Yes, 2016 was notably bad for the passing of many fine musicians who have enthralled and entertained us as we grew.  So many, in fact, that it will take several shows to mention even a few of them.

In this show we concentrated on just five: Bernie Worrell (P-Funk and Talking Heads amongst many others), Keith Gemmell (Audience and Stackridge, amongst others). Leon Russel (too many to mention), Greg Lake (ELP mostly) and Rick Parfitt (Status Quo).

Preshow was put together by Ed from earlier shows – I didn’t have time to do it myself, for reasons that are clear to those who listened to the show.

Postshow

I put the Heavy Metal tracks into the preshow, only to find that my colleagues disagreed with the labelling of Danish group Pretty Maids as Heavy. Apparently they are Hair Metal, despite what their website and Wikipedia (I know…) says. I think we can compromise on Glam Metal. I never knew there were so many different Metals out there.

Apart from them, we had two tracks from We Wish You a Metal X-Mas and a Headbanging New Year, on which each track is played by a combination of metallic musicians. I simply could not resist including Silent Night.

Also in the preshow was The Kings and Shepherds Arise from The Home Service’s soundtrack to the Royal National Theatre’s 1985 cycle of Mystery Plays, with John Tams and Linda Thompson providing memorable vocals.

The postshow contained a proper French language version of Patapan and Herderkenslied, the Shepherds Song from Flemish group ‘t Kliekske, keeping our international credentials intact. The Death or Glory Wassail from Sid Kipper could almost have been another language, heavy Norfolk accent laid on thick. Some Early English music from The Sixteen and Polyphony followed and we closed with the Wintersmith from Steeleye Span, in memory of Terry Pratchett. Steeleye Span were one of his favourite groups, and he was thrilled to bits that they had take his book and set it to music, as well as asking him to provide some spoken word parts.

The final show for 2016 went down well, even though the hosts all forgot their Santa Hats. We had 27 listeners at one stage and over 20 for nearly the whole show.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

Difficult Times had 26 listeners at one point, and 20 for most of the show.

Here’s the playlist, and a link to the lyrics for Rush’s Losing It, as requested (click on the track title)

Preshow

Unsquare Dance is possibly the second most famous Dave Brubeck track after Take Five. Klaus Doldinger’s Timesignature is the sleeper here – it is in common time, but has the relevant title…

The Show

Postshow

Aretha’s version of Say A Little Prayer is the second best, after the Dionne Warwick original.

Vix 9 is by Bela Fleck and the Wooten brothers, Victor on bass and Roy “Futureman” Wooten on drumitar, his own drum controller made in roughly the shape of a guitar.   Bela Fleck is playing an electric banjo and synth pedals, and the live video of them playing this on Youtube is very impressive to watch.

We had a great show with a very appreciative audience for our first Covered Up set, where we played well-known songs and their covers – in some cases the covers being more well known than the originals.

Edison put the preshow together and I didn’t make a note of what was played – it was taken from earlier shows though. I put the postshow together so I can give you the extra info for those tracks below – beginning with a rather impressive cover of The Sounds of Silence from heavy-metallers Disturbed.

An internet outage caused me to go offline and lose the channel for several minutes, which caused an unexpected and unannounced end to the show.  Apologies – Technical Issues Beyond our Control.

Postshow

After missing one show slot, we returned to a great audience who stayed with us for a long show.  As it was the DST shift for Europe, we started an hour later than usual for the US listeners, but I was able to get into the cavern early and let folks know what was going on, and also have some music playing during what would have been the preshow period.  There was also an extended postshow, as there was so much material and I wanted to chat about that too.  A long list below…   A peak of 24 listeners, which is at the top end of what we usually have, and even better as we were competing with an event in SL that drew the refugee crowd away.

Total time on air – about 5 hours

Pre-preshow   With a sub-theme of ‘time’ as it was to fill up time due to the late DST announcement by me.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

The preshow included Santana’s Samba Pa Ti from Abraxas, Jethro Tull’s Broadsword (I always think of it as one of his Scottish Songs), Status Quo’s elderly but still hale Caroline and Supertramp and It’s A Long Road.

We overran for a change, and Martin Barre’s ‘A Blues For All Reasons’ got bumped into the postshow.  What we might have said about it is

“He was a late starter, but it seems he needed an outlet for the creativity that was curbed in by being a member of Jethro Tull. His first three solo albums spaced out over a full decade, Barre has come back in force after Anderson declared J-Tull to be a thing of the past: he has put out three new albums in as many years since 2013.”

As is often the case, I went on for a bit after the post-show and we all had some fun dancing when I didn’t get in the way with chat.

Preshow

The Show

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Post Postshow

On The Road Again: In the preshow we visited my stash again for some more D’s – Dave Swarbrick, the effervescent fiddler who is most famous for his time with Fairport Convention, Dave Pegg, the tricksy bassist from both Fairport and Jethro Tull, Dave Mason, formerly of Traffic and with a long solo career and Dave Greenslade, who was a long-time member of Colosseum before branching out with his own group and also on solo projects.  Then some Road Songs to prepare you – Gary Numan’s electronic Cars, Tom Paxton’s very acoustic Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound, Donald Fagan’s Tomorrow’s Girls, a favourite from his album Kamakiriad, which is all about a futuristic road trip and The Who, I Can See For Miles – the sort of view you get On The Road.

We started with fewer listeners than usual (probably because I’d not let you know soon enough) but picked up very well as we went on and we ended up with a peak of more than 20, I think – which was, as always, very pleasing.

Playlist is below:  Ed padded out the postshow set but I don’t have exactly what he played – I do know Autobahn was one of them.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

A good time was had by all at the Electric Folk show on Sunday, including several who attended in Second Life. We are slowly building an audience there thanks to Ainia’s hosting in TJ’s Dance hall.

Perhaps this is a good point to say that although we are called Radio Free D’ni, our content is not specific to Myst Online or any particular environment. The shows stand on their own merits as straightforward entertainment, or at least that is our intention when preparing them. So please don’t be worried by the channel’s title – our shows are for everyone.

We had up to 23 listeners, with 16 for most of the time, which was very pleasing for a show that was not mainstream by any measure.

Playlists are below. As is becoming usual, there were requests from the audience for us to continue after the postshow, so another set was played – as listed.

In two weeks time, the next show will be another Road Songs set – the last one went down well and we have a lot of tracks we could not ft in to that show. See you there.

Preshow

The Show

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Post-postshow-show

We had a great 50th show, with a Golden theme that produced a lot of favourites, both ours and yours. I managed to get the notes finished just in time, and the show was a hit, with 19 listeners for most of the time and a peak of 25. We’re working on improving that, not sure if sending out scantily-clad tempters (of all sexes – we are an equal-opportunity team) or waiting in dark alleys to, ahem, persuade passers-by will work best.

Our thanks to Ainia who rebroadcast the show for us in real time in TJ’s Dance Hall in Second Life.  I have plans afoot to include Ainia in our commentary team, and she is also hoping to widen the scope of our advertising in SL.  Never a dull moment here on RFD.

We are still coming up with ideas that interest us, and I think will interest you as well. Next time we have picked Electric Folk as a theme, but will eschew the best known (who we’ve already featured quite heavily) to concentrate on some of the lesser-known champions of the genre. And believe me, there are a lot to choose from.

The Golden playlist is below, and we will be back in two weeks with some killer Electric Folk. See you then.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow

Ed’s ISP suffered a catastrophic failure, and he dropped out after just three of the postshow tracks. We breathed a collective sigh of relief that it had not happened earlier.  I took over, and about 16 listeners stayed with me as we went through a great dance set, and also managed to incorportate the missing bits of the postshow, later on.  From the Mixxx logs, I can give you a rundown.

About three hours of good golden dance tracks and other nice music – well I think so, and I hope you liked it too.

Reviewing this, I’ve been reminded of just how influential Jobim’s ‘Girl from Ipanema’ was – I wonder if we can put together a set of ‘influential songs’.  It would be pretty impressive listening, I think.  What do you think?  Let us know by commenting below.

Yes, Radio Free D’ni is two years old and in our now-traditional format the anniversary show consists of Edison’s choices from the past year’s shows.  And, for the first time, we had a simulcast with Second Life, Ainia playing the show in TJ’s Dance Hall, which is something we hope to continue.

Despite it being Mysterium weekend, we had a good attendance, 16 for most of the show, peaking at 21, and five people in Second Life.  Thanks to everyone who’s listened now and in the past year, and we have ideas for more shows still.  Special thanks and a garland of Martian fire flowers to Ainia, our Second Life representative.

Preshow

The Show

Postshow