Sometimes it is best to wait a while before writing a daily account of your life, and today was the perfect example. Had I acted on impulse, this entry would have been possibly the angriest blog I had ever written. However, having had a chance to calm down I have had time to reflect on what is a sad chapter for Nottingham’s music scene.

Today was supposed to have been the final edition (on Trent Sound at least) of NottinghamLIVE, and had been advertised as such on Facebook and Twitter. Having managed to take the show to a one year anniversary, we had decided to end it on Trent Sound due to the upcoming inability to have live musicians in the studio. Neither Darren nor I wanted to have to rely on pre-recorded sessions as it would have lost us the unique thing about the show. Even Dean Jackson doesn’t have live musicians in the studio, I saw on Facebook yesterday that one of our past guests, Aja, was at the BBC to record a session/interview in advance.

Anyway, for our last show we had live music lined up from Steep, a band who recently got in touch with me with tracks for the American show, and Joy Mumford. I’m pretty sure that in both cases this would have been their first radio session, certainly in the case of Steep. We have had a lot of firsts during the course of the show, and have watched in amusement as others followed us, puffing and panting to try and keep up. We also had Dom Gourlay, a writer from Drowned in Sound who has become a friend of the show throughout the run, coming in to talk to us.

At six o’clock I received a text message from the owner of Trent Sound to tell me that the entry pad system was still broken (I had to get into the studio on Sunday through the adjoining shop) and that we should abandon tonight as he couldn’t get there to let us in. At first I was furious as I read the situation as a deliberate attempt to fuck us up, and posted an angry message to that effect on Facebook. Although I managed to phone Cassia (who in turn got through to Joy Mumford), email Steep and message Paris and Dom, I was unable to get through to Darren. I’d left him a voicemail and messaged him on Facebook but hadn’t heard back from him. I thought nothing more of it until around half past seven when Darren’s wife phoned me to ask what was happening as she was listening to Trent Sound and it was obvious that no presenters were present. It turned out that he had broken his phone so was unable to be contacted, so I told Geri (Darren’s wife) that I would jump on a tram to Bulwell and see if I could find him. In the time it took me to get there, he had managed to ring home from a phone box (the first time a Bulwell phone box hasn’t been used to set up a drug deal since mobile phones stopped being a curious novelty and became part of everyday use) so was expecting me. At this time we were still pretty annoyed at what we saw as a vindictive sabotage attempt, the two of us planning to write an arsey email to Trent Sound to this effect.

After arriving home and having my dinner, I turned my laptop back on and checked Facebook. A couple of messages made me realise that there hadn’t been a deliberate attempt made to spoil our show at all. My original post had gathered some nice comments about the show, but I felt I should remove it due to new information.

There was a genuine reason why the owner of Trent Sound couldn’t come and let us in the studio, a reason that I don’t feel it is my place to divulge here as it is personal. I apologised for the Facebook post and removed it immediately, two things I wouldn’t normally do but under the circumstances I was prepared to admit to being very wrong on this occasion.

I didn’t think about it beforehand, but I really should have put together a press release for The Post and others, to formally announce the end of the show. Obviously I can’t speak for Darren and Cassia, but we should be proud of what we achieved since we took over the show from the old Notts Live and carried on the good work of Bainy and Andy while at the same time putting our stamp on it. There has only been one show without a live music guest, such was the queue to be involved. Old hands in the light entertainment business talk of people desperately trying to get on The Muppet Show or Morecambe & Wise in the 1970s, this was the same sort of thing; an appearance on NottinghamLIVE enhances a Nottingham musician’s CV and makes people stand up and pay attention. There are a few outlets left of course, but we need to find a new home (if not on the radio then a podcast version of the show) otherwise we are doing a disservice to the newcomers to the Nottingham music scene.

In the meantime, it will be nice to have a little sabbatical from the rigours of live radio and come back refreshed and ready to go. I’m only sad because we didn’t have the chance to go out with a bang deserving of one of the biggest shows in Nottingham. We had worked out goodbye messages and I had compiled a list of all the people who had helped on the show that we needed to say thank you to.

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