Oh, how I have missed
it, my bouncy missile, and particularly lately when watching the BBC coverage at Glastonbury. I'm not talking about the music. What a fabulous festival. A hundred stages and countless artists - where you could click from Seasick Steve and John Paul Jones having a proper good time to the Stones via the Smashing Pumpkins, Chic, Bobby Womack, Billy Bragg and Elvis Costello and dozens of others including Brucie and Kennie. No, I am on about the presenter 'links'. I am sure I am not alone in not expecting very much when a 'presenter' talks to a musician. It does help if they try not to use the words
'awesome' and 'fantastic' in every sentence and that their star-struck
besottedness doesn't blind them to the need not to talk about themselves all the time. Yes, yes, I know that there is this desperately important Beeb
mission to relate to the audience demograph, but surely it should be possible for the presenters to treat their audience as though they haven't all
just stopped off on the way to a part-time-week-end Bieber language course - any more than all viewers spend their evenings collecting interesting pop data and dancing round the kitchen listening to Coldplay....
Above everything else,
Glastonbury is a Festival of Music and the Arts and there is far more
to it than the Headliners and those lucky groups that the hip BBC
staff happen to fancy or are able to pronounce....from young unknown brilliant bands, film, acoustic wizardry, poetry, and burlesque to
performance art, street musicians and radical protest. Anyone who has
been there or listened to Michael Eavis for more than ten seconds will know that. Interviews? What interviews? Er, the deathly interruptions to some brilliant music to make space for buttock-clenchingly moronic questions ...(How did it feel?/I saw you wore the same hat/ Gosh, I do like a bit of Buddhist monk singing).....you couldn't make it up.
This all combines to slightly mar what is really a quite spectacular television coverage of a major event. The presenters could, almost without exception, be replaced by a sensible voice-over and some more time spent showing the music. Notwithstanding that, the hours of coverage, red buttons, downloads, iplayer catchups and the diversity of the music are generally superb and if you were not one of the 150,000 then the licence fee is worth every penny...so keep on keepin' on Auntie....but, to mis-use an old hack's phrase...next time, can we please, please, please Drop All The Dead Donkeys? Now where's that brick?
This all combines to slightly mar what is really a quite spectacular television coverage of a major event. The presenters could, almost without exception, be replaced by a sensible voice-over and some more time spent showing the music. Notwithstanding that, the hours of coverage, red buttons, downloads, iplayer catchups and the diversity of the music are generally superb and if you were not one of the 150,000 then the licence fee is worth every penny...so keep on keepin' on Auntie....but, to mis-use an old hack's phrase...next time, can we please, please, please Drop All The Dead Donkeys? Now where's that brick?
While on this matter of Proper Interviewing, The Hat would conjecture that a good many of his regular
readers tune in sometime, somewhere around the world, to a Blues Music
station. What a wonderful collection of grown up people we have out
there, ploughing their furrow for us, hunched over some complicated
switches, forever clamped into pincers on their heads, often talking
out loud to themselves and not knowing whether we are listening,
shouting, nodding agreement or lobbing Rubber Bricks. No, I agree, they are
not all Wolfman Jack or Clint Eastwood playing Misty. They may not even be one of those DJs famously 'saving your life'. Indeed, you may agree that some
of the very best could not be described as the greatest of poets or totally fluent in long
meaningful sentences. But...invariably, these guys know what they
are doing, know what they are talking about and are still welcome to
whisper in our ears on a regular basis and bring us good music. For
many, the internet has brought with it the opportunity to interact in
real time, trade information and lobby for your favourites and
alongside that comes the station's ability to identify exactly who is
listening and more accurately cater to their needs.
In the UK, the
Independent Blues Broadcasters Association has amongst its membership
some of the best Interviewers in the blues business. Invariably, they
know about the people they are talking to, have read their backgrounds,
listened to their music and frequently trade stories and gossip that
serve both to keep the listener absorbed and the artist feel as
though they are not wasting their time. Good heavens, they are
actually given time not only to play but to reply to a question! Showing that respect to
both musician and audience pays dividends. Both come back for more
and, of course, it is a small world. Word carries.
Just a short while ago,
there was a suggestion that the much loved Blues On The Marsh blues
station might go off the air. Within less time than it takes for Russ
Tippins and Jenna Hooson to deliver 'Mama Don't Allow', it became
clear that the blues community was not going to allow this to happen.
Hundreds of messages and a support page appeared on the social media
overnight, phones hummed and air waves buzzed. The Marsh isn't
Alice's Restaurant but Arlo Guthrie would have been proud – a
Movement appeared, as it were, Out of The Blue. Here was a fine
example of Blues Community action, with participants around the world
standing up and being counted to save something that they believed in
and thought was worthwhile. What is more is that in the front ranks
were many of the musicians who maybe got their first
sensible interview on an independent blues radio station and had
their music played and listened to by an appreciative audience. The interviewer didn't want to know their star sign or how they felt about the
weather....and I bet you, it all got done without anybody wearing sparkly wellies..
The Hat (who, by the
way, is an Aquarian - in case you think it's important) thinks that is...er... Totally Awesome and
Fantastic! Yo!
Pip Pip!
The Man in The Hat
Hi-tech Update...You can now find The Hat on that Facebook thingy...
Pip Pip!
The Man in The Hat
Hi-tech Update...You can now find The Hat on that Facebook thingy...