A song that I hear often on the radio

by Matt Sheret

I have to stretch the definition of radio here, but that’s worth dwelling on.

When I started working at Atlantic Records there were a few sources of sound, as you might expect, but by and large what dominated the office stereo was one of the Video Music channels. The sound of it swamped the office, and for full weeks you could learn an hour’s playlist as it ran through countdowns that simply wouldn’t change.

By the time I returned to Atlantic for occasional guests spots or to wave at Adam the whole office was plugged into iTunes. The TV still ran, but no-one was paying attention.

In the age of Save6Music this won’t be popular, especially with Mark, but I can take or leave radio. I love the broadcast mechanism, I love a well presented live session, I love the idea that you might never be able to catch a moment on air again, but I almost never actually use it for any of that.

If I’m unlucky in the morning I get The Today Programme waking me up. My girlfriend maintains that when she doesn’t listen to it something happens at her work that takes over her day. The Today Programme is her early warning system. In the kitchen we usually have 6Music playing, but much as I enjoy Sean Keaveny in the morning it really comes into its own later in the day, when I might well hear anything.

Basically, the idea of hearing something frequently on the radio is dead to me.

But what I used to find the radio good for is single rolling moments, sneakily captured, taped and replayed and taped and replayed. Those were good. Now I tend to sequence something similar using blog feeds, Spotify and YouTube, building random collections of sound that get me through the day. It isn’t radio, it’s only really public in the Last.fm sense, but it fills the same hole.

(I’ve been listening to Primary Colours a lot since it was released, largely to make up for my instant dismissal of it based on The Horrors previous output)