In October I hosted for the Hockley Hustle at Bunkers Hill for the fourth and final time as I am slowly stepping away from the music business in order to concentrate on other projects. Last year I also called time on The Sunday Alternative podcast after two hundred episodes as I just didn't have the time to give it my all. Initially I would record it during the week, upload it on Friday or Saturday and release it to social media fanfare on Sunday lunchtime, as I got busier I eventually ended up at times recording it on Sunday morning and uploading it straight away. It was a decision I gave a lot of thought to as the podcast was getting some mind-boggling listening figures and of course it was initially the radio show that gave me my big break. Hopefully I will be doing something under the Sunday Alternative name at some point but I don't feel in a rush. Having at one point been quite a big hitter in the Nottingham music scene it is weird to look back on a few years ago compared with now, especially when you consider that we haven't been replaced. A few months ago I posed the question on my personal Facebook page asking who the influencers are nowadays and didn't really get a definite answer. NottinghamLIVE, which I presented with Darren Patterson, and its predecessor Notts Live with Bainy and Andy Haynes, ran for roughly five years in total. Not a huge amount of time but Andy pointed out on the Facebook comments about what an achievement it was. Three hours of live radio a week with a live on-air performance, sometimes two, is something that has never been replicated and Nottingham's music scene is the poorer for it.
I'm not totally out of the loop though, because The Random Sessions continues to be a delightful way to keep my hand in. As I have written before, it is not an original concept and anybody could do it really so I am not claiming that this is in any way special. What it is though is a great way to spend time with musicians I know and to meet up with new ones. The balance between older more established performers and relative newcomers that are young enough to be my children is at just the right level, and I am glad that more women are getting involved. The original incarnation, The Random Saturday Sessions was very much a boys' club and it is nice to have moved away from that.
The good news is that after taking December off I have managed to get a new block of filming sorted in record time. January is a strange month for pubs and a lot of performers tend to still be decompressing after a busy festive season so I gave up trying to get the whole month sorted so I only have one session lined up, but February has six lined up so there will be plenty of episodes in the bank. I still have three from last year to release and I want to try and get in the habit of releasing them on a more regular basis, and really fly against convention by experimenting with putting them out in order. Crazy but it might just happen.
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