8. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting – Charles Mingus
Before I was in education, I used to make radio. I started out with 30-second ads at first, but after a while, I became a little more ambitious and decided to try my hand at full programmes. Perhaps a documentary.
The first radio programme I ever made was a modest little affair:
The Complete History of Jazz in 26 one-hour episodes.
I researched it, wrote it, produced it, engineered it, mixed it, sold the sponsorship deal… and did pretty much everything except narrate it (I was lucky enough to convince Chris Parkinson to help me out in that regard).
It was one of the most stressful periods of my working life — and it was not very good.
I mean, it was broadcastable. I was already the production manager at a commercial talk station at the time (Radio Pacific), run by a man who, in his own words, would play The Complete History of The Toilet if it came with sponsorship.
The boss in question is Zane Lowe’s dad, as it happens — which is how I ended up producing Zane’s first single: another story for another time.
So the conditions were: as long as I did it in my own time, after hours, and as long as I was able to get it paid for by corporate sponsorship (I managed Qantas and the Dymock’s book chain), then I was allowed to produce it.
I knew nothing about jazz at the time, but I learned quite quickly. I already knew I liked it — I was just ignorant about any of the facts.
Since I was writing and producing later episodes of the show while pre-recorded earlier programmes were already being put to air, it was essentially a matter of staying a chapter ahead in the book — a skill that has stayed with me into my career in tertiary education.
The series was reviewed in The Listener — the NZ equivalent of the Radio Times, only with a far more intelligent and political predisposition, and with far fewer cardboard promotional items that fall out when you pick it up.
The review started: “I hate modern jazz.” — and went downhill from there. The episode that the reviewer had selected to tune into was the one given entirely over to the importance of Charles Mingus, and the new approach he brought to the tradition of jazz composition and bandleading.
I mean, this is reasonably progressive stuff for someone who hates modern jazz. I still maintain that someone who was automatically predisposed to be antagonistic to what I was trying to do should not have written the review in the first place — but even so, her summation of the programme as mostly bollocks was probably fair.
Now that I teach radio programme production, I am horrified to think that someone in their early 20s would start on anything longer than 15 minutes in total for their first radio show — let alone 26 hours.
Still – when I think of critics, I think of Mingus, and the experience has brought me closer to his music. It’s me and him against THEM.
In fact, now that I think of it, it was probably that review that gave me the idea that I could bloody well go and start my own programme production company, make jazz radio programmes and start my own label.
Or maybe I’m just reconstructing history in the service of a good story.
At any rate, Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting kind of speaks for itself. It’s not difficult music — it’s a joyous, spiritual musical experience, and deserves to be turned up loud.
I am not a religious man, but if your church sounds like this, then I’ll see you there whatever day of the week you pick.
