Mar 18, 2026 · 1 hr 20 min · 10 segments
For the 45th anniversary of The Soft Boys’ influential second album, Underwater Moonlight, we take a detailed look at how it was made. When Robyn Hitchcock first started a band in Cambridge, England…
Robyn HitchcockGuest
Dan NordheimHostThey feed your pride with boredom and they lead you on to war The way you treat each other really makes me feel real
The whole new wave punk thing, everybody had to kind of cut their hair and speed up.
A lot of people kind of bleached out their Beatles roots, you know, so groups like XTC and Elvis Costello and the Attractions and Squeeze.
I think of them all as basically Beatle bands, but they all started out sounding quite punky.
or at least kind of sped up and angsty you know and then once those days had worn off their beetleisms began to come out more and the same went for us i suppose but we didn't do such a a big job of disguising it as soon as matthew was in there really i was trying to write i was quite happily trying to write beatles songs as i got better as a songwriter you know that still is what writing Pop rock is about you know, there was a group called the records and Virgin who were inclined the same way and they'd been big star who had also been rather overlooked because what they in the early 70s what they were doing didn't fit with what everybody else was doing in the Early 70s, you know, they were still trying to do jangly Pop, you know big star always reminded me of the birds really and and Yeah, the birds were another big influence on On us the Beach Boys on Morris particularly and we all love the Beatles Yeah, I mean it was Bob Dylan really but I put myself through a Syd Barrett filter because he was English and I'd from the age of 15 or whatever I'd wanted to be a I Wanted to follow in Dylan's footsteps in some way which eventually led me to Nashville, you know, but I I was very struck by listening to Syd Barrett solo records when I was just coming up for 19 and And that, I kind of marinated myself in that.
My favorite lyricists were Sid Barrett, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Captain Beefheart, who I thought was fantastic with words, you know, that he was the one with his kind of dictatorial cult treatment of these young musicians, which was cruel and, you know, abusive.
But he also managed to somehow create music that was as odd and original and... discordant as the lyrics.
The other people, Dylan and The Beatles and even Sid, their music was a bit straighter.
But Beefheart and the Magic Band, the music was apparently fractured or fragmented or free range or liberating or however you want to put it as the words.
So I was not going to leap overboard when Johnny Rotten sang Anarchy in the UK or, you know, i'm friends with some of the damned but you know that stuff didn't take me over or the clash i was you know sorry folks i don't believe that music began in 1977. i've waved that flag very very proudly and very high and you know got a bit of flack for it
upon the media and everything you read They tell you your opinions and they're very good indeed
They feed your pride with boredom and they lead you on to war The way you treat each other really makes me feel real
The whole new wave punk thing, everybody had to kind of cut their hair and speed up.
A lot of people kind of bleached out their Beatles roots, you know, so groups like XTC and Elvis Costello and the Attractions and Squeeze.
I think of them all as basically Beatle bands, but they all started out sounding quite punky.
or at least kind of sped up and angsty you know and then once those days had worn off their beetleisms began to come out more and the same went for us i suppose but we didn't do such a a big job of disguising it as soon as matthew was in there really i was trying to write i was quite happily trying to write beatles songs as i got better as a songwriter you know that still is what writing Pop rock is about you know, there was a group called the records and Virgin who were inclined the same way and they'd been big star who had also been rather overlooked because what they in the early 70s what they were doing didn't fit with what everybody else was doing in the Early 70s, you know, they were still trying to do jangly Pop, you know big star always reminded me of the birds really and and Yeah, the birds were another big influence on On us the Beach Boys on Morris particularly and we all love the Beatles Yeah, I mean it was Bob Dylan really but I put myself through a Syd Barrett filter because he was English and I'd from the age of 15 or whatever I'd wanted to be a I Wanted to follow in Dylan's footsteps in some way which eventually led me to Nashville, you know, but I I was very struck by listening to Syd Barrett solo records when I was just coming up for 19 and And that, I kind of marinated myself in that.
My favorite lyricists were Sid Barrett, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Captain Beefheart, who I thought was fantastic with words, you know, that he was the one with his kind of dictatorial cult treatment of these young musicians, which was cruel and, you know, abusive.
But he also managed to somehow create music that was as odd and original and... discordant as the lyrics.
The other people, Dylan and The Beatles and even Sid, their music was a bit straighter.
But Beefheart and the Magic Band, the music was apparently fractured or fragmented or free range or liberating or however you want to put it as the words.
So I was not going to leap overboard when Johnny Rotten sang Anarchy in the UK or, you know, i'm friends with some of the damned but you know that stuff didn't take me over or the clash i was you know sorry folks i don't believe that music began in 1977. i've waved that flag very very proudly and very high and you know got a bit of flack for it
upon the media and everything you read They tell you your opinions and they're very good indeed
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