The Worst Is Yet To Come

I've made a start on giving the Soul Expression site a long awaited tidy up and have began adding the various playlists from the last year. More should be added over the next few weeks as I go through the wide amount of output of Smoke Radio throughout 2006-2007. Just a shame I'm not compiling the audio for our station entry at the SRAs as I could have it done in minutes if people asked me for any specific moments from shows etc.

I'm nearing the end of the shows we did during Freshers Week and there's some really entertaining and eclectic stuff which was broadcast. These included the infamous Freshers Blind Date which saw an entire show broadcast from a bedroom in halls and what has to be an entry for the Best Interview SRA category; Goodlass and Marshall with Dave Benson Phillips!
I made a podcast of the show which for some reason never got uploaded so for those who missed the chaos first time round here it is for you enjoyment!

Other higlights included Andy B with Pippa ST and Tudor, who had a habit of cracking up whenever Pippa accidentally made a reference to seeing things!
Some superb specialist shows were on offer as well including The Punk Show from back in the days when Josie used to present with Ross T driving the desk with embarrassing consequences! One of the tracks played that week was "F**k It Up" by the Towers Of London months before Donny Tourette made a name for himself by looking stupid on Celebrity Big Brother and Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
Another stand out show was a special on Ryan Adams presented by Lewis, a Scottish film student including a superb cover of Willie Nelson's "Always On My Mind" as well as another track I liked from the 2001 album "Gold" called "Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard".

Listening back to the music shows especially can be really enlightening and inspiring as far as bulding my MP3 collection goes, as long as it doesn't break the bank.
But at the same time it can also take you back to a particular time and I'm now approaching what for me was a rather dark period for the station in October last year where the enthusiasm between members seemed to disapear and things started to feel rather empty. It took quite a long time for Fresher's to get their own shows and it seemed that only my show, Shuffle, Sport On Smoke and Smoke International were the regular shows on air with more and more people dropping out, or turning up for shows one week but not the next.

But as I've said before, ups are nothing without downs and I'm just an obssesive for remembering otherwise non descript periods of time.