Radio Free D’ni

Our second set of Connections showing the often complex interactions in world of Rock, this time centred on Dave Edmunds. Pre- and post-show are tracks by artists we also see during the show proper. And I will post a follow-up of the track of connections we followed this time. We topped out at 25 listeners, so that was not too bad.

See you in the Cavern,
Malaclypse

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