While free-to-air television numbers are dropping dramatically to video on demand, radio listening numbers are still solid. People still wake up every morning and prefer the radio over TV.
Stations focused on music are struggling, as people get more personalised offerings from places like Spotify.
But radio stations who speak to you about what happened overnight, and speak to you personally are doing still very well in terms of overall numbers listening.
What has changed is people are listening for less time overall, getting lots of the information they would traditionally have received from the radio – news, weather, traffic – from other sources. What continues to connect people is the intimacy of a single voice speaking to you, getting right inside your head.
Despite the fact people still listen to the radio, I reflected tonight that nobody seems to sing about the radio, as they once did. Or maybe I’m not as up-to-date with musical trends.
With that in mind, I’ve collected some of my favourite songs about listening to the radio. Please suggest any others I might have missed.
I had a brief cry when I watched an old family video this week. There were so many people in the video – even quite young people – who are no longer with us. When I shared the complete video with extended family, I warned them they might cry. But hopefully, they might laugh as well.
Going through a box of old videos I discovered a VHS called “Home 96 / Dreamworld” which I’ve had digitised. I knew exactly what “Dreamworld” meant: it was shot in the early 80s when some extended family visited the theme park on the Gold Coast. I shot the video, and appear only briefly in it as a teenage boy.
Family video from mid 1980s. Gloria O’Brien/ Pepper and Edna Dunn / Ianna
I didn’t really know what “Home 96” referred to, as it’s at least 25 years since we’ve watched the video. I haven’t had a VHS machine for years!
Additionally, there was a bit of mould on the videotape. So it was necessary to track down someone who could safely remove the mould and digitise the video. After a fair bit of research, I found https://movingmemories.com.au/ a small company in Earlwood, where the owner Emmanuelle did an awesome job restoring the tape. Restoration and digitisation cost $75.
As I watched “Home 96”, memories came flooding back of a return visit to Lismore in August 1996, and a brief visit to family in Brisbane. So many faces, so many people no longer with us. Chatting with a younger family member who recently had a baby, I asked him “Is that you as the baby?” to which he replied, “No I wasn’t born then”.
Family video from 1996
Even though video recordings are everywhere these days, thanks to mobile phones, I think these are the only two videos of our family which exist from that era, so they’re very special. And so pleased I made the effort to have them digitised.
Lots of younger family members who were born around the time of these videos, or even after, have written notes of thanks for making the effort. They’ve also admitted to a few tears, seeing our family from all those years ago.
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve walked past Sydney’s “Mortuary Station” and wanted to jump over the fence and take a closer look.
In the days before the car became popular, people (both the living and the dead) would travel to Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery by train, leaving from what was known as the Regent Street Station, or Mortuary Station.
Long closed to the public, about the only time I’ve ever heard of it being “open” was for Ian Thorpe’s twenty-first birthday. Apparently, you can hire it out, though I can’t imagine it would come cheap.
Fortuitously this morning, as I made my way to the White Rabbit Gallery (another post to follow), I noticed it was open, as part of the 150th anniversary of Rookwood Cemetery commemorations.
Chris Patrick was in town, author of the book, ABBA Let The Music Speak, a semi-academic book about the music of ABBA.
Chris is a musician by trade, and an ABBA fan by nature. Thus, he’s written a book about ABBA’s music from the perspective of a musician.
And on arriving home tonight I’ve spent far too much time staying up reading the book.
It was lovely to see him. He’s such a lovely gentle soul.
And along with Chris, there was a bunch of other ABBA fans who’ve all known each other now for over thirty years.
I’ve been fan world since the 1970s/1980s also, though it wasn’t until I came to Sydney in the mid 90s that I became actively, socially involved.
How it’s changed my life, I can’t begin to fathom.
New friendships most of all.
And although there was some discussion of Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Frida – and various rumours about an alleged meeting at Mono Music recently – there were a lot of other things to discuss also.
Customs at Sydney Airport this morning was an absolute nightmare. Although my baggage came off reasonably quickly, there were still delays.
I have one of those new “electronic passports” which, strictly speaking, speeds up the process of coming through customs. You’re supposed to swipe your passport, stand in front of the camera, and have your photograph taken, and then the door opens and you’re free. This morning, however, the camera failed to work for both myself and the people in front and behind me and so we had to re-join the queue. The queue which had the stupidest people in the world, by the way. “So, you don’t know what flight you came on, or what city you got on?”, I heard the customs officer say – infrustration – to the people in front of me.
Going through quarantine we had four lines coming into one which had its share of frustrations, as you might imagine. Worse, since a lot of people didn’t understand the Sydney traffic custom of allowing each row to have access to the queue one at a time. I only heard one person get angry, but there was a great deal of tension as we made our way SLOWLY through customs and quarantine this morning.
I didn’t bother with a taxi, since the queue there was just as bad, preferring instead the extortionate price of $15.80 (it’s gone up again, hasn’t it?) of the train from the international airport to Central.
Finally I was home and wide awake. Wide awake. Well, until I passed out after a couple of hours. It’s funny how after a flight you go from completely perky to drooling on your pillow. I didn’t expect jet-lag, since it’s only a few hours difference from Beijing, and I slept reasonably well on the flight, but I sure as hell slept well for most of the day. And here was I thinking working might have been an option today. Wrong.
Late this afternoon I woke and called my friend Graeme. Co-incidentally, he had just texted me to see if I wanted to catch up for a beer. It would have been great, though we had simply crossed paths. Instead, I’ve found myself still a bit jet-lagged and enjoying pizza on a Friday night back in Sydney. I’ve also been listening to a bit of the Chinese pop I bought as a souvenir of my visit. I quite like Khalil Fong.
I also passed the hours in my jet-lagged state by making some sense of my photographs and offer you the following…
Baking bread, but mostly fooling around with the new Google Camera app which, amongst other features, lets you focus on the main subject, blurring the background. For a camera phone app, it’s pretty good, eh?’
Over the last couple of years, there’s been an inverse relationship between the quality of the songs and the quality of the program presenters/comedy interludes for Melodifestivalen, the Swedish finals which lead to the Eurovision Song Contest. In recent memory, the combination in 2012 of Sarah Dawn Finer, Helena Bergström and Gina Dirawi was probably the best, combining intelligence, talent, and humour. In contrast, the low point was definitely 2014, when the program began to resemble The Footy Show. It was great to see Gina and Petra Mede together, as I watched the show this morning (Australia time).
I concede it must be a difficult thing to decide who should host. On the one hand, you have the (hopefully) artistic vision of Christer Björkman, on the other you have the demands/requirements of Swedish TV bureaucrats. I can’t help but feel some of the recent decisions about program presenters have been the result of a “committee vote”.
And then you have the songs themselves. I have previously written about the apparent problem of having too few songwriters contributing the songs. Fredrik Kempe was back again this year, and I can only presume he’ll be back again over coming weeks. Though he has contributed some terrific material to Melodifestivalen, I can’t help but feel his apparent cookie-cutter approach to songs and artists (Popular and Manboy by Eric Saade were basically the same song) adds little to the contest and doesn’t really advance the plot much.
For me, there were no outstanding songs this year, though there were many songs I liked. Last year, for example, I really liked “Groupie” by Samir and Viktor as a “fun, topical song with a great tune”. This year, their song lacked a little of the same appeal, ultimately resulting in them taking their shirts off to, presumably, add to their appeal to voters. Yeah, well, it worked for me:) Last year, I didn’t really like Ace Wilder’s song “Busy Doin’ Nothing”, and this year I quite liked her song. “Mitt Guld” by Pernilla Andersson, “Aint No Good” by Mimi Werner and “Constellation Prize” (what a stupid name for a song” by Robin Bengtsson were all quite good, though nothing special. “Rik” by Albin and Mattias was quite dull, and I thought it could have been an entry from a decade ago. And of course, poor Anna Book’s “”Himmel för två” failed to make it, disqualified in the days leading up to the heat. As good as all the songs were, none of them really shined for me. I’m hoping the following weeks will bring forth some songs worthy of representing Sweden at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Three more heats to go, and then Andra Chansen, and then the final.
Robin Bengtsson
Gina och Petra
Viktor och Samir
Anna Book performed, despite her entry not being eligible for voting.
This year’s comedy: the lyrics to one of last year’s entries, Selfie, read by a famed classical Swedish actress was genuinely funny.
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Good selection James.
Here’s one of my favourites:
Yesterday Once More – Carpenters
Karen is one of, if not the best, pop vocalists of all time – IMO.
Oh, and another one:
Angie Baby – Helen Reddy
I’m showing my age with these two. 😉
Good selection James.
Here’s one of my favourites:
Yesterday Once More – Carpenters
Karen is one of, if not the best, pop vocalists of all time – IMO.
Oh, and another one:
Angie Baby – Helen Reddy
I’m showing my age with these two. 😉
Excellent suggestions!! Angie Baby has such a great lyric!! And then I thought of “You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio” by Joni Mitchell.
There are rather more radio songs than I would have guessed.