On this episode, Marc talks with Ian Thompson, author of "Synths, Sax, & Situationists: The French Musical Underground 1968-1978," published in August of 2025. It's a detailed history of a group of French rock bands who, inspired by the protests and civil unrest of May 1968 as well as psych rock and free jazz, broke with convention to create some of the most original music of the 70s. The best known of these groups were Gong, Magma, and Heldon, all of which Thompson covers in depth, but he also delves into bands who haven't gotten their due such as Lard Free and Moving Gelatin Plates, and ones who barely existed yet made a mark, such as Barricade and Cheval Fou.

As Ian writes, "It slowly dawned on me that if other anglophones were to discover this essential music they would need a reference - in English. And so, for the last five years I’ve digested everything I could find on the topic and interviewed almost fifty musicians from the scene. Now, at long last, the result of my efforts rests in your hands."

You can buy "Synths, Sax, & Situationists" here.

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Ian Thompson!

On this episode, Marc talks to J. Hoberman, author of "Everything is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde--Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop," released in May of 2025. It's a fascinating, real-time history of the art coursing through New York City in the 1960s, with vivid descriptions of plays, concerts, events, political movements, and all other types of creative moments. Hoberman, the legendary former film critic at the Village Voice, tells his tales in an excited rush of detail-drenched scenes, conjuring the adrenaline of a time when the past was broken and the future was unclear.

As he writes, "[New York] was the site of demonstrations, insurrections, strikes, trials, sit-ins, be-ins, bombings, and, as a music, all manner of public theater – one giant happening on an epic urban stage...Although too young to have participated in most of the events I evoke, I am old enough to have experienced what might be termed the normalization of cultural craziness that characterized the 1960s."

You can buy "Everything is Now" here.

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with J. Hoberman!

On this episode, Marc talks with Audrey Golden, author of "Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats," published on July 15, 2025. It's an innovative and thorough biography of the crucial UK band the Raincoats, told through an unconventional structure which divides their history not into eras, but "lives" - those of the band members, their supporters, and the people they inspired.

As Audrey writes, "I consider this book–constructed from a Raincoats material archive built by Ana, as well as an archive of oral history and additional research materials collected by me–to be a layered feminist archive unto itself."

You can buy Audrey's book here, and you can hear her talk about her previous book, "I Thought I Heard You Speak: Woman At Factory Records,” on our 14th episode here.

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Audrey Golden!