Whilst taking a neutral stance on BREXIT it is interesting that the ‘auld alliances’ seem to be reappearing. Scotland, France and now Spain throwing a ‘Spaniard in the works for BREXIT. Whatever your thoughts on the matter it is an interesting time.

It will also be an interesting time this weekend, Frome FM has a new home with studios in the revamped Frome Town Hall. It says a lot for Victorian town planning that in the space of six months we have had three homes all within 200 metres (sorry yards) of each other. Christchurch Street West starts with a school, then the Old Police Station, The Rectory, The Town Hall, Christchurch and the Old Fire Station, throw in a couple of pubs and the Wesley Chapel and you had everything you needed next to each other.

Anyway the Town Hall opens tomorrow and so Frome FM will be live from 1400 to 1700 and open to the public. Our Technical lead, Terry, has done marvels this week enabling us to move in and go live all in the same day. I will get my hands on the system Sunday with my monthly Orient Express, which will take me to where we came in; Red, White and BREXIT BLUES.

The music will include some of the artists that have already been covered earlier in this Blog, but let me add a few more courtesy of Youtube:

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

and for my dear colleague John Forde, who has introduced me to the finest in Irish Folk Music.

My best friend always asks me ‘What did you do for the community today?’, usually my begrudging answer is nothing, or what a significant contribution to X or Y dependent which end of the spectrum the day has taken me.

Today is an interesting answer, a colleague asked me to cover half of his show as he had a commitment that was fixed. What a programme,  All about Frome extra, as we had just gone live in our new studio in the revamped town hall and it was to launch the new Frome volunteer website. A great mix of people and a pleasure to meet Kate and Greg from the Town Council and Paula, Helen and Lucia who came in to talk about volunteering and their respective organisations. It was heartwarming and indicates that Frome is justifiably the best town to live in the South West of England. All these organisations (120 of them) all seeking volunteers to help make living in Frome or its environs a good experience.

Apparently it was good radio so I am pleased with that I even played some Country and Western as I didn’t have a selection of my own CDs with me to provide breaks. Did manage some reggae which leads me to my important point, my tickets to see Dreadzone at the Cheese and Grain in Frome arrived today.

See why Frome is such a good place to live?

This has been one of those weekends that you wait for, savour while it lasts and enjoy the memory once passed. Nothing is better than time with family, so the heart of our weekend was my sister and husband staying over, enabling us to catch up. Although we speak regularly on the telephone, face to face is so much better.

I was working in the afternoon, but as I was leaving our postman set the tone for the day with the delivery of two long awaited CDs, Inna de Yard The Soul of Jamaica, and Oum’s latest offering Zarabi. Marvellous music from both sides of the Atlantic. Th raw, uncut reggae rather like Jamaican moonshine. Illicit not mainstream and each track exciting you for more. This balanced with the light, jazzy and clear diction of Oum with her haunting melodies from the desert of Morocco.

Sadly I had to wait until Sunday to listen to them as it would have been rude to say “Hello, sit down, have a drink”, and then play music for my own pleasure; anyway we had a table booked at the George in Croscombe and that was our treat for Saturday night. As always excellent seafood beautifully presented, my sister opted for duck and wasn’t disappointed either. It was busy we arrived just as a sitting of 20 had ordered, so much apologies for a delay, but with good conversation the time passed quickly. The chef came and spoke afterwards, a hundred covers in one day, that is pretty good for a village pub in Somerset and speaks volumes for the standard of food produced.

In my last piece I introduced Kawehi, I am pleased to say we have tickets to see her in Cardiff in September and also Dreadzone when they appear at the Cheese and Grain in Frome in April.

The music just gets better and better, and with the sun beaming down on me as I type I guess that it is well over the yardarm, so “”thank you a Cuba Libre would be just perfick”.

thank you YouTube for the videos.

Today there has been little travel, not much thought and my musical delivery today has been the Sharks – The Car Crash Tapes. I thought readers might enjoy some different kinds of music and so two offerings. The first is Behi, an Ethnic Mongolian Band, based in Ulaanbaatur and fusing traditional Mongolian music of traditional instruments with rock and lounge music. They must be a Health and Safety Officers nightmare, high heels, long flowing dresses and walking on the edge of buildings and rock formations in the desert. Perhaps they are suffering for their art, but they do make very good music.

The second is a lady with a prodigious talent, originating from Hawaii, now living in Kansas. She goes by the name of Kawehi and will have a four venue tour in UK in the autumn. I enclose two videos from her collection to just show her ability. I think a must see for 2017.

Enjoy

https://youtu.be/HSNOqHV4cuY

We are all shocked by the events in London yesterday and naturally our thoughts are with those who were killed. All credit goes to our emergency services who did as much to save the life of the perpetrator as for his victims. Our thoughts naturally are with the victims and their families. I will not enter into the debate on the issue, but post two links which people may find useful. They are little applications which give advice or warning of emergencies and may save a life.

http://www.redcross.org.uk/What-we-do/Emergency-response/Emergency-app

http://citizenaid.org/features/download-citizenaid-app/

Enough said, now Sign Language for Radio.

Not compatible I hear you say, those who use sign language cannot hear the radio. It’s your Fly Fishing in the Yemen moment.

Of course you are right, but community radio is all about inclusiveness, the very title gives it away; it is about your community and so we should make all effort to include everybody. So when an opportunity arose to get on a course, which was an introduction to Sign Language I took it. We can all order beer in a dozen languages and say, please, thank you, yes and no; so why not add sign language to that list. As a radio presenter we are invited to go out into the community and engage with our public so if I have learned the stock phases, let us include the deaf and those who use sign language. We produce a Talking Newspaper for the visually impaired, so let us look at improving our websites so that they can be at the heart of our local communities and include the hearing impaired too.

For my own programmes, I provide playlists for the music ones that I publish on my Facebook pages. I will develop a website that will carry more information on all my programmes, but rather like the Talking Newspaper wouldn’t it be good if you could go to a site where there was a transcript of an interesting programme that you might have enjoyed listening to, with all the links to useful sites. If I have mentioned a group, you could at least see what I had been talking about on a Youtube clip.

When I am on the street I will be able to say hello to everybody, that must be good for relationships in a community.

So where is the sun cream and my fishing rod, shukraan!

Yesterday was the monthly Shepton Mallet Sunday Market, it was credit to Helen Reader, who has been the driving force behind its establishment and her unstinting efforts to revive the Friday Market. It was a pleasant walk through the centre of town, crowded with shoppers and the food stalls seemed to be doing a brisk trade. Such activity was against the backdrop of a closed bank, the town has lost two of its three banks in a year.

Against the wall of the closed bank in the market square was a stall for the town’s twinning committee. The brave souls to kindle an interest with Misburg in Germany, Oissel sur Seine in France and Bollnäs in Sweden. I was wondering how strong the links are as I walked among the stalls? There does not seem to have been any streets named after the towns even though there has been a lot of housing development around Shepton Mallet over the years, and sur-Sheppey does not create an picture of bistros, boulangeries or cafes as there may be in our twin in France.

By the time I reached the bottom of town I realised my thoughts of twin towns were all mistaken. The real heart of our twinned relationships is with the Dia de Muertos and the mannequin in a glass case on the wall was its physical representation.

The headlines today are full of tributes to the legendary Chuck Berry, who has passed away at 90, so he has done well against some of his contemporaries. Credited with being the man who started Rock and Roll, his songs have been covered by nearly every major act.

Amongst the many tributes, I found this; it puts him in a place no other musician will achieve.

Elsewhere in the news is the story that the successful marketing campaign for dinosaurs has claimed another victim. Monopoly allowed the public to decide on their tokens and Thimble, Wheelbarrow and Boot got the boot and joined Iron who was rejected for a cat a few years ago. Welcome T-Rex, Penguin and Rubber Duck. We all love dinosaurs, safe in the knowledge that there is a 66 million year air gap between them and us and we will not meet one as we cut across the park on the way home from the pub. The historical reasons for the tokens that rose from the depression has been lost and modern populist themes sweep them aside. Progress, I suppose, as we no longer like history that has any unpleasant side to it, Jurassic Park and Happy Feet win the day.

Go Johnny Go

The quote comes from the gaming blog site and describes Aldious as they release their first overseas album Radiant A. It has been around for a couple of years on the Japanese market, but prices have been high. Now you can get it through JPU Records or Amazon here in UK. It arrived today having been released yesterday so will join the earlier material I have that has made its way here from JapanCD. The great advantage of being able to order nationally is that I will avoid the £8.00 handling charge that Royal Mail hits me with each time a CD arrives from Japan and there is VAT to pay.

It would have been great if the quote referred to Metallica or Slipknot, but I think they never went through a heels and bows phase.

Over the years I have added to my collection through the World Music Network, subscribing annually and picking up a selection of albums over the year. Two years ago I mistakenly selected digital download as my choice of delivery and went for a couple of months wondering why my selection had failed to arrive. On querying they sent a patient reply explaining my situation. So having paid for hard albums I forgot all about it, so imagine my joy last night when I discovered half a dozen albums that were still waiting to be downloaded! I noticed that I still had a good number of selections available and they still work. So ten downloaded albums and Radiant A will give me plenty of listening for this week.

By the way the girls in heels and bows are rocking!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQkhio7glys

My Chinese birth sign is that of the snake and I put it down to this that I have never manged to visit the Emerald Isle. I am blessed with some excellent Irish friends and acquaintances who universally can be relied upon for their generosity. Each month one of the small pleasures is to studio manage at Frome FM for John Forde who presents the Rambling House; which provides me with a window on the best of Irish Folk Music.

Looking through the CD collection there are some Irish music compilations, The Dubliners and Cara Dillon little else, so when I complete the Silk Road project perhaps Ireland beckons.

My contribution to the Saint’s Day will be a drop of the dark stuff with supper. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, enjoy it and be safe.

This morning, I travelled to Devizes in Wiltshire to visit Discovery Records. Headline not a wasted journey. Kieran Moore my host, gave me the five bob guided tour – look don’t touch – around their set up. Can only say an impressive organisation. The functional administration office opens into the warehouse wall to wall to near ceiling cds, Folk, Classical, World Music and I think some pop. Of course as a distributor when you look at the racks it is lots of the same as they deal in bulk. I didn’t take pictures but it looks impressive.

Kieran lead me across the yard to the jewel in the crown of their site, rather like a young boy with a dirty secret he opened the door and guided me upstairs, not only a distributor, but a producer too. A team press, assemble and pack cds. So they are able to support smaller producers and artists who require smaller numbers, so your local garage band who is moving from the handful of home pressed EPs can move to the lower hundreds. I was shown the packaging and assembly line where the sleeves and inserts are added, good quality and they should be rightly proud of their set up. They even have a machine that applies that annoying film wrap which is so hard to get off.  You will hear move of Discovery Records as they are good, local and need recognition.

That annoying film wrap was was I got home to with today’s mail delivery. In amongst the daily junk mail delivery our post lady handed Jun a package from JapanCD, which is early than I was expecting so a welcome surprise. The latest offering from Rami, formerly vocalist with Aldious, her solo album Aspiration. That blend that Japan is mastering so well at the moment, pretty girl with a sweet voice fronting heavy metal. The use of orchestral backing and an opening overture puts it more in the melodic end of heavy metal, but it makes for pleasant listening as I write. The bonus was a dvd of Jimi Hendrix, but I shall have to wait until later to watch that.