Archive for the 'ResonanceFM' Category

Babbling prose into a microphone for half an hour every week is all very well, but occasionally one feels impelled to vent in a less… shall we say, prosaic manner. To this end, I am very pleased (I think) to be taking part in a performance by Phil Minton’s Feral Choir this coming Saturday, 29th May.

Tune in to ResonanceFM at 8.00 PM, and – as Charles Ives recommended – “sit down, pin back your ears, and listen like a man!” (Women are equally adept at this practice.)

Incidentally, and quite coincidentally, both Phil Minton and I have contributions due to appear in a forthcoming recipe book, to be sold for charity. I am not joking. I will of course keep readers fully informed, so you can buy innumerable copies when this invaluable tome hits the boulevards.

Your favourite radio programme, Hooting Yard On The Air, will be six years old next month. As happens from time to time, I have been pondering whether or not to change the theme tune, which, since very early in the show’s run, has been the “Caucasian Lullaby” by Slapp Happy & Henry Cow, from the Desperate Straights album of 1975. When I mention to people that I am considering a change, I am almost invariably met with gasps of horror, as if by dumping the eerie lullaby in favour of something else I would be doing violence to a well-loved national institution, much as if I were to throw pebbles at Stephen Fry. So there is every likelihood the sixth anniversary will come and go without any change whatsoever. I am enamoured, though, of the University of Ghana Postal Workers’ Stamp-Cancelling Song, also from 1975, which was brought to my attention by Glyn Webster, to whom many thanks. Should this become the new Hooting Yard theme? Please make use of the Comments to air your views.

First we had Blodgett in the sewers, now Mr Key himself has been squelching through the subterranean murk. You can hear the results in an episode of Tunnel Vision on ResonanceFM – go here for further details, I am not sure in which week my troglodyte adventures will be broadcast, but you should listen to the entire series in any case. My thanks to Bruno Rinvolucri, who made the programmes, took me down into the sewers (at West Dulwich) and, more importantly, led me back to the surface again.

News bulletins often try to add drama to stories by announcing, in excitable tones, “Blizzard Britain – Day Four!” or “Pigeon Crisis – Day Two!” Once in a while, however, such an approach is justified, as it is today, with “Resonance FM – Day Two Thousand Five Hundred!”

We should all throw our hats in the air and cheer at this achievement. Given that on an unlikely number of those days  the station has played host to Hooting Yard On The Air, I ought to take this opportunity to thank the powers that be at the benevolent dictatorship that is Resonance, as well as the many sound engineers who have ensured my babbling is audible to the world.

You can thank them too, by listening and donating and buying things from the shop.

When the first babblings of Hooting Yard On The Air were heard across the aether almost five years ago, there was different theme music every week. After a while, a panel of experts settled on Caucasian Lullaby by Slapp Happy & Henry Cow to be the definitive theme and so it has remained to this day.

Mindful of the fact that this coming April will see the fifth anniversary of the show, Mr Key has been pondering whether or not to cast tradition aside, in a fit of what may be petulance, and to choose something different to begin the show and to play during those intervals when he stops reading to drink tea or to have a choking spasm. Incapable of making a decision, he is seeking the views of listeners. Please use the Comments here to “have your say”, as they say, even if – or especially if – you are someone who has never commented at Hooting Yard before. Those in favour of a change may wish to suggest an apt piece of music, although Mr Key cannot guarantee he will take the slightest bit of notice.

Whatever the final decision may be, every listener really ought to ensure that they are in possession of their own copy of Desperate Straights, the album from which Caucasian Lullaby is taken, and which is a unique masterpiece. Please purchase it directly from the ReR Megacorp, by clicking here. Now.

Last month I mentioned, in passing, Christopher Smart’s poem Jubilate Agno. I am happy to report that a reading of the complete work, all three hours of it, by Mr Key and the spoken word performer Germander Speedwell, has now been recorded and will be broadcast (and podcast) by Resonance104.4FM on Thursday 27th December at 12 noon GMT. Further details here and here.

UPDATE :  The podcast is permanently available here. I humbly suggest that you download it and set aside three hours every day to listen to it in full.