Category Archives: Radio

Virtual co-presence and radiolessness 0

I was interviewed by Scott Bliss for his internet-only radio-show-without-a-radio-station. It was a fun interview to do. We Skyped, but each of us recorded his own audio. After we spoke, I sent my recording to him for editing. Might use that trick for something myself one day. Sounds pretty good – and after a while [...]

Back to where it all began 1

I was in Lancaster with Tim today, and we visited the student radio station that he worked at in the late 1970s when he was at university there – now called Bailrigg FM. We met a great bunch of students there, and they got a bit of an insight into their history. Check some photos [...]

Radio can be simple 1

I’ve been teaching music radio programming for a good few years now. All right, maybe it’s a decade. Or more. At any rate, it’s something that I really love doing and it’s something that I think there’s a real opportunity to have fun with, particularly given the technology available now. That said, it’s not as [...]

Piracy – at sea, on air, and at the library 0

I have a book out from the library. It’s a little overdue. Actually, it’s about eight years overdue. I suspect they’ve cancelled my Auckland Public Library membership by now. The book is called ‘The Shoestring Pirates’ by Adrian Blackburn. It’s the true account (more or less) of four men who set sail to establish a [...]

Ashley’s Worlds for Christmas 0

If you like cats, or stories about cats – or if you just like stories – here’s a Christmas gift from me to you (and your kids, if you happen to have any). I made a ‘cartoon for radio’ about 15 years ago. It’s about cats – well, specifically about one cat, Ashley, who finds [...]

Playing Musical Chairs for over a decade 0

About ten years ago – maybe a little more – I made some programmes for a Radio New Zealand series called Musical Chairs. Each programme focuses on a person who is very important in the world of New Zealand music. Usually it’s a musician, of course – but for me – one radio DJ had [...]

Ashley’s Worlds revisited 0

Continuing along the thread of digitally archiving the radio programmes and jazz sessions I did in the 1990s, I’ve started digitising the series Ashley’s Worlds – a “cartoon for radio” that was syndicated on 26 stations around New Zealand on Sunday morning kids’ radio programmes. It’s been fun to hear them again. It was an [...]

Interviewed on BBC 6Music Comments Off

Ruth Daniel and I were interviewed about Unconvention on Tom Robinson’s show on BBC 6Music. If you’re quick, you can listen to it on iPlayer from about 44mins in.

Thinking about the wireless 1

Photo by YlvaS I’ve been thinking a great deal about radio over the past few weeks. After having done the conference keynote in Auckland, a number of things have lined up to bring me back into that world, after a good five or so years being only peripherally involved at best. I’ve been asked to [...]

Archival treasure hunt 0

I spent the last few weeks in Auckland. There was an international academic conference about radio, and I was the opening keynote speaker, which was a real honour. You can download the text of my speech here as a PDF if you’re interested, complete with the images that I used as slides. It was great [...]