Over the brink

I've been intending to do a post about Nick Grimshaw's breakfast show for some time now, the problem being that until now i hadn't reached a conclusion.

There is no denying that Grimshaw was going to have a massive challenge to take over from arguably Radio 1's most successful breakfast show and the cracks started appearing very quickly. The decision to only have Nick's voice on air most of the time was quickly overturned when it became clear he needed somebody to bounce off. It is difficult to actually sound like you're having fun on the air when you're alone and regardless of how much Ben Cooper wanted to get shot of the zoo format, we soon found that nothing sounds as lonely as a socialite with no friends. The result is that we now regularly hear the voices of the producer and broadcast assistant, which aids things greatly.

One thing i liked about Chris Moyles was his ability to admit when he'd changed his opinion on something. Quite often he'd criticise records on their first play, but would then openly admit it had grown on him. Compare this to Grimshaw who heavily criticised Swedish House Mafia's "Don't You Worry Child" on his first play and declared he was "never going to play that again", yet did several times before the end of the week without further comment. If you're going to have opinions, they need some weight to make them mean anything.

Anyway, i hadn't intended for this to be a complete hatchet job. The 08:45 quiz Showquizness is quite entertaining, although does wear thin when it becomes clear that they've got a very limited number of clips of the Showbot, a robotic voice that theoretically poses the questions in the quiz. It is effectively a pale immitation of Car Park Catchphrase with a recorded voice interacting with the DJ, except that the interaction isn't as well planned and feels a lot more clunky.

The show branding has been completely changed to fall in with the general station imaging and spoken jingles stating "Radio One's Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw" which suggest that he is pretty much interchangeable with any other name they wish to put in there. It doesn't scream longevity to me.

Another factor that doesn't endear the new show to the higher aged demographic is the fact that we've had three excruciating weeks of hype about the Teen Awards which seems to require One Direction to be mentioned at least every three seconds. To be honest, i've been able to put up with these short term distractions (Teen Awards, Brits Week, Big Weekends) because they're only there for a little while before being forgotten about again.

In truth, i'd been a bit meh about the whole thing and had neither found anything to really like or dislike about the whole package. That came to an end this morning when i decided to switch off. The ignorant fashionista twat came out when Grimshaw declared Television Centre (where he's hosting an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks) to be "like an 80s hospital" and complain because he couldn't get a phone signal in there, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the building has been there for a lot longer than him and is arguably the second most important building in British television after Alexandra Palace.

I could quite easily bang on for hours about TVC being the field of dreams, the blank canvas on to which artists paint pictures and bring them to life or a portal to another world where anything is possible... but i won't. But then again, i won't cluelessly dismiss it as "something off of the eighties". I want to be entertained by people who either amuse me, broaden my horizons or both. Grimshaw does neither, so after getting on for nine years i'm looking for a new breakfast frequency.

Strange faced Ellie Goulding

I do try not to comment on the appearances of pop stars where i can help it, but every so often i have to make an exception and as i've always referred to her as "Strange faced Ellie Goulding", i see no reason to change now. I do think she looks odd. Her new asymetric mullet hair doesn't help matters either.

I can't get my head around Ms Goulding's latest song and lead track from her second album. She's taken a cut in the tempo of her original material from her first album and Anything Could Happen sits at the sort of pace of a Moombahton track. Whilst i quite like the composition of the song, there is far too much reliance on a stupid earworm of vocal loops created by studio trickery, particularly as this forms the main chorus of the song. Just as it feels the song is going to some sort of epic climax, it slumps back down again.

The other interesting development in her sound has been the appearance of a far more raspy quality to her voice when she's really going for it which has never sounded quite so pronounced before. Quite where it sits with her hiccupy toddler voice the rest of the time, i don't know.

So overall, i really don't know what to think. I find it interesting, but i'm not sure i actually like it and having had a love/hate relationship with Goulding's music in the past (mostly hate if i'm honest), i almost feel as if i should have more of a reaction to it.

A very rickety bandwagon

Its easy to mock, but after getting on for 20 years hammering away at it, the wheels finally appear to have fallen off the bandwagon that is Scooter. Their success in the UK has been a rather hit and miss affair, with two periods of relatively decent success punctuated by long periods of being ignored. In their homeland of Germany, the success has been pretty consistent until now.

The warning signs were there after the 2007 Jumping All Over The World album. Scooter went away for a longer hiatus than they had ever previously taken. Having produced albums roughly annually since 1995, there was silence from the band after a long tour which had seen them sell out venues the likes of which they hadn't even attempted before. The album backed in the UK by a Greatest Hits CD took the top spot in the album chart, which raised many eyebrows and remains something of a thorn in the side of those always claiming the album chart is the one for grown ups. Unusually for Scooter, this album spawned five singles rather than the usual two or three and all went top twenty in Germany.

They returned in 2009 with Under The Radar, Over The Top which acheived reasonable home success, with two of the four singles lifted from it going top twenty. The sound had reverted from the stadium jumpstyle of the previous album to a ragtag mixture of their previous styles that didn't really have any cohesion. Worse was to come with 2011's The Big Mash Up, an alarmingly weak range of lifted samples and rip offs of other tracks in a vague attempt to catch up on the already tired fashion for mashups. Opening single The Only One was (broadly speaking) a cover of the Charlatans' similarly named song and it just sneaked into the German top 50 despite heavy promotion across mainstream TV. Three more singles were dragged off the album, but none inspired the public to reach the top half of the top 100.

Which brings us to 2012 and new album Music For A Big Night Out which is a pissweak title even by Scooter's standards. Lead single 4 AM is a thinly veiled mixture of Otto Knows' Europewide club hit Million Voices, amended just enough to put off the copyright lawyers and the opening couple of lines from Beverley Craven's Promise Me sung by someone who sounds like Rihanna with a cold. Really. Again, this isn't anything that hasn't already been done to death - the Bingo Players had a minor hit with a similarly looped couple of lines from Brenda Russell's Piano In The Dark (1988) the ethos of which has now been "brought to a larger audience" (ripped off) by Flo Rida who has practically made a career out of such works. The 4 AM single limped into the German charts at number 96 on the first week of release and is their worst performing single ever aside from their instrumental xylophone heavy debut Vallee des Larmes.

So where do Scooter go from here? It is difficult seeing any future in copying what the market already has an overload of - identikit dance covers looping a couple of lines of something from the Heart Time Tunnel playlist. They'll doubtlessly find a new direction in the near future and i wouldn't rule out them making a dubstep album.

Seriously.

Plastic Sunshine 2012

Its been a while and it has taken a lot to push me to it, but i feel anger brewing.....

Rita Ora - How We Do (Party)
Rita Ora's career should have finished right after she guested on the DJ Fresh #1 single Hot Right Now. You know, like the career of Do finished after being a featured artist on Heaven by DJ Sammy featuring Yanou and Do. As if the brick-to-the-face subtlety free zone of R.I.P. featuring Tinie Tempah (hence a guaranteed #1) wasn't bad enough, this latest slice of cod American bilge is truly grotesque. The radio edit is full of blanked out words (apparently Ms Ora gets the drunk sex feeling on a regular basis) and a repeated chorus chant of Party...and party....and party etc which makes Nicki Minaj sound like as if she has the eloquence of William Shakespeare. Everything about it is awful - there is precious little song, the content is vile and the repetitious nature is excruciating.

Wiley featuring Ms D - Heatwave
To quote: "I'm a party. I gone dance. Put your hands all over my body." Only one of these sentences actually makes sense. For a start, the last time i looked it was impossible to be an abstract concept of a social event. The second is clearly grammatically incorrect - perhaps i'm going to dance was the intended meaning, in which case i'd have even accepted i'm gonna dance as a reasonable appropriation of a sentence. The final statement of "put your hands all over my body" just about sums up the attitude to women of the brainless, alcohol fuelled Gary Lagers who will concieve unwanted to children to the rhythm of shit like this. Everything about it is awful - there is precious little song, the content is vile and the repetitious nature is excruciating.

Are you getting a sense of deja vu?

Trey Songz - Simply Amazing
Here is a surprise: it isn't.

Stooshe - Black Heart
I find it really hard to listen to this song without singing along my own lyrics. Daddy i'm falling for a bastard... (and that is the only one i'm willing to share in public). Stooshe are basically a foul mouthed version of the Spice Girls and this is their attempt to do a Motown song, which is partly successful but falls down on the lack of any subtlety that was usually present in the original female ensemble Detroit sound.

Nicki Minaj - Pound The Alarm
Like her previous single, the best bits of it are when Ms Minaj shuts up because whilst the American Black Music industry tears the heart out of the past 25 years of European dance music, there are some interesting sounds from the early 90s popping up from time to time. Its just a shame that we then have to endure Little Miss ADHD spouting her bullshit all over it...

Flo Rida - Whistle
Flo Rida is an amazing interviewee. If you hear a radio interview with him promoted, then make sure you listen to it because for somebody who has made a career out of making brainless party music, he's a completely sourfaced twat with no sense of humour whatsoever. As such, i'll review his latest record in the same way: Its an utterly childish and thinly veiled song about oral sex.

Fun featuring Janelle Monae - We Are Young
About the first 40 seconds is tolerable. The dual-tempo business that is going on is a bit like Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out. But then it all goes wrong. Instead of turning up the tempo and the brashness, it degenerates into four minutes of the most excruciating overblown, drawn out whiny self congratulation i've ever heard. Star turn from Glastonbury 2011 Janelle Monae has been roped into the bullshit as well, apparently to do backing vocals over about two lines halfway through the song. They probably think they're being dramatic, but ultimately it feels completely false and contrived. On the plus side, follow up single (and album title track) Some Nights is a much better anthem without the drawn out wailing.

Misha B - Homerun
Whereas most reality show contestants end up released abysmally wet singles drawn out from hours in front of focus panels, X-Factor bad girl Misha B has turned up this sparky slice of urban power pop which does a great job of showcasing her style and vocals without sounding cheesy or contrived. It also scores points on not going down the currently fashionable route of making a filthy song which has to be butchered for the radio. On the strength of this, she deserves to have a decent career out of it.

Merdan Taplak - On The Rocks
It becomes obvious that radio stations are crying out for a strong summer anthem when they have to commission their own. Studio Brussel did just that, booking local Belgian-Turkish electro stalwart of the Balkan Beats scene Merdan Taplak to record their summer tune On The Rocks. They've even produced a cocktail book of the same name, which is a marketing masterstroke. The song itself is a euphoric three minute marvel of everything that makes a good summer tune - a bit of house, a shake of electro and some balkan beats without the stupid gimmicks that mars most dance music that is successful in the UK at the moment.

Holiday Season

One of the perks of being a radio listener during the summer is a bit of a break from the listening routines that i normally have and this summer is the bonus round with several of the regulars booking holidays during the Olympics. Patrick Kielty has already spent two weeks in for Simon Mayo on Radio 2 drivetime and now switched to covering for Steve Wright's afternoons, the latter having also been recently covered by Chris Tarrant. For those who have forgotten how good Chris Tarrant is on Radio, these cover shows have been something of a reminder of how well polished his product was on Capital. The style may sound a little dated these days, but Tarrant's high energy presenting style is still nonetheless enjoyable when compared to some of the amateurs who are only on air because they've been on the telly.

Anyway, back to Patrick Kielty. Whilst he wouldn't be my first choice for these covers, he is doing a solid job. The shows are flowing together nicely and he exudes an engaging  warmth that was missing from covers by Ryan Tubridy for Ken Bruce and Chris Evans earlier in the year. Kielty would probably benefit from having a regular show on Radio 2 to build his own set of features, and in this respect i'm somewhat surprised that he wasn't given the summer cover for Graham Norton on Saturday mornings. This brings us neatly on to Jon Holmes.


The Jon Holmes Situation is not a Radio 4 sketch show as the title may suggest, rather a transplant of Holmes' 6 Music Saturday Morning show direct to Radio 2, albeit with a less interesting playlist. Whilst Holmes is on Radio 2, the obligatory 6 Music supersub Andrew Collins returns to the slot he has previously co-hosted with Josie Long, Richard Herring and Michael Legge. Whilst these two holiday cover jobs would appear to be something new, in reality they are reassuringly familiar. My one criticism of the Jon Holmes Situation would be that the podcast has shrunk somewhat from the 6 Music offering.

Finally on Radio 2, Sara Cox has been welcomed back in to overnights to cover for Janice Long having spent a week sitting in for Alex Lester earlier in the year, so her previous stint must have been considered a success. Personally, i didn't think Cox's self centred chatter fitted in with Radio 2's normal overnight output, but she clearly relates far more to the Radio 2 playlist than she has done to the Radio 1 output since the turn of the millennium. It is a bit difficult to see where Sara Cox would fit in these days on radio - whereas Zoe Ball has matured in to being accepted on daytime Radio 2, you can't help but feel there is still something needy in the nature of Cox and she hasn't quite shaken off the overgrown teenager image which still comes through in her broadcasting.

Most of the Radio 1 staff have remained in place, but sparky Ulsterman Phil Taggart has been covering the odd weekend slot (Sara Cox on Sunday mornings, Gemma Cairney on weekend breakfast). I find it difficult to dislike Taggart - he has demonstrated a good understanding of music on the Northern Ireland Introducing show, and has a lively style with something of a scattergun approach which sees him taking lots of interesting diversions over the course of a three hour show.

Moving over to local radio, BBC Bristol stalwart sports presenter Geoff Twentyman has taken over Steve Le Fevre's breakfast show for a few weeks and is doing a good job of interviewing people without interrupting them, my perennial pet hate of Le Fevre. I think this is exacerbated by the fact that BBC Bristol trails endlessly praise his "hard hitting" interview technique. I also struggle to distinguish between when Le Fevre is being sarcastic or just patronising and wonder how intentional either are. But i digress. Twentyman's deep scouse tones and less confrontational technique are a considerably easier listen first thing in the morning.

The lunchtime show, normally home to Steve Yabsley has been taken over for this week by Tony James. The first show was technically a complete mess with vocals and jingles being crashed all over the place. The playlist and banter also appear to have degenerated into a sub-Classic Gold 60s "Remember When" set up, guaranteed to alienate anybody under the age of 60. The constant "best part of the country / best radio in the country" patter as he tries to relate to the region is quite painful and out of keeping with the usual station imaging and does hark back to GWR imaging on the late 90s which insisted on calling Bristol the greatest city in the world every five minutes. James is something of a journeyman of local radio since the mid 80s, having broadcast for various ILRs and BBC locals. His website would have you believe he is the sole reason that any radio station ever gains listeners, but for somebody so experienced in broadcasting to be making such a cliched and technically messy show is rather a poor performance. I was almost expecting the "do you remember Spangles" phone in to come along...

Swings and Roundabouts

I can't help but have the feeling that Radio 1's recent swaparound might have had the opposite of the desired effect.

Scott Mills has moved from the drivetime 4pm-7pm show that he's inhabited since 2004 to the afternoon 1pm-4pm slot. The result has become something of a "Best of Scott Mills" with features from the drivetime show which would previously have gone in blocks, running for some six weeks on a daily basis, now appearing on a weekly or twice weekly basis. This shrewd move recognises that there is a far more loyal listener base for the afternoon show, and a much higher number of people who will be listening on a daily basis. Given that one irritating feature on a daily basis could make people retune, this strategy appears to be working. The online streaming of the Innuendo Bingo feature now regularly becomes a trending topic on Twitter whenever it happens, something which i haven't seen any other Radio 1 show manage for a recurring feature without on air promotion.

The other factor is that Mills, along with producer ("The One That Doesn't Speak", Emlyn Dodd) has rebuilt the team around him which at times has sometimes struggled to achieve its best output over recent years following the departure of Mark "Chappers" Chapman (to FiveLive / BBC Sport) and Laura Sayers, who now produces for Greg James. The recent introduction of Chris Stark, whose input varies from laddish to Karl Pilkington-esque obliviousness, has been a success with him rapidly becoming a valuable asset. Similarly, Beccy Huxtable's off-the-wall barminess is also brilliant. The team as a whole seems to be up for anything and always ready to ridicule themselves for a laugh.

So, moving on to the drivetime show. Greg James has moved in to Radio 1's second premium slot and i'm genuinely trying to think of something nice to say to start this section on a positive note. Being honest, i'm not sure i can, which is a shame because i've been a fan of James since he started on early breakfast. The show starts off well enough with three songs in a row, but thats where it ends. Greg then seems to fall into several traps of lame local radio shock jock features - an obligatory "is it just me...?" kicks off, followed by the audio equivalent of a fail blog where James highlights where his fellow DJs have made mistakes over the past 24 hours. Most of the time these are really lame clips of people stumbling over words and things like that, whilst the once affable James now gloats like a smug twat over the lot of it.

And that is before we get to Fridays. I had expected the "Feet Up Friday" feature to transfer over, but now we have three teams of listeners attempting to win control of the section of the show in the run up to Newsbeat at 17:45. The whole thing is just a mess - too many people, some of whom have very strange ideas about their wacky characters and team identities they've assumed for the feature. Over a three hour show it might work, but in scarcely an hour its just a shambles.

I don't think i've ever wanted to like a show so much and been as disappointed as i am with the new Greg James drivetime show.

The Importance of Yabsley

Something is bothering me, which tends to be the normal cue to write something on this blog. I’ve noticed before when Steve Yabsley (BBC Bristol / Somerset 12-2 Mon-Fri) is on holiday that I struggle to find anything at all worth listening to on the radio. The dismal Kate Justice who regularly sits in for him seems to be capable of no conversation beyond her own children. Jeremy Vine’s audio slanging match on Radio 2 is hideous, I can’t listen to Fearne Cotton on Radio 1 without wanting to rip my own ears off and none of our local commercial stations can manage anything beyond the usual collection of chart dross, adverts and promo trails for pissweak competitions.

Then I start wondering whether the problem lies in other places. Certainly late night broadcasting is weak, offering nothing with any personality. BBC Radio 1 and 2 use the space for specialist shows aimed mostly at iPlayer listeners and commercial locals will be either on Late Night Love or Party Classics. Either will be dire. I’ve blogged many times about the loss of late night zoo style radio, but now the “twenty shades of beige” seems to be spreading to daytimes. Aside from breakfast, there is precious little I find to be an appointment to listen, whereas I could quite happily listen to one of about six breakfast shows daily without any problem. It feels as if British radio is putting all of its effort and personality in to four hours between 6 and 10 with nothing creatively left for the rest of the day.

I suppose the problem has been slightly alleviated by the recent move of Scott Mills to Radio 1 daytimes. Much as I don’t mind Greg James, I’ve regularly found myself turning over to recordings when his show is on. I’m not sure what it is that doesn’t quite gel about the show, perhaps it is the fake lack of confidence in content or new features (something which Dev milks to eyewateringly awful levels). The afternoon show felt genuinely delightful when Chris Moyles covered for a couple of days two weeks ago. Freed from the cage and crew of the breakfast show, Moyles sounded like a newly invigorated man who was having the most fun he’d had in the past five years. I do hope the BBC bosses were taking note that he isn’t a one trick pony, nor is he creatively spent, nor does he have to rely on having a crowd of people around him.

So what of the "Importance of Yabsley"? Well, Steve is about the only person i can find who is trying to inject some personality into daytime radio at the moment and the fact that he's spent most of the past eighteen months worrying that the BBC Local Radio cuts will cost him his job seem criminally wrong to me when he is doing something genuinely different on local radio.