Following a post on Facebook from Darren Patterson of NottinghamLIVE I have written an end of year essay including my top five gigs of the year for publication. I’ve always shied away from list making at the end of the year simply because everyone is at it and I didn’t want to contribute to the clutter. However, I’ve taken some steps in mending my friendship with Darren and so decided I would take him up on his posting and offered to write something.

Looking back with the help of my trusty pocket diary, I see that 2014 hasn’t been very productive for one reason or another. 2015 is a make-or-break year as far as my career is concerned, I’m not bothered about fame and fortune but I am still wanting to fulfill my creative urges so will make every effort to have more diary markings by the time I come to write the 2015 version of this blog.

It was frustrating to bring The Sunday Alternative to an end when I felt that it was finally starting to find its feet. The daytime slot was a far bigger challenge yet I immediately fell into the new time with an ease that I had never felt before. We had to restrict the live music to acoustic performance because of sharing the building but apart from that I finally started to enjoy it. Listening figures for the podcast that carries the same name has been more successful than I could have wished for but I do miss the live feeling. If something goes wrong while doing the podcast I can just start again, with live radio you have to climb out of it without losing your cool or saying a bad word. The reason for leaving Trent Sound was simply because we wanted to continue to host live music sessions that actually were live and not pre-recorded and the station was moving to new premises that wouldn’t accommodate that. Looking at the diary entries for the show from January until the last show we had live music on eight out of a possible eleven times and this year we had to do our first NottinghamLIVE with no guest for reasons I can no longer remember.

To think I started the year with three weekly radio shows and by summer I had none is a little sad, although it was all my own choice to do so. Radio, particularly live radio is the one thing that I miss doing on a regular basis which is why I jumped at the chance to guest co-host Castle Rock in October. It is like an addiction that needs feeding.

I was disappointed at not releasing any more episodes of Moonage Daydream but they take a long time to write, next year I have promised myself that I will do four episodes. Several seeds were planted this year that failed to grow; the BBC local affairs programme Inside Out turned down a feature I pitched to them, and BBC Radio Nottingham gave me a positive response but had to say no because they no longer have a documentary strand. The television channel Christmas 24 didn’t bother to answer regarding something I suggested to them regarding A Christmas Carol, and we failed in our attempt to film a ‘red button’ style video podcast of NottinghamLIVE due to technical issues. An idea for a music show on Vintage TV also got politely turned down. The proposed Sunday Alternative video series and the crowd funding campaign to raise money to make the documentary about the show also fell through, although they will be revisited at some point in 2015.

On a more positive note, I managed to write and record a one-off podcast called The T-shirt Wearer’s Guide to the Ramones which still hasn’t been released and I wrote two episodes of The Shoebox Collection before deciding to pull the plug on the project. It took a while to complete but I released the audio book of Whatever Happened to Nathan McKenzie and A Dickens Christmas Collection recently, and I didn’t really give as much attention as I should have done to my review blog IMHO, something I hope to rectify next year. I wrote eleven reviews for the Nottingham Post before being suspended/sacked and two for NottinghamLIVE (plus interviewed Barrie Masters and David Nolan for NL), and with my own review I’m not sure if I will work for either again, not that I wouldn’t want to but it could get confusing. Demand for my services as a compere stretched to two gigs this year, one in Nottingham and one in Leicester.

When you put it all together it sounds like quite a lot, but spread over twelve months and several blank diary entries it is definitely something I wish to improve on in the upcoming twelve months.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

My Sherwood Radio archive is here, why not listen and donate?

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.