Shows
Destroy! The influence of punk."Vaughan Oliver: fond affections.” Pt II“Fond affections are never said, they’re only sung in song.” (Michael Allen, Rema Rema)—Born in 1957 in County Durham, northeast England, British designer Vaughan Oliver stepped out of a world steeped in tradition and into the nonconformist realm of the music industry. Growing up in an environment devoid of culture, it was through Surrealism and Pop Art that he discovered modern art, its power to open up his imagination, and provide a doorway to new adventures rich with possibilities. Inspired by the work of record cover designer Roger Dean, he eventually...
2025-06-2639 min
Destroy! The influence of punk."Vaughan Oliver: fond affections." Pt I“Fond affections are never said, they’re only sung in song.” (Michael Allen, Rema Rema)—Born in 1957 in County Durham, northeast England, British designer Vaughan Oliver stepped out of a world steeped in tradition and into the nonconformist realm of the music industry. Growing up in an environment devoid of culture, it was through Surrealism and Pop Art that he discovered modern art, its power to open up his imagination, and provide a doorway to new adventures rich with possibilities. Inspired by the work of record cover designer Roger Dean, he eventually...
2025-06-2644 min
Destroy! The influence of punk."Legs McNeil: Armagideon time."Legs McNeil didn’t just witness punk’s birth, he helped name it. From the chaos of late ’70s New York, McNeil carved out a space for misfits, outsiders, and anyone who didn’t fit the mold. As the co-founder of Punk magazine, he gave voice to the subculture, capturing its raw defiance and shaping its legacy in ways no one could have predicted.In this episode, we trace McNeil’s journey from Connecticut to New York City, where he collided with the anarchic energy of CBGBs and the raw force of bands like The Ramones. His magazine w...
2025-04-3029 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.“Spizz: the final frontier.”As a punk provocateur, design obsessive, and relentless shape-shifter, Spizz emerged from the chaos of late ’70s Britain with a DIY ethos and a sci-fi imagination that still defies categorization. He’s never fit the mold, not as a punk frontman, not as a designer, not even as a radio host.In this episode, we trace his wild trajectory: from gatecrashing the Birmingham Punk Festival to supporting Siouxsie and the Banshees, from four John Peel sessions to touring with the Human League, and designing record sleeves, fonts, and alter-egos along the way. “I saw The Clash a...
2025-04-1449 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.“Jon Savage: resistance is not futile.”Jon Savage’s journey into the heart of youth culture began at Cambridge University, where he turned his back on a career in law to pursue his passion for music and cultural criticism. From his early days writing fanzines in the 1970s to his influential roles at Sounds and Melody Maker, Savage became a defining voice in the world of punk and beyond. His landmark book England’s Dreaming captured the essence of punk, which, for Savage, was never just a genre, it was a cultural movement that challenged the status quo and created a space...
2025-03-3124 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.“Neville Brody: leaving convention behind.”Neville Brody was told at art school that he had “no commercial potential.” Instead of conforming, he built a career on defying expectations, reshaping graphic design, typography, and branding in the process.“You can’t be radical in every situation, but you can bring radical thinking into a commercial framework.” (Neville Brody)From pioneering font design to creating some of the most distinctive record sleeves of the 1980s, Brody’s work has always operated at the intersection of rebellion and mass communication. His radical approach to typography at The Face helped define the look of a generation...
2025-03-1457 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.“Brendan Dawes: on the edge of oblivion.”Growing up in a small seaside town just north of Liverpool, artist Brendan Dawes was always determined to make something of himself. Leaving school at 16 with no formal qualifications, he found himself propelled forward by the rise of revolutionary computer technology and a passion for Acid House."The computer was like this amazing box where I could make creative things. I always wanted to make stuff in some form, back then it was music. But with computers, I thought, this is incredible. You could just type into it, and it would do things. It just spoke to...
2025-02-2853 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.“Daniel Miller: revelation vs limitation.”DJ, producer, musician, and founder of one of the most influential independent record labels, Daniel Miller began his journey in 1976, just as punk was shaking Britain to its core. Returning to London that spring, he threw himself into the movement, drawn to its urgency, rebellion, and creative freedom.Hearing The Ramones’ debut on John Peel’s radio show was a revelation, and solidified his love for music that defied convention. A few years later, inspired by the experimental sounds of Can and Faust, he recorded his first single as The Normal: Warm Leatherette, a cold, mechanical, dystopian anth...
2025-02-1459 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.Sensoria : Scene x SceneIn 1984, industrial music legends Cabaret Voltaire released Sensoria on the Some Bizarre record label, the first single from their sixth album, Micro-Phonies. The song mixed driving beats and multicultural rhythms over a winding soundtrack and a hypnotic vocal.The Cabs, as they were known, never sought fame in the traditional sense; instead, they just thought it was important for you to listen. For them how things were presented was just as important - believing it was about your takeaway from the experience, as a whole, that mattered most.Peter Care, a pioneering filmmaker from southwest...
2025-02-1009 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.“Andy McCluskey: electric dreams.”There’s an urban myth that OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) were “discovered” by Lindsay Reade, the wife of Factory Records founder, Tony Wilson. As a local Manchester celebrity and TV presenter, Wilson was often inundated with cassette tapes from bands wanting to get on one of his shows. He kept them all in a shopping bag in his car and would often throw the rejections away, allegedly. As the story goes, Lindsay reached into the bag one day and played a tape by a “bunch of hairy shits from Liverpool.” Wilson said it was crap, Re...
2025-01-3059 min
Destroy! The influence of punk."Malcolm Garrett: conceptual continuity."The day Malcolm Garrett walked into Virgin Records in 1977 and bought Anarchy in the UK was a revelation. The Sex Pistols, and punk, were a modern manifestation of his Dadaist dream, and seeing them playing on TV that day changed his life. From that moment on he knew he was destined to bring his artistic vision to the masses and went on to create some of the most daring and original work for multiple punk, post-punk, new wave, and new romantic bands in history: Magazine, Duran Duran, Simple Minds, and Culture Club, amongst many others. His cover f...
2025-01-151h 00
Destroy! The influence of punk."Peter Care: projecting rebellion.”Filmmaker and video director Peter Care has spent a lifetime reimagining his craft. In the early 1970s, inspired by documentary filmmakers such as Ken Loach and cinematic auteurs such as Kenneth Anger and Luis Buñuel, he started the Sheffield Independent Film Company, which grew to be the largest film production company outside of London. Seeing a live performance by industrial music artists, Cabaret Voltaire, changed his career trajectory and started a long-term relationship with the band that began with Care’s short film, “Johnny Yesno.” His music video for their 1984 song “Sensoria,” was one of the most request...
2024-12-3150 min
Destroy! The influence of punk."Anton Corbijn: imperfection is perfection."At 17, inspired by the defiant spirit he saw in the various music magazines of the day, Anton Corbijn picked up his father’s camera and never looked back. By 1979, he was in London, capturing a photo of his beloved Joy Division at Lancaster Gate tube station. A year later, Ian Curtis’s death would transform the image into an icon, and cement Corbijn’s place in photography’s rock-n-roll hall of fame.“ I like people finding my work somewhere, that’s what I always liked about magazines, you accidentally meet your work if you publish in magazines, and I’ve alway...
2024-12-1442 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.“Alex McDowell: design is a sharp knife.”The work of acclaimed narrative designer and world visionary, Alex McDowell, has probably touched every corner of our lives. Beginning with an early career at street-style magazine i-D, he quickly moved on to music videos for Depeche Mode and Iggy Pop, record covers for Siouxsie and the Banshees, as well as game design for the BBC, and continues to fall forward even today. The incident that started it all was when he put on one of the first-ever live shows by the Sex Pistols at the Central School of Art in London, in 1975. This “transformative” moment has taken...
2024-11-3044 min
Destroy! The influence of punk.“Stephen Mallinder: the journey of the beat.”Stephen Mallinder has been pushing the boundaries of music since he cofounded Cabaret Voltaire in 1973, long before punk even opened the door. The band’s influence has reached far and wide since those early revolutionary days inspiring many of the music industry’s most creative artists, including, Nine Inch Nails, and Depeche Mode, and helping set up musical “signposts” for house music, techno, and hip-hop to follow. “We were influenced as much by film and television as anything else. We saw ourselves as modernists, as people looking to the future. As part of the machinery of the modern world.”-
2024-10-3054 min
Destroy! The influence of punk."Peter Saville: the epicenter of nowness."Peter Saville is arguably one of the 20th century’s most important artists. Growing up in 70s Manchester, inspired by the influence of punk, Saville seized the opportunity to change the world. Cofounder of legendary Factory Records, his groundbreaking design work for New Order and Joy Division inspired generations and influenced culture for decades. "I saw my work as signposts, where I thought things were going, my work was not actually about music, the music was the pulse beat of the moment and I tried to make a visual analogy as I heard it.”-...
2024-09-3052 min
Destroy! The influence of punk."Yobs" - Launch TeaserOn December 1st, 1976, the Sex Pistols appeared on English national television cursing and swearing obscenities. The “Bill Grundy incident,” riled a nation, incensed one man to destroy his TV, and inspired multiple generations of aspiring cultural revolutionaries to change the world.-Follow us on Instagram @destroypunkpodcast for the latest updates. Or visit us online: https://destroypunkpodcast.com for transcripts, show notes, and more.
2024-09-1301 min
Destroy! The influence of punk."England" - Launch Teaser1970s England: societal decline, civil unrest, riots, striking miners, mountains of rubbish, mounting inflation, no power, a 3 day work-week, and no jobs - punk. -Follow us on Instagram @destroypunkpodcast for the latest updates. Or visit us online: https://destroypunkpodcast.com for transcripts, show notes, and more.
2024-09-1300 min