Sean and his SP.O.T.S 💿

By this we mean Sean and his friend’s very own podcast, and not him reaching for the Clearasil.

SP.O.T.S is an abbreviation for Spines on the Shelves. The SP.O.T.S boys call themselves SP.O.T 1, SP.O.T 2 and SP.O.T 3 as a homage to De La Souls very own Plug 1, Plug 2 and Plug 3 🕺

In the beginning

It all started at the end of February this year, Sean and his friend Ben were looking for something to do in the evenings after work. They were always free on Wednesdays and wanted to bring a focus to their love of music, and that's where it all began. Ben came up with the name as he already used it for his hip hop blog. Ben’s brother Harry joined them as a break from his day-to-day studying of psychology and teaching. Sean is an Ocasta Graphic and Digital Designer and Ben runs a Football Academy.

Surrounded by wall to wall vinyl, books and tapes 📚 the show typically is about three hours long and gets condensed down to an hour and a half. The music really varies, they do themes each week which could be a genre or an event (such as Ben’s missing finger), Harry has done a jazz odyssey set and they’ve also had a rebel theme.

We put Sean on the SP.O.T to find out more...

What has been your favourite theme? I did an 80’s dad car journey theme, I played artists like The Travelling Wilburys, Steely Dan, Dexys Midnight Runners, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. I loved it because it reminded me of being in the Ford Cortina with my dad in the mid 80’s 🚗

Most difficult theme? Well we haven’t really had any difficult themes as of yet. We have so much material it would be very hard to! We did a show after Ben lost a finger, we played a set of songs which we thought portrayed the narrative of his accident really well. It was probably too soon after his accident though and I think we gave the poor boy some terrible flashbacks!

What are each of your music tastes? Harry has the most esoteric and out there taste, he reads a lot of music blogs and gets into record labels so discovers a lot of new music through that. I always gain something from listening to his sets. My sets are usually music from the 1977-1982 era, mostly punk, new wave and disco. Ben’s is hip hop... pure hip hop 👊

Is there ever trouble in SP.O.T.S paradise? Not really, but we do have arguments if someone is taking too long to do a set, or if we have technical issues. We all pay a subscription so we can invest in equipment and if anyone is late with a payment they get a rolling over.

The future

Sean loves doing the podcast because it means all the SP.O.T.S get to hang out and share each other’s tastes and passions for music. It also lets him use the recording equipment and learn as he does it. In the future they would like to make it an official podcast which they can share with friends “all of our girlfriends and wives laugh at us because they say it is the same as recording music off of the radio which they all used to do when they were younger.”

Ocastar Joe is their very first subscriber, keep your ear to the ground for when it hits the pod waves ✌️ but in the meantime feel free to listen to SP.O.T 1's current solo mix-tapes http://spinesontheshelves.com/sample-page