My Ears Through the Years with Laurie Rowan

Hello and welcome back to My Ears Through the Years! Your favourite series where we ask amazing individuals in the industry about the songs that have soundtracked their lives; the tunes and tracks that have got them through the good, the great, and the first slow dance. 

This week the ears belong to animator, illustrator, and director extraordinaire, Laurie Rowan! Represented by Nexus, Laurie is known for his distinctive style and unique approach to characterization. But what was Laurie slow dancing to in primary school? And, more importantly, who is Akon’s Dad?! Let’s get into it… 

Q> Hi Laurie! Tell us, what was your first memory of music… 

Laurie> I remember us having a VHS of songs recorded from TV that had mostly been recorded over with Watership Down. So I remember the combo of ‘Bright Eyes’ by Art Garfunkel fizzling out to the latter half of ‘Can You Feel It’ by The Jackson Five. I remember walking around the house singing the accidental transition verbatim: “Bright eyes, burning like fire BZZZZZZZUUUURRRPPPP …Feel it, eeeee, can you feel it!” 

Q> What was the first music you bought yourself… 

Laurie> I went out with my friend Alan and we pooled together and bought ‘Deeper Underground’ by Jamiroquai and ‘Lost in Space Theme’ by Apollo 440. We shared them on rotation, but I mainly listened to ‘Deeper Underground’.

Q> Your first gig…

Laurie> I used to go to Glastonbury with my parents in the early 90s and have very vague memories of The Levellers, Youssou N’Dour, The Orb and REM. The first gig I chose to go to myself was Idlewild in Liverpool in 2000. 

Q> A song that comes into your head at any moment.. 

Laurie> ‘Burning Down the House’ by Talking Heads or ‘Children Talking’ by Aphex Twin (which is basically children saying ‘mash potatoes’).

Q> A song you had your first slow dance to…

Laurie> I remember someone playing ‘Killing Me Softly’ at a school disco in primary school. I still cringe about the way I mimed “one time” while catching someone’s eye who telegraphed very clearly, that I looked very lame and self-conscious.

Q> A song you felt you couldn’t escape from…

Laurie> In another Michael Jackson related memory, we had ‘Thriller’ on VHS. We also lived in an old house with dodgy doorhandles that would come off in your hand if you didn’t apply enough downward pressure while turning. My older sisters knew I was terrified of ‘Thriller’, with the creaking door sound effects and when he turns with his cat’s eyes. So they used to put the video on then leg it out of the room removing the doorhandles as they went so that I was locked in with it. Years later I went through a massive Michael Jackson phase, which I now put down to some form of musical Stockholm Syndrome. 

Q> A song you grew up with … 

Laurie> ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’ by They Might Be Giants is the first one that comes to mind, that was our car music, along with ‘King of Rock and Roll’ by Prefab Sprout. I still have a lot of affection for those. My sisters also played a lot of Susan Vega in the car which I found torturous at the time and I still can’t listen to ‘Tom’s Diner’.

Q> A song you’d enter the stage to… 

Laurie> I used to play quite an aggressive stand up character called Chapsome Bear and used to walk out to ‘Hustle Bones’ by Death Grips.

Q> Your dancefloor anthem…

Laurie> Probably ‘Around the World’ by Daft Punk, I’ve never tired of it or not been glad to hear it when it comes on.

Q> Your go to karaoke number…

Laurie> I’ve actually never done Karaoke, but I was briefly in a band at school (before being thrown out for poor time keeping) and I used to sing ‘In Bloom’ by Nirvana, mainly. Now I think it would be ‘Falling Down’ (mimicking the live version from Glitter and Doom) by Tom Waits, because that’s the only register I can sing in.

Q> Your musical guilty pleasure… 

Laurie> I’ve got an inherited one – ‘I Love Your Smile’ by Shanice. My Dad had it on cassette and would play it every couple of weeks. But not casually. He would stand in front of the stereo and actively listen, motionlessly. Sometimes we’d walk in a mock him, because it was a complete outlier to the rest of his taste. He would adamantly defend it saying ‘it’s just great pop’. He wouldn’t classify it as a guilty pleasure, but I would, still like it though.

Q> A song that remind you of home… 

Laurie> ‘Tinseltown in The Rain’ by The Blue Nile reminds me of home. My Dad always found it very emotionally resonant because it’s deeply sincere and he could see his own feelings of fatherhood reflected in it. As a father myself now, it’s something I can only listen to sparingly because it’s an absolute emotional battering. That and Sneaker Pimps, we listened to that a lot growing up.

Q> Music that you’ve grown to love… 

Laurie> I never got The Fall growing up, but now I like them (him) a lot and that is a relatively recent thing, probably sparked by all the replays when Mark E Smith died. I think I’m a lot more immediately dismissive of music I don’t like now, which is an unfortunate product of the abundance of music available now. There was a pleasure in learning to begrudgingly like an album you regretted paying £11 out of a sense of duty.

There was a lot of music in my household growing up. A really formative taste defining moment was finding a Warp Records mixtape called Bletch when I was about 10. It came with a magazine and had been dismissed by everyone else in my household, but I was really drawn in by the abrasive cover art. I remember it being the first music I heard that was strange and off kilter in a way that I kind of felt a kinship with. It was the first thing I was exposed to that I consciously aspired to understand. I think it instilled in me a love of, I guess, odd music which has evolved into a love of music that is recorded and sung badly with a lot of soul.

Q> A song you wish you wrote…

Laurie> ‘Life In A Scotch Sittingroom 2 Episode 11’ by Ivor Cutler. I think it speaks to my desire to create a tone. It’s simple, experiential and comes from an unmistakably singular perspective and yet is universal (just read that back, uh-oh twat alert). A whole childhood and wilderness rendered in the documentation of a single family walk.

Q> Your musical unpopular opinion…

Laurie> I can’t speak to its universal acclaim, but I’ve always had a distinct dislike of ‘Love Shack’ by The B52s. The guy’s back of the throat hype man schtick (‘love shack bay bay!’) can absolutely do one.

Q> A song you think is underrated… 

Laurie> I really like a song called ‘Ayo Ayo Nene’ by Mor Thaim. He has 3,455 monthly listeners on Spotify whereas his son, Akon has over 28 million. ‘Smack That’ is not the better song.

Q> Your desert island disc… 

Laurie> ‘This Must Be The Place’ by Talking Heads. It was the first dance at my wedding and it makes me happy every time I hear it.

Q> The song you want played at your funeral… 

Laurie> ‘Daisies of The Galaxy’ by Eels. If we’re going for wistful. ‘Paga Le Cuenta Sinverguenza’ by Manzanita if happy, depends on the circumstances. I’ll make someone else deal with that choice.

Q> Best sync moment… 

Laurie> I loved ‘Where Is My Mind’ at the end of Fight Club and it started a big Pixies phase for me.

Q> Music that made an ad campaign… 

Laurie> This is a really obvious one but ‘Phat Planet’ by Leftfield on the Guinness advert. 

Q> Best theme song…

Laurie> Succession (Main Title Theme) or Sorry! Matt Berry version. 

Q> Favourite soundtrack or score… 

Laurie> Probably the soundtrack to Thief by Tangerine Dream or Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters by Philip Glass.

Q> A track you’d love to sync… 

Laurie> ‘Make 1, 2’ by Arthur Russell. At the moment. It’s got a nice soul and wonkiness to it with lots of little horn flourishes to hang things off. I often compose little choreographed sequences in my head for my characters to perform to and I often get lost visualising this one. If you asked me tomorrow it’d be different.