response 128 of 154:

Mar 27 21:21 UTC 2003

BBC Radio 3 has put up a new stack of live gig recordings of 
world music artists.  Most of these shows seem to come from the 
London Jazz Festival last November.  I'm unclear about the origins
of the shows with a March date, though.

Highlights for Mickey and I will be a 60 minute show by Mariza
(Portuguese fado) at 44K, and a 100 minute show by Mari Boine (Sami singer)
at the tasty 64K speed.  Also included in this:  Orchestra Baobab, 
Faudel, Oliver Mtukudzi, Bembeya Jazz and Ketil Bjornstad.
 
I'm listening to the Mari Boine right now.  Very nice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/world/ljfgigs2002.shtml

response 130 of 154:

Mar 28 21:18 UTC 2003

resp:128 - This is an interesting collection of recorded live sessions. 
Thanks for pointing it out. I'm looking forward to hearing Mari Boine 
singing live. I checked out the Mariza show, and believe it to be the 
very same recording that was featured on World Routes recently. 

resp:129 - There is video and two concert (real)audio linked from here:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/world/awards2003/index.shtml

response 132 of 154:

May 13 19:32 UTC 2003

OK, I am very confused.  First hour of today's Celtic Connection show
was great, lots of bagpipe-y stuff.  Second hour was a concert set
from Vasen, from the same "Across the Sea" festival which Late Junction
drew on last week;  it might even have been the same Vasen set which
LJ broadcast, I don't know.  But 25 minutes into the second hour, the 
show faded, and a Radio Scotland announcer expressed apologies for
the interruption and started playing sort of folky music.

No idea what happened.  Darn, it was a great concert set too.

response 134 of 154:

May 16 19:08 UTC 2003

  Bassist, former member of Public Image, Ltd., later went on to record
  a number of albums of world fusion music with his band "Invaders of the
  Heart" and some collaborations with other studio-experimentalist-leaning
  musicians (e.g. Brian Eno, with whom he recorded an album called "Spanner"
  (which is not very good, IMHO.))

  If you've heard any of his post-PIL work, it was probably "Visions of You",
  a single with considerable radio play in the Detroit/Windsor market, at
  least if you were listening to "alternative" radio at the time.  The most
  prominent feature of the single, apart from an infectious percussion line,
  was the guest vocal from Sinead O'Connor, so it's highly possible that 
  though you may have heard the song it might not have registered whose work
  it was..

response 136 of 154:

Jun 22 02:59 UTC 2003

I'd love to hear that Ketil Bjornstadt program, but every time I click 
on the link, Real Player pops up and gives me an error message 
reading "The instruction at 0x62352039 referenced memory at 0x00000045. 
The memory could not be written."

I don't have the slightest idea what this means or how to fix it.  I've 
uninstalled and redownloaded Real Player, and I still get the same 
message.

This is typical behavior for computers dealing with media downloads of 
any kind, and is a good explanation for why I rarely play media on my 
computer.

response 138 of 154:

Jul 28 23:25 UTC 2003

... and Jim Moray is also the guest on Wednesday's Mike Harding show.
 
BBC Radio 3 now has about half of the shows from last weekend's Womad 
festival up on their web page.  Shows are generally about an hour long, 
except for Lo'Jo, which seems to end rather abruptly at 15 minutes.
(I asked about it in the discussion forum.)

Bit rates are down to 44K this year, a mild bummer after the glorious
64K they used for the London Jazz Festival.
 
This is Real Audio, as usual for the Beeb.

response 140 of 154:

Oct 14 20:07 UTC 2003

Mickey will want to pick up a repeat of today's Celtic Connections show,
though one might want to keep a finger ready on the fast-forward button.
There are about four or five live-in-studio tracks with Scottish band
Croft No. 5, but about half of them are collaborations with a rap group.

Even more interesting are the two songs from Martyn Bennett's new album 
GRIT, finally out; I'll have to find a used or promo copy since it's on 
the arm of a major record company.

response 142 of 154:

Dec 3 03:56 UTC 2003

What are African rap and Latin American music doing in a show 
called "Celtic Connections" in the first place?

response 144 of 154:

Dec 5 22:14 UTC 2003

My carpooler often argues that the only apparent "Celtic" connection
is that the musicians have DNA, as do the people in Celtic lands.
 
I loved the mix in "Celtic Connections" when we started listening
20 months ago; it was my favorite of the BBC programs for a long time.
Things change; the show will probably pick up later; I just need a 
vacation from it.
 
The new hazard :) is BBC Radio 6, as my tastes swing back towards 
rock for the first time in many years.

response 146 of 154:

Jan 2 19:12 UTC 2004

Yes, they have been proliferating.  :)  Radio 5 is live news and sports
coverage.  Radio 6 (which the BBC markets as "6Music") I describe as
"serious rock music from 1960-2004."  Radio 6 started in the spring 
or summer of 2002 and it is only available on digital radio -- digital
radio is much bigger in the UK than it is here -- and on the net.
 
Bob Harris has a good show on Radio 6 -- was it Jeff who told me that 
Harris is famous from the show The Old Grey Whistle Test?  
Also Tom Robinson, who was a bit of a rock star back at the end of the 
1970s.

response 148 of 154:

Jan 4 05:40 UTC 2004

I was afraid that Radio 6 would be 24 hours a day of cheerful band 
music from The Village.  "Good morning, good morning, good morning.  
It's another beautiful day today!"

response 150 of 154:

Mar 10 20:34 UTC 2004

It's been just over two years since I started this item.  
The BBC has so woven itself into my life, it's hard to remember
what it was like when I had to constantly scratch and dig to 
find interesting music.   My consumption of American radio has 
dwindled to:  news on WWJ-AM and NPR outlets; occasional classical
music on WKAR-FM in East Lansing; even more occasional classic rock
on the Howell station I pass on my commute.
 
Late Junction on BBC Radio 3 had a number of excerpts from a 
concert by Bill Frisell & Djemilady Tounkara, both on acoustic 
guitar, with a number of supporting instrumentalists including a 
fine percussionist.  This band appears to be touring the UK intensively
right now but there are no recordings (yet); Frisell records a lot,
though, so I hope that maybe the UK tour was to shake down the lineup,
then the CD gets recorded, then they tour the USA and come to Ann Arbor.
This was Monday's Late Junction show, available for replay until next
week.
 
Celtic Connections this week, on the other hand, was a show I fled
from, a summary from the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards.  One would 
think that would appeal to me, but I just have not liked their awards
shows, at all.  The final straw was 
Senegalese rap group Daara J, who have become sort of an in-joke 
between Mickey and I.   We really can't abide them any more, and
the Beeb is plugging them heavily.

response 152 of 154:

Mar 13 17:07 UTC 2004

Next up, a world cuisine award featuring the Dakar MacDonald's.