Archive for September, 2011
Return to Konkerbury
Good news for fans of our classic University-based sitcom Konkers! CSR FM is celebrating the show’s fifth birthday by serving up a landmark re-run of every episode – with some BRAND NEW features! I won’t say too much, but I can reveal that we will be hearing from a post-University Geoff Island later in the run. Episode one airs tonight preceded by the first of the special features – a phone interview with myself, conducted by current Head of Speech Daryl Smith. After all those phone interviews I conducted with celebs for the Gulbenkian Podcast, now the tables have turned. Here’s hoping I’m not rambling and incoherent. The return of Konkers has even made front page news at csrfm.com and those good chaps have even seen fit to include our Konkerbury promotional video. Cheers guys! Thursday at 6pm on 97.4 CSR FM (repeated Sunday 11pm)
Sampling for music
I think most people are familiar with the use of sampling in music, whether they are conscious of it or not. Probably the most obvious example for me in popular music is the use of Camille Yarbrough’s Take Yo Praise in Fat Boy Slim’s Praise You. Another example would be Nas’s use of James Brown’s track, or more hilariously Dr Dre’s use of David Alexrod’s work. Hip hop as a genre, is just full of it. So there’s an obvious theme emerging here: modern musicians are often looking through the vast catalogue of decades of recorded music, for inspiration and more often than not using this to directly inform their music of the moment. Recently i came across a musician called Gerry Diver, who i believe is doing something quite original and tremendous with this use of the old, to inform the new. But instead of taking the tunes of the old musicians, he is taking their voices. And not even their voices whilst in song, but their voices whilst in conversation. And instead of just cutting and pasting voices over the top of a readily made melody, he’s creating a melody informed by the nuances in their voices. It...
Mrs. Hoffman stars in “Night Terrors”
Many of you may know that I’m a lifelong fan of Doctor Who. I don’t usually mention the programme round these parts. You see, some of my fellow Bakers have the temerity to be boring “grown ups,” and – in one instance – a bally foreigner. But this week I am willing to make a rare exception and promote a show which needs no promotion. Me and the series don’t always see eye to eye. As with all passionate relationships, sometimes I rant and feel frustrated, maybe even disappointed with it. But only because I expect so highly of it. I can also understand that new viewers might find it the most baffling, inconsistent and melodramatic mash-up of a programme they’ve ever seen. Some people mistake it for science fiction. In truth, you should think of Doctor Who as that childhood game you played, where you got all the different action figures and soldiers and teddies that didn’t belong together and improvised whatever mad story you liked. Any time, any place, any genre. A wonderfully silly, fairytale, make-believe comedy-horror-drama pastiche that constitutes the best BBC TV series ever devised. If you don’t enjoy at least some of it, you...
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