In the days before their output was dictated round the clock by committee, by content and by an algorithm that once owned CD 1 of a 2CD Stereophonics single and wasn’t afraid of who knew it, late nights on Independent Local Radio stations were a hazy, half-awake law unto themselves. Much like the unfathomed depths that cover seventy one percent of the Earth’s surface, their contents were a mesmerising mystery to anyone more familiar with daytimes filled with requests for Wages Day by Deacon Blue for ‘Jenny listening in Stockport there’. Some stations – as Paul Abbott memorably recounted on Looks Unfamiliar here – used it as a convenient juncture in their schedules to stow their ‘maverick’ presenters, who were seldom far from an answering back to a caller-initiated rebuke from the IBA. Many others initiated a ‘Love Zone’, wherein endless plays of Longer by Dan Fogelberg alternated with an infinite assortment of interchangeable yet somehow marginally distinct records featuring two ‘soul greats’ – one or both of whom was invariably Peabo Bryson – duetting with what appeared to be sheep bleating in the background, in blissful sponsor-abetting ignorance of the fact that a sizeable bulk of their listenership was more than likely composed of the recently dumped. Others took the proximity to the ‘Witching Hour’ as a prompt to indulge in a sort of ad-hoc Mysteries Of The Unexplained slot, obliging the presenter to pivot from Bros-backannouncing blather to sub-Valentine Dyall gravitas as they read out wildly implausible and bafflingly phrased tales of paranormal happenings to the accompaniment of music that started off sounding like the synth scowls from the opening of The Evil Dead before switching abruptly to what appeared to be OMD refusing to do their homework. Elsewhere around the available wavelengths you might well find more than one isolated-sounding presenter mock-enthusiastically reading out a recipe in haunted tones, or some off-the-cuff chat with the rest of the relentlessly one liner-toting studio staff about how well Charlie Nicholas was playing this season or the chances of Albion Market evading the ‘axe’. Then came automated playlists, centralised playout services and a certain incident in the late summer of 1997 – although more about that here -and they all gradually converged on the same Bauer-watermarked conveyer belt of You Get What You Give by The New Radicals. Presumably Jenny very quickly found something else to do in Stockport there.
That’s the commercial sector, though. Where there are RAJAR demographics, ‘The Kid’ lifting ‘the lid’ on The Net!Work!Chart! and that advert that went “My fellow bankers…” to consider. Over on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 – Radio 3, Radio 4 and latterly Radio 5, of course, would adhere steadfastly to small hours educational programming and news, ensuring that even the miscreant youngster covertly staying up to see what happened across the airwaves after bedtime could never fully escape the retribution of ‘extra school’ – matters were very different indeed. Aware that nobody who was listening at that hour would be doing so by choice – well, apart from those miscreant youngsters covertly staying up – longstanding presenters with a relatively off-the-clock free hand in their playlist built up a tongue-in-cheek us-against-the-world rapport with their unswervingly loyal audience who were encouraged to feel like members of a clandestine secret club, with matters frequently taking a turn for the absurd. Indeed, while all manner of esoteric, angular and self-important influences may be proposed for Chris Morris’ late nineties late-night Radio 1 show Blue Jam, the fact of the matter is that he is on record as confirming that the most substantial influence was Radio 2’s long-serving and much-loved purveyor of rails-averting small-hours whimsy Ray Moore. In fact Blue Jam was originally conceived as what would have purported to be a more straightforward extremely early morning show where it gradually became clear that the isolated and unattended presenter broadcasting to an audience of nobody was very slowly losing touch with reality; by the time that it made it to the air late in 1997 it had evolved into something slightly different, but even so, none of those fellow insomniac disc-spinners that had so informed the original concept could really have anticipated just how far into the realms of surrealism and unacceptability it would have delved by the end of that first run, culminating in a cheerfully shocking item that was pulled off the air mid-broadcast and managed to cause a minor kerfuffle even at one o’clock in the morning on a station few would have been paying attention to at such an hour.
The story of exactly what happened on BBC Radio 1 at approximately had a cold and work the next day o’clock in the morning on Friday 19th December 1997 is one that there is, amazingly, still no one hard and fast first hand factual account of, and it really is a thrill to reach my attempts to work out exactly what did and did not happen whilst still conveying a sense the otherworldly excitement of that very first series of Blue Jam as part of this trip through the Infinite Misery Jumper of the archives. Unfortunately, unless you count the ‘loungecore’ dance outfit The Gentle People who were occasionally heard on Blue Jam, then there is essentially nothing else in this whistle-stop that remotely thematically aligns with it – taking in a review of one of Jodie Whittaker’s first appearances as Doctor Who, Ste Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence from Scarred For Life on Looks Unfamiliar and a load of old comedy records where the jokes were probably delivered at too normal a pace for ambience’s Chris Morris – but at least it arguably sort of fits with the anything goes direction-hopping of late night local radio before they all turned into that Coldplay one that went ‘they spun a webbbbbbbbbbb for me’ stuck on repeat. Incidentally if you would like to help to fuel my attempts at contriving some kind of spurious link between these five highlights from the archives then you can buy me a coffee here. Anyway, before this introduction goes on so long that it starts replicating at the waistband…
It’s always the posts you least expect. Although I was very much a fan of none-more-mid-nineties lounge slash dance retrofuturists The Gentle People and in particular their mesmeric album Soundtracks For Living, which is probably best described as resembling The Sound Gallery if it started teaching deep relaxation techniques, they were one of many hugely talked-up acts from around that time that never really managed to translate that interest into any degree of commercial success, and I had often wondered whether it was only actually me that liked them in the first place, let alone remembered them. This fairly slight look at their all too brief moment in the spotlight originally began as a much shorter paragraph or so on Soundtracks For Living on one of my prehistoric blogs, as part of a feature called ‘Moogs Funks Breaks’ – named after the phrase widely adopted by arm-chancing online sellers trying to flog albums that invariably turned out to include less than none of the above – which was essentially just an easily-composed series on albums that possibly were worth seeking out second hand or in charity shops after all; quite what else was featured apart from somewhat unlikely musical bedfellow Slinky by The Milltown Brothers is unfortunately lost to the mists of funks and breaks. Short of ideas for new features some considerable time later – and having recently dug out Soundtracks For Living again – I decided on a whim to take that original paragraph and a half or so and embellish it with further thoughts on the wider ‘lounge’ revival and why it was never really taken seriously and so many missed out on so much good music as a consequence, and while it was certainly enjoyable to put together I cannot say I really expected it to attract very much interest at all. Which was why it came as something of a surprise when it immediately rocketed into the top five most viewed posts and still attracts a disproportionate volume of hits even now; other than that there are presumably more people out there who know the lyrics to Laurie’s Theme than anyone had realised, it has never been entirely clear how or why this is the case either. I’d like to take this opportunity to recommend Soundtracks For Living again, though. I Love The Gentle People hasn’t actually appeared in any of my anthologies but you can find the original version here and some further thoughts on The Gentle People and the loungecore scene they emerged from in Keep Left, Swipe Right here.
Although I can’t quite remember how and why this look at mid-nineties late nights on BBC Radio 1 – and one notorious incident from late in 1997 that was probably heard about by more people than it was ever actually heard by – originally came about, I am fairly certain that it will have started out as little more than an attempt to direct attention towards and hopefully shift a few more copies of Fun At One. However, it would very rapidly develop into something significantly more than that. It is fair to say that I have often made mention of both Mark Radcliffe being so enthused by Fanfare by Eric Matthews that he went against the station’s guidelines and played it twice in a row purely because he wanted to hear it again as midnight loomed on a frosty autumn night in 1995 and Chris Morris going against pretty much everyone’s guidelines by gleefully airing a sketch about Diana, Princess Of Wales more or less by subterfuge almost exactly two years later – and it is interesting to note that while one of those felt like a moment of triumph in a year when it really did feel like the alternative had become the mainstream, the other was more a moment of inspiring defiance once the mainstream had told us all very comprehensively to know our place – but I am not sure that there was any kind of ingenious plan in place to draw parallels between the two and the idea was probably fused by nothing more than book-plugging desperation. Yet the second that I attempted to express just how powerful and exciting these two little-heard moments were in conjunction with each other, it was evident that this was going to evolve into something quite remarkable. Which might well sound like a moderately arrogant approach to take to my own work but the finished feature surprised and thrilled even me in, well, much the same way as those two startling radio-based incidents originally had done. Apparently at least some of you out there agreed, as it is still attracting large numbers of hits and indeed shifting more than a few copies of Fun At One. You can find the original version of Amongst Them Trevor The Sheep here and an expanded version with much more on Chris Morris and Mark Radcliffe’s stints late at night on Radio 1 in Keep Left, Swipe Right here.
Looks Unfamiliar: Stephen Brotherstone And Dave Lawrence – We’ll Definitely Eat These Meatballs
Although I had been a keen follower of Stephen and Dave’s Scarred For Life project ever since noticing that an account using a screenshot of one of the ‘horrified’ reactions from that baffling Public Information Film apparently warning against tightrope walking over railways as an avatar had followed me on Twitter – and the descent and decline of that once relentlessly fun platform is true Scarred For Life territory in and of itself – when it came to appearing on Looks Unfamiliar we were all determined that we should talk about anything but matters hauntological and focus instead on other more light-hearted cultural half-memories that were perhaps not quite so fashionable to talk about. This turned out even better than I had expected, especially when the chat about the Roger Moore And The Crimefighters books diverted onto that idiosyncratic carousel of paperbacks you used to get in your local newsagents, how compelling yet terrifyingly ‘remote’ the early eighties CB Radio craze felt at the time and just how exciting a glimpse of the future the purportedly interactive ZX Spectrum game Deus Ex Machina represented back in 1984; a couple of correspondents were moderately disgruntled to put it mildly by the fact that we pointed out that some elements of The Lone Ranger by Quantum Jump have not exactly aged well, but we did so as part of a wildly enthusiastic appreciation of it so I am not sure what more any of you want really. Also we still have yet to find that Williams Superstore advert, although personally I cannot say I am especially keeping a particular eye out for it. You can find the full show here and the chat about The Lone Ranger by Quantum Jump – yes alright – in a collection of Looks Unfamiliar highlights here.
Well I knew this one was liable to put a few Women Who Fell To Earth amongst the Arachnids In The UK. It is probably quite well known how excited I was about Jodie Whittaker taking over as Doctor Who, and I will freely admit that I was even more giddily excited still when the episode I was genuinely randomly assigned to review was the one in which The Doctor encountered Rosa Parks and very nearly inadvertently changed history whilst attempting to stop someone else from entirely intentionally changing history. By now we were three weeks into this excitingly unfamiliar new iteration of Doctor Who, now on a Sunday with – horror of horrors – one of those pesky ‘women’ in the lead role and the TARDIS apparently now having turned into the Mouse Mill from Bagpuss, and although I could probably not say exactly the same about all of the episodes in Jodie’s first run in the series, I absolutely loved Rosa and was hardly backwards in coming forwards about saying so. Although I did manage to make a fair few jokes about Sunday television along the way. In the service of a thumpingly good story, however, Rosa did of course touch on a staggering number of elements that would be considered ‘woke’ by blowhards who very evidently have neither watched nor thought about Doctor Who since it starred Warren Mitchell, was mostly wiped and which they were too dense to understand was actually making fun of them rather than ‘saying’ what they were ‘all’ ‘thinking’ anyway. As part of the aimless lashing out that this inevitably and tiresomely engendered, a few incoherently furious rejoinders did indeed find themselves flung in my direction – lord alone knows what it was like for poor old Chris Chibnall – so when I republished the review here I took great pleasure in appending a comically high-handed rejoinder of my own, which itself drew some retorts from severely put-out gentlemen who were somewhat tetchy that I had bracketed them with sexists and racists when they had in fact, actually, I think I’ll find, not liked it not because she is a woman but because legitimate reasons that have nothing to do with her being a woman etc etc. Well, good for you. It’s not me who’s missing out. Anyway, you can find the original version of Doctor Who And The Rosa here and an expanded version with many further observations on the eccentricities of Sunday television of days gone by in Keep Left, Swipe Right here.
Funny Ha Ha And Funny Peculiar
Well, I may as well be upfront about it – this collection of unexpectedly rocking, jazzy and soulful highlights found hidden in the depths of fifties and sixties comedians’ surprisingly dense discographies is not quite the uncynical cavalcade of jollity and mirth that Bernard Cribbins’ disconcertingly single-tracked fixation on sounding a fire engine’s bell might make it appear. It actually began as an admittedly minor feature that a high street magazine cheerfully declined to pay me for – not the only time that this would happen over the next couple of years, especially once the pandemic hit – and rather than kicking up any kind of a fuss about it in public I decided instead that I was well within my rights to reuse it myself in the hope that it might at least inspire a couple of readers to invest in a copy of Top Of The Box, thereby ensuring that I accrued at least some financial compensation for my efforts. Repurposing it myself also meant that I could incorporate an actual playlist of the featured discs, most of which have never been on CD and some of which had to be wrestled from my own battered vinyl copies, and so here for your listening pleasure you can find Lance Percival covering The Kinks, Millicent Martin doing a surprisingly racy topical number, Peter Sellers duetting with The Hollies, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sending up Pet Sounds, Bill Oddie registering his disapproval of Mods and Rockers, Harry H. Corbett’s epic retelling of a Music Hall monologue, the little-heard single version of Stanley Unwin’s retelling of Goldyloppers And The Three Bearloaders, The Goodies inventing prog-metal and Mike and Bernie Winters doing whatever it was they did exactly, complete with the story behind each single which is usually much more difficult to determine than you might expect. Anyway if that sounds like the sort of collection of oddities slash rarities that you might want to give a listen to, and more hopefully if Top Of The Box sounds like the sort of book that you might want to take a punt on, you can find Funny Ha Ha And Funny Peculiar here. Speaking of which…
If you are something of a fan of discovering unlikely overlooked musical belters in even more unlikely places then you will find plenty of them to set about tracking down in Top Of The Box, the story behind every single released by BBC Records And Tapes, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.
Mystery Link! If you want to just go straight to a surprise page completely unrelated to any of the above, click here.
© Tim Worthington.
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Tim Worthington 