Mixcloud have one minor drawback, which isn't even really a drawback until you lose your radio archive in a crashed and dead laptop and have to trawl the Internet retrieving it. They don't allow you the listener to download, this is a good thing as far as using songs is concerned, as it means I am allowed to upload my radio shows in their entirety. It also means that I have to listen to everything while I record it, so I am listening to a lot of old editions of
The Sunday Alternative at the moment. Going back to the start is interesting in a way, as I have been able to monitor my own development as a broadcaster. I joined Trent Sound following a four month break after Sherwood Radio closed down, and the early shows reveal my Sherwood credentials, (or rather the lack of) as I lack the skills that I have now. The equipment at Trent Sound compared to Sherwood Radio is like comparing the latest mobile phone to two tin cans joined by string, and I had to teach myself how to drive a desk from scratch as it was all different. I have listened through the time that Chris Underwood was my co-presenter, and am currently in the Erik Petersen era (although he missed more shows than I remember). At the time I remember being pissed off at Erik's attitude to the show, he turned up at the very last minute before broadcast if he turned up at all, and if he wasn't coming in then he would leave telling me until as close as possible to transmission as if to deliberately try and fuck the show up. Although we did have a good on-air chemistry (when he turned up), the show did start to lose its way a bit. We talked a bit too much, and turned
The Sunday Alternative into something it was never meant to be, a comedy act. Erik and I talked about doing a series of Collings and Herrin style comedy podcasts independently of the radio show, if only to exploit the fact that we did work well together on that level. He wasn't suitable for a cool, credible, intelligent alternative music show in the BBC 6Music mold though, mostly because he had little musical knowledge. I can't diss him for that I suppose as that simply wasn't his area. I would have liked to have worked with him on other projects, but it wasn't to be as he just stopped turning up, dissolving the partnership and our friendship with it. We spent the rest of 2012 ignoring each other when we saw each other in public until just before Christmas when he bumped into me in the street and we couldn't pretend it didn't happen. He said hello and told me the reason he had for quitting the show without a word, which wasn't a reason built on foundation, but the result of an 'anonymous' phone call from Geoff Cooper from the fraudulent Radio Trent, (pre-recorded shows passed off as live, based nowhere near Nottingham) slagging off the owner of Trent Sound and making insinuations that he earned himself an injunction for. We talked through everything at my house, exchanged numbers, and arranged to go for a beer. After a few weeks he unfollowed me from Twitter and I haven't heard from him since. I really don't know what his problem is, and to be honest I am past caring. The shows were entertaining though. Like I said, he wasn't right for the type of show that
The Sunday Alternative is.
There's quite a way to go to retrieve everything though but there is some good news. My audio-books can be downloaded from the Bandcamp page, as can my short lived audio-blog experiment, free of charge as I had set them as 'pay what you like'. The Internet Archive is another good news story; the various interviews I have done for BBC radio are all there and can be downloaded for free. The same applies to the miscellaneous radio shows I have done;
Trent Sound Morning Show,
Castle Rock, and
Nottingham L.A.C.E. and a few of the radio versions of
Steve's LP Box. The original typed version of my book
First Draft was on Mandi's laptop for some reason, so my unedited reviews for
The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it) are safe. My only bollock at the moment is that my original versions of
Musings and
Christmas Musings are gone, so my only way to get them back is to buy them! Charming.
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