Speechification

Ian Marchant spends some quality time on London's buses, talking to people on the top deck, with particular reference to under-16s, who've been able to use the network for free for the last couple of years. [MP3]

It's great to hear so many teenagers' voices, giving a human side to what is often just a frightening racket, not least on the W3, local to me, and identified by Marchant as the scariest bus route in London.

Good, too, to hear a wide variety of opinions from older passengers and bus drivers, not all of whom are as disapproving as they might first appear. Some of the CCTV discussion is a bit worrying however, and I'd love to know how much the vast systems being implemented cost, compared to reintroducing conductors.

Another layered, community-based sound piece, which seems to be becoming a bit of a Speechification speciality, this time from one of our favourite independent stations, Resonance FM.

One Southwark features "A tapestry of voices compiled from 15 individuals’ monologues", described as "a touching portrait of the London Borough of Southwark." [MP3]

Compare to How Macroom Remembers for another, gentler take on how radio docs create this sort of overlapping, shifting soundscape. One Southwark is a lot rougher and more noisy than Macroom - and perhaps more reflective of the bustling, noisy place it comes from.

I've been meaning to post another London Ear for ages, but to be honest I lost them. And then at the very time I was listening to Paul Morley interviewing Craig David I came across this show underneath a box of postcards. So it seemed apposite and here it is; Ben Thompson playing assorted records and then (at about 24 minutes) Mr Thompson and Mr Morley discuss how to pronounce Satie (does it rhyme with party or patty?) Mr Morley's Satie tribute band Infantjoy, how all modern music begins with The Monochrome Set, how Satie's The Source of Eno ("Music Not To Be Listened To"), how epic Simple Minds are, Bez + William Burroughs, and, of course, Blood, Sweat, Tears and Speed Garage. There's some lovely music in this programme. And some funny, clever chat. Good. MP3 here.

(I think this is from 2006ish, so don't assume you'll be able to catch Infantjoy at Big Chill, but you might.)

UPDATE: I liked all the music on this show so I asked Ben to do a track-listing of it. Here it is:

London Ear theme - "A Foggy Day" by The Nu Sounds (one of Sun Ra's pet doowop outfits, on the Sun Ra singles album)
Richard James - "Cathedral" (opening track from debut solo album Seven Sleepers Den)
Field Music - "You're Not Supposed To" (from Write Your Own History compilation)
Maher Shalal Hash Baz - "How's Your Bassoon, Turquoise" (one side of double a-sided Geographic records vinyl single with Bill Wells)
Richard Dimbleby - "this is the interior of Dimbleby transmitting"
Keiran Hebden and Steve Reid "Electricity Will Change Your Mind" (excerpt - can't remember which album it's from, possibly the Exchange Sessions Vol 1)
Richard Dimbleby - again
The Tomorrow People (original TV music, track 2) - "Lure of the Space Goddess"
Eighteen 18 - "Carole Patricia Kilner", from debut album by Eighteen 18 (not sure if that is how it's written, but the rapper's name is definitely Lexis Salinger)

Satie Enclave

Brian Eno & David Byrne - "Something with Tinfoil" - bonus track on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts reissue
"O Maria" from Stella Maris by Trio Medieval (ECM)
Infant Joy Satie tribute (track from 1st album - not the remix album - sorry I can't remember what the title is)
John Cage - "Inner Landscape" from Early Piano Music played by Hubert or Herbert Henck (also on ECM)
Miles Davis - In A Silent Way (from the album of the same name)
Blood Sweat & Tears - Variations on a theme by Erik Satie from their first album
Hubert Laws - Not sure of the name of this but it should be "The man who killed jazz with his big flute"
SFA (Sweet Female Attitude, not Super Furry Animals) - "Flowers"

Leni Dipple put up with her infuriating jazz obsessive husband Ed for as long as she could but in the end she left him. A few years later he and his amazing shop Mole Jazz died. In this lovely Between The Ears she sets out to find out what made him tick.

Here's the MP3, here's a page from Fly with some more history, here's a poem by Leni and here's a page of recordings from the British Library's oral history of British Jazz that you might be able to listen to if you're at a British university or college.

This has got everything. Posh BBC presenters. Posh socialists. The end of empires. Trad jazz. And cappuccinos. It's the story of the brief life of a socialist coffee house in Soho which helped create the New Left. Whereas the 2i's spawned Cliff Richard and The Shads. Which was best? You decide. MP3 here. Programme page here.

Friend of Speechification Matt Jones suggested this one. A nice half hour presented by Robert Elms, White City native, about one of those glorious temporary fantasy cities, this one built to house the Franco-British exhibition of 1908: a dazzlingly white affair that filled a huge vacant plot between Shepherd's Bush Green and Wood Lane (where the BBC now stands). Also the reason we now call White City White City. MP3.

The pic is from the White City Stories Archive project for primary schools in Hammersmith and Fulham. And here's a set of lovely pictures made by children in the project.

I remember the Marchioness disaster for a couple of reasons, because a neighbour of ours was on the ship, and survived, and because many of those that didn't made it all the way down to Putney; a grim sight on the way to school. But I didn't know that the Thames lifeboats weren't established until 2002 - a full thirteen years after the disaster, and I'm very pleased, because they sound like a thoroughly good (read: unpaid) and professional (in an amateur British way) lot. I also want a go in a hurricane simulator. [MP3]

Thoroughly entertaining memoir of the events of May '68 in Paris, London, New York and San Francisco. From David Zane Mairowitz, who was both there and can recall enough of it to vividly conjure it up for us. Some fabulous archive footage, some hilariously frank, half-remembered incidents.

(Bonus points for starting with the beautiful, sparkling tones of 'Dark Star', double-bonus for some interstellar Syd-era Pink Floyd in the middle, and triple-bonus points for a raucous splash of Albert Ayler at the end.)

Radio Eye: My 68 [mp3]

I think there was a bit too much sharing in yesterday's Berlin post. So no teenage reminiscences today.

At St-Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square they’ve got a charity called the Vicar’s Relief Fund which, apart from sounding a bit Dickensian, does lots of important work with poor and homeless people in London.

I like the fund because it’s built on a human scale and helps people directly, giving them money to solve day-to-day problems. Unlike the Big Picture, macro concerns of the proper charities, all of whom have ten-year strategies and TV advertising budgets and 'Directors of Delivery' and so on.

Anyway, the fund gets all of its money from the annual Radio 4 Christmas appeal (ever since 1927, in fact). You can read about the fund here, about the appeal here and (this is the important bit) you can give money here.(you can also phone this freephone number if you live in the UK: 0800 082 82 84) You can hear the radio appeal again here.

I think of you all as vigorous early risers so there's a strong chance you'll have heard this yesterday morning at 05:43. Bells on Sunday is another of those Radio 4 institutions that's probably impossible to abolish, no matter how far out to the fringes of the schedule it's pushed.

Someone (I visualise an elderly sound-recordist in a Morris Oxford with a huge valve-operated tape recorder) travels to a different parish church each week and records its bells. That's it (there's an archive of the last three years' bells too. Sounds like material for a mash-up to me).

I particularly liked this one because I used to live not far from St Anne's (a gorgeous white stone Hawskmoor job that's got the full magical/alchemical/allegorical treatment from both Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair in recent years) and often heard the bells on a quietish Sunday morning (MP3).