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In today's episode, we take a break from taking breaks and present a mix of sounds and music to unnerve you. Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1963 to 1967 hundreds of songs about the Beatles, but not by the Beatles, were issued by no-name artists on tiny fly-by-night labels. An unimaginable amount of these mop top dedications were simply trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel of Beatlemania Bucks. And while the whole band received an unending amount of adulation from the masses of music makers, one member had an almost metaphysical magnetism for bad musicians: Mr. Ringo Starr. In this episode, we are going to explore America’s Jingoism for Ringoism. The ladies who love the goofball percussionist and the men who love to hate him. Odes to the drummer who is better than the best. Or at least better than Pete Best. And the scores of singers who can’t possibly imagine a better subject matter than those shaggy locks and that Gomer Pyle grin. Listening to this music...it don't come easy. But we’re going to brave the bewildering and backbreaking Beatlemania Bacchanalia to bring you a bounty of the best bedeviling Beatle bauble by bewitched Beatle buffs. In this episode, Ringo Songs.  Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we track the legacy of the music of the grittiest of film styles. Scores of scores that are riddled with bullet holes, whiskey bottles, scattered cards, wanted posters, and bloodstains. Tunes that put a bounty on your mind and will ride you down in the desert. So, saddle up your pony and load your six-gun. Down that bottle and kiss your senoritas farewell, Prepare yourself for double-crosses, and double-double-crosses. Get another coffin ready. Today, we’re gunning down the history of Spaghetti Western Music.  Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nobody intentionally builds cathedrals to mediocrity. Music criticism, and really society in general, is often preoccupied with defining, declaring, and debating superlatives by using any means at their disposal, subjective to scientific. Look at the vast array of books, articles, lists, blog posts, and podcasts dedicated to rock’s most important bands or the world’s greatest albums, or the first true trip-hop song, or even the musician with the most substantial mustache. We seemingly have a compulsive need to declare a winner. To pin an imaginary medal for a make-believe achievement of unquantifiable greatness.  What we rarely do is look to the opposite side of the bell curve. To the outliers at the bottom, that is equally rare as their counterpoints at the apex, but not nearly given as much consideration for how unique they truly are. Those who stand out because of their outstanding failure and shortcomings. The best of the worst. The dregs of the entertainment community. In this episode, we are going to explore the pop stars who found fans in spite of (or perhaps because of) their gross musical incompetence and who were demonstratively aesthetically just plain bad. The small handful of musicians who would be, under all circumstances, considered conventionally terrible at music yet manage to attain success. Those who through sheer will or perhaps complete ignorance managed to make a name for themselves. And those who were exploited, mocked, and enjoyed ironically but still fought to the top. We seek to understand first what the motive is behind their drive? Were they sincere? Delusional? We’re they okay being a novelty and laughing along with their hecklers? Did they even know it was happening? Or did they just want to cash in by any means at their disposal? And secondly, we explore the motive of their audience. Did these people truly enjoy these exhibitions of atrocity much like watching a train wreck? Or did they get off on holding this secret over an oblivious performer? And finally what sort of unhealthy dynamic is formed from the strange relationship of the two. Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bagpipes are a sonorous and ceaseless instrument. Almost comically so. The traditional Scottish Bagpipe is the loudest unamplified instrument known to man. Decibel levels range upwards of 110, which puts them far closer to thunderclaps and power tools than pianos and oboes. And if the deafening sound doesn’t get you, then the constancy of its noise certainly will. The chanter of a bagpipe is open, which means that once a piper has used the blow stick to fill the bag, the instrument cannot (and will not) be silenced until all the air is released. The spectacular implacable multi-dimensional soundscapes made by a stand of pipes are typically more unleashed than controlled. In fact, it requires technical playing to create an allusion of articulation and tone accents. In essence, the player bends to the will of the instrument, not the other way around...its the anti-Theremin. As James Reid, Bill Millin, and John Cale can all attest, the bagpipe is a fierce musical weapon. The power seems to be a tempting inclusion to engorge the depths of songcraft, yet, there have been so few popular musical artists who have attempted to integrate bagpipes into their songs. Even fewer used bagpipes on a regular basis. In today’s episode, we are going to explore the tenuous relationship between the sack and the song. To find the brave souls who marched into the mainstream with nothing but pipes, pride, provocations, and piercing pandemonium. We are going to lift the kilt on one of the world’s most maligned and misunderstood music-makers. So, take a deep breath and blow as hard as you can, squeeze your bag tightly, finger your chanter nimbly, and don’t stop until you or your audience passes out….because we are startin’ to tartan. Today, bagpipes in popular music.  Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s that time of year again, where we get pretty sick of hearing about Christmas. For this, unbelievably, our fourth Christmas episode we are going to carry on the tradition of taking an episode to talk about some of the weirder, smaller stories that we’ve wanted to cover, but wouldn’t fit in with a full-length turntable talk. A veritable cornucopia of record oddities. So, sit back and get ready to have your stockings stuffed with some fascinating tales of rock star mishaps and vinyl vanities. Stoke your fire, spike your eggnog, and don your winter’s cap, cause you’re about to be visited by the ghost of music history’s past. In this episode, we have stories about Adriano Celentano, Eduard Khil, Halyx, Computer Data on Vinyl, Dr. Arthur Lintgen, and Gary S. Paxton. Join us, won't you? Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early 20th century, a puppet fervor slowly crept across the America, like rust on a Chevy Nova, as travelling shows made puppeteers into full fledge celebrities, particularly the self-proclaimed “America’s Puppet Master” Tony Sarg who was instrumental in creating visually appealing versions of classic children’s tales and bringing to life puppets in live action and animated films. Concurrently, ventriloquism acts were breaking from music halls and vaudeville shows to find superstardom led by duos of Arthur Prince and Sailor Jimmy, the Great Lester and Frank Byron Jr., and, of course, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. America got wood for talking wood.  The rise of radio, television, and film provided even broader platforms for puppeteers and ventriloquists to spread their infectious amusements. In a world before special effects, making inanimate objects come alive felt magical and more real than still nascent animation. It was children’s television that really embraced puppets as Howdy Doody and Burr Tillstrom's Kukla and Ollie were beamed directly into the impressionable minds of the baby boomers. Lambchop lovin’ Shari Lewis, sweater-clad Fred Rogers, and googly eyed Jim Henson all followed suit shortly after making themselves and their creations into international superstars. At about the same nuclear age time frame, you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a socially awkward (and probably sexually frustrated) kid unsuccessfully practicing throwing his voice with a shiny new Emmett Kelly or Mortimer Snerd dummy emulating their heroes like Jimmy Nelson, Bil Baird, and Paul Winchell. They would spend hours listening to instructional records on letter substitutions and tongue positioning. The craze permeated far and wide as even Miss America contestants chose ventriloquism for the talent portion of the show. We even got so lazy that we decided to let robots run our puppets as animatronics started popping up all over place like Disneyland, Showbiz Pizza, and Chuck E Cheese. In this episode, we are going to stare into the cold dead eyes of the dummies. We are going to explore why and how adults mimicking mannerisms into lifeless masses became the preeminent evangelical apparatus. And how things went so far off the rails. So, dim the lights and focus the spotlight. Put on your duck tail tuxedo. Tip your top hat jauntily askew. Straighten your bowtie. Stick your hand up the bottom of your favorite inanimate object and throw your voice as far it goes. Join as we walk through the uncanny valley of the dolls. Just don’t let us see your lips move. Today, the wacky world of puppet records, you dummies. Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Almost as long as humans have mastered the ability to record the environment around them, they have desired to record the world that is just beyond them. A perfectly logical endeavour, as all recorded music is somewhat supernatural, especially when cocaine and LSD are involved.  Recorded sound is by its very nature taken from another place, a distant place, and thrust into a moment where it doesn’t belong and couldn’t exist without human manipulation. The technology that unlocks these past dimensions surely mustn't stop there...what other realms can be explored.  In this episode we explore the sounds of the occult and occultists. Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode we look at how graphic novels are pushing the boundaries of pop music history, bringing new perspectives and fans. Where life imitating art is just as  possible as art imitating life. How like the inked pages themselves, the books color their stories to accentuate their ideas and themes. Lighter, darker, more intense, more fanciful, more realistic, more fantastical. Entire biographies or genres are carefully condensed into imaginative visions. Adaptations that leave lasting impressions that are not necessarily bound by what is real. So move back in your mother’s basement, fire up the Batmobile, and bring out the shoebox of old Zippy the Pinhead comics. In this episode, we explore the symbiotic relationship between music history myth-building and graphic novels. Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As radio, and eventually television, became a fixture in American homes, a celebrity culture was solidified. With this fascination for the people that we hear and see almost daily, there was a longing to understand them. A striving for connection that lets people feel like they really know who this star is and maybe, one day, that star could know who they really are as well. These conditions of idol worship created a lucrative playing field for companies to draw upon the status of fame to sell their goods. Beyond the normal response that music can invoke in listeners, the draw was much stronger if the message came from a recognized, trusted, and desirable source. Today, we explore the literal commercialization of rock music. Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Night Bus, Late Night Grocery Run, & Pink Motel are microgenres that represent their own experiential sound, where the songs are held together by the atmospheres they invoke rather than a specific set of rules or location in time and space. The music, primarily captured on singles, was created by private press or no name labels with dreams of making it big or at least making a few bucks. The mood of these micro-genres provides a faded snapshot of the 1980s with a depraved combination of the excess and frivolity of popular styles of the time: RnB, disco, funk, AOR, and synthpop. Our episode today is being co-hosted by two cosmonauts of musical taxonomy, Candace and Micah, who launch themselves into the darkest recesses of the musical spectrum and bring back the fragments of unremembered sounds out of the oblivion. They explore musical trends that are mostly forgotten or intentionally pushed away from mass society for its own protection. They have worked diligently to find homes for the “square peg” music that certainly exists, but is, as of yet, unrecognized as a cohesive micro-genre. Music that is little known outside of the basement dwelling record trolls plastered to their discogs, mixclouds, and youtubes.  Listen to Micah's show on WFMU, Music of Mind Control Archives for WFMU shows hosted by Micah & Candace: Night Bus & Low Rent Grooves/Pink Motel Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is an unproductive trope of there being a fine line between genius and madman. Constantly, we are encouraged to believe that the works of “artists in asylums” are somehow this perpetual motion machine where mental illness fuels creativity which, in turn, fractures the creator even more creating a cycle toward an inevitable dark end, where we are only left with the work to scrutinize or admire. The truth is a lot less dramatic, but no less sad. Social circumstances, interpersonal relationships, biology, substances, and societal expectations each play relevant roles in determining the well-being of every person: artist, genius, or just the poor soul sleeping on the street. Art and artist are separate. Just as a mental condition and person are separate. Influenced and interlaced, certainly, but we so often forget that works do not define the person, rather the person defines the work. Many of us are captivated by albums that were created while the artists were in mental hospitals. They are rare artifacts that unfortunately end up defining the artist for their careers while giving an undue amount of weight to the condition of their mind rather than the beauty within it. The artistry that comes from the pain and confusion of confinement . . . in a hospital and in one’s mind. The records are snapshots of musicians on the brink that utilized songs to communicate their struggle or alleviate suffering. Today, we are exploring Institutional Albums by Roky Erickson, Skip Spence, and Danial Johnston. Sources used for this episode include: 13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History by Paul Drummond Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound by Paul Drummond Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a long history of the unjust treatment of women musicians whose contributions were often overlooked, dismissed, or stolen. Sadly, it’s likely to be a long future as well. This is on the top of the extra effort and persistence that it took to establish themselves in a sexist business that is stacked against female creators and performers. In particular, the development of experimental and electronic music has been established on the skills of a number of women artists who made monumental and transformative contributions to forward-thinking, technology-minded music. Unfortunately, many of these artists remain far too obscure for their importance in progressing the genre. This episode is an examination of the unsung women who shaped the sounds during the formative years of electronic music.  Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ween set forth on a career-long ambition to tear down standard music industry conventions by hook or by crook. To take that which is weird, obnoxious, and unclean, and show it as important as the falsely pristine parts of life. They were never more successful in this endeavor than on their 76 minute slog of a second record, The Pod. Recorded alone together in Dean and Gene Ween’s apartment that was a converted barn smack dab in the middle of a horse field while both were suffering through mono and high on, well, probably everything. The record sounds like you need to scrape off layers and layers of shit and grime to get the pop tunes hidden within. Underneath the juvenile jokes, the impressive assemblage of vulgarity, fast food orders, molasses-dipped song-smithing, sonic fuckery, squishy atmosphere, and overall friendly misanthropic posturing is a solid and comprehensive American pop music revue. Dinner theater at the slaughterhouse. So, tonight’s offering...another scoop of isolation but this time with a heaping of flies, scotch guard, and glandular fever. If you’ve ever woken up and found that someone had taken a deuce on your kitchen floor, you’ve already sort of heard this masterpiece. The sludgiest, brownest record of Ween’s illustrious decades long trouncing of indie music. Come on, it's a beautiful night for a walk on the beach, wouldn't you say? Listen to Fewer Owls, mentioned in this episode! Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s episode is a continuing examination of the strange bedfellows of cults and music. Last time, we discussed some of the more academic reasons why leaders and their minions utilize music to recruit, indoctrinate, isolate, and elevate their group, so today we are going to dive right into the fringiest of the fringe groups. The absurd ashrams. The Kookiest communes. The flakiest faiths. The goofiest gurus. The screwiest sects. And the zaniest zealots. So go ahead and plaster your best “Up with People” smile on that face, schedule tomorrow’s deprogramming session, and hunker in your bunker as we prepare to astrally project the second installment of the fascinating world of cult music. One of the main resources we used for this episode was WFMU's Music of Mind Control with Micah Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cults can manifest themselves in any number of ways. They deal in the currency of human beliefs….religious, political, racist, or terroristic beliefs. And can be delivered in the form of a prophesying doomsday, increasing human potential, or enhancing one’s position using new age techniques, black magic, crystal skulls, anything on Gwyneth Paltrow’s website, or other supernatural means. And while it can be difficult to know exactly when a group is truly a cult, they tend to share three things: a charismatic, often authoritative leader; an indoctrination program into a transcendent belief system; and a system of control through exploitation.  These self-styled leaders prey upon the most malleable members of society. Generally, those are the most stable and predictable of us. Cults use varying means of conditioning and thought reform through deception, isolation, dependency, and fear. One of the more fascinating tools in their horrible toolbox of manipulation is the use of music. As with the case of Bixby and DeGraff, there is a strange balance and codependency of music and mind control. Music is consistently seen playing a role in the establishment and functioning of cults, radical sects, and new religious movements. It can not only bring people together, it can also bring people into the fold. In this episode, we delve into the bizarre world of music made from within cults. Tunes that were left behind as relics of evidence of exploitation and excessive, destructive devotion. Results that are so strange because they were almost certainly weaponized by a brainwashed minion. Music that is created in a vacuum of narcissism, removed from free thought and outside influence. Hymns to self-appointed prophets, saviors, divine conduits, Christ reincarnates, gurus, faith healers, alien leaders, and Sting (probably). We will look at music from some of the world’s most infamous cults as well as the songs that are so insular, they make no sense outside of their context, even when that context makes no sense either. So, cleanse off your chakra, open your mind, pull on your robes, lace up your Nikes. Today, the music of the cults. Join us, won’t you? Forever? One of the main resources we used for this episode was WFMU's Music of Mind Control with Micah Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like it or not, we are all chained to our past. What we have done slowly becomes who we are.  This holds especially true for musicians as they constantly struggle against what they have already created for the world to behold. The pieces of art that fans, labels, journalists, and maybe themselves become forever tethered to their identity. The crusty joke about “I like their old stuff better” is often truly a death knell for a band’s growth. An artist is frozen in time by their own past success. Why try anything new if it won’t matter to most of the people who care about your product anyway? And, frankly, for a lot of bands, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Changing styles might spark the sell-out or jumped the shark chants with angry mobs carrying pitchforks and reading Pitchfork. If you don’t, though, you risk growing stale and fading away. Some bands lean into a stylistic steadfastness and can compel allegiance through sheer resolute commitment. The Ramones, Motorhead, and the Cramps built a brand on a singular style, albeit their own very unique style. Most artists with some longevity, ebb and flow, grow and retreat, but hang around their general vicinity of comfort. There are tons of examples of this. Artists like Wilco, REM, Willie Nelson, Rolling Stones, etc. It goes on and on. Some artists reinvent themselves constantly throughout their careers but never to a completely unrecognizable degree. This would include David Bowie, Prince, Madonna, and Bob Dylan. Some simply pinball from one horrific sound to the next. Sting, for example, and his tantrically mediocre existence. Some artists might occasionally take an oddball flier on a totally random genre record that exists squarely outside of their cannon, maybe for fun, or by accident, or out of contract obligations...think Serge Gainsbourg’s Reggae album, Ween’s country album, Neil Young’s Trans, Metal Machine Music, Pat Boone’s unfortunately satisfying metal album, and of course, the oft cited here, Chris Gaines taking off the goatee mask to become Garth Brooks. These often sound more on the wrong side of the “novelty to homage” scale. However, there are a few rare cases when an artist completely reinvents themselves, elevating the limits of ambition and shattering preconceived notions of their music. Scott Walker left behind his teeny bopper career to become a pork-pounding master of the avant-garde. Tom Waits evolved from a barroom balladeer to a carnival barking madman. Brian Eno disrobed from his leopard print glam tendencies to essentially single-handedly herald in ambient music. And finally, Talk Talk who started as a group of synth-toting Duran Duran doppelganger doppelgangers to being at the forefront of the post-rock movement. As we continue to delve into different forms of isolation shaped and sculpted into musical artifacts, Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock is intentionally distancing from the sentiment and bias of the past. A band that desperately works to create space and blatant disregard from what they are supposed to be. And in the end, it turns out to be too destructive of a force for the group to continue.   Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For being studied from philosophical, sociological, psychological, and biological perspectives for centuries, there is no one unified theory on the meaning of laughter. A common condition of all cultures, every person is susceptible to these involuntary responses. As Aristotle put it, “Humans are laughing animals”. One factor that most Gelotological philosophers and scientists agree upon is that laughter is an essential social tool. Laughter creates connection, expresses emotion, adds conversational context, signals acceptance, creates positive feedback loops, acts as a defense mechanism, and helps to ferret out the weak and embarrass them. In short, laughter is how we bond. It’s how we tell others and ourselves that things are going to be okay. Social, emotional, and cognitive regulation. A primitive means to deal with our unpredictable, inconsistent, and intense existence. 1900s French Philosopher Henri Bergson wrote that laughter was a collective apparatus that causes a separation from logic and emotion which allows society to intellectually adapt to situations, balance moral quandaries, and correct eccentric behavior. Of course, not too many people are worried about where laughter comes from or what it does, we just know that videos of men sustaining testicular injuries is never not funny.  All this begs the question...what do you get when you cross a joke and a rhetorical question? In the 1920s, an answer to that might have been the laughing record fad. 78s featuring uncontrollable cackling took hold of the culture causing a sort of mass hysteria in the sitting rooms around the world. It was a regular pole-sitter laughageddon. Inexplicably, millions of people could not get enough of songs that were interrupted with the wild pre-recorded howls and snorts flatulating from their Victrola phonograph machines. The bizarre novelty record phenomenon had a long lasting impact in both humanizing the nascent technology and laying the groundwork for embedded laugh tracks to assist audiences with remembering the hilarity they were witnessing. On this episode, we chuckle, chortle, snicker, titter, giggle, and guffaw our way through the bust-your-gut history of laughing records.  Primary sources for this episode: Ian Nagoski of Canary Records Cary O'Dell - Library of Congress Vocal Tracks by Jacob Smith Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a sense, private press records are the ultimate form of isolation music. They are albums that are created completely on an island. Often, recorded by a single person. Usually, created without any support or belief. Always, made without the assistance of a label to provide funding, resources, marketing, or expertise. Putting out a private press record is an act of faith. Faith in yourself...that you are an undiscovered and misunderstood musical treasure. Faith that you’ll see a return on your investment…that the thousands of dollars you spend will be come back tenfold with future riches, fame, and respect.  Faith in your fans….the ones that don’t yet exist, but will certainly fawn over you when they finally set the needle down on the shiny black vinyl, spinning at a perfect 33 and a third revolutions per minute. Faith in the system….that if you believe and you work hard, you will fulfill your destiny. Faith, that someone cares and empathizes with your point of view. Faith that you might not be alone.  Bobb Trimble might be the king of the private press.  He certainly checks most of the boxes that make a private press record highly sought after: Loner outsider musician, hilariously bizarre cover art, strange story, lo-fi recording, minuscule pressing, cited as influential by big-name independent artists. However, what makes him the master of this lost genre is the music itself which is gorgeously detailed, strangely attractive, shockingly accessible and engaging. Music that is not just rehashed and stylized, but something that lives outside the standard comfortable genre descriptors. Somewhere between acid folk, soft rock psychedelic, fuzzy space rock, and power pop with a streak of musique concrete. Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Paisley Underground might be the first mix-tape scene. Not really a genre at all, but a collective of people who had similar interests and influences who all happened to be in bands. The music was defined more by what it wasn’t...not punk, not singer-songwriter, not hard rock, not New Romantic. It was entirely synthesized by openly combining parts of beloved sounds of the past into a fresh and forward-thinking way. The bands were composed of musicians who wore their hearts on their technicolor dreamcoat sleeves with regards to their love and devotion of 60s music. However, the sounds of the individual bands varied greatly, so it makes little sense to call it a true genre. More a scene that captured shared ideals and fashion sense. As Dream Syndicate main man Steve Wynn aptly put it: “We had enough in common with each other and almost nothing in common with anybody else.” It involved a wave of kids who became tired of the punk scene which had become what it initially railed against: stagnant music that was too concerned with maintaining status quo uniformity as the kids were getting too violent. Scores of kids who had initially fallen in love with the thrill and DIY mindset of punk, who'd grown bored and felt disenfranchised and left behind. Many of the Paisley Undergroundlings described themselves as bad punks, making music just for the sake of belonging rather than for the sake of the songs. It was the spirit of punk but with a more expansive sound. They started looking inward and backward to the more gentle and pretty sounds of the 1960s. But this wasn’t a neo-hippy movement with romanticized political ideals and stereotypical retro wear. In fact, all the bands gleaned what they liked most about the 60s without any concern for being true to their heroes or dedicated to the sound and fashion.  Highway Hi-Fi is a proud member of the Pantheon Music Podcast Network - Home of the Finest Music Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices