Infinite Mixtape: Episode 3 - No Scotland, No Party (With Ross McFarlane)
My guest for this episode is Ross McFarlane, who made a mix for me with the deterimiantion to make me a Scotland fan in the World Cup back in June. Mission accomplished! In return, I made a mix for Ross to make him a fan of...well, Boston and Massachusetts!
Ross is a freelance project manager, writer, poet, and performer. He’s the writer and producer of the audio fiction podcast FOXLORE, and the script supervisor and production manager for CAMLANN. He works primarily in audio production and event coordination, specifically working to elevate queer and disabled artists with a focus on effective communication, and a love of spreadsheets!
Ross's Mix:
Jeff's Mix:
Transcript:
EAR•WAX Magazine
Infinite Mixtape: “No Scotland, No Party” with Ross McFarlane
Episode transcript · Runtime 1:01:51
Speakers
Transcript notes
- Timestamps mark the start of each new section only.
- Sound effects and music cues are in [italic brackets]. They describe what the recording sounds like and aren’t official cue names.
- Song clips are described, not transcribed.
- Clean verbatim: filler words (um, uh) and false starts were removed. Wording is otherwise as spoken.
- [unclear] marks words that couldn’t be made out. Band and song names marked [spelling?] or [title?] were spelled by ear and are worth checking.
Contents
00:00:00 Cold Open and Introductions
00:01:28 Scotland at the World Cup
00:07:27 Ross's History of Making Mixes
00:11:53 Ross's Mix: How "No Scotland, No Party" Came Together
00:13:21 Not Always, Not Never: "Think Again"
00:18:39 "Shake That Bagpipe"
00:20:34 Mickey 9s: "Maradona"
00:23:12 Stanley Odd: "Who Am I"
00:27:37 The Narcissist Cookbook: "Castle of Rats"
00:32:15 Frightened Rabbit: "The Twist"
00:35:12 Elsie McDonald: "Tourist Town"
00:40:33 Picture Skruer: "Let's Get Ice Cream"
00:43:22 More from Ross's Mix: Fisty Muffs, Spencer Mason, Chido Babies, Burnout Baby
00:51:12 Jeff's Mix for Ross
00:59:06 Wrap-Up and Where to Find Ross
01:01:21 After the Sign-Off
[00:00:00] Cold Open and Introductions
[An opening collage of sound effects (what sounds like a sharp bang, applause and typing), then intro music.]
JEFF VAN DREASON: Welcome to Infinite Mixtape, a podcast from EAR•WAX Magazine. Infinite Mixtape, where the tape rocks and never stops. Each episode, my guests and I decide on a theme, make each other a mixtape, share it with each other and you, and then talk about it. I'm your host, Jeff Van Dreason, and I'm delighted to introduce our guest, Ross McFarlane.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Ross McFarlane is a freelance project manager, writer, poet, and performer. He's the writer and producer of the audio fiction podcast Foxlore and the script supervisor and production manager for Camland. He works primarily in audio production and event coordination, specifically working to elevate queer and disabled artists, with a focus on effective communication and a love of spreadsheets. Ross, thank you very much for joining us today.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Thanks so much for having me. Any excuse to talk about weird music things.
[00:01:28] Scotland at the World Cup
JEFF VAN DREASON: Very weird music things, and your love of your country, specifically your national football team, because this episode is all about converting me. The theme of our mix: converting me into being a fan of Scotland and the World Cup, which is happening. Scotland has won their first match against Haiti, and today, in just a matter of hours, they're gonna be playing Morocco. Ross, how do you feel about that game?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Oh, terrified. Terrified is the technically correct way to put it, because I've started to get a little bit of hope, which is the worst thing that can happen to you as a Scotland fan. I'm also a St Mirren fan, if that means anything to anyone listening. It probably doesn't. Tiny club from Paisley. And we're not used to things going well. So Scotland being in the World Cup at all is just an incredible experience. The whole country has stopped, or left to go to Boston.
JEFF VAN DREASON: And there's a lot of you over here right now. It's true.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. I am just getting videos upon videos from friends over in North America being like, "Here are the Scots doing their thing." Which brings us quite nicely on to the title of the mix, which is No Scotland, No Party.
JEFF VAN DREASON: No Scotland, no party.
ROSS MCFARLANE: That is our vibe. If we're coming over, we're there to have a good time. Not a long time, but a good time.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yeah, yeah. Well, you never know. Maybe it'll be a long time. I have to tell you, one of the things I love: I was away last weekend for the first game. My family went to visit some other family in Salem, Massachusetts, and there was a Renaissance fair going on. You know what a Renaissance fair is?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah, yeah.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Okay. You don't have them in Scotland, though, I assume, right?
ROSS MCFARLANE: There's a couple across the UK. I have friends who are into it, and it seems like the kind of thing that if someone sorted it out for me, I'd love to go. I'm just never going to go.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Well, these Scots did not know what the hell was going on. And — explain to me the hats. The cone hats that are fashionable to wear. Why, for Scotland fans? What's that all about?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Okay, so this has just become a thing over many, many years. In the middle of the city, just by George Square, which is kind of the big square in the middle of the town, and just down from there, there is the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. Outside it, there is a statue of the Duke of Wellington on a horse. At some point, people started putting an orange traffic cone on his head. The police came along, took it off, and someone went, "Well, we need to get his hat back." And now, no matter how many times the police try and take it down — and they still do — someone gets to go up and put it back on. Quite often there's a hat on the horse as well. I remember it like it's always been a thing, the cone on the head of the statue. It is only recently that I've seen it as a marketing tool for Glasgow.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Seems like it's really spreading. There was a guy sitting at a pub outside my neighborhood, and he had a little stuffed animal with the cone hat on. I was like, "Oh my God, this is everywhere."
ROSS MCFARLANE: I did see a picture of one of the Boston statues where someone had made a mohawk of cones on top of it, and I'm like, yes. Yeah, you know what? That's actually a very specifically Glaswegian thing.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Got you. Okay. Well, anyway, to continue the story: there was a woman on the train back who was wearing kind of a gnome hat, because she was going to this Renaissance fair. And the Scottish guys all started hitting on her and assuming that she was a Scotland fan. And she was like, "No, I'm going to a Renaissance fair." And they're like, "What the hell is a Renaissance fair?" And she's like, "You know, you go and you pretend like it's medieval times." And they're like, "We all live in castles" — which they surely don't, just joking — "we don't need that." They were really sweet, though, and they were nice to her. And some Haiti fans got on.
JEFF VAN DREASON: And what I love is that in US sports — it isn't always this way — there's a lot of animosity between sports clubs, which I think is stupid, right? A friendly rivalry, fine. A little bit of tension, fine. But there's also just a lot of uber-masculine nonsense that I find distasteful. None of that. They were like, "Good luck today, mate." They were slapping each other on the back. And I think it speaks to the larger appeal of soccer, or football, in general, where people love it for the game more than anything else. Sure, you have your pride in your team and your country or whatever, but it's really more about just the sport, I think. Am I wrong about that? Or is that accurate?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Oh, Jeff.
[Laughter.]
JEFF VAN DREASON: I'm so naive, aren't I? Okay, never mind.
ROSS MCFARLANE: That's such a lovely sentiment, and I want you to hold on to that forever.
JEFF VAN DREASON: All right.
ROSS MCFARLANE: The Molotov cocktail was first brought to Scotland by Dundee United fans when they were feuding with Aberdeen.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Wow, okay.
ROSS MCFARLANE: There is no way in which I could go into the history of just how violent football is in Europe. It's for another podcast. I'm sorry. Not this one. What you have witnessed there is two teams who are just there to have a good time. The Scotland fans think they might get a win off Haiti, but they're just there for a good time. The Haiti fans, just there for a good time.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Haiti's not going to win at all either. They don't have the strongest squad either.
JEFF VAN DREASON: That makes sense.
ROSS MCFARLANE: There is something deeply sweet — I'm kind of aware of American animosity among sports teams. I really hope that that is your experience of football, because that is the better experience of football. Probably best to see that than how they look after a loss to a team that they hate. So I'll just leave it there.
JEFF VAN DREASON: And I didn't even witness it. It was my family that told me about it, and they said it was a lovely experience.
[00:07:27] Ross's History of Making Mixes
JEFF VAN DREASON: I'm gonna transition to questions about the mix, and then get into specific questions. I think we already said this, but this is Ross's attempt to convert me into a Scotland fan — a Scotland football fan — which I feel like I am already, because I don't really have a lot of stake in US hockey. Or, I'm sorry, US soccer. US football. So why not root for an underdog, for one? And also, they're bringing the party, and it's clear that they are. But before we get to your mix specifically, can you talk a little bit about your history of making mixes or playlists? Did you start making CD mixes, or were you always just a playlist kind of person?
ROSS MCFARLANE: The one that comes to mind as the biggest one was when I was about sixteen. My partner at the time was learning to drive, and so I spent a couple of months making, like, "When you learn to drive and get in your car, we're going to have a playlist."
JEFF VAN DREASON: A driving playlist. Yeah. Songs to drive to.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And through that — because I went to Fraser, my big brother, and went, "What am I missing from this? What should I put on?" — that was when he introduced me to Bright Eyes, because we put on "Road to Joy," and "Stuck Between Stations" by The Hold Steady. That was my first introduction to the two of those bands.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Really? That was what you discovered? Ross and I bonded over The Hold Steady. How does it vary when you make a mix for yourself versus for somebody else? What's the difference there? Is it intentionality?
ROSS MCFARLANE: So I have two different types of playlists on my Spotify. One of them is, "Here's all the stuff I'm listening to," and they're full albums just thrown in there to be played on shuffle. I have one for the poetry night that I run that I just play before every single poetry night, and it's got a bunch of full albums that I like. So that's one side of it. And then I like really specific playlists with rules. Generally, my rules are it has to have a certain length — most of the time for me, that's 12 songs — and it should kind of sit like an album.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I was surprised. Yeah, I was surprised the one you made with me was longer. I made a short one thinking you were going to make a short one. I was like, "Oh no."
ROSS MCFARLANE: You'd said 15 to 20 songs.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I did. Well, I told you. Then you said 12, and I was like, "Well, we can change it."
ROSS MCFARLANE: Oh, sorry.
JEFF VAN DREASON: It's all right. It's all right.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah, so normally it would be 12 songs and a strong theme. Recently I've been getting back into a playlist I made for myself a couple of years ago. I made one in the week leading up to a general election here, and then one for directly after it. Just a level of, "Okay, we need to get a bunch of anger out, and now we need to get motivated."
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yeah, I'm familiar with those types of mixes. I've made a few of those recently.
ROSS MCFARLANE: But yeah: a strong theme, a set length, and trying to make it listen like an album. I want it to pass through phases, both in terms of intensity or content, and move between things. So, especially when I was making something for you, I was like, I want you to be able to listen to this as an album and go through a bit of a journey with it.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Both sonically and lyrically, kind of? Like the themes, but also the sonics, how they blend together. Is that sort of the idea?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yes. Although I would not argue that I have any real understanding of the musicality of it. I played some instruments growing up, but I am a lyrics guy. I am a words guy. So when I say it needs to go up and down, it has to have dynamics — I'm going on vibes. This one starts slow and goes fast. This one starts fast and goes slow. We can have some dynamics that way, you know.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yeah, I think vibes count. I mean, that's all I'm going on. I'm not a musician either, just a music lover. And I think vibes are at least more than 50% of the whole thing. Sometimes I'll get really specific and think about how a song begins or ends, or how much contrast is there. That's how I try to do it too, although, to be honest, I didn't do a great job, I think, with the mix I made for you.
[00:11:53] Ross's Mix: How "No Scotland, No Party" Came Together
JEFF VAN DREASON: So obviously you're making this mix to convert me into being a fan — also, mission accomplished, both because of the music and also because of the vibe that the Tartan Army is bringing to this area. I love it. What was your mindset? How did you select the songs with that in mind? And how did you sequence the songs? What was your process, I guess?
ROSS MCFARLANE: So the process for this: initially, I'd been sent the form that you'd put out about doing this podcast, and there was a section that was like, "Suggest some concepts." I had put in about five or six. I was looking at that list on the day that we were gonna meet up and talk about what we were gonna do, and I went, "I'm pretty happy to do most of these. I have some preferences. I think the only one I really don't wanna do is Scottish music." I put that in there because it's something a bit different, but I don't really — unless. And this is how most of my ideas creatively happen: "I don't want to do this, unless —"
JEFF VAN DREASON: Unless.
ROSS MCFARLANE: "— I think that's the least interesting version, unless it was like this, this, and this." And then I went, "Well, then I'll just do that, right? That's the thing I'm doing." And I kept coming up with ideas for what I would want to put in it. It helps that one of those tracks on there is my brother's, and it's the World Cup song.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh, you're kidding me!
ROSS MCFARLANE: And he'd just done that. So if you look at the album art for that, that's me in a Scotland top with my single.
[00:13:21] Not Always, Not Never: "Think Again"
[A clip of "Think Again" by Not Always, Not Never plays: a rock anthem with guitars and gang vocals (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: Wait a minute. That's towards the end of my questions, because it's towards the end of the mix — the second-to-last song. I thought that was a song that was commissioned by Scotland for the World Cup, 'cause first of all, it rules. You got the references to Boston, you got, like, "Shipping Up to Boston," and to cheer them on. That's just a song he made because he's excited about Scotland being in the World Cup? Like, for real?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. I think it was part of — he runs a wee songwriting circle in Paisley for songwriters there, and it fit the theme, and he started doing it as a joke. And then he was like, "Oh, I think I've made something kind of fun here," and recorded it. And there's been a whole thing around everyone trying to make a World Cup song for Scotland, and it's become a bit of a joke. But he recorded this months ago, and I feel bad for him that it's become a joke, 'cause I think he's done a good job.
JEFF VAN DREASON: So here's what I'll say. This is Not Always, Not Never; the song's called "Think Again." It's hard to make a song like this not sound cheesy, in my opinion, right? Because it's very patriotic. It's very loving of the country and also the team. But I think it works so well, because first of all, it's propulsive. It gets you psyched. You get really excited. It's very heart-on-its-sleeve, but I think it works so well, and it kind of just rips. I was so impressed, because I don't think we could do a song like that in the States for any sport and have it work. So I was very impressed with that, which is why I thought it was commissioned by the country. Your brother did a great job.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Recorded in his flat in Paisley.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Wow.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And it is really annoying, because he's very talented. I grew up going to his bands' stuff. I think my first ever gig was him playing in Glasgow when I was about eleven years old — going to a little underground, fucking skeezy punk venue and seeing him play with his high school friends. And then he stopped making anything for like 10, 15 years. He would make one song every few years in his room and send it to me, and I'd be like, "This is amazing. You should do more of this." And he just wouldn't. But in the last few years, he's been making incredible stuff. And I felt bad putting this track on specifically, because he's made a bunch of really good music.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Sure, yeah. Well, I'll check it out. But I still think this is a perfect song for it. It's like a summer anthem, I think. You can't pick a better song for the vibes of going into this and coming to Boston specifically to root on your team. It just works.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I'm sorry — and I will say the bridge just makes me so happy, which is the repeated line, "Will you deep-fry apple pie?" Which I just think is amazing. "Deep-fry apple pie" is an incredible hook. Is there something to that? Is it a Scottish thing? Is it something people think we do in America?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Scotland's known for deep-frying everything.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh. Gotcha. That makes sense.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. Especially desserts.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Really?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Do you have Mars bars over there? Are Mars bars a thing?
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh, yeah.
ROSS MCFARLANE: So a deep-fried Mars bar: a Scottish delicacy.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh, okay. Sure.
ROSS MCFARLANE: We deep-fry ice cream, we deep-fry pizzas, we deep-fry whatever you want.
JEFF VAN DREASON: We do that too, but usually only at state fairs or crap like that, right? I mean, we love deep-frying shit, who am I kidding? But not as many desserts, necessarily. So that's interesting. Deep-fry your apple pie. I love that.
[00:18:39] "Shake That Bagpipe"
JEFF VAN DREASON: All right. Going back to the first song, which is kind of similar in a way, because it feels like — this is "Shake That Bagpipe." It sounds like a song that's blasted at stadiums pre-, maybe during, maybe post-game. Is that true? Or what's the story with the song?
ROSS MCFARLANE: I think it should be.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh, it's not?
ROSS MCFARLANE: No, this is just a song that my pals play that I really like. We often have it on on road trips. And I will say this is where I have broken my rule for the playlist. I feel like I was allowed one rule break. This band is Italian.
JEFF VAN DREASON: What?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. This is the one non-Scottish act on it. But the fact that it's called "Shake That Bagpipe," and it feels like it should be played in a football stadium — I think we'd be too embarrassed to. I think it's a bit too catchy for it to be sincerely loved by the masses, but it is just a fun track.
[A short burst of electronic music plays.]
JEFF VAN DREASON: God, absolutely. I mean, I guess it wouldn't make sense for them to play it in Italy, because they don't vibe with the bagpipes. But why is this Italian band making a song called "Shake That Bagpipe"? What's the story?
ROSS MCFARLANE: I'm imagining that there are Scottish links in the band. To my knowledge, they're an Italian band, and they play electronic bagpipe music. But I imagine there are some Scottish roots going back.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Gotcha. Wow.
ROSS MCFARLANE: So that's the one non-Scottish band that I have on there.
[00:20:34] Mickey 9s: "Maradona"
JEFF VAN DREASON: And speaking of — this is going back to my very naive thought earlier about how football as a sport is uniting people, which you were like, "No." We've got the second song, which is Mickey 9s, right? And it's paying homage to an Argentinian great, Diego Maradona.
[A clip of "Maradona" by Mickey 9s plays: an electronic dance track with chanted vocals (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: Is that why this is here? Just thinking about how you're celebrating great players, even if — he was Argentinian, right? I'm not making this up. He didn't play for Scotland or anything, but you're still celebrating a great player. Is that the idea?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Absolutely. One of the best ever did it, and iconic for many things, including, you know, the Hand of God goal, which is celebrated around the world. Definitely everywhere. Nowhere dislikes that one. But yeah, Diego Maradona. And this is a very silly song. Mickey 9s are an incredible band, and one of the best live bands you can see in Scotland. I've managed to see them a few times. You see the lead singer up on stage in a football top, trackies, and a full face of makeup, just dancing beautifully, having the time of their lives.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. There are many Mickey 9s songs that could have been on this playlist. And I will say this about any artist we talk about on this playlist: there are so many songs that I probably like more, care about more, have more to say on. But this just felt like it fit. This is our relationship with football, and it is a song about Maradona having a couple of lines with you at the after-party.
JEFF VAN DREASON: It's very catchy. I mean, it is silly, but it's super catchy. It sticks. It's an earworm. I'm going around saying "Maradona" all the time, because there's something about the enthusiasm that gets into my head.
[00:23:12] Stanley Odd: "Who Am I"
JEFF VAN DREASON: All right, now we have Scottish hip-hop, which I'm not too familiar with. I know they're not exactly hip-hop, but I know Young Fathers is a Scottish band, right? And I'm a big fan of them. But I had never heard — and to be fair, you predicted this — I hadn't heard most of these bands. Stanley Odd, right?
[A clip of "Who Am I" by Stanley Odd plays: rapped vocals over a hip-hop beat (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: It feels very like an anti-anti-immigration song, kind of tying into what we were talking about earlier. And there's a lot of that going on in the world right now. But I'm interested: is this the reason why you picked the song "Who Am I" for the mix? Is that what it means to you? Or is there more to it than that?
ROSS MCFARLANE: So yeah, Stanley Odd: again, just an incredible band. I've been going to see them since I was a teenager. And the reason I picked this track — again, so many tracks I could have picked, especially from their 2014 album, A Thing Brand New, which this song is from. I think it's such a beautiful full album. But the thing I wanted to do with this track, at this point in the playlist, was touch on the slightly more complicated aspects of Scotland. I'm not a very nationalistic person —
JEFF VAN DREASON: Sure.
ROSS MCFARLANE: — and so I did not want to be like, "Here are the reasons Scotland's amazing. Scotland's great."
JEFF VAN DREASON: Right, sure.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. I was like, oh, well, this is the perfect song that is about someone grappling with the complicated identity of being both colonized and colonizers. And I think especially in Scotland, we can be quite bad for that, especially during the last 15 years of independence [unclear], and all of the politics that came out of that, and the ways in which we are still to this day beholden to another country's government. That's all true, and we do have a very different culture and a very different politic up here. However, we still made a bunch of money off slave ships, and we made a bunch of money off colonization, and we don't do a good enough job of recognizing that. So I was like, where do I bring in that aspect? And "Who Am I" is literally that in a song. It is entirely about, yes, Britain, the British Empire, bad. And yeah, we were along for the ride on that — we were very much along for the ride on that, and we did profit off it entirely. I thought that was important to get in there early, to be like, this isn't just going to be "rah-rah Scotland."
JEFF VAN DREASON: Right, yeah. I was thinking about this today, partly because I was really listening to the mix. The idea of patriotism is so distasteful to me, because traditionally it just feels like a very nationalist idea. You set aside whatever issues there are with your country, whether it's in the past, whether it's current, and just love it unconditionally. And I don't think it's a good idea to love anything unconditionally — except for maybe your children. Even then, though, you gotta not just be like, "I still love them, and that's that." I think true patriotism really should be loving your country not for what it is, but for what it can be, and also having really concrete ideas about what it has done and is doing wrong. Certainly that's the case with my country, right? I look around right now — but let's be honest, there's been issues, and we're talking about profiting off of slavery since before our inception, right? So I think this song really hit me hard, because every July 4th, I'm like, how am I supposed to celebrate this country when it's like a rotten shell? But also, it always kind of was, and we're just seeing the rotting corpse of it come more to light these days. So this one resonated with me big time. I liked it a lot. So thank you for that introduction.
[00:27:37] The Narcissist Cookbook: "Castle of Rats"
JEFF VAN DREASON: However, my favorite song on this mix —
ROSS MCFARLANE: Okay.
JEFF VAN DREASON: "Castle of Rats." I love this.
[A clip of "Castle of Rats" by The Narcissist Cookbook plays: spoken-word vocals over acoustic guitar (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: It kind of seems to continue the theme a bit: a takedown of those in power. And I love how the singer sings, like, "This isn't a metaphor." There's a real power to being like, "I'm not fooling around. This is really what's going on." But I'm curious: is this a well-known song, or is this one where some folks coming over here to watch the game would be like, "What is this?" I'm guessing the latter, right?
ROSS MCFARLANE: The latter. So this was the hardest choice to make. I love "Castle of Rats" as well. I think it's a great song. However, The Narcissist Cookbook, who is a Stirling-based singer-songwriter, is not quite well known in the States, but quite well known here — has a very specific following of late. Mentally ill queers are probably a good fit. And there are so many tracks. I will say, Amber Devereaux told me to listen to The Narcissist Cookbook for years, and I did not do it. And then I was forced by someone else to listen, and I was like, "Oh, Amber was right. I should have been listening. This is so my shit."
JEFF VAN DREASON: Takeaway from this podcast: always listen to Amber. Amber knows all. Literally just met with him yesterday. There's a mix coming with Amber, so I'm excited about that. But anyway, continue, please.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Amber, yeah, knew me well enough to be like, "You will love this." And Amber actually did some sound design and some work on The Narcissist Cookbook's most recent album. The two of them used to busk in Stirling together when Amber was at uni there.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh, no way.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And I have become obsessed with The Narcissist Cookbook. Everything that Matt does is incredible. Really strong concept albums, spoken word pieces to music that are just some of the best that I've heard done. So much incredible stuff. I could have done a full playlist of Narcissist Cookbook stuff. In fact, I have one of Narcissist Cookbook spoken word things specifically, but I wouldn't subject you to spoken word pieces on a music podcast.
JEFF VAN DREASON: That could be another one that we do at some point, because why not? I'm down. I'm going to have to explore more of The Narcissist Cookbook, because first of all, I just love the name. And second of all, this hit all the vibes for me. I was like, this is a band I should know. I'm gonna take a deeper dive. But tell me a little bit: why here, why now? Is it true that it's kind of continuing off some of the themes from the last song, "Who Am I"? Or is it going in a different direction, do you think?
ROSS MCFARLANE: So the idea, I think, initially was: we start off with the party — "Shake That Bagpipe," "Maradona" — and then hit "Who Am I." We're going to talk a bit more seriously about some things and really set a precedent for the playlist: "Hey, here are some of the problems with Scotland. Here's some of the problematic history of Scotland." And then we're going to move into, "And here's what we all think about it here." Here is the kind of protest music, angry political music, that is being made here.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Got it.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Because again, the idea is to appeal to you specifically, and I felt like you would enjoy this.
JEFF VAN DREASON: And I did.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Well done. So yeah, that was the idea with that kind of progression: start off fun and happy, and then lure you into the politics —
JEFF VAN DREASON: Sucker punch me with that. Yeah.
[00:32:15] Frightened Rabbit: "The Twist"
JEFF VAN DREASON: Well, the next song is from the only band I'd heard of on this mix: Frightened Rabbit. I was a fan of theirs for a long time.
[A clip of "The Twist" by Frightened Rabbit plays: guitar, tambourine and male vocals (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: "The Twist." Possibly — I could be wrong — kind of the most mournful, sad song about getting down. Is that true, based on the lyrics? And if so, what is it about? Or explain why it's here, in any event.
ROSS MCFARLANE: I needed to put a Frightened Rabbit song in there. I absolutely needed to. And this one is just my favorite from this era — one of the best albums ever made, The Midnight Organ Fight. "The Twist." There's something so melancholy. I'd say if we're talking about the most depressing song about getting down, it's absolutely "Keep Yourself Warm." It's on the same album.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Okay, fair. It's fair. But he's saying the same thing. He's saying, "I need warmth, I need human warmth," or something. There are similar themes there, right? But fair enough. Fair enough.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. Frabbit — just a deeply important-to-me band from back in the day. For many reasons, I don't listen to it nearly as much.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Hard to listen to after everything that happened, I think. And that's valid.
ROSS MCFARLANE: But yeah, I saw them more than any other band in my teen years, I think, 'cause they were just about at the time. I went to their album launches and saw them at Record Store Days. And when it came down to "What do I put in? What really fits?", I'm like, well, we're just going into a different vibe of the playlist, and I can use this Rabbit song to kind of shift those gears. We skipped a couple there, but we can use it as a movement. And this is a banging track. There needs to be a Frightened Rabbit song on this playlist, of course.
[00:35:12] Elsie McDonald: "Tourist Town"
JEFF VAN DREASON: As someone who lives in a high-tourist area, the line from "Tourist Town" — "these tourists buying postcards in the place I'm gonna die" — man, that hit me like a bolt to the heart and the head. I was quite taken with the song. It's just great songwriting. Obviously I'd never heard of the artist before, so tell me a little bit about Elsie McDonald. Is that their name? And why you included that song here? I have a theory as to why, but I'd love to hear it from you.
ROSS MCFARLANE: So there's a few things to talk about. We've gigged together once in the past, at an event called Queer As Punk in Edinburgh, which I also want to give a massive shout-out for a bunch of the bands on here, because the person who runs that, Suki Goodfellow, who's a poet and punk promoter, just does incredible work over in Edinburgh, putting on acts, and has a huge audience of wonderful punks. And is just doing so much good work, including a playlist of queer Scottish contemporaries — of which there have been two — where I discovered a bunch of the bands on here. So, huge shout-out to Suki for all the work going on there. Recently I went and saw Pigeon Pet [spelling?], Cheap Dairy Horse [spelling?], and Maz in the Phantasms [spelling?] over there, which was fantastic. I'm going tomorrow night to spend Edinburgh Pride with Queer As Punk. So, huge shout-out to Suki for all that work.
ROSS MCFARLANE: But yeah, Elsie and I did a show at the Fringe, maybe three, four years ago. And when I saw Elsie, they were doing more kind of Grace Petrie, Billy Bragg vibes.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Okay.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And so when I started thinking about artists that I've enjoyed from the local scene, Elsie kind of crossed my mind: "Oh, I'd love to find something like that." And then I hit upon this song. I hadn't heard it before. I was making this playlist and went, "Oh, wow! This is banging. This is great."
JEFF VAN DREASON: What I love is, obviously, you've got tourists over there, but what fits for me is that you could almost see this as some of the Scots coming to the Boston area, right? So it hits on both levels, and I really like that synergy. Maybe you weren't thinking about that, but it is perfect. And it really resonated with me on a deep level. It was very intimate and very personal, but also very cutting at the same time. Everybody's like, "Tourism is good," but it's also very weird in a way, right? And I like that that's being explored in the song in a way that is truthful, I think. But anyway, tell me a little bit about why you included this song, other than what you just said.
ROSS MCFARLANE: I love it. I'm not sure, Jeff — have you been to Edinburgh before at all?
JEFF VAN DREASON: No. Never been to Scotland.
ROSS MCFARLANE: No? You'll have to visit now.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I will. I will. It's on my list.
ROSS MCFARLANE: So this is so quintessentially Edinburgh to me. I think Elsie's Edinburgh-based, but I don't actually know. That's where we gigged together. It's the descriptions of the cobbles, and the fact that Edinburgh is just the tourist center of Scotland in a lot of ways. People go to Edinburgh, they go to the Highlands, they avoid Glasgow because of the knife crime. I will always say Edinburgh is the best place to visit; Glasgow is the best place to live.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Okay.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And I've heard many years of people talking about living in Edinburgh and what it is to live in this place that is just so heavily touristy. It is not a big city. It's smaller in population size than Glasgow. But in August every year, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe happens, and the city's population doubles overnight and stays that way for a month.
JEFF VAN DREASON: God.
ROSS MCFARLANE: It's the biggest arts festival in the world. It's an incredible thing to be part of. And it's an incredible thing to be part of when you can get in your car and drive home at the end of the day, and not have to deal with it for 28 days in a row, or whatever it is. There was just something in this song that was so deeply Edinburgh. And I realized that I'm biased towards Glasgow in the songs that I pick and the stuff that I'm adding in here. When I heard it, I was like, "Oh, this is so Scottish in a way that isn't necessarily my Scotland, but is one I really recognize."
JEFF VAN DREASON: Nice.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And it was just a beautiful song. I've listened to it a bunch since I put it on the playlist.
JEFF VAN DREASON: We have cobblestone streets here. So again, there's a lot of little lines — because we're old for America, right? Not that old, but there's a lot of little touches that just seem to kind of cross the Atlantic a bit. It moved me quite a bit. Just a well-written and well-performed song.
[00:40:33] Picture Skruer: "Let's Get Ice Cream"
JEFF VAN DREASON: I have a question about the next one. And we are skipping around a bit, just because there's a lot of songs. I'm only talking about the ones that really made an impression. That's not to say there's nothing — there's plenty of great songs here. "Let's Get Ice Cream" by Picture Skruer [spelling?]. Also very lovely.
[A clip of "Let's Get Ice Cream" plays: acoustic guitar and vocals (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: Is this a "frozen ice cream" song? What's the deal with this? I'm just curious about how it fits in and what the idea behind it is.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Honestly, I don't know quite what to say about this one, because I have the version of it in my head that it's about being queer in small-town Scotland.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Okay.
ROSS MCFARLANE: That is my version in my head. I don't know what this is.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Headcanon counts, man. Headcanon for the win is my theory. I love it. And sometimes you don't have any text to point to. It's just a vibe where you're like, "Oh, I think that's what this is about." And then people will argue with you, like, "No, that's not what it's about." Well, that's what it's about to me. That's valid, right?
ROSS MCFARLANE: No, it definitely just has this vibe of this particularly seaside, small-town Scotland, and feeling watched when you're just trying to do very normal things. There's so many elements to it that just give me that. I put this on there and I went, "What am I gonna say if Jeff asks me about this?" Sorry. I don't actually know what I have to add to this, other than vibes, and —
JEFF VAN DREASON: Doing a normal thing that everybody should and can do, having the added pressure of being different, but also just trying to ignore that and enjoy yourself, kind of. Is that the idea?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. And I can't say that I know for sure that that is the intention of the band, but it was the vibe that I got listening to it. Picture Skruer — not someone that I know very well, and I've not listened to much of their stuff, but this has been on a bunch of playlists since I found it. Again, shout-out to Queer As Punk: I heard this song on their playlist and went, "I'm stealing that. That's going on the playlist." It just has that vibe.
[00:43:22] More from Ross's Mix: Fisty Muffs, Spencer Mason, Chido Babies, Burnout Baby
JEFF VAN DREASON: All right. Obviously, I was going to end with your brother's song, but we covered that first. But there's plenty of songs I didn't get to talk about. Are there any specific songs that you really want to mention and give a little insight about that I didn't mention yet?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Oh, what have we got? There's a bunch of fun stuff on here that I don't know that I have much more to add to, other than: I really like these songs, I really like these people, check them out. Oh — "This Job Is Killing Me." Fisty Muffs [spelling?] is Suki Goodfellow's band.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh, really? Okay.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And Suki is absolutely responsible for me being introduced to a bunch of these bands.
[A clip of "This Job Is Killing Me" by Fisty Muffs plays: a punk track with drums and guitar (lyrics not transcribed).]
ROSS MCFARLANE: Go check out Fisty Muffs.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Check out Fisty Muffs. I just clicked on their profile in Spotify, and yep, that makes a lot of sense. It all tracks. And that's a fun song. So yes, definitely check out Fisty Muffs.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Spencer Mason is probably one of the most exciting voices in Scotland in terms of writing and performance. They mostly focus on spoken word these days, as you can maybe tell from "Swarm," which is the track on there. It's very spoken-wordy, kind of erring towards that.
JEFF VAN DREASON: That song is one where I need to sit down and listen a few times with the lyrics.
[A clip of "Swarm" by Spencer Mason plays: spoken-word vocals over music (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: I wanted to talk about it, but I was like, "I need more time to process this one." It was very good. Also right up my alley. But it was just a lot. Yeah, it was good. There's not a miss on this list. It's a strong playlist. Remember — I'm going to shout this out at the end — all of the playlists are linked in the show notes, so you can go listen to Ross's list and discover a great bunch of Scottish bands, and one Italian band too. But anyway, continue. Sorry.
ROSS MCFARLANE: I will say, that's a very common one with Spencer. I love them dearly. They're going to be around — they're finishing up band practice with Burnout Baby, which is the next band on the list, for which they are the guitarist. They're finishing up and then heading round here to watch the football tonight.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Nice.
ROSS MCFARLANE: I'll say that they have no interest in the football, but their partner does.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Sometimes that's all it takes.
ROSS MCFARLANE: They're gonna do crafts with my flatmate, and me and Lisa will watch the football. But Spencer's incredible. Last year at the Fringe, they came along and did a one-hour-long poem every day for the Fringe, and it is that style: extremely eloquent, beautifully performed, really intricate. It was a [unclear] through hell, and it was called The 100-Headed Song [title?]. It's available with live improvised music on YouTube. Highly recommend.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Wow.
ROSS MCFARLANE: But Spencer came out afterwards, after the first show, and I was like, "That was incredible. It was just an experience to have wash over you," and all these sorts of things. And they went, "Do you think everyone got it?" No. Oh, absolutely not. It was an hour-long poem.
JEFF VAN DREASON: But that doesn't diminish it at all. You need a couple drinks and a full evening, I think, to really appreciate it, right?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. I went and saw it three times, and twice I took the book of it and read it as I watched Spencer perform it. And that's when I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm getting it more." I can't talk enough about how incredible they are as an artist. They deserve the absolute world.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Nice. Well, [unclear] — great job, and I'm looking forward to more of their work. Was it a different poem every day? Like, a different one-hour poem every day?
ROSS MCFARLANE: No, it was a single one.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I was like, that's crazy. But that makes a little more sense. Any other songs you want to touch on before we move on?
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah: big shout-out to Chido Babies [spelling?], who had their last gig in March this year. Absolute icons of the Scottish scene, and organizers, and a very, very important band from Scotland.
[A clip of "Equinox" by Chido Babies plays: loud, driving punk (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: Why is that the final song? Is there a reason? Is it just 'cause they're important to Scotland, and you feel like it's fitting to close out the mix with them?
ROSS MCFARLANE: There were a few places that I had Chido Babies, but I couldn't think of the right song to close out the playlist for a while. I didn't want to leave it just on the World Cup song.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Sure.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And "Equinox" is this really great song. It has a nice build and trail-off, and it used to be their set closer for a while.
JEFF VAN DREASON: That makes sense.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah. In my head, when I'm listening to it, I can really feel that idea of everyone singing along at the end of a [unclear] gig.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yeah, it makes sense.
ROSS MCFARLANE: And yeah, go check out Not Always, Not Never. The pick that I would have normally put on here would have been "April Showers," but it had to be the Scotland song. And Burnout Baby have two songs released as of now — they had one song released when I made this playlist.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh my gosh.
ROSS MCFARLANE: An incredible new pop-punk band. Proper pop-punk, like we all loved in the early 2000s. That is the vibe, and it makes me deeply happy as a guy in his thirties.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I still love pop-punk. I always will. I'll defend it until the day I die.
ROSS MCFARLANE: It's good. It's fun.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Sorry that I like fun with my punk. That's an important aspect.
[00:51:12] Jeff's Mix for Ross
JEFF VAN DREASON: Speaking of which, there's plenty of pop-punk on the mix I made for you. Do you have any thoughts, questions, concerns, comments about my — in my opinion — underwhelming mix, comparatively? I just had a hard time. I was stinking — 'cause I was trying to keep it more recent, and I'm a bit less connected to local scenes than I used to be, although there are some friends of mine on this mix. Anyway, that's all I'll say. I'll leave it to you. And if you don't have anything to add, or even if you didn't listen to it — which has happened before; some people were like, "To be honest, I didn't even have the time to listen" —
ROSS MCFARLANE: Fair.
JEFF VAN DREASON: — but I want to give you the opportunity to talk about it if you're so inclined.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Would love to. I will say I had a chance to listen to it once the whole way through, so I have some thoughts and feelings. First of all: yeah, you got me. You read me for filth. This is the stuff.
JEFF VAN DREASON: And that was the goal. So, yeah.
ROSS MCFARLANE: There's a bunch of stuff that I'm going back to from this, without a doubt. There's a bunch of stuff that I absolutely loved in here. From the moment I put it on, I was like, "Okay, we've got some — a little bit moody, a little bit — oh, the vocals are high in the mix. That's for me. Some nice rhythms." Songs in under two minutes — all of this is very my shit.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I figured it would be. Yeah, yeah.
ROSS MCFARLANE: What did I really enjoy? What really stood out? I loved when you were talking earlier about how you didn't have enough time to sort transitions and stuff like that. You did a very good job on that.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I tried as much as I could, but it was tough, because I was picking very different songs in some ways, and in some ways too much that was similar. So I tried to lump them together in a way that made sense, but I wasn't altogether happy with it, to be honest with you. But anyway, thank you. I tried.
ROSS MCFARLANE: "Mosquito" and "Kiss the Ladder" just went along like it was the same song.
[A clip from Jeff's mix plays: loud, distorted rock (lyrics not transcribed).]
JEFF VAN DREASON: Some similar — and actually, "Mosquito" is a pretty out-there song. New York City will claim Model/Actress as theirs, but they started in Boston, so I'm sorry, I consider Model/Actress to be a Boston band. Similarly, Ezra Furman did not start in Boston, but they live here now. They perform down the street from me all the time, so I claim them as a Boston artist now. So it's sort of fluid, who counts as Boston and who doesn't. But whatever. I decide the rules, right?
ROSS MCFARLANE: So Ezra was the only artist on here that I think I'd heard of before.
JEFF VAN DREASON: That makes sense. Yep.
[Another clip from Jeff's mix plays: guitar-driven psychedelic rock (lyrics not transcribed).]
ROSS MCFARLANE: I think things like the Little Low song — I was like, maybe this has come up on a Spotify mix for me. I'm not sure. I don't know.
JEFF VAN DREASON: That's my friend Christine's band. Actually, we just interviewed her for EAR•WAX not too long ago. Little Low. That's from their EP. Their new album is fantastic. I highly recommend it. It's actually a year old now, but it's good stuff. So if you like that song, check out Little Low. Massive Nightmares: another local band. They're more friends of friends, but I know them, and it's very Replacements-y, but I think there's good stuff there. They're doing a good job, playing at local pubs and so on.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah, definitely. The things that stood out: the Rebuilder track I enjoyed. And the Palehound — the "Independence Day" one —
JEFF VAN DREASON: Love that song. I could listen to that song every day.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Something about the lyrics to that, about writing your first draft because you can't go back and rewrite. I don't know, that really hits me. I just love that kind of — really strong Beths energy, to me.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yes. Yeah, that's a good comparison. I love The Beths too.
ROSS MCFARLANE: It was brilliant. I spent all of last year listening to it, since my partner had to move back to New Zealand. I have not listened to [unclear] alone.
JEFF VAN DREASON: I believe it. Yeah.
ROSS MCFARLANE: It's so good, though. I need to go back to it. I remember — because I was over in Aotearoa just at the start of the year — sitting by a river listening to "Mosquitoes," and really feeling flashed back to 2020, 'cause it was about a flood that happened in Auckland back in 2020 [as heard]. The whole energy of that, and then being in the country where it was made, and all these sorts of things, and just being like, "Oh, this is the best song, actually." Lots of feelings about The Beths. But yeah, I definitely got that vibe from Palehound. And I was really interested in you picking three tracks from the same artist, 'cause one of my rules on my playlist was —
JEFF VAN DREASON: As much as I want to give a bunch of different songs from a bunch of these artists — I could have, again, filled it with Narcissist Cookbook — that Fiddlehead album was my pandemic album, and I feel like it saved my life. First of all, the first two songs just bleed into each other, and you just don't separate them, because they just do in my mind. And then the last song — it's the last song on the album, and it closes the mix with the same poem that opens it. The lead singer is an English teacher for his day job. And just the idea of — despite separation, whether you're in Boston, New Zealand, Scotland, or wherever you are — carrying someone's heart with you wherever you go. It's such a lovely poem. It's one of my favorite poems. I was like, "I need another song. I need a good closer." And I'm like, "I don't fucking care. I'm putting the Fiddlehead song on." And that was that. So yeah, I broke all sorts of rules with this mix, or whatever.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Yeah, good. Okay. No, great. Great choices. That's one where, even from the first two tracks, I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna have to listen to this."
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yeah, I recommend you do. It was my favorite album of the year it came out. And they're a great band, and they're proper, proper local. Big supporters of the local punk and hardcore scene, and just a great bunch of [unclear] guys.
[00:59:06] Wrap-Up and Where to Find Ross
JEFF VAN DREASON: So, thank you so much for listening. I guess I didn't do as badly as I thought I did, but comparatively, I was like, "This isn't as good." And I feel like I'm a Scotland fan; hopefully you're a little bit more of a fan of the local area. We are hours away — even closer — from Scotland versus Morocco, and I am hyped. I'm going to watch the game. I'm gonna Discord message you and commiserate with you, or celebrate with you. I really appreciate you making the mix and converting me into a proper Scotland fan. It's nice to have somebody to root for, especially a little bit of an underdog.
ROSS MCFARLANE: I'm so glad. I'm so glad it worked.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Thank you. Yeah. Well done.
ROSS MCFARLANE: Thank you so much for having me on. This has been great fun. I would do this again —
JEFF VAN DREASON: We'll do it again. We're going to do it again. We're probably going to do one of the other ideas that you have. We can do it multiple times. Remind folks where to find you online, if you're so inclined, Ross.
ROSS MCFARLANE: I am. You can find me at Ross D. McFarlane Poetry. That is where I will mainly post about things that I am doing as a poet, and occasionally audio drama things. Or you can follow — I work with Amber Devereaux and Ella Watts at Tin Can Audio. So if you follow Tin Can Audio anywhere, that'll be where you'll see more of the audio drama side of things, podcasting and such.
JEFF VAN DREASON: One of the best podcast production [companies] in existence is Tin Can. [They were a] huge influence on me. Amber and Ella — the three of you are just, you know, the Mount Rushmore of UK audio fiction? I don't know.
ROSS MCFARLANE: [Unclear] — that's a bad analogy. [Unclear], yes.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Oh, come on, don't sell yourself short. Spreadsheets are important, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Jordan Stillman is our spreadsheet master, and I wouldn't survive without them. So: remember that you can find Ross's playlist and mine on the EAR•WAX Magazine website, on Spotify, and in the show notes. And also, bonus playlists are available via Patreon. Until next time, remember: the tape rocks and never stops on Infinite Mixtape. Thank you for joining us.
[01:01:21] After the Sign-Off
ROSS MCFARLANE: [Unclear.] I just can't believe that I made it to the end of over an hour of podcasting without making fun of the English once.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Would you like to? Here's your chance.
ROSS MCFARLANE: That was just — that was me doing it now.
JEFF VAN DREASON: Yes. We got it in.
[Laughter.]
[Closing music sting.]
