Radio

Several years ago, I began listening to a comedy podcast. Just two people chatting crap and making each other laugh with silly stories told in even sillier ways. I figured: “I wanna do that” but the lack of a comedic sparring partner and essential audio recording equipment meant that it was a dream that fell by the wayside.

Through that, I began listening to the radio after holding a long belief that it was a dying medium. At the time I was beginning a three-year university degree with modules looking at film and television. Mind, this was film and television studies rather than film and television production – instead of learning how to produce video, I was analysing how directors in the 70s had produced video.

With less and less access to video making and dwindling inspiration, the radio offered a bit of an outlet. “Here’s some new music you haven’t heard before and some old music you’d forgotten about, and here are some knowledgeable people contextualising them.”

I still wasn’t wholly convinced, evidently, until after university though.

Once I’d secured a job that involved regular early mornings on weekdays – as opposed to random lie-in patterns – and stuck in a room with no TV aerial access, I found myself relying on breakfast radio as my first-thing-in-the-morning companion. Soon after, I became settled into a routine involving radio during my workday as well. Sometimes even on the weekends I’d tune in to special programming. All of this partly for the perceived companionship, partly for the distraction from what utter shit I felt like my life was. As it turns out, radio – what I’d once considered dead – was doing very well at keeping me alive.

Unlike the comedy duo podcast, a lot of the radio broadcasting I’d been listening to involved only one voice. Something happened in my head – that yearning to do something – and breaking down the components of these broadcasts and realising that they were largely comprised of a person pressing buttons, playing great music and talking a little bit in between the songs. The words that my silly little brain conjured up stuck around for a while afterwards: “I could do that.”

Even though no human partner was necessarily necessary, I still struggled from a lack of recording equipment, coupled with the fact that I also lacked music playing equipment that could interlink with any potential recording equipment.

I began searching the web, idly wondering about the feasibility of going back through education, looking for apprenticeships, musing how far I’d be willing to travel to pursue this not-really-dream-more-of-a-wondering. After some years of on-and-off absent minded, half-arsed investigation, I came across a local community radio station. Mind, read “local” as “sort of near the same place I work but nowhere near home, really”.

Nevertheless, curiosity kicked in and I became a sometime listener. Some time later, I bothered a few of the volunteers to see if they could be persuaded to let in an idiot with zero experience to “have a go and see”. As it transpires, that’s pretty much a given for community radio. Maybe not the idiot part, but the have-a-go side of it, sure.

So I went in and had a go. Then another go. Then another. That third go lasted longer because of another person’s unforeseen illness and time needed to be filled. I’m still having goes now and into the near future as it happens. And it’s well weird.

I’d often imagined it as being like sitting in a room on your own, playing good music and talking to yourself – something I’d be more than happy to do at home anyone. What is actually like is sitting in a room on your own, playing good music and talking to yourself while there’s a microphone in front of your face and the niggling thought in the back of your mind that you might not be completely alone.

As a result, stage fright happens. Before doing it, I imagine and rehearse in my head all the clever things I’m going to say. Once the mic goes on, however, all of that inconveniently rushes out of my head, leaving me coming across as a hesitating, umming and ahhing buffoon. Still, at least it only took about seven-and-a-half years to get round to realising this.

Let’s give it another seven-and-a-half year’s and I might be alright with it. Or I might’ve just given up entirely.

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Oh, a black-and-white artsy video that requires interpretation of the viewer? How very français. But enough of the video, the accompanying noise-scape is what I’m enjoying about this.

With Halloween approaching, it’s nice to share a tune with echoey electric organ bits that make the whole thing sound like it’s been lifted from The Specials’ Ghost Town or the opening titles of The Munsters. French artists tend to have a knack for pulling off electronic-y music. Yes this has more of a standard guitar-and-drum rocky vibe, but it’s cool and quirky all the same.

Juniore – Panique