"Old Blodger's Curate's Egg" Rock Show

Isn't music radio crap these days? Or is it just me? It probably is me as I don't actually listen to music on the wireless any more. But that's because the last time I listened to a music station it was crap...so perhaps it isn't me. Ergo Sic Kumquat!

I'm seriously toying with the idea of setting up my own radio programme and, other than the fact that I don't have the vaguest idea of how to go about it, I don't see why not. It would be for people like me, if such beasts exist. People who want to leave their comfort zone and see what's really out there. I'm not talking about a station dedicated to the avant garde or freeform jazz, that would be hell on earth. What I am talking about is a place where you could go to hear stuff that you don't automatically recognise.

For example, there are numerous rock stations that proudly proclaim to spin 'the best new music and classic album tracks', but you know before you tune in that what you're going to get is Kasabian's latest ditty followed by Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop - i.e. singles that you are going to hear a million times or that you've already heard a million times. I don't want that.

My musical education largely took place in the U.K. during the late sixties and early seventies, my tutors being the 'disc jockeys' (doesn't that term seem arcane now?) on Radios One, Caroline and Luxembourg. I consider myself very fortunate to have grown up listening to such legends as John Peel (before he went industrial), Fluff Freeman, Annie Nightingale, Johnnie Walker, Tommy Vance, Whispering Bob, even the much maligned Dave Lee Travis (to whom I'll always be grateful for introducing me to 'East River' by 'The Brecker Brothers'). They all specialised in different genres to a certain extent but they each had two things in common - their musical knowledge and their voice.

Each would tell you the name of the track, the performers, the record label and, as often as not, which bands the members had previously been with (how often do you hear that info these days?). Each voice was radically different in tone and timbre but each was rich, fruity and instantly recognisable - not something you could say about most d.j.s today - and I couldn't get enough of them.

The best thing about these guys though was their choice of music. Peel (Sounds of the Seventies and Top Gear) and Fluff (Saturday Rock Show) in particular had a massive influence on my burgeoning tastes as they were so eclectic. Peel would play Ivor Cutler one minute, the Portsmouth Sinfonia the next, followed by something more 'mainstream' like Van der Graaf Generator. Fluff was more rock orientated but he'd throw in a bit of Tchaikovsky between the Jethro Tull and King Crimson.

The vast majority of these tracks would be new to one's ears as few of the artists concerned released singles. If you liked something you had to go out and buy the album to hear it again (unless you managed to catch it on your Phillips cassette recorder that is...ooh, naughty you. Didn't you know that home taping is killing music?).

I still vividly remember exactly where I was when I first heard certain songs. I was lying on my bed in my brown-walled bedroom drooling over my newly acquired first drum kit - an Ajax - in the corner when I first heard Frank Zappa's Cosmic Debris. I was crating up empty beer bottles outside the back of my parent's pub when I first heard Jet by Wings. I was in the bath when I first heard Bowie's Starman.

It wasn't just me either. There were times when every pubescent boy in the country would experience the same Damascene moment of realisation that they'd just come into contact with something extraordinary. In the early seventies this usually involved the 'Old Grey Whistle Test', the only rock music show on the telly at the time. I was watching OGWT in the upstairs living room in my parent's pub one night when a band of Dutch nutters appeared and played a fast instrumental number that included whistling and, believe it or not, yodelling sections. I went to school the next day and everyone had scratched 'Focus' into their satchels. The local music shop, 'Record Rendezvous', was inundated with schoolkids desperate to buy Focus' Moving Waves album during their lunch break.

I wonder if kids today experience such eureka moments when they first get an earhole full of Kings of Leon. Actually, I like the Kings of Leon and I imagine that every generation has its 'stop what you're doing and go AAAWW YEAH' moment.

Whatever, if I ever get around to starting up the Old Blodger's Curate's Egg rock show my manifesto will be as follows:

• There will be no advertising, quizzes or phone-ins (but perhaps the odd jingle)
• You will be told the name of each track and artist/band plus any interesting historical trivia about same
• You won't hear 'Don't Stop' by Fleetwood Mac
• You will hear 'Green Manalishi' by Fleetwood Mac
• You will hear new bands as long as I think they're good
• You will hear lots of covers, particularly the funny ones
• You will hear genuine 'classic album tracks' - i.e. tracks that were never released as singles
• You will be able to request a track and I might play it if I find it interesting enough
• Though it is predominantly a rock show I will spin anything I like as the fancy takes me. This could be Doo Wop, Americana, Classical, Ivor Cutler, Richard Cheese, the whole of 'Zeit' by Tangerine Dream (scary stuff), Dean Martin or obscure seventies Italian prog-rock
• You will hear loads and loads of funk

So there you have it. Interested?

Keep on truckin',
oldblodger