Radio Free D'ni

A second helping of Rarities and What-ifs.

Postshow

Some tracks from Yes, and from individual Yes members’ solo albums or other groups. I made no attempt to cover a history of the group, partly because they have a habit of making very long tracks and partly because they have been going for a very long time. So this was be a few favourite tracks.  Pre and post show consisted of more tracks that we couldn’t fit in to the show space.

Yes, I know the last Brit Prog show was show 2.  There was a reason why, but I can’t remember it now.

The Show

Postshow

Another history of a group with a long career and many albums. Pre and post show take the overspill, as usual.

The Show

Postshow

The Doobie Brothers formed in California in 1970 by Tom Johnston (gtr, vo writer), Patrick Simmons (gtr, vo, writer) and John Hartman (dms) with Dave Shogren on bass. They worked hard, playing all over California, often in Hells Angels venues, and adopted the biker look. After an unsuccessful first album, Shogren left and was replaced by Tiran Porter (bs, vo), and a second drummer (Mike Hossack, dms) was added to beef up the sound, in what would become a trademark.

This lineup recorded a second album, Toulouse Street, in 1972, which has several standout tracks on it. The best known is the one that could easily be a Radio Free D’ni theme tune: Listen To The Music.

Postshow

For the fifth anniversary of the current incarnation of Myst Online: Uru Live again a grand event was organised by Janeerah, spreading over a whole weekend.  As a part of this, Radio Free D’ni presented an extended broadcast in three sections lasting five hours or so.  The playlists from that are below.

The first set was ‘Mysty Music’  – Turjan, Piboc, Peter Gabriel and soundtrack items

The second set was some music from Gandalf, an Austrian ‘New Age’ multi-instrumentalist

The final set was of live tracks taken from performances on Jools Holland’s show ‘Later…’

Rarities and What-Ifs are tracks that are either rare or have a hidden history or story behind them.

A strange group in many ways, The Doors formed in 1965 in LA by Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison, both UCLA Theatre Film School graduates.  Their music is unlike almost any other bands, based in blues and rock with some jazz thrown in and a large dose of performance art.  Morrison was essentially a poet, and not a great singer, but an extremely charismatic performer.  The band contained no bassist, Ray Manzarek playing bass pedals on stage and session musicians performing on the albums.

Broadcast December 20, 2014 – yes, a Saturday… We all had other commitments for the Sunday and as it was the start of the holiday and people going away, we decided that Saturday would be a better spot.

The preshow has a mixture of tracks that didn’t make the main show, then we start with some rock & pop, then jazz, folk, and finally classical.

The Postshow has the tracks from the previous show that were missed out. Fionnghlua is Irish mouth music, a form of a capella, as are Rock and Roll Woman from Decameron and the Tuvan throat singing of Huun Huur Tu, as well as the sublime two choruses of Find The Cost Of Freedom from Dave Crosby and Graham Nash with Dave Gilmour.  King Henry’s Madrigal has harpsichord and flute (no surprise as this is Jethro Tull) and Break It Down is on Chapman Stick by Tony Levin.

Broadcast December 7, 2014

Vocalese is the setting of lyrics to established jazz orchestral instrumentals. The word was coined by jazz critic Leonard Feather to describe the first Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross album, Sing a Song of Basie.

So Jon Hendricks, Dave Lambert and Annie Ross can be thought of as the originators of this style.  Some would disagree, citing Eddie Jefferson (who replaced a solo instrumental line with a vocal, rather than a whole horn section) or scat singing (which is vocal improvisation on a chord sequence using nonsense syllables rather than words.

A Cappella (Italian for as in chapel) means unaccompanied singing and as you might guess has a long history, from Gregorian Chant onwards.

Unexpected instruments :- instruments being used in unusual contexts.

Due to a cock-up on my (AlanDJ’s) part, not all the planned tracks got sent to Edison in time for the show.  The missing tracks were added in to the next show in the post-show set.

Broadcast November 23, 2014

The second show in the Brit Prog series, this one concentrating on the Canterbury Scene band Caravan.  Caravan have a long and varied history as one of the premier groups of the Canterbury Scene, a noted Brit Prog melting pot that produced Soft Machine, Hatfield and the North, National Health and Gong among many others.  The membership has varied wildly throughout its lifetime, but the constant presence of Pye Hastings ties everything together with a trademark vocal style and songwriting standard.