Category: Audio
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Hyde Park Calling and the Buena Vista Social Club
And so to Hyde Park Calling – a festival that happens at the same time as Glastonbury, and so has an “old rocker” feel to it. Due to a bit of a cock-up on my part, one of the newer singers I wanted to see, Terra Naomi, who’d I heard on the cover CD of…
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The Special Edition
So I’m popping in to HMV after work to look for an album, and can’t help but notice all the special editions of albums that are on sale. It’s pretty typical these days for albums to be packaged in at least two different manners. It might be that one set comes with an additional DVD,…
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Stoppard on the Radio
The BBC finally announced today what The Stage had already told us – there is to be a Stoppard season on BBC Radio this summer. The headline piece is the radio debut of Stoppard’s most recent work, Rock ‘n’ Roll, which is shortly to transfer to Broadway. I was hoping for a repeat of Radio…
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Serial Competition Winners
Here’s a little known fact: it’s easier to win radio competitions than you might think. Most people assume that there are thousands of people phoning in to try to win tickets, cash, a holiday or maybe even a car. But the truth is that it can be easier than you think to get through. I’m…
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Pet Shop Boys – Hammersmith, May 2007
To the Hammersmith Apollo to see a great Pet Shop Boys concert with all your favourites in a non-stop show. Great stuff, and more photos to be found here in my Flickr stream.
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Local Stations for Local People
So what is localness? I’m just wondering because today Xfm announced its much rumoured (within the radio industry at least) initiative to get rid of its daytime DJs and run an “all music” daytime schedule. Between 10am and 4pm each day, Xfm will be running “Radio to the Power of U.” And this will happen…
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A World in Your Ear
There’ve been one or two pieces recently bemoaning the sad departure of several treasures from Radio 4 and Five Live including in particular A World In Your Ear. Essentially, it’s too expensive and labour intensive to put together. I must admit that it’s one of those programmes that I know I enjoy, but never find…
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Stoppard Season
According to The Stage, Radio 3 is putting together a Stoppard Season. This is expected to include the recent Rock’n’Roll as well as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I’m hoping that Radio 3 opens up its archives and repeats its 1993 production of Arcadia featuring the original cast. I never did get around to cleaning…
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Disappointment
There’s nothing like having something really built up, only for you to be let down at the last moment. I feel a bit of a heel for saying this, but that’s a reasonably accurate reflection of me earlier this evening. I was at the evening do for the Radio Academy’s Production ’07 conference. After a…
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UGC
Sadly, not the late, and quite probably unlamented cinema chain (not that Cineworld is a whole lot better with useless security guards supposedly checking that I did video-phone films, and too few people manning the ticket desk at the weekend), but that ultimate flavour-of-the-nanosecond buzzword “user generated content.” Today we learnt that LBC is rebranding…
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D2 Bids Are In
Bids went in yesterday for the second national commercial multiplex. There are two bidders – Channel 4 and National Grid Wireless. Channel 4 we know about – James has all the details. National Grid Wireless (NGW) are one of the two radio transmission comapnies in the UK (the other is Arqiva), and the big story…
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Music Industry in Decline
A couple of really interesting stories to come out of America recently regarding the state of the music industry. First up was the report that in the US, CD sales dropped by 20% in the last year. That’s an awful lot. In real money, it’s a decline from 112 million CDs to 89 millions. A…
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Going Digital
BBC Radio Five Live is running a campaign to persuade us to go digital at the moment. It’s awful and condescending. Have a listen yourself. powered by ODEO I listen to a lot of Five Live outside work, and I’m certainly in the digital community with DAB, broadband, Freeview and Sky as ways of listening…