A journey though a massive and messy music library

 Well, we all knew lockdown was going to be weird...

Fortunately for me, a project dropped into my lap in March, and it kept me very busy for months. I am only now rocking gently in my backwater, blinking, looking around, thinking of other projects.

With projects, I always go in too deep. This was no different. But oh, was it ever fascinating.

Some background first. For much of my time in radio, I have been gainfully employed sorting out other people's programming disasters, the ones that crop up in music scheduling and database systems.

The programming  beast 

The leading system I've worked in is, still, RCS GSelector, along with its RCS predecessors. If you're a fan, it's a splendid beast. But with all such systems, it's easy to paint yourself into a corner. You need decent music nous, allied to geekiness and tenacity. It's a tricky balance. Too much geekiness squeezes out on-air spontaneity.

The thinking behind computer music scheduling is, I find, often shared by musicians. Their shows are planned out: sets kick off with bangers, new material is nicely balanced, there's a flow built in, and the audience goes on a journey. Even when set lists are starting points rather than a rigid show structure, the same principles apply. If you know your stuff and your audience, you don't need a fixed safety net, either at radio or onstage. And that's as far as I'm going with that particular debate. 

The work

My cleanup work has taken me all over the UK and Europe. Often, one job has led to another; other times I have been put forward by much appreciated colleagues. It's been a lovely, magic carpet ride. But Covid19 has put an end to flying off to distant lands; now it's Zoom meetings and distance work.

I'm happy to work in any music format: the fundamentals, be they in Pop, Rock or Classical, are the same. Seriously, they really are, even while library sizes and presenter freedom vary enormously. Personally, I prefer a deep library in a station that values its presenters for their knowledge, but that's just my taste.

The Classical differences

But Classical? Well, there are differences. Tricky ones. Take durations for a start: Classical music radio is not the home of the 3'30” pop edit. Amazing works of 15 minutes and longer are common; you simply can't do without them. The 'bleeding chunks' debate - chopping out moments from Concerti or Symphonies - continues. Now, I love a complete work, an entire opera, a splendid soloist delivering fireworks to an audience... when I'm in that audience. But music radio doesn't work that way; instead, it offers a flow of music to take with you while you go about your day. Radio is rarely an 'appointment to listen' medium; you can now listen again with ease. So that's two challenges right there.

I've worked on Classical databases four times now: firstly in Ireland with the splendid RTE Lyric FM, where more than half the personnel were active musicians. Later came Bartok Radio in Budapest, and more recently pre-launch setup work at Scala Radio in London. And the most recent project, with all the Zooming and remote working, was for Radio Classic in Finland.

My job was to tidy up a messy database and set it up in GSelector before handing it back to the local team to take it onward. I won't go into all the gory details, but every conceivable data entry mistake was there... it was a tangle.

Mind your Language!

The interesting areas were the use of language, and the local market. Finland values its culture and identity. It supports the arts: national and regional orchestras are properly funded, unlike in the UK. It's admirable; I so wish we took this approach with the Arts in general, and music in particular. I also wish we had Finland's admirably low Covid19 infection rates.

From a population of less than 6 million, Finland exports a steady and impressive flow of talent: the first two conductors to follow Simon Rattle when he left the CBSO came from Finland; one of them now splits his duties between orchestras in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London.

Of course there were local composers whose works I wasn't familiar with; with these, the plan is for the Radio Classic team to strike the right balance. And that's the proper approach: radio has to reflect its locality, be it national or regional. Dumping a generic format onto a station is cheap; it directly affects the bottom line, but it may not build audiences. We often hear of 'MacDonalds Radio' in this context, but in truth, even that giant corporation goes to great lengths to cater for local markets. And it's worth pointing out that Classic Radio Finland are part of Bauer Media, who, admirably, have given their station free rein to develop as they see fit. It's easy to jump to conclusions about massive corporate radio groups, but those conclusions are not always spot-on.

So – back to the Classical job. How to describe a work? What language do you use? Do you say the Magic Flute? Or the original Die Zauberflote? Or the Finnish Taikahuilu? Verdi was, I am told, passionately in favour of works being sung in the language of the country where the performance was taking place. But, with works and orchestras in at least six languages, this aspect was increasingly complex.

The Web. Upending things. Again. Everywhere.

In working through the Radio Classic library, something else struck me: just how much emphasis has moved away from tradition and towards powerful performances. I contrasted an opera aria from a revered Finnish veteran, recorded in the 60s, with a fresh recording of the same piece by a contemporary superstar. The difference was extraordinary. The veteran was polite, formal and understated. The superstar was showy and explosive. That, change, in my view, has been driven by opera houses and orchestras competing online to deliver more of an experience to a wider audience, the more so because a lot of their work is now filmed and distributed either live or as special cinematic events. The days of 19^th century polite salon performances of music designed to be played at home, once all the rage, are long gone. As elsewhere, the web has had its way, and we are now in the world of short-term spectacle.

Bottom line, as usual: what matters, and to whom?

The initial clean-up task completed, Radio Classic are now up and running. What are the next steps? Many classical stations embrace movie soundtracks; others rush to programme contemporary 'mindful' piano work from the likes of Ludovico Einaudi; still others incorporate gaming music, written for teenagers and young adults, into their output. Gaming companies are now so flush with cash that they can afford to hire entire orchestras to record their material – but I'm really not sure that an orchestra's playing qualifies a piece of music for use in Classical radio. It's a sliding scale of age appeal, which doesn't tempt me, but then I am very aged. That said, I can't say I'm exactly a purist either. The big question is to recognise the demands of the market, as I mentioned earlier.

My personal view? The great works are there because they have found their place over decades and centuries. That timescale means things change slowly; it's the complete opposite of pop. Recordings of individual Classical works may not generate huge sales figures, but that's partly because there are often literally hundreds of different versions of the same work available to the listener. Therefore popularity has to be measured in a different way; chart sales, downloads and influencer-driven YouTube views don't work in this arena. The picture is further muddied by a combination of stuffy conservatism in the classical industry itself, and the shift to showier, flashier performances that new technology has fostered, as mentioned earlier.

It's never easy. But right now, my best wishes go to the good folk at Radio Classic Finland, who are now navigating these tricky waters. I think they'll do just fine. You can, of course, listen to them here: https://radioplay.fi/radio-classic/

and if that doesn't work, go here: https://tinyurl.com/y4dstoxe

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RTE Lyric FM: a genius radio station under threat?

Well hello there... my, it's been a long, long time.

How'm I doing? Well, I guess I'm doing fine.

Willie Nelson wrote that song, Funny How Time Slips Away. There are dozens of fine versions. It's a simple, truthful song of enormous quality. Songs like that get better with age. So do some radio stations, when they get the chance to grow into themselves. And so do some people, who blossom over the years. I'll come back to that. I'm working up a podcast series; I'll go into great detail in the next post.

I've used that couplet because I have been quiet of late on this blog. I've been not so much under the weather as comprehensively flattened. It's taken me a while to wrestle myself back upright. So, my apologies if you've been missing any, er, shining thoughts. Now, to the meat of this post...

  Classical Music and the arts on the Radio. Under threat. Again.

Photo: Peter Hopper http://tinyurl.com/y2xupyjo

I wrapped up a six month consult gig in April this year. The job was to set up the initial library and scheduling database for Bauer Media's new Classical music station, Scala Radio. It was enormous fun; it's work I love to do. What you heard at launch date was pretty much what I had been beavering away on since September 2018.

I would not have got that gig without experience gained twenty years ago with the team at RTE Lyric FM. I worked with them, on and off, for five years from 1998. Now, Scala's project was top secret when I joined. So that made me a good fit, being the only person they could find in the UK with Classical programming chops who wasn't at Radio 3 or Classic FM. I had also worked in New York on the RCS gSelector scheduling engine, and that came in useful too. I wrote the online help there. Since then, of course, it's been much expanded to go with the program's development. And it was a strange thing to look afresh at the work I did in 2009.

Lyric FM 

Of course I didn't know it back in 1998, but the Lyric work opened the Scala door for me. Lyric was the most fun place I ever worked for. There were, and I'm sure there still are, some brilliant, articulate, eloquent broadcasters. The Irish can put their English colleagues to shame with their use of language when so minded. Lyric was bursting with talent and enthusiasm. It's the only music station I worked at where the majority of the staff actually made music. Over its twenty years, Lyric has been garlanded with awards at home and abroad. They run on a shoestring budget. Lyric's funding to awards ratio must be one the most respectable in Europe. But now for the bad news.

A casual remark on an RTE TV show last week suggests that RTE are considering 'cutting' Lyric FM. It's all about costs: RTE are in even deeper financial difficulties than the BBC.

It must have been sickening to learn this information at third hand. There's a part of me that wonders if the mooted decision to 'cut' Lyric FM was helped by geography. Lyric is based in Limerick; Most of RTE in based in Dublin. I know, to my cost, how capital city workers frequently regard work done outside the capital with contempt. In the UK, it happened at Pebble Mill in Birmingham time and time again. In fact, this week, In the Radio Times, John Sergeant bemoaned the fact that sometimes he was forced to travel outside London to do his BBC work. The poor lamb. It must have been frightful. The provinces! I shudder for him.

Time for action?

Be that as it may, the bald fact is that Lyric is under threat. And I encourage you, wherever you are, to sign petitions, tweet and email your support.

Lyric is bold and adventurous. It is also a nursery slope, a training ground and a solid platform for broadcast talent that is out of the ordinary. Lyric champions a wonderful range of music. It is the home for much of RTE's Arts coverage. And it is astonishingly good value. If you haven't done so yet, take a listen here. 

Here are some links to follow and addresses to contact: both the basic facts and the people who make the decisions. They need to hear from you if you care about adventurous radio.

This link takes you to the facts as reported

CONTACTS

Dee Forbes (Director General, RTE) Dee.Forbes@rte.ie
Richard Bruton (Minister for Communications) richard.bruton@oireachtas.ie 

SOCIAL MEDIA
On Twitter there is a group voicing their opinion: go to @RTÉlyricfm 

And use the hashtags: #lyricfmpublicservicebroadcasting #savelyricfm

CAMPAIGNING
And sign this petition 

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BRMB: 45 years ago today, a station came out to play

Sedate? Pah. I was expecting big fun, tidal waves of emotion and mawkish sentiment. Why? Well some of us old originals at BRMB Radio threw a bash last Friday for staff members, to mark the 45^th anniversary of the launch date, February 19^th 1974. That's today. And the day after Friday's bash...I felt distinctly fragile. 

I'm one of the BRMB originals. They'd hired me the previous November, along with the great John Howard; we were the first jocks on board. John left, quite early, to make his way to Radio 4. I stuck around for twenty years, ten on them on air as, mainly, a rock jock.

That nice radio interview? Upcycle it to video

Platforms for your audio, everywhere

I've had a little play with some new software. I took some audio from a radio show I did a few months ago, and added images and captions. Now I've got a nice video clip. 

The audio is excerpted from a lovely long interview I did with the great guitarist Gordon Giltrap, now based in the West Midlands. The full show is on Brum Radio's listen again page. 

Gordon tells a terrific story early in the interview; I found myself telling and re-telling it to friends. Gordon tells lots of stories, often in very compelling ways: take in a live show and you'll see what I mean. So I don't want to use too many of them up. But this was an lovely little tale, a nice candidate to embellish. I've put it up in this post, as a YouTube clip, after the jump.

A conversation With Music: Gordon Giltrap.

This week, I'm thinking guitars and guitarists. Especially those with a few miles on the clock.

I was at a gig last week, packed with music veterans. Among them, the great guitar player Tony Kelsey, who, along with fellow muso Matt Worley, has criss-crossed the country collecting superstar guitarist signatures on a Fender, soon to be auctioned, to benefit Jerry Donahue: that particular story is here. There's hardly any room left on the guitar for more famous names. I came away thinking... guitar.
 

Guitarists. Skills. Seems to be a good combination.

Guitarists just seem to carry on longer than many in rock. The Guardian just ran a review listing the many incarnations of 70s prog-rockers Yes, all of whom tour; it's not just UB40 who have a bad case of multiple fractious identities. The last sentence was key:

“Arguments still rage about which band is really Yes, but with 70-year-old guitarist (Steve) Howe’s virtuosity undimmed... these time-served warriors are surely entitled to a few more moments in the sun.”

So, the incredibly ancient Steve Howe still struts his stuff. Good luck to him. 

The joy of watching skills honed over a lifetime

I take huge pleasure in watching veteran musos still at the top of their game. It's long been said that the very act of playing music is good for you, and I believe that. Of course, you need to avoid rock and roll excess, and factor in the sheer physical strain of, say, strapping a plank of wood across your shoulders for half a century.

But it's heartening to see so many of the musos I know from back in the day, still spry, still up for it, still savvy, and still, above all, thoroughly enjoying their craft.

A reunion forty years on

And that brings me to the newest radio show I've been working on. In 1976, as a young rock DJ at the old BRMB, I was very taken with an album from Gordon Giltrap. Again, I invite you to look him up if you're under 40. We met when he did the radio circuit to plug his album; it was a nice interview. 

A few years later, Gordon hit pay-dirt with 'Heartsong', which he still plays. That paydirt got richer still when the song was chosen to be the theme tune for BBC TV's Holiday programme.

And late last year, we met up again. Gordon's still here, and happy to be here too. He's still spry, as nimble-fingered as always, and as positive as ever. I went to his house to for what turned out to be a long and very convivial chat. Gordon is a man with stories: he has extraordinary tales of the UK 60s folk scene, when, starting as a fresh-faced 18 year old, he met, befriended, played and collaborated with some of the giants of the UK folk revival.

Conversations with music. Live music.

Now, every so often, I've been lucky to conduct an interview with a musician, who in between the chat, will sing and play right there in the studio. I did one a few years back with Brum favourites Steve Gibbons and John Caswell; another with Steve Ajao and Dave Wakelin. They were lovely shows to do, recorded under studio conditions, and if you are interested, Brum Radio has both on its listen-again page, here and here.

I love this kind of show. I've long wanted to do more. But of course, you need the right elements. Those are: favourable recording conditions, a musician of stature and experience, who can, and will, switch seamlessly between story telling and playing, ideally as naturally as if you were simply having a conversation. I'm thinking fondly of some rather fine pub nights in Killaloe in the West of Ireland, some 16 years back. Music conversations flowed and sang across the room. 

Pick up your guitar and play....

But you know what? Those elements all came together when I sat down with Gordon Giltrap. Gordon rolled out some great stories, and the cherry on the cake was that he was happy to break out his guitars, talk about them, discuss structure and technique, and above all play some stunning stuff. It was thrilling to sit three feet away from a great virtuoso, watching him play, really close up. I was very lucky.

So now, after some careful assembly work, you can hear the results. It is, indeed, a conversation with music. I haven't made this as a DJ show, with in-show intros for every piece of music; Gordon's live work is front and centre in the show, but on top of this absolute luxury, there are snatches of music from influential stars of the day as they came up in the conversation.

If you know all of these pieces, you're probably over 40 years old. If you don't, I list them at the end of the show. And when the show goes on to listen-again, as it will after its two Brum Radio airings, every detail will come up on your player as it happens.

That's why it's a conversation with music. Listen online right here...




I'm planning on doing more.  

Links: Gordon Giltrap's website
Photos from Mick Dodsworth
 

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Shame and scandal - a game of reputations

2017: the year of risk-averse defenestration

A while back, I was at a local station, in the meeting room. There were Gold and Silver discs, snaps of celebs with DJs, major station events, directors

           Who, me? I deny everything

and dignitaries; the usual. And a large framed photo of Rolf Harris, with local schoolkids and a couple of jocks, all grinning for the camera, behind a panel with the station logo. This was well after Harris' public fall from grace: awkward. I gently pointed this out; they didn't thank me.

This year, mainstream media have been lightning-fast in dropping disgraced notables with less than perfect personal lives. Radio has long had a ripe history of bad behaviour and downright nasty control freakery. There's a well-established routine to make it all go away: 

1: Drop the accused, instantly.
2: Never mention him (it's always a him) again; he never existed.
3: Watch the waters close over his head. And breathe.

It's not just radio, of course. 

Have we lost much? Oh, yes we have.

Ugly thinking; changing tech

Missing you already....

Things change. Last month, United, successors to Continental airlines, cancelled daily New York flights from Birmingham as of October. It’s a Brexit thing; also a consolidation thing. We're promised a new airline on the route from May 2018; it's looking pretty expensive for a low-fares operation. 

I used that flight a lot in the noughties - four hops yearly to the New York hq of RCS, the radio software people. I went over, two weeks at a time, to work with the RCS development teams on several projects. 

Looking back, now that United are closing my old route to New York, it was clearly a decade when things really changed at radio. Big forces bore down on the sector, kicking the industry into the 21st century. 

Did we lose anything? Oh, I think we did. 

The Noughties, Radio and an unforgiving business climate

At the turn of the century, RCS was at the top of its game. It had a powerful, exciting mix of radio veterans and brilliant developers, hand-picked by the extraordinary Andrew Economos. It was Andrew who first thought up software to schedule music at radio. For those who rage about Robot Radio, I would say that wasn't what drove Andrew’s concept. His idea was simple: get the best out of your music library. To do that takes knowledge, skill, humility, and a willingness to engage in dialogue and take different views on board.

Andrew had all that; his company reflected his thinking.

But that idealistic, individual approach would not survive more rigorous commercial competition, nor the corporate thinking that emerged as computing power increased. By the time I arrived, RCS’s unique market advantage was under attack, after two astonishing decades of dominance. At radio, as scheduling spread across networks, with multiple rival systems coming in to play, elegant programming was increasingly devalued. Automation became the norm; presenter input was devalued. When research software was grafted on to the system, risk-averse programming gained the upper hand for good. 

It's one thing to work from a paper print-out - effectively that's theory. It's quite another when music is set up for the presenter on a play-out system from which there is no deviation. That's practice.

I'm not saying that structure isn't a bad thing. 20th century radio allowed an awful lot of 'creative' behaviour. But for every maverick genius radio presenter, there were at least twenty self-indulgent idiots. Both ends of that spectrum gave management headaches; both were dealt with the same way. There were, and are, of course, decent managers who could handle great talent. But they were, and are, thin on the ground. 

Changing times on the tech front too: computer networks finally grew strong enough to carry the data needed to run multiple stations from distance. So there was massive consolidation: station after station went dark, replaced by remote, centralised programming. The road to consolidation was clear and wide open. Advertising revenue stayed relatively constant; staff costs were slashed.  

The web, consolidation and a takeover 

All this was in the noughties, before the web muscled in on music distribution, undermining radio’s ground and sucking up revenue. Things couldn’t last. Towards the end of that decade, feisty, creative RCS was bought up by Clear Channel. 

Culturally, the two companies could not have been more different. One was a blue-state East Coast operation, eccentric at times, yes, but home to creative oddballs and blue sky thinkers. The other operated out of San Antonio, Texas, deep in the heart of red-state Trump territory, where the art of the deal is: I’m right, and your opinions don’t matter anyway. Of course the incoming company brought their own, highly developed business systems in. RCS became a managed division of a large media empire.  

Interestingly, Clear Channel’s parent company, after gutting maybe a thousand stations and throwing the bitty remains back, is now struggling with an awful lot of debt. That's a change they didn’t see coming.

Much of this is ancient history: consolidation first, followed by the power of the web, has left radio much altered, for better and for worse; there's no going back. There is still a place for great radio if you want it. Podcasts and web radio prove it. It’s cheap to get on air; powerful tools are there at the click of a mouse. So if you believe in it, do it. Nobody's going to stop you. But there's an awfully big distance to cover from wanting to do something different... to actually making a mark.  

Newer, uglier, thinking

So what else has the web given us? Well... distraction and trivia for a start. Cheap and easy thinking. The web magnifies and distorts. Complex concepts are drowned in shouting, trivia and click bait. That brutish business stance of Clear Channel I mentioned above - by no means unique to that company, of course - has been ramped up to damaging levels.

That's the huge 21st century change: who shouts loudest wins. You don't like it? Well, here's a basket of adorable puppies on Facebook.  

Taking stock...

'bye...

So let’s look at those noughties United flights. They carried, overwhelmingly, Brits. Maybe 80% on each flight. All on shopping sprees with the dollar at 2 for a pound. 

Now you get $1.10 for your post-referendum pound. Aviation fuel is paid for in dollars. The US is costly to reach, and bloody expensive once you land. We’re heading elsewhere for our holidays. That's one main reason for the end of those daily BHX-EWR hops. 

Thanks, Brexit. 
Thanks, ugly thinking. 
Thanks, 'I'm right and your opinions don't matter'...

Things are different now, all over. I'm not sorry I got the chance to bounce around New York for a decade. It's, however, somewhat arresting to look back and see what was going on after a few years. 

Yup, we've gained a lot. But I think we've lost a lot more. 

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I still do stuff on Brum Radio, a volunteer-run internet station. It's online here; download the Brum Radio app here. My Brum Radio page is here; scroll down for all the shows. 

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Payola? Still here. Methodology? Totally different

Some traditions never go away. They just morph 

I have a problem with hype. It's not new and it's not just with music. You see it with movies, gaming and more. The film industry does it best. They're brilliant - they sucker me every time. I wind up really wanting to catch a movie, and then, when I do, I often leave vaguely dissatisfied. Indie film makers with zero budgets must hate this. 

Hey, this is entertainment, where there's a need to recoup investments made sometimes on the back of risky emotive judgements. It gets vile and slimy when vast sums are laid out to manipulate public taste. In general, shamefully, the media know this. But they play along.

The album, the artist, the audience. Are we going full circle?

Grudgingly, I find myself starting to agree with vinyl freaks. Weird. 

I posted a while back about the interesting origins of what we now call an album.  This was in the context of our new, brave MP3 world of digital downloads. After all, when you can cram an entire library onto a tiny piece of plastic, who needs those ancient concepts of singles, albums, EPs and CDs? Tech developments have moved so very fast. I'm not entirely sure that's all good.  

The vinyl revival was a surprise to me. It's really not a huge slice of the market. Vinyl gets more attention than it deserves because it's a retro vintage fashion thing. Personally, I find the obsession with vinyl as a style statement slightly ridiculous. 

But there's another reason for the continued survival of the album, over and above vinyl fetishes. And it's a lot more valid than a business proposition or a badge of identity.  

Young Man Gone West

So what happened after City Boy, Steve? If you didn't know already, you'd never guess in a million years...

1978. I was conducting an interview on BRMB. It might well have been Bill Nelson from Bebop Deluxe, but I can't be sure. It was someone on the arty side of pop-rock, in any event. 

A call from security. Someone to see me: Steve Broughton, real name Steve Lunt. We were pals; I'd been championing his band, City Boy, for a couple of years. And they'd finally had a hit, '5705'. 

I hadn't seen him for some time. So, up he came... to hand me a silver disc for sales of their hit. I was chuffed, of course. It led to slightly awkward chat in the studio, in between records, with the three of us: me, my interview guest, who might have been excused for looking slightly askance at my visitor with his very pop hit. 

The following year, City Boy were in the States, a million-dollar contract with Atlantic records under their belts. That was the year they sacked Steve. 

It was 48 years ago today...

I did my first radio gig. In the USA. On a Rock station.

On 27 May 1971, jetlagged after flying in two days before, I went on the air on WPHD-FM in Buffalo, in upstate New York. 

I was a Brit import; they named me Robin Thomas. There were a handful of Brits in US radio; work permits and visas made it tricky.  

This was the early 70s, the time of the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Free, Sabbath, Derek and the Dominos. What we now call Classic Rock. A big big slice of that came from the UK. British rock really mattered in the US then - it certainly doesn't now.

And for US Rock stations, a Brit DJ was an asset.  That's why WPHD took a risk on an unproven kid with only UK college radio experience. Bless.

Whittingdale's little list: The White Paper and the BBC

Clowns to the left of them. Jokers to the right...

At the BBC: Ariel between Wisdom and Gaiety. Mike Knell, Flickr

I've got two pages open on my screen as I write this. Both make my blood boil. The first is yet another anti-BBC piece from Rupert Murdoch's Times, where Culture Secretary John Whittingdale is reported to have joked to a bunch of Tory Students that the end of the BBC might be 'a tempting prospect'. The article goes on to list Gary Lineker as the first to spring to the Beeb's defence. Go Gary, I say; power to you in your underpants.  

Item number two is just as jarring: a strident attack on the BBC from new boys Evolve Politics, who emerged after the Labour Leadership election, along with The Canary and Momentum. They're all over my Facebook feed. Depending on your politics and/or your Facebook 'friends', they may well be all over your Facebook too. That's the creepy way the thing works. Ironically, it's great for marketing...

Evolve Politics and pals are solidly, uncritically, behind Jeremy Corbyn; Jezza can do no wrong, ever ever ever. Evolve are never less than outraged. Here, they slam the BBC for being disgusting Tory stooges.  

Poor old Beeb, eh? Attacked on all sides, while the troops on the ground have to soldier on. It's reminding me of Tennyson's poem...

What can DJs learn from Poets? Two separate worlds, right?

If you're going to talk, talk to me, not at me. And make it good. 

Guests David Calcutt with Helen Leavesley

Every month, a bunch of poets gather at Brum Radio and make a programme, obviously on poetry. The show, Brum Radio Poets, went out on Sunday 25th April, and will is also now up on MixCloud. I normally oversee the recording. I wouldn't go so far as to call it producing; others might. 'Studio Engineer' might cover it. Except that Brum radio only actually has one proper studio; we use a spare room. It's all very lo-fi and improvised. 

I really like working this way, miles away from the grandiose fuss of a full-on facility. You have to concentrate on the core: ideas, passion, communication. A stripped-down approach can go a long way with the right content. And if you think all this has nothing to do with DJs and music radio, you couldn't be more wrong. 

The wood from the trees

Taking a mile-high view of your local music scene is tricky, but it's worth a go

It helps to have a sense of perspective.  Photo Elliot Brown

Posts here are mostly on artists and their stories. Everyone has a story; some are amazing. But this week, and probably next, it's about lots of artists. Next week, I'll publish my six monthly survey of local artists who smash it on YouTube. It's interesting, but not definitive: YouTube numbers can be, and are, fiddled for marketing advantage.

No, it's good for spotting early trends. It's fascinating to see who's coming on fast, what genres do well, and to try to work out why.

And recently, with some colleagues, I've picked up a new way of looking at what's happening. Imperfect it certainly is; rankings are subjective and based on reputation, not numbers. The sample is tiny, and taken at a specific point in time. So I won't get carried away. But I'm astonished and pleased at what we found.