The Bureau of Lost Culture broadcast curious, rare, half-forgotten, half-remembered countercultural stories, oral histories and tales from the underground.
Join host Stephen Coates and a wide range of guests including musicians, writers and cultural commentators like Billy Bragg, Michael Moorcock, Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore in conversation.
Listen live on Sundays at 11.00am on London’s premier independent station Soho Radio or via catch-up on all major podcast providers: https://linktr.ee/BureauOfLostCulture
The Bureau is now also collected at The British Library Sound Archive
For more on the Bureau: www.bureauoflostculture.com
The Bureau produce publications, films, events, broadcasts and installations that tell half-forgotten or lost narratives driving human endeavour. We create immersive experiences with unique perspectives that connect people to hidden stories. +
We celebrate the self-made, inventiveness and ingenuity driven by need. +
We resonate with those who have taken risks to go against the establishment, beyond censorship and outside the forbidden. +
BILLY BRAGG pays a visit to the Bureau to lead us on an extraordinary whirlwind tour through the music that the counterculture forgot.
Along the way we hear about the emergence of The Teenager in post-war Britain, the massive impact of Rock Around the Clock, the Soho espresso bar culture of the 50s and the birth of British youth culture.
We explore why Skiffle, which soundtracked that youth culture for a few intense years and was the inspiration for musicians in The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones, has been oddly forgotten. And Billy explains why, as the first British DIY musical revolution, Skiffle provided the template for the Punk movement of the 70s that was to inspire him.
Along the way, we get educated about the post war 'trad jazz' movement, the cultural stranglehold of the BBC - and the terrific transformatory power of a guy - or a girl - with a guitar.
For more on Billy and his book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: