More Aural Creativity

The majority of today has been spent listening to a few more homegrown radio gems, in the form of more of the features made by radio students from late 2007.

One of my favourites was Phil Landers' feature on how in the 21st century same sex marriages are acceptable, but the bible hasn't been adapted to accept these changes.
The feature itself contained some extracts from comedians including an American one who I don't know the name of, asking why the bible didn't mention the dinosaurs in "Genesis".

If I had been around Uni in October 2007 I would have been more than happy to lend Phil the audio of Richard Herring's "Christ On A Bike", especially this hilarious rant about Jesus's ancestors according to Matthew.

The feature also featured an interview with Westminster Radio alumni, web design king, but also wannabe radio-evangelist James Poulter to give his views on the bible.

If I'm being honest I wasn't a fan of his Sunday afternoon Crossway show that went out on Smoke Radio with features that would be better suited to a younger audience, and really contrived Christian Rock music, which was basically tunes similar to Snow Patrol or
The Script but with lyrics praising the lord.

But I guess the real reason I wasn't a fan was because my Sunday afternoon show disapeared from the schedules when James extended the show to two hours.

There weren't any gospel tracks played as Carl looked after that with his ever superb "Upliftment" show with artists such as Kirk Franklin, Kiki Keirra Sheard and Virtue to name a few.

In fact the majority of those I've spoken to share the same opinions as me as they have quite a dislike for "Christian Rock" music but don't have a problem with contemporary gospel at all.

I wouldn't really be converted into the religion however as I just like the music.

On that subject another one I liked was Steven McIntosh's feature on the smaller record shops in London and how the larger stores and digital downloading affected them.

I could really understand how disapointed he felt when returning to London from Scotland in September to find that a lot of them had closed down over six months.
It was also the time that Blues and Soul magazine had folded
so that was another reason why the last few months of 2007 were shit.

The feature itself had an interview with one of the owners of my favourite independent record store in London, that being Soul Brother in Putney. I really need to buy one of their t-shirts pretty soon and will definitely be visiting them more this semester to get a few more rarities.

In addition to that was an interview with Shola Ama, a UK soul performer who never really got the sort of recognition as a songwriter that she deserved. Mainly because her most well known hits were a cover of Randy Crawford's "You Might Need Somebody" and a garage remix of "Imagine" (once again, an original song) which still gets played now and again in clubs although I remember her performing the slower R&B version of the song on T4 in April 2000 and thinking "Ooh, she's put on a bit of weight".

A talented performer though.

The most creative and entertaining feature came from Kelly Gravells who did a superb feature following the journey of a letter from being sent to arriving at it's destination.
This was linked through both herself and Phil Landers voicing the parts of the letters themselves with one of them being sent in first class and the other being sent in second class.

The music used was a bit predictable but added to the fun such as "Please Mr Postman" by The Carpenters (and yes I did do Ant & Dec's Postbag Dance), "Message In A Bottle" by the Police and even the Postman Pat theme which resulting in me singing this rather juvenile version as orginally done by Stewart Paske;

"Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat is a right old twat,
Banned from public schools, over kids he drools...."

And I can't remember what the last line was.

It's a shame she decided to move back to Lincolnshire but I've heard that she's about to become a mother and I know she'll be a really good one at that. The nicest girl I've known on the radio course, apart from Sirin of course.

On the subject of post I recieved quite a few DVDs from James2001 to give him his online name and they were quite a treat. Following the post made last week I recieved the first two episodes of The Chart Show broadcast on ITV in January 1989, and also one from the 6th of May in the same year. A couple of clips from that episode are on Youtube but it's nice to have the genuine article and I get a lot more pleasure watching full episodes rather than just the individual rundowns.

It also means that I have three original episodes with all three specialist charts respectively.

That wasn't all though because there was also a DVD containing the final show of the original series from Channel 4 which was the 1988 Christmas special broadcast on the 2nd of January 1989. Rather bizarrely there was no mention of the programme moving to ITV on the following Saturday.

That episode used to be on Youtube before James' original account was removed
and I still have them as .flv files but it's nice to have it on DVD.

Although the graphics from the ITV fairground era were my favourite, I actually think the music used for the last set of titles on Channel 4 in 1988 was catchier and singable to an extent, although the musical stings used on ITV were a lot more ballsier and punchier.
Although in this clip it was a bit silly to use the Channel 4 closedown ident beforehand as the logo formed part of the titles.

To make sure that they don't go missing this time round, I will buy another CD wallet where all my DVDs and video downloads of the best video show on television will go.

I also happen to have all the end of year specials apart from 1987 as I managed to find
the 1990 special on Myspace earlier this week.
I hope to get round to watching it this weekend and as is normally the case,
they'll probably be a review here as well.

With regards to Countdown, I'm starting to get even more competitive as I got two seven letter words which doesn't happen too often. In addition to them I solved two of the numbers games including one that couldn't be solved not just by the contestants but Rachel Riley as well.

The target was 527 and the numbers were 25, 75, 50, 10 and 2.
This could be solved by multiplying 10 with 50, adding 25 and then adding the 2.

And I thought I was rubbish at maths.

It was a good contest today with who I reckon is the youngest contestant in the Champion of Champions Kai Laddiman who was just pipped at the post in the semi finals last series by Cambridge student (booooo) Charlie Reams who ended up losing to Junaid in the grand final.

I'm sure we'll be seeing Charlie either tomorrow or sometime later in the knockout tournament.

I can't remember who the other contestant was but it was a very close contest with the older competitor just losing the crucial conundrum by making an easily made mistake guessing the word "Cafetierre" as "Caffeteria" two seconds in.

To make anyone reading this feel more comfortable, I've never managed to guess the conundrum.