Does My Finger Look Big In This?

Janet Beat - Pioneering Knob Twiddler

BBC Radio 3 is smashing it out of the park at the moment. They've opened up a lot more to music experimentation and not only is it the good stuff but their presenters are so articulate and able to pronounce difficult international names with an ease and fluency I've not heard elsewhere. That's attention to detail. 5pm onwards if you're in need of the kind of music that washes off the 2022 pressure building up dangerously around us as a global medical biometric security complex. More on that later when I post about my recent stay in Southampton General Hospital.

I was listening a couple of nights ago, and the presenter announced that I'd been listening to Janet Beat, one of the early electronic music pioneers. Huh, I thought. I know most of the pioneering names but not this one.

Turns out as the top comment below the video {Eliane Radrigue} on Youtube says:

Interesting to notice how a lot (if not most?) of the pioneers of ambient and electronic music from the 60s across to the early 80s were women..Eliane Radrigue, Laurie Spiegel, Pauline Oliveros, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Charlotte Bebe Barron etc...

Well I certainly didn't know that before so there's plenty of rich searches to explore her female contemporaries. It's also worth noting that one of the earliest synthesiser pioneers Wendy formerly Walter Carlos was also an early pioneer of sexual characteristics reassignment surgery.

Craig David & MNEK - Who You Are

I haven't paid much attention to Craig David till recently. He's a Southampton Lad so I do get to hear him on voicefm.co.uk where local talent obviously gets a bit more airplay and that's how I found out this wonderful song was his using Google Assistant to identify the track.

Not only is it a blinder, but it handles homosexuality or gender dysphoria with the kind of restraint that is classy, not obnoxiously shoved down our throats.

Craig comes across to me as a nice guy and when I think about the excessive hammering he got via Bo Selecta it felt overdone and agenda-driven to me. I wonder if he upset someone powerful? That's the usual media agenda when they slag someone off day in and day out like Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump.

Craigs voice in this track is as close to angelic I can think of. What a talent.

Not so sure about that MBE though. I'd rather have leprosy than an award of Empire and Royalty.

Another few years or even months and everyone will know.