Archives for February 2009

I've known about U2's rooftop gig for weeks. The secret was public by Wednesday but until then we'd been pretending that the "big Irish band" who were going to perform on top of Broadcasting House were B*Witched. Few were convinced.

The Music Interactive team's office in Portland Place has the best view of U2's open air 8th floor stage so it's no surprise that we've been overrun today by a TV crew. There are wires stuffed behind the radiator next to my desk and Health and Safety have allowed the windows to be fully open for the first time that I can recall so that two TV cameras can poke out and film the band.

The mid-afternoon lull was broken at 4pm when Bono and The Edge stepped out onto the Broadcasting House balcony. A crowd on Regent Street, all hoping that their camera phones could capture the moment, let out an enormous cheer.

4pm: Bono gives the gathering crowd a wave from the Broadcasting House balcony

By the time it had got dark the crash barriers had gone up along Regent Street and a massive crowd had gathered. It was interesting overhearing their voices which ranged from "What's going on here?" to "I've known about this for days."

Before the gig started at 6.45pm the office was full of faces I didn't recognise and even some children. I should have sold tickets.

My colleagues Tim and James, who produce the websites for our major music events like Glastonbury and the Electric Proms, have been holed up in a meeting room "closed to unauthorised staff" making sure all of the content from today is published as soon as possible.

You can now watch all of this morning's Live Lounge set from the Radio Theatre as well as gems we've found in the BBC archive. My favourite is the clip from a 1981 episode of Top of the Pops which you need to watch for both Dave Lee Travis' 'comical' outfit and some special effects possibly created on a Commodore 64.

Later tonight you'll be able to watch all of U2's performance from the roof of Broadcasting House on the website and tomorrow highlights from all of today's fun and games on the TV via the red button.

Do leave a comment and tell us what you think of U2 at the BBC.



Nigel Smith is Senior Producer at BBC Music Interactive

Updates from U2 at the BBC

6.15pm

Just heading off somewhere now. Speak soon.

6.47pm

Wow. What an amazing way to finish. A gig on the roof of Broadcasting House. I've had an incredible time.

You can hear Dom on the Chris Moyles show every morning on Radio 1 from 6.30am.

Updates from U2 at the BBC

4.50pm

At Radio 2 now, the band are about to speak to Chris Evans. I just can't get enough of the U2. X

5.20pm

I've been having a great chat with Adam about the music he's into. Loves The Killers and a band in California who I'm going to find out...

5.28pm

Bono is giving the travel lady a massage. Blimey.

5.53pm

Can i just say hello to my wife and children? I'm aware that i've not been the ideal husband/father today. Sorry. I'll be better tomorrow. X

Follow me on Twitter for more updates at domisatwit.

See tons more U2 stuff on the U2 at the BBC website.

You can hear Dom on the Chris Moyles show every morning on Radio 1 from 6.30am.

Updates from U2 at the BBC

3.07pm

Well - what can I say? I have just fulfilled a bit of dream. They say never meet your idols etc but I did they were just fantastic!



3.47pm

The empty stage is all that's left. For now...

Follow me on Twitter for more updates at domisatwit.

See tons more U2 stuff on the U2 at the BBC website.

You can hear Dom on the Chris Moyles show every morning on Radio 1 from 6.30am.

Updates from U2 at the BBC

2.15pm

Bit of lunch now. Rejoining the band in about an hour

Follow me on Twitter for more updates at domisatwit.

See tons more U2 stuff on the U2 at the BBC website.



You can hear Dom on the Chris Moyles show every morning on Radio 1 from 6.30am.

Updates from U2 at the BBC

1.50pm

My present. First pressing vinyl with added Bono graffiti.

2.06pm

Interviewed Bono and Adam. Amazing. Very cool and funny. Hear it all on the Chris Moyles show on Monday.

Follow me on Twitter for more updates at domisatwit.

See tons more U2 stuff on the U2 at the BBC website.

You can hear Dom on the Chris Moyles show every morning on Radio 1 from 6.30am.

Updates from U2 at the BBC

1.30pm

Still waiting to do the interview with Bono. Still as nervous as i was 10 min ago.

Follow me on Twitter for more updates at domisatwit.

See tons more U2 stuff on the U2 at the BBC website.

Hourly Updates on U2 at the BBC

11.40am

Starting to fill up a bit in here now. It's very quickly becoming a very cool day.

Jo Whiley interviews the band backstage

11.55am

Still haven't said hello to the band. Think I should do this soon.

Me. Five mins before they will walk out on stage

12.30pm

Get On Your Boots live. Amazing song and great crowd here too. Brilliant atmosphere and Bono says they'll play the UK early summer.

Follow me on Twitter for more updates at domisatwit

See tons more U2 stuff on the U2 at the BBC website.

Hourly Updates on U2 at the BBC

Look who it is: Bono arrives at the BBC

10.40am

Well. Here I am in the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House. U2 are sound checking. Very excited now. I'm 4 feet away from The Edge.

Soundcheck: They're at full volume now

11.05am

Mr Bono is in fine voice in sound check. I'm grinning like a loon.

Follow me on Twitter for more updates at domisatwit

See tons more U2 stuff on the U2 at the BBC website.

They say never meet your hero but... too late!

I'm going to meet Bono and the rest of U2 in less than 24 hours. They're playing the Live Lounge for Jo Whiley and then - somehow - I've managed to blag a pass to spend the day with them. I know!

So where do you start with something like this? Ask very insightful, original questions? Or perhaps just come clean and try your best not to dribble too much. I've got every album the band has made and seen them live about 15 times too. I'm what you'd call a FAN!

The stuff from the new album sounds great and I can't wait to hear the the new songs in front a crowd.



The plan is for me to tweet all day as I follow the band around the BBC. I might try and take some pics too. I would however like to apologise in advance if I sound a bit giddy tomorrow - this is because I will be.

Follow me on twitter - domisatwit - and we'll see what happens, together! You'll also be able to my tweets and any photos I take on this blog and the U2 at the BBC website.



You can hear Dom on the Chris Moyles show every morning on Radio 1 from 6.30am.

English alto player Martin Speake is in session on this week's Jazz on 3. It's a fine set with a band he calls Change of Heart featuring the swedish piano player Bobo Stenson.

Martin writes distinctive and refreshingly simple tunes that act as a springboard for his expert but never flashy playing. This band also brings out another side to the great Stenson. His most recent CD Cantando was one of my favourite releases of 2008; it's a mini-masterpiece of ethereal folkish charm. In Speake's company Bobo is much more boppish and references Thelonious Monk in a subtle and literal way.

Chatting to Martin off-air we reminisced about a very different jazz time when I was a fledgling jazz DJ and he was one fourth of a sax quartet called Itchy fingers. The band won a jazz competition judged by Joe Zawinul and sponsored by Schiltz beer. (I find it hard to even write the word Schlitz as the sickly brew was the cause of my first ever hangover - something you never forget!). Itchy Fingers were runners up but amazingly the competition was televised and a bigwig at Virgin records was watching. He immediately signed the band for a huge advance - for a sax quartet!

I'm never one for looking back and mourning for the good old jazz days. The music is as alive today as ever. However the late 1980s and early 90s were extraordinary times for major record labels signing up jazz artists. Don Cherry, Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor were on A&M, Henry Threadgill was on Sony and in the UK Courtney Pine, Andy Sheppard and Steve Williamson all had major label gigs.

As it happens Martin Speake was very unhappy with the music Itchy Fingers made for Virgin and left the group. For the last 20 years he's been one of the "quiet men" of the music - head down mastering his art. Our Jazz On 3 session is witness to a fine player and composer who irrelevant of music business trends has built a career based on excellence, perseverance and love of the music.

Jez Nelson presents Jazz on 3 every Monday at 11.15pm on Radio 3

I present a three hour show on 6 Music which includes two featured concerts from the BBC music archive and four featured sessions. Then we play lots of other records.



The bits in between the music consist of me passing on the necessary basic information on the music and, with the help of the listeners, we spin and add to various discussion threads. Recent subjects have included "What is the best example of drumming on a record", "What song most epitomises the 1980s" and "Who was the greatest coat wearer in popular music history."

There's more to the show than the music we play from the archive. That said it provides the basic structure around which we scatter all sorts of new and old tunes. When I first took over the slot I was determined to explore the music archive much more than it had been investigated by my predecessors. I guess the idea was to boldly go (excuse the split infinitive) as far into the archive as possible. So far, so good. We've managed to repeat old sessions that probably haven't been aired since they were first broadcast. And most of them have been well worth the effort.

That effort can't be classified as proper work as it involves looking through books and listening to lots of music. That's how we rediscover Peel sessions and other recordings from throughout BBC radio including concerts and all the sessions that we've had on 6 Music since we launched in 2002. The great thing about the archive is that it keeps growing with every session and live recording the BBC makes. That gives us such a wide variety of stuff from which to choose. Once material has been chosen, we order it up and wait for it to arrive.

On any given show we can mix up a session from The Smiths with Gil Scott-Heron playing at Glastonbury in 1989 and a Sonic Youth concert from London's South Bank with more recent sessions from Midlake or The Shins alongside older ones from Roxy Music or The Soft Machine. And every time I worry that we might be getting low on potential material - some more arrives. Or I'm reminded of something we played a while ago which is worth repeating.

There are some holy grails; some older recordings that I fear may be lost forever. I hold out the hope that, as with rediscovered Hancocks, some of the lost music archive recordings may turn up one day.

There was a flurry of excitement in my part of the 6 Music office last week. Admittedly it wasn't a very recognisable flurry. And we're tucked away in the corner anyway so nobody takes any notice of us anyway. Truth be told, it was more a conversation I was having with researcher and sometime 6 Music Freak Zone Professor Justin Spear. He was on the trail of a session Captain Beefheart had done for John Peel which we were hoping to repeat on the show. For a brief moment we thought we had it in our grasp. Or at least in the post. Sadly, the trail has now gone cold but we're still hoping it will turn up one day. It could be sitting on a cassette somewhere. In a drawer. Next to an old copy of Wisden.



Gideon Coe's show is on 6 Music Monday - Thursday from 9pm

A couple of weeks ago I went to see the first UK gig of a new(ish) improv band called Buffalo Collision at the Vortex in North London. I like the Vortex a lot. It's small, well designed, has a great sound and is always full of brilliant passionate people - those who run it and frequent it. I also like it because it's within spitting distance of one of my favourite restaurants. And there's a lot of spit in Dalston. Mangal 2 does great Turkish food but it's the art I go there for. Visit any and every night at precisely 8.30pm and you'll dine in the company of Gilbert and George. As with all aspects of their (public?) lives G and G run their diets to a precise and rigid system. So for the price of an £ 8 kebab you're guaranteed to feel like a bit player in a performance art piece.

So full of Shish and admiration for Gilbert and/or George's suits I headed to the Vortex. God it was packed. The reason - the first UK appearance of a new super-group of sorts. Buffalo Collision brings together two duos from seemingly very different parts of the US scene. Tim Berne (sax) and Hank Roberts (Cello) are NYC underground jazz royalty. Dave King (drums) and Ethan Iverson (piano) are two thirds of The Bad Plus - a piano trio that thrill and annoy in equal measure. Adept and fiery players they are best known for quirky covers of unlikely tunes by the likes of Aphex twin, Nirvana and Blondie.

On paper it's quite an unlikely double, double act. And in some ways it didn't totally gel. But that was part of why I liked it so much. Tim and Hank have their own language, Dave and Ethan theirs. Often Berne and Roberts would take the lead and head off in to open ground, then Iverson would seek out a melody in their madness and bring the group back to more structured play. The result was the on the spot invention of some wonderfully engaging music. Highlight was undoubtedly Hank Roberts - each solo he played left you wanting more.

For the first set I was squashed in the corner at the back next to an amazing guy who laughed his way through the entire 45 minutes. Rather than being annoying it was really touching. I love the way people laugh at free music gigs. Improv can be silly, moving, embarrassing, astonishing - all things that make you laugh. We had the comedian Stewart Lee on Jazz On 3 a few weeks ago. He's a big free music fan and we asked him to interview the trombone player Gail Brand. It was fascinating. Stewart revealed that he'd learnt a lot about comic timing from watching free jazz.

You can hear Buffalo Collision on this week's Jazz On 3. They are one of four groups recorded at last Summer's Saalfelden Jazz Festival. Sallfelden is a small town in the Salzburg region of Austria and home to one of the premierre jazz events of the summer. Also on the show are Austrian bass player Peter Herbert, electro-improv from Craig Taborn and a Don Cherry tribute led by Dave Douglas.

LP Hartley famously wrote that "the past is another country". Making the third part of Folk America, about the 60s folk revival, the past felt strangely familiar to me.

This series was made throughout 2008 as America worked itself into election frenzy. I travelled to the USA in September with talented assistant producer Luke McMahon. Our whistle stop-tour would take in New York, California, Arizona, Florida, Connecticut and Rhode Island- all within two weeks.

That's a lot of driving. Fortunately we wouldn't have to rely on the radio for entertainment as we would be accompanied by our own election-fever barometer. Californian Daniel Meyers' personal mission was to make sure every single American voter was going to put an X next to Barack Obama. He was going to win the election singlehandedly, on an individual-by-individual basis. To relax Daniel would also perform series cameraman duties.

Like all good journeys, this trip would be full of epiphanies. On a 300 mile pre-breakfast slog to film with Pete Seeger, Luke was incredulous to discover that he was a capitalist. I too was equally amazed to find out I was a nihilist. Before I could shout, 'I'll cut off your Johnson, Lebowski' we were discussing the Middle East crisis and then it was all too late...

Crossing the country on our mini-crusade reminded me of the attitudes of many involved in the 60s folk revival. There are many resonances between the Kennedy and Obama generations. For example, Obama's rhetoric has often conjured up the figure of Martin Luther King Jr - the key figure in the Civil Rights Movement that many young 60s folk revivalists patronised.

The 60s folk revival itself is a bit of a curate's egg. Between Elvis joining the army in 1958 and The Beatles' American invasion of '64 a generation of liberal-minded youth managed to get something called folk music into the charts and onto television.

These well-intentioned college kids could sometimes make excruciating music. The charts were constantly filled with ersatz, preppy folk trios. Luckily there were many notable exceptions, including a certain Bob Dylan who would float the early stage of his career on the revival.

As well as some great individual talents, I think the 60s 'folk scare' had two intriguing legacies.



The revivalists fostered an interest in the work of old southern musicians, bringing some of them into the commercial spotlight - many for the first time and in their dotage. It could be argued that without the folk revival the world would never have heard of these figures.

For instance, on the back of the resurgence Columbia Records chose to release King of the Delta Blues, an amalgam of Robert Johnson's scant recording career in 1961. He'd been dead since 1938 but the album would go on to inspire countless generations of musicians.

Secondly, the interest in America's roots music that the folk revival re-ignited went a long way into broadening the church of what would become known as rock music. In everyone from Neil Young to Fleet Foxes, Canned Heat to Kings of Leon you can find traces of an unfamiliar old America.

Working on a series like Folk America has thrown the power and depth of the musicalachievements of this fascinating country into stark relief. It has been a real treat to delve into the absolutely mind-blowing cornucopia of what comes under the term of 'American folk': Ernest Stoneman, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Dock Boggs, Bukka White, Leadbelly, Bill Monroe, Muddy Waters, Roscoe Holcomb, The Carter Family, Earl Scruggs, Jimmie Rogers, Skip James, John Hurt, Woody Guthrie...

Amazing. We just don't make them like that.

Ben Whalley is the director of episode 3 of Folk America.