World Radio Day 2012

And so it’s World Radio Day. It surprised me that this exists, to be honest – radio is something that we take for granted, part of the background noise of day-to-day life. And yet there’s more to it than that – heck, my favourite song (Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’) starts with the image of a girl on a doorstep listening to Roy Orbison on the radio, ‘Only The Lonely’ hissing and crackling because the reception in Mary’s house isn’t all that great. It’s a moment of scene-setting that perfectly evokes Bruce is singing about. It’s a beautiful piece of writing.

My favourite radio-related story is the famous tale of how Orson Welles panicked America with his adaptation of The War of the Worlds. What’s less known is that there were copycat panics following radio broadcasts in Ecuador and Chile. That was back in the day, of course, when radio ruled and TV was still in its infancy. Radio was the trusted medium, let into everyone’s home, and while that role now belongs to 24-hour news channels, radio is still king in other territories – our cars, for instance, or our offices. My morning commute is soundtracked by Kerrang Radio; there’s nothing like starting the day with a howled singalong to ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ or ‘With Or Without You’. Music is a fundamental part of our culture, and despite iTunes and Spotify, radio is still a fantastic medium for getting music out there – the shuffle function on an iPod still isn’t as good as radio at hitting us with songs we haven’t heard for ages, and radio stations with a commitment to promoting unsigned bands will still have an edge on getting that music out there, simply through weight of audience numbers. After all, radio is a medium that the UK does really well – heck, the BBC channels alone, especially Radio 4 and the World Service, support this, but that’s before we get onto the talent involved in local stations.

(And isn’t podcasting basically DIY radio?)

My other favourite radio-related story is how some of the earliest celebrities working in the medium were ventriloquists like Edgar Bergen and Peter Brough. I guess you couldn’t see their lips move… And yet, this is another example of radio’s power – its ability to engage the imagination. Because if you’re listening to a ventriloquist on the radio, you can fill in the gaps for yourself – the skill of the performer, his interaction with the dummy. The script may be the same for everyone, but the performance in your mind’s eye is unique.

(That’s probably another reason for the War of the Worlds panic.)

The intimacy of radio grows out of this, I think; bigger music fans than I talk about lying under the sheets at night listening to crackly broadcasts from pirate radio stations. I remember messing around with the Long Wave dial on my first proper stereo and picking up mysterious transmissions in French and German – sure, they were probably just a regional late-night phone-in show, but it proved there was a whole world out there, with radio stations and music and opinions, not just information culled from the Weetabix Wonderworld Atlas.

(Actually, that just fired another radio memory – staying up later than I should and listening to the Midnight Line phone-in on Beacon Radio. People who sounded like me, only talking about subjects I was only vaguely aware of, like conspiracy theories and Marxism. There’s a fantastic tribute to the show here.)

(And it all ties in to my other other favourite radio story – number stations, Cold War era transmissions just broadcasting numbers for no officially acknowledged reason.)

Sure, radio entertains the world but it also enchants it – the moments when an unexpected broadcast breaks through the static as you’re driving at night, or when your favourite song kicks in just as you drive towards the sunrise. Television lacks the ability to do this – it lacks the ubiquity – and so does the Internet, which is getting too tailored to our preferences, hurting its potential to surprise.  Radio still has a place in our world, because it’s not so much what it delivers, it’s how it delivers- music spun out of air and bringing a world into a teenager’s bedroom.

 

Yet Another 12 Blogs of Christmas #1: It’s cliched to be cynical at Christmas

Okay, so technically ‘the 12 days of Christmas’ refers to the period leading from December 25 to Epiphany, but it would feel weird to still be blogging about Christmas on January 6. I’m also a day late for this little series to end on Christmas Day, so I’m going to have to play catch-up at some point.

Anyway, the first post in my Twelve Blogs of Christmas is a tribute to the second best Christmas pop song ever recorded, ‘It’s Cliched to be Cyncial at Christmas’ by Half Man, Half Biscuit. It’s not one of the well-known ones, failing to rub shoulders with Slade and Wizzard and the Pogues on compilation CDs. This doesn’t matter, as it’s fantastic and a triumphant riposte against all the Scrooges out there.

At the same time, this post was also inspired by a post writter by my friend Sudge, who comments on the difficulties of a worldview based around cynicism. I agree with that – there comes a point when cynicism becomes boring – not actually serving any purpose and becoming a form of hipster irony. The minute you start putting imaginary quotation marks around everything is the moment you stop believing in, well, the importance of believing in something. It’s also the minute cynicism becomes dull. “Now how did I guess/You were going to express/Your disdain at the crane/With the bright fairy lights”, sing HMHB. It’s an expression of boredom against the sort of person who’d bitterly inform a kid that there’s no Santa under the guise of ‘telling it like it is’.

(As someone pointed out on Twitter earlier this week, who let the sort of person who tells it like it is define what IT is? Half the time they’re spouting misinformed bobbins anyway…)

There’s something about this that’s heightened at Christmas – it’s easy to sneer at the idea of, say, peace on Earth, but if you’re going to be cynical about it, at least let that move you to eye-popping fury at the injustice of it all. Anger at injustice is more likely to motivate change than ‘irony’. And why not be sincere at this time of year – it’s about celebration, giving gifts, peace on Earth, God reaching out to humanity, joy to the world and unrepentant sleighbells. We may do our best to turn it into a feast of unrestrained consumerism, but it’s boring to moan about that before going out to buy a new iPhone – better to let annoyance at capitalist hijackings prompt a reappraisal of what it’s all about. Maybe if we stopped being cyncial and actually tried to believe in the possibility of peace and love and joy, something might be achieved…

“Make a noise with your toys
And ignore the killjoys,
‘Cos it’s cliched
To be cynical
At Christmas.”

 

 

When The Night Has Come: A tribute to Stand By Me

The world, so they say, has become a smaller place, networked and and virtualised, a village the size of the globe. This is, I guess, a good thing, for the most part anyway, but only willful blindness would stop us from noticing that something is missing. Maybe it’s the way people listen to their iPods, isolated in a musical bubble; maybe it’s the way people – myself included – are almost surgically attached, cyborg-like, to their smart phones. Somewhere along the line the world got closer together, and we reacted by retreating into our personal space. It’s ironic when you think about it.

Back in October 1960, on a Thursday long before anyone had really dreamed of iPods, a song was recorded. Based on an old spiritual and some verses from the Bible, ‘Stand By Me’ made Ben E. King’s name as a solo performer. It’s a gorgeous song, with a bassline that you never forget leading you into an almost mythic dimension – even in the depths of darkness, even if skies and mountains fall, loyalty and love are still possible, now until the end of the world.

Anyway, those Bible verses I mentioned? They’re from Psalm 46:2-3:

“Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way,
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.”

Fear’s something that we see a lot of, in tabloid journalism and cab driver conspiracy theorie, and it defines us more than we’d like to let on. Asking us not to fear may sometimes feel like asking us not to breathe, but it doesn’t have to be like this. We can unite, talk, sing songs, tell stories around acampfire lit to ward off the darkness. We can stand together – you, me, friends, families, lovers, God – stand together and not be afraid. We may have to turn off the iPods and put down the smart phones to engage with the people, the communities, the world around us, but it’s worth it.

“Whenever you’re in trouble
Won’t you stand by me?”

Happy birthday, Ben E. King.

Some Joyful Musical Awesomeness for Thursday

I’m feeling a bit under the weather and need cheering up, so here’s some musical awesomeness to brighten up your day:

A unique cover of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ (starring Bill Bailey, who is a personification of joyful musical awesomeness…)

Musicians from around the world unite to sing ‘Stand By Me’.

You’ve seen this before, but how can you not love the Muppets singing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’? (Also Ode to Joy.)

Dedicated to my friend Sudge and little baby Clark: Live orchestra playing the Superman theme…

…And for my lovely Helen, here’s Ella Fitzgerald singing a live version of Summertime in concert in Berlin.

The Hallelujah Chorus in a shopping mall…

And finally, A whole town sings American Pie. This is fantastic.

Hope you’re all singing!

The Song That Got You Into Music

Kerrang, my in-car radio station of choice, was doing a nice feature this morning – basically asking listeners the song that made them a fan of music. It’s a nice getting-to-know-you idea, so I thought I’d throw it out there.

Of course, that raises the question about the answer I’d give. Well, I’m not saying, at least at the moment, for fear of the slings and arrows of outrageous rock snobbery. No, someone else can go first…