The first recording today starts with the end of Richard and Judy featuring Kelly Osborne, and Stephen Mangan driving a bus. Not together, that would be silly.
This is followed by another episode of The Simpsons – And Maggie Makes Three. We’re in for a lot of Simpsons episodes, although many, like this one, I’ve also seen on my tapes. I quote my previous entry: “Regular readers will be unsurprised to learn this always makes me cry.”
Media Centre Description: Marge gathers her family together for some quality time. While browsing through the photo album, Lisa asks why there are no pictures of baby Maggie.
Recorded from Channel 4 on Wednesday 9th January 2008 17:58
After this, the recording stops with the start of Hollyoaks.
The other recording today starts with the end of Classic Albums on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
There’s another of the behind the scenes promo for Mad Men which, every time I see it, remonds me why it, on its own, meant I never watched any Mad Men.
Then we have our first programme from the Pop Britannia series that I’ve kept, How Pop Songs Work. It’s a very entertaining documentary, not least because there’s loads of clips of songs. I’m old, so I don’t recognise much after 1992, but there’s plenty even for me to enjoy.
It’s presented by classical conductor Charles Hazlewood.
Allan Moore (not that one) is a Professor of Pop!
John Altman (not that one) is an arranger.
Richard Niles describes the origin of the blues.
Nick Ingman talks about the 1-4-5 chord sequence. I pretend I know what this all means.
Steve Levine: “With a pop record there’s so many defining things that you have to get right because essentially it’s going to land on a radio producer’s desk and if you don’t hit him bang in a few seconds it’s going to go down the pile to the next one.”
Guy Chambers: “You don’t hear many long melodies, now the melodies tend to be quite short. I think that’s to do with the fact that there’s so much information being targeted at people.”
John Harris: “This idea that it’ll get the milkman whistling. It’s always been talked about down the years as the great test.”
Phill Jupitus talks about the lyrics of The Jam.
Martin Fry: “It’s very hard singing a song with conviction unless you can really live it, I find. I don’t want to sound pretentious but you definitely have to climb inside a song.”
Rob Davis was in the 70s band Mud before making a big career as a songwriter and producer for other people. “Record companies are just fanatical about getting that record to sound so so good because there is so much competition, there’s thousands and thousands of records being made every day and they need to find ways of making it stand out from the rest of them”
Here’s a four-part upload of the programme.
Media Centre Description: Celebration of the magic of pop music and the skill and musical dexterity that goes into writing, performing and producing hit records. Conductor Charles Hazlewood explores the mechanics of pop songs such as Imagine, Tomorrow Never Knows and Back to Black by breaking them down into six key areas, aided by contributions from a cast of writers, producers and arrangers including Guy Chambers, Martin Fry, Steve Levine, Richard Niles, Nick Ingman, John Altman and Rob Davis.
Recorded from BBC FOUR on Wednesday 9th January 2008 21:58
BBC Genome: BBC FOUR Wednesday 9th January 2008 22:00
After this, there’s a trail for Six-Five Special.
Then the recording finishes with the start of Jez Butterworth’s film Mojo featuring a pre-Gollum Andy Serkis.
Here’s the ad breaks from The Simpsons.
Adverts:
- trail: Dispatches: The Truth About Your Food
- Herbal Essences
- Toyota Yaris
- Churchill Insurance
- DFS
- Asda
- Shrek’s Quests
- Direct Line
- Look
- trail: Relocation, Relocation
- Asda
- Butlins
- First Choice Holidays
- VO5
- Take A Break – Kim and Aggie
- Recycle
- trail: Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack