In this episode my guest is Mark Croft who I describe as a ‘musical scholar’. All my guests have a love and passion for music, but Mark takes that to a different level and to every aspect of music.
In a wide-ranging conversation, we explore (amongst other things) the magic of live performance, the importance of shared experience, the joy of playing live, the art of song writing, and the fact that music was around 40.000 years ago in Europe with the bone flute!
It’s fair to say that we both believe music really matters and Mark finishes the episode with Nietzsche’s quote:
“Without music, life would be a mistake”.
In typical style Mark tweaked the format and chose all live performances for his song choices and each day for the next two weeks I will be posting those clips (and some of Mark’s shortlist) on https://www.facebook.com/musictalkspod
His choices were:
60’s The Clancy Brothers The Parting Glass
70’s Rory Gallagher As The Crow Flies
80’s Talk Talk Living In Another World
90’s Massive Attack Karmacoma
00’s Brandi Carlile The Story
10’s Gillian Welch Revelator
20’s Bob Dylan I Contain Multitudes
We also talk about the benefits and dangers of streaming technology, and I know Mark has some deep concerns particularly around Spotify and its CEO Daniel Ek. I respect those views and therefore there is no Spotify playlist of songs from this episode.
Mark also performs live himself, with Farmer’s Markets being a speciality. You can find some of his recordings at:
https://soundcloud.com/markacroft/speed-trap-town?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing . https://soundcloud.com/markacroft