Radio Killed the Video Star

I’d start this blog with an apology, if that wouldn’t be a hubristic approach to take. It assumes that there are people who have bemoaned the lack of updates here, which there aren’t. This entry is going to be chocked full of self-interest and hubris so I will attempt to keep it to a minimum.

My blogular inactivity stems from the radio shows which, to paraphrase Shang Tsung, have begun. The preparatory work for these shows varied greatly, but strangely, being excited about the shows seemed to be an activity in and of itself, and despite having made outlines and plans for various features, the actual scripting of the scripted sections happened at 2am Saturday morning, as I blearily attempted to force whimsy through my weary brain.

The two shows ended up fairly different in the end, and we have come to embrace that, where we view Saturday as the heavily scripted pseudo-AIOTM style show, and Sunday as a more freeform pseudo-Collings and Herrin number. I warned you there was hubris. Obviously any comparisons to these works are about format rather than quality of output, although if they ask then you must vehemently insist that the work of three Welsh buffoons is as funny as the output of a 20+ year veteran.

We were surprised to find that none of the scripted sections we had planned for the Saturday failed, and so we will be sticking with regular sections the Journal of Cannonby, which takes the form of a play, Footballer or Religious Figure, in which I offer up a name of a real person and two potential histories, and of course, Dafydd’s longwinded joke. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it seems everyone’s favourite section was the interview with actual ghost Kadoogan Aboogan, whose name was originally spelt Cadwgan Y Bwgan, which we decided to change after an e-mail came in with the frankly amazing spelling. We will be bringing in a new guest every week, and though it may prove difficult to top Kadoogan, we are going to bust a gut with this weeks' guest.

Sunday’s show was a far less structured show, to the point where we were expecting to have to blag extensively in order to fill the 3 hours, but we received an unexpectedly abundant amount of correspondence, exclusively filled with positive feedback and funny ideas which provided an interesting platform to launch some silly chat. We expected it to be a 2 man outfit on the Sunday, but apparently our modifying of the playlist, specifically to play ELO’s Twilight and The Beatles’ Octopus’ Garden was interpreted as a secret signal by Mr Luke Sampson, whose wonderful blog can be found here, for him to come and join us. He was always intended to be a part of the Sunday show, but had originally opted out due to illness, however our subliminal music summons helped him overcome his maladies, and a good thing too, as some of the biggest laughs of the show came due to him.

We began to put more of our own music in the playlist due to the feedback we received on the Saturday, which was almost exclusively positive (I've said that twice now haven't I? Well it's the truth dawg), the only criticisms were of the music, which we were led to believe we had little control over. However as a few requests came in straight away on the Sunday we let loose a bit more, opening the show with the huge Kansas hit Carry on My Wayward Son, which really geed us up for the show. We substituted a few tracks, getting a specific excited response for Lostprophets’ Last Summer, buoyed by this, we started making more changes, and hence playlist mistakes were made. No ones seems to have noticed, but it amuses me and so I will go into it. Our radio station, Rhondda Radio thanks for asking, runs a ‘gem’ system, where in every hour a song considered a ‘hidden gem’ will play, though more often than not the track would have been better off staying hidden, IN MY OPINION. I am tempted to begin the next sentence with ‘our’ but since I am really to blame for the first one I will take responsibility. My first blunder was to accidentally replace a ‘gem’ with The Jam’s Town Called Malice, which is less hidden than the track which was actually scheduled to play, which was so hidden I’d never heard of it. Perhaps more of a blunder was towards the end of the hour where my capable co-presenter Dafydd Evans, who’s wonderful blog can be found here, replaced a ‘gem’ with Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha, the juxtaposition of which made me laugh, although my mother claims that this is a verifiable ‘hidden gem’. Expect more playlist modification this weekend, but be sure to e-mail in praising the songs, as that way we will be able to justify our choices.

The way I’ve written about the shows here has been a little bit dry, but it is perhaps necessary as I’ve had to be quite systematic in order to get in everything I wanted to say about the shows, which really excited and enthused me. There’s a link to being a fan of the show on the right hand side of the page, we will attempt to be judicious with our updates there, we know it can be really annoying when events/groups/fan pages on facebook send a million updates a day. Join up even if you can’t listen on the weekend, we are going to record the shows from now on, with an eye to editing them into a podcast, although we’ll have to work it out with whoever runs the station’s website about whether they’ll host it or not. If not, we’ll find another way to do it, but it might take time. We always planned on releasing it as a podcast, as all three of us, though the show goes under Adam & Dafydd, Luke is a key player as well, are huge podcast fans, to the point where we listen to far more podcasts than we watch television shows. With the amount of messages we’ve had from people asking for podcasts or mp3s it would definitely be worth doing, though this could be hubris again.

With the amount of people who were interested, but unable to listen when it was live, I came to realise that the last time I actually listened or watched something when it was originally broadcast was Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, and that was a lot earlier in the year, back when I was still a student. Everything else has been podcasts, iPlayer, 4oD, YouTube, definitely not illegal downloads though, and DVDs. It really is an On Demand Era, and podcasts are an integral part of a radio station, at least if it wants to keep the tech-savvy but incredibly busy ‘youth’ listening. BBC, XFM, Absolute; all the big hitters of the radio station world put out podcasts, and if Rhondda Radio wants to thrive as a station, I think it’s key that it follows in their footsteps.

As well as being what I think, it's also the stirring diatribe I am planning to give if the station aren’t keen on the idea of podcasts, though I am hoping that won’t be necessary. The station have been incredibly supportive of our show, which surprised us a bit as we were expecting to be slightly odd and inaccessible, but everyone seems to be getting on board, which is good news for us, though we definitely lose “hipster cool dude” points. Though we never really intended, or had hopes of scoring very highly in the hipster cool dude sweepstakes.

I am going to turn this blog into something which Peter Serafinowicz would likely describe as “biznure”. Having dealt with the business side of the show, I will now describe my pleasure. There was a lot of it.

The show, especially Sunday’s, was essentially a focused and condensed version of the sort of silly conversations we usually have. Focused inasmuch as we were actively trying to be funny in this situation, whereas obviously when we are talking in real it is more casual. But the rush of being in a room with 2 of my best mates and knowing that I’m likely to burst out laughing any second because they are actively searching for the funny thing to say is incredible. Getting messages from people who were listening was often surprising, as we had to remember that people actually were listening. I was pleased, more than anything though, of what we put out, I knew that we were guaranteed to amuse ourselves, but I am genuinely happy with how funny it was, thinking that even though the first 2 shows weren’t recorded, I would gladly record and put the subsequent shows online if they are as funny, knowing that what we put out won't be an embarrassment.

This one is a busy week for me, but I promise to prepare sufficiently for the shows and give them my all. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who listened and/or e-mailed in last week, and encourage everyone to do so again. We will be stockpiling messages throughout the week as well as during the actual shows, so even if you won’t be able to listen on the day, do get involved. If there's anything you want us to discuss, from hard-hitting topics to why your cat pees in the washing machine, to just telling us to grow up, feel free to message in.

Direct these midweek messages to acrecomedy@googlemail.com.

If we are currently on when you're reading this though, send them in to mail@rhonddaradio.com, if you send stuff there during the week, it'll get through to the presenters currently there rather than us, though I'm sure they'd thank you for messages aswell.

My internet doings have been very radio show centric for a number of days now, for which I apologise, but at the same time they have been the focus of my energies and so I am stubbornly going to force them onto people.

Hopefully something interesting and non-radio centric will occur to me this week for me to blog about. But even if it does, I’ll probably talk about it on the radio aswell.

The shows can be streamed from www.rhonddaradio.com, we are on at midday until 3pm on Saturday and Sunday. Listen to it! Love it! Or don’t. S'up to you really.

If you like it, spread it around you juggerknuckles! I do.

Thank you very much for indulging me. Bye for now.