This item is for talking about interesting things heard on the 
Internet radio.  Back in 2002 I discovered the BBC's offerings 
on the net, and for over three years they have dominated my 
radio listening.  I take occasional side trips to KUT, 
a music-dominated NPR station in Austin, and to a student radio
station in the UK which hosts a folk music show "Cool As Folk"
and also some interesting rock programming.

39 responses total.

Jerry Douglas was featured in a live studio session on two of 
the Late Junction programmes from last week, on BBC Radio 3. 
Douglas is a star player on the dobro, aka the resonator guitar,
which my carpooler had not encountered before.

 I can attest to Ken's serious BBC addiction and I fear for
 his continued mental health if the Beeb changes its internet
 streaming policies..

Today's listening was the Late Junction programme from Monday.
Blues guy Otis Taylor had a song which was one of those whack-you-on
the-head, go buy it now experiences.  I haven't fully picked out what
is going on here, even though I replayed the track a few times.
Amazon says that Taylor is "bonding acoustic Delta blues with 
Appalachian country blues."  Might be just a trace of 60s psychedelia
in there, too, with the organ sound, and then there's the bits that
remind me of Czech folk/experimentalist Iva Bittova. 
 
I'm trying to resist impulse purchases these days -- my house is
too full of impulse purchases.  I'll let you know how it works out.
 
In the ordinary old Late Junction wonderfulness that was the rest
of the programme, DJ Verity Sharp opened with Bob Dylan, went on
to cover some African tracks which had my butt wiggling in my 
office chair, followed by a singer/songwriter named Laura Viers
and then Alfred Brendel with a Beethoven piano sonata.  
Somewhere in there was a lengthy Steve Reich composition, and then 
the show closed out with a folk accordion tune from a new album
by Brian Peters, a fave of mine, from a new album that I haven't
got yet.   
 
Life is good.  
 
Here's the playlist, for those who like things to click on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/latejunction/pip/9ku4p/

I was weak, and I had to drive right by the Arborland Borders anyway.
 
The Otis Taylor album starts with a banjo and electric guitar 
riff, and then adds a fiddle....   more to come!

Er, um..   Right now I'm running last week's Mike Harding folk show 
from BBC Radio 2, and it starts with a rather appealing tune, sort of 
old-timey with a female singer.

I look at the playlist: it's from Tara Nevins' album MULE TO RIDE, which
I got years ago, I think, and tossed into a box as uninteresting a long
time ago.  Sigh.  Time to go digging for it.  

I did sound for Otis Taylor at the Ark a few weeks ago - actually he was the
opening act for another blues performer.  But Otis was definitely more
interesting... that stuff is really hypnotic when you see it live.  

Oh, and you can add the word "modal" to the list of things said about
Taylor's recent stuff.  

  
unfortunately .... 
  
  http://www.annarboralive.com/arlo/index.html
  
didn;t deliver
  
suposed to be forem the ark, live. but it wasn't.
  
i lkie arlo guthrie and his dad woody. i met woody once. (in a sam hill dream)
but that's another story....
  
supposedly, the tape will be broadcast.  
  
  
wth   total recorder    and    winamp   i get teh best of the best.
  

You can now hear Dr. Demento on-line, direct from the source.

http://drdemento.net/online.html

 Lately I've been occasionally listening to a music streaming service
 called Pandora ( http://www.pandora.com )  [requires Flash.]

 The way the site works is you type in the name of an artist, album
 or song that you like and that you wish to hear music similar to.
 The site then tries to match the properties of that song or artist
 with other music in its database, which it streams to your computer.
 As each song is played you can fine-tune the process by telling the
 Pandora Flash applet that you like the song it's playing, that you
 don't like the song it's playing, and/or to skip to the next song.

 The idea is that with enough fine tuning it will help you find music
 that you will like but that you didn't know about.  So far I've found
 the quality of the recommendations has been mixed but it's definitely
 introducing me to artists I didn't know about previously.

Genevieve Tudor's "Sunday Folk" was fairly dull this week, except
for another song by Suntrap, but Genevieve did mention that Andy 
Kershaw's show had a live profile of The Eighteenth Day of May, 
a band Kershaw has been hyping for weeks.  The band is channeling
early Fairport Convention, with an American female singer from 
New Orleans who used to hang out in Athens GA, and a 
two electric guitarists and a violinist.  So far I've liked everything
I've heard and I should order a copy of the disc.

Had an entertaining listen and chat this afternoon with Fee and Chris,
the hosts of the "Cool As Folk" radio show from Reading University.

(http://www.1287am.com, and they have a IRC chat so you can talk 
with the DJs and maybe other listeners.)

Unfortunately they are closing the programme after another two
installments.  Highlight of the show for me was a track from
"Okavango", the new album collaboration from a Belgian band, Fluxus,
and a Welsh band, Hoover the Dog.   Lots of reed sounds -- accordions
and pipes.  They also played some Linda Thompson, Richard Thompson,
Oysterband: it's a fairly English emphasis. 

News Allan might have missed:  BBC Radio Scotland is ending the
"Celtic Connections" show.  The installment which is currently in the
BBC Radio replay system, from last Tuesday, is the final one.

This may not be much of a change, except for the loss of a rather good
name.  The replacement show, also to be hosted by Mary Ann Kennedy,
will be "Global Gathering."   Celtic Connections had been my favorite
BBC Radio show when I started listening four years ago, but in the
last year or two the steady influx of rap-influenced African music,
and more Latin music than I cared for, meant that I listened to the
show less and less often, and made the name "Celtic Connections" seem
like more and more of an in-joke.  My carpooler said that the "Celtic
Connection" appeared to be that everyone who performed on the show had
DNA.

I just heard them announce that another Radio Scotland show, "BeBop to
HipHop", is ending.  Looks like it's time for their annual spring
redecorating.

((Ooops.  Allan is a Scottish participant in another forum where 
  I originally wrote this...))

apparently wrcj is streaming now ... 
http://www.detroitpublictv.org/wrcj/Listen.htm
  
but even w/cookies set 'on' (as requered) no tunez ?!

  

Charlie Gillett has announced that he cannot return to his 
Saturday Night program on BBC Radio London, due to health problems:

http://www.charliegillett.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2440

Charlie Gillett was one of the two key DJs in spreading the "world
music" concept into the English-speaking world -- the other was Andy
Kershaw.  I first got introduced to Gillett through a great
internet-only show he hosted on the late, lamented www.wen.com back in
2000; I started listening to his show occasionally on the Internet
around 2003.

A key feature of the two-hour Saturday Night show was "Radio
Ping-pong, where Gillett and a musician guest would take turns
spinning tracks at each other, as one does with visiting friends.

Gillett hopes to continue doing his 30-minute weekly show for the BBC
World Service, which is also available via the internet.

resp:12 :: BBC Radio Scotland's "Global Gathering" has turned out to 
be one of my favorite radio shows right now.  The main thing that 
changed, I believe, is that the rap-friendly producer, and about 
90% of the global rap music on the show, left.    Apologies if
global rap music was your thing; I realize I am turning into 
my dad as I get older.   "Turn that rock music down!"
 
Anyway, the mix on Global Gathering runs about 1/4 Celtic, mostly
Scottish, and the rest tracks from everywhere else. 
 
(And now I see the show is on summer hiatus from 4 July - 26 September.
Awwwwww.)

Followup on resp:15 :: It's possible that last Saturday was the final
world music show in Charlie Gillett's timeslot on Radio London.  
Charlie departed his show abruptly in May due to health problems, as
described above in resp:15.  Numerous guest hosts have been keeping the
show alive since then, most notably Gerry Lyesight with his "Planet
Mambo" format, which mixes in a lot more jazz than Charlie used to play.
 
But the BBC has not announced any plans for the timeslot beyond last
Saturday, and the link to the replay of Saturday's show is very 
well hidden:  I can only get to it from Charlie's own page at 
http://www.charliegillett.com, not from the usual BBC pages.
In Charlie's discussion forum, both Charlie and Gerry write that they
think the show's run is over, as the BBC hasn't told Gerry, or anyone else
in the world music community, to do a show for this coming Saturday.

Why all this fuss over a retiring DJ?  Charlie Gillett, on his Saturday 
Night show on Radio London, was one of the two key DJs in developing the 
"world music" concept as we know it today.

More BBC changes, this time for Radio 2.  The changes that affect 
me are on Wednesdays:  Nick Barraclough's country music show ends
and the crackin' Mike Harding folk show moves forward one hour,
to 7 pm UK time.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/03_march/23/rad
io2.shtml

Barraclough's country music show was very good, I'm disappointed
to see it go.

Ken pointed out that I should post in here about a station that I
discovered recently.  It's WHFR, a low power station from Henry Ford
Community College on 89.3, and on the net.

Their website is: http://whfr.fm and includes links to listen to them
online, in one of two different stream types, and a jpeg of their
broadcast schedule, showing variety of music they feature.

This is pledge drive week, so they are talking more than usual right now,
but still playing a decent amount of music.

I listened for a bit.  Boy, are they talking a lot during pledge week.  :)

WHFR is an excellent station.  I listened a lot when I lived in the Taylor
area.   Since WDET and CBC2 / Winsor have cut my favorite music offerings I
am now strictly satellite radio and WCBN

Yeah, I am really disappointed with the changes to the CBC 2 network.
It seems like most of the evening programming is now live concert
recordings of Canadian easy-listening music.  I still listen to the
morning drive-time classical show on occasion.
 
Brave New Waves, CBC's overnight indie-rock/alternative/whatever show,
was pretty irreplacable, as was David Wisdom.

I've hit my annual-or-so burnout on BBC listening.  The last several
years I've taken a one-month break after the coverage of the 
Celtic Connections festival in late January, but this year I 
kept going.  Now it's just feeling like an obligation though, 
so it's time for a break.   I'll probably cheat and keep an eye 
on the playlists, to see if there's anything I would die to have
missed.

Ha!!   Well, at the moment, looks like I am just going to take 
a short break from the Genevieve Tudor and Folkwaves shows.
Too much else interesting going on with the other shows.

The break extended to cover all of the BBC shows, for nearly
all of June.  Guess it was just time to stop for a while.  

Now that I'm interested again, the 
Radio Scotland shows are taking their usual summer break.  
Starting today, Global Gathering has been replaced by the Asian 
show Tigerstyle Presents, which I think was the same replacement as 
last year.  And then on Thursday, Travelling Folk will be replaced
with "Dean Friedman's Real American Folk" for six weeks.

From the fRoots message board, which points to some BBC forums:
 
Radio 3 DJ Andy Kershaw has some unspecified serious health problems,
and what was supposed to be a short absence is now going to be at 
least another three months.

Ah, I feel bad now about not catching his show more often, he is an awesome
DJ. Hope he's back soon!

The BBC has rebranded its Radio Player as the iPlayer, as they move to 
converging audio and video.  The live and replay streams on the 
national channels have now gone up to 64K, which sounds darned good.
 
Mike Harding's folk show is now available as a podcast, but access 
is restricted to UK IP addresses.  I figure one of these days we'll
get cut off from the streams as well.  On that day I will cry.

As the SXSW music festival gets underway today, I thought I'd mention some
live music that will play (and stream) on Austin radio stations this week.

On KGSR - www.kgsr.com -
   Thurs, 13 March
    (all times Central US Daylight Time)
    * 12pm - Billy Bragg / Carbon Silicon
    * 1:45pm - Martha Wainwright
    * 2:15pm - Kate Walsh
    * 2:45pm - Yo La Tengo
    * 3:15pm - Carrie Rodriguez
    * 4:45pm - Kaki King
    * 5:45pm - Ingrid Michaelson
   Friday, 14 March
    *12pm - Bobby Whitlock & Coco Carmel / Bodeans
    * 2:15pm - Buddy Miller
    * 2:45pm - Susan Voelz (interview)
    * 3:15pm - James McMurtry
    * 4:00pm - Tift Merritt

On KUT - www.kut.org
   Wednesday (today!) at 1:30pm - Liam Finn
                         2:00pm - The Whigs
   Thursday, 13 March at 9:00am - Pyeng Threadgill
                        10:30am - Lobi Traore & Joep Pelt
                        12:00pm - Daniel Lanois

Tune in, if you can!

jealous. mighty jealous.

The monthly radio show from fRoots magazine is now available as a
podcast, a downloadable MP3 file, starting with the April 2008 show.
The May 2008 show is promised to be available in a few days.

I can't recommend this highly enough to anyone with an interest in
world music, and there are even a few spots of great folk music in
there, like the bagpipe tune that closes the April show.

http://froots.podomatic.com/

The file is 128K and sounds pretty good -- better than the old Real
Audio stream, and fRoots has one of the better-sounding Real streams.

(Editor Ian Anderson (not that one) says that the paper fRoots magazine
should also be reappearing soon in USA outlets like Borders, as a
result of a new distribution deal.)

Two brief notes from BBC Radio Scotland:
 
1)  RScotland is redoing its overnight shows, and Monday (is that 
    really Monday am or Tuesday am?) is going to be The Celtic Zone,
    featuring a variety of folk-based programming, much of it from 
    their archives.   Other genres, including some talk shows, will
    be on the other nights.  This starts next week.
 
2)  Mary Ann Kennedy has gotten a promotion of sorts:  the show is 
    now formally called "Mary Ann Kennedy's Global Gathering" and 
    web links relating to it are now filed under "M" instead of "G".

Big changes ahead for BBC internet radio operations.
 
The BBC's internet radio will drop Real and Windows Media technologies
and move to a 128K stream for replay shows.
A "rewind" button will be added; previously one was not allowed to back 
up the program.  Changes to the live programs will come later, but 
as I listen to almost everything on demand, it's the replay changes
which will affect me directly.     
 
Actually I worry about this because Real degrades with some elegance
under congested network conditions; I expect the MP3 streams will just
stop working.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/25/bbc_iplayer_update/

Ah, left a term out.  The BBC radio replays are moving to a 
128K MP3 stream.

I found the beta version of the new BBC Radio iPlayer.  However, 
it is still delivering the same old Real Audio streams -- no 128K
MP3 streams yet, as far as I can find.

Ah, here's a BBC blog discussing a bit more of the technical aspects
of the upcoming radio systems.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/06/under_the_iplayer_hood_for_rad
.shtml

The BBC's move to new software is underway.  Radio 2 and Radio Scotland
have moved to the new iPlayer software, which is not working well.
The replay shows I care about from last week on those stations appear
to be lost in the transition.   Seems like I'll be off the BBC for 
a while until things settle down.

It's another overhaul for the BBC Radio system.  The national channels
(generally the ones with numbers; I care about Radio 2 (weekly folk 
show) and Radio 3 (classical/world music) the most)  have been
switched over to use Flash streaming for computers that have Flash
installed.

I have a non-flash machine at home, and it still pulls up the 
national channels on Real Audio.

I'm not sure how I feel about the sound quality change.  Flash seems
to have a wider frequency range, but my first impression is that the 
sound is less stable in the time domain -- kind of a bit warbly.
Which is NOT something one expects from digital sound.
 
Radio Scotland and Radio Derby, the other key parts of my listening,
remain on Real Audio.

UK listeners get MP3 streams which I hear are gorgeous, but those
are restricted to those who are UK residents who are likely to have
paid the license fee.

Frankly I'm inclined just to throw over the whole mess for a while
and take a BBC vacation.

Since 2002, a stable group of 6 BBC DJs have dominated my listening to
folk & world music radio programmes.  In a short three weeks, half
that group is off the air, and I'm somewhat in shock.   After eight
years, these voices had woven themselves pretty thoroughly into my life.

-- Charlie Gillett died on March 17.  Charlie was one of the key
broadcasters in the evolution of the "world music" marketing
pigeonhole.  He'd been sick for some time; he was disabled out of his
full-time weekly show in 2006(?), and about 18 months later he
returned on a part-time basis, doing two shows every six weeks for
Radio 3's "World on 3."  He left that show due to health 
problems in January 2010, and the
last we heard was that he was scheduled for heart bypass surgery, and
a few weeks later came the announcement of his death, age 68.   Tons
of tributes from listeners and music professionals on his website
forum at http://www.charliegillett.com

-- Verity Sharp, one of the two rotating hosts of Radio 3's "Late
Junction" since the show's beginning, has left.  No further
information about her departure has been available.  "Late Junction"
was one of my favorite radio shows ever, a mix of world, classical,
folk and jazz.  Verity has been an enthusiastic advocate for British
folk music.

-- Archie Fisher has left "Travelling Folk" on BBC Radio Scotland.
Archie had hosted the show since 1983, and he turns 70 this year.  I
have conflicting reports, none authoritative, about whether he retired
voluntarily or was pushed out.   I suppose I could ask him when he
plays a concert in East Lansing later this month.   So far the signs
are that Radio Scotland intends to keep the Thursday night slot for
folk music.

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