I Wanna Jump Like Dee Dee

I think relatability has become one of those words that has become overused and, as is usual with these things, the importance of what it means to be relatable has tended to become a bit diluted….it’s unfairly become a target for the old eye rolling emoji. But, I think being able to relate to other people is such a powerful tool to have in our box in whatever way we communicate – through words, action or our art – especially when we seem to be such a divided world and seem to have little desire for even tolerating or even und...

When Segs and I were messaging trying to organise this podcast, Segs wrote something like “we’ve got lots to talk about…the world is changing what feels like day by day”. Now with my meticulous research – OK, it was just by luck! -  I was reading back at an interview Segs, Ruffy and me did a couple of years ago just after they’d done their first tour of Spain. And we were talking about movements getting big and Segs said “The bigger the movement gets it has to get okayed by the government and the it becomes “you can demonstra...

One area of my being that I’ve been working on is not feeling the necessity to be ultra-prepared for things. Things like my podcast episodes. I’ve been able to trace this back to when I was a kid – long story which I won’t bore you with. I think this is tied into this obsession that a lot of society has with perfectionism – don’t make a mistake, be ready for all angles, get it right first time – when really, human beings are far from perfect and we don’t need to dig too far into the newspaper headli...

I do think of my formative years a lot – and I think this started to happen more when my parents died in 2022. Music started to become huge for me around 1976 when I was 8 and started playing the cello…but I did have some music differences of opinion let’s say as I got a bit older and started to  listen to “bang and thump music” as my dad used to call it  – I really struggled to reconcile what I now know is a beautiful instrument with the Ramones, who were changing my life and pulling me in the other direction – it...

As we were recording this episode, Natalie Hoffmann was a week or so away from releasing a third album with her band Optic Sink called Lucky Number and you’re in for a treat. 

It’s like a modern day film noir on the rainy, lonely streets - well, the streets were definitely rainy where I grew up – trying to discover who you are. 

After all these years, I’m still taken aback with how music evokes strong feelings of time and place. It makes me wonder if we are more receptive to songs or parts of s...

Over the years, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Emotional Intelligence and how it fits in to how many people live their lives now, lives which, for many, are much more multi-hyphenate, multi-stage.

With that comes much more uncertainty. I’ve read a lot by Daniel Goleman, who argues unequivocally that EI (or EQ) is as important as IQ for success in all elements of your life, especially how you navigate your working life, private life, relationships and physical and mental wellbeing. I’d also argue that society collectively benefits from investing in its em...

One of my interests that started well before I started this podcast - so we're talking maybe 8/9 years ago - was what sort of characteristics and attributes do we need as people to get stuff done in a world that was becoming more complex, uncertain, volatile and ambiguous. Fast forward 7 or 8 years to now and that world has changed at a pace that I’m not sure many predicted.

One aspect of music that always intrigued me was how bands evolve. I’m not really talking about whether they evolve from one genre to another (altho...

Rebecca Schiffman recently released her 4th album called Before The Future and it starts with a 9 minute song - which is remarkable in its own right especially these day -  but, in my opinion, it could have gone for another 9 minutes and not felt too long, such is the prowess of her ability to write captivating, enthralling slices of life that are at once nostalgic for the past and nostalgic for the future. The entire album is beautifully rich in unhurried harmonies and melodies and is like peering deep into the creases of her memories to produce an introspective me...

The last song on Violencia’s album Viviendo Tiempos Aún Mas Oscuros is called El Exito Es La Droga del Futuro – Success Is The Drug Of The Future.

For me, the nerd, this is interesting as I’ve often thought about how the words we use can take on specific meanings – appropriated oftentimes – I literally heard one just now – “Joy Is Resistance” started and often used by black women is now being appropriated by a bunch of white women. 

And there are times, where other equally valid meanings are ignored or treated with less importanc...

I’m very excited and deeply honoured to talk to my guest today. Joy Guidry is a classically trained bassoonist - and, the first bassoonist on my podcast – who, with each record released (and there are three now), is showing a level of thinking and creativity that is, excuse the pun, a joy to witness. She brings experimentation, improvisation, the radical, the avant garde and deep reflection whilst always being connected to Black ancestry and sound traditions. Her latest album, Five Prayers, moved into a territory of solitude, refuge, peace, discovery and gratitude. It’s a really stunning piece of wor...

You know those times when you’re ambling along – disconnected from the real world with your headphones on as is the norm these days – trying to ignore the gazillion things that run through your brain every minute, forgetting to look both ways, behind you, above you, before you cross the road, and then some music comes on and stops you dead in your tracks – hopefully when you’ve crossed the road! – well, that’s Emma Swift’s upcoming album, The Resurrection Game – out on 12 September from all good record shops and all of the very mundane   - but important! - streaming platfor...

It’s fascinating to look at the entire creative evolution of an artist - how they started and where they are now. Of course, looking at what’s been going on in their life, can feel quite invasive and voyeuristic, like prying into the inner sanctum of life, but hey, all in the name of research! 

Music and art (although I’m by no means an expert) often feels subjective and open to interpretation and honestly, for me, I love it when I’m challenged to think about what it means to me. 

This brings me on to r...

Way back when, maybe 8-9 years ago, I had been researching what sort of skills humans would need for the future, given that we were experiencing big changes in technology, demographics, stuff like that, the sort of things that would affect the world of work. One skill or attribute, whatever you want to call it, was adaptability. Workers were, and still are, being asked to do many different things in their jobs and also do those things differently. So the ability to adapt to quickly changing environment struck me as something that was quite important.

I do...

I think gravitas is a rare but really important attribute to have, especially when the world is so fucked up, chaotic, volatile, reactionary. Gravitas. Presence. I wanna be around people that have the ability to give off positive energy in this way.

Scott Osment is one of the most blistering, powerful and accurate drummers I have seen. I’ve seen him in two very different bands – Deaf Club and Glassing – and I’ve yet to see him in Planet B – maybe in 2026??!! Each band has their own style and his adaptability to their styles blows me away. 

Fo...

Nostalgia is something that I ponder a lot as I get older – I’ve got way too much time on my hands. But it’s such a layered emotion of experiences, some vivid, some half-forgotten and some probably embellished. The band you never got to see live. A long-lost lover. How good you didn’t look in that army surplus jacket. Summer road trips. Friends lost. That gig that ended in a riot. 

I’m gonna read out some lyrics from a song by the Buzzcocks called ……..”Nostalgia”

“About the future I only can reminisce
For what I've had...

Over the last 10 years, I’ve been undergoing a - for me at least - massive transformation and I’ve been thinking a lot about what identity means – the identity that I present to the public, the identity that I present to my friends and family and the identity that I present to myself. With that comes a need to face yourself if you are going to find freedom. 

Our brains like to compartmentalise things and I think this is why we often get defined by society by our work or what we do. I mean, who hasn’t...

So here’s a couple of questions for y'all…how much do you think improvisation, self-consciousness and self-belief are connected? How do you get into that flow state where inhibitions are shed? And can an improv state of mind be a skill that can be learned?

I’m asking this with a bit of self interest as I have two practices that I’ve approached from completely different directions – cello and graphic design. And I am, as usual, probably overthinking things, but I do wonder how these work alongside my natural instincts.

Karl Bielik makes art and mu...

It’s fascinating to look back at the catalogue of band like Crocodiles , not that there are too many bands like Crocodiles. 

There’s the consistency – the tunes, the hooks, the harmonies, the feeling of escapism

There’s the unexpected – the sonic departures, the reinvention, how they make a new Crocodiles record always sound…just kinda Crocodiles… how they throw you an entire record of covers that blows you to the moon and then deliver something that confounds you but doesn’t in a kind of “how the fuck do they do it?” kinda way..…they hit...

The opening paragraph of Justin Pearson’s first book “From The Graveyard of the Arousal Industry” tells a story of how, when his mother had just given birth to him, that another new mother asked if she wanted to swap babies – her Frank for Justin. 

I’m not sure that JP himself is sure of the truth of that story, but hey, we live in a world where fewer and fewer people, certainly in government, media and other esteemed corporations, give fewer fucks about whether they tell the truth, so I kinda feel that it’s my turn to say t...

https://www.iwannajumplikedeedee.com


I Wanna Jump Like Dee Dee is the music podcast that does music interviews differently.

Giles Sibbald talks to musicians, DJ’s and producers about how they use an experimental mindset in every part of their lives.

- brought to you from the mothership of the experimental mindset™
- cover art by Giles Sibbald
- doodle logo and art by Tide Adesanya, Coppie and Paste

I remember starting an Arts Lab a few years ago – just before Covid started actually - with a group of people here in London, based roughly around the counter-culture arts labs of the 1960’s – Jim Haynes was the main guy behind that movement. The idea was to bring together people who wanted to challenge the corporitisation of the arts, draw, socialise, talk about culture, put on cultural events or fuck around.

I wanted to be a part of it but I didn’t know why. I mean had terrible insecurities about my ability to draw, sketch or paint…ev...

Allen Saunders was an American writer and cartoonist who once said “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans”.

It was later popularised by John Lennon in his song, Beautiful Boy.

Saunders first said this in 1957 and I guess how I see this is that many of us still spend time planning ahead, creating goals and objectives, trying to weed out uncertainty, only for that uncertainty to keep coming back, those unexpected things to happen which can derail our plans – either for better or for worse. 

If I think of a fe...

Whilst conducting my meticulous research for Gail….I was taken back to 1980 - my year of transition that was painful, perplexing, exciting, scary – a tussle between my heavily Top of The Pops Top 40 oriented collection, my classical cello playing and a new, emerging, Through The Looking Glass world of punk, post-punk and hardcore. 

Not easy bedfellows for 12 year old me, I can tell you.

One of the songs in that struggle was Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra. I think that the new punk crowd that I was gravitating towards would have sent me mu...

Before I started this podcast, I was kinda rudderless. Didn’t know what I was doing with my life. When this idea came up, the feeling was “Who will want to listen to me talking about mindset, about my worldview, blah blah blah”… I was dragged into doing it…my self-confidence and self-belief were pretty low. I’ve talked to amazing artists, many of whom, with incredible bravery, bare the inner sanctuary of their own mind through their music and, in particular, their lyrics. 

So, here we are: 4 years into this podcast and I’ve learnt so much about myse...

Over the last few years, I’ve been heavily influenced by some of the work that my partner has been doing around decolonisation, particularly in the field of yoga. 

It’s led me to think about how this applies to music and my own relationship to music. 

I’ve realised that my own classical cello training from way back when, the exams I did, the framework that I was expected to adhere to, were a western, colonised version of what the instrument represents. 

Whilst it gave me a lot of technical abilities that have stay...

When I got into thinking how mindset and, in particular, how an experimental mindset was fundamental to navigating a complex and volatile world, I was intrigued with the way scientists approached their work – for example, not being tied to goals, or pre-determined outcomes and analysing the data from their experiments – and how this could be the blueprint for our own life journey – living your life as a series of experiments, using the findings from these experiments or experiences to take to the next experience. This then led me to thinking that musicians have long lived with that uncertainty and volati...

I’m always trying to work out why certain artists hit me as soon as I hear them. There are some that are a mystery as to why the fuck I like them. Like, why am I still in love with Anastasia’s Welcome To My Truth after all these years?  But I can tell you what I love about N8NOFACE's  @N8NOFACE music – it’s primal, raw, subversive, underground, heavy, manic, chaotic, stuttering, exciting, surprising, and propelled massively by so many influences and musical styles that you could easily spend a day amusing yourself reading all these descriptio...

I’m really into this notion of music being your friend for life and how certain songs represent a particular point in your life, good or bad. There’s one song that sticks in my mind which represents such a dark time in my life. And now, looking back at it, I can see how much I’ve changed and sometimes it’s hard to play that song. I’ve played and sang other composer’s songs in front of people - let’s just say that it was a few years ago – and I know that if I sang them now, i...

One of the pages on Leigh Heggarty's website is called “Me Me Me, it’s all about me”. A cursory look through this and the other pages would most clearly identify someone who has lived a substantial part of his life very much NOT promoting Me Me Me, rather being very self deprecating and perhaps uncomfortable talking about himself or what he has achieved in life. This all sounds very familiar to me, I’ve often used self deprecating “humour” to lighten situations where I’ve felt I’m a bit of an imposter. I’m tons better but it’s a battle….

As someone who has played the cello in my much more youthful days and is ineffectively trying to resurrect past glory, I fully appreciate Kishi Bashi's love of the violin and the way he uses that instrument in his compositions. You can literally hear it cascading through every release he has done – from the Room for Dream EP to the epic music and soundtrack for his film Omoiyari. 

He is an epic multi-hyphenate - songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist, film maker, father, husband who has used his creativity, his energy and whole being to produce art that, well...

I’ve long thought about our individual persona or personas and this idea of ever evolving identities …for example, people who have work and non-work personas: the arsehole in work, nice as pie out of work; the surprising competitive aggression at the work social bowling alley do, the extroverted party goer (ok, so there might be some substance impact for that one) – kinda like Henry the mild mannered janitor morphing into Hong Kong Phooey (does anyone remembers that show?!)

What does this mean for the authentic you? Who actually are you?

I think I’ve come to...

Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to work out why certain things in my life have turned out the way they have. Friendships has been a particular thing that’s been on my mind, in particular why I’ve tended to let some slide. I’ve had occasions where I’ve reconnected with lost friends and family and realised just how important they are. Having said that, I do think that the way we handle friendships is kinda different to that of my parents generation, when it was definitely friendships for life. More people live a nomadic li...

One of the things that I was looking at about 7-8 years ago was the growth of the term ‘multi-hyphenate’ and how, with us living longer lives (well, that was the case up to 2019, I think Covid has probably affected that a little), more people – and across all ages - were moving away from the stable job, linear career trajectory and into a more multi-hyphenate way of working which involves doing more than one thing, often 3/4/5/6/7/8 different things. It struck me that many creatives, particularly musicians, have always had so many aspects – roles if you want - to their lives –...

So, as hopefully my faithful and long suffering subscribers will know after 120 + episodes, the whole idea behind this podcast is about the importance of mindset and specifically how an experimental mindset can help us to navigate the world today, a world that is becoming more complex, more volatile, full of more and more contradictions and where outcomes are less and less predictable or certain.

Within our mindset, I really believe that emotional intelligence is one of the most important attributes that we need. I still find it hard to believe that it’s not part of...

I'm gonna keep this one brief.

Stress Positions would have been in the list of identity shapers for 14 year old me. No question. They are hands down one of THE most potent and important bands right now. They will pulverise you with their musical and lyrical intensity. And in 30 years time, people will be talking about Stress Positions as they did - and still do - those pioneers of the 80s hardcore scene. 

Trust me, they are that good.

I'm so very happy to have had this opportunity to talk to Stephanie Brooks, w...

As the devoted fans of this small but perfectly formed podcast will know, I’m a big believer that emotional intelligence is one of THE super powers for navigating the world, especially nowadays with all its complexity, volatility, uncertainty and division. It often feels like the critical components of emotional intelligence – like self-management, self awareness, empathy and social skills – are out of reach, I mean I also feel that it’s getting out of reach for myself, such is the helplessness and rage that I feel sometimes. It’s the hardest time I’ve ever known for keeping raw emotions in...

A few years ago, after I quit my job and decided to go self employed or freelance or whatever, I fell into the trap of trying to start a bit of a hustle which - I still think was a great idea – but was still with a mindset of doing things in “work” mode - how to start something and grow it. It was a bit of a fun concept but I was way too serious about it. It wasn’t where my head was at or where it should have been at and it was only through some fairly g...

Nostalgia. Such a layered, gamut-running emotion. That experience of having what you lost or never had, of a band that split up before you could see them, of seeing a band in a venue that’s now a bunch of this-could-be-anywhere apartments, of lovers long lost, of finding yourself. Then there’s the nostalgia for the present, knowing that it won’t last forever and then there’s future nostalgia where we perhaps blend our past experiences and project them into the future.

I’m gonna read out some lyrics from a song by the Buzzcocks called serendipit...

I’m really intrigued by instinct and the circumstances in which it can really flourish. For example, I’ve been classically trained – admittedly many more years ago than I’d care to mention – and that training can stay with you, or at least the modality or mindset of it can, if not the skills! I also have a tendency to analyse things, which is like watching a political debate – mind numbingly tedious and utterly pointless. I have got far better at going with my instinct – must be that thing of not giving a fuck as you get older. But, it intrigues m...

For me, emotional intelligence is one of the most important attributes we need today  – things like empathy, self awareness, self regulation, and the ability to interact socially - well, I just feel that they should be taught from the day we are born and, if we don’t, then  generation after generation is going to be born into a world where, in the context of our social and political climate, we’re not given those tools, selfishness, indifference and dehumanisation in the very widest sense will continue to grow.

I mention all of this as it’s 45 y...