On a Wednesday I get to spend
a highly enjoyable three hours in the company of Darren, Cassia, a live musical
guest, and any number of passerby. The three hours that NottinghamLIVE
broadcasts live to the people of Nottingham almost makes up for the entire
behind the scenes shit that we have been dealing with. Tonight’s show was a joy
to be a part of, which is why I have stuck with it for so long. One of my
methods for dealing with it is to take the piss out of the ridiculousness of
the situation, like the way I ripped into Trent Sound a few weeks ago on The Sunday Alternative.
One of the biggest changes at
Trent Sound over the last few months is the lack of atmosphere now compared to
the last time I was there. The whole social element has vanished completely and
now people just turn up and do their show and then go home. When we have a
packed show the studio building is a hive of activity and it feels like you’re
a part of something really important. Tonight was one of those nights when the
studio was full of people and anything could have happened.
Our live music guest was Sam
Jones, someone who until tonight was in that strange but modern situation, the
person you only ‘know’ from Twitter and to some extent Facebook, so it was nice
to meet him in real life at last. Joe our sound engineer always turns up with
his guitar as he runs off to perform at an open mic night in town afterwards,
and tonight I walked out of the broadcast studio into the live performance area
to find him jamming with Sam. It was a brilliant thing to watch these two guys
losing themselves in playing, and Cassia managed to catch some of it on video.
Sam’s set was great, we’ve somehow managed to extend beyond the three song set which of course makes our job a little easier and fills the second hour with content. Although he had already warned us that he had a train to catch and we were mindful of keeping him too long, he did one of the longest interviews we have done for a while, and even joined in with the standard question of what cartoon character he would have sex with, (Roadrunner, dirty bastard).
Cassia, who has now been given
gig guide duty, has really been a find for the show. It’s good that people
still regard radio as (quite rightly) the superior medium, and it was by chance
that I saw her tweet to the Trent Sound account one Sunday while I was doing
the show admin for The Sunday Alternative
asking if she could come and help out. Luckily we saw her first and have now adopted
her as a member of Team Live, (or TeamLIVE as we should call ourselves, no
spaces, that’s an in-joke).
Worst episode of Blind Date ever.
The third hour was a departure
of sorts, as Darren wants to introduce a guest presenter to do a takeover set.
I can’t say that I’m 100% sold on this idea as I don’t want to push Cassia’s
nose out of joint, but I’m willing to see how it goes. Another radio enthusiast
who got in touch with us, (Darren and I should set up a radio school), was
Sarah. Sarah knew from student radio how everything worked, and didn’t need any
guidance at all. I know that radio equipment isn’t that hard to use, so it was
cool to be able to sit in the lounge and listen to someone else doing all the
work. She and Cassia worked well together, so I’m wondering if they are working
undercover for Trent Sound in an elaborate plot to get rid of us two trouble
makers.
Don't fancy her in the middle much!
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