A quick glance around the schedules

[johncorrigan]

Just listened to a rather fine half half hour on R4 entitled 'Space, The Vinyl Frontier' - I'm a sucker for space and add the musical dimension and you've got me...and they had Carl Sagan and Public Service Broadcasting too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b067x151

...and of course there's still the space based collab playlist over there on Spotty.
spotify:user:trautiganlaylist:6edc4xJzR2qFliXmph5FW0

[Lat-Literal]

Just listened to a rather fine half half hour on R4 entitled 'Space, The Vinyl Frontier' - I'm a sucker for space and add the musical dimension and you've got me...and they had Carl Sagan and Public Service Broadcasting too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b067x151

...and of course there's still the space based collab playlist over there on Spotty.
spotify:user:trautiganlaylist:6edc4xJzR2qFliXmph5FW0

Thanks - Space is the Place!

I have got back into Spot-fi but don't know how to sign up to the playlist.

(And the messaging system still confuses me)

Help on the first would be appreciated.

[johncorrigan]

Thanks - Space is the Place!

I have got back into Spot-fi but don't know how to sign up to the playlist.

(And the messaging system still confuses me)

Help on the first would be appreciated.

First of all click on this, Lat.

https://open.spotify.com/user/trautigan/playlist/6edc4xJzR2qFliXmph5FW0

...or copy into your browser if you can't click. Then allow it to be opened. Then click the button to follow Global's playlist. 'Finalising the Frontier'. We'll be able to see you then. Will you still have the same user name? The messaging and notifications are up on the top right (at least mine are) and it's much the same after that for sending messages.

[Lat-Literal]

First of all click on this, Lat.

https://open.spotify.com/user/trautigan/playlist/6edc4xJzR2qFliXmph5FW0

...or copy into your browser if you can't click. Then allow it to be opened. Then click the button to follow Global's playlist. 'Finalising the Frontier'. We'll be able to see you then. Will you still have the same user name? The messaging and notifications are up on the top right (at least mine are) and it's much the same after that for sending messages.

Yes, thank you JC, I think the first bits have worked.

[Globaltruth]

Yes, thank you JC, I think the first bits have worked.

Messaging on Spotify is a (well-known) nightmare, only works on certain devices, and, because they insist on having a dark grey slider on a black background for a long time I didn't realise I could move up and down the messaging list.

But - a discovery I have discovered is that Spotify generates a Discover Weekly playlist every Monday based on what you've been listening to - it's actually better than some of the awful recommendations from other places and I've actually discovered some discoveries as a result (Ed: think you'll discover that's the end of this post)

[Lat-Literal]

Messaging on Spotify is a (well-known) nightmare, only works on certain devices, and, because they insist on having a dark grey slider on a black background for a long time I didn't realise I could move up and down the messaging list.

But - a discovery I have discovered is that Spotify generates a Discover Weekly playlist every Monday based on what you've been listening to - it's actually better than some of the awful recommendations from other places and I've actually discovered some discoveries as a result (Ed: think you'll discover that's the end of this post)

Thanks GT. l can't understand why they have made it so complicated. Surely they know? I have now made the move from XP to 8.1 so maybe it will be easier but at present it looks and feels about the same in most respects including vis a vis the Spotify. I don't do mobile phones at all as you need 20/20 vision and the fingers of a nine year old. It is discrimination essentially against people with life experience. 95 is still the new young but 50-ish is the new old. That's wot the difference between income and house prices does.

Anyhow, onwards and upwards.

[Globaltruth]

With respect to messaging, in 2011 Spotify 'partnered' with FaceBook and, in my opinion, that is how they want us all to message - via FaceBook. As I'm not on FaceBook that is a tad diificult. Spotify have not changed messaging since 2011, obviously the FaceBook relationship works well for them.

Anyway, probably elsewhere on this forum (even though it's R4) but this deserves a mention ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b066vyy7#play

[Lat-Literal]

Anyway, probably elsewhere on this forum (even though it's R4) but this deserves a mention ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b066vyy7#play

Oh yes. I can feel an essay coming on. This ties in with what I alluded to in my post on Gordon Crosse. When we were all invited to sing at the Croydon Schools' Music Festival in 1974, the main piece was the less than likely "The Demon of Adachigahara" composed by Crosse in 1968. The other compositions were Copland's "Zion's Walls", "Simple Gifts" and "Ching a Ring Chaw". Ten and eleven year old suburban primary school kids with no musical ability to speak of being taken by bus to the north of the borough where there were more black children than white. Rehearsals - serious, intense, professional as if we were all older and at a music college. The entire thing was extraordinarily well managed. Sellick and Smith were there or thereabouts on the fringes, performing at the Fairfield Hall to show us how it should be done before we did it. I suppose there were a hundred or more of us. The part of the programme which only involved the more urban schools was ostensibly "steel drum" so it was a brilliant cultural mix and an opportunity for greater integration.

I think we did do quite a lot of plinkety plonk earlier on for I remember a variety of glockenspiels. The first music other than hymns was, though, based on sitting around teachers with guitars rather as if they were in "Nuts in May" with us cross-legged singing "Lord of the Dance" and "Kumbaya". Impersonations of trees, yes, to "Music and Movement" and a lot of folk reels for the compulsory country dancing run by the Deputy Headmistress who could teach no other subject. It wasn't given the same priority as English but was viewed by the school as more important than Maths. The Headmaster - almost identical to Harold Wilson in appearance and demeanour - taught basket weaving but only to the boys. The very best songs came later and were on the BBC's "Music Workshop", especially the "Colour Me Cornwall" series. Fantastic. Actually, I can still sing at least one of the songs in full.

The cultural and social dynamics of it interest me now but I haven't yet been able to get my head around it all. I think one thing that is clear is that this was the proverbial awful liberal schooling. While being woeful in some key areas - there was nothing on English grammar although there was a vague allusion to it in sporadic are-we-really-attempting-this lessons in French - it could be remarkably advanced in areas like music and art. There was a looseness in the emphasis on experimentation - sometimes it was a case of "oh paint whatever pictures you feel like and all of them will probably be good" - but opportunities were created in being so haphazard. In contrast, my independent school experience was stodgy. Perhaps that early approach was better designed for those of a younger age, perhaps by 1975 it was all a bit old hat and perhaps it was just a bit too close to the post-war Labour vision for the masses beyond the elites. I did join the choir at senior school and we performed songs by Gershwin as well as being involved in a performance of Handel's Messiah. In a house competition, I can't quite recall what all eight houses did but I think the winners sang Hamlisch's "One" while ours did "The Trolley Bus Song". Whatever, the feeling wasn't the same. There was an insularity to it. If pupils weren't intending to be employed in a professional orchestra the music department ditched them at the end of year two. And oddly for all of the formal emphasis in that place, the approach could seem a bit too casual compared with what we had been taken through for Crosse and Copland.

The other area of interest to me now is how it all weaved in with radio listening habits in the home. I am not sure it was felt at the time to have weaved in much at all for the two seemed entirely separate. But then Radio 1 and non schools Radio 4 were not Radio 3 at its most innovative and forward looking. Also, Mrs Waller knew how to fly into a rage when the sword dance sticks collapsed about our feet but she may have been completely out of her depth when it came to Ewan MacColl and the Watersons. It was a strange era. I think it must have been the most creative in schooling terms. Today, having Buckley's "Grace" on the "O'level" curriculum is all very fine but one just wonders about the limitations in everything being so packaged and knowing without any real knowing. There is a ludicrous belief in the we-can-all-do-the-static-a-la-carte that there is a mastery in modern bureaucracies when patently there isn't at all. The key word might be "flux" for the 1960s/early 1970s were very evidently as in flux culturally and socially as children are in their development. There is no sense of life being so now as we are in the information age but of course it is - it always is - and it is the notion that everything can be professionally hammered down that is the biggest, most arrogant constraint. I am happy to say I've never been an expert in anything. The quid pro quo is that I just don't believe experts exist.

As an adjunct, there had already been much change by 1983. When Britain's leading authority on French politics refused to give lectures on campus and expected us instead to go to his home in the evenings for a concert by him of Bob Dylan covers ahead of any relevant tutoring, that was no Kumbaya and we ran several miles. Maybe, though, we were being unfair both to him and to us. It might have been different had we been able to tell ourselves "at least it isn't 2015". And he was the sort of bloke who would have been a great tree.

With respect to messaging, in 2011 Spotify 'partnered' with FaceBook and, in my opinion, that is how they want us all to message - via FaceBook. As I'm not on FaceBook that is a tad diificult. Spotify have not changed messaging since 2011, obviously the FaceBook relationship works well for them.
[/URL]

Yes. I'm not on Facebook or that other thing they have now - Facepal or something - and having tried it I just can't understand the appeal of it. I feel exactly the same about Twitter and have never had an account on it. The only one I ever read - and it is very, very occasional - is the one calling itself The Globaljukeboxed but for God's sake don't ever tell him.

[johncorrigan]

Oh yes. I can feel an essay coming on..

You know, we missed you when you were away, Lat-Lit!!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You know, we missed you when you were away, Lat-Lit!!!

... and just look at how many Threads have been galvanized back into life since he's returned!

[Lat-Literal]

You know, we missed you when you were away, Lat-Lit!!!

Aw, thank you kindly.

[Lat-Literal]

You know, we missed you when you were away, Lat-Lit!!!

... and just look at how many Threads have been galvanized back into life since he's returned!

Aw - thank you kindly good people.

[johncorrigan]

I love the BBC sometimes - especially radio - whether it's a beautiful bit of romantic violin on R3 or an ancient Jerry Lee Lewis live recording on 6 Music. This morning flicking from one channel I chanced on Sona Jobarteh on Woman's Hour. She is that unusual being, a female kora virtuoso - she talked a bit about the kora and then played a fine tune. I think Jenny Murray, who appeared a bit out of her musical depth, was nonetheless suitably impressed. (so was Frank Gardner) It's about ten minutes in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b068lsn6

[johncorrigan]

I notice that tomorrow evening (Sunday) Beeb4 are replaying that rather excellent 30 minute programme where Laura Mvula revisits the work of her great hero, Nina Simone - very enjoyable I thought. Later in the evening there's highlights of Sir Van's concert on Cypress Avenue last week in celebration of his 70th birthday. Looks like a Sunday night in...no change there!

[Lat-Literal]

I notice that tomorrow evening (Sunday) Beeb4 are replaying that rather excellent 30 minute programme where Laura Mvula revisits the work of her great hero, Nina Simone - very enjoyable I thought. Later in the evening there's highlights of Sir Van's concert on Cypress Avenue last week in celebration of his 70th birthday. Looks like a Sunday night in...no change there!

This recommendation and the previous one look very interesting and I will follow up on them.

I was listening to "The History Hour" on the World Service in the early hours of this morning. The Auschwitz cellist, Russia's first DJ who as just stepped down after 38 years of broadcasting and the heyday of Somali music. Highly recommended - and I think they said it was a part of a month-long season in which the emphasis will be on music stories:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03139b9

Seva Novgorodsev MBE -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/seva-novgorodsev-bbc-russian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Kca7Gk_Fc

Maryan Mursal -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqf4PwGopMg