It was a funny coincidence (not ‘funny ha-ha’,
I am aware of this before anyone thinks it needs pointing out) that I happened
to find these scripts as earlier on I had tidied up those CDs into bigger
boxes, so even if I decided to do the series after all I would need to think of
a new name for it. The shoeboxes were looking a bit tatty so I put them into
some boxes I have been using for all of my office filing. Every week or so I manage
to rescue a box from the court offices that contained reams of A4 printer paper
so they are the perfect size for putting various things in during the ongoing
tidying up of my office (the only thing they are no good for is music magazines
and my collection of Christmas Radio Times) and they stack up against the wall.
One day I will sort these CDs into alphabetical order but for now at least they
are neatly stored, a job that took a while due to my reading of notes and
single sheet press releases. The fact that (I’m sure I’ve mentioned this
already but let us recap) a lot of the bands only have a MySpace address and a
fair few have Hotmail or AOL email addresses makes them seem as if they should
be in a museum.
I haven’t listened to some of these for
several years and probably only actually listened to them once or twice before
making a decision. Most of these CDs hark back to the Sherwood Radio show when I
was told initially that I had to have physical copies of each song I played for
copyright reasons. It also helped because Sherwood Radio was unmanned (or
indeed unwomanned) for the most part so there was never anyone around to load
MP3s into the system for me. The CDs dried up when I joined Trent Sound as the
opposite rule applied and everything had to be played through the same system
in order to keep sound levels correct, although I did occasionally have to play
a CD or even use Soundcloud.
Although I remember the names of the artists
in my collection, I am still curious to know what happened to a lot of them. Some
of them are still going; Jake Morley, Hadfis Huld and Calling All Astronauts
are three names that I have ‘I played them before BBC 6Music’ bragging rights
on and are still making music. Other bands such as Redtrack have split up and
then there are names that showed promise but fizzled out. I am going to make
the effort to sit and listen to these artists when I have the time to just sit
and listen – too often we use music as background noise but nothing beats the
feeling of listening to music for music’s sake.
Listen to The Sunday Alternative Saturday Bonus Podcast here.
Listen to this week's edition of The Sunday Alternative here.
===
February housekeeping
I rely on donations via the PayPal button to enable me to provide free online content. This year there are plans afoot for more podcasts plus documentaries, comedy sketches, short films and other content that will be available free of charge.
My audio books can be downloaded from my Bandcamp page.
My books (including my latest, Bowie Day), are available to download to your Kindle.
This daily blog can be delivered to your Kindle for just 99p a month
If you want an audio book or e-book and would prefer me to get more money, cutting out the corporate middlemen (or women) then make a donation of one pound or more, and then email me with ‘I paid a pound or more’ in the subject line. In the email simply tell me what you want and I’ll email it to you.
