Easy Music for Difficult Ears

Cary composed a large library of incidental music for Doctor Who between 1963 and 1972, including the debut story of the Dalek’s and the epic Dalek Master Plan, which was broadcast from 1965 to 1966. Mainly a composer of electro-acoustic music, it was Cary who pioneered the use of tapes in electronic music, while serving as a naval radar officer during World War 2 and a number of years later, he designed the first electronic studio at the Royal College of Music in London.

However, it was during the 1950’s that his name spread quickly through the electronic music fraternity at this time as he often journeyed around Europe to meet other pioneers of the second age of music technology.
Cary died in Adelaide, Australia aged 82.
Tristram Cary (1925 – 2008)

Current listening:
New York Dolls “Personality Crisis”

Leigh

The duo Quite Village

came to my attention earlier via a short promo of their new album, “Silent Village”. It’s out on May 12th (I think…) and I must admit that I am somewhat impressed from what I’ve heard so far and as well as that initial reports on the release are apparently pretty good.

…it’d probably be here!!

Haha,
Leigh

Apologies for the lateness of the post, but I’ve been rather busy this week with work (etc…) so I’m just going to stick up my Formula 1 bit now quickly. This is my third main love in life (behind music and Doctor Who).
I quite enjoyed the first two races of the season with some wonderful drives and performances, mainly from Honda and BMW – nobody quite thought they’d be that fast. For the two teams to gain over a second in late developments is astonishing by Formula 1 standards and it is fantastic to see Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello further up the running order, especially Button who has really put his career on the line with the Honda group.

Heikki Kovalainen looks like he could seriously challenge Lewis Hamilton later on in the year, but as with Renault last season he seems to be taking a few races to really get settled in the car and this may give Hamilton the edge for the season. However, Kovalainen was excellent in Malaysia and thoroughly deserved his third place at the end of the race.
Hamilton, however, had problems in the Malaysian race following an excellent win in Australia. After being correctly penalised in qualifying (along with Kovalainen for impeding Heidfeld on his final run), he got stuck behind the Red Bull of Mark Webber and when the McLaren finally pitted, his front right wheel got jammed thanks to those new aerodynamic frisbee’s and as a result lost approximately twenty seconds.
Webber to his credit drove brilliantly with his own reliability problems (his fuel-pump was faulty) to keep the faster car behind him.

I was especially pleased with Kimi Raikkonen’s performance in Malaysia after a couple of slip-ups in Australia, although people talking about the championship now is pure silly – we all knew the basis of this years championship would be between Raikkonen and Hamilton, I do not need ITV to tell me this every twenty seconds!! Two races and two non-finishes from Felipe Massa though tells a different story, he really needs to up his game and stop making the kind of mistakes he made at Sepang.

Pass of the year so far must go to Nick Heidfeld with his move on both Davis Coulthard and Fernando Alonso (turn 15, lap 4 of the Malaysian Grand Prix) – Heidfeld took advantage of Alonso attempting a pass the Red Bull and managed to get around both of them.

There are a number of concerns regarding the 2008 Red Bull with regards to its structure in light of it’s failure’s over the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend, and also let us not forget Mark Webber’s brake failure in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix. Apparently the car only passed its first crash test four days before arriving at Melbourne, so it’s conceivable that there still problems with the machine.

I used to be an occasional visitor to the ITV-F1 forum on the broadcaster’s website, but I just cannot do it anymore. So many Lewis Hamilton fans attacking anything remotely negative about the driver and constant conspiracy theories surrounding Ferrari and McLaren are just too much – so goodbye ITV literally…
As news filtered through last week that the station has lost the rights to show the sport on terrestrial television and that the BBC have regained them. No figures have been released yet as to how much the sale was, but all I care about is the fact that there will be no more ad breaks. I do hope they lay off the Lewis Hamilton love-fest (I’m looking at you James Allen) which has gotten very, very irritating in the last year – don’t get me wrong, the young Englishman is an excellent driver, but other shit is going down.

So in seven days the championship moves to Bahrain to the circuit of swirling sands where the Ferrari’s are destined to be strong and both the BMW’s and Williams are expecting stronger performances.
In the meantime, I’ve discovered a motor-racing archive site that will keep me busy for a long time yet. Imagine my thrill at being able to watch the 1963 Australian Grand Prix. Fantastic stuff!!

Current listening:
Suicide “Suicide”

Grand job,
Leigh

Fantastic,
Now that I’ve got a recent hassles off my chest, I can continue writing stuff. I spend a lot of my spare time listening to the radio – a truly fantastic and slightly nerdish past-time – aided by several pots of tea and digestive biscuits.
Over the years, I had listened to many an Irish station with a primary focus of Tom Dunne, Donal Dineen and Dave Fanning amongst others and while their shows are all quite good, I was always well aware that I was not being catered to. I’ve made my irritation with wacky DJ’s and soulless pop music apparent in previous posts and thus I quick to be turned by them, but that wasn’t it…

I’ve always wondered if a truly independent station possibly exist in Ireland (baring in mind independent means a station independent of commercial concerns as opposed to a station that plays just independent music – that’d just be plain silly)?
A licensed body, such as the BBC, and pirates preoccupy this particular threshold for the time being, but these havens are consistently under threat. There have been calls in recent years to remove the comfort of licence money from the Beeb’s radio stations as it is seen as unnecessary – in years past, you would have had to pay a licence fee to have a radio, this is no longer the case.

The removal of these funds – in essence forcing BBC Radio to become a commercial concern – would be disastrous for independent musicians. While stations like Radio 1 play the commercial radio game (pop hits and irritating DJ’s), it should be pointed out that many Irish artists get their first British radio play on stations such as 6Music – often via George Lamb, Steve Lamacq, Queens of Noize or Stuart Maconie’s Freakzone.
While not attracting huge numbers of listeners, these stations and shows often address the balance that commercial stations can’t and it is conceivable that should the BBC be forced into commercial situation, these stations would lose out very quickly as they simply do not have the audience pull on a national scale to be attractive to commercial bodies, yet as they currently exist they are most attractive to cultural bodies.

Pirates on the other hand face an entirely different problem. One of the main difficulties for pirate stations is their signal tend to be limited and even then, they would have to play the commercial game should they go legit. But more than that, pirates are been pushed quietly into extinction by podcasts as the possibility of presenting to a mass audience – even for those broadcasting from their bedroom – may be too hard to ignore.
Faster internet connections and speeds – which will get much faster within the next five years – will surely make pirate radio (in its present state) extinct.

I must admit that I am very biased here as I know for a fact that I will never be on the radio and anyone that tempts me with assurances otherwise is either a liar, a delusional person(ette) with dreams of publicised intellectual status or someone who is looking for favours (most likely the former with a touch of the latter...).
Much of the resentment towards commercial stations, from an independent musicians standpoint, stems from feelings of isolation – with many worthwhile artists left out in the cold, while the mundane, easy and the tacky triumph. Commercial radio seems to be shrouded in glitter and ticker-tape.
There is also an air of suspicion towards home-grown talent as pointed out by Paul Finn of the Flaws in a recent interview in Day and Night (Irish Independent’s Saturday Arts Magazine)

“…he (2FM spokesperson) said 2FM wasn’t there to promote Irish music. We did the 2FM Tomorrow Tour. We had a single out when we did that tour and we couldn’t get it played on 2FM. They were saying that they couldn’t playlist it because it wasn’t suitable for daytime listening. It’s pathetic — it’s a fucking radio station…”
(Day and Night, Irish Independent; February 16th 2007)

An important question is of course “is commercial radio relevant in today’s world?” and the answer is definitely yes. Radio stations oft speak to its own audience in a way that its rivals and independents do not. There is a corner for everyone to operate in – I just wish the same dozen artists weren’t shoved down our throats everyday.

So where does the future of radio broadcasting lie? I must admit it feels like I’m repeating myself here, but the internet has opened so many channels for artists. However a very interesting side-effect is that radio broadcasters themselves have found that they now foresee possibility’s of a much, much wider audience.
They idea of maximum audience figures within a certain area has been completely dismantled, because there is a realisation that stations can now broadcast to the entire world and penetrate areas that were unreachable only five years ago. Even I enjoy sitting down to jazz and folk shows on BBC Radio 3 and Radio Stoke, before switching to Phantom FM for Access All Areas and Donal Dineen’s show on Today FM!!

There will always be a call for commercial radio and pop(ular) music, but the downside will always be those shows/DJ’s that determine the only way to gain new listeners is to be more wacky and irritating than the next. If they’re not careful, we could find ourselves switching back to Gerry Ryan and maybe that’s the day we should throw the radio out of the window.

That’s all,
Leigh

It is my sad duty to have to announce that veteran English actor, Kevin Stoney, passed away on January 20th past at the age of 87.
He served as a pilot in the Middle East during World War Two, but was moved to desk bound duties when he crashed too many planes (really) and although he started acting in the early days of live television during the 1950’s, it wasn’t until the mid-sixties that he garnered national fame.
It was his portrayal as the character Mavic Chen in the twelve part Doctor Who classic, “the Dalek Master Plan” (1965/6) that brought him to the public’s attention – so much so that in 1966 the Daily Mail awarded him with the title of ‘Villain of the Year’

He went on to star in two further Doctor Who serials, putting in starring roles as Tobias Vaughan and Tyrum in “the Invasion” (1968/9) and “Revenge of the Cybermen” (1975) respectively. He also had starring roles in many other BBC and ITV productions including Blake’s 7, The New Avengers and I, Claudius amongst others. He retired from acting in the mid-1990’s.
Ironically in 1986 his death was announced in the national media too, and had to contact various media outlets to reassure them he was still alive – however it appears that is not the case on this occasion. To this day, he is remembered as one of the greatest guest stars of Doctor Who.

Here’s a short clip of Kevin playing Mr St-John in an episode of Inspector Morse

Kevin Stoney (1921 – 2008)

Current Listening:
Miriam Ingram “Trampolonica”

Leigh

In a bizarre twist filled with notions of excitable folly, last night I dreamed that I was tie-ing shoelaces over and over again…

Current Listening:
BBC Radio6 Music “Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone (TX: 27th January 2008)”

Sweet,
Leigh