Speechification

A radio nostalgia special! First, part one of a two-part feature about Wolfman Jack, legendary 1960s DJ who broadcast from a Mexican ‘border blaster‘ and was made famous when he provided the soundtrack for George Lucas’ American Graffiti in 1969 (MP3). Second, a really fascinating Archive Hour from last year about the surprising early years of commercial radio in Britain: God, Pirates and The Ovaltineys (MP3). Third, an hour-and-a-half of memories from 80 years of Irish radio made to mark the closure of the state broadcaster’s medium wave service last week (MP3).

Only the Wolfman doc will show up in the podcast so click the links to listen to the other shows. Border Blaster: In Search of The Wolf,  God, Pirates and The Ovaltineys, Medium Wave Goodbye.

Try as you might you can’t prevent this programme making you nostalgic for a time you don’t remember. A time when composers wouldn’t work until they had their tie on, when everyone seemed to smoke exotic Turkish cigarettes and when the BBC wrote long memos referring to everyone as ‘Mr’.  The voices are quaint but the music is belting. Nice music, nice people, niceness. What else could you want? MP3 here.

Here’s another very Radio 4 thing, an “adventure in sound and memory” from 2004. The only reference I can find to it anywhere is this page from radiolistings.co.uk which appears to be another volunteer project, providing archive listings for speech radio. The sounds here “the ring of an old telephone, a treadle sewing machine, the hum of a radiogram” are splendidly evocative, even if I don’t share the actual nostalgia of the contributors. And I suspect it won’t be long before I’m tempted to make a similar programme about the noise of a modem handshaking or the painful banging ring of one of those rock-hard shrunken footballs hitting a cold thigh in a 70s playground. (MP3 here)