For the first show of 2018, we looked back at the careers of some of the most notable musicians that had died in 2017. There were a great many, too, so many that we will cover some of them in postshow sections over the next few shows.
We covered sixteen artists, and inevitably had quite a lot to say about each of them, leading to an unusually large overrun. Still, you, the audience, stayed with us – a peak of 22, and 19 for most of the show, a goodly number to start the year on. We had the occasional fluff, but teamwork pulled us through.

Preshow

Show

Postshow

The featured artists were:

1) John Wetton
2) Deke Leonard
3) Al Jarreau
4) Larry Coryell
5) Chuck Berry
5a) Billy Bland (songwriter)
6) John Geils
7) Allan Holdsworth
8) Gregg Allman
9) Glenn Campbell
10) Walter Bekcer
11) Tom Petty
12) Fats Domino
13) Paul Buckmaster
14) Malcolm Young
14a) AC/DC manager and producer George Young (older brother of Malcolm)
15) Jon Hendricks
16) Johnny Hallyday

For a change, sets of tracks that are linked by title only, everything else about them being different.  Once we started looking we found lots of candidates, so there will be more shows on this theme, unless you’d rather we didnt’…

The preshow contained one track excerpted from the main show, Dog Eat Dog by afrobeat legend Fela Kuti – at fifteen minutes it would have eaten into the time too much – and we overran as it was.

The show theme meant we had a wide variety of styles of music, showing off our ecelcticism if nothing else.  Unfortunately, some of the tracks turned out to be poor examples of the musicians talent, which we will try to correct next time.

Postshow was stuff from Mal’s stash, as he put the show together.

This will be the last show in 2017, as our next slot would be on Christmas Eve and we all plan to be busy then.  Have a great time over the holiday, and we’ll see  you on January 7th with a show paying tribute to all those musicians and performers we lost in 2017.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

A fine time was had, eventually, despite some difficulties with the handover and a problem with a couple of the tracks.  We still overran a bit, but you stayed with us, which we do appreciate.

Prior to the show, I had streamed music for Xenipher’s race, a CavCon event aimed at raising awareness of the state of cavern finances and encouraging donations.  The race went well, I think (the secret music, which was not revealed beforehand, was the Uru soundtrack by Tim Larkin, and the track titles were clues), and was won by thoekenem.  We only had a few minutes to make a handover, from me to Ed to host the show, and although it went well as far as could be seen (I did not lose the stream), we did lose a lot of listeners.  Most of them came back though, having been warned that this could happen.

On with the motley, then, and a fun-packed show with a bit more chat than usual.  Well, I had the books to write about as well as the tracks…

I did promise during the show to say a bit more about the Mock Turtle.  Alice In Wonderland, if you don’t know already, is slotted into the “nonsense” category by many, but it truth it is much more complicated than that.  The author, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll is a pen-name) was a mathematics don at Oxford (having achieved a Second in Divinity and a First in Mathematics, and been awarded a Fellowship for life, no mean achievement) and contributed important work in the fields of symbolic logic and what is today known as game theory.  The Alice books  are full of logical allusions, as well as literary references and puns.  The original illustrations for the books were done by celebrated illustrator and cartoonist Sir John Tenniel, to Dodgson’s exacting and profuse directions, and should be considered as part of the story.

So, the Mock Turtle is an allusion to a culinary dish called Mock Turtle soup, which is a dish that tries to replicate the taste of green turtle soup using items more easily available.  The main component is a calf’s head, boiled, and the meat recovered for use in the soup, along with oysters and a few other things.  Hence Tenniel, under Dodgson’s instructions, made the Mock Turtle have a turtle’s body and front flippers, but a calf’s head, feet and tail.  A clever visual joke, sadly lost on today’s audience who have no reason to know what Mock Turtle soup is made out of.  The text of the relevant chapter can be found here, and will explain the whole “Fainting in Coils” thing (painting in oils, in case it’s not obvious)

I’ll link to as many helpful pages for the books and songs as I can below.

The Show

Postshow

We got the glitches out of the way at the start, with Ed having to restart his systems to cure a problem – which it did, and we ran through without any difficulty after that.  I do wonder if we lost a few of our early starters though.  The show was a lot of fun and we got ourselves thoroughly mixed up at one point when working out who was going to talk next.  Only 21 listeners tops, which is down on recent shows, but it is European carnival season and perhaps that lured some away.  The cavern was quieter than usual too.

Interruptions to the broadcast will usually cause your player to disconnect from the stream, and you may well have to reconnect to the stream once it is back up.  There is a handy indicator on the radiofreedni.org home page that shows you if the stream is up or not.  Urutunes also has one.  Once you see the stream is back up, reconnect your player to the stream 🙂

Anyone who did drop off missed a successful show 🙂  Preshow was taken from my stash, now in the L’s and the postshow was stuff that didn’t quite make the cut.  It was a long show, and we sort of sneaked in one more track as the first of the postshow, announcing it at the end.  And overran a bit too.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

A new theme, the rationale for this one was tracks that have a great musical hook (something that draws you into the music straight away), are memorable (so you want to hear them again) and make you want to turn it up, to hear it better.  Despite my making a mistake about the broadcast time, because the UK had ended DST in the early hours of Sunday but the US would not do so until the next week, we had a great audience, and more people on the plaza than we’ve seen for some time.

The preshow was from my stash again, and ended with Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters singing Turn It Up, which seemed only right.  Postshow was taken from some of the tracks that didn’t make it to the show, as usual, but we still have plenty left.  Let us know here if you liked it enough for us to do another similar show.

We also introduced an new feature (or possibly bug), Awful Warnings.   As the last track in the postshow, I put in a track from my folder of songs that you probably don’t want to hear twice.  At some time in the past someone will have requested these, at a disco or party.  The folder has novelty songs, over-the-top stuff and other strange items.  I think it’s wise to let them have an airing occasionally, in case they get bored and start trouble 😀

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

A change of pace with this set, as we gave you a show of slower numbers, but not without some excitement.

Preshow was once again from my stash (now into the J’s of this pass through one section – there are three more once I’ve finished this one) and picking slower tracks again, from Jethro Tull, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Giuffre.  The postshow was made up of tracks that didn’t make the cut for the show, because we’d used them before perhaps, or did not fit into the storyline I’d assembled.

Once again, we had 30 listeners at peak, which is very satisfying.  Of course, we would always like more 🙂

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

Part 3 of a four-part series.  This show covered the period from 1975 to 1979 including the albums Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall.  A turbulent period in the band’s history.  Preshow and postshow both contained tracks from the Live at Pompeii movie, as well as some of Roger Waters’ solo album Radio K.A.O.S.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

Something close to all our hearts (well, just below in fact), food, and being the first of several, this one’s about breakfast. In the preshow we had Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast (I wanted to get that out of the way early) followed by some stuff from the H section of the stash, Hayseed Dixie and Huey Lewis.

The breakfast theme included Cyril Tawney’s Chicken on a Raft, a made-up sea shanty – Cyril served on diesel submarines – and includes some Royal Navy slang – a short glossary is included below

Chicken on a Raft = Fried Egg on fried bread
Jimmy = Jimmy-the-One = 1st lieutenant
Comic Cuts = A sailor’s personal file, record of service, misdemeanors etc.
Dabtoes = seamen (not specialist ratings), used the Foreward Mess
Dustmen = Engine Room specialist ratings (originally stokers), used the Aft Mess
middle, forenoon = watches
Whalin’ crew = Whaler’s Crew / Whaler = Ship’s boat
pusser = purser
DonnyB: Donnybristle in Fifeshire, not far from Rosyth dockyard

The postshow included some alternate takes (my, we are getting good at this) on songs from the show, plus a couple of ones that didn’t quite make it.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

The 75th show made use of the wedding-anniversary convention and had a theme of diamonds – which had to be augmented by ice (the slang term for diamonds, we are lead to believe).  A very wide-ranging selection was the result of combing all our stash for suitable candidates.  In the end we had enough to cover the pre- and post-show requirements as well.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

An excellent third anniversary show, put together by Edison Rex, drew over 30 listeners at one point, which is close to the best we’ve ever had.  All the tracks are selected from shows we’ve broadcast over the past year, and I have listed the shows against the tracks below.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow