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Emil Amos' Drifter's Sympathy

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Emil Amos charts the birth and development of the classic archetype 'The Outsider', telling disturbing and often humiliating stories about growing up in a small town in the 90’s. Every other episode digs into the archaeology of lesser-known music to illuminate the same themes from a more objective, historical perspective.

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  • 22 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 1 hr
  • English

Episodes 22

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  • S7 · E57
    Yesterday · 57 min

    LONER LEGENDS V

    This episode of Loner Legends is one of the most important casts in this series because we get to bring a true punk god back from the dead, honor his complexities and raise him up to his rightful place in history. Adrian Borland sat side by side with Robert Smith in the mission to refine and define the landscape of post-punk... but one boy ended up changing the world and the other was locked away in a madhouse. After creating the first home-recorded punk record in history with The Outsiders, Adrian forged the pioneering band The Sound and then made industrial/experimental history with Second Layer. Hopefully this cast gets more eyes on his singular, fiery spirit and hips people to one of the greatest, lesser-known artists of the 1980's. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • August 24 · 56 min

    MOVING TO PORTLAND III

    The third installment of the MOVING TO PORTLAND Trilogy bares the accidental creation of the band GRAILS, their first show and first recording... but the task of it brings some seedy characters into the mix. Emil begins recording a record called "I Want to Live a Peaceful Life" with his new friend Pat and things wobble forward into a very emotionally opaque horizon. This episode is dedicated to Pat who eventually took his own life. We loved him. You can read about how many people were affected by him and how he was a huge part of helping bands out in Portland and Chicago from the nineties onward here : https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/remembering-soundman-and-musician-patrick-kenneally-who-nurtured-scenes-in-chicago-and-portland/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S7 · E55
    August 10 · 1 hr 10 min

    LORDS OF SELFISH MUSIC

    Drifter's Sympathy returns with the first episode of SEASON SEVEN called 'Lords of Selfish Music'! While this episode could've easily been called "Casualties of Selfish Music", it avoids dwelling on their dark endings too much. This is an attempt to dig the classics back up and place them under a new lens of 'existential history' that unearths a more 3-dimensional view of our heroes. Richard Manuel of The Band, Sandy Denny & Danny Kirwan of Fleetwood Mac are the central characters of this episode, being people who've had quite a bit of ink spilled on them that was often more cut & paste than the true deep dives they deserve. And while they don't appear to be overtly rebellious, each of these characters found themselves trapped between violent contradictions in their private biospheres, creating internal battles that bore some of the most gutting artwork of their time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • July 13 · 30 min

    *Q&A and 7th Season Announcement*

    The SEVENTH SEASON of Drifter's Sympathy is coming on August 10th to all streaming platforms! The season will open with a new series called "LORDS of SELFISH MUSIC," and roll out 6 new episodes over the course of 3 months. Join the Drifter's Sympathy Patreon NOW if you want to get each episode a week earlier, ad free and receive all the new exclusive stuff we've put together. We're shipping out a brand new unreleased Holy Sons LP, a new Drifter's shirt, a couple tapes and MORE. (https://www.patreon.com/drifterssympathy) This bonus episode features an explanation of what's coming up and includes a Q&A session we did on the Patreon 4 years ago. See you on August 10th! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • Oct 8, 2025 · 52 min

    BONUS EPISODE - 'Sun City Girls, Grails & The Turn Of The Century'

    For a SEASON SIX bonus episode Drifter's Sympathy is highlighting a recent cast Emil did on a new Sun City Girls based podcast ('The Burning Nerve Ending Magic Podcast'). The cast begins around the time Emil moved to Portland and dives into Grails' classic cover of "Space Prophet Dogon" (released in 2003 on "The Burden of Hope"). Then it moves into Emil's time with Jandek as it ran parallel to his meeting Alan Bishop of SCG, and how both of those characters helped change the course of his artistic life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • Mar 12, 2025 · 1 hr 6 min

    LONER LEGENDS IV

    LONER LEGENDS IV brings us to the end of SEASON SIX with a new installment of the central music pillar of the cast.⛲️ I'd been saving covering one of the greatest songwriters of all time for a few years now so its a relief to finally get to tell the story of the great RAMASES... check out his record 'Space Hymns' immediately!. The second genius on the list for today is Gary Davenport... check out his record 'Scattered Thoughts' immediately! And then for a special feature I flew out to Portland and interviewed the great Jed Bindeman who runs a killer record store called 'Little Axe' and two different labels called "Freedom to Spend" and "Concentric Circles". Jed is one of the deepest cassette diggers in the world and has uncovered vast amounts of private tapes, found the artists and issued these records for the first time on LP. He's put in a very special kind of work, a labor of love similar to this podcast, that will help people slowly realize there's a massive universe of art thriving fully outside of the central capitalist stream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S6 · E53
    Feb 27, 2025 · 1 hr 9 min

    NICK DRAKE II

    This will probably be the only sequel episode Drifter's will ever do on one artist... solely because Nick Drake has such a dense story that had never fully been told until this new book arrived ("Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack"). Pat Sansone (Wilco, Autumn Defense) joins Emil again to hash out the more difficult, back half of Nick's story and provide some light on just how quickly Nick had become mentally ill by the time he recorded Pink Moon. Joe Boyd fittingly gets the last word on Drake's legacy and helps us understand how his disappearance inadvertently set up the autonomy of the space we meet these timeless records in. Important footnote!:: the super legend that Pat refers to in his intense story at the end of this cast is Ahmet Ertegun :: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmet_Ertegun Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S6 · E52
    Feb 12, 2025 · 1 hr 3 min

    NICK DRAKE

    If something has changed you irrevocably in the past, its a kind of betrayal of yourself to not re-visit it and try to understand why. For this one I wanted to pull in one of the most sensitive and present people I know to help me out (Pat Sansone of Wilco & Autumn Defense) and he really rose to the test. I think we were able to bring Nick Drake's day to day world into focus with the excitement we felt over this new, unprecedented book in hand called 'Nick Drake : The Life' by Richard Morton Jack. This episode could function as a new kind of category I could roll out every once and awhile that's basically a full-on 'Existential History' deep-dive into someone who's true nature has been hiding in plain sight while they've been somewhat misunderstood. I feel strongly that musicians themselves should be the ones exploring the emotional terrain of the great fallen musicians because we're part of a kind of family who's given everything to be sacrificed on this altar... a beautiful but heavy gamble for sure. Maybe its a bit of the overall mission statement of this podcast to try and re-define how we see the actual humanity that lies behind art instead of just kicking back and being entertained by it. And this kind of study can also function as an expose of what it is to be a human in general. Hustling, sweating, dreaming, failing miserably and worrying endlessly... We can see ourselves in Nick Drake in many ways.. for better or worse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • #51
    Jan 29, 2025 · 1 hr

    THE TERRORISTS II

    "The Terrorists II" arrives to balance out the Mellow Soldiers of Season Six with a bit of history on resistance music and the avant-garde. It appears to be a natural part of evolution that there are dead spots and valleys in growth, where we just have to WAIT for better ideas while people take urine baths and try out experimental blood-letting procedures. So it's an important task to sweep through culture every now and again to point out that there's some massive amounts of bullshit in our bloodstream that seem to be there voluntarily. The central concept of this cast needed a name & that term ended up being "NECRO-NESIA"... an idea that means when a culture starts hitting an evolutionary dead end, it tends to turn back & consume "classic" moments of itself... forgetting to move forward at all, while having too much fun enjoying the fruits of its most obvious arrival points. So its a kind of opium addiction to GREAT MOMENTS of capitalism... and the cyclical bastardizing of art into entertainment. Does Sabrina Carpenter bring anything that wasn't already a basic tenet of the Britney Spears product 25 years ago?... 'The Terrorists II' proposes that we are living in an era where we've become unaware that all culture is becoming THROWBACK culture with no conscience of it's self-consumption. It follows that the 'Ranger' of culture becomes extremely bored of being surrounded by a lackluster celebration of things that have already happened before... and must take to the farther edges of the earth to seek out new & less stale information. This cast is in GREAT appreciation of those types... while trying to point out that just because the rides at the carnival are FUN, it doesn't mean there isn't a world of depth out there that still needs our attention to keep paving an evolutionary path. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • S6 · E50
    Jan 15, 2025 · 1 hr

    MOVING TO PORTLAND II

    This cast ties together the 90's era of our story to the current ERA.💫 (if you want some XTRA background you can re-listen to the episodes 'Moving to LA' & 'Moving to Portland' as those two set this one UP.) The opening catches listeners up to Portland, Oregon in 1999 and the emotional STATE of things... but this cast could ultimately be called "The beginning of GRAILS". The bottom line is that one often has to throw everything out the window to open up a new horizon of possibilities. And that horizon, by definition, can often begin with a pathetic and destitute situation by LAW. But from that desert floor,, grow the WEEDS that become the terrain in every hero's journey rite? This cast features a couple very special guests... Alex Hall (Grails co-founder, who's living out in Malmo, Sweden) weighs in on the frame by frame situation from his perspective. And then Emil & Alex realize that they didn't so much 'start' Grails but that their mutual friend Brad Adkins (who introduced them) forced them to start the band against their WILL. So not only do you often begin the dream out in the desert with no food or water,, but sometimes there's a GUN to yr back too.🔥🚣‍♂️🔥 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • #50
    Jul 6, 2022 · 1 hr 8 min

    BONUS EPISODE - "STEPHEN MALKMUS"

    Ever since he heard the Trigger Cut 7" in high school, Emil has been a big fan of Stephen Malkmus' contributions to the American underground. Emil stopped by Stephen's house while visiting Portland a few years ago and had a rare conversation about his younger years and early experiences in Pavement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • #49
    Jun 14, 2022 · 51 min

    BONUS EPISODE - "RON GETS FAN MAIL!"

    Ron & Emil recently began a ritual of Sunday brunching at the same family restaurant they worked at back in 1992. After a pleasant brunch Ron is granted his customary 'hard cider' and the mics are fired up. Questions were posed by listeners on Patreon and, while Ron is initially shocked that he's gotten fan mail, his storied wisdom comes rolling out just the same. It begins with the unwrapping of some rare 8-track tapes Emil's just added to his collection, which to Ron's astonishment and inevitable arousal, contains the entire Bob Dylan discography. And then when the cider eventually starts hitting, Ron regales the true, unknown story behind his friendship with the, now un-locatable, "Ecstasy Damaged Chef". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • #48
    May 17, 2022 · 1 hr 13 min

    LONER LEGENDS III

    "LONER LEGENDS III" is the final episode of Season Five & features:: *an overview of Eden Ahbez & the writing of Nature Boy* *a difficult dive into the dastardly world of John Phillips* *an overview of Alan Hull's work with Lindisfarne and his solo LPs* *a section on Basil Kirchin and his pioneering of 'ambient music'* Thanks so much for listening Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • May 3, 2022 · 54 min

    FOUR WALLS

    Emil has a mid-life crisis... and records it. This episode is a sequel to "The Outsider", the other purely philosophical episode that anchored Drifter's Sympathy into a hardcore existentialist stance. This cast uses the holy trinity of American Country Music, Taoism and the Twilight Zone to illustrate our fruitless attempt to resolve the perpetually unfinished nature of consciousness itself. In the form of a classic Existentialist thesis, 'Four Walls' puts forward that escapism only erodes what integrity and strength we have... and that the only way forward is straight through the murk & confusion directly. At the very least, you'll never hear the song "Hello Walls" the same again... and at the very best, this cast helps demonstrate why Kurtz's last words in 'Heart of Darkness' are "The horror, The horror." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • #46
    Apr 19, 2022 · 1 hr 13 min

    THE DAWN OF SELFISH MUSIC II

    The sequel of "THE DAWN OF SELFISH MUSIC" goes a little darker into the consequences of gaining total freedom. On the other side of this new frontier, Dylan finds people breaking into his house to find their leader, Miles Davis tries to shake off imitators chasing his every aesthetic move and a never-ending supply of drugs causes David Crosby's life to fully crash and burn. Gene Clark is the patron saint of this episode, while managing to commit various sins no saint has ever conceived of. If this particular cast ever seems overly negative, its really just an attempt to grapple with the true ugliness that went on behind the making of some of our favorite music. Because treating that music as a product alone doesn't really honor the spiritual confusion that came alongside the "me generation" and selfish music's announcement that anything was now fair game. When does being too selfish cause total destruction...? - All of the characters in this episode flirt with total freedom and some don't make it out.🔥 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • #45
    Apr 5, 2022 · 1 hr 6 min

    THE LECTURER II

    Duncan Trussell returns to Drifter's Sympathy for the continuation of "The Lecturer". Emil and Duncan get into the archaeology of their friendship, their early development and how they were molded by completely different forms of trauma to come to a similar internal place. The second half dives into their artistic process and how Taoist methods have helped lead them towards creating their body of work over the years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • #44
    Mar 22, 2022 · 1 hr 11 min

    THE DAWN OF SELFISH MUSIC

    Tracing back to the beginnings of when music on the radio began to slowly fracture and morph in the late 50's, Emil returns to a small fleet of songwriters in the Teen Heartthrob era that began to dream of a coming world of freedom and evolution in the art of songform. Driven by the seizing of a personal power outside of the need to please the crowd, these writers leaked actual emotions into their recordings which set the stage for bands like the Beatles to flex an intellectualism that couldn't have been hypothesized a few years before. This setting is established by the epic meeting of Bobby Vee and Bob Dylan in a record store in Fargo, North Dakota in 1959. Dylan lasts two weeks in Vee's band after greatly misrepresenting his skill set and then Bobby Vee goes on to become an international superstar without him, showing Dylan that the dream is really possible. Then when Dylan makes his return to the market with a fully developed image, he ends up eviscerating Bobby Vee's entire genre and the world would never be the same. This is part one of "the Dawn of Selfishness". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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