When I was a kid and just starting to expand my sound world I used to listen to our old radio and spend hours flipping the dial across the bands to find the european stations(forget the BBC in those days!) that might have something worthwhile to listen to - Luxemburg for pop, of course but also the Voice of America Jazz Hour - with Willis Conover, the other American Forces Network stations in Stuttgart - was it Frankfurt as well, can't remember - and many German and Dutch stations it seems that played jazz. Being a junior fanatic, I also used to write down the details of the tracks that I could figure out. This wasn't always easy, due to crackling signals fading in and out and not being able to understand the various languages - apart from French to a certain extent. The book it was all written in is long gone -which is a shame. It would be interesting to look back at what I was listening to then. Now I sit surfing the net and suddenly realised when I stumbled across a new music blog/site that has loads of links to mainly classical music that this is very similar - except that when I was young it was more difficult and you had to hunt the music down relentlessly and then not always get anything remotely resembling clean reception. The hiss and the crackle were part of the game...
How it all has changed. Within twenty minutes or so of clicking on this particular blog, I had surfed off to several other sites, bookmarked a few pages (to add to the absurdly expanding list which I keep promising to organise but never do) and started to listen to some disparate stuff - everything from Conlon Noncarrow to Schoenberg to Henry Billings! I love the internet! I have long periods where I just take it for granted - then on a random cruise bump into new treasure.
The blog in question is here and called 'On an Overgrown Path.' Thanks to Pliable for some great links and an interesting blog...
Strangely enough - the last time I can remember using one of those old radios (on the cusp of FM coming in) was down in Hastings at a friend's house in 1967 - the day John Coltrane died. I was moving the dial across Europe and station after station was playing his music in tribute. An eery experience, track after track of Coltrane as the night went on.
Nothing on the BBC though...
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2 comments:
Many thanks for those words, they are really appreciated. I've reciprocated your link - and more.
On An Overgrown Path originates not a million miles from Loughborough, in Norfolk to be precise.
Dave Read writes his excellent Hot Brass from Cambridge, so perhaps we should form an Eastern region music bloggers co-operative!
Keep up the great blog,
Pliable
See also New Music ReBlog - you just hit the big time!
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