May, 2009

Comedy / Internet — 1 Comment
16
May 09

Non-Stop Stand-up (without Arthur Smith…)

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Much like many of you, in the morning all of my radios are tuned to different stations. The kitchen flops between Radio 4, Radio 1 and 1Xtra (what else do you listen to on a DAB over breakfast?); the bathroom, waterproof and FM/AM, does the pirates (dancehall being the audio equivalent of Nivea Sport for Men – waking you up with a start) and upstairs the most recent addition to the family, an Intempo digital number, goes all over the place.

Over the last couple of months though, as I throw on my clothes in the morning I have checking out .977 The Comedy that also goes by the name of Comedy 104. Whether by design or accident, this station has the privilege of being the first of the 86 stations in the ‘Comedy’ genre on my radio, and as such was the first one to be given a go. Since then I have pretty much skimmed through all of the comedy stations (including several that sound like they are recorded at the wrong end of the night in an Austrian bierkeller) and .977 is still probably the most reliable of the jukebox comedy options.

I like my comedy straight up, not-messed-about-with, but I do appreciate that comedy radio provokes a very large range of reactions (my other half can’t stand comedy jukebox radio). What .977 does is give you 3 minute chunks of the world’s best stand-ups (and Jasper Carrot) telling a few jokes. Then it cuts immediately to another stand-up and the cycle continues until the end of time. Contributions are 90% American (thank the Lord) and on any given morning you might hear, as I did today, the likes of Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor and the overlord of comedy – Jerry Seinfeld.

Sometimes the contributions err a bit towards the US’s equivalent of Jethro or Freddie Starr (‘aren’t men and women different?’, ‘anyone else here like beer?’ etc) but you are generally only 5 minutes away from someone with a brain. There is no censorship or mediation whatsoever which can make for pretty uncomfortable listening when segueing from Radio 4 in the kitchen.

A station like this can only have a short listening lifespan: as I am quickly discovering people who listen to a lot of stand-up soon become jaded, hearing the familiar patterns again and again. Also, I have no idea how they are getting the rights to this stuff (I’m not sure how E4 radio with its comedy remit would have existed with international comedy talent 24/7 on the same dial) but for the time being I will still be surfing this station and others like it to get my morning fix of slander and willy jokes.

Check out .977 here.

Podcasts / Public Radio & NPR / Speech — 5 Comments
13
May 09

Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me…

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A missive from subscriber Terence Dackombe;

Ever since our earliest ancestors told the first joke, “A man walks into a cave…”, commentators have debated on why there is a difference between what an American, and a Brit, finds funny.

There are immediate and obvious disparities. UK comedians want to be your mate; for them, life is an ordeal and fundamentally grim. Comics from the USA perform, they are not one of the crowd, and they don’t want you to buy them a beer. They have hope, and they believe the sun will come out tomorrow. The British anticipate a cloudy day ahead.

As Matt commented recently, from the perspective of this side of the Atlantic, we don’t really know how NPR works. What we do know is that it provides a seemingly endless supply of quality programming, which, thanks to the free podcasts, can make even the most frustrating commute considerably more bearable.

Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! is, loosely, a quiz, based on the weekly news, recorded on Thursday nights at Chicago’s Chase Auditorium, and broadcast across NPR affiliate stations in America, on Saturday mornings.

It would be tempting to draw comparisons with Radio Four’s  News Quiz, or even its televised cousin  Have I Got News For You, but here we return to the theme of two nations divided by a common language, or more accurately, divided by comedy.
Both of these British shows are supposed to be based on a bedrock of satire and irony, lampooning the foolish and the pompous. However, over the years (the News Quiz was first heard in 1977) the humour seems to have filtered away, to be replaced by a rather childish, immature reliance on sniggery-pokery about undergarments, toilets, and sexual preferences. Increasing numbers of potential guests return the ‘thanks but no thanks’ slip to ‘Have I Got News For You’.

‘Wait, Wait’ manages to avoid these traps, and regularly provides a mature, but still ‘laugh out loud’, review of the week’s political news stories, draped over the theme of a quiz.

Hosted by the quick-off-the-mark Peter Sagal, and featuring veteran newscaster, Carl Kassel as judge and scorer, the show has a panel of three guests, drawn from a set of about ten regular contributors. With the exception of P.J. O’Rourke, these people are not widely known outside the USA, but listeners from elsewhere will soon pick up that if it is a week when any of Paul Provenza, Mo Rocca, or Paula Poundstone, is on the panel, then it’s a ‘not to be missed’ edition.

Although, as with the best shows, the whole thing feels effortless, the team of up to ten writers contribute about a hundred gags each week, of which maybe ten will beat the cut and make the programme.

The show has a regular set of ‘rounds’ which vary a little week to week, but are always set up to provide the host and guests the opportunity to riff on the hot issues of the week. It helps if the radio audience has some knowledge of world affairs, and perhaps a little understanding of American politics, but the casual listener will still enjoy the lightning fast repartee and razor sharp humour.

Don’t err… wait for ‘Wait, Wait’. The podcast can be downloaded from everywhere you would expect, including  iTunes

Music / Uncategorized — 1 Comment
6
May 09

Every Cloud’s Silver Lining

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Something a little different for you today. Mixcloud is a new audio streaming site, currently in beta, which is hosting a nice variety of DJ mixes, podcasts and radio programmes. It says it’s ‘rethinking radio’, which is a nice line, but not quite true. However, it is a really good place to listen to interesting mixes and radio shows. It’s nice and clear to use – you can search on a variety of tags underneath each mix, by style, location, popularity and also date or DJ if you’re looking for something specific. And there’s a good playlist and comments facility, which might well lead to a good community swapping comments on each other’s output.

The quality can be variable – I’ve been checking out some really good reggae and jungle sets that are better for the content rather than the execution, while the mixes posted by Clash The Disko Kids, a Singaporean DJ team that push the button marked ‘acid’ until it breaks, are fantastically put together. On top of that there’s also death metal and punk, rock and random tracks thrown together by people who like playing and talking about music, including ThisKID, who puts up his Italian radio show, the excellently named Electric Underwear

And, although it’s in beta and is currently members only, they’ve sorted out an invite only log in for the Between Dogs & Wolves. If you point your browser here
And use the invite code ‘dogsandwolves’, you can explore the site and all it has to offer. And, if the mood takes you, post up some stuff yourself.

Music / Radio France / Uncategorized — No Comments
4
May 09

The Old Ooh La Lah

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Back again with another station Francais – and this one might not be such a secret, at least if you live on the South Coast of England.

FIP is one of the stations run by Radio France. Founded at the start of the seventies, it’s a very simple, yet very unusual, format. Mixing up jazz, world music, reggae, classical and the occasional bit of hip hop and seventies rock, it keeps presentation to a minimum and threads music together like one of your mates’ mix tapes (remember them?)  It follows themes and moods through in a manner most radio stations would never, ever dare.

So this morning we had Blossom Dearie’s spikely twee jazz, then David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ , followed by Flight Of The Conchords ode to the Dame himself, with Tom Jones and Santogold snuggling up beside each other shortly after. Not to mention half a dozen tracks from Africa, France, Jamaica and further afield that I’ve never heard of before. All within the space of half an hour.

It’s music radio like you wish it could always be. Inventive, entertaining, exciting, always giving your ears a treat. And more often than not it’s music you either haven’t heard before, or something you know really well but which is framed in a way that makes you look at it afresh. Earlier I heard Elbow’s ‘Days Like These’ followed by some Puccini, and I had to stop what I was doing to catch my breath at the brilliant simplicity of the juxtaposition.

It’s a glorious listen, and David Hepworth explains some of the reasons why (much more eloquently than I’m able to) here. The station’s fame has spread far and wide, and specifically to Brighton where, apparently, it was relayed by a not for profit pirate and developed quite a following. The Man (a/k/a OFCOM) took the pirate off air, but hey, now we’ve got the internet no one can tell you what to listen to, right?