate thing John McCormack there's not much between Boughton Harker's voice and John McCormack when you hear that thing he had it was gentle but it was strong you know it's a it's a beautiful thing but singers yeah he always I always loved him singing and you know I love Amy Winehouse singing I love rock singers I've always been just obsessed with all music I would still listen to the latest stuff and try and get a handle on that or what's happening I love Ella, Ella's voice I'm not too familiar with her now Eliphas Gerald Oh, Eliphas Gerald, sorry I thought it was something new No, no, Eliphas Gerald Well, here's the thing Sinatra took his phrasing and if you listen to Eliphas Gerald it's like Sinatra singing or he is like her singing he took so much from Ella Fitzgerald she's her phrasing yeah yeah listening to her singing bewitched bothered and bewildered oof astonishing yeah and even the scat stuff which you know people would be quite old fashioned at this stage when you're here doing that stuff it's very hard to do all that scat stuff but yeah I read that somewhere or something and then I listened to her and I went wow Sinatra really did just took Ella and gave it a male kind of spin yeah really did something else yeah Jack So it's great to talk to you.

1:06:56You too. And I didn't realize, that sounds patronizing me to say, because I was obviously your singer, your performer and artist and songwriter. I didn't realize you thought so much about other, the outside areas and the, you know, the AI and also the history as well. You're big into the history. Oh, big time, yeah. But it's fascinating. Like I said, having come from an age where it was tapes and stuff and then you're going to the CDs and then digital and now you have AI coming. so it's a fascinating journey just trying to not only keep up with it but just seeing it all happen You're in the Olympia next March is it?

1:07:30Next March the 19th and 20th two nights two different shows the first night is the the 19th is the 20th songs the immortal songs of the 27 Club and then the second night is greatest songs all the songs from my various albums all the best picks Okay so it's a bit of a greatest hits night March 19th and 20th 19th in the great Olympia theatre Beautiful place Oh boy Okay well go see him folks he's great thank you Jack thank you loves that Jack thank you and my thanks to Jack L for coming in and spending a very entertaining hour long plus conversation with me he really is a lovely guy and I encourage you to go and see him and listen to that fantastic voice wherever you can find him he's at Forest Fest in Leash coming up in July my thanks of course also to Hum our great sponsor and partner on the Mario Rosenstock podcast, Hum Finance.

1:08:25They've been around in Ireland for 30 years. They let you get your hands on anything you want. Easy to pay back payments, bite-sized payments. And get out in the garden and start thinking about barbecuing and sheds and all that sort of stuff. And let Hum get involved with you. Okay, my thanks to you, of course. And I'll see you same time, same place next week.

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