Human Beatboxing – Jimmy Castor?

Back in the old days of Radio Lancashire’s “On The Wire” programme (see earlier post), Steve had lots of carts (Wikipedia, Repflug, The Cart Guys) with sound effects, drops, fillers, jingles, theme tunes and other such radio audio paraphernalia.

For years and years through the 80s and 90s they were stored in a large box in the studio with a bit of paper plopped on top of them “On The Wire carts”.  I last worked on the programme regularly in 1999, and before I left I took copies of most of them, which I transferred to minidisc.  At some point after then, I think, the box was lost or whatever, and times change and in this digital age the studios don’t even have physical cart machines of the like of the Sonifex any more (although the ancestry remains in the digital replacement: the computer application often presents a “cart wall”).

Anyway, back to the matter in hand.  Many of the drops were taken off records, and there was one in particular I asked Steve about one time.  It’s a human beatbox thing, that goes on for about 40 seconds.  Now Steve reckoned it was from a Jimmy Castor record, but if it is, I haven’t found it yet.  But at least one other one that we used certainly was: the intro to Bertha Butt Boogie (“Bom bom, bobba-dom, baaaa bom-bom bom, bobba-dom”).  If you listen to some of the other track excerpts on Jimmy Castor’s discography website, you might recognise several others: King Kong, It’s Just Begun, and so on.  Many are listed on the web pages.

But I’m still stuck on identifying my 40 seconds of human beatbox.  A dirty copy of it is here.  “Yam *phh*-*phh*, yam *phh* *phh*; Yam *phh* *phh*, yam *phh* *phh* …)

Denver lyrical

A few days ago I was discussing the odd lyrics to an old 80s Radio One jingle.  While I was poking around on t’Internet (in fact to listen to the JAM Song again), I found reference to the package from which presumably that Radio One jingle originated, which was produced for KIMN Denver.  You can hear it here, the lyrics are:

“Show me a show you can hear at D.U.,
Washington Park and even the zoo;
Show me a show that’s the best show of all,
And I’ll show you the best show in Denver.
The best show in Denver, KIMN!”

As a sidenote, it is always odd to hear old familiar radio jingles with different lyrics for different stations: the nature of the jingle business is (was) that a package gets written for a client (or maybe no client in particular), and then is available to be re-sung for other stations that might want it.

Glasgow lyrical

Who remembers this:

“Send a request we can play on the air,
From Cardiff, Belfast or Glasgow Square;
Ask for a song that’s the best in the world,
And we’ll play it just for you.
The best sound in Britain, Radio One!”

Although who knows what “Glasgow Square” is supposed to be; there is no place of that name.  I suppose they could mean George Square which is in the city centre, but I suspect it was just a case of finding a rhyme.

Of course the other famous mention of Glasgow in a song is from Abba, in Super Trouper:

“I was sick and tired of everything,
When I called you last night from Glasgow;
All I do is eat and sleep and sing,
Wishing every show was the last show.”

Writing in The Telegraph, Neil McCormick appears not to be enamoured with this lyric:

“Has any song used a reference to “Glasgow” less convincingly than Super Trouper, where it is shoe-horned in just to rhyme with “last show”?”

On The Wire – 25th Anniversary – press release

From:  Steve Barker
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009
Subject: On the Wire – 25th Anniversary

ON THE WIRE

On Saturday 19th September 2009, between 10pm and 2am, BBC Radio Lancashire’s “On the Wire” show will celebrate 25 years of continuous weekly broadcasting as the longest running alternative show on British radio.

For the past 25 years Steve Barker has produced and presented On the Wire,
which was first broadcast on 16th September 1984. (Check Radio 1′s playlists
for that month compare and contrast).  Way back then there was no such thing as ‘dance’ music – hip-hop was confined to NYC and LA – and the UK was in the grip of the New Romantics. Smashy and Nicey still ruled at ‘Fab FM’ and the London dance mafia were still with their mums shopping for shells. Reggae was apparently dead.

On The Wire’s first guests were Adrian Sherwood – who provided its now legendary theme tune – and collaborator Keith le Blanc, who had earlier launched the ‘sampledelic’ hip-hop classic, “Malcolm X” on the world via Tommy Boy. The following week Depeche Mode turned up in the studio, and  then in December a three hour live special was broadcast with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry – still fresh from torching the Black Ark a couple of years earlier.

And so it went through the eighties as On The Wire slowly built a reputation beyond Lancashire and the North West, throughout the UK and onwards – before the internet – via cassette to the outer reaches, Greece, Sweden, Australia,Italy, USA. The show was fairly expansive: releasing a compilation, “Bugs On The Wire”; putting on The Fall – a free gig at Clitheroe Castle when 2,500 people and one policeman turned up; a Xmas party at the Ritz in Manchester featuring Adrian Sherwood with Gary Clail, 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald, Little Annie plus a heavily pregnant Neneh Cherry absconding from a Bomb the Bass gig.

On the Wire saw the first radio plays for in the UK for numerous artists and bands, including Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson as well as specific tracks such as 808 State’s “Pacific State” and A Guy Called Gerald’s “Voodoo Ray”. As  the nineties turned, OTW was under threat from inside the BBC, but at the last minute the show was saved by the BBC board pegging the show as “a unique BBC product”.

For the last 7 years Steve has contributed from Beijing with the invaluable help of Jim Ingham co-producer in Blackburn, the indefatigable local  commentator Michael ‘Fenny’ Fenton, plus American exile and co-founder of the China-based nu electronic unit fm3, Christiaan Virant. Steve now DJs out in Beijing and Shanghai, and recently played the Big Chill festival in the UK. Steve has been the dub columnist for The Wire magazine for the past decade.

On the Wire’s celebration show:

The celebrations for the show will include mixes from friends far and near who have contributed to the show over the years, including:

• Mick Sleeper from Toronto, controller of the net-based show Radio Scratch, exclusively featuring the work of the legendary Lee “Scratch” Perry both as artist and producer (http://www.upsetter.net/)
• Pete Holdsworth from the world’s premier reggae revival label Pressure Sounds based in the UK and Japan (www.pressure.co.uk)
• Alan Bishop from the Seattle based label Sublime Frequencies (www.sublimefrequencies.com) a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations.
• Stephen Hitchell from the Detroit based label Echospace (www.echospacedetroit.com) one of America’s finest imprints currently setting the bar for dub-influenced techno worldwide.
• Steve Goodman aka the London-based DJ Kode9, and owner of the influential Hyperdub record label. Steve holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Warwick and recently worked at the University of East London as a lecturer in media production, and course tutor for a master’s programme in sonic culture April 2004 (www.hyperdub.net)
• Steve Hardstaff aka Jahcuzzi, the North West’s most prolific creator of record album art. He recently had his work collected in a book published jointly by the University of Chicago and John Moore’s University in Liverpool, he was one of the Peter Blake’s assistants for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album artwork.
• Rob Ellis aka Bristol’s DJ Pinch, and owner of the label Tectonic Recordings, will be presenting a history of drum and bass music from the city that spawned so many artists who based their music and success on dub and reggae (www.myspace.com/tectonicrecordings)
• David Toop author of definitive books on both rap and ambient music (Rap Attack and Ocean of Sound) and musicologist extraordinaire will taking time off from writing an opera to offer a special mix (www.davidtoop.com/)
• Steinski aka Steve Stein and his pal Doug DiFranco (aka Double Dee) were hip-hop producers who achieved notoriety in the early 1980s for a series of underground hip-hop sample-based collages known as the Lessons. Although they never had a hit record, they proved highly influential for hundreds of subsequent artists both in hip hop and wider field of sound art. (www.steinski.com)
• Noel Hawks is perhaps best known for his authoring of hundreds of well informed sleeve notes since the start of the revival reggae business. A long time collaborator of On the Wire, Noel will be contributing a mix of personal favourites.
• Ashley Beedle is the man who introduced house music to the Notting Hill Carnival, founder of the Black Science Orchestra and The Ballistic Brothers, record-label owner of Soundboy Entertainment, Afroart, and Ill Sun. He recently recorded an album with reggae legend Horace Andy.
• Beijing-based Yan Jun, works in the realm of sound and language manipulating feedback, drones, voice and field recordings for site-specific sound installations, improvisations and environmental sound. He founded the Sub Jam and its sub-label KwanYin Records. He has run the weekly event Waterland Kwanyin and annual festival Mini Midi in Beijing since 2005 and published five essay collections on Chinese new music and three poetry collections.

For more information please contact Steve Barker steve.barker@bbc.co.uk or Jim Ingham jim.ingham@bbc.co.uk.

Update 5thSep: Now confirmed, legendary producer Adrian Sherwood from On-U Sound will be live in the studio to join the celebrations.