For most of the 90s I presented a show on GLR. I left before they could fire me or, worse, tell me what to play. It was mostly on Friday evenings and it had a select but devoted audience.
Just this afternoon I got an email from a woman. She and her husband used to listen devotedly and taped many of the programmes. And guess what? They still play them in the car whenever they're off to Wales for the weekend. One of these tapes ran out before they got the answer to the phone-in quiz. It was driving them mad. They had to know what the answer was.
The question was "what do all Motown records have in common?"
I think the answer was, they all fade at the end.
I suppose Gary Davies gets loads like this.
Motown has quite a few that end - most notably (it ends twice)the Isley Bros with Behind A Painted Smile, which my old mate Nick used to refer to as Behind Your Sainted Piles.
ReplyDeleteCould the question have been 'What do all Reggae records have in common?
Funnily enough, the same question and fact came up on Radio 2 recently, I think on Stuart Maconies's Saturday afternoon show (although it could have been when Mark Lamarr stood in for Jonathan Ross).
ReplyDeleteFrom what I remember he was similarly surprised to hear the answer and there was debate as to whether it was true or not, with various callers positing records that don't fade.
Personally, I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's a great question, all the same!h
Yes I think Freddie Owen is right - that reggae records all supposedly fade (I heard this on Mark Radcliffe show I think). I am not sure this is correct however. I don't own Bob Marley's 'Live at the Lyceum' but surely tracks on that all have an end?
ReplyDeleteWe have some friends around the corner that taped nearly every Charlie Gillett GLR show including some of the old Sunday lunchtime ones, and then graded them on listenability. There's some great interviews with long-gone artists amongst their racks of C90s. They still listen to them, as well.
ReplyDeleteIt seems in this age of retrieval, nothing really goes away for ever. Whatever you've done in the past will end up on a website somewhere. Aaargh, some things we should just let go..
ReplyDeleteA slight turn in topic - but I was distractedly going through some radio channels on my very old non-digital radio last night, and found a lovely crackly french one full of Gainsbourg, Dutronc and the such like. I used to do this when I was very young too late at night in my bedroom, and discovered alot of music I wouldn't otherwise hear this way. When digital kicks in and old radios are literally no longer available, presumably this is one more way for people to randomly discover new music gone. I found that rather sad.
ReplyDeleteOn the Radcliffe and Maconie show, they were laughing at the way that Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" sort of dribbles away feebly at the end.
ReplyDeleteMy thought was that this is because in the film of the soundtrack, Cliff's character is shown recording it in the studio, and so the record itself carries on as a band would until the producer told them to stop. If that makes any sense.
iamnotthebeatles - hopefully you won't need to worry as more and more phones and PDAs have WiFi facilities which means that they're capable of picking up hundreds of Internet radio stations from all over the world not just weak signals from Europe. I wish I could have listened to US stations all those years ago under the bed clothes instead of Radio Luxemburg.
ReplyDeleteDH - I used to really enjoy your GLR 'Executive Drivetime' show on Sundays in the early-mid 90s after the also excellent Gary Crowley show. If I remember rightly, when your show finished at 7-ish I switched over to Radio 1 where Annie Nightingale came on. About 6-9 hours of top notch music radio!
ReplyDeleteSunday teatime is a great time to broadcast, particularly in winter, because people are ironing and feeling melancholy.
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago we were throwing a load of casettes out, some of which were marked "Hepworth".
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the ironing as my wife often used to do her weekly batch listening to your show.
I still occasionally play the "Don't Stop Doo-Wop" CD I won on the A level. Another time when I won a pile of CD singles, no doubt scraped from the bottom of the GLR cupboard, there was one by Cracker. Only it turned out to be Hot Chocolate's Greatest Hits. I mused upon the confusion of those who bought it and perhaps Hot Chocolate fans who ended up with a Cracker single. My brother who lives in Spain now has it.