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 write a book about radio in the digital age, for a kickoff. It’s early stages yet, and there’s no contract – but it looks pretty promising. In fact, it’s probably the book I should have been writing since about 2004. I’ll give myself 18 months to turn that one around.

I’ve also been doing a fair bit more academic work in the radio realm than at any time since I originally left New Zealand… and all of a sudden I’m doing a spot of radio consultancy here and there as well.

I did my usual, weekly four-hour jazz, bossa, rare groove, laid-back funk DJ set at the Hare and Hounds this afternoon, while people ate their Sunday roasts. There’s a playlist here, if you’re interested.

Now, because all this radio stuff is going around in my head, I’m thinking of ways of using that activity as the basis for a radio show of some kind. Since I’m playing records anyway…

Radio without additional effort
Here’s the scenario: I have these decks in front of me, and I have brought a pile of records – proper, 12″ vinyl, 33 1/3 rpm albums. Lots of them are rare and all of them are perfect for that Sunday afternoon vibe. In fact, Sunday afternoon’s kind of my specialism. I hosted It’s A Jazz Thing on George FM in the 2-4pm Sunday slot for about 6 years, and then did more or less the same thing on Rhubarb Radio a couple of years ago.

So there’s a four-hour mix each week at the same time. I’m in the back room of a pub which has been converted into a restaurant for the occasion, and people are eating, drinking, listening to my tunes, and talking with their friends and loved ones. Surely, an extra wire, or a little bit of internet technology could plug the output into a web radio stream and provide a low-effort, expertly curated jazz Sunday afternoon vibe for some radio station somewhere.

Could be a community radio station in Lithuania, a small college radio station in Minnesota, a local station here in Birmingham, a web-only station with no obvious point of origin – or whatever.

It just seems like an under-utilisation of media production for the records I play only to be heard in one room, when my laptop’s sitting right there…

Not really radio
A couple of things: first, I don’t talk during my DJ set. People are eating, and I’m more or less just providing the ambience (though it is a very cool ambience) – so there’d be no “Hi, you’re listening to X, that was Y, and coming up, I’m going to be playing some Z”. It’s just a continuous music mix for four hours.

Second, I’m not a DJ in the beat-matching, scratching, turntablist sense of the word. I play one record, and then I play another. I’ve put a lot of thought into what record comes next, and there’s generally no silence between the two – but that’s as good as it gets. One good record after another.

Third, I don’t play much in the way of new music. I would say over 90% of what I play was made between 1967 and 1977. As such, some of the records are a little bit surface-noisy. It all adds to the vibe.

It all takes place in a pub, through a simple mixing desk between two Technics turntables. I’m pretty certain a single feed off the desk could be piped into an upload stream at a decent and reliable rate that could be rebroadcast anywhere.

Of course, I could record it and then syndicate it out in some kind of reliable recorded music format, and I guess I could be persuaded to do that – but it’s the idea of it happening live that most interests me. The idea that someone is listening right now, and they know that what they’re hearing is happening somewhere in the world as they hear it.

So – that’s what I’ve got, and that’s what I’ve been thinking. Anyone interested in taking a feed and filling a slot on their station? Drop me a note.