Radio radio

 

I know it might be unfashionable but I still get a lot of my music tips from radio. I listen to some radio live but I use, in particular, the BBC Sounds App to catch up with specialist shows that I find interesting, enjoyable, exciting, soothing. Some of the shows are on the station BBC 6 Music (such as Cerys Matthews' Sunday morning show, which I've loved for years) but one of my favourites in recent times has been on BBC Radio Scotland, Tuesday night's the Roddy Hart Show (10pm-midnight). This week it was announced that this show (along with a few others from similar slots, article here) is to be cut from the schedule, replaced with something more 'easy listening' and with more 'mainstream appeal'. Like many listeners (and musicians) around Scotland and beyond I am really, really disappointed about this. There is so much 'mainstream' radio in the world and so few carefully curated, lovingly made shows that this makes me almost ridiculously sad. I know there are many other things to be sad about just now, but that doesn't stop these feelings. There is a petition to save one of the doomed shows (the Iain Anderson Show) but this is my (lengthy) plea for my Tuesday night favourite. I have also contacted the station (not easy to email - I ended up phoning my dismay and getting a bemused 'we always appreciate feedback' kind of a response).

A still from Netflix's Wayward

For a while I didn't listen to much Radio Scotland after we moved here in 2002 - nothing ever really grabbed me - and then I was introduced to the Roddy Hart Show by musician Kim Edgar when she was featured on it in December 2020. I loved that first listen - the mix of music, the obvious passion for it all from the presenter and producer (and, even though they are both male, the serious focus and attention on female songwriters and musicians). Hart is a musician himself and (as with Cerys Matthews) this is certainly a factor in the appeal of the show. He plays a lot of Scottish artists (new and old) but a lot from outwith the country too. The show has a loyal band of listeners and this is particularly apparent when tickets go on sale for brilliant varied events that Roddy Hart is involved in at the Celtic Connections music festival (they sell out quickly - we've been once, going again in 2026). I've listened to every single Roddy Hart show since that first one back in the cold, emptiness of a lockdown December (sometimes on Tuesdays, sometimes not). I've listened inside and out, whilst ironing or washing dishes, whilst lounging or walking, at home and away, in the bath or in the car. Sometimes I've listened in headphones whilst unable to sleep (the second hour is often especially gentle and slower sounds and Roddy's voice is a very soft and reassuring one). When I was doing intense nightshifts in recent years I've loved listening to the show the next day, just me and the gorgeous tunes, recovering from whatever complicated situations I'd been involved in at work, getting lost in good music and processing some of the difficult stories I'd absorbed the night before. The show for me has been good for my mental health, no question about this, and I know I've used radio like this many times over the years. Radio has been a friend, a confidante, a source of a lot of positivity. I like radio that surprises me, that takes me to good places, it doesn't have to be, it can't be, just about memory and playing the same favourites over and over.

I listened to a lot of older siblings' records as a child but my earliest memories of radio are courtesy of Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart - a presenter whose show I remember being on weekend mornings (although Wikipedia tells me it was Saturday mornings and Junior Choice on Radio 1). It was all music aimed at children and I only remember listening to it in the house* where my Dad was so that must have been the early 1970s. Kids could write in with requests and I remember songs like Nellie the Elephant, things to bounce around to. I used to climb into my parents' bed when the show was on (though I don't think they enjoyed the music much). I suppose it was the equivalent of Baby Shark on YouTube or something (i.e. fairly horrible) but I remember loving it, thinking it was something for me (not for them).

Later on I remember (distinctly) hearing Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights on the radio for the first time (that was a pretty wild school run, must have been 1978) and somewhere around the same time a lot of Elvis Presley when he died (we were on our way to the Lake District for a family holiday, 1977). A little later I recall mornings with just me and my Mum and Terry Wogan's Breakfast Show on Radio 2. My Mum wasn't a big pop music person (not that generation) but she could put up with his show because it had character (as well as a lot of country music and silly jokes about Dallas). All my favourite shows in recent times have that too, I think, a sense of individuality, so you feel people are choosing the records, not just playing them because someone (or something) tells them to, because they think it's what the biggest group of people want to hear (because that is so often wrong or hard to figure).

As a teenager I lived in an area where BBC Radio 1 wasn't available on the FM radio I had (an old one of my Gran's) so I listened to the local commercial station (Radio Tees as it was then, which is a bit confusing as the local BBC station in the area has been called Radio Tees since 2020). I can't say I loved it but I didn't have a lot of other options, radiowise, so I gave it a go. I remember it was the exception, rather than the rule, to hear something I liked, but I suppose it was aimed at adults (not 14 year-olds). There was a lot of Andrew Gold and Crystal Gayle and ads for furniture shops as well as a phone-in bit that I used to leave on but didn't really understand as it was all gardening and consumer bits and pieces. I listened to the station quite a lot but I couldn't tell one presenter from another and I don't remember a single one of their names, which is significant I think. The more commercial local radio I've heard the more it is obvious that they want presenters who seem to have individuality (fun! cheeky! guy/girl next door!) but that, like the boybands they so often play, those individuals are so easily replaceable. 'Hey, can you make it sound like you believe this new X Factor song is the best thing you've ever heard? You can? Can you ask people what they had for breakfast and why that it's hilarious? Have you got a cheeky smile for the posters? You have? You're hired!'

Moving south, as we did briefly, I listened to commercial station Capital FM in London and that seemed exciting (I was 16 and from Teesside, everything in London seemed exciting). Then I listened to another commercial station, Chiltern FM, in Cambridge (it was pretty dire but they did soul alldayers which I quite liked). After uni I even hoped to maybe work in radio and went for a sort of placement day at commercial station Metro FM in Newcastle to have a go at writing radio ads. The guy there showed me round (in 1989 or so) and he was very friendly but he also showed me, with some pride, the new computers they had which, he told me, would provide the order of play for the records. 'It's basically current pop hit, golden oldie, current pop hit, golden oldie all day', he told me, obviously thinking this was a great solution to radio programming for the rest of time. And indeed I'm convinced many stations still use this pattern. In my most recent job I have experienced 'mainstream' radio quite a bit and it does seem to be Taylor Swift/Elton John's I'm Still Standing/Taylor Swift/Elton John's I'm Still Standing ad, as they so suitably say, nauseum. Mainstream is usually code for 'bland' (and yes, I know some people obviously like bland but that doesn't mean it has to suffocate everything else)**. 

Back up north in England in Leeds in 1989 and onwards there was plenty of local commercial and BBC radio but I didn't have to bother with that because there were also pirate stations and I embraced them heartily (house, soul, techno... all that). Along with many others I DJed on one of the loudest Leeds pirates, Dream FM. We played what we liked, what people liked, and there were certainly lots of characters on all the Leeds pirate stations (very rough round the edges but joyful for that, not a cheesy mid-Atlantic twang between us). 

Kiss FM had started as a pirate in London in 1985 and had gone legal in 1990 and this was a pattern others wanted to follow around the country, taking advantages of new radio licences on offer, getting more dance music onto the state-approved airwaves. With my DJing 'career' winding down for various reasons, I ended up doing quite a lot of qualitative research work for people putting in bids for commercial radio licences around the country in the late 1990s. I say 'people' but in fact it was various businessmen (I remember pretty much always being the only woman in radio meetings during that time). Kiss FM's Gordon Mac was involved in at least one of the bids (Newcastle I seem to remember) but mostly my contact was a bit of a character called Colin Walters who had a big house down south somewhere but who had in fact worked many years at Manchester's Piccadilly Radio***, ending up as their Managing Director. In his travelling expert phase, Colin gave me a lot of work in a period where I was a bit stuck and I was very grateful for that. I think at least part of him really did care about finding out what music people wanted to hear but it was tricky to be clear with the focus group results because, like all art, it's very hard to generalise about music. 

I spent a lot of time talking to groups of people of different ages all around England, playing them music and getting their reactions. I can remember some of the music I had to play them (Radiohead, You Get What You Give by the New Radicals) and there must have been some dance music but bizarrely I can't remember what it was (I had listened to a lot of dance music by that point - pretty much non-stop from 1989 onwards - so I'm guessing whatever they had me play was pretty bland and forgettable compared to what I really liked). Of course the unavoidable truth is that people have different tastes and so most often our conclusions were that people wanted a mix of music, that they didn't want specialist dance stations, for example, because they wanted some indie and rock music too. Many of them wanted, in fact, what stations like BBC 6 Music ended up giving them (though that happened a bit later, 6 Music was born in 2002). Not one of our bids won a licence. Instead single-interest commercial dance stations (a lot of them eventually called Galaxy) did come into being and mostly ended up being very watered-down versions of dance radio and nowhere near as good as the pirates, like Mr Fingers meets Alan Partridge. They were possibly even blander than the commercial radio that came before them because their choice of music was so narrow. I've never managed to listen to one of those stations for longer than about 10 minutes.

Radio and the world around it has changed a lot since that time. Now there is streaming, playlists, all the Gold stations (programmed not chosen), the many versions of niche radio (all 1980s, for example, and there is a special place in hell for whoever dreamed that one up). BBC local stations (not something I've really listened to over the years) seem in a fairly long troubled phase and, though not strictly speaking a local station as it covers a whole country, I suppose Radio Scotland is included in that. I don't know their listening figures but I don't imagine they are anything huge. They've had a terrible morning presenter for some time (though I believe she's just gone) and the BBC in general lost a lot of Scottish love during the last independence referendum (indie supporters felt the BBC very much took a side and it wasn't theirs). Their daytime afternoon shows have some decent presenters (Nicola Meighan I like, she loves music and that comes through) but I can't say I listen to it anything like regularly. Out and about in shops it's local commercial stations I still hear as the go-to for popular appeal, or other UK-wide commercial stations (there are many, often with slightly famous people presenting what these days is so often called 'content'). All this, I'm guessing, is the argument behind bringing the changes just now at Radio Scotland (courtesy of new 'Head of Audio and Events' Victoria Easton Riley). They will possibly even have done focus groups where 'ordinary' people around Scotland will have said they want more Elton John I'm Still Standing**** and less stuff by weird songwriters they've never heard of (a Roddy Hart Show speciality). 

But there are a lot of us who do want those weird songwriters we've never heard of - mixed up with all the great artists the new ones learned from and were inspired by. We want Margaret Glaspy and Patti Smith, Karine Polwart and Michael Marra, Lewis McLaughlin and Nina Simone, Josienne Clarke and Sandy Denny, Blue Rose Code and John Martyn, Rachel Sermanni and Joni Mitchell... it's a long list. Some of the musicians the Roddy Hart Show has introduced me to who I love with a passion are some of those mentioned so far (many of them, but not all, Scottish or Scotland-based) and also Mairi Sutherland, Bonny Light Horseman, Izzie Yardley, Budgee, Outliers, Big Thief, Heir of the Cursed, Weyes Blood, Susan Bear, Big Red Machine... and I just took those names from my Bandcamp page because I have purchased all their music after hearing it on the show (and not just listened to it via streaming*****). Elton John does not need the money (so I assume) but these lesser known artists really do. It is vitally important that there are shows that play us things we don't already know and that aren't getting 'heavy rotation' on sodding Spotify. Musicians, after all, won't be able to stay in the game and learn and grow if they can't eat or pay their energy bills. I'd like new music any time in the day but I understand that some stations (like Radio Scotland) only dare play it in the evenings. Maybe even that is in danger now.

Sometimes I wonder if radio will survive at all. I know many of my daughter's generation barely listen to it - they have so many other options that come with strong visuals (endless YouTube, endless Instagram reels and so on) and the idea of a radio DJ/presenter (just a voice) can feel like an old-fashioned concept (unless its owner is already famous******, obvs). Just this morning I read a story in a 2015 book by Scottish writer Ali Smith Public Library (that suitably enough I picked up in a Dundee public library yesterday). This book had been curated, if you will, left out on a display to catch my attention in much the way that a good DJ/presenter picks out a track that they think I might have missed and might like. This is what I read:

Voices, individual, unique voices (both speaking and singing) - we are all unique but it's easy to forget that if you listen to too much bland radio. So let's end on a tune. A while back the Roddy Hart Show introduced me to a musician who is one of my current favourites, Joshua Burnside. I have since bought quite a lot of his music, introduced it to friends, one of whom straightaway bought tickets to see him in the city where she lives (miles from here). This is how music has grown and developed for years, people sharing new sounds, getting excited, spreading the love and the enthusiasm. It is not just about playing the same track you loved when you were 15 over and over again and living entirely on memories or just about listening to the artist who's huge right now, played everywhere you go. Here is one of Joshua's latest singles. I love his writing (the radiator/later rhyme in this is a particular joy). This is specialist, this is special, this is magic:

 

*In 2021 I did a whole series of posts and poems about places I've lived. If you're interested that series starts with home number 1 (1967-73) here.

**This always reminds me of the scene in 1987's Broadcast News about the changing face (and dumbing down) of TV news. The Holly Hunter character shows a domino topple that was featured on a news programme to other news professionals and they find it entertaining. Holly (as Jane) shouts to an emptying lecture theatre 'You're lucky you love it - you're going to get a lot more just like it' (to which a stray voice calls back 'good').

***I was recently reading one of DJ Mark Radcliffe's books (Thank You For The Days, I think) and he writes about his time at Piccadilly Radio early in his career and Colin gets a mention in there. He died in 2019. 

****Actually the Roddy Hart Show does play music by Elton John but mostly his 1970s output and not the same one bloody song. The same for big artists like Nina Simone, she made a lot of music not just Feeling Good and My Baby Just Cares For Me and shows like this remember that. Also let's not forget that Elton and Bernie Taupin were also once weird songwriters no one had heard of.

*****We do stream as well, we use Deezer currently.

******Of course some already famous people have always made good radio presenters, if they care about music enough. I have enjoyed shows by, for example, actor/director Angela Griffin on BBC Radio 2 (though I am something like allergic to Take That so I do have to skip some of the blander stuff on that show).