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I adore Chris Moyles. I laugh my way to work with him every morning. I just love the banter I’m afraid, I think he and his team are terrific. So yes, I’m one of the sad fools!
Marb – find myself disagreeing with certain chunks of that summary, not least the suggestion that the daytime DJs have that much of a say in what they actually play. The concept of the A, B and C lists for radio play are still very much adhered to in Radio 1’s pre-7pm output.
Anyhows. Chris Moyles I’ve covered, and of some of the others…
Jo Wiley– Very into live bands and has her own “live lounge” in which she recruits leading bands to perform at BBC studio’s at maidevale, will throw in her “record of the week” and try’s to balance things up by playing a bit of Justin Trousersnake alongside the latest Radiohead. Today she announced Coldplay will have another album out (called prospect I think?) in the summer.
…announced on the same day that Coldplay also stated they’re likely to go on strike, along with Robbie Williams, Radiohead and others, over the way EMI Records is currently being run, so I’d not be as optimistic about a summer release for that one.
As regards Jo Whiley, she ceased being interesting to me when she left her job as the booker of bands for Channel 4’s The Word, at which she was very, very good indeed. Her move to become co-presenter of Radio 1’s Evening Session in 1993 coincided with the first shoots of the New Wave of New Wave movement, which quickly begat Britpop as well, and, sad to report, she and Steve Lamacq went too far down the road of endorsing practically every last bit-player in the genre (right down to the Conference South-quality no-hopers such as Powder and These Animal Man), rather than continue to question, challenge and discover new stuff of their own volition.
Around the same time she also cultivated her now familiar personae as the Lesley Graham of alternative music broadcasting, too ready to give bland, fawning, uncritical interviews of guests. That she got a chat show on Channel 4 to do more of the same staggered me. That this vanity project then got commissioned for several series still has high-foreheaded boffins with lab coats and red pens and everything utterly bemused to this day.
Not a favourite of mine, all told, and the more of Lauren Laverne and less of her hosting the Beeb’s Glastonbury footage, the better, I reckon.
Edith Bowman– There was a piece about her travelling expeditions in a sunday magazine last week (The Mail?) and basically she’s more of a phillosophical type, wanting to discuss the lastest films etc and playing whatever music she so likes at the time. I’m sure there’s much more to her but thats all we need to say for now.
Now she’s much more like it, and anyone who can withstand years in the same studio as Colin “I Invented Every Band Ever, Me” Murray (nice bloke, and I love Fighting Talk, but I bet he’d drive Rowan Williams to murder before too long) and emerge unscathed can’t be too bad an egg.
Older farts will remember that in the wake of Matthew Bannister’s wholesale culling of the Fab FM lot in 1993, a couple of attempts were made at a more cerebral, contemplative lunchtime / afternoon show, but they were a bit arch for their own good and alienated listeners somewhat. Edith has succeeded where Emma Freud and Lisa I’Anson failed a decade and more earlier.
Sara Cox– A strange accent that sounds a bit like she’s from Lancashire, a bit from yorkshire and a bit from Primrose Hill. she’s got serious street cred, she’d have more if she was mates with me though!
Heh-heh, from Bolton to Balham! I can take her or leave her. At least she’s toned down a lot of the “ladette” silliness from several years ago.
Scott Mills– Made famous in my book by trying to get a slow, Thomas The Tank engine like song that went something along the lines of, “the ladies bum, the ladies bum, the ladies tities and the ladies bum”, into the charts.
This was presumably The Ladies’ Bras by Jonny Trunk and Wisbey, wasn’t it? Wikipedia advises;
“At 36 seconds, it is the shortest song ever to enter the UK charts reaching number 27 in September 2007. Coincidentally, it took this record just a few weeks after the song “Spider Pig” by Hans Zimmerman (from The Simpsons Movie) had taken it. Previously, the record for shortest charting single had lasted since 1961.
It became popular after it was played on a UK podcast show, reaching #70 in the UK singles chart with 1,644 sales and no national airplay. It was introduced by Danny Baker, on his All Day Breakfast Show podcast, and then later picked up by Scott Mills who campaigned to get it in the charts by asking guests in his show including McFly and Dannii Minogue to sing it live on air”.
As for Mills, he’s a bit too lightweight and lax in his research for me. He reminds me rather of Neal James, one of the last (and shortest-lived) Fab FM types at Radio 1, who did his chances of retention no good at all by playing a Bob Dylan record and announcing, “It would have been Bob’s 60th birthday today. What a shame he isn’t alive to enjoy it”. Spanner.
Tim Westwood Before listening to your first Tim show, I should warn you, once you go West, you never go back!
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Au contraire. I need to go and fetch my length of 4 x 2. With a nail in it. I’ll “Yo, whussup dog” you, Westwood, you delusional, witless waste of blood and organs!
Mind, the best thing to say about all the above, even the ones I don’t like very much, is they’ll never wind me up as much as DLT (The man named after the sandwich that never was – Dickhead, Lettuce and Tomato), Peter Powell, Bruno Brookes and their ghastly, superannuated, Conservative-voting ilk.
I need a lie-down after all that. Nurse, the screens!
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Ah, why did you have to tell me GC, I was still under the illusion they actually played what they thought was good taste! No seriously, is it what they done before they got on radio one that got them their job then? Otherwise, if all their doing is playing what their told to play, whats stopping the average bloke on the street who can talk shite all day from getting a job?
Basically yes on both counts – Lamacq, for example, was a far more cutting-edge character during his late 1980s music paper days. The fact that he has been totally deaf in one ear and half-deaf in the other for over a decade now does lend itself to easy jokes, but even putting those to one side, he’s never been half as interesting a DJ as his early credentials would have had you expecting.
Radio 1 probably doesn’t give the impression of being as prescriptive in terms of what its daytime DJs have to play, as its playlists are far bigger than your archetypal local commercial FM station. But playlists they still are, make no mistake.
I kinda gathered folk like you (with your musical taste) would’nt be tuning in to hear the latest Timberland tune on daytime radio one, so challenging these dissenting views is what it’s all about!
That was just my take on them though, not gospel by any means.Entirely fair, although for all my preferences a good pop song is still a good pop song. There’s one club in London I used to go to that would drop S Club 7’s Don’t Stop Movin’ inamongst a whole bunch of Baxendale, Sarah Records, Talulah Gosh or Wedding Present tunes, and it made more sense than it may seem.
ps,I thought Zane Lo would be more your thing, a bit of eccentricity in there.
Lowe – another self-aggrandising nob, and his remit is far too narrow. His Gonzo show is one of very few things on MTV2’s evening roster I’d go out of my way to avoid, as well.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
really took to Edith Bowman when she was doing the Leeds Festival on the telly and likened Gogol Bordello to ‘the sort of band that you see when you go away on holiday; buy their cd, take it home and play it to your friends saying -listen to this amazing music that I heard on holiday – only to realise that back home it sounds like utter rubbish’…do like Steve Lamacq and must admit to sort of fancying him…think thats to do with my age. It must be difficult for female presenters to appeal to both men and women; the best in my humble opinion being Lauren Laverne who is pretty, highly intelligent and funny. I can’t get used to Jo Wiley doing voice overs for Blossom Hill. Zane Lowe is really really irritating and still needs to talk slower. Johnny Walker was so brilliant in Radio London [Caroline] days, but I guess you’re all too young to remember that….John Peel was and always will be the best of the best….
By gum GC, an encyclopaedic knowledge of both contemporary music and grim northern permit-holders. Two less likely bed-fellows would be hard to imagine
Truly a man for all seasons
By gum GC, an encyclopaedic knowledge of both contemporary music and grim northern permit-holders. Two less likely bed-fellows would be hard to imagine
Truly a man for all seasons
Ye verily I am the Aldi own brand Stephen Fry.
You’d actually be surprised at the prevalence of such a music / racing marriage, Drone! As well as myself and Prufrock bigging up bands, the Sportsman office also included the owner of the independent label Vespertine (home of Gnac and the Montgolfier Brothers), and another guy who was an expert on C86 / 1980s indie / post-punk.
There can’t be many places of work where one could discuss the merits of Cartmel and the Colorblind James Experience in more or less the same breath. Wonderful, heady days, for all that the hours and stress levels were incredible.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
That was just my take on them though, not gospel by any means.
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