No Stairway

Bill McLocklan, Carl Messenger and Tim Bulmer

Bill, Carl and Tim are three middle-aged men brought together amidst a chaotic and uncaring universe by the shared desire to make, distribute and discuss mixtapes. Each week, your hosts produce playlists according to a theme picked at random and discuss them for an hour or so of your valuable time. To maximise your entertainment for this brief window of opportunity, they are guided by three simple rules: Rule One: All playlists should be of album length (no more than 20 songs or 80 minutes). Rule Two: No artist can be repeated in a playlist. Rule Three: There is no Stairway to Heaven. read less
MusicMusic
No Stairway 32 (Season 2, Episode 9) - Onomatapoeia
02-01-2023
No Stairway 32 (Season 2, Episode 9) - Onomatapoeia
Poets and lyricists had long desired to use words that phonetically imitate the sound they describe. Philosophers from antiquity to the modern era, linguists of all schools and several noted East Coast beatboxers have all attempted to capture the majesty of sound in words. However, it wasn’t until three brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma under the band name Hanson had the breakout genre redefining hit “MMMBop” in 1997 that the concept of onomatopoeia was fully realised in song form. Hanson’s song was, of course, wildly successful, being voted number 20 in now long defunct television channel VH-1’s poll of the “100 greatest songs of the 1990’s” - it also notably caused world famous poet Pierre Autin-Grenier to controversially rewrite sections of his celebrated collection “L'éternité est inutile” in order to reflect the now completely transformed literary landscape. Hanson’s keyboard player Taylor Hanson had a particularly strong reaction to his unintended effect on contemporary French poetry and subsequently spent several years in semi-retirement writing knitting patterns for the local parish magazine. He returned to music when convinced by former Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos to form the super group “Tinted Windows” although the eponymous album that followed failed to include any onomatopoeia at all. The band broke up shortly thereafter. In this week’s episode, Carl defends the Bare Naked Ladies, Tim is rendered speechless by the hatred Bill has for Nicki Minaj whilst Bill repeatedly denies that he is clearly suffering from the effects of sleep deprivation. This week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Anm7nKHJB7zSsbu49bPSg?si=1c58448b0ab14cf9 Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7jpkMnK63aozAYu12XlR5r?si=0e5e93814ff54d14 Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2nrwm4oI5R91wMfdj8BVOO?si=5b08e04a2d584e76 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=acf1ca427b7e4999
No Stairway 31 (Season 2, episode 8) - All About the Bass
27-11-2022
No Stairway 31 (Season 2, episode 8) - All About the Bass
Learned folk have often disagreed on the origins of the bass line. Today, the daemonic bastard child of the drums and the guitar is the undisputed driving force beneath all of our favourite modern popular songs, but there was a time in the recent past when records were tinny and bland and completely devoid of funk. Some blokes down the pub would have you believe that the bass line was invented by noted Italian guitar manufacturer Oliviero Pigini, who, having had the misfortune of losing both his thumbs in a kneading machine accident as a child, miscounted the number of strings on his new range of guitars in 1946. The new 4 string guitar was an instant hit amongst less able players all around the world and thus the bass guitar was born. However, that is an old wives tale. The truth is that the bass line was invented in 1879 by Nebraskan fisherman Valentine McConaughy. Valentine had specialised in catfish and trout fishing until a working holiday in the Caribbean caused him to fall in love with bass fishing – so much so that he developed his own range of extra thick fishing line for this purpose. Alas, back home in his landlocked home state there was little call for bass fishing, however, his “bass lines” proved an instant hit amongst local thick thumbed banjo players, and the modern banging donk was just around the corner. Many Thanks, Mr McConaughy and your fat thumbed friends! In this week’s episode, Bill accuses Carl of being disingenuous about Soft Cell, Tim accuses Bill of being “sublime” and Carl accuses OutKast of being a “bourgeois disgrace”. It’s the usual stuff, on a different day. This weeks playlists: Bill's playlist Carl's playlist Tim's playlist
No Stairway 29 (Season 2, episode 6) - The Four Seasons
26-08-2022
No Stairway 29 (Season 2, episode 6) - The Four Seasons
It is easy to forget, in these times of endless drought, burned tundra and an inevitable future when our children choke on atmospheric red dust whilst android overlords decide our reproductive rights, that there was once a time when very small pieces of water would fall from the sky. That’s right, tiny pieces of that miracle fluid would descend from heaven - in older times they called it rain. Rain would then make plants grow - plants are those yellow and brown things on the ground. In the olden days plants were green and would grow and turn into flowers, fruits and vegetables. Seriously, when you write it down it seems very sci-fi, but this was actually how things used to be. Rain happened in other seasons, before the brutal and endless summer that the world is currently enduring. These “seasons” were called spring (mainly rain), autumn (cold rain) and winter (rain so cold it became semi-solid, like a flavourless slush puppy caught in the wind). The commemoration of these mythical “seasons” is the focus of our playlists this week. Of course, not everything went to plan - we blame the heat. Firstly, the fabulous Olivia Newton-John, the patron saint of Summer Nights, passed away whilst we were in post-production and we thus missed the opportunity for a proper send-off. Then, to add insult to injury, Bill admits that Bombay Bicycle Club are shit after all, Tim laments the lack of songs about artichokes, and Carl takes his ability to deliberately misunderstand things to a level which strains credulity. The whole thing is a shambles. This week’s Playlists:  Bill Carl  Tim  The Golden Shuffle
No Stairway 28 (Season 2, episode 5) - Me, Myself and I
29-07-2022
No Stairway 28 (Season 2, episode 5) - Me, Myself and I
Billie Holiday’s invention of the phrase “Me, Myself & I” with the song of the same name in 1937, had led her at the time, quite undeservedly, to be described as “The Narcissist’s favourite chanteuse.” However the first person singular has, in recent and perhaps more egocentric times, become a popular and widespread opening to songs of all genres. From John Lennon reading the news today to Bob Marley shooting the sheriff (although I believe Bob was wildly exaggerating his tale of a lawman’s murder for dramatic effect) the opening of songs with “I this” or “I that” now hold the song appreciating public in thrall - and it is these very songs which will be our focus this week. It is an oft forgotten fact, of course, that prior to Ms Holiday, all characters in songs were required, by international law, to have full names and titles - hence such lovable personalities as Mr Bojangles, Mrs Robinson and, of course, Major Tom. This law can be traced back as far as Charles II of England who passed it in order to make the loathsome ballad “Scarborough Fair” illegal. Although the trend in history is for formality to slowly and surely erode over time, I for one can’t help thinking that something has been lost here along the way, and I’m sure we could all agree that banning “Scarborough Fair” would be a welcome bonus. In this episode Carl parades his ignorance of Whitney Houston’s back catalogue, Tim declares he’s “getting into the Monkees” and Bill finally admits that Bruce Springsteen is probably not writing songs for him. This week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6f23SxSCxlNg9HH7DZ4Anh?si=3094f55b3265429d Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/289fz2lP3qiyHkIFaGGVyE?si=3d1f62c39f184d2d Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EyEc5CxNiIuXA7pywkrSw?si=21a024a2be204671 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=735e5fa6009f4d90
No Stairway 26 (Season 2, Episode 3) - Three Chords and Everything About Japan
13-05-2022
No Stairway 26 (Season 2, Episode 3) - Three Chords and Everything About Japan
The Sakoku Edict of 1635 made Japan an isolated state, cutting off trade relationships with most other countries of the world and banning foreigners from entering Japan upon pain of death. Over the next two hundred years, the land of the rising sun would become a place of mystery for the rest of the world, and from this period of isolation it is thought that the West’s fascination with all things Japanese sprang. Indeed, many learned folk trace the first instances of Japanophilia to the 1894 book “Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan” by Greek writer Lafcadio Hearn. In this work Lafcadio detailed many fascinating and foreign aspects of Japanese culture, descriptions of the striking and romantic landscapes of a pre-industrialised Japan, and gave illuminating explorations of the Shinto and Buddhist religions, both relatively unknown to the West at the time. At No Stairway, however, we understand what truly makes Japan cool - Godzilla, Ninjas and some of the greatest and most insane popular music ever made. Come with us as we explore dubiously named power-pop combos, Super Mario sound-tracking super bands and the peerless genius of Sheena Ringo. You’ll have to use your imaginations for Godzilla and the ninjas, but in all honesty if these playlists don’t invoke images of 300 feet tall lizards breathing nuclear fire on an army of robotic ninja warriors, then frankly there’s no hope for you. Ikimashou! This week’s Playlists: Bill's playlist Carl's playlist Tim's playlist The Golden Shuffle
Episode 25 (Season 2, episode 2) - Covers that are better than the originals
03-03-2022
Episode 25 (Season 2, episode 2) - Covers that are better than the originals
Cover versions of popular hits are often much maligned as lesser copies of their more authentic (and therefore somehow superior) original recordings. However, while no sane person would defend the Take That cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, there are exceptions to this perceived rule. For example, the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest winning performance pails into insignificance when compared to ABBA-cadabra’s rendition of “Waterloo'' witnessed by yours truly on a particularly wet Thursday night in Wakefield some time in late 1998. Similarly, almost everyone who has sung a Bob Dylan song with a comprehensive school standard issue nylon string guitar has a better than even chance of out-performing the work’s originator. In 1939 Soloman Linda wrote and recorded a song utilising a traditional call and response structure called “Mbube”. Though it was a pretty big hit in South Africa, it wasn’t until Pete Seeger made a complete dog’s breakfast of the pronunciation of the underlying chant and re-recorded it under the name “Wimoweh'' that we had the solid gold pop classic that is “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, a mere six iterations later. So, were cover versions really inferior to original recordings, we wouldn’t have Timon and Pumbaa - just ponder that for a second and let it sink in. This week we consider all manner of covers, re-imaginings and free-style interpretations of otherwise perfectly decent pieces of original music to finally judge whether the loss of authenticity is a price worth paying for a bit of Disney Magic. This week’s Playlists: Bill's playlist Carl's playlist Tim's playlist Golden Shuffle
Episode 24 (Season 2, Episode 1) - Space
27-01-2022
Episode 24 (Season 2, Episode 1) - Space
Joint winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics, Felix Bloch, famously recounted a walk he took with his doctoral supervisor, Werner Heisenberg, pioneer of Quantum mechanics and himself a Nobel Laureate in 1928. During this walk Bloch remarked that, following his recent reading of Hermann Weyl’s “Space, Time and Matter” it was obvious to him that space was simply the field of linear operations. “Nonsense” rebuked Heisenberg, “space is blue and birds fly through it.” The accepted reading of Heisenberg’s remark is that it is foolish to describe nature in terms of idealised abstractions far removed from the evidence of actual observation. However, at No Stairway, we favour the interpretation that Heisenberg was in fact misunderstanding Bloch’s broader point describing the nature of the physical universe and was merely pointing out that space is whatever is ‘up’. And it is up we go this week, as we venture further than any middle-aged mixtaping podcast has gone before, through the blue bit with birds in it and out into the farthest reaches of the cosmos with three playlists on the theme of ’Space.’ In this first episode of a brand new season of No Stairway Bill recommends listening to Apex Twin when being chased by the police, Carl debuts his beat boxing skills, and Tim shares that he is tortured at night by the sound of his plumbing. Cosmic stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/46zfbtk3WLM9PVMPCnNxhL?si=5ccfd8edee784475 Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02vN6iKHO6NB7LfvCwinmT?si=4b01eacb8689434f Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4WAPJ66ffrgMNhnSdojR1h?si=8276805b02e24a8f The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=edc47d1445c44767
Episode 23 - The Christmas Special
09-12-2021
Episode 23 - The Christmas Special
It is often remarked that Santa Claus’ famous red suit was first popularised by the Coca-Cola company in 1931, however many other facets of our supposedly traditional Christmas are much more recent inventions than we might like to think. For example, Santa’s sleigh was thought to have been pulled by huskies before a highly successful but mean-spirited initiative led by Bernard Matthews in 1978 to undermine the then-lucrative Christmas venison market. Likewise the annual excitement for the Christmas number one single was manufactured in the mid-nineties following a disastrous and clearly drunken appearance on daytime television by Mr Blobby.  It is a little known fact that since 1996, all Christmas number one singles have been written by tax-averse Poundland Elton John impersonator Gary Barlow and then vetted by a committee of luminaries which includes Ant McPartland, Neil Morrissey and noted real estate expert Nicki Chapman. And so we come to the most recent of Yuletide traditions - The No Stairway Christmas Special.  In this most festive of episodes we take a look at the year’s play listing offerings and formulate our top 5 “ones that got away” from the Golden Shuffle the first time around and then offer up three festivus playlists for each others’ criticism. Bill’s crying corner takes a sinister turn at Christmas as he outs himself as a sprout-hating Scrooge, Carl gives his favourite post-Christmas sandwich recipe and Tim finally breaks Carl’s electronic apathy with a barnstorming 19-minute version of a Bing Crosby classic.  This Week’s Playlists:  Bill's playlist  Carl's playlist  Tim's playlist  The Golden Shuffle
Episode 22 - Halloween Special
28-10-2021
Episode 22 - Halloween Special
Halloween, a contraction of All Hallows’ Eve, marks the beginning of the Western Christian season of remembrance known as Allhallowtide - comprised of Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, it is traditionally a time to remember the dead. Then in 1962 an enterprising young singer-songwriter named Bobby Pickett wrote and recorded a catchy parody single called “The Monster Mash” which topped the US Billboard singles chart that Halloween. What followed appears to be either some kind of mass hysteria or collective social malaise, as ever since the entire world has associated an otherwise little known Christian Festival with werewolves, pumpkins and witch costumes made out of bin bags. This group insanity is our topic this week - as with all popular culture phenomena, Halloween has spawned a great number of tributes in the form of song. So, prepare to be scared silly as we shake, rattle (our chains) and roll our way through the spookiest hits thus far conceived by humankind. Also in this horrifying episode Bill gives a detailed history of his admittedly limited Halloween costume wardrobe, Carl embarrasses himself by getting Ghostbusters confused with Die Hard, and Tim drops the terrifying bombshell that he is a previous winner of an international singing contest. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7u2xkEonxe2ZOLya12mXSO?si=e266c23886464c0e Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7uzvO3LvYbDbNNiR3xoiv3?si=1b0a3f221e664606 Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6QQE0qBFyogTqCK3hKaco6?si=11b7744dd19d41f2 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=6da01f6bf3574f85
Episode 20 - Songs not in the English Language
30-09-2021
Episode 20 - Songs not in the English Language
Xenophobia is a perennial problem facing humanity as a species. It would seem one way to tackle this particular kind of small mindedness is to spread far and wide the artistic outputs of all cultures for everyone to enjoy, and thus cultivate a commonality to better aid mutual understanding. And whilst the written word requires either translation or additional work by the reader, we can all tap our feet to the tunes that popular beat combos across the globe are churning out - or can we? For that is our quest this week, to find songs that you probably can’t understand but can love anyway. The risk, of course, is that we find the only music worth listening to is written in the English language and we end up being the official playlisting poster-boys of some hideous totalitarian mix-taping regime. Were that to come to pass, we would of course graciously accept the commission from our narrow-minded overlords but we’d like to think that we would nonetheless attempt to change the system from within, slipping the odd Nusrat Fattah Ali Khan track into our state-sanctioned broadcasts. Highlights this week include Bill recategorising all of world music into either “Dance Hall” or “Iron Maiden Rip-offs”, Carl risking a double-prejudice by declaring his hatred of French Hip-Hop, and Tim continuing his one-man war against The Smiths, expertly going off-topic to put the boot into Morrissey’s singing voice once again. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ZrIfAHqlQVDfR3N0GFbJE?si=03c86841892f410f Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1E5qLEHazQO4hSaXXKJWU6?si=b2f829c2868b4902 Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3BgevJ00G1ZAko2TmK06B7?si=e6e6f6fef6724321 The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=5adbf88426644031
Episode 19 - B-sides that are better than A-sides
16-09-2021
Episode 19 - B-sides that are better than A-sides
Mixtapes may be a moribund art form, but the B-side is well and truly dead. There are currently fully grown adults, human beings that you know and perhaps even respect, who are sufficiently young to have no idea what a B-side is. These are your bus drivers, your chartered accountants and your compliance managers the world over who have never experienced the joy of preferring the throw-away freebie which used to come as a party favour when you purchased the physical media version of the latest pop banger. This week on No Stairway we dive headlong into this oft-neglected box of audio delights in a search for B-sides which were inarguably better than their more successful and glamorous siblings. Also this week, following a bumper edition of the Mail fun-bag, Bill fires a couple of well-aimed warning shots across the bow of Paul McCartney’s solo work, Carl exposes himself as a secret Eddie Vedder vowel-counter, and Tim doubles down on his hatred of The Smiths, causing a metaphysical debate about whether you can ever truly separate the artist from his haircut. This Week’s Playlists: Bill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/507Vem9k08riFFe2qalpKi?si=10d8ae4fd23441e2 Carl: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IbPDWfYMiRVMXEOSByCYU?si=f70cd840323e4407 Tim: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6K2kJD8pYZsubTY1KsRmVt?si=ad3ae32b63e44ffc The Golden Shuffle: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uQWC10T9PaKi7YPjMlVB?si=f8ae60380fc04182