Turn Up Your Radio

I've never been able to pinpoint why, but Radio as a broadcast medium has always intrigued me. There's something magical about creating entertainment purely through sound.

The problem I have is that, in my opinion, most local radio in this country is rubbish. Commercial radio is just awful - it doesn't matter where you go in the country, every commercial radio station falls into one or the other categories: inane Top 40 pop, classic rock or talkback. There's no inventiveness or creativity in any of it, and the amount of promotion intertwined with normal programming is annoying and downright offensive at times (try listening to a Triple M football commentary sometime if you don't believe me.)

Thankfully, there are plenty of great stations around the place that stream on the web that are still awesome: Triple J Unearthed, EastSide Radio, FBi Sydney, 4ZZZ-FM Brisbane, not to mention great overseas ones like KCRW in Santa Monica California, Indie 103.1, Radio Paradise, plus great things in Britain like BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6Music, XFM, Absolute Radio, Jack-FM Oxfordshire, and heaps more, and they're all available via Tune-in.com.

It's so easy to lament the great stuff that came before now, and how most DJs are annoying and vacuous. Breakfast radio just isn't as interesting, clever or funny anymore. Cheap stunts, celebrity trash and general outrage are the flavour of the month. And yet, there is still life in the medium, provided people are prepared to be inventive at the expense of ratings and advertising dollars.

Pretty soon, the analog radio spectrum will be switched off and all radio stations will be forced to go digital. This is a major problem for the hundreds of Community and public radio stations in the country, who are struggling to make their operating costs as it is, without having to find additional capital to upgrade their broadcast gear.

But as well, what is going to happen to the old analog spectrum? There's still millions of cars without digital radios in them, and every mobile device has an analog radio built into its firmware?

Radio has captured the minds of people for almost 100 years now, and there is a huge volume of music the has been written in tribute or that has been inspired by radio - much more than anything about newspapers or television.

Below is a playlist capturing as many as I could think of. It's not exhaustive; I'm sure there is more. Take a listen to the 99 tracks that are here and let me know if you can add any to the list!

Enjoy.

The Workplace Relations playlist

Image source: The Age/Fairfax Media, Melbourne.

Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of posts lately as I've been busy and/or away for a few days.

Anyway, as we all know, the only female Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher, died last week and was laid to rest on Wednesday. Her legacy has divided Britain right down the middle. However, the one thing that sticks out is the massive job losses and battles with Trade Unions during her reign as PM.

Granted the Unions were too strong - they were asking for unreasonable things, and then when they didn't get them, they took unreasonable action, crippling the country. Thatcher changed things, but not without causing many many people to lose their jobs.

This playlist is a list of songs that specifically relate to working and dealing with "the man". It is not exhaustive, and if you can think of anything to add, please let me know in the comments. It is also partly inspired by BBC Radio 2's program "The People's Songs", which specifically dealt with this issue in Britain in the 1970s.

Enjoy!

Sunday Sessions: Brad Sucks

Here we are on another Sunday, and what better to post on a day of rest than some laid back tunes from Brad Sucks.

First of all, Brad certainly does NOT suck. The name is self-deprecating, on purpose. Brad Turcotte is the man behind the moniker and the music he creates is home-brewed, home-recorded tunes with the kind of charm that comes with the thought of anything handcrafted by an individual away from a production line.

The music is not easily categorized - sometimes it is acoustic based rock. Sometimes it's low-fi electronica. Either way, it is sung with that low, mellow register that just screams "Relax".

The other cool thing about Brad is that all his albums are available free from his website in a form ready for electro or dance producers to remix it. How cool is that?

These two tracks are from Brad's first LP "I Don't Know What I'm Doing", released in 2004. It's highly recommended. The two tracks are "I Think I Started A Trend" and "Sick As A Dog".

Enjoy!

REM: The Early Years

It's hard to imagine that REM's first LP "Murmur" is 30 years old, because it still sounds as fresh as (I imagine) it sounded when it was released.

There are some people who would call themselves REM fans but who have heard very little of the band's early work. They usually know of the big hits like "Everybody Hurts" or "Losing My Religion", or maybe even "Orange Crush", but they happened after the band jumped ship from indie label IRS records to Warner Brothers in 1988.

The first five REM records are all brilliant and there's barely a weak spot on any of them (there's more on album #3: "Fables of the Reconstruction" than on the others). They show a band that is raw and bristling with youthful energy. You can't always make out what Michael Stipe is singing about, but that was always the case, even into their later period. The lyrics may be indecipherable, but the chiming electric guitars with acoustic shadows and driving rhythms still sound fresh, despite sounding similar to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty was never this visceral or heartfelt, or even melodic - REM was always very tuneful.

The band sound very nervous on their first record "Murmur". The production is thin but that's because it was recorded cheaply. The band became tighter and better songwriters gradually and by the time "Document" was released in 1987, the production sounded better because the budget was bigger.

I hold the first five LPs of REM in very high regard, but my personal favourites would be "Life's Rich Pageant" and "Reckoning" (LPs 4 and 2 respectively.) For those who have never heard of any of the early work, below is "The Best of REM" on Spotify which cherry-picks 3 songs from each of the first 5 albums in chronological order, and the opening track is taken from their first EP release "Chronic Town".

Turn it up and, most of all, ENJOY!

Do Anniversaries intend to make us feel old?

Source: www.pefinfo.com

This morning I was reading about the 30th Anniversary of the release of REM's first LP "Murmur" on Consequence of sound.net. Linked to that at the bottom was a list of the 29 albums that are 20 years old this year on Buzzfeed. The one thing about the latter post that grabbed my curiosity was that it said in the introduction "Sorry if this makes you feel totally ancient".

Is that actually the point of these things? When an artist re-releases an album to coincide with the anniversary of its original release, is it designed to elicit nostalgia? Or does it serve to remind us that we are all advancing in years and we haven't been paying attention to that fact?

I think it is interesting to reflect on when albums were released, purely based on the fact that they either reflect the times it was created in or, in some cases, how they were so out of their time compared to other music available at the time. That's why an album like "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison is an interesting listen, because it sounds nothing anything that was released before it, or like anything else at the time of its release, or like anything released since.

The age of the music never bothers me either. If a record was made 35 years ago, but I hear for the first time today, then it's "new" music to me. If it's good music, I don't care how old it is.

Probably a more pertinent question, and the answer is certainly much more interesting on a social level, is "Where were you when you first heard [insert album name here]?" In many cases, if you weren't even born when an album was released, but the music made some intense impact on you, does it really matter when it was released?

It's something worth thinking about...

The Ngoni

Unusual and exotic stringed instruments just absolutely fascinate me. Being a guitarist, I'm endlessly fascinated how stringed instruments can be built differently, can sound differently and can be played in different styles. I discovered this one, the Ngoni, through the latest album by Malian musician Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba. The album is called "Jama Ko" and it is an amazing piece of music, not least for the way Bassekou incorporates western playing techniques and signal processing on his instrument.



According to Wikipedia, the Ngoni is thought to be an ancient ancestor to the Banjo once the African slave trade began. It is an interestingly built instrument, built similarly to a guitar or a banjo, however the body is made from the shell of the fruit of a calabash plant, or from wood and is covered in dried goat skin. It has a long fretless fingerboard and can contain anywhere from 6 to 12 strings. It is commonly found in West African countries such as Ghana and Mali.

When electricified, it has an unusual timbre. Twangy, yet somewhat deeper, but not unlike an Asian instrument such as a koto. Being fretless, it can produce unusually pitched notes and some unusual sounding bends when the strings are struck and pushed up against the fretboard. With the strings being lower to the body, the speed at which a virtuoso can play these instruments is lightning fast and it is fascinating to listen to. Couple that with solid and eminently danceable rhythmic backdrop, and you have some seriously fun music.

Below is an amateur film clip of Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba filmed at this years WOMADelaide festival. The first half of this is two Ngoni players trading solos before they go into some synchronised moves that put Status Quo to shame. The rhythm is insistent, so if you feel compelled to dance (how could one not?) go right ahead. Around 1:19, Bassekou filters his Ngoni through a cry-baby wah wah pedal.

It's joyous and fun music, and it looks like both band and audience during this set had a ball.

Enjoy!

Escape from Toytown

Yesterday I let Billy Bragg explain what life was like under the rule of one of Britian's most divisive politicians, Margaret Thatcher.

Today I bring you a tribute to an equally divisive politician, but this time from the Australian Sphere: one Pauline Hanson.

Pauline Hanson, for those who don't know, stood on a platform of hard-right conservatism with a minor party named One Nation. She raised the ire of the other right-wing party in this country, The Liberal-National party, as she encroached a little too vehemently on their ideological turf, but that's a story for Margo Kingston to tell...

She got her start in the public eye by running a small Fish and Chip shop in the rural Queensland town of Ipswitch. Some of her political office staffers were known to remark in her absence that the fiery redhead was "The Fish and Chip Bitch from Ipswitch", no doubt in reference to her temper. Once she became notorious for her outspoken radical beliefs, a young Brisbane band called Escape from Toytown took the nickname, crafted a state-of-the-nation-circa-1996 address around the theme, scored some airplay on legendary alternative station 4ZZZ-FM and they quietly went off into history books.



Enjoy!