Podcasts are all the rage but, though I've tried a few, I've not been able to make time to follow any on the regular ... save one: Blindboy's podcast.
Blindboy, as you may know, is one half of the the Rubberbandits. He's a self-described gas cunt with a bag on his head who may, or may not, get one out of every three facts wrong; however, he's the only podcaster who's engaged me. For all the faults with the medium ... why these fuckers can't just write it down is beyond me ... Blindboy's got it down, pretty much out of the gate with episode one, which I've linked above. The thing's evolved a bit, for the better, but I think you'll get the gist of it and some benefit from starting at the beginning.
For me, part of the pleasure is listening to the Limerick accent, it's the icing that gives the cake that extra bit of appeal. An accent isn't content in and of itself; content carries the weight, but there's something about listening to his Limerick vocalization over soft jazz tinkling that's very relaxing. Most podcasts, I'm five minutes in wishing the fuckers had just typed up their thoughts, or transcribed and edited their session, on account of their vocal tics irritate me or it's just taking too long to get to an interesting point and I could've scanned in a matter of seconds instead of sinking minutes into determining if anyone's going to say anything interesting or not. Now, there are folks on twitter as brilliant as they come, and I appreciate their insights, but I'm just not able to make it through hour long podcasts of even my online favorites discussing something fascinating. They're fantastic bloggers and twitterati, but podcasting is, sorry to say, not their strength.
Blindboy does interviews, reads short stories, engages in a bit of foolery, and shotguns hot takes pretty consistently. The main thing though is he's a compassionate, vulnerable lad with an inquisitive mind, an interest in language and history, a passion for art, and a gift for the gab.
Stream "Horse Outside," see if your local library or bookstore has a copy of The Gospel According to Blindboy to check out, and give Blindboy a chance by telling your smart speaker to play the Blindboy podcast, or whatever you have to do to queue one up. Let me know if you do, and if you like it, or not. I'm also open to suggestions if there are other podcasters who are out there getting it right.
