Charles Frith - Punk Planning: bbc

Thursday, 4 January 2024

Ewan McVicar - Abrasive Route

My first full time PAYE job was a laboratory technician producing specialist polymers for a contact lense manufacturing plant. Radio 1 was piped into most corners, and at 18 or 19 it was ok but when I look back, the DJs were self serving and indulging themselves.

They liked music but it always felt like they were more important than the product. Not any more though. I listen to a lot of Audio; music, podcasts, more female academics than males but the easiest smorgasbord to pick from, depending on my mood which is driven by the time of day or night, is mostly Radio 1, 1D, 1R and 1X but Radio 3 and 4 are faves too, usually R3 is for when I drive. Before BBC Sounds I was smoking it on Samurai FM, Audio Scrobbler, Last.FM and now Youtube is great for hunting down tracks heard in R!D and of course the dance edits are mind blowing.

The thing I love most about the Radio 1 spectrum on Sounds, is I'm sorta into pop music for the first time in decades but what makes it a canyon leap from the old days are the DJs who are of course young (except one who really needs to lay off the adrenochrome with 'make some noise', you're my age mush, make some noise about Julian Assange). Anyway, sorry about that because the focus I want to share is how unbelievably passionate about the music the presenters/producers/djs are now.

They absolutely love love love music and that's infectious so I pick up on this or that track and we're on the same wavelength. It's great and it's also a lot more different than you think I'm trying to convey so I'll leave y'all with the quotes and if I'm lucky I'll come back in five years and point out what I was trying to say without sending people insane.

It's not for everyone but the future is mind blowingly different and so it should be.