The Reason
Jun 16, 2009
Hi everyone! This blog page is about to be the home of my new
podcast. Some of you will already know me from my DJing and production, while others might
know my photography
work. Those that don't know
me will have have picked up on the fact that I have my fingers in a
lot of pies!
So why am I doing a podcast? Well, I wanted a way to widely play
some tunes I was interested in! Commercial radio is inaccessible to
most would-be hosts of course, and while online radio shows can be
good, you're relying on people to be able to tune in at a specific
time on a specific day. That's not even taking into account the
fact that it locks you into playing at that specific time, or all
the streaming problems that seem to pop up! Playing in clubs is
cool but restricts you to how many people you can get into the
venue, and of course you need to keep it danceable so there's a lot
of stuff which is difficult/impossible to fit into a set. Besides
all that, mixtapes are harder to sell than they have been in the
past, as the market has changed and there's more of an expectation
of getting things for free. With a podcast, I can use a radio-like
format, go on at length or keep it brief, and everyone can download
easily/automatically and listen at a time of their choosing!
Putting all the "technical" considerations aside, it's really a way
for me to share and get into discussions on music. I grew up in the
pre-internet era (cue Hovis music or EPMD's "Strictly Business,"
whichever you prefer) - at that time, there was little if any
Hip-Hop on TV or commercial radio, and so for a kid with a limited
budget wanting to learn about it there were three main sources of
music and info; tape swapping, pirate radio and magazines.
The pirate stations would play whatever they thought was good - the
DJs weren't in anyone's pocket, and were playing records they'd
bought with their own money - and over the years I got the chance
to hear a wide selection; some of the records they played came from
artists who went on to become legends, while others were one or
two-hit wonders, but wonders all the same. The variety of stuff
they played allowed me to develop and define my taste - finding an
artist or record you liked lead to searching for info on them in
the magazines, seeing who they were associated with or might be
similar to, and then trying to get hold of some of that, and so
on...then exchanging tapes of albums you'd bought with friends
would send you on another path. This kind of cycle meant that
records could become underground hits in one particular area while
being pretty much ignored elsewhere.
Somehow, despite the explosion in media availability and speed of
access in the modern era, this seems to be happening less and less!
The DJs I grew up with very much kept a balance between playing
stuff that people would obviously like and playing things they
personally liked themselves, and so the range was very interesting.
This is what I'm going to try and do with this podcast; I guarantee
pretty much every episode, someone I know will say "I was really
into (song x) that you played" and then go on to say "but what was
up with that bullshit (song y)? You actually like that?" There'll
be a mixture of Hip-Hop and music more generally, "underground" and
"commercial," the somewhat known and the utterly forgotten, new and
old, the conscious and the ignorant, and the straightforward and
the slightly bizarre! I hope you'll find it interesting and
entertaining, and that it leads you towards discovering and
enjoying some music that's new to you :o)
Stay tuned - first episode soon come!
Peace,
Adam
