Joan Armatrading, Tom Robinson and the great music meltdown of Summer ‘76

Joan Armatrading, Tom Robinson and the great music meltdown of Summer ‘76

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold July 3, 2026 Duration: 39:38

The blistering heat of 1976 burnt various things onto the memory – standpipes, strikes, Entebbe, ‘Confessions’ movies, Jeremy Thorpe – but most of all the records that became its soundtrack, some of them revolutionary, others begging for extinction. John L Williams captures the moment in ‘Heatwave: the Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point’ and a paints of picture of a country on the brink of a vast pop-cultural shift. We talk to him here about …

 

… violence at gigs and football and on Derek & Clive albums

 

… dumb people pretending to be clever (prog rock) and clever people pretending to be dumb (Ramones)

 

… the rise of Joan Armatrading in the days before ‘identity’ marketing

 

… how ‘funny’ t-shirts were the memes of their day

 

… when Tom Robinson saw the future in Scarborough

 

… “mainstream culture gave you things to both love and hate”

 

... how Rock Follies featured an imaginary Blitz Club where people danced in military uniforms

 

… Andy Summers (with Kevin Ayers) and Stewart Copeland (Curved Air) on the same bill a year before the Police

 

… why anyone with a Sensational Alex Harvey Band scarf got a wide berth

 

 … Time Out’s headline: "It's the Buzz, Cock!"

 

… Tom Waits, aged 25, unconvincing hobo-hipster

 

… and Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Emmanuelle and the lowest point of the Radio One Roadshow.

 

Order copies of ‘Heatwave’ here: https://tinyurl.com/2kudc6xr

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There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

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