Beat Motel was born a long time ago. In a galaxy far, far away. From reason and logic. Beat Motel was ‘run’ by Andrew Culture and had around 30 regular contributors. Every issue was A5 in size, 80 pages long and had a word count that regularly topped 80,000 words. 400 copies of every issue were printed and sold and traded worldwide.
Economic factors, including the climate crunch, mean that Beat Motel is no longer a printed zine. In early 2023, Andrew and long-time friend and original Beat Motel contributor Dr Sam Page kicked Beat Motel back into life as a podcast.
Andrew has won awards for public speaking (ha!) and Dr Sam is a clever fucker. So the end result is a music podcast that is very much in the same vein as a punk zine.
Themes, and other bullshit
We cover the music we adore, which these days appears to mostly be metal, jazz, electronica and (country). Basically, if it’s weird shit then we’re probably into it. We pick a theme for each Beat Motel episode, and then spend an hour talking shit about it.
Dr Sam and Andrew both chose four tracks that they wanted to discuss in relation to the theme. We play 30 seconds of each track, which is as much as we can play without getting a knock on the door from whoever owns the publishing rights to whatever we’re playing. We also think it would be cool as shit if the listeners went and bought the music to support the artists.
We also have ‘riff of the week’ in each of the themed episodes. Sometimes this section actually includes riffs. Sometimes.
In addition to the themed episodes, we also publish ‘gonzo-style’ live reviews and the occasional special episode that doesn’t really fit into any category.
What’s the deal with all the black metal cats?
No reason other than the fact that cats are cool, and black metal is cool. Well, some of it. And to be honest we’ve met a few cats who were total shits. So in answer; fucked if I know.
Read enough? Start listening 😉
