The New Cue (2025)

04/08/2025

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

“Anywhere from 10-15 years back. When you lose someone so close you really do wake up to seeing what’s important and what’s not important and what’s been a waste of time and a waste of energy and concern in your life and you wish you could go back and take that time and energy and focus on the things you know were most important. Not that you were neglecting anything, you just realise, ‘Wow, it turns out these things were the most important and I should’ve been spending all my time focussing on that and not so worried about this or that’. It’s not so much that I have regrets, it’s just I can look back pretty easily and see things I would’ve done differently and that I would’ve spent my soul on a little bit more instead of some things I thought were important and thought were worth worrying.”

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Today’s edition is an emotional Life & Times interview with Alan Sparhawk, the US singer-songwriter who was guitarist and vocalist in Low until the death of his wife and bandmate Mimi Parker in 2022. Alan’s answers will stir your soul. It’s a free edition, link in bio.

28/07/2025

What would people be surprised to learn about you?
“That I wanted to be a ballet dancer when I was a kid. My mum was a ballet teacher so I learned ballet. I don’t know if they do this in the UK, but at schools in New Zealand, when you’re 12, the class wrote down, ‘What do you think people are going to grow up to be?’ and I wanted to be a ballet dancer and everyone thought I would be a ballet dancer, I was kind of like a New Zealand Billy Elliott... with a much more supportive family. They said one of my friends was going to be a rubbish man. Pretty outrageous!”

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In today’s edition, we’ve got a Life & Times interview with Bret McKenzie. Best known as one half of the Grammy Award-winning musical comedy duo Flight Of The Conchords, Bret is also an Oscar-winning composer, a dashing elf in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit films and, since 2022, a solo artist signed to Sub Pop - his second record Freak Out City is out next month. It’s a free edition, link in bio.

21/07/2025

What is the closest you’ve ever come to death?
“I was away on tour with Lee Scratch Perry in Greece, having a nap for five minutes longer than I should have in order to ready myself to join the tour bus to go to the next gig. I took a quick shower in a bath without a slip mat and fell over. I felt like I’d cracked my skull open. I had an out of body feeling, saying to myself ‘Come on, you can’t die here - we got a gig to do!’ But it resulted in a cracking of my spine. It healed back but I had to have an operation called a laminectomy to have my right-side nerve removed from the tip of my spine. It was a very, very, very scary moment. Thank God I survived, but it rendered me unable to do certain things with my right hand, like playing the bass guitar. I can play, but I can’t do the two- or three-hour concerts I used to with Linton [Kwesi-Johnson] anymore.”

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We’re very happy to share this morning’s Life & Times interview with you as it’s with MBE, the 72-year-old musician, producer, songwriter and all-round ubermensch whose imprint has been stamped through so much of the best reggae, dub, post-punk and skewiff pop produced in the UK since the mid-70s. Link in bio!

14/07/2025

What was your first job?
“It was quite glamorous. It was with Lord Of The Dance as an Irish dancer touring with Michael Flatley. It went all downhill from there because after that I did a bit of music, then I went on the dole and then I went and worked in a pub and then I joined a band. I thought that’s how it was going to be, I will always be paid lots of money for being on stage and dancing around. That was a difficult thing because if your first job is at the bottom, you work your way up, but it’s a bit harder when you’ve had this job for something that you do that’s really easy, that you’ve always done, and it’s really not naturally transferable to any other environment, even creatively. I was playing arenas, it was a lot to work out in a few years, what the reality was.”

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In today’s edition, takes on our Life & Times interview. It’s free for all to read, link in bio!

23/06/2025

Has anyone you’ve ever met made you feel starstruck?
“Yeah, there’s lots of people where I’ve been reduced to silence. I rapped my way backstage to meet Pharoahe Monch and then I got to his dressing room and didn’t know what to say and he was just sat there.”

Sorry, stop there - what do you mean you rapped your way backstage?
“I used to do this thing when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, where I’d go to a gig and I would wait and if I didn’t have a ticket, I would rap my way in. I’d go to the bouncer and be like, ‘Look, I’m here, I love music, these are my lyrics, please let me in, I don’t want to drink, I don’t want to cause any trouble. I just want to fu***ng watch the music’. And eventually, if somebody was a decent one, they would let me in. I would watch the show and then I knew where all the backstage bouncers were in all the venues in London, I’d go to the bouncers and I would rap past one, and then you get down a corridor, you do it again, do your lyrics, rap past another one, and you just keep going, keep going, keep going, and eventually you get to the backstage to the dressing room, and then you’d knock on the door, and you’d be like, ‘Right now you’re here, what’s gonna happen now, there’s just a person in there who’s just come off stage, drinking some water and taking their fu***ng shoes off’.”

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In today’s edition, we have a Life & Times chat with the artistic force of nature that is , the South London rapper, novelist, spoken word artist and poetic polymath who has established himself as one of the most vital British voices of the 21st century. It’s a good one, link in bio.

16/06/2025

What’s your pet peeve?

“People saying ‘enjoy’ when you’ve been served something by them. I always want to say, ‘I fu***ng might...’. It’s some kind of weird power grab. At the very best, it’s ‘I bequeath you enjoyment’ and at the very worst, it’s almost like ‘Under His Eye’ in The Handmaid’s Tale, pseudo mystical, patronising. F**k off with your ‘enjoy’.”

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frontman Guy Garvey takes on our Life & Times interview - it’s a free edition, link in bio!

09/06/2025

When were you most creatively satisfied?

“I don’t think I operate like that. I don’t really think of things as being satisfying in that sense. I think I’ve been creatively satisfied for a while, but I’m a pretty restless person when it comes to that. I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m like, I’m satisfied.”

In today’s edition, psych warlord and Hardest Working Musician in L.A.™
stops himself from making another record for 20 minutes to take on our Life & Times interview. It’s a good one, and it’s free! Link in bio.

02/06/2025

How do you spark creativity?

“Listen to music, dig into the record collection or pull out a box of tapes and start listening to stuff. Another big one for me is reading plays. Something about reading plays in the written form gets my juices flowing. Also, taking public transit is a big one, observing others and listening to their conversations and moving through the city in a tube, entering one end and popping out another, I find that very stimulating.”

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Ahead of the release of her excellent new record, U.S. Girls aka Meg Remy (.and.remy) takes on our Life & Times interview and talks New Kids On The Block, Iggy Pop, breastfeeding twins, American radio, post-war New York and much more. It’s a free edition, link in bio.

27/05/2025

When were you most creatively satisfied?

“Probably when I was about ten years old, coming home from school and writing songs. I’d write three or four songs a week. The best times of writing music are when I feel like I’m back in that mind-frame. I still remember them, they wouldn’t have words but they’d have melodies that I’d sing, I wouldn’t bother with words. One was called Midnight Blue. They’re probably some of the best things I’ve ever written. Waves was a good one. I wrote a song about basketball called Basketball. There was a song called Bubbles and a song about Homer Simpson. These were my preoccupations, aged nine. It’s a funny thing, being able to access this past version of yourself.”

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Following the release of their excellent new record Crooked Wing, frontman takes on our Life & Times interview. It’s a free edition, link in bio.

19/05/2025

What do you wish the 18-year-old you knew?

“That there is time. That finding yourself is a gradual process. You’ve got time to learn things. There’s a lot of family pressure and society pressure for you to know your path as soon as you step out of school. And it took me a while to discover what I wanted, until I met Grant McLennan and we started The Go-Betweens when I was 20. You can learn things and grow through life, if you’re lucky, through your 20s and 30s and 40s. I didn’t realise that.”

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In today’s edition, takes on our Life & Times interview and talks The Go-Betweens, writing his first novel, making his new record, Lee Remick, his bad habit of drinking his coffee too hot, enjoying his 60s and much more. It’s a free edition, link in bio.

12/05/2025

How were you and Thom communicating?
“We started on email and I found that difficult because straight away there was some issues. I think I said I really liked something and then the way I worded it, he took it that he wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not. And I was like, ‘No, I really like it!’ Then I was like, ‘OK, let’s just move it to Zoom.’ I’d work on something, he’d send it back, I’d mess around with it. If there was something we needed to discuss, we’d have a Zoom on a Sunday, Sunday morning his time and Sunday night, my time. It was instantly easier to communicate because I’d met Thom one time in person at this point and then the rest of our communication was over email. So I didn’t know him that well. We’d email each other music, and not just our own music, other music. If I found music that I thought he might be into, I’d send it to him. I guess it’s much easier to communicate with somebody when you can see their face, especially where you’re discussing things that are potentially delicate. But Thom’s very straight up, I’m very straight up so all that stuff was really easy. We trust each other and we weren’t afraid to say what we felt because at the end of the day there’s no real wrong or right. We’re both old enough and have been doing this long enough to know how you collaborate with people. We would just say, ‘I’m not sure about this, what do you think?’ Sometimes I’d try something and push it one way, and he would just go, ‘No, you’ve lost it, you’ve lost the vibe’. Sometimes I was right, sometimes he was right. But there was no kind of, ‘No, I’m right!’. We were both moving forwards for the same goal.”

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In today’s edition, tells us all about the making of Tall Tales, his collaborative new record with , and takes on our Release Valve questions too. It’s a free edition, link in bio.

02/05/2025

How did you choose the set?
“We had the spine from the first day. Sgt Major was always such a good opening. We were saying people will expect it, because it sounds fu***ng boss at the start with that drum roll. We had to get Miles Apart in, Meant To Be had to be in, Comedy, Undecided…you’ve got the set before you’ve even started thinking about it really.”

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A Recommender edition with a bonus today: after their first show in 15 years last week and ahead of their gigs in Manchester tonight and London on Monday, we speak to about the reunification of . Link in bio!

The New Cue