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Radio Redux
May. 31st, 2007 12:37 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
jeff-worrell.livejournal.comFurther to this post earlier in the year, here's another bulletin about the wacky world of Radio 2's evening programming.
Since that earlier post, matters have taken a turn for the worse, with the decision to schedule 2 hours of Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie between 8 and 10pm four nights a week: the show is basically Q mag in radio form and clearly belongs on 6Music rather than R2. The culture clash with Desmond Carrington and "The Organist Entertains", which bookend Rad-conie on a Tuesday, for example, is a hoot. Worse, many of the documentaries and the more eclectic shows that one used to be able to hear around this time of night have been shunted to graveyard slots to make way for the duo (echoes of the ghetto-isation of the more interesting Radio 1 DJs a few months back).
But it's not all bad news. For what I gather is a limited time only, you can listen to the utterly mad Charles Hazlewood show on a Wednesday from 10-11pm. In a last rearguard action to preserve the Reithian tradition of public service broadcasting, Charles records his show in a barn in Somerset and sets out to bring high culture to the masses by wilfully mixing together classical and pop music and pointing out Really. Obvious. Connections. between them: "Ooh look, Bach's done a remix of Corelli there. And now, here's some Coldcut. DO YOU SEE?"
This week, Charles dragged in Him Out of Guillemots in to his barn to perform a couple of Guillemots songs on Charles' wheezy harmonium, while Charles accompanies on a drum ("it's sort of like a cover version, isn't it? DO YOU SEE? And now, here's Seu Jorge playing a David Bowie song"). And THEN Charles orders Guillemots man to the piano and says make something up on the spot: "here's a drone in D to get you started"! OK, Derek Bailey wouldn't have thought much of the (overly pretty and tonal) end result but ... free improv on Radio 2?
To be honest, the show's playlist is hardly![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
poptimists-friendly, and Hazlewood seems rather obsessed with notions of "cool". But I'm glad he's on the air, even if it's only for a few weeks.
Since that earlier post, matters have taken a turn for the worse, with the decision to schedule 2 hours of Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie between 8 and 10pm four nights a week: the show is basically Q mag in radio form and clearly belongs on 6Music rather than R2. The culture clash with Desmond Carrington and "The Organist Entertains", which bookend Rad-conie on a Tuesday, for example, is a hoot. Worse, many of the documentaries and the more eclectic shows that one used to be able to hear around this time of night have been shunted to graveyard slots to make way for the duo (echoes of the ghetto-isation of the more interesting Radio 1 DJs a few months back).
But it's not all bad news. For what I gather is a limited time only, you can listen to the utterly mad Charles Hazlewood show on a Wednesday from 10-11pm. In a last rearguard action to preserve the Reithian tradition of public service broadcasting, Charles records his show in a barn in Somerset and sets out to bring high culture to the masses by wilfully mixing together classical and pop music and pointing out Really. Obvious. Connections. between them: "Ooh look, Bach's done a remix of Corelli there. And now, here's some Coldcut. DO YOU SEE?"
This week, Charles dragged in Him Out of Guillemots in to his barn to perform a couple of Guillemots songs on Charles' wheezy harmonium, while Charles accompanies on a drum ("it's sort of like a cover version, isn't it? DO YOU SEE? And now, here's Seu Jorge playing a David Bowie song"). And THEN Charles orders Guillemots man to the piano and says make something up on the spot: "here's a drone in D to get you started"! OK, Derek Bailey wouldn't have thought much of the (overly pretty and tonal) end result but ... free improv on Radio 2?
To be honest, the show's playlist is hardly
poptimists-friendly, and Hazlewood seems rather obsessed with notions of "cool". But I'm glad he's on the air, even if it's only for a few weeks.
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