Douglas Fur Los Angeles
Radio 2 Is A Brilliant Station Nowadays With A Diversified Playlist, Whose Evolution Was Masterminded By Former Controller Lesley Douglas And Continues To Develop Thru Resourceful Programming, Glorious Documentaries And Glorious Live Sessions And Shows.
So Keith Richards has saved ‘oldies ‘ station Angel Radio from going to the wall. Meanwhile, Ronnie Wood is the saviour of Emphatic Radio with his new show that’s pulling in record listeners. Bob Dylan’s on Radio 2 – what next, Weird Al Yankovich’s all-hit breakfast show on Radio Lolli? !
Seriously though, it’s fantastic that our old politicians of rock are taking to the airwaves – well, I suppose if your new album’s no longer judged worthy of airplay on our traditional stations, why not take over a show, so that you can play whatsoever you want?
But I’d like to see a bit of a shake-up in the way the music we hear on our traditional stations is chosen. I am in particular considering Radio one here.
Radio two is a brilliant station nowadays with a varied playlist, whose metamorphosis was masterminded by former controller Lesley Douglas and continues to develop through inventive programming, excellent documentaries and wonderful live sessions and shows.
Other national radio stations, Sorcery, Heart and the larger commercial stations are proponents rather than leaders when it comes to choosing the music they play.
Radio one however seems to have got caught in a self-obsessive spiral in pretty much the same way as it probably did in the 90s, when its output turned the station into a pirate radio-sounding wind tunnel of repeated and faceless dance music that was almost unlistenable ( and I say that as fan of the genre, having grown up with house music as my teen soundtrack ).
Radio one has once more become too cool for school and ghettoized, caught in a rut where the playlist is dominated by same-sounding dubstep pop, which barring one or two exceptions such as the glorious Chase & Status and Nero, is back to its mid-nineties low point.
What I believe we need are rather more representative and varied playlists at radio, where there is a chance for all of these genres to shine and share the airwaves. As it stands at Radio one – or so I am informed by the premiere radio pluggers in the business – everything must be championed by a tastemaker or come from a particular scene ( currently dubstep ) to have a chance of airplay support.
Therefore, daytime output is deluged with one common sound and all the other genres are locked out till a chink in the armour appears wide enough for a band ( or a vocalist or a pair etc ) who’ve mobilized enough support to smash through.
For the last 2 years the talk in the industry has been about how things are going to shift back towards guitar bands. But so far, this has not materialised, because labels can’t get the support from producers because all they’d like to play is dubstep because they suspect that’s what the children need and are listening to.
If they only went out to gigs and festivals as much as I do and saw the range of acts and types of music that young 16-24 year olds are into, then our traditional airwaves would sound significantly different. Young people out there love people, they like acoustic singer-songwriters, they adore reggae, pop, guitar bands, female vocalists, couples, boy bands and girl bands and they adore them all of the time.
What do you believe happens to all of the fans of guitar bands or singer tunesmiths or soul singers when that idiom of music isn’t given nationwide airplay, in periods of mono-sonic doldrums? They do not just cease to exist. They are still out there, but they do not have any exposure to the acts that satisfy their tastes, which is a great missed opportunity for radio stations eager to improve their reach.
You may disagree that that is where six Music shines, but I suspect that all radio stations should have open minds instead of limited focus. BBC’s Introducing is a superb and well-executed passage for music, but in this digital age where it may be easier to make and distribute music, the difficulty is still exposure.
One ray of light nationally is the superb Extraordinary Radio, which is innovatively taking the BBC’s Introducing format a step further and featuring music from their amazingtunes.com site. Fans choosing the music effectively, moderated by a team of established music industry presenters like the effervescent Gill Mills, with her new music show and Jim Gellately up in Scotland, as well as the Guardian’s music man Paul Lester.
Another excellent platform that has emerged is the British Council’s Selector Radio show. Recently nominated for a BT Digital Music Award for Best Show and fronted by Goldierocks, the show promotes British music globally.
The show currently goes out on FM in more than thirty countries worldwide to an audience of more than three million. Bands such as Dinosaur Pile Up and artist Jamie Woon, whose music has been played on the non-playlist constrained show, have found new audiences in nations as far apart as Mexico and Kazakhstan.
Dinosaur Pile Up received so much interest in Mexico Town that they ended up going out there and playing to a sell out crowd of more than three thousand people in a land they’d never formerly been to as reported tagza.com.
Ramshackle Glory – From Here Till Utopia (Song For The Desperate) [Live]