Permanent Record Podcast

Episode 143: A-ha - Scoundrel Days (1986)  Part 1 After a couple of mini-episodes about past concerts they attended, Brian and Sarah are back to the "regularly-scheduled programming" of in-depth album analysis. However, even this episode has mention of concerts in it, which is partially why this album was chosen in the first place.  Up for discussion is a-ha's second album, Scoundrel Days, which was released just shy of a year after their debut, Hunting High and Low. The trio from Norway was still riding high on the worldwide success of the first album as their second effort was recorded and released-- and that's the period of time Brian and Sarah focus on for this episode. However, our hosts recently had the good fortune to be able to see a-ha live in concert, for their delayed Hunting High and Low 35th anniversary tour, so they also take some time to talk about that experience. They also just watched the new a-ha documentary, "a-ha: The Movie," so they share their insights and observations on that as wel

PRP Mini Concert Memories: Episode 2 -  Colin Hay, 4-28-2012 It's the second episode of the new mini-feature Brian and Sarah are trying out, called PRP Mini Concert Memories, where our hosts choose a ticket stub from their vast collection and talk about a concert they attended. The ticket stub selected at the end of Episode 1 was the Colin Hay show at the Keswick Theatre on April 28, 2012. This worked out nicely for several reasons: 1) it's almost the 10th anniversary of this show, and 2) Brian and Sarah just saw Colin Hay earlier this month, as their first concert since September 2019. The pictures here are a mixture of photos from the April 28th show, and from a show they attended just a few days earlier! The full details are given in the episode, along with all the info you need on Brian's recent birthday, all the records he bought on his birthday AND Record Store Day, and how you can join the PRP hosts on the next installment of Mini Concert Memories! Read more at http://www.permanentrecordpodcast.com

PRP Mini Concert Memories: Episode 1 -  Yazoo, 7-20-2008 Welcome to the first episode of a new feature Brian and Sarah are trying out, called PRP Mini Concert Memories. The idea behind it is that Brian and Sarah will choose a ticket stub from their sizable collection of concert tickets, and they'll spend a few minutes reminiscing about that particular show. In the future, the selections will be random, but for the inaugural episode, Brian thought it would be fun to hearken back to the first episode of the podcast proper, which was about Yazoo's album Upstairs at Eric's. So in this installment, Brian and Sarah talk about seeing Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet performing as Yazoo on the Reconnected tour, at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. Join Brian and Sarah as they share their memories of this show, featuring a duo they-- along with many other people-- never expected to see on stage together. But it really did happen, and they have the pictures to prove it! Read more at http://www.permanentrecordpodcast.co

Episode 142: Permanent Record Trivia Showdown 2022 The annual tradition is back, for the fourth year in a row! The hosts of the Permanent Record Podcast find themselves competing against each other in a trivia showdown-- each hoping for a victory that eluded them both last year!   They are once again joined by the Quiz Master (known in other circles as Hans Lemke, longtime friend of the hosts), who leads Brian and Sarah through several rounds of questions, providing witty commentary along the way. It's because of the hard work of the Quiz Master and the contributions of many listeners that this show is even possible. Brian and Sarah send special thanks to the following people for sending in questions: Michael Berlew, Erin Berlew, Gregory Chidester, Chris Cotham, Andrew Dineley, Frederick Frantz, John Justice, Daniel Lundberg, Nick Oswald, Pete Rogers, Gary Shepherd, and  Jurgen Stein. And of course they also send a big thank you to the Quiz Master for his work in putting together all the questions (includi

Episode 141: In Conversation with Kurt Larson of Information Society Many people these days talk about having a yearly "bingo card" and in particular, what events they didn't have on their cards. Well, Brian and Sarah definitely didn't have "talking with the lead singer of Information Society" on their 2022 bingo card-- or any other year's card, for that matter! But it has, in fact, happened, and both Brian and Sarah are absolutely thrilled to bring you this special episode! Our hosts talked about Information Society's 1988 self-titled album over the course of two episodes back in July 2018. In this episode, they get to talk with Kurt himself about the making of the album, its release and reception, the music videos, and even get some answers to questions they posed aloud way back then. However, the conversation covers a great deal more than just that album. Kurt tells stories ranging from the band's very early days all the way up to the recording and release of their latest album, 2021's ODDfellows. And a

Episode 140: Queen - The Miracle (1989) Part 4 At long last, the final part of Brian and Sarah's discussion of The Miracle is here! It definitely took our hosts longer to cover Queen's 1989 album than they expected, but they can at least say they finished talking about The Miracle in less time than it took for the band to record it. Track by Track, continued After a 'mini-episode' that only covered one album track, Brian and Sarah are left with three more songs to discuss, including yet another single and video. Thankfully, there are no more mentions of plagiarism! Instead, our hosts cover such diverse topics as the paparazzi, disappearing fake blood, quotes from Shakespearean plays, and an instrument called the vibraslap. Scandal My Baby Does Me Was It All Worth It Extra Credit For extra credit, our hosts find themselves talking about even more songs associated with The Miracle. The five singles released from The Miracle all had B-sides that were not on the LP version of the album. Brian and Sarah each c

Episode 139: Queen - The Miracle (1989) Part 3.5  and Trivia Showdown 2022 promotion Brian and Sarah are trying their best to make up for the long gap between the first and second episodes discussing  Queen's 1989 album The Miracle, so here's yet another episode about the album! However, this episode is serving more than one purpose. First, by talking about one song on its own, that leaves Brian and Sarah with three songs left to discuss on the fourth episode on The Miracle, as well as the final reviews and ratings. The song up for discussion in this episode is "Rain Must Fall," which finds Brian and Sarah talking about the difference between "good fake drums" and "bad fake drums," a famous poet,  an Olympic athlete, and once again, plagiarism! Second, this episode gives our hosts the chance to promote the upcoming Trivia Showdown episode, which depends a lot on you! While the Quizmaster is an excellent emcee (although after last year, his scoring methods may be somewhat suspect), he needs your help with c

Episode 138: Queen - The Miracle (1989) Part 3 The question on everyone's minds has been answered, and the answer is YES! Brian and Sarah did manage to bring you the third installment of their discussion on Queen's 1989 album The Miracle much faster than they did for the second! The universe did seem to conspire against them for a bit as the editing was underway, but thankfully, the obstacles were overcome, and the episode made it out! Track by Track, continued Just as in Part 2, three songs are up for discussion in Part 3. And all three of the songs in this episode are singles, so that means more talk about reviews (including some real head-shakers from Record Mirror), chart positions, and especially the fantastic videos!  Brian and Sarah also find themselves talking about clothing (such as shirts, ties, and vest/waistcoats), headwear (hats and visors), and sunglasses. Two different kinds of TV commercials are mentioned-- one kind more cute and cuddly, and the other kind more sultry and sensuous. Speaking

Episode 137: Queen - The Miracle (1989) Part 2 That's not a typo in the show title; this really is Part Two of Brian and Sarah's discussion surrounding the 1989 Queen album The Miracle. Part One was released waaaay back in May of 2021 (episode 128), and it actually covered the time period after the 1986 album A Kind of Magic, leading up to the recording of this album. Now, all these months later (and by popular demand, as is revealed later in the episode), Brian and Sarah finally sit down to discuss the album itself! Part 1 - Album History Since they didn't cover it in the previous episode, Brian and Sarah do start off by talking about the recording of The Miracle--including the locations, the producer, and some rather significant changes to the band's traditional operating mode, only one of which was truly decided on as a group. The release and chart history are also discussed, and the hosts are interested to see where The Miracle charted in the US compared to other 80s Queen releases. Both hosts have albu

Episode 136:  Dead or Alive "Blue Christmas 2000" (2000) and U2 "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" (1987) Another year is coming to a close, and with the end of the year comes the holiday season. And with the holiday season comes Christmas songs, of course! So once again, Brian and Sarah close out the year by  choosing a couple of songs to talk about, before they turn their full attention to holiday preparations and celebrations.  And although the titles of both songs may look familiar, only one of them is a cover version. The first selection is "Blue Christmas 2000" by Dead or Alive. It's been quite a while since Brian and Sarah have talked about this band, so they're both eager to have a discussion about more than just the selected song. In fact, they go all the way back to 1988 to discuss the album Nude for a bit--which gives Brian the opportunity to tell a story from his freshman year in college that never fails to amuse and delight Sarah. The hosts go on to discuss the band's success in Japan; yet anot

PRP 007 Mini-Broadcast: Episode 6 - You Only Live Twice Since the beginning of the show, Brian has done his best to strong-arm discussion of Agent 007 into as many podcasts as he could.  Finally he has convinced Sarah to embark on a new mission: the Permanent Record Podcast 007 Mini-Broadcast! This new occasional series from your friends Brian & Sarah will start with "Dr. No" and work its way up to the most recent Bond adventure, and on the way it will discuss and critique all of the 007 theme songs and other relevant recordings.  It's a dream come true for one of the hosts - and for Bond fans everywhere! In the fifth episode, Sarah and Brian are joined by Bond author Robbie Sims (Quantum of Silliness: The Peculiar World of Bond, James Bond) to discuss the theme song from the fifth James Bond film, "You Only Live Twice."  Along the way, the trio share their thoughts on the movie itself, Robbie Williams, David Arnold, and of course, the latest Bond adventure "No Time to Die."   We had a lot of fun recordi

Episode 135: Five Years, Four Track Fives (The Smiths, Electronic, The Beautiful South, Jerry Harrison) It's hard for Brian and Sarah to believe, but it's been five years since the first episode of the Permanent Record Podcast appeared for download. (It's also hard for them to believe that in that first episode, they covered the entire album Upstairs at Eric's in less than an hour!) To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the podcast, Brian and Sarah went through their album collection and looked at the track listings. From there, they each picked two Track Fives from albums they like, but that wouldn't necessarily get discussed otherwise. The result is a conversation about songs by The Smiths, Electronic, The Beautiful South, and Jerry Harrison. Of course, the conversation covers more than just those songs, artists, and  albums. Brian and Sarah also find themselves talking about the artists Pebbles, Vanessa Williams, Mark Ronson, and Kraftwerk; the Sire Records compilations such as Just Say Yes!; a rather un

Episode 134: In Conversation with Kip Kubin, Tony Miracle, and Annette Strean of Venus Hum In April 2020, Brian and Sarah branched out into new territory by publishing their first-ever interview. The kind soul who agreed to talk with them (for several hours, as it turned out!) was none other than Tony Miracle, known by many for being one-third of the band Venus Hum. It was a delightful conversation covering a wide variety of musical topics, and a good time was had by all. Now, in 2021, Brian and Sarah are delighted to present a conversation with all three members of Venus Hum: Kip Kubin, Annette Strean, and of course, Tony Miracle. And what's even more exciting is that there's a brand-new Venus Hum album to discuss! First, however, the hosts have a little catching up to do with Kip and Annette. They learned a lot about Tony's musical background and history in last year's talk, so they wanted to hear Kip and Annette's stories too. They find out how everyone met and how the band came together, and the trio t

Episode 133: U2 - The Joshua Tree (1987) Part 4 Brian, Sarah, and Tom Austin-Morgan (of Banned Biographies fame!) are back to finish their discussion of U2's 1987 classic, "The Joshua Tree." This time around, the trio shoot the breeze about the darkest moments on the album: "Exit" and "Mothers of the Disappeared."  But in case you think this episode is all doom and gloom, they also talk about ice cream trucks, all the U2 back-catalog Brian has been acquiring, the return of the live music scene around South London, and, of course, they finally get around to ranking the record as a whole on a scale of 1 to 100 record adapters. There's also a surprise EXTRA extra-credit segment at the conclusion of the episode, just in case you needed just a tad more U2 chat!!  And if I could switch from third person to first person for a moment, I wanted to extend a final "Thank You!" to Tom for making time to join us for these episodes.  It requires a lot of work to be able to discuss an album for over six hours, so we appre

Episode 132: U2 - The Joshua Tree (1987) Part 3 It's been a while, but finally Brian, Sarah, and special guest Tom Austin-Morgan are back to discuss The Joshua Tree. In case you've forgotten, Tom has an excellent podcast called Banned Biographies which covers the histories of some rather famous-- and infamous-- bands and artists. Make sure you check it out; you can find the links below. Track by Track review, continued In the previous U2 discussion, the trio didn't get too far along in the track-by-track discussion. This time, however, they make up for that by discussing what ends up being five songs off the iconic 1987 album.  A lot of facts, opinions, and laughs are shared in this episode as Tom, Brian, and Sarah finish talking about Side One and head over to the tracks on Side Two. Some topics that came up during this discussion were: the differences between the punk movement in the US compared to the UK; Lou Reed; Bob Dylan; "People Are People"; and hootenannies! Songs discussed in this episode: Side O

State of the PRP Nation (A Brief Interlude) We hope that your August is off to a fantastic start!  Of course, we had hoped to have Part 3 of our U2 "The Joshua Tree" discussion available for you by now; however, things have been moving a bit slowly here at the BlueZone Studio. If you miss hearing from your friends Brian & Sarah though, do not fear!  We want to clue you in to a couple of podcasts you may want to check out! Firstly, Wendy and Kevin of the wonderful MetaPod show just released their 26th episode, which features a conversation with us!  MetaPod's mission statement is to "unpack the web’s most interesting podcasts and the stories behind them", so it was an honor to be considered as guests.  Please give the show a listen, and if you like what you hear, subscribe. https://www.metapodshow.com/2021/08/04/episode-26-sarah-and-brian-linnen-of-permanent-record-podcast/ Secondly, the mighty Craig Smith of the Pods & Sods Network is kicking off a new series of sidecasts called "Why We Love..." a

Episode 131: U2 - The Joshua Tree (1987) Part 2 Brian, Sarah, and their special guest Tom Austin-Morgan are back to talk more U2! As a reminder, Tom has an excellent podcast called Banned Biographies which delves into the careers of some rather notorious bands, so be sure to check it out-- after you're done listening to this episode, of course. Track by Track review, continued Last time the three hosts talked about The Joshua Tree, they only got as far as the 1987 album's opening track, so there are many more songs to discuss! This episode finds them talking about three more songs and two more videos. They also end up talking about Las Vegas, oversized slot machines, the TV show Friends, Thomas Dolby, and some differences in American English versus British English. Songs discussed in this episode: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For With Or Without You Bullet the Blue Sky Watch the videos we discuss here: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For With or Without You Check out Banned Biographies a

Episode 130: In Conversation with Ivan Doroschuk of Men Without Hats Once again, Brian and Sarah are taking a detour from publishing the episodes everyone is expecting, but they have an extremely good reason this time-- they're absolutely delighted to welcome founder and lead singer of Men Without Hats, Ivan Doroschuk, to the Permanent Record Podcast! If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you'll know that Brian has mentioned many times how important Men Without Hats and their first album, Rhythm of Youth, were to the formation of his musical tastes; Sarah is also a longtime fan of the group. The conversation starts off with look back at the history and formation of the band, and then fast-forwards to talk about the 2020 induction of not one, but two, Men Without Hats songs into the Canadian Songwriter's Hall of Fame. The three then move on to discuss the four albums Men Without Hats released in the 80s and the 1991 release Sideways. There's another fast-forward-- this time to the 2010s--to talk a

Episode 129: U2 - The Joshua Tree (1987) Part 1 As evidenced by the title of this episode, Brian and Sarah are taking a bit of a detour from their look back at the 1989 Queen album, "The Miracle." They're thrilled to be joined by Tom Austin-Morgan, who, among his many talents, is creator and host of the terrific podcast Banned Biographies. Banned Biographies is "an audio documentary series charting the careers of some of the most notorious bands ever to grace the world's stages." Brian, Sarah and Tom wanted to discuss an album together, and after a few ideas were bounced back and forth, they decided to kind of meet in the middle, musically, and tackle an epic album-- not just of the 1980s, but of the entire rock 'n' roll era-- U2's 1987 opus, "The Joshua Tree." Brian and Sarah had to admit they weren't really familiar with the album much beyond the big singles. Tom had more of a history with it, but was still not intimately knowledgeable on it off the top of his head. The three hosts had their work cut out

Episode 128: Queen - The Miracle (1989) - Part 1 Now that Brian and Sarah have 'warmed up' by finishing a discussion on an EP (Martin Gore's 1989 offering Counterfeit e.p.), it's time to raise the stakes and take on an entire album again. And what an album they've selected! It's another release from 1989-- Queen's thirteenth studio album, The Miracle. However, our hosts decided they couldn't just jump into the album discussion right away. The Miracle was released three years after Queen's previous effort, A Kind of Magic (discussed in episodes 28, 29, & 30), but more than the just the recording of the album took place during that time. Brian and Sarah decide to spend this first episode exploring what was going on with the band, and its individual members, between the end of The Magic Tour and the recording of The Miracle. In this episode you'll hear about Brian, Roger, Freddie and John's various projects during 1987 and 1988. Half of them worked on a lot of music; one of them worked on some music, and