We need to talk about Graham

 

Graham Norton needs to go from our Eurovision presentation. He sounded bored, jaded and like he’d rather have been somewhere else last night and he is also rather rude. He needs to remember that it’s a show with 200 million viewers around the globe so has to appeal to a very broad demographic. Slagging off the comic skits isn't a good look, especially when they're being delivered by women trying to make the best of appealing to the sense of humour of a multitude of nationalities and cultures. Maybe there aren't enough A-list Hollywood actors on the show for him to giggle along with. Oh, that's right, there aren't ANY A-list Hollywood actors at this show. That's one of his problems; he never comes across as a Man Of the People. 

Also, his undisguised disdain for any kind of rock music is pretty condescending. Guess what, Graham, rock music is still pretty popular in Europe. And does he actually LIKE music? I realise that a liking of music isn't exactly a prerequisite of having absolutely anything to do with the Eurovision Song Contest but surely it helps?

I will give him his due, though, he was measured and balanced when introducing the Israeli entry. He didn't shy away from mentioning that their continued presence in the competition is a cause of much debate but also spoke about the human element of the whole thing (even though he didn't say anything about the Israeli entrant, Yuval Raphael, being part of the October 7th attacks, sustaining shrapnel injuries and having to play dead for eight hours).

Can we also lay the ghost of Terry Wogan to rest? The last time he commentated was in 2008 and he’s been dead for nearly a decade. A large number of under 25s watch Eurovision and won’t have a clue who he is.

The UK commentary needs to be a lot more positive and to actually get into the whole spirit of the thing.

The UK presentation of the event needs a big reset. A new commentator please. Preferably one who actually likes Eurovision. And British. A woman maybe? Hannah Waddingham? Sara Cox? Mel Giedroyc?

How many hours…?

This is a really interesting piece that I've linked to at the bottom of this post. I sometimes find it exhausting, all this talk of seasons and hours and hours of the same telly programme. I find it all overwhelming sometimes and wonder where people find the time to sit and get invested in these things. There's currently a few things on the streaming sites that I'm interested in but I just think "Where am I going to find the time to watch ALL of that?"

I say this as someone who has, this past week, watched and enjoyed something I haven't seen for over thirty years. Take Me Home was a three part series produced by the BBC in 1989 and shown over three consecutive weeks. Nobody demanded to see the next one straight away. You had to wait. For seven days. 

And the story, of a love affair between two married people of a large age difference, was begun and ended within three hours of television. It didn't need to be stretched out to ten hours or go to six series. It started and ended in three hours. 

I heard this week that the BBC are considering bringing back Play For Today,/The Wednesday Play. How wonderful would that be? A story told within 70/80/90 minutes. When one looks at old Play For Today/The Wednesday Play did anyone demand another seven hours of Cathy Come Home, Up the Junction, Abigail's Party, Blue Remembered Hills, Penda's Fen, Kisses At Fifty, East of Ipswich, Sunset Across the Bay, The Firm or Nuts in May? No, they didn't. Tell your story succinctly but with impact.

Sidebar: despite the pic on this Substack post, I LOVED Mad Men and didn’t want it to end. I could also never understand why Joan or Peggy didn’t get their own spinoff show set in the 1970s.

https://open.substack.com/pub/joelmorris/p/homeopathic-storytelling?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Tolkien the pee

 

Happy World Read a Book Day to all who celebrate!

This is my current reading. I had any love for The Hobbit beaten out of me at primary school when one of our teachers decided to read it to us. Clobber us over the head with it, more like. I think we were slightly too young and I never took to it. She would have been at teacher's training college in the early-mid 70s when Tolkein was all the rage, what with him being an influence on the lyrics of a load of the rock bands at the time.

So all of those Peter Jackson films passed me by. "Bloody fantasy crap" was what I thought about those.

Fast forward to about a month ago and I'm listening to a podcast and the guest is talking about an adaptation of an abridged The Hobbit that she had as a child, that was on a double album and read by the actor Nichol Williamson. They played clips from it on the podcast and were talking in general about other non-Jackson adaptations of The Hobbit. What was mentioned was the 1979 Jackanory adaptation which celebrated the 500th Jacaknory story and was told over two weeks and with four actors, which included Bernard Cribbins and Jan Francis. I distinctly remember that, and they sat around a camp fire while they told the story. So I thought "Why aren't I into this? It's about things I love: folk tales, mountainous landscapes, runic symbols, adventure etc. And it's been a massive influence on a load of music I like and directly referenced by both Led Zeppelin and Rush. And I'm also into old telly" so I thought I'd look to see if the Jackanory adaptation was on YouTube. But of course the Tolkien estate is rather controlling, so it isn't.

However, what is on Spotify is the album version that was talked about on the podcast. So I thought I'd listen to it. And do you know, I really rather enjoyed it. So I bought the book. And I'm actually reading Tolkien. This is a slippery slope to The Lord Of the Rings, isn't it?

Supermarket car park reviews: Steven Wilson

 This week's supermarket car park retrospective review.

Narrator's voice: "To the Bone didn't get to no.1 on the week of release. The no.1 album that week was some estate of Elvis Presley cash-in to mark 40 years of his death which was heavily promoted in supermarkets. Back when supermarkets sold CDs"

Forgot to mention in the video that when we saw the tour to promote this LP at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, Robert Fripp and Toyah bloody Willcox were in the foyer having a drink during the interval. They’re only slightly taller than The Borrowers.

https://youtu.be/rYth2CpRawk?si=sXBhIusdgRFibPXo

Commotion At a Book Festival

Lovely afternoon and evening at Newark Book Festival. First up talking all things ABBA was Giles Smith. He wrote one of my favourite books about music, Lost In Music. I have two first editions of that book but couldn't find either of them when I looked last night so bought the new, updated edition at the festival for him to sign.

Then this evening a great time with one of my favourite writers, Nottinghamshire's own - via Devon - Tom Cox. And he knew who I was! He said to me "Are you the Rich who runs the vinyl club? I wondered if you'd be here". How cool is that!? I've told him via socials before, but reiterated again tonight, that if he wants to come and do a presentation at Vinyl Sundays when he's up here visiting his parents, then he's always welcome. And Vinyl Sundays sounds miles better than the record club he goes to in Exeter. What a lovely man. Plus there's a free bookmark made by his very talented mum. And he brings all the hippy chicks to the yard.

I also bought a copy of his latest, yet to be released, novel, 1983. I helped crowdfund it, so another copy will be coming through the door on publication day in August.

 

Spirit

Interesting evening in Sheffield on Monday when I attended a talk and Q&A by the biographer of Talk Talk's Mark Hollis, Ben Wardle. The evening also included a playback of Talk Talk's most celebrated LP, Spirit of Eden.

These author events are becoming more and more popular which matches the large increase of books about pop, and indeed, rock music. 

1988 was a torrid year for popular music. Stock, Aitken & Waterman and dreck like Bros seemingly had a stranglehold on the charts. Spirit of Eden is such an anomaly of the time because unlike virtually everything else, it didn't contain things like a synthesiser, sequencers, click tracks, gated drums etc. I'd say that the only instruments on Spirit of Eden that requires electricity to reach its potential is the Hammond organ, electric guitar and maybe an electric bass guitar used sparingly. There is an electronic instrument on the LP called a variophone but then again, that's something else about Spirit of Eden - the instruments used that are so far outside the bounds of what rock records normally contained. I mean do you know what a shozygs is? Well, you can hear one being played on Spirit of Eden.

It was recorded in an unorthodox manner too. Hollis and co-producer and co-writer Tim Friese-Green would have a basic idea of what they wanted and would then bring in a whole range of session musicians to play whatever they felt like over a very sparse backing track, and in darkness with just a strobe light or oil projector for light. Quite often, when these musicians had left, Hollis would decree that "it didn't feel right" and delete hours and hours of recordings. 

I mean, how do you decide what is right? What was it within him that made him decide that only three notes of Danny Thompson's double bass would be used out of hours of recordings? 

And yet the album works completely. It's so massively understated. For 80% of the vocal, Hollis's voice barely registers above a whisper. Even the band photo on the cover is deliberately obscure.

I have a funny relationship with Spirit of Eden. When it was released, in 1988, I was 17 and a fan of TT's earlier more synthpop albums and also their excellent album from 1986, The Colour of Spring, their real breakthrough album in the UK (although they'd been very popular in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands before then).

I think I was far too young for Spirit of Eden in 1988. I bought it on cassette because I had the luxury in those days of being able to walk to work and would use a Walkman to help me on my way. I recall thinking at the time "What the hell is this? Where's the hooks and choruses?" I really didn't like it. I listened to it once put the tape in a drawer and never touched it again.

Then, in around 2000, a funny thing happened - Q magazine gave away a cover mount CD that was themed around chill out, which was all the rage at the time. Included on that CD were tracks by Goldfrapp (the first time I'd ever heard them) and a lovely song called Underneath the Weeping Willow by the Radcliffe & Riley endorsed American band, Grandaddy.

Also in this CD was a track from Spirit of Eden called Inheritance. And that's when it struck. That's when Spirit of Eden hit for me. Inheritance has this strange woodwind instrumental section that is hugely reminiscent of music that Oliver Postgate would use in Ivor the Engine or The Clangers. Kiddies telly is a weird way into an album as important as Spirit of Eden but that's what struck me. I needed to go back and listen to it again. So the cassette came out of storage and that's when the whole album revealed itself to me. I needed to be nearly 30 and not 17. I was too immature to understand it.

There's a lesson there - if something doesn't hit immediately then leave it and go back to it, years, or even decades later. That's why I try again, annually, with Jeff Buckley's Grace. It's yet to have any kind of impact on me but I'm patient. 

Talk Talk were signed to EMI with the hope that they would be the next Duran Duran. Can you imagine Simon Le Bon writing a lyric like this:

"Desire, whispered, spoken

In time

Rivers oceans

That ain't me babe

I'm just content to relax

Than drown within myself

Of mind

Sheltered broken

Denied

Gifted stolen

Ain't got a bed of excuse for myself

That ain't me babe" 

Hungry Like the Wolf, it ain't. The understatement at work in that lyric is just perfection.

It most definitely isn't a record for everyone but when it does reveal itself to you, you're in for life. My companion on Monday was saying that it isn't something he listens to much, not because he doesn't like it, quite the opposite, but because it isn't that sort of LP that one would listen to all the time. You need to make time for it and give it your full attention. It's also hard to take any of the tracks out of context. The album was intended to be listened to as two separate pieces of music - Side 1 and Side 2.

Oh, and the joke's on Ben Wardle - I haven't bought the book twice; my original first edition was a gift.

 

Cue the Music

It's with a tinge of sadness that I read that the next issue of Q magazine is to be the final edition. Q is a magazine that I started reading when I was 17 and had a disposable income in my pocket. Smash Hits, as excellent as it was, I'd outgrown, the 'inkies' like NME and Melody Maker always seemed to take thmeselves far too seriously while Kerrang! just seemed rather childish (and there's a whole other post in how hard rock and heavy metal in the media is dished up to the fans). So Q came along at just the right time as my interest in music was growing massively with its mix of what we now call 'legacy acts' and pushing the hot new darlings. There was also a sense of humour at work, which I wouldn't expect any less with former Smash Hits editor Mark Ellen at the helm.
So yeah, I'd found my mag. Each month I'd devour the mag from cover-to-cover, learning about the aforementioned legacy acts like The Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd while looking to see what was new and exciting with the expansive Q Review which covered everything from albums to films to books. I'm not entirely sure but did they invent the star rating system? At the very least they popularised it. A one star review was always much more fun to read than a five star (complete with red stars to emphasise how great this thing was) because you knew the reviewer had put the boot in. This was 30 odd years before the admirable 'be kind' movement. It was the 80s and despite Live Aid, people weren't particularly kind.
Ah yes, Live Aid. Would Q have existed without the events of July 13th 1985? Probably but not in the form it went on to take - Live Aid validated the appreciation of artists whose best work was released perhaps ten to twenty years earlier. So it's no great surprise that McCartney appeared on the cover of issue 1 and the likes of the revitalised Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and Mick and Keef were regular cover stars in the first decade of its publishing life.
Then, bouyed by the success of Q, the publishers decided to launch Mojo. I think this diluted the brand somewhat. The legacy acts that had their place in Q were now on the cover of Mojo, so Q's shift was then on to the newer artists. To me that wasn't what Q was about. It was supposed to be 'the modern guide to music and more'. So as much as I wanted to read about Radiohead or PJ Harvey I also wanted to read about Fairport Convention or The Isley Brothers. I resented that I was being ased to buy two magazines. So I didn't.
I stuck doggedly with Q until 1997 when my circumstances changed - I had my first mortgage and percieved luxuries like glossy magazines were put on the backburner - I remember the last issue I bought as a matter of course clearly: the issue where the Oasis album Be Here Now was given a five star review. Now I know that artists are much more receptive to giving a magazine more access if that mag is seen as being on board with the product but five stars for Be Here Now? Really? Britpop was already going down the dumper and this lumpen, rambling, overlong, cocaine-fuelled muscal travesty was surely no serious music journalists idea of a five star album, was it? That was where the mag lost some cred with me.
So I did buy the odd issue when I could afford it or if there was something I really wanted to read in it. In fact for quite a while I hardly bought any music magazines regularly. Then the team that brought us Q originally then brought us The Word (or just Word as it was back then, not the definite article). Now this was the very magazine for me: legacy acts? Yes! Newer acts? Yes! Decent review section? Yes! Funny? Yes!
And then, sadly, The Word left us. But that had rekindled my love of music magazines. So I now subscribe to Prog and regularly (not every issue but regularly enough) buy Mojo (I finally succumbed,), Uncut, Classic Rock and Record Collector. Cherish these things and buy them because it's no good lamenting them when they're on the way out. Buy the physical copies. Don't be like the person I heard on a podcast a few months ago say that he no longer bought music magazines "because someone invented the internet". In all spheres physical product is king, streaming services whether that be Spotify, Netflix or Apple can and will pull things down and not bother paying the creatives their worth. Nobody discovered The Incredible String Band because they clicked a link on Pitchfork.

The photo up there is of the first Q I bought. So I was a regular for nearly a decade. Not bad going.

Percy

There's a good documentary to be made about Rockfield Studios to be made. Sadly, the one shown in BBC4 on Saturday night wasn't it. Dave Edmunds, the guy who made the studios name, was only shown in a brief clip and as much as I'm not fussed about Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody was talked about only in passing. However, we did get treated to Liam Gallagher effin' and jeffin' for ages and Chris Martin droning on about the gestation of Yellow. Which was nice*...

I was listening to a podcast the other week that claimed Robert Fripp had 'won' rock music: he's very highly respected, lives in a nice house and is clearly still able to make a substantial living from his work. Sadly for him, he  has the misfortune to be married to Toyah Willcox so no, Bob hasn't 'won' rock music. I'll tell you who has, another Robert and a contributor to the Rockfield film, Robert Plant. He's filthy rich, can pick and choose what he does, people are still interested in his output, can sell tickets, can and does tell Jimmy Page to do one, retains a highly approachable everyman image which sees him sitting in the stands with all the other punters at football and, crucially, he ISN'T married to Toyah Willcox.
So why not give this a watch instead of the Rockfield film?

*It WASN'T nice.

Concision

On Saturday night we watched This Is Spinal Tap, a film which clips along and lasts barely 75 minutes. We then watched Letter to Brezhnev which lasts just over 90 minutes. I've also been listening to a podcast about the third greatest film of the 1980s, An American Werewolf in London, which has a running time of 97 minutes. No film needs to last more than 105 minutes at the very most. Reservoir Dogs lasts 99 minutes which is the perfect length. Tarantino's latest film lasts for over 160 minutes. Why? Films are too long these days. If you need your film to last more than an hour and three quarters then turn into a TV series. And don't get me even started on The Irishman. Difference there is that at least you can watch that at home if you're one of these people with Netflix, so you can at least get up and have a walk around.

Rocket Man, the Elton John biopic could have done with some serious editing, knocking at least 20 minutes off it. I was well square-arsed when we came out of the pictures. I'm currently reading Elton's autobiography, as well as being a right rollicking read, we've already met Bernie Taupin by page 50, he's slayed the American glitterati by page 70 and the entire book is out of your way in less than 350 pages. Brevity in all things is what I now demand. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to. Films lasting far too long is what puts me off going to the pictures these days. I'm nearly 50, life is short, I have other things to do.

I like what this band do. They do prog, but hardly any of their songs last more than three and a half minutes. Which is nice. For prog.

h

Worzel

Worzel Gummidge was a fantastic meditation on our countryside, it's lore, tradition and on how we should look after it. And with actual jokes. Mackenzie Crook clearly loves the British Isles but loves it in the right way, not by using a flag or national identity but by celebrating what we have and our luck at the complete accident that we live here. Long may he be be given money to make funny, educational, inclusive and entertaining television. We live in a beautiful country with some truly wonderful people in it, it's fantastic to be reminded of that every now and again.

I want you...

...to attend Flying Vinyl no.5.
Our next Flying Vinyl session on November 24th will feature, just after the time of its 50th birthday, the final LP The Beatles recorded, Abbey Road. Produced at a time when personal and business relationships within the band were coming under strain, musically they were never stronger and more collaborative (all four band members feature on lead vocals and writing credits) which resulted in one of their very finest albums. We'd love it if you could join us and celebrate a significant anniversary of a milestone LP.

Newark Thrill Pt.2

I'll be doing my vinyl thing in Newark again this Sunday, Newark folk. It would be great to see you there.

Bright Ambassador Adoring

Well now, I received some very welcome news today - one of my favourite bands of the last fifteen years are getting back together after having been on a break since 2011. Pure Reason Revolution were my band from about 2005 onwards. This band were pivotal in getting me back into music after other concerns (mortgages, decorating, DIY, idiotic in-laws, my dad's death and life in general) had led me away from it in any meaningful sense in the previous decade. At the time I was with a long term partner, she was the kind of person who would ask "Haven't you got enough records now?". She was a teacher who had an arty disposition so I would never have dreamt of saying to her "Haven't you got enough pens now?"

Go back fourteen years, I was bored working the late shift one night. This was the time when Mark Radcliffe had a late night show on Radio 2 that ran from 10pm to midnight. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love Radcliffe as a broadcaster and I think his shows are always worth listening to. This night he just happened to say "I'm going to play a record now by a band called Pure Reason Revolution. This record has got echoes of Pink Floyd all over it. In fact they studied at what used to be called Regent Street Polytechnic which is where the members of Floyd met each other. I'm going to play an edited version of their new single, which lasts for over nine minutes, which is why I'm editing it. It's called The Bright Ambassadors of Morning". He was right about being influenced by Pink Floyd, the title even riffs off a line in Floyd's Echoes. I vividly remember how Radcliffe introduced the record because in the early days of catch-up radio, I revisited that part of the show over and over again during the following week just so I could hear this music which I felt had been written specifically for me. It pushed all of my buttons. I just loved everything about it: the different sections, the harmonies, the drums, the huge riff, even the length of it. This record changed my life. I just had to have this record as soon as possible. I knew that no record shop around here was going to stock such a niche thing so I tentatively made my first purchase from Amazon (sorry, I knew not what I was doing). A few days later a CD single of The Bright Ambassadors of Morning fell onto the doormat. I couldn't believe I now actually owned this piece of music and wouldn't have to listen to it over the internet (how times have changed, eh?). This record became my obsession, I needed to know everything about this band and find whatever else they had out there. This being 2005, MySpace was all the rage, so I set up a profile and found PRR. Turns out that PRR consisted of some friends from Reading (some of whom had been to the old Regent Street Poly) and one of them had been a member of a band made up of schoolgirls called Period Pains who got a bit of press coverage in 1997 when John Peel made their anti-Spice-Girls single his record of the week. And guess what, through MySpace, I found that other people out there liked this band too. Who knew? That was my first foray onto any kind of social media.
So what now? I had to have whatever else this band had out on release. So the CD of their one-off single for Alan Magee's post-Creation label Poptones, which was called Apprentice of the Universe arrived. And what do you know, that track and all the 'b-sides' were great too. This band were hitting the spot for me. A few months later, when they were getting ready to release their debut album The Dark Third, they were out on the road supporting Manchester prog-metallers Oceansize, so I just thought, sod it, I'm going to see this band (she didn't want to come, of course). So I did. On my own. My first time at Nottingham's Rock City in what felt like donkey's years. And they were great. And I got to the front. And I bought everything else they did after that (two more albums) and saw them twice more. One of those times was on their farewell tour, sadly. But I didn't need to ask permission to go because by that time I'd split with the teacher and was living on my own in a flat and had met the woman who was to become my wife who means everything to me and who shares my passion for music and performance. Which kind of felt like a natural end for the band from my point of view - they'd shown me another way, I followed it, was all the better for it and made a massive change. The power of music had pulled me back in. I had left a relationship that was going nowhere because if you love music as much as this, why would you be with someone who asks if you have enough records? Or be with someone who has absolutely zero interest in the things you're interested in? Besides, I was fed-up of being on my own all the time, at home (both her job and her hobby trumped everything) and at gigs.

Anyway, The Bright Ambassadors of Morning, then. I know it's not everyone's cup o' tea but surely if you love music then you know how it feels to totally connect with something (at the risk of sounding wanky). Here's the video for it, which was on the "Enhanced CD" (remember them?) single. There's a scene in Gregory's Girl where Gregory's sister orders this fluorescent green milkshake thing in Wimpy and she explains that the best bit is just before it hits your tongue, in short, the anticipation. Waiting for that moment. That moment for me hits at about 8m 30s in this video. You're just waiting for it - the headbanging section. The anticipation is better than the moment. You know its coming and that feeling is better than anything else. And that's music for me.



And here they are performing it on the German TV show Rockpalast:



So that's it, they're back together. I can't wait to hear what they have in store.

And now you know why I'm Bright Ambassador.

New(ark) Thrill!

People of Newark, I start a new listening experience in the town this coming Sunday. Why not come along, full details below.

He's gawn completely Radio Rental

So here I am watching coverage of the 1979 general election coverage on the BBC Parliament channel (which includes the news read by Richard Baker right at the start, which is worth the price of admission alone), and the complete Eighventiesness of it reminded me of this ghost sign that I noticed in town on Saturday. A more recent shop has closed, removed their signage and uncovered this. Funny how there are a certain subset of high street shops that have now completely disappeared. Did you rent a television? My parents did right up until the beginning of the 1990s. There were all the big hitters here in Newark: Granada (where ours came from. The televisions were always modelled as Granada Finlandia. As the name suggests they were manufactured in Finland, I think possibly by a name that would become ubiquitous in the 90s and 2000s, Nokia), DER and the above mentioned Radio Rentals. I also think that electrical retailers Wigfalls (where you could also buy records) and Rumbelows rented TV sets. We had them all here, long gone now of course. Even Dixons/Currys no longer have a presence in the town centre.
Renting electrical items hasn't gone away though. I was watching television the other night (a Panasonic 32" HD smart TV purchased from, ahem, Sainbury's, if you're interested, most definitely not rented) that the online electrical retailer AO are now offering rentals for low-income households on washing machines with a view to rolling the service out to other electrical goods. As it happens Mrs Ambassador found a receipt yesterday for her grandparents' television which was purchased in 1990 for £300, about the same amount you'd pay today for an equivalent set. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

Air bridge

When I was a kiddywink, this picture of a Jaguar being loaded on to an aeroplane fascinated me. The thought that you could load up a car on a plane and go on holiday somewhere overseas was just mind-blowing, especially when the memory of a Hillman Super Minx estate (it wasn't particularly 'super') constantly overheating on the way to Cornwall burned bright in your mind. I doubt the Aviation Traders ATL-98 Carvair with its piston engines would have spluttered its way much further than Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam - and Dad was NEVER going to take US to France* - but the thought of it was rather nice.

Inside the book the same aircraft shares its page with the Vulcan. Which is perfectly correct.

* The last  holiday he ever had was actually in Paris, Dad fans.

Radio, radio

I don't know if you recall but last August some damn fool gave me an hour to play some records that I'd bought from charity shops on the radio. Well that was an experience that I really enjoyed and what do you know, the radio station in question run training days for complete and utter wannabes like me to produce and broadcast an hour of a radio over a six hour course. So when the inevitable question came from family members at the back end of November "Whaddya want for Crimbo?" (well what does a man in his mid-late forties want? Socks? Hankies? No thanks) I asked if they could chip in for this training day so I knew that I was going to get something I really wanted.

After emails back and forth with the guy who runs the station, a date was decided for March 1st. The day came and I find myself in the Levenshulme area of Manchester ringing the doorbell of a former library which is home to the station. Inside I met Jason*, our trainer for the day, along with my fellow trainees Freya and Luisa. A tour of the studio while the station was playing a mid-morning automated playlist was followed by us recording our own voices and learning about operating a fader on a training laptop. Then came the production part of the day where we had to decide what kind of two hour show we wanted to produce. So we decided on each of us having our own thirty minutes followed by thirty minutes of what some would call, ugh, "chat 'n' choons". Luisa decided she wanted to make a show with music related to fashion as that was her bag. Freya, an Aussie, was there for radio experience because she had been working in TV and wanted to transition to the wireless so she decided to theme her show on Australian music that might be unknown to a UK audience. I decided that mine should feature music from Manchester, basically because I'd taken two hours' worth of music and was looking for a label to hang on it.
To cut a long story short, zero hour of 5pm arrived and we were on air. Only having one studio Nicky,

who was on air before us with her regular show, very kindly played a long final track to give us all time to get in the studio to set up and sort ourselves out. We decided to let Luisa and Freya go first as Luisa, in particular, was quite nervous, so she could get her solo segment out of the way.

6pm arrived and I was on. Well, I had a blast and you can hear the results in the link below. Stick around because after thirty minutes you can hear me pontificate on subjects ranging from fast fashion (of which I'm an expert...NOT! Ho-ho!), Australia's participation in Eurovision (I chose that topic) and, as it was a Friday night, is British pub culture on its knees? After only knowing each other for six hours or so beforehand there was much camaraderie and willing each other on because we all kind of clicked.
It's a bit of a cliche but the two hours flew by and we were saying our goodbyes and going home. I'd recommend it to anyone, it put a real spring in my step for the next couple of weeks and, if they were offering it to paying punters, I'd participate on All FM's thirty hour radio training course which goes more in depth into stuff like Ofcom regulations, legal stuff etc. If only I'd taken up the chance to do hospital radio when I was at school...oh well.

*Jason is also a regular presenter of Charity Shop Classics so it was nice to finally meet a voice I'd got used to hearing coming out of a radio. And he was brilliant.

New Boots

Tracks of My Years Part 3: Nancy Sinatra - The Boots Are Made For Walking

The last time I did one of these was in 2015 so I suppose I'd better get back on track with it. If you don't remember (and why would you?), these are songs which I remember really leaping out of the radio at me when I was a kid and somehow shaped my musical taste. And in a lot of instances they frightened me. This is definitely one that frightened me.
The sad death of the Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine this week helped remind us of the amount of excellent work he did. One of those songs he played on, These Boots Are Made For Walking is a record that both fascinated and scared the living daylights out of me as a child. For some context, among records like The Runaway Train, The Laughing Policeman, The Laughing Gnome (and all manner of other records with the word 'lauguing' in the title) and Nellie the Elephant which would get played week in, week out on Radio 1's Junior Choice in the 70s and early 80s, Nancy Sinatra's most well known song would also always get an airing. I think the record both enchanted and frightened me for a variety of reasons. First, there's that slightly off-kilter descending double bass part that leads into the verse. Secondly, this person wants to walk all over you in their boots. Why would she want to do that? Of course at the time I was too young to realise that she wanted to metaphorically walk all over you in her boots (although I'm led to believe that people literally like to be walked on in boots). Thirdly, she talked about matches. Now, I was always taught that matches were never to be touched*, so what's she going to do with those matches? Isn't it all rather dangerous to be playing with matches? She'll burn herself. Put. The. Matches. Down (as before, it was metaphorical matches she was playing with. Again, that bit was lost on me). Fourthly (is that a word), she actually talks to the boots. "Are you ready boots? Start walkin'" Are these magic boots? Wow.




*A message that was lost on my sister who once tried to set fire to our wooden garage. Think she might be something of a pyromaniac as she would often light matches and watch them burn down to nothing. And she taught me that trick of flicking your index finger in and out of a lit candle. There were a lot of power cuts in the late 70s.

Start the Dance

There's been a lot of talk about The Prodigy this week, for all the wrong reasons. I recall when they first hit and got songs like Charley and Outta Space in the hit parade they were seen as a bit of a joke act (but not a full-on joke like Altern 8). However, they made Music For the Jilted Generation which got nominated for the Mercury Prize and released this as its lead single. I doubt Keith Flint had very little to do with its inception or production but I'll never forget hearing this coming out the PA at Rock City. It made your whole body vibrate.
I'd already been discovering that Marshalls set to 11, a huge kit and a biker boot resting on a monitor didn't necessarily have to equate to HEA-VEE. Getting into stuff like Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and Godflesh along with more traditional bands at the 'alt' end of the rock scene like Helmet, Nottingham's own Fudge Tunnel and Corrosion of Conformity was already turning my head to another form of headbanging.
Hearing No Good (Start the Dance) that night, in its natural setting, a club, meant that I suddenly 'got' rave culture. It still sounds fantastic. And, alarmingly, it's now a quarter of a century old. Oh dear.

Christmas Top of the Flops

I'm sure our memories must play tricks on us at this time of year. I say that because songs that have always seemed to be embedded in our consciousness as stone-cold Christmas classics, when you delve deeper, and from my own memory, weren't such massive songs during the festive period at all. And I can pinpoint when all this started happening: the run up to Christmas 1985 when Virgin/EMI released The Christmas Album (or The Christmas Tape, as it was in our house) all done under the Now! banner.
I mean, there were some bone fide yuletide tracks on there that did transcend the years and always seemed to chart on re-release. I'm talking about Slade, Wizzard, Bing Crosby etc but some of the others? Hmm, not so much.

• Queen - Thank God It's Christmas. Reached no.21 in 1984. This was of course before they re-wrote their own history and played a make-or-break gig at Wembley Stadium on July 13th 1985.
• Elton John -Step Into Christmas. Reached no.24 in 1973. A song I had never heard before that fateful Christmas in 1985. Now it's all over the place. I guess it keeps Elton in 'fruit and flowers' these days.
• Kate Bush - December Will Be Magic Again. Wheezed its way to no.29 in 1980. A song written for her 1979 BBC Christmas Special. This was before she went down the dumper for a bit and made an album that sounded like King Crimson with a Fairlight.
• Chris De Burgh - A Spaceman Came Travelling. Didn't chart on original release in 1975. I had heard this single before but only because we had a teacher at school who'd been a bit of a Head back in the day and used to start his year assemblies with a bit of rock music (on one occasion treating a load of bemused 1980s kids to Black Sabbath).
• Beach Boys - Little Saint Nick. Didn't chart on original release. Something doesn't sit quite right with me when a band associated with California sun and the outdoor life sing about reindeer.

All those songs now seem as much a part of Christmas as mince pies, drinking too much and having to be nice to people. And the tracklisting of today's Now Christmas album just grows and grows. The edition in this house had grown to three CDs as at some point with a lot of artists realising how much the publishing on a Christmas track can be worth. Indeed, the most valuable song for non-Beatles royalties in Paul McCartney's catalogue is that ultimate in will-this-do? filler, Wonderful Christmastime. And what's on in the background while I'm writing this? Freeview Channel 88, the Now That's What I Call Christmas channel showing Pete Waterman's Christmas 1972-Now. The songs keep coming: East 17, Bo Selecta, Peter Kay, Steps, Jon By Jovi, Mariah Carey, Mickey Bubbles...