{"id":398,"date":"2019-09-27T08:46:13","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T07:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=398"},"modified":"2019-09-27T08:46:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T07:46:14","slug":"radio-jive-and-live-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2019\/09\/27\/radio-jive-and-live-jazz\/","title":{"rendered":"RADIO JIVE AND LIVE JAZZ"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

RADIO JAZZ AND\nLIVE JIVE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crescent Community Radio broadcast all\nacross the Rochdale borough. In a town where ethnic diversity was and is a\nwell-managed yet nevertheless sensitive subject, the station is run by the\nMuslim community and aimed at the \u2018stay at home mums and taxi drivers\u2019 of that\ncommunity. Station owner Faheem Chisti thought that a \u2018chat show\u2019 produced and\npresented by a team with English as their mother tongue might help his\ncommunity learn to speak better and more conversational English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Steve Bewick
Jive talking on Crescent Community Radio<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So I and Steve Bewick, a jazz presenter\nwith FCUM Radio, delivered all across the\narts<\/em> as a chat show, reinterpreting what we had already presented in that\nweek\u2019s newspaper. Steve had started broadcasting through local hospital radio\nand was by now presenting also for Allfm radio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By now the aata<\/em> page was being included in each of The Rochdale Observer\u2019s weekly editions and in the weekly publications, The Heywood Advertiser and The Middleton Guardian, which I had achieved thanks in no small measure to the solid contact list and diligent work of my new partner Steve Cooke. It was only later that Bewick and I learned that Faheem didn\u2019t really think any of his community would actually be \u2018listening\u2019 to our all across the arts show but, because radio was such a strong part of the cultural life of the station\u2019s audience, there was a good chance his listeners might learn better English even by having it as \u2018a background sound.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to say that presenting the\nprogramme with Bewick in those years was a real joy, though not without moments\nof sheer panic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one of our earliest shows I remember\nuttering a dreadful profanity out loud on hearing from the patched-in news\nreport that Manchester United were losing 0-2 in a European match being taped\non my tv at home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hadn\u2019t wanted to hear the score at\nall, and especially not a losing score and so blasted some expletives at Mr\nBewick which I then immediately heard being blown through the air waves as he\nsimultaneously faded out the news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another show, which ran from 9.00\npm., we noticed half way through that there was no one else in the premises,\nand as ours was the last live programme to go out before a release to looped\nshows overnight, nobody would be coming back until early next morning. We\npleaded over the airwaves to colleagues to either ring in or come and let us\nout, and just as we closed the live show at 10 pm we heard the front door\nopening, by a staff member who had been drving in his taxi on his evening\nshift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allah be praised.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u00b4t all so chaotic and in fact\nCrescent Community Radio gave us a new set of transferable \u00b4soft life\u00b4 skills\nwhich I think we both still use today, some ten years later. It can\u00b4t have been\neasy turning two Rochdale \u00b4ramblers\u00b4 into smooth-talking broadcasters for an\nimmigrant listenership, but boy, Faheem and his staff and volunteers very\nnearly managed it. We learned how to \u00b4build\u00b4 a sixty minute programme and\nwithin a few weeks were able to put together a pre-recorded show and leave it\nin the studio ready to air. We learned to patch in news items, (and the flaming\nfootball scores) from a remote press agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We preferred to actually broadcast live,\nand actually attracted some quite unusual guests for our kind of programme. We\nhad the then mayor, Cllr. Jim Gartside, talking about his daughter\u00b4s work in\nthe film industry, fine-art press publisher Andrew Moorhouse telling us about\nhis anthologies by poets like Simon Armitage and we even had artists like John\nCooke speaking about their visual arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There wasn\u00b4t much cultural call amongst\nour Asian community for Steve\u00b4s strangely-strange jazz concoctions and nor did\nour Asian friends jump up behind me in the saddlle as I played my favourite\ncountry and western cowboy songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All joking apart, though, the role of a\ndj presenting western art forms and tastes to an exclusively (well, perhaps not\nexclusively,\u2026my wife tuned on one week) Asian audience brought with it some\nsocial responsibilities. At certain times we had to play \u00b4call for prayer\u00b4 at\ntimes left prescribed for us on post it notes on our microphones. To miss this\nwas to insult our listeners and would have been incredibly disrespectful. We\nmanaged it every time,\u2026 not always with panache, but we did manage it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the radio station received some\nlocal revenue funding it still needed to generate further income through local\nadvertising and sponsorship, and so timing and accuracy was required also to\nupload the adverts and play them on time. With news at the top of each hour,\nand three advertising segments of three minutes each we became adept at\nbuilding the show into three fifteen minutes segments. The fourth segment of\nthe show we passed over to our own volunteer staff member, Adam Souter. He and\nI had become friends a few years earlier when he was \u00b4referred\u00b4 to me by a\ncaring employee at the local job centre. He called me on the phone and\ndescribed Adam as being a nice young lad who had suffered throughout his\neighteen year life with some physical and mental health issues that were at the\ntime making it hard to place him into gainful employment, but who constantly\ntold job centre staff that he was a writer and wanted to publish his poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I agreed to meet Adam to discuss how\nthis might be possible but nothing could have prepared me for the eighteen\nstone of solid muscle and tattooed skin dressed in black trousers and a black\nsleeveless vest. Perhaps the scariest man, in appearance, that I had ever met,\nhe nevertheless turned to be a young man with a poet\u00b4s soul. I loved his work\nand we found a way of acquiring publication after Adam learned from me how to\nedit and prepare his work for its audience. We organised a book launch with the\nhelp of the fantastic staff at Rochdale Borough Library Service and I will\nnever forget how proud I was to see this strangely shy giant of a man, fielding\naudience questions with great courtesy and a gentle wit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Steve Hignett, percussion and Dave McKeon guitar
all across the arts on Crescent Community Radio<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So he became one of our regular\npresenters of the section of the show that took a look at the arts through\nyounger eyes than the Specsavers beneficiaries that were mine and Steve\u00b4s. Another\nyoung writer, Louis Brierley, shared duties with Adam and each of them presented\nreviews of computer games and the science fiction they both loved to read, and\nto write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steve and I even managed to cram some live musicians into the studio including percussionist Steve Hignett, singer guitarist Dave McKeon and \u00b4trombone poet\u00b4 Paul Taylor as well as a wonderful young folk group we both thought had a long career ahead of them but artistic differences and some health issues seemed to disintegrate just as things were about to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The building itself was in the heart of\nwhat was a very distinctively Asian area of Rochdale. Deeplish was full of cash\nand carry shops selling Asian foods and restaurants selling the best desserts\non this side of the Taj Mahal. When we would leave the studio at ten past ten\non winter nights we would always cross the road a late night shop selling cakes\nand pop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They just might have been the best\nnights of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steve Bewick always was, and now I learn\nstill is, a real jazz-hound. He it was who recently sent me a You Tube of the\nlate road poet Jack Keroac riffing about the visions and work of William Blake,\ncurrently the subject of a critically acclaimed exhibition at The Tate just a\ncouple of centuries after his death. It was Bewick, too, who heard of  the sound-scape group Juxtapostion before I did\nand dragged me along to a gig of their that might have been one of the most\ndisturbing, (In a good way) gigs I have ever seen. It was also Bewick and his\nwife Marlene who left me twenty or more jazz albums to listen to after they had\nstayed with us here on Lanzarote a couple of years ago. And it is Bewick who\nhas just sent ma an e mail raving about another band I have never heard of. After\nreading this article below, though, I am anxious to find out more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had heard\nthem previously, (Steve Bewick tells all across the arts<\/em><\/strong>)  but had never seen them playing together, so I\nwent along to experience five musicians who were starting a national tour at\nthe Golden Lion, Todmorden, West Yorkshire. I was not to be disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The venue\nwas a little like mother\u2019s front room ! You know the set, all sofas, tables,\nchairs, lamps, patterned carpets and throw-overs. You get the idea. A punk band\nfinishing off an upstairs show was a supporting duo of saxes and drums. They\nmight have been as anonymously titled only as \u201c+1 support\u201d but they did the\nbusiness in setting the mood. The night was to become all about improvisation\nwith attitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sloth Racket
at Jazz North East Festival<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sloth\nRacket is a band of UK improvisers led by baritone saxophonist Cath\nRoberts, with Sam Andreae on bass and Johnny Hunter on drums. They play a lot\nof Cath\u00b4s compositions which combine written fragments and graphic notation to\nexplore the balance between freedom and structure. The results are always\ndifferent and, so far, they have followed Sidetracks and Detours across several\nmusical territories inhabited by fiery free jazz, minimalist improvised\ntextures and heavy riffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nband was formed in 2015 when Jazz North East invited Cath to present a new\nproject at Gateshead International Jazz Festival. The delivered a gig that\neveryone who played in it and saw it agreed afterwards had to be more than a\none-off show. They subsequently went on to appear at London jazz Festival,\nBrighton Alternative Jazz and the LUME festioval, and have toured every year since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sloth\nRacket have released three studio albums on the Luminous label and a live album\non Tombed Visions. Their fourth album has now recently been released to\ncomplement the Dismantle Yourslef tour, of which tonight\u00b4s was the opening gig.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From\nthe outset they attacked the air and filled it with their distinct sound.\nMoving seamlessly from one core motif to another or to solo improvisations and\nback again without ever returning to precisely the same point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their\nsecond, gentler, piece started with Sloth Racket divided between rhythm and\nbass till the tempo picked-up. Sloth struck a pose between R&R and\navant-garde. From that point on there was never a dull moment as the band bent,\nstretched, smoothed and folded their sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nfact, the final piece even re-called, for me, Black Sabbath but re-tuned for\njazz. Sounds strained the Bass and Sax over Anton\u2019s skilful guitar playing. The\nchallenge then passed to the saxes finishing with a call for an encore which\nwas duly delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Steve Bewick, Jazz\nBroadcaster, regularly working with <\/em>www.FC-radio.com<\/em><\/a> as Hot Biscuits)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RADIO JAZZ AND LIVE JIVE Crescent Community Radio broadcast all across the Rochdale borough. In a town where ethnic diversity was and is a well-managed yet nevertheless sensitive subject, the station is run by the Muslim community and aimed at the \u2018stay at home mums and taxi drivers\u2019 of that community. Station owner Faheem Chisti […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}