Forgotten 80s

FLA 25: Matthew Rudd (03/08/2025)

/ whenisbins / 2 Comments

Matthew Rudd pic (c) Jamie Stephenson

If you work Mondays to Fridays, Sunday nights don’t have a good reputation. They’re about winding down the weekend, and about preparing for another week of grindstone. Creeping into the late Sunday night routine in recent years, though, has been a reassuring but often adventurous radio show, tapping into a generation’s nostalgia for the 1980s. For two hours every week, from 9pm UK time, Forgotten 80s gathers together listeners’ requests for the underplayed and the undervalued from all kinds of pop music genres.

Forgotten 80s’ creator, presenter and producer is Matthew Rudd, who has worked in radio for 30 years, initially at stations in the North of England including Hallam FM in Sheffield, Viking FM in Hull, and Stockport’s Imagine FM.

But he has since reached a national audience via Q Radio and since 2013, Absolute 80s, the decade-specific offshoot of Absolute Radio, and it was my pleasure to invite him on to First Last Anything to launch this third series of conversations on music. Over two Zoom sessions in June 2025, we discussed how he puts Forgotten 80s together, how it all came about, and how it continues to link together a loyal band of listeners on a variety of social media platforms every Sunday.

Matthew also talked to me about how he first got into music, about a band who put his home city of Hull on the map, although Hull was already generally on maps obviously, and about some of the other acts who have floated his musical boat down the years. We hope you enjoy our conversation.   

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JUSTIN LEWIS:

Let’s start with the question I ask everyone. What music would have been playing in your house in your formative years?

MATTHEW RUDD:

I was raised in East Yorkshire and my parents are both from East Yorkshire. I love my parents dearly, but I’ve always felt they were brought up in a period where so much exciting stuff was going on and it completely passed them by. Either because they didn’t get access to it, but more likely because of the influence of their own parents; I think that they were told ‘this isn’t for you’ and therefore ‘stay away from it’.

My dad was born in 1940 and my mum in 1942, both still with us, and so both teenagers when Elvis Presley came along. The immediate reaction of their own parents was ‘this is not good’ – you know, like all parents are with new stars. But of course this was more than that – the advent of rock’n’roll, the beginning of what we would now call a modern world.

My dad’s only experience of music – I don’t know this for certain – was hearing a transistor radio while he was at work, as a motor mechanic, fixing a car. Most places where they’re providing a service and the customer has to stay for a while or the service involves the staff being in the same place for a long time, they’re going to have the radio on in the background, and I don’t think that was any different back in the 50s and 60s.

My mum, though, did notice stuff. Her parents were much more musically minded, they liked going dancing between the wars, when they first met and then, after the war when my mum and my auntie were little, they didn’t have a lot of money, but they treated themselves by going to a dance club. But also my granddad was always into Perry Como. And so, the very first record I remember in the house – I was preschool, so 76/77 – was a Perry Como LP. Couldn’t tell you what it was called, but it had ‘It’s Impossible’ on it.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

He had that revival, that second little run of hits in the 70s, didn’t he, that and ‘And I Love You So’.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Now my granddad died in 1991; he was nearly 80. We’re almost 35 years later and my mum who’s now in her 80s, still says, ‘Oh, my favourite was always Perry Como.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but it was his music.’

Later, when I was a teenager, I found this 7-inch singles box stowed away somewhere. There was Elvis Presley’s ‘Rock-A-Hula Baby’, the double A-side with ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ (1961). Now, neither of my parents remembers buying it. So whose was it, where did it come from? And did they have anything to play it on? I’m convinced my granddad on my dad’s side, who died when I was ten, would not have had a record player. But there was also a copy of Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ (1968), and the other albums included a Leo Sayer album [Leo Sayer, 1978], with the Buddy Holly song ‘Raining in My Heart’ on it… and Arrival by ABBA (1976). And I remember my mum was particularly keen on one of that album’s tracks, ‘When I Kissed the Teacher’.

But, apart from that Perry Como LP, I’ve never known who owned these records. I’m guessing it’s my mother, though my dad is not a music ignoramus. He’s a good singer. And this is something that he will be known for, by every member of his family all his life – he knows the first line to every single song that’s ever been recorded – and no more.

So to answer your question about the music that I grew up with, I had to learn about it myself and I learned more from my elder brother – same age as you, born 1970, and a completely fervent and loyal rock fan – who went to a Motörhead gig at Hull City Hall at the age of 13.

He had a friend who was a year older, really into heavy rock. Motörhead were on tour. His mate got two tickets – and he wanted to go, obviously – but he’s 13 and it’s Motörhead, they’ve been massive with ‘Ace of Spades’ et al, and it’s Hull City Hall in the middle of the city centre, on a school night. And he was allowed to go on one condition: that my dad drove him there, parked outside the City Hall and stayed there for however long the gig was – two hours, whatever. And then, when the gig’s over, Dad expects his first-born son to be out of the door and straight back into the passenger seat immediately. And that’s exactly how it transpired.

That he was allowed to go to that, though, is amazing. My mum would have made the final decision, but it’s a tribute to my dad because he had a father who really did not rate anything about the modern world and didn’t actually rate his son very much. They had a very difficult, awkward relationship, which only got better when he left home and got married and produced grandchildren with his surname. That was important.

Meanwhile, my mum’s younger sister, my auntie, is a baby boomer, born in 1946. My granddad had been out to war. And like an awful lot of couples, as soon as my grandparents reunited, when the war was over, another child was soon on the way. So when The Beatles became really prominent, she was 16 years old.

In 1963 or ‘64, my auntie got tickets to go and see The Beatles, at the old ABC cinema on Ferensway. So she’s 17 or 18, but she’s living at home. And my grandma just said, ‘You’re not going’. And that was it. That was the end of the debate. Nowadays, there’d be bartering, bargaining, pleading, third party gets involved. But: no. My auntie’s always been quite generous about it – ‘Well, it’s just the way things were, so I didn’t go’ – but I can’t help but think she never forgave my grandma for that. Because the Beatles never came back to Hull.

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FIRST (1): SHAKIN’ STEVENS: ‘This Ole House’ (Epic Records, single, 1981)

MATTHEW RUDD:

I was not quite eight years old, so clearly Shakin’ Stevens was going to appeal to me. I was the right age for purchasing this record, with the help of my parents. Every major city has a local record store of great repute, and ours in Hull was called Sydney Scarborough. The address was ‘under the City Hall, Hull’, and that was enough. And I think that’s where my mum had gone to buy it for me.

That was my first record that I had bought for me. And over the next year or two, Mum would continue to buy the odd record for me, from town.

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FIRST (2): HOWARD JONES: ‘What is Love?’ (WEA Records, single, 1983)

MATTHEW RUDD:

But the first record that I bought myself was Howard Jones, ‘What is Love?’, in January ’84-ish. It got to number two, his biggest hit. And 1984… I can’t put into words how important that year was for me.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

That sounds like my 1980. Pop music became everything.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Well, there is this phenomenal period between the summer of 1980 and the end of 1981 where so many artists who defined the whole decade had their first hits – it’s incredible. You’ve got UB40, Joy Division, OMD, The Cure, Spandau Ballet, Linx, Ultravox, Bad Manners, Adam and the Ants in the second half of 1980, and then look at 1981: The Teardrop Explodes, Toyah, Duran Duran, Visage, Kim Wilde, Altered Images, Level 42, Depeche Mode, ABC, Human League, Freeez, Echo and the Bunnymen, Japan, U2, Imagination, Haircut 100, Soft Cell, Fun Boy Three… it almost goes on forever. I was seven and eight years old, I only noticed bits and bats, and didn’t see any bigger picture, and just liked Shakin’ Stevens because I was a child. If I’d been 11 then I don’t know how I would have
kept up, but I’d have had a good go.

And by the beginning of 1984, I’d started to be quite obsessed with the Top 40. I’d listen to the new chart on Tuesday, six o’clock [Radio 1, Peter Powell]. And that obsession came from the first Now That’s What I Call Music album, which was incredibly heavily advertised at the end of ‘83. And on that album was Howard Jones with ‘New Song’, which I’d seen him do on Top of the Pops.

By the time I started secondary school in September ‘84, I began to become known for my pop obsession, and also get slightly teased for it – but in particular my Howard Jones obsession had gone through the roof. I got the Human’s Lib album on cassette for my birthday – my grandma, the one who wouldn’t let my auntie go to see The Beatles, still managed to get herself to HMV and buy that for me.

I interviewed Howard Jones, in 2013, not long after I joined Absolute 80s. I was such a fanboy. It’s a good interview, I’m pleased with it – but I sound like somebody who knows slightly too much about him! He’s a lovely man, which is one of the reasons I liked him – he wasn’t controversial, but for 1983, ’84, he still looked relevant. He was a bit older, of course – he was twenty-eight when he had his first hit. He was a classically trained musician who ditched his boring square piano, and got this massive synth stack. He ditched his normal hairdo from his prog rock days, and his music teaching days and spiked it and turned it orange. And he found this mime artist geezer, Jed, with a bald head and stuck some chains on his wrist and said, you know, ‘Act like a div in front of me and let’s see what happens’. What can I say? I was ten years old and looking for somebody to idolise, and there he was.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

And you have something in common with him. Because obviously you’ve worked on overnight radio shifts…

MATTHEW RUDD:

Yes. He used to go to Piccadilly Radio in Manchester and he wasn’t allowed to use his real name because of something to do with the Musicians’ Union or something like that.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

He was billed as John Howard.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Well, his real name is John Howard Jones. His real first name is John. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester… And he used to go into what was then called Piccadilly Radio – became Key 103 later – and do songs on the overnight show.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Apparently a psychedelic version of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Well he was a big prog man.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Tell me how you got into radio, then.

MATTHEW RUDD:

I had two obsessions as a child. One was music and one was football. I wasn’t a musician and I wasn’t a good enough footballer, [but I was] so determined that these things were going to rule my adult life as much as my childhood. So I decided to go into journalism, because in any case, I was also quite a news and current affairs junkie. I took A levels in both English subjects and then after sixth form I went to Darlington College of Technology and did the NCTJ pre-entry certificate in newspaper journalism.

Prior to that, in 1989, when I was sixteen, I joined Kingstown Hospital Radio in Hull, at the Kingston General Hospital, which isn’t there anymore, but which was the original hospital radio station in England, started by a guy called Ken Fulstow (1920–83), who came up with the idea of setting up a radio station within a hospital to play music and requests and give messages to patients. [In 1969, Fulstow helped to set up NAHBO (the National Association of Hospital Broadcasting Organisations) and became its vice-president.] I learned the craft there, eventually well enough to get onto Hallam FM in Sheffield [1996]. Meanwhile, after I did my newspaper journalism qualification, I was a newspaper journalist, living in Huddersfield, and I worked for a news agency doing news and sport. But I was also doing what they called RSLs, Restricted Service Licences, which were 28-day FM stations handed out by the Radio Authority to people who wanted to put on a station in a town where the Radio Authority were considering advertising a permanent licence. So you basically got this opportunity to run your own 28-day radio station, see if it works, see what the reaction was. And then when the licence was advertised, you could apply for it permanently.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Isn’t that how the original XFM [now Radio X] got started?

MATTHEW RUDD:

Yeah, that’s right.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

So where did the format of Forgotten 80s, your Sunday night show, come from, then? Because it began – and this is how I first became aware of you – as something called Q the 80s.

MATTHEW RUDD:

At the turn of the 21st century, in commercial radio, most FM stations, certainly ones that were targeting the slightly older adult contemporary audience, 25-to-44 year olds, would always have an 80s show. Friday evening, kickstart the weekend, nonstop 80s for four hours. And it was: ‘Come On Eileen’, ‘Don’t You Want Me’, ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’, ‘The Only Way is Up’, etcetera etcetera. Every week. Which was taking the piss out of the people with a liking and a memory of this era because they were just playing the stuff that got overplayed in the first place. I mean, most commercial radio to this day (outside the one I work for) still thinks that Depeche Mode only had one hit single in the 1980s.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

‘Just Can’t Get Enough’, presumably.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Yes. At the time, Q Radio was run by an old chum of mine from Hallam FM called James Walshe, who was also the programme director of Kerrang! Radio, and Q was in the same building. Some Kerrang! presenters used to host voicetracked shows on Q, their own little pet projects, because nobody was calculating who was listening so they could put on whatever they liked that fitted in with the idea of what a Q magazine reader was.

So I emailed James with a treatment for a three-hour eclectic 80s show, Q the 80s, listed about half a dozen 80s songs, and I promise you, I got an e-mail back within 45 seconds saying, ‘When can you start?’ There was no money in it. I never got paid for Q the 80s, and I did 138 shows [September 2010 – April 2013], Sunday nights 6 till 9. I was still working for a living as a full-time presenter on stations all around the north as a freelancer, but I had this chance now to put together my own 80s programme, showing my image of who I was as a listener and as an adolescent.

Because I had been obsessed with music in the 80s, listening to everything, but not necessarily liking everything. But with my radio sensibilities, I knew that what the presenter likes isn’t necessarily what the listener will like, and vice versa. I persuaded myself that you can put on what you don’t like because somebody out there will really appreciate it because they do like it.

In fact, the biggest influence on both Q the 80s and then Forgotten 80s was a brilliant local show called Good Times, Great Oldies, hosted by a guy called Tim Jibson, who passed away earlier this year. He did it on BBC Radio Humberside, then on Viking Radio when they launched in the mid-80s, and then with his wife producing, much later on KCFM, the station that he ran which launched in Hull in 2007 (and I was on the launch team of that). I have no idea how they actually picked the music from different eras, 50s through to 80s, maybe the odd 90s track… but there would be detailed research on the songs and that made all the difference, plus they were often choosing less obvious songs from quite well-known artists. I’ve always wanted to be somebody who wants to pass on the basic facts about a record, or something they didn’t already know about the song in question. I got that inspiration from this show, and it was a big precursor to what I’ve done since.

When we started Q the 80s, we had a tiny cult audience almost entirely on social media because, Q wasn’t using RAJAR, so it had no calculation of audience figures. It wasn’t on DAB, you could only listen to Q on Freeview and online, and this is before smart speakers and before apps – so it was only on Freeview and its own website.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

And this is when I started listening, quite soon after it began. It started to trend well on social media, especially Twitter – did that surprise you?

MATTHEW RUDD:

Yeah, massively. I mean it. It thrilled me to bits because it was the only type of radio I wanted to do at this stage. I was otherwise eking out a living covering other people’s programmes on standard commercial radio and just phoning it in, you know, show and go as they call it.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Then, in 2013, the Q the 80s format was tweaked for Forgotten 80s, on Absolute 80s. Tell me how that came about. 

MATTHEW RUDD:

Q Radio was coming to a halt, but the format of Q the 80s was mine. My name was above the door as the producer, as well as the presenter – and I was desperate for that to continue. And Absolute said yes, you can continue that. I was giving up the industry at this point because I was retraining – and suddenly I’d been offered the biggest gig of my career.

Initially Forgotten 80s had no profile, it had to start somewhere – so I was quite cautious with music choices. When I joined in 2013, the station was only three and a half years old, and DAB was still fairly fledgling as a platform. We started to get more traffic when we put the show on a Mixcloud page after broadcast, and then eventually the app and smart speaker technology gave us more platforms to aid the show’s growth.

There’s only room for 24 tracks in a two-hour show, but I will get upwards of 150 requests a week, on e-mail alone, as well as all the stuff that comes in on social media during and after the show has been on. And then there’s all the stuff that comes in later, on the socials, with people who consume the show via Listen Again.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

For people who may not know the show, we should probably explain that it’s not just a standard 80s show, is it? Forgotten 80s, as its name suggests, treads a slightly different path.

MATTHEW RUDD:

It’s an 80s programme but it plays an awful lot that otherwise doesn’t get onto standard ‘80s radio. One or two selections scrape through on the Absolute 80s daytime schedule or during the rest of the weekend, but the vast majority of tracks don’t get on the station’s peak slots, and certainly not on other 80s stations, certainly not mainstream ones.

The opening night for Forgotten 80s was 26 May 2013, which was two days after my 40th birthday – the symmetry is wonderful. So every year, we do an anniversary show. This year, we’d done 12 years in May, we did songs that got to number 12 in the charts – a wide range of things… ‘Tower of Strength’ by The Mission; ‘Ever So Lonely’ by Monsoon; ‘Thinking of You’ by The Colour Field; ‘Easier Said Than Done’ by Shakatak.

But with Forgotten 80s I made sure I had features from day one. In fact, from the beginning of this year, I revived the one we started with, an hourly feature called ‘The Nobody’s Diary’, where we play singles from artists who charted between number 41 and number 100 but never actually made it to the Top 40, the route into the Radio 1 chart show and potentially Top of the Pops. ‘The Nobody’s Diary’ was the one feature I brought with me from Q the 80s.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

What are some of the other ones you’ve done? There have been several, haven’t there?

MATTHEW RUDD:

With ‘When Will I Be Famous?’, we’d play acts who became really big but whose initial singles flopped. ‘Dreaming of Me’ by Depeche Mode, for example, that sort of thing.

Then we did a couple of tie-ins with the retro chart shows that precedes us in the Absolute 80s schedules: Sarah Champion doing two 80s singles charts from 4 till 7, and Chris Martin doing the equivalent albums charts from those same two years from 7 till 9. So we’d find a couple of records that didn’t make those Top 40 singles charts or weren’t in the Top 20 album charts.

Another time, we did ‘Calling America’, selections from the Billboard Hot 100 from that week in two different years that never made the charts here – some of the stuff there never even got a UK release.

With ‘Flaunt the Imperfection’, people picked album tracks from two favourite albums of the 1980s. And finally last year, we did ‘Song for Whoever’ – cover versions released in the 1980s. Most of these features ran for two years at a time, though ‘Song for Whoever’ was just a year – and now we’ve gone back to ‘The Nobody’s Diary’.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Do people suggest features to you from time to time?

MATTHEW RUDD:

They have done. ‘B-sides’ is one. I also get a lot of suggestions for ‘12-Inch Versions’.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

I remember suggesting that one myself, very early on! You explained why not, and I understood.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Because if you take a song that people already may not like very much, and then play the seven-minute version, which takes forever to start, you’re just going to piss people off. It’s too divisive.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

A surprising number of 12-inch versions are terrible, it must be said. Long for the sake of it, sometimes.

MATTHEW RUDD:

And we’ve had people suggesting a ‘novelty records feature’, which is a straight no. My first executive producer of Forgotten 80s, Martyn Lee, was incredibly supportive – he said: ‘As long as you’re not ridiculous.’ And by that, I think he meant: Don’t play any novelty records.

I get requests for novelty records all the time, but I’m not going to play them, partly because ultimately it’s my head on the block, but also because it’s counterproductive. The person who wants them: fine. But everyone else is going to go, ‘What’s he playing this shit for?’ And they’ll switch off. I can’t afford for that to happen. And I wouldn’t blame them for switching off, because I’d do the same. 

JUSTIN LEWIS:

What is a novelty record, then? How would you define that?

MATTHEW RUDD:

If it’s designed to make people laugh, or if it’s an obvious parody, or if the artist is very obviously not taking it seriously. I’ve played the odd one which people say is a novelty record – the one that always comes up which I’m now looking forward to seeing on your playlist at the end of this is ‘John Kettley (Is a Weatherman)’ by A Tribe of Toffs (1988). A teenage band having a go, mentioning lots of celebrities, and it’s all a bit playful. It’s not offensive, it’s funny but it’s not laugh out loud – just random celebrities and random rhyming.

But there’s a ‘mini campaign’ on Facebook for ‘Seven Tears’ by the Goombay Dance Band [#1, 1982]. [JL gasps] Yeah, exactly. Your reaction says it all. But generally, I’m not complaining. Long-time listeners know what I’m going to play and what I’m not and they get it completely.

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LAST: BROTHERS OSBORNE: ‘Might as Well Be Me’ (from Brothers Osborne album, EMI Records Nashville, 2023)

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Not to be confused with the bluegrass act the Osborne Brothers, especially popular in the 60s and 70s, this is the Brothers Osborne, an entirely different act – and current, too.

MATTHEW RUDD:

I was listening to Planet Rock, and what I like about it as a radio station is that they take the word ‘rock’, and they look at every single subgenre with the word ‘rock’ in it – they’ll play hard rock, soft rock, prog rock, spandex rock, glam rock, Celtic rock, roots rock, a little bit of punk rock, and then they’ll play an awful lot of country rock. And that’s where these guys come in, because Planet Rock played this song, ‘Might as Well Be Me’. I thought it was great. I don’t know anything about them, it’s just two brothers, obviously American. Ultimately, with Planet Rock, if it’s got a guitar and a raucous vocal and a heartfelt lyric or whatever else, they think, ‘Our listeners are going to like it.’

JUSTIN LEWIS:

When we were setting this up, you acknowledged that you’re not listening to a lot of contemporary stuff, instead tending towards music that’s unfamiliar to you from different eras. And you mentioned that that started to kick in maybe about 15 years ago. It occurred to me that coincides with the creation of Q the 80s. So do you think that the 80s shows have necessitated you doing more listening research, or did you in any case find you were getting less satisfaction from new music – or both?

MATTHEW RUDD:

Well, certainly I was doing the research for the shows because it’s the professional thing to do. There are always going to be gaps in your knowledge and when somebody requests an unfamiliar song, you go off and look down the usual Spotify or YouTube rabbit holes and find a million other things at the same time…

But also, by 2013, by the time I came off daily commercial radio, it was my own choice. I lost a lucrative nightclub gig thanks to the premises closing which meant that my DJ work was no longer paying the bills on its own. I did love being on the radio, I loved prepping, the geeky side of it, working the desk, hitting the news on time, doing all the professional things. But the music – and a lot of jocks of this era will tell you this, depending on the station you’re on – was incidental. And repetitive. Your own taste never came into it – never does with formatted commercial radio, you play what you’re told, and you play it in that order…

JUSTIN LEWIS:

And with that frequency too.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Yes. And I was only forty, but I just felt too old for the majority of stuff. I didn’t mind most of it, but I can’t say I loved any of it. One genre that I’ve always found a struggle is R&B and that was dominating radio playlists. An awful lot of new music was R&B. Even the new music that wasn’t R&B was being pushed to one side. And there’s plenty of good R&B and I used to love playing it if I was doing a more modern club night – because I knew the audience would like it. There are records like ‘Yeah!’ by Usher, which I will always turn up if I hear it. But the majority of it was insipid, bland, boring – and I just didn’t like it. And unfortunately, it really dominated radio playlists at the turn of the century.

——

ANYTHING (1): THE HOUSEMARTINS: London 0 Hull 4 (Go! Discs album, 1986)

Extract: ‘Happy Hour’

MATTHEW RUDD:

I don’t know how much airplay they got before ‘Happy Hour’ – but that video became part of the psyche, and it became national as much as it became local. But I’d never seen them live – I was too young, and also, I always lived in the East Riding, so the city centre and the music venues were always at least a bus ride away. And I think my dad had, by now, gone beyond the stage of ferrying his lads into town to watch bands anymore. Plus, it was a different era for me, I was doing other things in the evening. I was a competitive swimmer and that dominated things.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

So how quickly did you get round to buying this album? It came out at the end of June 1986, just as ‘Happy Hour’ was in the top three. 

MATTHEW RUDD:

I’m pretty certain I saved my pocket money, and bought the cassette – cassettes were just handier and you could play them in the car. And I bought it in the summer holidays, so if it came out in June, I got it within a month or so. But I’d heard about the Housemartins not from the teenage music press that I read but from the local paper – they were in the Hull Daily Mail all the time, and were interviewed on BBC Radio Humberside. They were playing the Adelphi, still a very famous venue. Paul Heaton lived around the corner from it for years – even at his most famous in the Beautiful South, he was still living on Grafton Street and talking about the Grafton pub and the Adelphi Night, the Adelphi Music Club, still a brilliant going concern to this day.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

It’s very interesting to see, in that period, ’85–88, even at the height of their fame, they’re talking to the local press, the Hull Daily Mail, much more than the national press. When they decided to stop, Norman Cook did quite a long interview with the paper, and you get a completely different side of them to how they ended up being marketed in the national media, in which they were portrayed as first ‘wacky’ and then attacked for daring to have opinions on things. The ‘Happy Hour’ video, and it’s brilliant, does unfortunately and unwittingly pigeonhole them as The Wacky Housemartins. And of course, on this album – they’re not that at all.

MATTHEW RUDD:

No, they’re not. They’re ‘wacky’ because of that video, but that video is a massive pisstake of people in the City, making too much money and being obnoxious and being unpleasant to bar staff, especially female members of staff. London 0 Hull 4 is wonderful – nearly every song is brief but the lyrics hit you hard, and the musicality is fantastic. Only ‘Lean On Me’ goes on for any length of time, and that’s more an epic piano track.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

And ‘Flag Day’’s a very different arrangement on the album to how it was as the single, their first single which Norman wasn’t on. Ted Key, the original bassist, is on that. Norman joined after that.

MATTHEW RUDD:

‘Think for a Minute’ was like ‘Flag Day’ in that it was very different in arrangement when released as a single. I don’t remember hearing ‘Flag Day’ as a single – it didn’t chart, and therefore it fell by the wayside. ‘Sheep’, my first experience of them, nearly made the Top 40. But ‘Happy Hour’ was when I realised I liked them, and they remain a favourite band. And that album means so much to me because they’re ours.

Hull’s musical history – and there’s half a million people here – is not considered outstanding. That’s not to say there weren’t great people making music from here; they just never got the breaks or got the chance. Whatever, you know… life happened for them, presumably. We did have David Whitfield [light operatic tenor, was #1 for 10 weeks in 1954 with ‘Cara Mia’], whose granddaughter was in the year below me at school. Joe Longthorne, brilliant entertainer, was from Hull. Mick Ronson – now more revered in the city than I think he ever was when he was alive. There’s a stage in Queen’s Gardens named after him, a memorial in East Park and a mural on a wall in Cranbrook Avenue, in the middle of the student belt. 

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Do you claim Everything But the Girl as Hull, as obviously they were at university there?

MATTHEW RUDD:

Oh yeah, because they formed there. The Housemartins, similarly – Paul Heaton’s formative years were spent in Manchester, Peterborough and Sheffield – and then he moved to Hull where the Housemartins formed. But Everything But the Girl – who famously took their name from a local furniture shop in the city, a shop I used to walk past every week to get to the hospital radio station – are one of the three bands from Hull who Paul Heaton claimed were better than the Housemartins because they used to label themselves ‘the fourth best band in Hull’.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Red Guitars were one of the other two, I think, and…?

MATTHEW RUDD:

The Gargoyles. I’m assuming Kingmaker hadn’t formed at that point. But also, the Housemartins called themselves Christian socialists. They had the little crucifixes shaved into their heads. How religious they really were, I don’t know. But they combined Christian values with left-wing politics. And whether you agreed with them or not, it was just completely infectious.

I can’t put into words just how much my class at school talked about that album over the rest of 1986. And at the end of the year, when ‘Caravan of Love’, which wasn’t on the album, got to number one… you could have asked the Lord Mayor of Hull to give everybody a day off work and he would probably have said yes. It was that important, Justin. I can’t emphasise it enough – their impact on the reputation of a city that still hasn’t got, hasn’t had for a long time, a good reputation, even though most people who say that Hull’s a shithole have never been there.

They’re still revered around here, the Housemartins. They’ll never get back together again – not properly anyway. I remember publicly saying I’d hope they would reconvene after Hull got awarded the City of Culture status for 2017, but it never happened, although Paul and Jacqui Abbott did a gig at Craven Park, home of one our rugby league teams, during that year. They were supposed to reform when the Adelphi had a big anniversary a couple of years ago and they nearly managed it. But Norman got delayed and had to pull out. Paul, Stan and Dave Hemingway were there. But then Norman did Glastonbury, didn’t he, last year, with Paul, playing ‘Happy Hour’. I’d have loved to have seen Stan and Dave there as well.

—–

ANYTHING (2): JESUS JONES: Doubt (Food Records, 1991)

Extract: ‘Trust Me’

MATTHEW RUDD:

The first time I knew about Jesus Jones was ‘Info-Freako’, great record, which just missed the Top 40 in ’89. And then ‘Real Real Real’ came out [spring 1990] and I just thought, What a brilliant song. It’s no more scientific than that! I bought this album, on CD, I had a CD player by then, early 91, while I was doing my A levels. I went to Sydney Scarborough again, and bought that and Mixed Up by The Cure on the same day. I had a part-time job in a pizza takeaway at this stage, so I had a little bit more money, bit more disposable income, and saved for a CD player and then started getting CDs.

Doubt is still a great album. It opens with this two-minute jam, ‘Trust Me’, which starts with this little sound of a door opening or something. And then in the background, a voice: ‘Trust me, I know what I’m doing.’ And then immediately this noise starts up. They actually put a warning on the album notes that some of the music could cause damage to speaker equipment! Some of the songs had been deliberately recorded slightly louder than the recommended level for recorded music played on stereo systems or hi-fis. And ‘Trust Me’ is so loud – it’s a noise but it’s a musical noise. Adrian Edmondson always said that the Sex Pistols were the best punk band because they made the best noise and I know what he means.

The second song is ‘Who? Where? Why?’, a much better version than the one that came out as a single. A guitar part that bangs you right between the ears. And that was a track that I could play at full volume on my hi-fi. I made a point of it, especially when I was a student in Darlington and had my own digs, I loved blasting that. And coming straight after ‘Trust Me’… it was a loud, relentless, unforgiving guitar song, but with a with a singer, with a melody, with an electronic element. I liked that Jesus Jones were a fusion band, electronic as well as guitar led, which attracted me more than bands like the Stone Roses, who I’ve never really had much time for. Although I also liked Inspiral Carpets because I love the organ motif on most of their records, and they had the best singer of the era in Tom Hingley.

Also, on Doubt, later on, you get ‘Right Here Right Now’, Mike Edwards’ effort at talking about the revolutions in Eastern Europe at the end of the 80s. The fall of Romania. The split of Czechoslovakia into two separate states. Lech Walesa had done his job in Poland, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and of course the breakup of the USSR in the early 90s.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Which was not a particularly big hit here, but was massive in America [#2 on Billboard, in fact].

MATTHEW RUDD:

And at the end of the album there’s this song called ‘Blissed’, their kind of ambient track, with bleeps on it that sounds a bit like the pips on the radio.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

I was very interested to discover that while making this album they’d been listening to the KLF’s ambient album, Chill Out. That and Janet Jackson.

MATTHEW RUDD:

There’s not a lot of ambience on the album – ‘I’m Burning’ is one, ambient but still a sort of fusion track.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

But there are quite a few samples. And I think when they were doing remixes as well, they were really interested in all that, I think they got a lot of inspiration from Pop Will Eat Itself and people like that.

MATTHEW RUDD:

They were influenced by dance music, but they had guitars in their hands as well and as songwriters and as performers they could marry the two. In turn, Jesus Jones heavily influenced EMF, who were younger, a little bit less mature, more tabloid fodder.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

Also massive in America, briefly [‘Unbelievable’ was a US #1 single].

MATTHEW RUDD:

Yeah, at the same time – the two bands became sort of touring mates.

—-

JUSTIN LEWIS:

How do you put each Forgotten 80s together, then?

MATTHEW RUDD:

When it comes to picking the music, for the main body of the show, I have three rules.

The first rule – and it has to be my decision in the end – is that the record in question is underplayed. The show’s called Forgotten 80s, but if you’ve been listening for ten years or more, nothing’s forgotten anymore, because I’ve kind of played everything. So ‘underplayed’ is a better word now – a song from the 1980s that you think doesn’t get on the radio often enough, if at all. That’s the first rule, kind of the main rule.

The second rule: to guarantee that we don’t get too much repetition, so that the artists are spread around in the various genres and that the individual years are evened out, there’s always a thirty-show gap between each play of a song. Once I’ve played the song, I have to wait at least thirty shows – usually longer, depending on requests – before I’ll play it again.

And the third rule: no artist is repeated two weeks in a row. So I wouldn’t play, say, Ultravox two weeks running – although when it comes to solo careers of group members, I could play Midge Ure – or Visage for that matter.

But mainly, it’s about gut feeling: ‘Those two tracks will sound good together.’ It’s about mixing it up and representing as many people as possible who put requests in.

JUSTIN LEWIS:

And you really do mix genres up – not always to everyone’s satisfaction! There was a running joke that certain listeners would announce they were putting the bins out whenever a heavy metal record would start, but I quite enjoy that element, not least because it evokes what an 80s top 40 chart was like. Heavy metal was part of the mix.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Yeah, though I have a soft spot for those tracks because they bled through my bedroom walls throughout my childhood via my brother’s collection. People also do the bins joke with a lot of dance records from the end of the 80s. But I’ve got the nerve to play almost anything – as long as there are no obscenities – if it fits those three rules. I do like a mad segue, and they often get picked up by people on the socials – my most memorable one was putting The Fall next to Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson, and then imagining the number of programme directors throughout my career who were obsessed with pigeonholing and compartmentalising music and presenters and audiences that would now be tearing their hair out! But nobody at Absolute has ever come to me after a show and told me not to do something again.

Generally, I’m not one who dislikes. Of 1980s bands, I’m known for not liking Simple Minds and New Order, but between them, they’ve been played on the show 124 times in over 600 shows. As we’re speaking, I’m putting show 627 together. So about a fifth of the shows have featured at least one of those two groups. Because people ask for them and I’m not quite so pompous to say, ‘Well, I don’t like that band, so I’m not going to play their record.’

JUSTIN LEWIS:

The request element of it is very important. Because, especially via social media… you’ve created a community through that show, there’s no question about it.

MATTHEW RUDD:

Well, we’ve had one Forgotten 80s wedding. I think at least two other couples have got together through the show, if not got married. But the weirdest thing, though, which I still can’t get my head around: every year, maybe twice a year, some listeners have a tweet-up or meet-up. They meet in a pub somewhere and do karaoke and quizzes – and these are all people who largely didn’t know each other. They’ve come together because they’ve met on social media through this tatty two-hour show that appears on their radios at the end of the weekend. It’s brilliant. It’s a huge, magnificent compliment – but it’s also a bit of a mindblower.

I count my blessings literally every week, because – something that isn’t always known and certainly isn’t common within the industry – not only do I present this show, I produce it as well. It’s the most privileged job in radio, as far as I’m concerned.

—–

You can hear Forgotten 80s with Matthew Rudd every Sunday on Absolute 80s between 9 and 11pm (UK time). You can stream Absolute 80s here: https://radioplayer.planetradio.co.uk/ab8, or tune in via your DAB radio.

Here’s how you can get involved in suggesting tracks for the show:

Via the Facebook page ‘Forgotten 80s – Requests’.

Or email Matthew via Absolute Radio here: matthew.rudd@absoluteradio.co.uk

Before you do that, take a look at the Forgotten 80s blog, with details of every show’s set list since it began in 2013: https://forgotten80s.blogspot.com/.

And search ‘matthewjrudd’ on Spotify to find playlists of every Forgotten 80s feature, and most of the show’s special editions.

Check out the archive of Disco Dancing 80s, a show Matthew sold around commercial and community stations a few years back. The tracks chosen were selected from the Disco/Club charts in the music press during the 1980s. The shows (50 editions, arranged chronologically and all anniversary based) are available to listen to here: https://www.mixcloud.com/DD80s/

Matthew is also a columnist for Classic Pop magazine: https://www.classicpopmag.com/

Finally, please consider donating to Matthew’s favourite charity: Parkinson’s UK – https://www.parkinsons.org.uk

Follow Matthew on Bluesky at @matthewjrudd.bsky.social

——

FLA PLAYLIST 25:

Matthew Rudd

Spotify playlist link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5iv1pSVvbqiqpSuCPJ3yTu?si=e13576b945554b3d

(For the time being, this site and project uses Spotify for the conversation playlists, but obviously I disapprove that Spotify doesn’t pay artists and composers properly, and other streaming platforms are available, as are sites to buy downloads and buy recordings. For consistency, you can also listen to the selections via YouTube (where available), and links are provided in each case, below.)

Thanks to Tune My Music, you can also transfer this playlist to the platform or site of your choice by using this link: https://www.tunemymusic.com/share/KMEXs4aWEH

Track 1: PERRY COMO: ‘It’s Impossible’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8yzk5wuNTk&list=RDX8yzk5wuNTk&start_radio=1

Track 2: ELVIS PRESLEY: ‘Rock-a-Hula Baby’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMIdBzQcsy8&list=RDnMIdBzQcsy8&start_radio=1

Track 3: ABBA: ‘When I Kissed the Teacher’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dW8XRt5-hY&list=RD8dW8XRt5-hY&start_radio=1

Track 4: MOTORHEAD: ‘Ace of Spades’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMavhk16FJU&list=RDPMavhk16FJU&start_radio=1

Track 5: SHAKIN’ STEVENS: ‘This Ole House’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRvcrWGUmR4&list=RDdRvcrWGUmR4&start_radio=1

Track 6: HOWARD JONES: ‘What Is Love?’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w34vnz_LEX4&list=RDw34vnz_LEX4&start_radio=1

Track 7: DEPECHE MODE: ‘Dreaming of Me’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeRezaKB_os&list=RDDeRezaKB_os&start_radio=1

Track 8: A TRIBE OF TOFFS: ‘John Kettley (Is a Weatherman)’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJRdsqMvBgE&list=RDXJRdsqMvBgE&start_radio=1

Track 9: BROTHERS OSBORNE: ‘Might As Well Be Me’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCuNc3XfFVA&list=RDrCuNc3XfFVA&start_radio=1

Track 10: USHER featuring LIL JON, LUDACRIS: ‘Yeah!’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxBSyx85Kp8&list=RDGxBSyx85Kp8&start_radio=1

Track 11: THE HOUSEMARTINS: ‘Happy Hour’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9-_0RJYGl0&list=RDI9-_0RJYGl0&start_radio=1

Track 12: THE HOUSEMARTINS: ‘Caravan of Love’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehfiQd7lcPY&list=RDehfiQd7lcPY&start_radio=1

Track 13: JESUS JONES: ‘Trust Me’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK3C9XZcTbM&list=RDCK3C9XZcTbM&start_radio=1

Track 14: JESUS JONES: ‘Who? Where? Why?’ (Album Version):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fidPRriWTrQ&list=RDfidPRriWTrQ&start_radio=1

FLA 21: Sangeeta Ambegaokar (16/07/2023)

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When I was first thinking about First Last Anything, I knew I wanted to include a range of guests, including those who were learning and performing music at amateur level. And so I thought of my friend Sangeeta Ambegaokar, a medic based in Birmingham whose spare time outside her day job is these days dominated by music. She has weekly saxophone lessons and plays in an amateur orchestra for mixed ability players, called The Rusty Players Orchestra. She also sings in four different choirs in the city – and is a member of a bell choir.

 

Sangeeta kindly and helpfully shared her experiences of all these groups with me when we spoke on Zoom in the early spring of 2023 – since when she has achieved distinctions in her Grade 3 and 5 theory examinations. We both hope this conversation may inspire you, whether at beginner, intermediate or lapsed level, to seek out amateur or community groups in your area.

 

Sangeeta and I also talk about her formative years in the UK and the United Arab Emirates, about the Absolute 80s Sunday night show Forgotten 80s – which is how we met, as fellow listeners! – and of course discuss her first, recent and wildcard record choices. But as usual, I started with one question: what music was being played at home before she started buying records?

 

 

—-

 

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I was born in Newport, in South Wales. I don’t remember us having music in the house much, although the radio and Top of the Pops always featured highly, but early on, I can remember at bedtime – I don’t know if you’d call it a lullaby – my dad singing ‘All My Loving’ by The Beatles. We had the ‘Red’ and the ‘Blue’ albums.

 

I was three when ‘Save Your Kisses for Me’ by Brotherhood of Man came out, and at the end it goes, ‘Even though you’re only three’. You’re very egocentric about age then – you think everything would be about you, so I was of course convinced that it was written about me as a three-year-old.

 

ABBA was a big thing. I can remember being absolutely terrified of ‘Tiger’ [from Arrival]. ‘I am behind you, I always find you, I am the tiger.’ And Showaddywaddy as well, ‘Under the Moon of Love’, that kind of sticks.

 

I also remember going to a childminder, who had a record player, and things like ‘I Love You Because’ by Jim Reeves, and a copy of ‘The Laughing Policeman’ which had a scratch on it at a really inopportune time, on the last word – the last laugh in fact, on and on and on, so even more terrifying, and it’s quite terrifying anyway.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

It really is. The guy who did that record, Charles Penrose, had a career of making all these records about laughing. Even though ‘The Laughing Policeman’ was 50 years old in the 1970s, they were still playing it on Junior Choice on Radio 1. I suspect that it was people writing in and requesting it for their grandchildren. Because I never met a child who liked it.

 

—

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

When I was five, so from 1978 to 1991, we moved to the Middle East. And although from 1983 I went to boarding school back in the UK, for those first four years I’ve got this real gap in popular culture. In the UAE, we got quite a weird selection of things available to watch and to listen to. But the two ‘local bangers’ that everyone who lived in the UAE in the late 70s and 80s will recall are ‘Life in the Emirates’ and ‘Back in Dubai’.

‘Life in the Emirates’, The Establishment (1979)

‘Back in Dubai’, The Establishment & Sal Davies (1984)

By about 1982, around the time we got a video player, we used to go to the local video rental place. Somebody had recorded all the episodes of Top of the Pops in the UK and they’d send them over, so you’d get like a month’s worth of Top of the Pops to watch, four episodes, and then a great month when there were five episodes. It must have been summer ’82 – ‘Happy Talk’ by Captain Sensible was number one.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Were these official BBC tapes?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I don’t think there was anything official about anything that went on over there! [Laughter]

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Ah, I just wondered if it was a BBC World Service thing.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I used to listen to the charts on the World Service, but it was really hard to hear. Before that, there used to be a programme on Dubai Television called Pop in Germany, which was all in German, and occasionally you’d see a band you’d recognise, like Boney M… which would figure, given it was from Germany. And we had a radio station that played music from all over. But with Top of the Pops, I vividly remember seeing one of these tapes of the 1000th episode, with Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’ at number one (original broadcast BBC1, 5 May 1983).

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Oh yes, when they’d celebrate the programme, and say, ‘Let’s now look back at the old days, the five clips from the sixties we haven’t burnt.’ Cue ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ by Status Quo.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

And with these tapes of Top of the Pops, something similar happened again later with Live Aid (13 July 1985), though as you can probably imagine, this stretched to about five different video cassettes, and came in Part 1, Part 2, and so on. So we did manage to watch the whole of Live Aid in the UAE, but not actually in the correct order!

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

I saw you tweet a picture of one of your 80s compilation tapes yesterday. One of the tracks was by ‘TMTCH’ – presumably The Men They Couldn’t Hang?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I seemed to have a cassette of them playing live so I must have taped it with one of those double cassette recorders. The song’s called ‘A Night to Remember’. I don’t want to upset any Men They Couldn’t Hang fans but in my view, the live version is much better. The album version sounds quite clunky.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

The reason we know each other is because of something called Forgotten 80s, a radio show on Absolute 80s on Sunday nights, hosted and compiled by Matthew Rudd, with a considerable listener input, and quite a social media community has sprouted up around that over the years. With that show, have you found yourself joining dots you couldn’t join during the 80s? How did you discover that show?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

My other half was a fan of Forgotten 80s. At that time they used to repeat it on a Thursday, he’d be doing the ironing, and listening to it, and saying, ‘This is a great show, loads of forgotten tunes from the 80s’. I had imagined – nothing against The Fall – but that it would be that kind of obscure stuff which I wasn’t really into. And then one week, I heard them play ‘The Last Film’ by Kissing the Pink. And I thought, ‘God, I haven’t heard this on the radio for years.’ So I thought this show might actually be quite good. That must have been eight, nine years ago. Not quite since the beginning!

 

In 1983, I came to boarding school in the UK, in Monmouth, so from then, I’d see Top of the Pops when it went out, and there was Radio 1 so I was an avid listener. Mike Read was on the breakfast show at the time, and the signal to go to school was this feature he did called ‘First Love’.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Yes, with Scott Walker and the Walker Brothers’ record, ‘First Love Never Dies’, as the jingle!

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I’d latch on to any kind of music then. On TV, Fame. In those days, if you missed an episode, and we didn’t have a video recorder at school, then that was it. So I remember buying the cassette of the Kids from Fame album, really liking ‘It’s Gonna Be a Long Night’, and being really gutted I’d missed the episode that song was played in. But at the start of lockdown, I got the whole series on DVD, and started watching them.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

So was Fame shown on television in the UAE?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

Yeah, on Dubai Television, which used to start at five o’clock with the reading from the Holy Quran.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Fame was massive in Britain because it was on straight after Top of the Pops, wasn’t it? In fact it did much better than in America, where I think it might otherwise have been cancelled because the ratings weren’t great there. And there were all these Kids from Fame albums. Were there two or three, a live one?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I think I might have four of them!

—-

FIRST: FUN BOY THREE: ‘Tunnel of Love’ (Chrysalis, single, 1983)

JUSTIN LEWIS

So your first purchase was this, which comes from this same period.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I’m renowned for liking this song so much. People now tweet me to tell me when it’s on.

I first saw them do it on Top of the Pops. I was mesmerised by the whole thing – the song, and also all the musicians they had playing with them, who were all women. So that really drew me to them. The cello player [the great Caroline Lavelle]! I don’t think I’d ever seen a cello on Top of the Pops before. I remember us being out at the shopping centre in Dubai, God knows how much it cost, because it was real, not pirate. My sister bought Orange Juice’s ‘Rip It Up’. So we each bought a single. And then my sister had a pirate cassette of Fun Boy Three’s first album, which I got a copy of as well, and then I got Waiting, their second album.

 

But the charts in general were a big thing. Remember when Simon Mayo on the Radio 1 breakfast show used to do Highest New Entry, Highest Climber and Number One at about 7.45? My life was run by bells when I was at boarding school. At twenty to eight, there was a bell: ‘Make sure you get over to breakfast, 7.45.’ And you couldn’t have music on during breakfast, but by then you could get these ear-pod-type headphones, and I’d have my Walkman in my pocket with a radio on it. I’d have the wire going down my sleeves and into my hand, so I’d tell everyone on the breakfast table what Mayo was announcing.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

It’s hard to explain that era to anyone young now. There wasn’t music everywhere then. Radio 1 wasn’t even 24 hours a day. I remember at secondary school, taking a tiny little radio in on a Tuesday lunchtime, and Gary Davies would announce the brand-new chart. I don’t know what this says about me, but people from school still remember this about me! This stuff felt important then. But meanwhile, what was your involvement in music at school during this time?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

[I did various things at school.] At primary school, when I was five or six, I started playing the piano, my sister had lessons. So I looked at her piano book, it was John Thompson’s Teaching Little Fingers to Play. I think everyone had those back in the day. I started going through it, and teaching myself how to play the piano – probably not very well. And then mum and dad decided they should probably pay for lessons for me as well. Then, at secondary school, I started learning the violin because of ‘Come On Eileen’. But I quickly realised I was awful at the violin and it was never going to happen.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

It’s a hard instrument. Professional violinists say this!

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I don’t think I have the patience either, because I think I’ve got quite a good ear for music, so I could hear it wasn’t in tune, and it was all about moving my fingers. I got really fed up with that. But I carried on with the piano, I was in the choir at school. And I’d played the recorder in primary school as everybody did. I was probably one of the better players at school, so a couple of us got to play a duet in a concert.

 

So I always had an aptitude for music, I guess, but then after that, year 10/11, it was all ‘you ought to be in the school opera and school performances’. It all looked a bit much, so I didn’t do any music at all after that.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

There’s a lot of extracurricular activity, isn’t there, and it requires a lot of commitment. Not unlike being in sports teams. You have to give up evenings, and after school – if you’re going to take this seriously, I suppose.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I had a brief foray into playing percussion in the orchestra in sixth form. They needed percussionists, and there were four of us. It was hilarious because I think a couple of us were okay, we had a decent sense of rhythm, but one of my friends, they put on cymbals, and she never quite came in on time. I stuck to tambourine and castanets – those were my specialities.

—-

LAST: DEPECHE MODE: Black Celebration: The 12” Singles (Venusnote/Sony Music, vinyl box set, 2022)

Extract: ‘Stripped (Highland Mix)’

JUSTIN LEWIS

We should perhaps explain that this isn’t the album of Black Celebration. This is a lavish repackaged box set that assembles all the 12” singles released from that album in 1986: ‘Stripped’, ‘A Question of Lust’ and ‘A Question of Time’, some of them released in multiple formats with extra mixes, B-sides and live tracks. They really seemed keen to give the fanbase value for money, and it’s beautifully packaged too.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I’ve got this real affinity to the Black Celebration era of Depeche Mode. When we were in the USA in summer 2022, we were staying in Los Angeles, and nearby there was this big record shop called Amoeba Records. On our last day, we went in, and just as when I used to go into record shops, went straight to the Depeche Mode section. There were a few box sets of the different albums’ respective singles, but Black Celebration was the one. I was wondering: ‘Should I get this, because it’s expensive. And do I really need it?’

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

How much was it? Because it’s, what, five 12” singles? £100?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

It was less than £100, but it didn’t take a lot to talk me into it. It was an unexpected impulse buy. Depeche Mode was my first ever concert as well, at Newport Centre [The opening date of the Music for the Masses tour’s UK leg, 9 January 1988.] ‘Behind the Wheel’ had just come out, they started off with that.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

So you saw them on the same tour at Newport that ended up in California, where they recorded the 101 live album, because it was the 101st and final date of the tour [18 June 1988]. Which of course led to a live album and a film, and you see this stadium of people all singing the ‘Everything Counts’ chorus at the end. And they become huge in America. But how did you first get into them?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

The first song I remember was ‘Get the Balance Right!’ on Top of the Pops, ’83, but just before I started boarding school the same year, if you bought a pair of Start Rite shoes, you got a free single from the top ten, and so I got ‘Everything Counts’ by Depeche Mode. I kept up with their singles – I remember Lenny Henry reviewing ‘Love in Itself’ in Smash Hits.

JUSTIN LEWIS

It was his Single of the Fortnight, I think.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

Yeah, and he was bowled over by it sounding like it had some proper instruments on it, rather than just synths. So he went, ‘Guys, are you okay?’ The other thing about ‘Love in Itself’ – I’m the sort of person who, if somebody says a word, I break into a song with the word in it. When I was a student, there was a bloke – it usually was a bloke – saying something like ‘You can’t come out with a song with the word “insurmountable” in it.’ And I went, ‘Well, actually…’

 

I got Some Great Reward (1984), then the Singles 81–85 compilation (1985), and then in Year 9, we had to do a project at school on music. I originally started doing my project on the Thompson Twins, but then I lost the book I was using, so I decided to do it on Depeche Mode, and nobody else seemed to like them, which I suppose drew me towards them even more. When I was writing their biography for the project, on how they came to be, I asked other people to write comments about them, and they’d either put, ‘They’re really boring and depressing’, or ‘I think their music is fab, but I don’t think much of their image.’

 

Their next album was Black Celebration, which I played over and over. Another girl who started at the school about then, was really into them as well, so we bonded over them.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

You mentioned just now that you have teenagers. Do you keep up with new stuff through them?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

They’re 18 and 14. Yes, it’s a bit of a standing joke as to which songs that me and my other half have heard of that they’re listening to. Watching the Brit Awards with your teenagers is always quite amusing. Even my 18-year-old said, ‘You complain that all the songs sound the same’ – in fact she complained herself that all new music sounds the same! Which is quite interesting because our generation remembers our parents used to say that as well.

 

—

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

We’ve established that you had these forays into music at school. But then, years later, you are in an orchestra playing the saxophone. Tell me about how that came about.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I’ve always been drawn to the saxophone, I guess. Especially with Spandau Ballet, the Steve Norman sax bits, and then ‘Your Latest Trick’ by Dire Straits. So it was always in my head. And then, one day, in around 2000, I bought a saxophone from a second-hand music shop near where we lived in Birmingham. I had one lesson at the time, and worked out that the fingering was the same as the descant recorder.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Yes, tuned to E flat rather than C, but otherwise similar. I learned alto saxophone when I was a teenager. And the flute, which I already played, was similar fingering, although again in C.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

Yeah. After that one lesson, work and life took over for a time. But we have this [organisation] called Birmingham Music Services, which goes into schools and does music lessons and has loads of ensembles, which are all free to join, they have them for all standards from beginners up to Grade VIII symphony orchestra. So if you play an instrument you can join any of the ensembles.

 

When they started doing lessons in the evenings at our local school and they opened it up to adults, I thought, This is my opportunity. I can actually have saxophone lessons now. At first they were full, but a couple of weeks before term started, I got a phone call: ‘We’ve got a space, someone’s dropped out.’ This was 2019, so a few months before lockdown, whereupon they switched over to Teams. And because of the singing, and having a good ear, and reading music, my teacher said after a few months, ‘It would be really good if you could join some sort of ensemble, you’ll progress much more if you’re playing with people.’ There was a real gap for adults in ensembles, as the Birmingham Music Service ensembles are only for school age children. If you feel you’re really, really good, obviously there are orchestras, but if you’re a learner or beginner, there’s a real gap.

 

After that, a friend sent me a link to an orchestra they found on Facebook, called the Rusty Players Orchestra, which was an offshoot of the People’s Orchestra, a charity based in West Bromwich. As you know, in orchestras, saxophones aren’t a central instrument, but as they were a saxophone-welcoming orchestra… So it’s for people who used to play when they were younger and would like to go back to playing or for people who are kind of beginner or intermediate and want to play in an orchestra.

 

I went along to rehearsal, in January or February 2020, and there was quite a motley crew of us. They’d welcome any instrument at all, they’d find music for you. So we had concertinas that were playing the violin part, for instance. It’s a proper range of ages too – our youngest player is from year 10 (so he must be 14 or 15) and our oldest player has just turned 80! Some started learning recently, but quite a lot were a good standard at school and are coming back to play.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Do they have similar projects elsewhere in Britain?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

They do, in places. There are two branches in South Wales actually: in Barry and Carmarthen.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Not in Swansea, unfortunately?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

Not at the moment, by the look of it, no.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I went back to the flute last year, after a long time away from it, and I thought, What on earth do I do with this now? Because I don’t yet feel good enough again to go and audition for a proper orchestra. And of course, with an instrument like the flute, they only have two or three in an orchestra anyway. But it sounds like there’s no formal audition process for the Rusty Players Orchestra.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

No, you just turn up. The first week I went, I probably played about three notes! I was too scared to play any more than that. I remember we were playing ‘Moon River’, me and a clarinet player. Both of us quite new, she was newer than me, but I was still anxious. We were both supposed to come in at a particular point, but neither of us did, we were too scared!

 

But now, our conductor is a student at the Birmingham Conservatoire and it’s a bit more relaxed. You come along, you have a go, it doesn’t matter if you can or can’t play, but the following week, you’re likely to be able to play more notes – and then you just keep going. So there’s really no pressure at all.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

What are your plans in the near future with the saxophone?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I’m lining myself up to do the Grade 6 exam.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Wow, you really are coming on in leaps and bounds. So what sort of things are you learning in your lessons? What’s your repertoire in those?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

A mixture, really. One of my pieces is Scott Joplin. I often just turn up with things, but one thing I really want to be able to play is the sax solo from ‘Will You’, the Hazel O’Connor song. It’s really really hard.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

It’s a long solo too. Two minutes or so!

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

And with Grade 6, you’re first starting to learn those top notes anyway. So that’s a bit of a work I progress. And in the orchestra, we’re playing a lot of film stuff: Hamilton, Chicago, Blues Brothers. It’s quite a nice range.

 

 

—-

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

As well as the Rusty Players Orchestra, I’m in four choirs and a bell choir. The biggest choir is called So Vocal, and it’s the community choir of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which is 150, up to 200 singers in that. And we’d sing with the CBSO every Christmas in the Christmas Concerts which is amazing. We started off being the free performance before the concert, and then we graduated to singing in the concert. Clearly, they thought, ‘Actually, they’re not too bad!’ We ended up going on tour to Poland.

 

I’ve made some really good friends through that. About two years ago, me and a friend went to an experience day with the London Community Gospel Choir. You have a day of learning songs, and in the evening, you join one of their rehearsals. A few of us go to this summer school as well, which is called Sing for Pleasure. It’s a three-day course, you learn some songs, and then there’s a concert at the end. You don’t have to think at all for three days, it’s like a holiday from life! One year, our group was taken by Themba Mvula, who runs a gospel choir in Lichfield, and he’s just out of this world. When you sing, you’re encouraged to go a little bit off-piste if you want to, make your own stuff up, sing as you feel. And though I’m not somebody who really does that, actually you find yourself coming out with stuff.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Is it like improv?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

Sort of. It’s like pretending you’re a bit of a diva. It’s quite a lot of fun, actually. You have that moment, and everyone else – who are all like-minded – has a bit of a go.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

The first time I actually met you in person, it was at a Forgotten 80s event, and there was a karaoke bit, and you seemed well into that. Have you always been?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I don’t do karaoke, generally. If there is karaoke, I could be persuaded to join in. But I would never say, Let’s go and do karaoke.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Does that mean, then, that you like having rehearsal and preparation time? The learning process.

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

Not specifically. I think it’s just, you might have had a day at work where your brain is full of stuff. It’s just doing something totally different from that – singing and making music with people. You’re using a different part of the brain, so all the things you were doing earlier are forgotten.

 

The choir I’ve been in the longest is a Ladies Choir called Bournville Vocal Ease which is based close to where I live. When my daughter started at the local school, one of the parents was talking about a choir there, and I thought, God, I’d love to join a choir. Within the school is a carillon, and they’ve got a set of handbells they lend the school. In Year 6, all the children learn how to play the handbells, and so when our Ladies Choir conductor decided to form a bell choir, I joined that. I’ve been in that about six years or so. We play with bell plates.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

I was watching the YouTube clip where your group does ‘Singing in the Rain’. That would require a particular kind of co-ordination, even if you’ve only got two bells to play.

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

Well, not necessarily only two! Sometimes you’ll have five bells, and you have to swap and pick up the right one and they change key often. And then sometimes the person next to you can’t play that bell because they’ve got too many notes, too many bells already, so someone else has to step in and play their bell temporarily! It can be quite complicated – and you have a proper musical score as well, so you go through and highlight your bells. What’s really amazing, though: there’s a couple of people in the bell choir that actually can’t read music, but they’re playing from a score and they’re actually just learning what their notes look like and highlighting them and learning how to count.

ANYTHING: RICHARD SMALLWOOD: ‘Total Praise’ (composed 1996)

London Community Gospel Choir, ‘Total Praise’

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

In one of the choirs I’m in, the So Vocal choir, we sing a real mixture of stuff, and our conductor introduced us to this piece by Richard Smallwood, ‘Total Praise’. I think this was our first real foray into gospel singing, although we’re not a gospel choir and I’m not religious at all. But singing gospel music, something about it takes you somewhere else, so when we all sang it together, it was a powerful experience. We sang it in a few concerts, and then a choir member passed away, and at the next rehearsal after we heard the news, we all decided we wanted to sing it as a tribute to him. It’s something that feels like it draws us all together, wherever we are. All the arrangements that I’ve heard of it blow you away.

 

Some of the choirs I’m in are relatively straightforward, but I’m also in this a capella choir, Cantoras. Really challenging, and I had to audition on Zoom. We sing in Latin and German, even Norwegian, all sorts.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

I found a clip on YouTube, which I enjoyed watching.

‘Sing My Child’, composed by Sarah Quartel, performed by Cantoras Upper Voices Chamber Choir

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I went to a taster day. You could go along and sing, and then if you wanted to audition, then you could. And I realised: I know I can sing, I can read music. A lot of the people in Cantoras are musicians or singers who do it for a living or teach music, so it’s a different sort of group. In some of the choirs, I’m one of the stronger musicians, whereas in Cantoras, I’m one of the weaker ones. But that lifts you, it stretches you, and I guess doing the other choirs has given me the confidence to do something new and exciting and challenging that I wouldn’t have done before.

 

Interestingly, I’m a different voice part in each choir: Soprano 1, Soprano 2, Alto 1 and Alto 2. Just because, for various reasons, the first choir I went to, I was a soprano because they didn’t have enough of them. Second choir, they said, ‘Soprano or alto?’ and I said, ‘I don’t mind’, and they were, ‘Well, we need more sopranos.’ With the third choir, they had too many sopranos, and I fancied a change, so I was an alto.

 

JUSTIN LEWIS

Where would you say you belong most naturally in terms of vocal range?

 

SANGEETA AMBEGAOKAR

I’m probably not quite a Soprano 1. I’m a fairly comfortable Soprano 2, but I can sing low as well. With the choir I auditioned for, where I’m an Alto 2, she did a range test, and I could hit the Alto 2 notes.

 

With the Cantoras group, we went to see an a capella group recently called Papagena – an all-female vocal quintet. They’re well worth looking up, and quite an inspiration because one thing we try and do is sing songs by female composers or arrangers, and we’ve sung a song that they’ve done as well, called ‘When the Earth Stands Still’. I don’t know if that’s on the YouTube channel. It’s nice to do things for fun, but also to stretch yourself. You might be at an age where you think your best days are behind you, but perhaps that isn’t the case! 

 

 

—-

 

You can follow Sangeeta on Bluesky at @mango24.bsky.social. She is also on Threads at @mango___24.

 For more on The Rusty Players, visit The People’s Orchestra website, where you can also find information on The People’s Show Choir. They have branches around the country. https://thepeoplesorchestra.com/the-rusty-players-orchestra/

If you’d like to know more about Sing For Pleasure, who organised the singing summer school Sangeeta mentioned, see here: https://singforpleasure.org.uk/. The charity focuses on the enjoyment of singing, trains choral leaders, publishes some excellent songbooks, and runs events for singers. 

This is an excellent resource for details of amateur orchestras across the UK: https://amateurorchestras.org.uk

The radio show we mentioned, Forgotten 80s, hosted by Matthew Rudd, is broadcast on Absolute Radio’s Absolute 80s station every Sunday night between 9 and 11pm. You can listen to episodes here.

 —-

FLA 21 PLAYLIST

Sangeeta Ambegaokar

(For the time being, this site and project uses Spotify for the conversation playlists, but obviously I disapprove that Spotify doesn’t pay artists and composers properly, and other streaming platforms are available, as are sites to buy downloads and buy recordings. For consistency, you can also listen to the selections via YouTube (where available), and links are provided in each case, below.)

Track 1: THE BEATLES: ‘All My Loving’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdajVoRgx3w

Track 2: BROTHERHOOD OF MAN: ‘Save Your Kisses for Me’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yJUi6ke71I

Track 3: ABBA: ‘Tiger’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htziQt0pCAQ

Track 4: THE MEN THEY COULDN’T HANG: ‘A Night to Remember’ [5 Go Mad on the Other Side Version]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtV1m_UjD-8

Track 5: KISSING THE PINK: ‘The Last Film’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRdrAoroSw

Track 6: THE WALKER BROTHERS: ‘First Love Never Dies’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KszX9WAas-0

Track 7: THE KIDS FROM FAME: ‘It’s Gonna Be a Long Night’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWLwcfw3C-s

Track 8: FUN BOY THREE: ‘Tunnel of Love’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi7BXqmYxiw

Track 9: DEPECHE MODE: ‘Stripped’ (Highland Mix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dx9ZvpUD8U

Track 10: DEPECHE MODE: ‘Behind the Wheel’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEAuMiKqP-4

Track 11: DEPECHE MODE: ‘Love in Itself’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pi_egc6qkY

Track 12: DIRE STRAITS: ‘Your Latest Trick’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blPf0-WphFQ

Track 13: HAZEL O’CONNOR: ‘Will You?’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDa-uPzlzDg

Track 14: DONNIE McCLURKIN & RICHARD SMALLWOOD: ‘Total Praise’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NIr9fqLBQ

Track 15: DON MacDONALD AND PAPAGENA: ‘When the Earth Stands Still’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJmbEecjjMA