Familiar voices on BBC 6music

Just been listening to Lammo's interview with Tom and Ant from Tunbridge Wells band Tom Williams And The Boat. It was live on this afternoon's show - when it's finished you'll be able to listen again, as normal, here.

At this point I should confess that, apart from Tom Robinson's Introducing show, I rarely listen to 6music - usually spreading my listening habits across BBC Radios 1, 4 and Kent (and some commercial stations). I stayed listening to Steve Lamacq's show for a while after the interview and was impressed (particularly with All The Young Dudes by Mott The Hoople which I haven't heard for ages). Looks like they've gained another listener... if Rajar gave me a diary to fill in they wouldn't believe I have the time for the amount of radio listening and channel-hopping I get done.

And now I have random cravings for nice cold fresh orange juice. Random.

Portable radio production

Hello to those of you who are visiting this blog for the first time after hearing me plug it on the show last night.

Jim and Tom and myself - and some important people from Radio Kent - met up in Tunbridge Wells this morning for a little meeting about this and that. It's not often we're all in the same place at the same time (apart from when we actually do the show) because we all put together the show during the week from our respective homes and workplaces.

As you'll have heard on the show, the BBC Kent Introducing tour is having a rest for August and coming back the following month for more local music fun across the county... that means that we get a month to catch up on stuff and concentrate a bit more on the radio side of things. There'll be a few changes to the show in September too, mainly involving some of the features and the way you can get involved (I'll keep you posted). Anyway, we went and sat on the nice squishy red sofas at Radio Kent and drank tea and talked about things.

All the post that gets sent to the show arrives at the Radio Kent offices, so whenever we're there we have the chance to pick up what we've been sent. Usually it's demo CDs from artists who are looking to get featured on the show. On the way home, as demonstrated in the photo above, I had a chance to listen to some of the material that we picked up from the pigeonhole today... and there's some really interesting and unique stuff which I can certainly forsee being played on the show. I love having the opportunity when time allows (which it usually doesn't) to listen to music without doing something else at the same time. I certainly believe that the conditions in which you listen to music, and what else you're doing at the time, can completely define your opinion of the tracks.

On a similar note, it's brilliant being able to put together a radio show from anywhere in the world... Up until fairly recently I didn't own a laptop, but now I can't imagine how I'd get things done without it. The whole show has a great portability - all the demos Jim listens to get added to his personal iTunes library so he can easily categorise and sort them, and we've also been able to record and edit interviews and whole hour-long shows directly from festivals.

Technology has also brought you the slightly-newly-improved BBC Kent Introducing website... check it aaaahhht.

Lounge On The Farm

Hello... Lounge On The Farm was a weekend music festival held at Merton Farm outside Canterbury on the 11th, 12th and 13th of July. Sorry this is a bit late... you've already heard the Lounge On The Farm BBC Kent Introducing special show which Jim presented last weekend, but we decided it would be nice to show you some of the photos we took and let you listen to some of the other interviews we did. So here they are!

It was an awesome weekend which we mostly spent in the sun watching great music, and eating and drinking local produce...

...oh and practising our circus techniques, as demonstrated here by yours truly (left) whilst proudly advertising the station which Tom thought was funny. I didn't get very far - as you see, I had to keep one foot on the ground in order to push myself along because the pedals were so high up that my knees hit the handlebars. Hello to the Kent Circus School though - was good fun.

If you want to see the latest addition to Tom's family photo album, have a look at the photo of Tom on the bike on Frankie's festival review. His parents must be so proud.

If you listened to the show last Sunday you'll have heard Tom's interviews with Kent bands Polka Party and Underground Heroes... both bands put on a great show and were very friendly and happy to talk to us as always. Here's Polka Party during their appearance on the Cow Shed stage (that's the main stage!):



On the front of more well-known artists...



Another thing you'll have heard if you listened to the show last Sunday is that we managed to get an interview with the legendary Sylvain Sylvain (the guitarist from 70s punk act New York Dolls, pictured above).
The full interview (which is about seven minutes long!) will be uploaded soon to the BBC Kent website; when it is I'll post the link here.



The other headliners for Lounge On The Farm were Liverpool five-piece The Coral, fronted by James Skelly (above) who we were given the chance to interview... so off we went to a little portakabin dressing room. Here's what happened:



As you can hear he wasn't really in the mood to talk to us, but he was nice enough and we had a good chat. Their set was - as you'd expect from The Coral - very impressive and packed with singalong favourites.

The festival organiser was Matt Gough - we got the chance to have a chat with him as well. He was a bit more articulate than James from The Coral, but maybe he can't quite match the musical talent. Here's what happened when Tom and I went to talk to him:



Another equally nice man was BBC Introducing favourite reggae singer-songwriter Natty... here's our chat with him:



Let's skip back a bit... the first interview we did of the weekend was with a band that, according to the BBC guidelines, I shouldn't really talk about. Sadly we missed their set, but they were fun to talk to and made us very welcome in their dressing room:



Because computers and I don't get on (especially when it comes to uploading MP3 files) there will hopefully be more coming soon. So keep checking back, and keep your fingers crossed on behalf of my internet connection...

Staying focused in the sunshine

One of the problems with working from home is that you get distracted easily by good weather. All this week it's been sunny as a sunny thing and the view from my window is very nice, which makes it very difficult to get any work done.

I could do with an angry teacher-type man to scream at me when my eyes wander away from my computer monitor... Here's what it looks like from my kitchen at the moment:





Yeah, as I said... sunny.
To keep myself on task I've written a list of things I need to get done before 2.45pm today (that's my deadline, because I'm going to 'jam' with some friends - apparently it's something to do with making music).
Here's what my list looks like so far. There are lots of boxes yet to be ticked:



...so I'll get on with what I need to be doing.

By the way on this week's show (Sunday from 8pm, on BBC Radio Kent) we've got the brand new singles from Medway band The Long Weekend and our Introducing tour stars for this month Tom Williams And The Boat, from Tunbridge Wells. And there's plenty of new stuff too.

Mercury Awards

Photo by Flickr user Old Sarge, used under license.

This morning the nominations were announced for the National Mercury Prize 2008.
Here they are if you missed 'em:

Adele - 19
British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
Burial - Untrue
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Estelle - Shine
Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep In The North Sea
Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement

Some weird nominations (as always) this year. They often seem to pick some pretty obscure or generally less mainstream albums as well as the bigger ones; I'll confess to never having heard of Burial, Portico Quartet or Rachel Unthank.

I think if I had to pick my favourite album from the list above it would be between the debut albums from Laura Marling and The Last Shadow Puppets - two really innovative and successful new acts for 2008. I can forsee Adele or Estelle getting the gong though for their commercial appeal and chart success, although to quote the Wikipedia article: "The Mercury Prize also has a reputation for being awarded to outside chances rather than the favourites."

This got me thinking about the possibility of one of Kent's bands being selected for a Mercury nomination. Since there are some acts I haven't heard of before, it's probably because they are 'breaking' artists as opposed to established ones. So if the standard is good enough to impress the Mercury judges, perhaps some of the albums released out of Kent soon (Nick Harrison's One Drop perhaps?) or the kind of success we've already been seeing (Tom Williams And The Boat, Jack McManus, Floors And Walls, Underground Heroes) will be Mercury material for the future? Maybe even next year?

What's been going on this week

Hello. I'm Jacob.
First posts on blogs always annoy me: when there's only one post there it looks like the blog has been abandoned. And for all I know, by the time you read this, this blog will have been abandoned too. But it's a nice idea and I'll see how long I can keep it going.

This week I've been doing some things that aren't related to radio. That doesn't happen often... apart from eating and sleeping, radio work is usually my number one daily activity. And wasting time on Facebook comes in a close second. So the first thing you've learnt about me is... I'm a bit of a geek.

But this week, other things have been happening which have drawn me away from the studio... I've been being 'stage manager' for a production by the Instep Dance Company near where I live in Hythe. That means I have to scream at children who don't do what they're told, and I also have to run around in the dark fixing things. I've made the job sound really appealing. Every evening this week is being spent looking at either this view...



(That's a little table in the 'wings' by the side of the stage, where I make notes and scream at people.)
...or this one:



(That's people performing on stage).
That means my evenings have been pretty much taken up with 'stage management' all week. During the day I've been eating, sleeping and working on this week's show (like normal)...

On the show this Sunday (20th July) you can expect interviews with Polka Party and Underground Heroes... and also a little snippet with the chat that Tom had with the legendary guitarist Sylvain from The New York Dolls. Tom's in Spain at the moment at the Benicassim Festival, so once again Jim is alone in the hotseat this week.