It has been on my mind for a while to do a small series of podcasts in the week leading up to the anniversary of The Sunday Alternative this September celebrating the various features of the old radio show. My notebooks have several scribbled notes and ideas for how I would structure this and whether or not they would look out of place on the regular Sunday Alternative page slotted between two regular Sunday podcasts. Scouring through my old collection of show books I tried to find enough sections to make a week of special podcasts and came up with Music Hall (used to open the show), comedy/novelty song (used to open the second half of the show after the news), the legendary Louie Smells Like Rock & Roll and its less well remembered follow up Paul Young Will Tear Us Apart and the feature I took with me from the Sherwood Radio show, Mash Up Montage. Now that the podcast is established and I have listeners that didn't listen to the radio show I doubt that these admittedly self-indulgent editions would go down very well with, or indeed make any sense to, the current fans of The Sunday Alternative.
The live sessions are of course the strong item and I wondered about doing something with them. One track from each session is on the show's Soundcloud page and several of the sets are hidden within the Mixcloud archive already so I wondered about a way to stop them from gathering dust to commemorate the show. On the earlier shows I went through the traditional route of talking to the artist during the performance and breaking for songs which in playback sounded (to me at least) a bit stilted. This method is still used on mainstream radio and I don't really know why. What this ultimately means is that my archive of session tracks are broken up. Deep down I like to believe that I invented the method of interviewing the artist either before or after a stand alone performance of three or four songs as a little gig within the show. I brought it in on The Sunday Alternative and we used it on NottinghamLIVE too and it worked really well because it gave the act a chance to flow instead of having to talk to me full of adrenalin and calming down just in time to have to start playing again.
Each live session lasts roughly twenty minutes long so as a stand alone recording would make a neat little podcast episode with me re-recording an introduction. Again I would have to decide whether to put these on the regular podcast page or find a new home for them. It did of course occur to me that this all would make sense if I did it next year as 2016 marks the fifth anniversary of the radio show and the birth of The Sunday Alternative as a brand that apart from radio show and podcast has now become a live show. Brilliantly next year the actual birthday of the show is the date that it first broadcast live on the radio, the memorable for the wrong reason date of September 11th. Plans are already in place to celebrate the anniversary in style although my intention to make a documentary is looking a little shaky due to lack of funding (hey, why not help out by making a donation using the PayPal button above this blog?) but there will be a packed weekend of birthday hoopla to enjoy.
The Sunday Alternative #49 is available from here.
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July Housekeeping
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