Radio Curry Challenge

Curry.

A bit of an obsession of mine. Pretty much the only thing I can cook besides pasta. It's something that gives me a vague pride in living in Tooting. "You know, Tooting is where you can get the most authentic Pakistani curry in all of London" is what I said to my flatmate when I was first showing her around the flat.

So, when I became the editor of the last episode of the Round 1 project, I knew that it had to end with a curry cook-off!

Malaysian Chicken Curry, Indian Paneer Curry and Jamaican Curried Goat.
All next to a gleeful Rashmi 

However, since we were an Olympics show I put a international spin on it. We had a slim team of three people: Shamara - a Jamaican, Rashmi - an Indian, Me - a Malaysian. Three great curry nations. So, we battled it out for the honour of  being taking home the Gold medal for curry excellence. To be precise, we were battling it out to win 'The Round 1 Spatula'.

I decided that on top of the tasting of the curry we would have each do a small report on the curry we were making - so, several pieces of curry goodness sprinkled throughout the show. Incidentally, when I emailed our supervisor the plan for the show on the night before he was a bit concerned, replying with "it's the last day of the Paralympics, why are you spending half the show on curry?!?". I justified it noting that it was in the spirit of international competition and the curry chimed well with being in East London. I think he bought it.

Shamara made a delicious goat curry. It was actually the first time she had ever cooked a curry, so she took careful instructions from her mother on how to prepare an authentic Jamaican dish. This curry genuinely blew me away. I remember saying with a measure of surprise, "Wow, this is ACTUALLY really good". Succulent, herbal and really tender.

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Rashmi prepared a Tamil paneer curry (Paneer is a type of cheese, though it has a consistency similar to a tough tofu) . We were all a bit apprehensive, because less than a week before Rashmi became violently ill as a result of a dodgy curry she cooked for herself. Her curry was decent, though as our judge said, it had a Heinz tomato soup element to it as a result of the cream she added.

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I myself prepared a Malaysian 'Kari Ayam'. Essentially I cooked a normal chicken curry, but threw in some Malaysian curry powder. I actually hadn't cooked a chicken curry in a while, so asked my cousin Kenneth for some advice since he is generally an expert at all things food related. He has actually been a vegetarian for several years, so he was going on some old memories. I was somewhat pleased with curry, though I held back on the spice (I usually really go to town with the chilli) since I was unsure about how much our guest could take. This turned out be my downfall, since the curry ended up being a bit too mild.

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For our judge, I enlisted the expertise of Lily Rae, who was also coming on our show to perform a 'Canal Sessions' song for us. She is a fantastic songwriter, plus she also writes on a food blog called http://badsalad.wordpress.com/, so I figured she would be a perfect candidate to judge the curry. Her friend Lawrence (who is her guitarist) also had gave his opinion on the curry.

Lily Rae and Lawrence

Shamara, the Round 1 Curry Champion!

She gave a great analysis of our curry and rightly awarded Sharama the award as Round 1 Curry Champion, bestowing on her the Round 1 Spatula. To hear the important curry tasting stuff, skip to 20 min 50 secs in of the soundcloud post (remember you can download it too!):

Shaun Tey's Swedish Adventure!

Well… I've been neglecting this blog for quite a while, as I've been preoccupied with the Round 1 project with Roundhouse Radio, which is keeping me occupied until the end of the Paralympics. I thought I’d post some of the packages I've been making and photos I've been taking on the blog.

So, each week on the show we investigate a foreign community and their presence in London.

As part of this series, in Show 9 I investigated the presence Sweden in the Capital. Recording the package sent me on a little Swedish adventure across London.

Here’s the package:

First I found Swedish blogger Stephanie Dellner (who explained that she didn’t have a particularly Swedish accent on account of her moving away from Sweden when she was very young). She has a lovely blog which is full of articles about food, with lots gorgeous photos of both Sweden and the food she has cooked.

Check out her blog: http://www.alwayssohungry.com/

She suggested that I check out the Swedish church near Marble Arch, since it acts as a cultural hub for the Swedish expat community. She also said that I had to sample some cinnamon buns, which seem to epitomise Swedish baking.

Anders

Anders is the chaplain of the Swedish church in London. I had a long conversation with him, where he talked about his attraction to England from an early age due to his love of English football. Plus, he told me that loads of Swedes loved London because the people were really friendly and open, which was a sharp contrast to most Swedes who are usually very reserved. So, it appears that there is a nation which is even more quiet and stiff-upper-lipped than us in England!

Sarah was working in the café and gave me two cinnamon buns for the price of one!

Round 1! Live On Air!

I’ve been working on this for more than a month with about 13 other young Londoners. We’ve been deciding the structure of the show and we’re going to have a good mix of pre-recorded packages, outside broadcasts and music.

It’s going to be live and coming from a radio barge based on the Regent’s Canal. We’ll be able to get the buzz off the crowd and sounds from the waterways.

Here is a clip giving you a taster about what our project is going to be all about:

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Check out our first show, which went out on the 25th July (and was of course awesome).

This had provides a bit of an intro to the Round One team. This broadcast live from Camden, though tomorrow will be the first broadcast from the lush surroundings of Victoria Park during the build up to the Olympic opening ceremony.

It will be going out 3 times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 6.30pm. Listen to the show live at: http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/listen or simply load the direct stream at (which I find easier to use):  http://roundhouse.org.uk/sites/all/themes/roundhouse/radio_player/RHRadio_Livestream.mov

Check out our blog: http://round1radio.wordpress.com/

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/events/398544756870861/

Twitter hash tag is:  #round1pirates

The Olympic Torch Comes To Tooting!

Okay, so it’s been quite a while since the typed word has graced the screen of the Thoughtfully Tooting blog. So, what a better way to return than with something that is actually thoughtfully Tooting. 

Yesterday on the 25th July, I arrived back in Tooting after another weary day at work, only to find the streets lined with people all rather mysteriously facing in the same direction. I remembered that this was to be the day the Olympic Torch came to Tooting, something that I had thought I couldn’t really care less about.

It’s fire. Something that I will generally come across everyday, so I thought it was rather odd to wait patiently in the street to see some flame go pass for less than a minute.

I sat in my bedroom, wondering if I could be bothered, though then realised I didn’t really have any excuse to not walk 5 minutes down my road to witness the embodiment of the Olympic Spirit. 

And I have to say it was rather nice. It was cool to have something create a buzz in my hometown and see loads of people in the turn out for something that was unambiguously good natured. It was warm and happy – something that could only be good for the community. It works because we want it to work. We turn out to see the torch because we do want to enjoy ourselves and we all feed of the communal joy surrounding us.

What people don’t realise when it is on the TV is that the Torch is preceded by a procession of commercialism. First there was Samsung in their blue party bus, full of attractive young people jumping up and down, saying things like “make some noise!” – the crowd responded in kind with yelps and huzzahs. Then there was the Coke bus, which did more or less the same thing, though with a slightly swankier vehicle (plus they gave out coke on occasion) – again, crass commercialism was not going to bring down the warmth and love of this once in a time community event. 

Then the Lloyd’s TSB bus went pass. The crowd went dead.

“Come you can do better then that!” said the poor man tasked with whipping the crowd into an Olympic fervour at the sight of a moving bank. I could see him force a smile as he reflected on the impossibility of drumming up a party atmosphere at the sight of the most boring (and at times shameful) aspect of British life. Samsung makes smartphones! Who doesn’t like those? And Coke makes drinks that you can mix with booze! Banks just remind you of debt, mortgages, credit crunch, obligations, evictions, bailouts, bankruptcy, etc… 

Well… at least it wasn’t a Barclay’s bus.

Radio in Review: The Truth

“The Truth… movies for your ears” goes the tagline of this radio project, which has managed the impressive feat of creating radio dramas that don’t bore the shit out of me.

Please... no! Not an omnibus!

I have long abhorred radio dramas, with the main focus of my hatred being Radio 4’s ‘The Archers’ and the quarter hour crime against my ears which is the Woman’s Hour’s ‘15 minute drama’. Both of which are basically 15 minutes of middleclass white people sighing and moaning over a kitchen sink. This aversion could be down to my dislike of soaps as a format, but I believe I am frustrated with the way these two programmes completely fail to utilise the creative potential of the radio medium. Both dramas reduce the radio drama to a cheap man’s TV series, whilst trying to compensate for the lack of visuals by destroying any sense of subtlety.

David Tennant... a radio star!

Of course, radio dramas do not have to be painful. The BBC’s World Service has produced a number of wonderful plays. Also, Radio 4’s ‘Love Virtually’, which was voiced by David Tennant and Emilia Fox in March 2012, was a brilliant drama revolving around the romantic correspondence between two individuals who never meet.

This work played to radio’s strengths as a non-visual medium, since the drama unfolds purely through a series of emails and letters. The radio drama was captivating since the characters had no knowledge of what each other looked-like, a facet which was an essential ingredient to the story. It rose beyond poor-man’s TV and created something that was meant to be appreciated as a unique audio experience. ‘Love Virtually’ can be downloaded at this link (incidentally, I have absolutely no connection to the site that is hosting the mp3):  http://www.david-tennant.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/lovevirtually.mp3

But I digress, so let us head to ‘The Truth’ of the matter. In the same way that ‘Love Virtually’ utilised the purely auditory aspect of radio to present an epistolary novel effectively, ‘The Truth’ finds inventive ways of presenting stories for a listening audience.

For example, in ‘Tape Delay’, an episode that was my introduction to the series, the drama revolved almost entirely around phone conversations, placing the listener in the same shoes as the protagonist. It starts off with a phone conversation between a male protagonist and his would-be-date. However it soon goes beyond this original phone conversation, as the protagonist listens back to the original phone conversation (which he accidentally recorded). Then in an act which could only ever work on radio, he decides to load the recording onto his computer and edits it to produce his own fictional radio mini-dramas using his would-be-date’s voice. This piece fully utilises the way audio is open to manipulation in a way that video is not. Do give it a listen: 

Again, in ‘Eat Cake’ they are able to use telephone conversations in order to produce a sweet romantic comedy, which like ‘Love Virtually’, embraces the fact that the appearance of the characters is mystery. This probably my favourite episode.

‘People Beat’ indicates that ‘The Truth’ (and possibly radio drama as a whole) excels best at short stories, which cover small individual situations. This piece works by having a humorous setup as the female protagonist stresses in anticipation of a potentially embarrassing family catastrophe.

'Making It' with the Roundhouse

Here’s the project that took up most of April 2012 – a documentary for Roundhouse Radio on how to get a career in the radio industry.

We got advice from Mike Anthony (the owner of Bang FM and one part of BBC 1xtra’s ‘Rampage’), Amy Redmond (BBC Radio 1 Producer), Ruth Barnes (BBC 6music contributor, Amazing Radio presenter and creator of the Other Woman podcast -  http://theotherwomanpodcast.podbean.com/ ),  Julie Adenuga (Rinse FM drive-time presenter) and Sacha Brooks (Capital FM Birmingham). In the end I think we made a great show, which is genuinely informative (there was loads of great advice, plus there was loads of good stuff that didn't make the final cut).

We actually had a whole range of ideas for our radio show. In the end we had two show ideas, a documentary on cassettes (‘The last Cassette Generation”) and a show about breaking into creative industries with a primary focus on radio.

After much deliberation we decided to go for the Radio documentary, since our mentor, Ray Paul, said that it would be more straightforward to make, given the contacts we had through the Roundhouse, and suggested that it would be more suited to the young creative types that listen to Roundhouse Radio. Also, later on in the month I heard a FANTASTIC series on Resonance FM by Naomi Christie http://cassetteradio.wordpress.com/ (I intend to write a more detailed ‘Radio in Review’ in the coming weeks) - so a part of me is glad we didn't make something that was too similar to another project.

We quickly realised the sheer amount of work that goes into making a documentary! It was originally going to be recorded as live, with us trying to book guests to come into the studio, but we figured that it would be too difficult to get loads of people find the time to come in. The ten point structure idea was given to us by our mentor, since it would be more straightforward and easier for the audience to follow it the show was broken up into segments that were under 3 minutes.

The topics we chose to do were:

Be a Pain

Be Ambitious

Make Your Mark

Be Wise

Make Mistakes

If in Doubt… Blag

Go Viral

Get Stuck In

Do It Yourself

Take Action

Me with Emma

It was pretty difficult to get interviewees at first, though eventually we were able to get quite a few contributors on board by simply asking them to record their questions from home and email them to us. After a disastrous attempt to edit it together on Protools (more because we were completely incapable of using a Mac), I did a rough cut of the show on Audacity, which I emailed to Ally (our team’s tech person) to put all the music and effects under the interviews. The girl doing the topic idents is Emma, the producer.

We all got loads of experience, plus we realised that making radio was easy to do by ourselves. We hardly used any of the professional Roundhouse Radio software or equipment (however I did borrow an Olympus Dictaphone to do the Amy Redmond interview). We used Audacity on our laptops and I recorded the script at home with a Tascam dictaphone in my room. Plus, big tip for anyone working in a team making DIY shows, wetransfer.com is a godsend – since it lets you transfer massive files online, meaning that you can transfer Audacity project wholesale to others. Producing this proved that, technology wise, everyone has access to the tools they need. It certainly helped that the contributors we used were technology savvy, but anyone who has access to a smart phone could easily record answers to questions using a voice recorder app (as I suspect Julie from Rinse did) and send it to you via the web.

Hackney Marshes, Football and Adventures with BBC Radio 1

Over the last few months I’ve been putting together a radio documentary for the Roundhouse about breaking into the radio industry. Making the documentary involved hassling lots of radio professionals to do interviews with us. After emailing Amy Redmond (the Radio 1 producer who tutored me in the ‘Penniless Podcaster’ class) about helping us out, she emailed back saying:

  

Amy Redmond!

“Hey Shaun,

Nice one, totally, and you're bbc too yay!

Well, can I set you a lil fun challenge in return?!  I am making lots of short video/audio clips about east London in the run up to radio 1's hackney weekend. I want to get down to hackney marshes either this or next Sunday to do some voxes with some local footballers about 'their hackney' to clip together and make a short podcast. Maybe to take a few pics too.

It will be going on the radio 1 academy page, so it’s a good thing to have done in terms of experience and it'll be fun too!”

Well, I thought it sounded like a fun day out… and it was!

Here’s a recording of Amy talking about the podcast and why we are making it about the marshes. It was recorded whilst walking along a canal in Hackney on a beautifully scenic day, so you can hear the sound of Amy’s bike rolling along as well as the sound of other cyclists who are out for a ride.



 For those of you who are curious about the process behind preparing for interviews, this is a recording of us discussing how we are going to go about getting the material we need for the podcast:

 

Here’s the podcast me and Amy put together:

For those of you who don’t know, the Hackney Weekend is a this huge daylong music festival organised by the BBC that is descending down on the Hackney Marshes. There’re some big names, like Rihanna and Jay Z – and the tickets are more or less given away for free to kids in and around London, with a substantial bulk of them being set aside for the young people of Hackney. Amy is the 'social media content producer' for the Hackney Weekend, hence why she was making the podcast. She's also a Hackney resident, so she was really keen to make something that celebrated her area.

The Hackney Marshes are massive. You'll find it laden with football pitches and hundreds of footballers. There are probably over a dozen matches going on simultaneously on a Sunday morning. It’s loud and lively – so you can pick up some great sounds for radio. Plus, it didn’t make it into the final piece, but there’s always lots of foul language coming from the sides of the pitches.

However, all the footballers were really friendly and willing to go on the record about how much they loved the marshes. A recurring theme was how it’s like one big family at the marshes and there’s a deep sense of community.

After we recorded the voxes, I interviewed Amy and asked her a few questions about getting a job in the industry for my radio documentary. You'll be able to hear her responses, along with advice from 4 other radio professionals in 'Making It' - a 30 minute guide to a career in radio - coming soon to this blog! Actually Amy Redmond has already posted up on her blog! See it at: http://amyredmond.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/making-it-in-radio-industry.html

You can find out more about the Hackney Weekend at: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/events/e9wmxj

America, Healthcare, Lies and Radio

So, apparently something is happening with healthcare in the USA.

This is something that I should have no knowledge of, since I live in the socialist utopia that is the United Kingdom. We in the UK exalt the NHS as the sacred cow of all sacred cows - making the NHS is the closest thing this country has to a national religion. The whole US healthcare comes across as rather perplexing to us, since the idea that you will be slowly die  from curable ailments due to a lack of funds seem like the worst possible state of affairs for any developed country. Of course, I know more than the standard English prole, largely due to my addiction to American public radio. There's a great wealth of material out there on how a savage illness can often act as the set-up to the real horror... the American health care system.

This is an interesting radio essay by Kairol Rosenthal. It underlines the dilemmas faced by Americans who suddenly get sick and find themselves without insurance. The radio piece draws you in from the beginning as Kairol goes through how getting cancer taught her "how to deceive and manipulate the health insurance system". The piece is darkly humorous, bitingly underling the chaos caused by being caught off guard by a sudden illness and demonstrating the need to do anything to ensure your survival when your life has been turned upside down.




Here's a captivating story from This American Life. It's probably one the funniest things I've ever heard on radio, but it has a killer blow towards the end which illustrates how being without insurance can throw you into a financial hell-hole.

I first came across the recent issues surrounding Obamacare's individual mandate by listening to NPR. (By the way - they have a fantastic 'NPR News' App, which is where I first heard this 'Individual Mandate's Growth In Unpopularity'story. The makers of the 'BBC News' App could certainly learn a thing or two, since the BBC app is clearly geared towards use on an iPad, with a focus on text and video. However, the NPR app is far more suited to a smartphone and is built as a convenient means of consuming radio content.) Anyway, here is a rather interesting 11 minute piece on the individual mandate, which makes it compulsory for the majority of American to buy insurance (something, which I have to say does sound rather questionable).



The full article, along with other related stories, can be found here at the NPR website:
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/31/149767228/how-did-the-health-care-mandate-get-here

The question which should be on Americans' minds is whether this act (and this provision) would prevent the above scenarios from being as financially strenuous as they were. The horrors the above radio stories would not have occurred in the UK under the NHS, but given that socialism is a dirty word it will be interesting to see how Americans will be able to provide safety nets for those who do not have health insurance.

Lies, Retractions and This American Life

Mike Daisey

In January I heard an episode of This American Life called “Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory”. Mike Daisey – a theatre monologist, writer and self-confessed Apple devotee – narrated the details of a trip that he made to China. He toured factories making Apple products, primarily those owned by Foxconn. He said that he spoke to numerous workers and heard first hand accounts of terrible working conditions.

It was a captivating and compelling piece of radio. It personalised of the ordeals suffered by Chinese factory workers that are often only given a passing level of consideration in the news – highlighting our connection to their lives by focusing on a brand that we all know.
                       

However, a journalist based in China thought that several aspects of the narrative sounded odd, such as Daisey’s claim that he saw factory guards with guns (in China only the military and the police can carry firearms). He tracked down Daisey’s Chinese interpreter, who disputed several aspects of Daisey’s account.

As a result This American Life pulled the show from their website and issued a statement:

“I have difficult news. We've learned that Mike Daisey's story about Apple in China - which we broadcast in January - contained significant fabrications. We're retracting the story because we can’t vouch for its truth.”
“The China correspondent for the public radio show Marketplace tracked down the interpreter that Daisey hired when he visited Shenzhen China. The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show.”
“Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast. That doesn't excuse the fact that we never should've put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake.”


The full statement can be read here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory

In addition to this statement This American Life made a one hour long ‘Retraction’ episode, which is even more interesting than the original show. It’s well worth hearing in full (even if you haven’t heard the original piece), but I suggest that you at least listen to the first four minutes, where Ira Glass issues an apology:

Ira Glass

It was a fascinating episode, since they interviewed Mike Daisey himself, putting to him that he lied to them. Ira Glass proved himself to be a formidable interviewer, pinning Daisey down with the facts, exposing the fabrications and conveying that he was really pissed off without losing his temper.

There are lots of awkward silences, which really hold the audience on edge and make Daisey look the fool. Daisey’s defence…. he didn’t give an account that was up to journalistic standards of truth, but what he does is theatre not journalism. Daisey reiterated his “it’s theatre, so it doesn't have to be true” defence in this 3 minute prologue to his subsequent shows.

https://sites.google.com/site/mp3hostshauntey/mike-daisey-this-american-life/prologue.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1

What was interesting about this retraction was the way Ira Glass expressed that public radio had a strong reputation for accurate journalism. There are strong parallels with the values of the BBC in the belief that non-commercial radio must hold itself to a higher standard. Ira Glass appeared to be concerned for the reputation of American public radio as a whole and not just his show.

Something which is important to consider is that the journalistic integrity of the original episode held up. The This American Life team cross checked the allegations against Apple and laid out the evidence during a 20 minute segment of the original show, which scrutinised Daisey’s account. They found objective evidence that verified the allegations that Daisey made against Apple, mostly using Apple’s own internal audits. There are numerous other accounts of terrible working conditions and suppression of trade unions in China. Journalistically This American Life already had their backs covered. This retraction proved the show to have an extra commitment to integrity. Furthermore, its exploration of the conflict between journalism and art made great radio.

You can hear a full stream and read more about the controversy at: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction

The Artist

On the weekend I finally got around to seeing The Artist. My opinion.... I thought it was good, very good in fact... and certainly interesting.

I think what makes it interesting is that comes across as an artefact from another age, which allows us to break with the typical expectations that we have from a modern film. The film has a light hearted playful campiness, that marks it out in our cynical age (the Descendents it is most certainly not). 

I think it is the nostalgic tropes that allows us to suspend our eye rolling cynicism and run away with this beautiful piece of escapism. If the film was a full colour all speaking period piece on the era of the silent cinema, it would come across as over the top and unbelievable.

However, being a film that genuinely looked and felt like something from the past, it allowed the audience to make exceptions to the realism that we have come to expect from films. Once we were in this vintage mindset we could simply relish the exaggerated wide-eyed expressions and fantastical plot.

I wonder if this film could spark a revival in silent cinema. I for one would love to see some more silent films, since I loved the level of concentration I gave to the screen and the added emotional intensity the absence of dialogue gave to the musical score.

Well, enough of my views. Let's hear from Alex, Thoughtfully Tooting's resident film critic (sort of). Oh and the quality of the recording is pretty dreadful, lots of very noisy wind! Lesson: never record an interview next to a bridge! Seriously, what was I thinking. I guess I always have to learn the hard way.

Ray Man Music and the Yangqin

The day after the Podcaster Masterclass I did another class at the Roundhouse called an “Intro to Speech Radio”.

After discussing a few audio clips that were played to us, we were handed some Olympus dictaphones set an exercise to tell a story through sounds found in the area.

So strolling around Chalk Farm road, I thought I’d go into this interesting instrument shop called Ray Man. It appeared to be a shop run by several generations of a Chinese family. Here’s the piece I recorded:

This is a picture of the instrument, the Yang Qin (which I misheard as a Jiang Qin… whoops).

I asked the guy who played for me a few questions about the instrument for my own record:

I had to do a bit of negotiating with the woman who appeared to be running the shop since they have a store policy that prohibits the recording of musical instruments. She let me record once I got headed letter from the Roundhouse stating that I was on a course. She was quite interested in the dictaphone that I was using (the Olympus LS-11 Linear PCM Recorder – which I personally think is fantastic), so I did I quick interview with her so that she could hear the quality of the recordings it made.

 

So another great class at the Roundhouse. Listening to it again I probably should have tried to make it shorter and reduced the volume of the voiceover, but like the Podcast Masterclass, there was a real joy in creating something against the clock in a rush. Hopefully I will do more of these short pieces on local shops in the future.

The Penniless Podcaster Masterclass

Amy Redmond on the right

On the weekend I took a course with the lovely Amy Redmond – a Radio 1 producer who is probably the most chirpily vivacious person I’ve ever met. She’s someone whose every other sentence ends with “!”. It really cracked me up the way she said stuff like “tell me about yourself girlfriend!” in class. I wonder if everyone speaks like this at Radio 1. You can check out an article Amy wrote about the class in Clash magazine. http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/the-penniless-podcaster-amy-redmond

Anyway, so I was doing this ‘Penniless Podcaster Masterclass’ at the Roundhouse, where Amy helped a group of us put together a podcast reporting the happenings at the Roundhouse on Saturday. We covered the ‘Roundhouse Rising’ event, which was a collection of events held over two weeks – including a series of talks focusing on women in music.

Since the class lasted about 4 hours, during which time we went through interview techniques, recording and talked about the joy of radio/podcasts, it was a bit of a frantic rush towards the end - however it was great to hear our final product.

You can hear our podcast on Soundcloud:

I did the interview with Judy and recorded some of the vox-pops towards the end. As one of my mentors at the BBC used to say, you’re supposed get a broad selection of voices for vox-pops, though you can often end up only interviewing attractive members of the opposite sex. There’s definitely a real joy in being in a position to ask strangers questions (particularly the attractive ones!).

Bookclub, Art Spiegelman and my vocal premiere on Radio 4

Whilst interning at Radio 4 I came across a very interesting book, a promotional copy of Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus.

It's a book detailing the making of Spiegelman’s Maus, answering some of the readers’ questions about why Spiegelmann wanted to make a memoir of his father’s experiences during the holocaust in the form of a comic book.

It even came with a DVD, making the whole package feel like a bonus disc that you’d get with a film that’s packed full of extra features.


I found the very concept of MetaMaus intriguing, since it’s odd that a writer would make a book explaining and examining their greatest work.

In December one of the researchers at Radio 4 told me that Art Spiegelman was coming onto Radio 4’s Bookclub and that I might want to go along to it. I emailed one of the producers, who let me sit in on the recording in exchange for helping out with the guests and pouring them drinks.

Art Spiegelman was a fascinating guest. He was perfect to have on the show, since the book was so completely intertwined with his own personal relationship with his father. Unlike an author discussing the characters of a fictional work, being before the audience Spiegelman gave real answers about his views of very real family members. He gave extra insight to his life, which deepened our appreciation of the book.

What made this episode of Bookclub particularly interesting was the fact that it was on a comic book, so the programme explored some interesting ideas about comic books as a medium. Spiegelman did a particularly interesting reading of a comic strip, which of course had to be adapted for radio.


I was very pleased to find out that the question I asked was kept in (particularly since I thought it was slightly convoluted when I said it).

So, I present Shaun Tey's debut on BBC Radio 4:



You can hear the full episode (though I think that the link will only work for the next few weeks). You can also download it:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/openbook/openbook_20120205-1630a.mp3

Radio in Review: 'Heartbreakers - The story of all-girl Zep'

Here is another Falling Tree production – an indie that initially caught my attention with their bold 4 part series, ‘Short Cuts’. It's a great 50 minute documentary on the all female rock band… Lez Zeppelin.

Lez Zeppelin

You can download it at:
http://www.fallingtree.co.uk/static/user_uploaded/60591154_1-01%20Heartbreakers_%20The%20Story%20of%20All.mp3

(Note: The embedded mp3 and the link is from the Falling Tree website)

Sarah McLellan

It’s littered with some great Led and Lez Zeppelin tracks. If anything it’s great to hear Zeppelin again, a band which I have neglected for far too long. It makes you realise how amazing songs like ‘Rock & Roll’, ‘Blackdog’, ‘Dazed and Confused’, ‘Whole Lotta Love’ etc… are – and how a pair of female lungs can really add an interesting dimension to them. The documentary often plays Zeppelin tracks alternating between the Lez and Led versions, letting the listener compare the vocal qualities of Robert Plant with that of the Lez Zeppelin singer, Sarah McLellan.

Listening to Lez Zeppelin is used as an opportunity to reflect on the aspects of Zeppelin that makes them so great. For example, they talk about the sexual energy of their performances, as well as the effeminate posturing of the blouse wearing Plant. They also discuss the diversity of Zeppelin’s influences and question whether they really are the quintessential “Cock Rock” band. Members of Lez Zeppelin discuss how they feel about performing Zeppelin tracks as a female group, talk about how they are received by the sometimes sceptical crowds and ponder over whether they see themselves as a 'Tribute Band'.

Amy Jane Hall

What adds an extra charm to the piece is the way the documentary is presented. You are guided through the interviews and the themes by the father/daughter team of Alan Hall and the 15 year old Amy Jane Hall. Amy gently mocks her father’s attempts to play Stairway to Heaven and they talk about their favourite songs. This gives a nicely personal touch to the documentary, which adds to the sincerity of the admiration the presenters have for Zeppelin.

In short, it's a wonderfully warm documentary, which shows how the love of Zeppelin can span generations. It also demonstrates through Lez Zeppelin’s recordings that the great band’s tunes are truly timeless.

Radio in Review: 'Short Cuts', Radio 4 - This English Life?

Now this is an interesting show, which isn’t to say it is necessarily completely accessible or enjoyable. It should be said that not everything works on this show; however it’s refreshing that something that is genuinely experimental is being played on Radio 4.

It’s a Falling Tree production and is described on the website as:

“A selection of brief encounters – true stories, found sound and radio adventures. A new series for BBC Radio 4, presented by Nina Garthwaite”

Nina Garthwaite

In some ways it’s like ‘This American Life’. Each week has a theme, such as “Divided We Stand” or “Misadventure”, with contributors who narrate tales and ordinary folk telling their own stories. However the style is distinctly British. The pieces bear a similarity to the Hackney Podcast, with a focus on captured sound and, unlike American public radio, usually lack the voice of an interviewer/narrator. The absence of the reflective narrator is used to good effect, creating personal relationship between the listener and the interviewee. Nina Garthwaite has a lovely youthful voice and she does is excellently job of linking the sometimes disparate pieces. The clip below is the introduction to the first episode, 'Misadventures'.

It’s a programme that’s willing to showcase experimental pieces, though it keeps them relatively short and accessible (in contrast to the often over indulgent experimentations found on Resonance FM). However some pieces can be slightly indulgent, having an excessive use on ambient effects, which distract you from the main story as opposed to complimenting it. This is particularly true with the first episode which overlays interview tracks with sounds of birds and other ambient nonsense.

Also, some pieces are a bit too experimental for my liking, such as the third piece from episode two, ‘All you need is a separation barrier’. It consists of someone reading a list of countries and the other nations they border on, all with annoying bleeping sounds and typewriter noises in the background. The piece is pretentious and it’s jarring to hear such an abstract art piece right after a fairly conventional radio story. Below is a short sample.

The pieces that came before were brilliant. A couple spoke about how they met and the adversity they faced when the man was forced into an arranged marriage to his cousin by his parents (a short sample is embedded below). Another piece was an interview with an old man who was a teenage fighter pilot during WW2, who spoke about his objections to the class system during the war and his love of singing. Both stories were lovely and simple, going largely without added sound effects, besides a few pieces of well placed music.

In short, I’m going to be keeping an eye on Shorts Cuts. This programme is helping the BBC catch up with the progress that has been made by American public radio.  It is willing to explore new ways of using radio to tell stories and provide space to an array of inventive producers.

Check it out on the Radio 4 website while you still can:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019m2pj

You can also find out more about the show on the Falling Tree site:
http://www.fallingtree.co.uk/broadcast_history/2012/short_cuts_misadventure

Radio in Review: Queen Mary Radio Archive - 'Radio Show I Guess'

I’d like to write briefly about a short lived show from the days of “Queen Mary FM” old. I came across it again recently whilst looking for the MP3 of my old show. There were quite a few pilots commissioned by Queen Mary Radio when it was starting off and this was my favourite.

It had everything - anecdotes, humour, fantastic music (mopy US indie and folk pop), plus heaps of personality (the “self-hating Jew” and “self-contradictory Socialist”). So it’s a shame that this two part show is all you’ll get of Natalie and Kyle – a pair of Queen Mary students, who are also a romantic couple. Amongst other things you’ll hear tales of trips to America and Hungary, delivered in a reflective self-doubting tone – which is rather aptly summed up in the title.

Here are first two (and to the best of my knowledge the last two) episodes of “Radio Show I Guess”:

Download Part 1 at:

https://sites.google.com/site/mp3hostshauntey/queen-mary-radio-show-i-guess-natalie-ann-and-kyle/radioshowiguess-1.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1

Download Part 2 at:

https://sites.google.com/site/mp3hostshauntey/queen-mary-radio-show-i-guess-natalie-ann-and-kyle/radioshowiguess-2.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1

Well, I couldn’t just have a big chunk of text, so using my crafty skills of investigative journalism I dug up (what I think) is a photo of the young radio making couple. Judging from one of their facebook profiles, I don’t think they are together anymore. So “I guess” that this radio show, along with the facebook photos swilling around cyberspace, is relic of a relationship that has now passed.


Like a photograph, the radio show has perfectly preserved the dynamic between two people in their youth. A picture is worth a 1000 words, but a radio show captures a whole chapter of the presenters’ lives. It speaks mouthfuls about their musical tastes, their personalities, their emotional bonds and their quirks at a particular moment in time. Perhaps it’s the charming and teasing relationship of the hosts that makes it such wonderful radio – and the fact that it’s a relationship that is now gone makes it rather precious and poignant.