Reeling in the Years: Interviewing Bob Marley

In 1978 I interviewed Bob Marley. Yup, the Bob Marley. Face to face. Now, before Marley fans get too excited, I must state here and now that it really wasn’t a great piece of work. I did it backstage: never my favourite place to conduct an interview. Backstage is a working area, definitely not DJ territory.  And Marley was… somewhere else. He really didn’t have that much to say to an impressionable Brit rock jock. Island Records were pumping up the Bob Marley mystique as hard as they could. That meant preposterous backstage faffery and ego-trips between promoter, pr people, tour managers, jocks and journos. I was really quite nervous, being a callow young honky and all, and Marley’s security was, shall we say, forbidding.

Job done and interview broadcast, I forgot all about it. For decades. Until yesterday, when I was contacted by a film company who wanted to use some of the material. How’s that for something echoing down the years and smacking you in the face?

I think this is a fascinating turn of affairs. There’s a whole bunch of things you can draw from this, none of them are about me and my interview.

In the Treehouse with Paul Murphy and friends

A documentary  about the Songwriter's Cafe, a Birmingham institution

Songwriters Cafe 1 hr version part 1 by Radio To Go

Two files: a two-part documentary. This one's on Soundcloud, the other, after the jump, is on MixCloud (I'm running short of space). I try to tell the story of a 2011 summer evening at Paul Murphy's Songwriter's Cafe. Paul organises this lovely event most weeks during the summer months, in his treehouse venue in South Birmingham. It is a platform for the oft-neglected art of the singer-songwriter. Performers are allowed to flourish and develop in front of a warm and receptive audience. I always feel wholly privileged to be at one of these events. And since Paul, pictured above (thank you, Richard Shakespeare), asked me to get involved, adding short interviews to his web feed - the event is streamed live at www.rhubarbradio.com and www.paulmurphytv.com - I thought I should try to tell a slightly more detailed story.

Carina Round, Dan Whitehouse and Vijay Kishore deliver bigtime

It just keeps getting better, and better, and better. A great night at the Hare and Hounds, and a studio session to remember

Carina Round

This has been another of those weeks for amazing, amazing music. Last night, I caught one of the best live shows I've seen in a long, long, time, in King's Heath, Birmingham; and Saturday last, I was privileged to be at Music Up studios in Coventry to work with Alternative Dubstep Orchestra, as they recorded their first full live in-studio session. 

I say ‘work’, because I was there to record an interview to add to the recorded material. But it was a pure pleasure to watch the band in a studio environment and pick out more facets of their extraordinary music. Eleven stunning musicians, with buckets of imagination and creativity in an atmosphere of collaboration and experimentation. 

I don’t know where this collective is going – they don’t know either – but I know it’s going be exciting, and different. As soon as I finish this post, I’m back to editing the interview.  Then when the tracks are mixed, I’ll put the package together. It’s part of a series I’m working on, with UB40’s Brian Travers, all featuring the best of local musicianship.

Radio's oldies but goodies: who decides what we hear?

What perspective do 35 year olds use when programming 50 year old songs on the radio?

First things first: this post has been triggered by an invite from old pals Mean Street Dealers. They were also known as Hooker and School Sports, but, as Mean Street Dealers, they truly were one of Brum’s finest bands in the mid-70s. And, like a lot of excellent bands, they kind of got swept away by punk towards the end of that decade. Punk, for all its early DIY spontaneity, soon became  yet another marketing device for the music industry. This made life hard for bands who had been knocking on the door for more than a couple of years. Remember all those outfits that suddenly had to pretend that they couldn’t actually play?

But that’s another story. Mean Street Dealers could play then (and how), and now they are planning a comeback gig, on Friday 8th July at the Asylum in Hockley. Here’s the reunion gig info in more detail. I will dj at the event; I'm really looking forward to it. And that’s started me thinking for this blog post.

Interviewing UB40's Brian Travers again, 30 years on

A radio interview in a studio paid for out of UB40 Signing Off royalties 

I had a GREAT day yesterday. Much of it was spent gassing with UB40 horn maestro Brian Travers  in a studio that simply oozes Birmingham rock history. 

That’s him on the left, looking disgustingly healthy; I’m the, er, distinguished elderly gent on the right. The shot's from the camera of the excellent Richard Shakespeare.

And the studio? Well, it’s the studio that ‘Signing Off’ built. 
 

BBC Local Radio: death by a thousand cuts

I’ve been mulling this post over for a couple of days. This is partly because I am so damn angry. I’ve been trying hard not to unleash a stream of bile. I certainly don’t have all the facts, and I really don’t want to heap invective onto the wrong heads, or add more bitterness to the mix. And yet, and yet, and yet…. I still can't think about this without getting angry.

Here’s the focus for my ire: it was reported last week that the beeb are seriously considering ripping all but maybe six hours a day of local output out from BBC local radio, replacing this output by opting in to 5 Live. Here’s the Guardian’s report from Thursday 10th.

That we’ve got to this point is, sadly, inevitable. The BBC is on the back foot, and has taken a vicious funding hit. Savings have to come from somewhere. They tried with 6 music, and that didn’t fly. So now they appear to be picking off local radio. Me? I’m angry because this kind of savage cut is both ill-thought-out, and targets some of the least well-paid staff at the corporation. And it is - still - completely avoidable.

Local radio, both BBC and commercial, is simply not taken seriously by its metropolitan bosses. It never has been. It was only a matter of time before commercial radio happily abandoned any pretence of localness in favour of nationally marketed ‘brands’. In so doing, they insulted the broadcasters they had just fired by loudly claiming that there was just not enough talent out there anyway. That sort of attitude is patronising, arrogant and very stupid, but not unexpected. But that BBC management should seriously consider throwing hundreds of talented and dedicated coal-face workers onto the scrap heap makes my blood boil. It means national networks are valued and local radio is not. Of course, this may be a scare tactic to usher in less savage cuts, but it speaks volumes about how the corporation views its regional talent.

Do I know of what I speak? Well… yes, I do. I landed at Pebble Mill in the 90s to produce for Radio 2 Overnights. R2 was about to take its great leap forward, ousting R1 as top UK station. I inherited my main presenters, but was allowed to use local radio presenters for holiday cover. For them it was a big deal: a shot at the big time. They gave it their all, of course, and the two that I eventually came to rely on were excellent, delivering terrific listener feedback and often outshining the regular presenters. But did this mean my fine local radio professionals were taken seriously for possible promotion to the network? Even cursorily looked at? I’ll let you take a wild guess.

That was fifteen years ago, but I doubt that attitudes have changed. I know there have been countless consultations and strategy initiatives. I know that part of the agenda has been to put news first at BBC local radio. Music programming took a back seat, with a centralised and super-safe library fed to all stations, and local music shunted to off peak hours on the admirable weekly BBC Introducing slots.

That’s a crying shame. The news agenda is fine – give me good reporting any day - but news radio is expensive. Good reporters don’t come for free. Effective speech radio takes time and money. It also means that all too often the news agenda of the day follows events dictated from outside the region. If you then fail to deliver effective local coverage, you wind up sounding parochial, and unfavourable comparisons with national networks naturally follow. Radio 5 Live is great, but I don’t need it on yet another frequency. I would, however, really like to hear the next Victoria Derbyshire honing her craft locally.

Much worse, and by now I think it’s far, far too late to rectify this, BBC local stations have been allowed to distance themselves from local culture. The staff with the skills and contacts to deal with this have gone. There’s a bloody big freighter full of cultural goodies that’s sailed right on past local radio, and the stations have fatally and completely ignored it, because it wasn't in the strategic plan. In the first ten years of this century, there has been an explosion of creativity across the country. Creativity in the visual arts, theatre, dance, video and, especially, music is bursting with energy and collaborative enthusiasm. It is a source of huge pride to many in my  city, and the same principle applies elsewhere. A lot of this is down to the web, which lets ideas fly around to create inspiring events like flash-mob choral performances, musical collaborations, mashups and more. And where is radio in all this? Pretty much nowhere, criminally being allowed to miss out. Unparalleled riches are just going to waste. 


Has this even been noticed in the higher echelons of the beeb? Has its potential value to local radio been evaluated? I’ll let you take another wild guess.


I don’t know where we go from here. I do know that thrilling and brilliant music is happening both here in the West Midlands and all over the country, and it’s clear to me that this wonderful new resource – squarely at the very heart of our local and national culture - is being almost completely ignored. It may not be too late to change tack. But if the BBC throw hundreds of staffers out, with all their skills and local knowledge, then thousands upon thousands of years of work and experience will be lost to the BBC, forever. Talent will flow elsewhere, and will bypass the corporation, forever. There will be less and less challenges to existing thinking, more ossification of managerial attitudes, and we will lose, pretty much permanently, a cheap, value for money resource that probably will be impossible to reconstitute.

Ask yourself: where does talent come from? How does it learn its craft? And – is it really to be found exclusively in London, with the odd side trip to Manchester?

I think not.
.

CBSO and ADO. A tale of two Orchestras

They both absolutely rock. We should be proud of both bands.

We have great orchestras in Birmingham.  Why, I saw two this week. Now, I just may have been the only person who attended both of these gigs, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see other kindred spirits: the music making was equally passionate and fulfilling, and the audiences welcoming and knowledgeable.

Wednesday night was the CBSO, rollicking through Mahler 9 and a brilliant contemporary piece, Kai, from Mark Anthony Turnage. Top notch delivery from all concerned, brilliant Symphony Hall acoustics, and a few members of the audience I would have tipped off the top balcony had I been able to reach them when they coughed or sneezed during the final movement.

Thursday night was the ebullient and witty Mama Matrix - I’d never seen them before, and I loved them to bits - and the third public gig from the Alternative Dubstep Orchestra, at a seething Hare and Hounds in King’s Heath.

Seething is actually the right word. I’ve never seen an entire audience go bonkers in quite such a complex and bendy-twisty way. If was if the crowd turned into a collective skanking jelly. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of this is due to the extraordinary heroics of guitarist Tom Hyland, who plays and dances with huge expressive freedom. But you simply can not single out anyone from this collective. The mix and approach are so infectious, and the shifts and splits in direction are fresh and mesmerising. I am deeply impressed. I love catching a band as it locks into something new and individual and unique. This was one of those moments. And they’ve hardly got started.

So who are these guys? Well, the full details are on their facebook page, but simply put, they are a live mash-up of genres, with stupefyingly good live djs (last night, Malicious DJ and The Doctor, with an appearance from Maxwell 45) and brio musicianship and skills from a multiplicity of music disciplines. Some musicians – they all play with other outfits - rotate in and out, and they plan for flexibility and surprises, underpinned with a solid sense of structure and purpose. There is a very early video available for you to watch, but it cannot capture what they do live. And a mixed multicultural band draws a multicultural crowd, who as I’ve already said, mashed themselves up into a pulsing, oozing, frenzy. In some ways, the gig  reminded me of the Rock Against Racism gigs of 30 years ago – but here, the driving force was the sheer pleasure of experimental music making, powered by the purest idealism and goodwill.

This is very new and very vital, and I urge you to check them out. They play monthly gigs (so far), at the Honeycomb Club nights at the Hare and Hounds in King’s Heath, with intensive rehearsals in between time. The set is brief – four or five numbers - but those numbers are extended work outs which stretch the band and the audience.

Huge props to all concerned, not least the unstoppable Shelley Atkinson and Karl 'Malicious DJ' Jones, who dreamed up the concept, and then charmed, cajoled and bullied the project to its feet and into vibrant life. Respect and admiration doesn’t begin to cover it. And many thanks to Richard Shakespeare for the use of his picture

An INTERESTING year… because we live in interesting times. Don’t we?

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m taking stock. In many ways, this has been an extraordinarily diverse and creatively fresh year. I’ve found myself both trying new things with new techniques, and also handling old-school projects in new ways. I’ve met some truly great people, and worked with new and old friends and colleagues on some inspiring projects. I’ve pushed myself both creatively and technically, and winkled out some new skills. All that’s good, and in some ways a very pleasant surprise. But, as it says at the top… we live in interesting times. There are a lot of clouds on the horizon, both for music and radio. But let’s do the good stuff first, shall we?

Yesterday (Thursday 30th December), I spent a very refreshing and pleasant hour guesting with Brett Birks at BBC WM. It’s on the BBC iPlayer for the next six days or so here – scoot through to the start of hour 3 to hear it. We were talking music, local issues, and trailing the BBC WM transmission of my Handsworth Evolution documentary. This was a commission from Birmingham Music Heritage, and I don’t think that they or I had any idea of how the piece would be received. The doco is permanently up on SoundCloud; you can get there from this blog page. The doco was also aired on WCRFM in Wolverhampton on Boxing day, and it is due to get a further airing on Rhubarb Radio in the new year. That’s lots of stations, and the more the merrier, say I: as I stated when I put the thing upon this blog, the doco is available, free of charge and gratis, to any station that would like to run it – just drop me a line and I’ll get a copy to you.

This was a sweet, sweet project to work on. I have had some truly lovely feedback. There really was something special about the Birmingham Music scene in the late 70s and early 80s, both in Handsworth and Balsall Heath, and indeed across the whole city. New and enthusiastic players emerged from all sides, bursting with skill, creativity and optimism. Rock Against Racism played a crucial role in introducing audiences and musicians to each other.

I’d like to think that time laid some foundations for the sparkling cross-cultural collaborations we enjoy now. It’s too easy to view each new generation as sweeping away the conventions of their crusty and conservative forefathers. In fact, now that we are seeing some of the children of those great 70s and 80s musicians make their way in our local music scene, I know this is not the case. Sometimes, anyway.

Five or so weeks back from yesterday, we launched the Pilot Project website. I’ve written at length about this, and it’s fair to say that the site has had a gratifying impact. Lots of traffic, lots of time spent on the site exploring. I am especially grateful to my fantastic team of advisors and collaborators, some of whom went far, far beyond that extra mile to help the project find its feet. You know who you are; I can not thank you (or, indeed, pay you) enough.

The next steps are already underway. However, I won’t go into detail just yet about these. But if you haven’t been to the site yet, why not go there now? Click around. Read about how it came together. And, above all, explore some of the sensational music from our region.

There’s more: I've seen new and exotic client radio stations for the consultancy side of my business. I’m also now a proud member of the RNIB Talking Books reader panel, and I can’t wait for my next assignment. It’s serious fun, and I work with people, many from radio, who know the power of the spoken word in a way few others do. And I am pleased to be able to report that – tentatively – Rhubarb Radio seems to be building solid foundations for its future. Props to those good people who are making this happen.

Now… the downside. Mmmm. Where do you start?

I mourn for many of my talented radio colleagues, people I trained and worked with back in the day, who now, saddled with mortgages and bringing up families, have to carve out a new future outside of an industry that has decided it has no need for their talents as it rolls its radio ‘brands’ out across the country.

I hate the notion of a radio ‘brand’. It's got everything to do with not communicating... in an industry whose lifeblood is communicating. Maybe the Radio industry thinks its brands are akin to a chocolate bar…something you pick up easily because you know what it is, no matter where you are. And maybe that’s so. But maybe it’s also the case that a brand is such a familiar and known quantity that you can throw it away all too easily.

Here’s a scenario: I’m ditching my long-term fave station. I stuck with it when it suddenly morphed into Flake FM a couple of years ago. But I’m tired of that now, so think I’ll go over to Wispa FM. There’s really not a lot of difference, and somehow I don’t much care for either these days, but it’ll do for now. I suppose. Until something better comes along. Or maybe I’ll just go off cheap predictable sugary bland confectionery altogether, because they do this stuff better on the web or on the telly.  

Closer to home, I hate the way our local music industry is being starved of venues because property developers want to make a quick buck running up shoddy flats, and in so doing, try to get long-established neighborhood music venues declared noise nuisances. I know we need more housing; no argument there. Possibly we don’t need so many ‘luxury’ flats, but I’m not the one selling these, so how would I know?

I do know we absolutely need our venues. We need our talent to be able to work in those venues. It’s all part of the local economy, dammit. The next UB40 is out there. But if they can’t get started, then there’s no chance that the next UB40 will develop into a long-term vibrant business that will generate dozens of jobs and millions and millions of pounds for the West Midlands economy over the next 30 years. But, hey, some property guy from out of town will have sold a few more cheap flats and made our neighborhoods even more sterile. So that’s all right then. If you doubt that this is the case, just read this. 

There’s more of course: Arts funding, for example. But I think I’m going to stop there. I’ve ended this year in a much better place than I thought I would. For that, and for the talented and generous creative world of radio people, arts and music people and, especially, music makers, that I find myself sometimes part of, I am truly grateful. 

Here’s to 2011. We all need a good year. I hope we get one.

Rhubarb Crumble

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about radio. I’ve been busy with the Pilot Project, of course, but there are other reasons. The overall radio picture is relentlessly depressing. Imaginative and capable broadcasters are being squeezed out to make way for networked output, with less and less sense of an obligation to listeners or communities. All this to allow more er, ‘brand development’ (Radio practitioners who feel unjustly maligned are welcome to reply to this post).

Last month, there was more bad news. Like many community stations, the eccentric but occasionally quite wonderful Rhubarb Radio is feeling the cold winds of recession. The current managerial team is bailing out; an intensive effort is being mounted to build a new and solid structure for the continued existence of the station. As I write, there are positive signs. The latest revival news is here.

I really want the Rhubarb revival to succeed, for a number of very good reasons, listed below. But I have been struck by the harsh cynicism, and sometimes malice, with which Rhubarb's bad news has been met by many of my colleagues in mainstream and associated radio sectors. I want to challenge that. 

It must be said that a number of community stations seem to be not so much about community as about layers of control-freakery and ego-tripping. Rhubarb is certainly not immune. But, to be brutally frank, not one of the 70 or so stations I have worked at or advised could be said to be immune either.

Truth be told, I don’t know anyone who puts a show out who doesn’t have ego drive. Ego drive can be a very good thing. It should encourage competition; it should make you strive to make your show, or your station, the very best that you can make it. .So rivalry certainly comes into things. But it should not extend to barely disguised glee at a fellow broadcaster’s troubles. When I was programming at BRMB, I wanted to take the opposition (at the time Radio 1) down, big time, and it felt really good when I put a serious dent in their figures. That did not extend to wanting to demolish the BBC or shutting Radio 1 down.  There were those in commercial radio who did, and do, want it shut down, but that’s another story.

The spectrum of ability and impact in radio is continuous and seamless, from beginner to practised. There’s no clear division between the big boys and the tiddlers, much as the big boys would like to see it that way. But I have a problem with hearing one radio person tearing into another operation – no matter what reasons they may have. A bit of humility might be nice. It’s only radio, after all…..

We all started somewhere. Chances are it was a tiny station, online or otherwise, a whole world away from today’s glossy radio factories. Dumping on stations like Rhubarb, especially when they’re on the ropes, is an ugly way to thank the people who put your first college or community or tiny local station up, so you could start to practise your craft. I started in student radio. It was not perfect then; it’s not perfect now. But you won’t find me dumping on it.

We need those community stations. We need the room to allow people to experiment, to try new tricks, to learn their craft, to practise until they’re perfect. And we need community stations to reflect and support their communities, to champion the music from their town, to float new ideas.

When a station folds, it’s sad, but the world does not stop turning. But when a small station folds, yet another door closes that might admit brave, fresh and idealistic talent to the world of broadcasting.

When I was putting the Pilot Project team together, I approached a lot of stations. From the mainstream, apart from the gracious and constructive help afforded me by the BBC Introducing team at BBC Shropshire, I drew a blank, even from areas where I might have expected some kindred spirits. But four of the fantastic advisors who worked with me on the Pilot Project were or are community radio djs. They were and are valuable to me because of their knowledge and enthusiasm. This knowledge and enthusiasm also took them into radio, and their stations were the richer for it. Three of those advisors were from Rhubarb. All of them do excellent shows.

I want to keep listening.
.

See more radio and broadcasting posts on Radio To Go

More Pilot Project stuff. The lessons we learn...

It’s fascinating how people use website information. We’ve had the Pilot Project site up for coming up on four weeks as I write this.

We’ve just added a new link – you can now email to info@pilot-project.co.uk.

I’ve been monitoring usage with Google Analytics. It’s telling us all sorts of stuff about where people are tapping into the site from.  But the nice story I have to tell today is that, placed at the very bottom of the Advisors page, accessed off the About page, is a small paragraph thanking some of the people who went above and beyond the call of duty in offering comments and advice. You kind of have to dig to get down to this section. But people have been digging. 

Mike Davies is a long-standing West Midlands Music journalist. He was down to be an advisor, but had to withdraw from our first shot for personal reasons. But happily, towards the end of our first curatorial period, he was showering us with ideas, which were most welcome. Yesterday Mike dropped me a note, because a band he worked with back in the day had been digging deep into the site, and turned his name up way down at the bottom of the Advisors page. And emailed him.

Not what I planned. But very nice to hear about. It shows how something like the Pilot Project , which is pretty damn well connected up, due to its fab team of advisors, can turn up even more connections. We saw a lot of synergies on launch night, and there have been more since then.

Another piece of news smacked me round the head this morning. I’d been double checking a couple of details on the site, and found out that the really excellent Senses, from Coventry, have called it quits. Sad for their followers, and it represents another tiny milestone for the Project.

Any site that takes a snapshot of 'now' is going to have to deal with change. Our approach this time around? We note that fact that with regret, the Senses are no more… and keep their music online for the time being. If there is any justice, the talented individuals from that band will go on to do other things, and if and when they achieve some success, it’s a nice to think that some of their earlier excellent work will have been archived for posterity. In a way that is the whole point of the Pilot Project. In the meantime, I’m racking up more feedback to evaluate as the Pilot Project progresses…

I mentioned some stats, didn’t I? Well, now... 

We have an average of well over four minutes on site per visitor. That means a helluva lot of people are sticking around for rather longer. Even at average durations, that means more than one track being checked out by each visitor. Not at all bad in these days of dysfunctional site surfing. 

Most popular page once you get past the home page? Well, it’s the Artists page. But the next most visited page is a surprise: it's the About page, which covers the whys and wherefores of the whole project.   

At the start of the site’s life, two thirds of visitors were from the West Midlands. Now it’s about 50%, which tells us that the site is rippling out across the world wide web rather nicely. And initially, most of the traffic came from Facebook and Twitter and blog plugs. Now we can see a small but growing slice of interest directly from Search Engines.

I could go on. I will, next time….  

Don't forget to email: info@pilot-project.co.uk

.