Cracking podcast. Particularly entertaining.

Brilliant podcast. The truth about music radio programming. How depressing is that? I'm just reading Johnny Walker's autobiography. He used to have to invent a 'family choice' spot to get past the BBC's dislike of album tracks on his daily show back in the 60's. (It's a better read than some recent highly publicised muso biogs, as well).
Trevor Dann is always a fantastic storyteller.
Have you ever met anyone who's filled in a RAJAR form, or been on one of those BBC listening forums described here?
My favourite Stealer's Wheel? 'Late Again'.

enlivened by the trumpeting nose of Mark Ellen and the wisdom and insight of Trevor Dann and David Hepworth! Excellent. Thanks for the oblique mention regarding why Nick Drake didn't get more recognition in his own time... I am honoured.

Have to disagree with the notion that people will forget Chicago - although their music is without interest, they were the band whose guitarist died while playing Russian roulette...

As for radio - I'm in Australia, where radio is generally awful. Not so much providing listening matter as simultaneously patronising and pandering to the lowest common denominator. Thank god for streaming and downloads; although when I find out what's available around the world, I get quite depressed about what's on offer here.

Great podcast - good to have you back.

My radio station of choice is Virgin, which is great to wake up to, and to listen to in the car if I can't be bothered to connect my iPod, but I once made the mistake of listening to it for two days solid while helping do up my friend's house. There were at least 4 songs repeated at least 4 times every 12 hours, and it soon began to grate.
However, hearing "A Day In The Life" by The Beatles in its entirity on national commercial radio on a Saturday afternoon almost made up for all the Robbie Williams repeats.

Pre-recording Jools Holland is one thing - but this is quite another.

Have a look at this report from the Take That New Year's Eve show at the loathsome O2....

http://www.thetriforce.com/newblog/?p=1069

A brilliant listen, the best yet.

I've loved DAB ever since I bought a Psion Wavefinder, a PC-only monstrosity looking like a transmitter from the 50's version of War Of The Worlds; I love the 'secret' BBC stations and the odd little outfits like The Arrow (nearly advert-free, and nearly DJ-free now too), Smooth & Chill (very good in the middle of the night or Sunday mornings); I love the 'Now Playing' text; I love 5Live sounding crisp & clear, not like it's being broadcast through a sock. So why the poor take-up? Because the place most people listen to the radio remains a DAB no-go area : their cars. DAB just doesn't hit a moving target very well. Sure, you can buy £250 in-car DAB's, then spend another hundred quid on roof ironmongery to get a better signal, but you're still in the lap of the gods. Mind you, (adopts Clarkson voice) we'll all
be stationary most of the time before long & then the signal will come through uninterrupted.

Re Kevin Greening, here's http://botherer.cream.org/?p=833 an interesting blog piece, reprinted in Private Eye, about how the MoS end of journalism works. The blogger
doesn't name the hack but PE does - take a bow one Daniel Cochlin.

I listen to two podcasts on my ipod on the way to work every week, the Guardian Football one and this one. I can listen to and hear the Guardian podcast anywhere, even walking along a busy road beside noisy traffic. The Word one, though, I can basically only listen to on the train where it's nice and quiet.

Do you think you could make it a bit louder, or give everyone their own microphone, or do anything to make it a bit more audible?

Cheers

How exciting to hear some reminiscing about Rock Around The Clock on the recent Podcast. I remember the evening very well. I must have been about fifteen or sixteen and had arranged for my friend Rich to come and stay at my parents' house. The plan was to stay up all night and watch every second of the marathon broadcast. So, loaded with cola and crisps (and a few lagers for when the folks had gone to bed) we sat in front of the telly
to enjoy the music marathon. How wonderful it was, too. Shambolic, disorganised, no one knew what was coming next including the presenters. I loved it. Just thinking about it makes me yearn for a time now long gone. In the current climate of focus grouped television by committee, there is no way a show like that would air today. What a shame. However, my top Rock Around The Clock moments, in no particular order, are:

1. An obviously "refreshed and relaxed" Bernard Sumner of New Order struggling to stay in tune with the rest of the band during their live broadcast from the BBC. Leading him to change the words of Blue Monday to: "I still find it so hard/To stay in tune with you/But I'm quite sure that you'll tell me/What the f**k we should do." This was at about five thirty on a Saturday afternoon, on live TV.

2. Morrissey on the phones for the Video Vote. It took three attempts for us to speak to him, but on the third attempt, we dialled the number and got straight through to the man himself. We duly placed our vote for Bowie's China Girl before telling him he was our hero. "what do you want to vote for that one for? It's awful" was his response. Imagine that happening now? It's the equivalent of phoning a vote into Strictly Come Dancing and getting straight through to Brucie.

3. The Cure live at Glasgow Barrowlands. My favourite band at the time. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see or hear an awful lot for the first few songs due to the stage being constantly invaded by drunk Glaswegian blokes all wanting to say hello to their mates/girlfriends/mums as soon as they realised that the live broadcast had begun.

4. The Air Guitar Contest. I can't remember where it was being held, but it looked like the seventh circle of hell. A bunch of drunken, potentially violent metal heads greeting each hapless air guitar contestant with a barrage of abuse and middle fingers as they were, literally it seemed, shoved out onto the stage to mime along to various AC/DC tracks as best they could. As the contest wore on, winning became less important than getting off the stage in one piece. As the crowd's boredom and drunkenness increased, so did the threat of violence. One poor soul got too close to the lip of the stage and was pulled into the crowd by the front row and disappeared for several seconds. It was left to a terrified looking Andy Kershaw to wade in and pull the poor blighter back onto the stage by his belt.

Now that's television!

I found the point about the use of the Floyd Track 'Money' for all finance-related TV interesting. Seems to me use of this 'songtitle to screen activity' music library is rife - but with one problem - most people would never know. It only hits the mark with those with a reasonably deep musical knowledge. I regularly hear background music that I recognise, and point out to my wife the relevance of it to what is actually happening on screen, ie 'The River' by Springsteen is playing briefly as the tv action moves towards or onto a river. However, the soundtrack never actually gets to the point where BS actually sings 'the river' so the point is undoubtedly lost on most. ITV do this all the time in their drama series, I'm never sure whether it's an in joke going on, or whether, in the same vein of Pans People's literal interpretations of songs in the 70's, its just some lazy clerk in the record library who sends out the first thing with a relevant song title. Does anyone know ?

Some how i don't see michael jackson performing at an FFC game, let along getting a crowd if given the chance. I just got some concert tickets for janet though and her i can watch all day anyplace.