Minipods Of Funk On DeepBlue FM

During August I am producing a daily (Monday to Friday) lunchtime feature on DeepBlue FM, a holiday season Bournemouth-based radio station. Martyn (The Hat) asked me very nicely, so how could I refuse? It means that instead of sixty or so minutes of podcasting once a month, in August I am producing more than double that in daily bite-sized minipod chunks. If you haven't subscribed, this is a good time to do so.



To celebrate Olympic month, I'm also running a competition on behalf of the Free Tibet Campaign. You could win a night out at a Chinese Restaurant! So mosey on over to Funkpod.co.uk and check that out. Did you notice the comments made by the architect of the Olympic stadium? That's what I'm talking about.

Rise and Shine

Do you remember this? I'm kicking off something new next week which is the combination of blogging and songwriting: writing music in response to news.

I wanted to extend the writing discipline back into music, whilst venturing into new personal territory - live radio. I've done stacks of audio production and also event production, but traditional form radio I've only for a short period way back when I was the early morning DJ in a pirate station in the west country.

That delightful station called itself NBS (No Bull Shit) and the FM transmitter traveled each weekend around various covert houses on the tops of Bristol hills. Every few weekends we'd take care of the station and the crew from Friday night to Monday morning. The rave DJs would leave around 5am and I'd be up at 8am, turn on the transmitter and fill in the gaping hole in their schedule with cheap vinyl I purchased from the second hand and charity shops on the Gloucester Road. I entertained people all the way to Bath.

So I do have radio form - albeit achingly-hip form, not standard-industry-sweat-your-way-up-the-greasy-pole form - and of course, I have quite a bit of podcast form by now, so we'll certainly be putting out a podcast alongside the livestream. Nonetheless, being live for three hours every morning, and showing the warts-and-all process of making a song should be an interesting and scary enough challenge to break through the tupperware barrier of people's breakfast cereal containers.

This show comes with a few caveats, the main one being I'm not promising to write songs that you're going to like! Although I may do. We'll see. Expect glitches. I'm going out on a limb. But I am enlisting the help of other writers, and I'm intending to collaborate wherever possible. In fact, I'm going to need as much help as I can get.

But the best thing about the next month is going to be that we're raising money for BuskAid, a South Africa-based charity that teaches township kids to play music. I was inspired by the remarkable Rosemary Nalden - one of those TV documentaries which had me inexplicably in tears at the beauty of what was being achieved. So I hope you'll turn up and take part.

The breakfast show will be live from 7am to 10am GMT, Monday to Friday.