I Wanna Jump Like Dee Dee

No introduction needed for John Wardle aka Jah Wobble. This is a massive conversation with John about life. It's funny, personal, intense, a full learning experience. All the things that you want and need from conversations these days. 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. ...

I only met Jem Doulton a couple of months ago and have had the privilege of watching him play several times with the Au Pairs whilst they’ve been out on tour supporting the Skids and also doing their own headline shows. Jem’s predominantly a percussionist and drummer, but is also partial to the odd bit of crooning now and again. Now, getting together a list of his bands, projects and all that good stuff is where my research gets dodgy, but fuck it here we go with what’s probably a part...

I recently read a blog post of mine from 2019, not long after I’d quit my job and it was clear that I was riddled with self-doubt, some fear, some excitement at this new liminal space I was going into. And also worrying about what people think. What the actual fuck? I look back and think why?? Most people were excited for me and those that were sniffy, well, I thought I didn’t give a fuck about them. But they still snuck into my brain rent free. The self doubt lasted a good while into...

I started writing a book during Covid which in a spur of the moment I called A Re-Design for Life. I bet you can’t guess what album I’d been listening to…... The reason for starting, apart from being able to satisfy some boredom and ego, was to try convey my belief that the most important asset we all possess is our self, especially as more and more of us are living multi stage lives and in a world that is so fucking complex and volatile, that the old rules are redundant. Much of societ...

Atef and I go way back - almost 6 entire months! We met on a balmy end of summer night at the Shacklewell Arms in London and Crocodiles were playing one of the sweatiest and most perfect gigs I’ve been to. At the end of the night I said “See you in Spain in September” to rousing sniggers of “yeah right” from everyone - only kidding, they were delightful but, y’know, bold promises are often made when the euphoria of adrenaline is rushing. But, sure enough, I appeared in Murcia to take in some ...

When I was a kid in the 80’s, I used to listen to a local radio show called On The Wire, presented by Steve Barker. Steve and John Peel were single handedly responsible for me finding bands and artists like African Headcharge, Sonic Youth, Tackhead, Test Dept, Cabaret Voltaire, Mark Stewart and The Mafia, Keith Le Blanc, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and so many others. It was so, so thrilling to discover these new artists. And the show is still going, Steve is still going (albeit on Mixcloud...

I’ve really not talked about this too much, but when I first moved to London at the end of 2008, I felt a massive liberation from the anonymity that the city gave me. I hardly knew anybody – and there’s a separate conversation to be had about how people perceive our identity and how that can confine us - but even when I got to know people and scenes, the city made it easy to disappear when I wanted to. For me, an introvert at heart, this gave me freedom to allow my true identity that was lurk...

In 1987, the US Army War College coined the acronym of VUCA in 1987 to describe a world that was expected to become more difficult to navigate as the end of the Cold War started to become a reality – VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Aside from it being kinda ironic, with what’s happening right now, that the US Army coined this acronym, it’s struck me that musicians have been working in an industry that has breathed this sort of uncertainty and volatility, whilst th...

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say in the introduction today. I’ve felt quite rattled with some of what’s been in the news, especially these last few weeks, let alone years, and it’s kind of taken over my brain. But, I recalled a few words from Joe Strummer many years ago saying "People are out there doing bad things to each other. It's because they're being dehumanised. It's time to take humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time." Music...

In the last few 6 or 7 years – and bear with me here - I’ve become much more interested in the nature of the relationship between humans and other species, forces or whatever – animals, birds, trees, plants, the elements… nature, I guess. I think the genesis was when I listened to a conversation with the novelist Richard Powers and he was talking about his book The Overstory and how we should think of ourselves as being part of life itself, not think of living in terms of “our life” – a subtl...

One thing I’m aware of in myself and others is a shortening attention span and fierce competition for our attention with the sheer amount of information we have to process. If ever there was “it was never like this in the good old days” moment, here you are. As an aside, I actually heard that screenwriters are being told by production companies, distributors or whatever that they need to write scripts that assume the viewer will also be scrolling on their phone whilst watching their show.&nbs...

The genesis of this podcast was a thesis that I did about 8 years ago around the sort of skills and attributes that we will need for the future. I used a horrible term – human capital - to describe the value that these things give us because that was the terminology that was understood in the academic circles that I was submitting to. I now see it as quite a derogatory term, but the premis still stands – that our self, our own talent is our most important resource that we need to protect, nur...

New York has always been – bold statement coming up – my favourite music city. No question that it’s connected to my life changing discovery of the Ramones way back when. I still can’t walk past the Guild Hall in my hometown of Preston without a couple of nostalgic tears forming for when I first saw them play there – I tried my best not to wash off the water that Joey threw over me when things were getting a little hot. But getting back on track… all those New York musicians over...

When I started out with this podcast, one of the things that I was – still am - interested in is the uncertainty of living today and how it takes us into living with liminality. “In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.” The Divine Comedy – Dante It makes me wonder if life always been woven together with paths of liminality. I guess it has. And perhaps what was liminal to someone in the 14th ...

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 desi...

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 governmen...

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...

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 pulli...

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...

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 wellb...