Podcaster, poet, punk-rap pioneer, promoter and all-round Glasgow music scene legend Mark McG and I sat down to talk about the new album by his band The Girobabies, Dreams Are Mental.
It’s a tour-de-force, and as we explore in the episode, perhaps the most fully-formed and beautifully-realised album from the band yet. You can hear it now by ordering it on Bandcamp on vinyl, CD or digital, and while you’re there, cop yourself an awesome t-shirt. For those of you in Glasgow, don’t miss the chance to catch The Girobabies live at Slay on 29 March.
Check out some links and recommendations below from our conversation, which covers everything from the highs and lows of the Giros, to the poshness problem behind the 2025 Brit Awards, to the history and legacy of Mark’s epic arts and culture podcast You Call That Radio, and a run-down of some of the best up-and-coming working class bands and artists.
Photo: MJ Windebank
Recommendations from Mark McG
As well as discussing the making of Dreams Are Mental, we spend a fair amount of time talking about Who Took Utopia (2015), which is a stone Giros classic. I’m wearing the tee in the interview (their tees are really very good). We go on to talk a little bit about The Skinny, a Scottish culture magazine I helped set up in 2005, and wrote for on and off up to about 2014. It pains me to say it, but I feel they missed a trick not supporting or covering The Girobabies, as we discuss in the episode.
We talk a little about Mark’s early influences as an artist, and the industry figures who showed love to The Giros and his other projects. He mentions Jake Black of Alabama 3 (most famous for the theme tune to The Sopranos) and Steve Mason, front-man of The Beta Band. Mason’s original group have recently reformed to tour the hits — this recent piece at The Guardian has some amusing details about their antics and challenges while signed to a major label.
I mentioned the secure digital promo and press release services to which major and independent labels now both subscribe, and through which magazine editors and journalists hear about new music — as opposed to the older model, where bands and labels would send physical CDs; or the less-secure early to mid-00s model, which involved sending a zip file with (not very well) encrypted and tagged mp3s. One of the biggest of these promo services is FatDrop, used by many UK and US labels. It charges £35 a month for bands who want to reach more than 30 industry contacts.
Mark mentions more of his early inspirations, including Welsh 90s indie heroes Super Furry Animals, and Gomez. Tom Gray of the latter band later became known as a musicians’ rights activist, and the founder of the Broken Records campaign — read about his activism against the extortion tactics of Spotify in this 2022 piece by Mixmag.
Mark mentions his first gig supporting a Glasgow band called Madskull. Traces of them seem to have disappeared from the internet along with MySpace, unfortunately. We go on to talk about Mark’s podcast You Call That Radio, which really took off in 2020 during lockdown, when Mark began broadcasting daily.
Go subscribe to YCTR on YouTube, where you’ll find Mark’s interviews with local and independent bands, artists and writers from Glasgow and across the UK (and beyond), including more than a few big names, like legendary music industry guru Martin ‘Youth’ Glover of Killing Joke (producer of a literal who’s who of 80s and 90s bands); Grasshopper from Mercury Rev; producer Gordon Raphael (who worked with The Strokes); punk-rap crossover duo Sleaford Mods; and Gary Mitchell, aka Boaby The Barman from breakout Scottish comedy hit Still Game (to name just a few).
We also talk about his ‘You Call That Mexico’ era, which saw Mark travel around the South American country visiting raves, bars and beaches, and having some quality chats with absolute randos. For my money, these are some of his best clips, showing Mark’s natural humour as an interviewer, and his remarkable ability to put people at ease.
I looked for some pictures from Mark’s legendary parties at Loch Lomond, aboard the Maid of the Loch, but I couldn’t scare anything up — maybe that’s for the best, as these gatherings were epically debauched! We go on to talk about how Mark and rapper Ciaran Mac infiltrated the much-loved Scottish boutique festival Kelburn Garden Party, which is still going strong, and nowadays features a lot of ‘brass band and ska’ stuff during its daytime lineup. My label Black Lantern did some shows at Kelburn back in the day.
We talked about the Girobabies lineup for a while, and the frequent comparisons to legendary 80s band The Fall, who also had a few lineup changes — leading to the conclusion that The Fall was just Mark E. Smith and whoever else was on stage at the time. The Giros, meanwhile, are now in what may well be their final form — shouts to T33TH aka Mark McKeown, their current guitarist, who has breathed new life into the band (and also recorded the theme tune for Revol Press podcast Theorize And Be Damned).
We also mention the Giros bassist Jo D’Arc, whose band The Twistettes are also doing great things (as is Jo’s solo project Minerva Wakes); drummer Jenny Tingle; and keyboardist Mima Merrow, also a singer-songwriter in her own right. Finally, my old collaborator and underground techno / bass artist Morphamish gets a mention — he runs Sound Sound Studios, a hub for independent Scottish bands where the Giros recorded the new album (which Hamish also produced, mixed and mastered). He and I collaborated in 2007 on the album Future Proof.
We talk about Mark’s terrific solo albums as Jackal Trades, which see him explore the rap side of the Giros’ influences in greater depth. Check out the albums Trip Hazard Advisor and Need The Characters, both of which are absolute classics. Mark goes on to mention a few new, specifically working class bands coming up, who he’s either supported, mentored or booked, including DOSS and CCTV. He also mentions breakout Irish stars Kneecap. I couldn’t find the review Mark mentions where the Giros are referred to as “baffling ned punk” but I think that quote says everything about the contempt in which many middle-class journalists hold working class artists.
This culminates in a discussion of the two shows the Giros played at the world-famous Glasgow Barrowlands (watch the whole set from one of these shows below). The idea that a local, working class band could sell this huge, iconic venue out twice without any mainstream or even local media coverage tells a dark story about the prejudice artists like Mark still face.
I tie this in to a meme that emerged about the winners of the 2025 BRIT Awards, the majority of whom attended elite private schools. Read a full breakdown here from The Tab. The reality is, music and the music industry have become games for the wealthy and the privileged to play — and this has led nowhere except to blandness, stagnation, and a slow decline into witless poptimism that does nothing for emerging artists, while lining the pockets of billionaire stars and corporate streaming giants.
I briefly mentioned how these factors influenced the release plan for my 2023 EP Old Boy. Darren McGarvey and I chewed over a few of these issues in Episode 31 of Strange Exiles, discussing his album Not Funded By Creative Scotland. Artists like Mark, Loki and myself will still be here making independent, edgy, weird-as-fuck music until — as Mark says — Spotify figure out a way to stream t-shirts.
As one of the many, many artists who has benefitted from Mark’s support, advice and mentorship over the years, not to mention as a sincere admirer of his work as a writer and broadcaster, this was one of my favourite episodes of the year. I hope you enjoyed it too.
If you’ll allow me a moment of vanity, I’ll sign off with a live set I performed for You Call That Radio in 2021. Thank you, Mark, for giving artists who don’t fit anywhere else space to play. You are truly one of the best humans. Please support Mark on Patreon if you can!
Next up… Brad Kelly
My next guest is author, podcaster and master of the Tarot Brad Kelly, author of the brilliant weird fiction novel House of Sleep, and until recently, co-host of Art of Darkness. He talks about his bewitching project on the Tarot, and his terrific new literary podcast Method and Madness.
Until next time… take care of each other.
-Bram, Glasgow, March 2025
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