I love WordPress, but the nature of my needs are now more suited to tumblr.com so I’ve moved there.

Please come on over to my new place, have a read and a chatter. (Don’t chatter here)

I’ll leave the archive of stuff here rather than try to export it or whatever, but as of November 2008, I’m officially blogging here: http://christopherengland.tumblr.com which should also be mapped to by http://www.christopherengland.com which you should learn off by heart and visit at least once a day!  It’ll change your life…

Politically, I hate Ken Livingstone. When the lovely Boris ousted him from control of London, I was a happy man. Be gone, creep, I thought.

Then he got a programme on LBC. Yes, he still uses it to try to settle scores or blame everything from global warming to broken fingernails on Margaret Thatcher, but actually it now sounds really good. I don’t know if this is down to his Producer, but Ken sounds confident and like a real talk radio presenter. I’m impressed.

However, I hang my head in shame at having to come out and admit this in public.

Lordy, I hope I’m not turning into a loony leftie.

I’ve been listening online to this station for a little while now ( http://www.kcrfm.co.uk ), after finding out it’s no longer called The Rocket – D’oh! – and I was pleasantly surprised by the human touch.

The presenters actually speak to their listeners as if they are people rather than resorting to standard commercial radio links. None of that silly shouty voice and outrageous telegraphing of commercial breaks with formula phrases. Sung jingles too! None of the constipated / I’ve just wet myself annoying voice-over man/woman liners you’d normally endure between each song either.

I’m not sure about the music policy. It does seem quite adventurous and broadly playlisted with regard to the ‘oldies’ and has a fair selection from ‘today’. I’m not sure that it works for getting listeners. The only thing that pulls ‘em in is playing 30 songs on high rotation.

But hey, it got me listening to oldies without wanting to kill myself!

Years ago, commercial radio was more human and less full of formula and cliches and had listeners. The most listened to music radio today (Radios 1 and 2) still has that human touch some might consider ‘old fashioned’. So, there must be something in it that these critics are missing.

I titled this “RNI – wtf is it about?” because I want to say a few words about Garrrry Stevens’s’s internet radio stream RNI (more details: http://www.garrystevens.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rni ).

So, I’ve been listening on and off for a while and I’ve just had to smile, but there’s a couple of things I just don’t get. Firstly, if anoraks are all around the same age, and part of anoraking was to get away from the crass and novelty records on the legal radio at the time, then why is RNI focusing on all that’s awful on the novelty front?

Equally, there’s a heck of a lot of oldies from before most anoraks were even born. Again, this was music that anoraks rejected in their need for the music of the day. So, why are anoraks suddenly into all this crap they used to hate?

Secondly, I think the stream is addictive and a brilliant anorak listen, although for me this is mainly for the jingles, since I mainly hate oldies (Why doesn’t it play some modern stuff too?).

Loving the Tony Allen impressions and the cut-up and chopping of various stables of jingles from lord knows which eras, sometimes merged and montaged together in a way that’s embarrassing yet kinda works. Now and again a novelty tune will kick off, especially the old TV themes, and whilst I’m sure that they get boring when listening over a long period when they come around again and again, for now they are brilliant.

So, highly recommended anorak listening: RNI. Anybody else listening?

It seems that the idea of inviting a bunch of folk into your home in order to maintain a version of Radio Caroline was not necessarily a good one.

Apart from all the naughty DJs coming in at all hours and playing their rock’n'roll and crazy guitar hero type beats at full volume and keeping the old lady in the next bedroom awake, there’s the issue of who keeps things running and dealing with the automation when it frequently falls over.

Well, in typical Caroline Maidstone style of course, this’ll be down to the poor fellow who let them into to his home in the first place, even though he didn’t realise this would be the case when he helpfully invited them in after they were thrown out of their previous squat.

I’m hearing that enough is enough and Caroline Maidstone has been given its marching orders. It has to relocate within the next 10 weeks or quite fairly the plug will just be pulled on its operation. The Caroline countdown is on.

So, the quest is on for a new sucker, erm, I meant a new volunteer to let the radio station inhabit his or her spare bedroom. Can you help?

If you are near Maidstone (because we wouldn’t want the nurses that drive the volunteers having to drive too far now, would we) maybe you’d like to offer your facilities to this legendary bedroom radio station.

I certainly would if I lived south of the Thames. But I don’t, so I can’t. If they want to move operations up to East London I’d certainly welcome them with open arms. Or is that fully loaded arms with the safety catch off. I’m never sure.

Can you help Caroline Mattress bounce back?

And finally: Why are the presenters not allowed to mention that they are looking for a new bedroom? Apparently they’ll be thrown off the station if they mention it on air or are caught discussing it with ‘enemies of the station’ or on message boards, and will never be allowed onto Caroline Maidstone again (unless they prove themselves by attacking me, the usual pre-requisite for being welcomed back into the fold).

They’ve been told that the vast majority of their listeners aren’t actually interested in where the studio is, and that’s the reason it must remain secret. Interesting. If the vast majority of listeners don’t care where the studio is, why does Caroline Maidstone try to live off the fact that the unlicensed free radio station Radio Caroline had its studios on a boat in the North Sea? Hmmm?

Despite my moaning about aspects of them, look at this written by the Brand Director of Absolute Radio.  Look mum, I’m famous!

http://onegoldensquare.com/2008/09/absolute-beginners-no-longer-by-chris-lawson/

On that note, I have been impressed by the whole ‘openness’ of the One Golden Square blog thing and the way they’ve scouted around the more credible radio fora (such as Anorak Nation) and challenged what people are saying or explained what they are doing.

That has got to be a first in radio, and it is truly worth giving those Absolute folk a round of applause for. They didn’t have to do any of that.

If they persist with their openness and apparent honesty with regard to ‘involving’ listeners in decisions, then I can see them building a tight-knit cult following which can only go on to reflect very positively in their RAJAR.

As Simon Cowell would say (or did he get it from me?), Good for them!

This new Absolute Radio, right. It promises you ain’t gonna hear the same thing between 10am and 5pm, all part of the ‘no repeat workday’, right.

So how come all I hear repeated again and again is that I mustn’t miss the breakfast show tomorrow morning? Oh, and constant repeating of the fact that it’s a no repeat work day!

Don’t tell us about it, just do it!

(The music’s quite a broader range for now though. Cool!)

Is it me or is the all new Absolute Radio (“used to be known as Virgin Radio”) going the way of Jack FM?

Jack FM in Oxford (owned by Absolute) boringly has no presenters except on the breakfast show or when they halt the music and do their sports commentary. Instead it has pre-recorded automated drops that are side-spittingly funny, not, and recorded in their mass by voice artist Paul Darrow (who used to be in Blake’s Seven on the telly). The only difference between Jack FM and an iPod (or preferably one of the better and cheaper generic mp3 players) is that when something comes on that you don’t want to hear, you can’t step on to the next allegedly random track.

Anyway, for Absolute Radio the Absolute people have come up with an absolutely side-splittingly funny idea. They have little voice drops inbetween the songs – in fact, the DJs are not being allowed to say much apart from speaking just before a whole bunch of commercials, in order that the hilarious voice drops are given maximum exposure. The voice drops are not quite recorded by Paul Darrow but David Meyer, although they might as well have been Mr Darrow. They sound the same, or maybe it’s the same scripts. Sigh. Whatever happened to the idea of allowing the DJs and normal presenters develop themselves? Obviously not!

‘Absolute Radio’, that was the name they settled on after months of debate about what should succeed ‘Virgin Radio’.  They looked at their letterheads or the name of the company on the door that they were walking into every morning and suddenly had a lightbulb moment!

I think it’s a really good name. The bit I didn’t ‘get’ was why none of the pundits sussed that it was the most obvious name to give the station, as that was the name of the company!

If it’s really true that the format is changing to a more realistic one (larger number of songs, personality presenters, less highly structured and restrictive links), then that’s also got to be good news, surely?

I’d assume that the whole music and presentation format will slowly bend towards the new style over the coming weeks even though I hear there’ll be an official end of Virgin and new beginning for Absolute, rather than a slow morphing from one name to the other.

Hmmm. Radio stations closing down and opening up, an anorak’s dream! I might even listen.

Apparently it’ll have a ‘no repeat workday’ section (10am thru 5pm) when songs won’t be played more than once.

Hey, Absolute: Here’s a request for you: Please don’t have the DJs or stupid liner-men constantly telling people it’s a ‘no repeat workday’ or constant flagging up of such things about the format.

Just get on and do it without telegraphing it.

The excitement of radio should be that things bubble away and happen without the mechanics of what’s happening being effectively explained on air. I think of it as being like a scenic coach journey – you want the driver to be using the PA system to tell you what great and interesting stuff is outside, you don’t want him telling you every time he changes gear or where the petrol gauge is pointing, do you?

I use (in business) Google Apps for Domains, have been playing extensively with Google Gears, and generally find that things Google just work. Compare and contrast things Microsoft. Why buy MS Office when Google Documents is free! Why use IE8 when it takes so long to clunk and click to resolve webpages? And Firefox is resource heavy, and slows right down when fully loaded with add-ons.

Google Chrome just works.