In my recently appointed role as co-editor of the news section of AUK I am reading a lot more ‘news’. In fact, I haven’t read so much music news since I pored over every line and full stop in the weekly music press of MM, Sounds and NME way back in the 70s and 8os. Funnily enough Joe Pernice and I discussed these very papers in my interview last month. He used to send friends to the store several miles away to secure the single copy they got and then it was passed around for a week until the next and it was always at least two to three weeks behind date-wise.
So to the point. One of the news stories I combed through this week was from the Black Deer organisation announcing a series of small-scale dates AND the creation of a radio station that would be streaming on DAB and other formats. This is excellent news but there must be deep pockets at play here as obtaining a DAB licence and maintaining it is not a cheap thing to do. My radio broadcasts are via the Internet and Mixcloud. These are small fry compared with having a nationally available station on your radio playing Americana – 24 hours a day. Sure you can get this online – there are 1000s of such stations – but being able to turn the dial from the Today programme to a station playing our kind of music will be brilliant. Although many would argue that radio is dead in the face of music on demand/ Spotify I would say Absolute-ly not (do you see what I did there?) and hands must clap applauding Gill Tee and the rest of the Black Deer organisation for having the vision (and hopefully the sponsors who will Let the Music Play (I did it again)).
Tempting though it is to now play some Big Barry, it’s not going to happen. Some GospelbeacH, yes indeed a real West Coast blast, so sticking with the wonderful Curation Records I then went to Triptides. Groovy, man. The radio show was entitled ‘All About Eve’ this week or possibly ‘Sweethearts of the Rodeo’ or maybe ‘Homecoming Queens’. Check it out to find out what was going on but ignore the usual chaos as I try to sort out the levels of the bedding tracks. FFS. Take what you need or want. Laters… dudes.
