Tag Archives: BCB Radio

Happy birthday to us!

This week we mark BCB’s 25th anniversary by looking back at some of the best music that was doing the rounds in February 1992 – that was when we first started broadcasting as Bradford Festival Radio.

Here’s the full list of what we played:

Team Picture – Back To Bay Six
Elbow – Magnificent (She Says)
Terrorvision – Urban Space Crime
Stereo MCs – Step It Up
Primate – Break My Fall
Nirvana – Come As You Are
Arrested Development – Everyday People
Crowded House – Weather With You
Tasmin Archer – Sleeping Satellite
Suede – The Drowners
Sleaford Mods – BHS
Pigeon Detectives – Enemy Lines

You can listen again here >

An excellent selection of new music for bank holiday listening!

New songs from a  rich variety of artists – including GNfN  favourites & others new to the show.

1. The  Handsome Family: Octopus from their new ‘bugs & beasties’ themed album Wilderness.

Then, from Leeds……….

2. Fossil Collective: How Was I To Know, lovely track from debut album Tell Where I Lie

3. Jonny Walker: Song for Bernie – from debut EP This Is Not Me. Jonny is a Leeds- based street musician with a mission!

4. Lloyd Cole: Diminished Ex from Standards

5. Josh Ritter: In Your Arms a While

6. Iron & Wine: Grace for Saints & Ramblers. Interesting track off album of new sounds for Sam Beam

7. Dave Hause: C’mon Kid – his single released for Record Store Day 2013

8. Field Report: I Am Not Waiting Any More – impressive single form debut album

9. Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie Prince Billy: Empty Boxes -from album of covers: What the Brothers Say

10.The National: Fireproof – nice track from Trouble Will Find Me

11. John Grant: Blackbelt – from his highly acclaimed Pale Green Ghosts

12. Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo: Dear River, title track of their new album

13. Beth Orton: Dawn Chorus – new single from Sugaring Season

14. Samuel Taylor: Some Nobody to Me

15. Billy Bragg: Goodbye, Goodbye from Tooth & Nail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Selection Box Show 253: Rodent Touch That Dial

Not only do rats spread disease, they also saved TVam, which was far worse.

Having avoided fully referring to BCB’s Studio 4 as a sea-faring vessel I now find that the metaphor would be rather useful not in only that, as a committed land-lubber (again in not in literal terms, though I can’t pretend I’m especially taken with sailing), I’m set to leg it from the aforementioned craft but also because a water rodent theme briefly developed on this week’s Selection Box. Whilst I am not a rat, and indeed Studio 4 is presumably built upon sound foundations and therefore I’m unlikely to disappear into a sink hole like that poor fellow in America, there does seem to be a varmint of a metaphor just sat there waiting to be smacked by my rolled-up newspaper.

 

Anyway, I appear to be drowning in metaphors. Metaphorically. As featured on this week’s programme, here’s some actual Rats, but not actual rats, courtesy of that there YouTube what all the kids are talking about now whilst they play with their yo-yos and trade Garbage Pail Kids cards.

 

Selection Box Show 253 (Listen again HERE)

Transmitted 27/02/2013

1. Gogol Bordello – Sally
from: Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike

2. The Glens – I Feel Great
from: Doo Wop From Rome Records 1960 – 61 (various artists)

3. Yumuri Y Sus Hermanos – Acaramelao
from: Tiene Bilongo

4. Balthazar – Sinking Ship
from: Rats

5. The Rats – Rats Revenge
from: Back From The Grave Volume 1 (various artists)

6. Ryan Francesconi & Mirabai Peart – Road To Palios
from: Road To Palios

7. ME – Vampire!! Vampire!!
from: Even The Odd Ones Out

8. Gary Numan – M.E.
from: The Pleasure Principle

9. Maclaine Coulson & Saul Rose – The Lazy Farmer
from: Sand & Soil

10. Submotion Orchestra – Thinking
from: Fragments

11. Tindersticks – A Night So Still
from: The Something Rain

12. Debroy Somers & His Band – You And The Night And The Music
from: Great British Bands Volume 2: Debroy Somers & His Band

13. The Bush – To Die Alone
from: Impossible True – The Kim Fowley Story

Patrick Thornton presents Selection Box every Wednesday at 9pm.

Selection Box Show 252: Fire Up The Quattro

For reasons far too dull and footling for even me to remember, this week’s Selection Box was recorded in Studio 4 of BCB instead of it’s regular home two doors away in Studio 2. Much like its Thunderbird of the same numeral, Studio 4 is something of a minor player in the BCB cannon compared to the all-important live broadcast hypersonic variable-sweep wing rocket plane of Studio 1, the heavy supersonic VTOL carrier lifting body aircraft that is Studio 2 and the re-usable, vertically-launched single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft we affectionately know as Studio 3. It’d be a stretch of an already tenuous metaphor to suggest it is a small utility submersible for underwater rescue, but, to flick to a barely more relevant simile, using Studio 4 instead of one of the other recording holes is like suddenly trying to use a Commodore 64 joystick to play Fifa when you’re used to the Duashock 3 controller.

In basic terms, the controls are different. In basic terms, it’s basic. Whilst to a novice the myriad of fiddly knobs, light-emitting diodes and push-me-pull-you faders may look more daunting than a desk with an abacus and a twisty crank, when you are used to the former you know how it works and, more to the point, how to correct something if it goes wrong. If you have nothing more than an on / off switch and a big red button that says, “DO NOT PRESS” on it then finding a way of piloting the vessel away from the big broadcasting black hole you’re about to get sucked into is more problematic. And thus it was that I fully expected disaster to befall the programme this week with every given push of a button or slide of a fader. Save for an odd moment a few records in, where my voice seems to appear mid-sentence for reasons I’m still not entirely clear of, I seem to have come out of my Studio 4 journey unscathed, which makes me blase for next week when I am in there again and will, therefore, no doubt end up die screaming as I plough the ruddy thing at full pelt into the hot burning sun.

Anyway, a quick bit of housekeeping is required on here before I get onto the weighty subject of the playlist, namely that the show this week began with Local Natives and you can still hear the interview I conducted with them at Leeds Festival on this ‘ere Soundcloud wotsit here. You can even download it should you be so very inclined – simply click on the arrow on the player and save it as you feel appropriate.

Patrick Thornton speaks to Andy & Kelsey from Local Natives by PatrickSelectionBox

 

Selection Box Show 252 (listen again HERE)

Transmitted 20/02/2013

1. Local Natives – Heavy Feet
from: Hummingbird

2. Junior Electronics – Mike McConnell
from: Musostics

3. Harlem River Drive – Seeds Of Love
from: Harlem River Drive

4. Mikhail – Cerberus
from: Xenophonia

5. Ray Noble & His Orchestra – Oh You Nasty Man
from: Risque Blues, Vol. 1 (various artists)

6. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Higgs Bosun Blues
from: Push The Sky Away

7. Natacha Atlas – Marifnaash
from: Halim

8. Chris Barber Skiffle Group feat Dickie Bishop – Gypsy Davy
from: Chris Barber 1956

9. John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts
from: Pale Green Ghosts

10. Freaks – 80s Throwback
from: The Man Who Lived Underground

11. Melody’s Echo Chamber – Crystallized
from: Melody’s Echo Chamber

Patrick Thornton presents Selection Box every Wednesday at 9pm.

Selection Box Show 249: Kris mass time

Nothing says Folk more than a set of welding goggles

Last Wednesday was a good evening for Kris Drever.  At virtually the same moment he was stood on stage, towering over his Lau bandmates Martin Green and Aidan O’Rourke as they picked up the Radio 2 Folk Award for Band of the Year, he was also treated to an even more thrilling achievement in that his solo recording of Harvest Gypsies, from the album Blackwater, was the opening track to Selection Box.  I dare say that life will never quite be so exciting for him again.

I did suffix the track by saying that it was one of my favourite records of the last five years, then suggested that it may well be older than that. In doing so I have made myself right and wrong simultaneously as it is in fact an astonishing 7 years since said offering was released.  No matter, though, because I’ll just readjust my hypothetical lists and declare that it is one of the best records of the last seven years.

Because it is.

 

 

Selection Box Show 249 (Listen Again here)

Transmitted 30/1/2013

1. Kris Drever – Harvest Gypsies
from: Blackwater

2. John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts
from: Pale Green Ghosts

3. Unknown artist – Oun Rognea Dul Chung Knong
from: Aquarium Drunkard Presents Dengue Fever (various artists)

4. Besnard Lakes – People Of The Sticks
from: Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO

5. Julia Holter – Boy In The Moon
from: Ekstatis

6. Wave Machines – I Hold Loneliness
from: Pollen

7. Freddy Slack & His Orchestra – Mr Freddie’s Boogie
from: Bands That Can Boogie Woogie (various artists)

8. Pulp – After You
from: single release

9. Mary Love – Baby I’ll Come
from: Soul ‘n’ Moody, Black & Bluesy (various artists)

10. Beryl Bryden’s Backroom Skiffle – Rock Me
from: Heroes of Skiffle (various artists)

11. Rachael Zeffira – Here On In
from: The Deserters

12. Nick Cave – Jubilee Street
from: Push The Sky Away

 

Patrick Thornton presents Selection Box every Wednesday at 9pm.

Selection Box Show 248: Landmarks & Engels

I think we can safely assume that time travel is impossible (which is a shame, because I’ve already written this entire thing once and then accidentally irretrievably deleted it [although admittedly this would be footling use of such a powerful tool – shall I stop the Holocaust? No, I’ll undelete the BCB piece I wrote and lost which was largely about myself. Still Marty McFly didn’t do much more than make his family rich and everyone seems to love him]) so I think I can be forgiven for failing to play David Bowie on last week’s show. As I have previously explained, the cunning fox sent his new single Where Are We Now? out into the World just a few hours after I had recorded my show. Still, it provided a perfect opener for this week’s Selection Box. What is more remiss of me is the fact that the 70th birthday of arguably the greatest ever pop singer, Noel Scott Engel aka Scott Walker (anyone now yelling “Frank Sinatra!” at their computer can go and shove it up their badger. I’ve never understood the fuss over Ol’ Short Arse and never will), passed me by on the very day my first show in the new timeslot was broadcast.

Whilst I would always maintain that some of the greatest vocalists of all time are people who cannot actually sing (Mark E. Smith being a primary and quite astonishingly brilliant atonal example) when hearing Walker open his trap and, indeed, his throat I feel the pressing need to point people at the speakers and say, THAT is how you sing. I can’t imagine anything I’d like to see less than a guest appearance from Scott Walker on The X Factor, but if such a thing took place at least the result might be that the long queue of neat-haircutted chicken-in-a-basket warblers might just nudge each other and say, “Come on, we may as well go home.”

Not that such a thing is likely, of course, because these days Walker’s output couldn’t be further removed from the conveyor belt claptrap offered by ITV’s flagship God-it-goes-on-forever entertainment piece. Indeed is hard to think of another successful artist who has moved as far leftfield as Scott Walker. I cannot help but applaud any bloody-minded artist who is determined to challenge their own boundaries, experiment with new sounds and seek to explore untrodden avenues, and to hell with shifting units and keeping the bank balance high enough to afford another swimming pool in the back of a stretch Hummer. However, that’s not to say this necessarily results in a more rewarding output because, as much as I love music that takes you somewhere you’ve never been before, I must confess that some of Scott Walker’s more experimental material leaves me rather cold – indeed parts of his 2006 album The Drift were frankly unlistenable. When his new album Bish Bosch was released last month I was, therefore, left with a ummm ahh hesitation as to whether I actually wanted to hear it, let alone buy it. However, I have decided that hard-earned brass must be shelled out as the wares from the album I have heard thus far have been really rather splendid.

This includes the extraordinary Epizootics – which featured in this week’s Selection Box as our long track for the Thanking Your Kind Indulgence section of the show – a 10-minute brooding stew of tribal drums, a malevolent squealing three-note trumpet motif and Walker’s haunting vocal with the added bonus of hearing our hero intoning that we should “take that accidentally in the bollocks for a start.” What’s not to like, frankly?

A belated happy birthday to you, Noel.

Here be the tracklisting, by jingo:

Selection Box Show 248 (Listen Again here)

Transmitted 16/01/2013

1. David Bowie – Where Are We Now?
from: The Next Day

2. Berna Dean – I Walk In My Sleep
from: Theme Time Radio With Your Host Bob Dylan Volume 1 (various artists)

3. Harry Mudie – Heavy Duty Dub
from: Ghostcapital III (various artists)

4. Tadao Sawai – Futatso No Hensokyoku Sakura Sakura
from: Sanka Tadao Sawai Plays Tadao Sawai

5. Clinic – See Saw
from: Free Reign

6. Joe Williams’ Washboard Blues Singers – Baby Please Don’t Go
from: Western Swing Roots 3: Jug / Washboard Bands (various artists)

7. Scott Walker – Epizootics
from: Bish Bosch

8. Scott Walker – Plastic Palace People
from: Scott 2

9. Jessica Pratt – Night Faces
from: Jessica Pratt

10. Pulsallama – The Devil Lives In My Husband’s Body
from: The Devil Lives In My Husband’s Body 7″ single

11. T.P. Valentine – Love Trap
from: The Northern Soul Story 3: Blackpool Mecca (various artists)

Patrick Thornton presents Selection Box every Wednesday at 9pm.

Music with a Siblings theme on Going North from Nashville! Monday 22nd October, 10-11pm

First, Chuck Prophet looking for his brother………….

1. Chuck Prophet : Where the Hell is Henry.  Next a couple of brother & sister acts……….

2. Angus& Julia Stone : Mango Tree         

3. Cowboy Junkies: Brothers under the Bridge . Followed by a fake brother & sister act……..

4. White Stripes : Well it’s True that We Love One Another.

 Now, some good old fashioned country brothers………

5. Stanley Brothers : If I got Loose

6. Louvin Brothers : The Family Who Prays .

Not real brothers next, but a seminal alt country band from the 60’s……

7. Flying Burrito Brothers : My Uncle

We move on to a couple of songs about sisters…………..

8. Mary Gauthier: Your Sister Cried

9. Rebecca Worthley : Little Sister . Followed by two more classicl sister songs…..

10. Bob Dylan : Oh Sister 

11. Leonard  Cohen : Sisters of Mercy.

Next, a sister of a famous brother, now famous in her own right……….

12. Martha Wainwright : GPT.

 Back to the 60’s………………. 

13. The Byrds : Tribal Gathering from their Notorious Byrd Brothers album, followed by two more bands of brothers………

14. The Felice Brothers : Frankie’s Gun

14. The Barr Brothers: Deacon’s Son.

Finally, a classic brothers song from a band that once featured two brothers…………….

16. Dire Straits:Brothers in Arms

Eclectic Mainline – 18th July 2012

As I prepared a couple of tunes to play you here on the blog, I thought to myself, “Haven’t I included this new Frankie Rose single on the BCB Music Blog before?” And the answer, it turns out, is yes I have, back in February. It’s a cracking tune though, so I don’t begrudge it being re-released.

Frankie Rose – Know Me by Slumberland Records

Frankie isn’t the only great artist on the Memphis Industries roster to have been played in tonight’s show. I also played this, the new single by Hooray For Earth:

HOORAY FOR EARTH – True Loves by Pias France

If you wish to listen back to the entire show, you’ll find it somewhere on this page of the BCB Listen Again service.  This is what I played:

Continue reading

Songs of the Same Name on Going North from Nashville, Monday 16th July, 10=11pm!

Going North from Nashville presents a programme of ‘same name’ songs.

We start with a couple of ‘Jolenes’,  but no sign of Dolly Parton………

1.Bob Dylan: Jolene – (Together Through Life) 

2. Ray Lamontagne: Jolene – (Trouble) 

A few more Dylan links later in the programme, but next, a Yorkshire lad who sounds remarkably like Ray La Montagne…………..

3. Ben Ottewell: Blackbird – (Shapes & Shadows)

4. Beatles: Blackbird – (White Album)

Another Ray La Montagne link, a bit of Trouble from…….

5. Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan: Trouble – (Sunday at Devil Dirt) 

6. Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions: Trouble

From a spot of trouble to an Avalanche……..

7. Leonard Cohen: Avalanche – (Songs of Love & Hate)  

8. Foreign Slipper: Avalanche – (Farewell to the Old Ghosts)

Next, we’re going Coast to Coast with Elliot Smith………

9. Elloit Smith: Coast to Coast – (A Basement on a Hill)

10. Blue Roses: Coast – Blue Roses

For any listeners who have a birthday on the horizon ‘ happy birthday’ -twice!………

11. Sufjan Stevens: Happy Birthday 

12. The Innocence Mission: Happy Birthday

Back to Dylan for the next two tracks……..

13. She & Him: Don’t Look Back – (She & Him Volume 2)

14. Lloyd Cole: Don’t Look Back

 Don’t look back, but look forward to the next GNfN in 2 weeks’ time………..!

Diagrams, Yppah, Crybaby and Weird dreams on The BCB Sessions!

Ello ello!
Double helping from me - two playlists for the price of one.
Fill yer boots with these lovelies on The BCB Sessions...
Wed 21st March 2012 

Love Bites - LUST /LUST
Bowerbirds - Tuck the darkness in
Weird dreams - Hurt so bad
Firefox AK - The wind
Shearwater - You as you were
Reptar - Stuck in my Id
Me and Cassity - Fred Astaire
Yeti Lane - Sparkling sunbeam
Diagrams - Ghost lit
Laura Gibson - The fire
Bonobo - Eyesdown feat. Andreya Triana & Dels
Deco Child - Pray
School of Seven Bells - Love from a stone
Tindersticks - Slippin' shoes

Wed 14th March 2012 

Robert Ellis - Friends like those
Slugabed - Sex
Waters - Take me out to the coast
Ellen and the escapades - All the crooked scenes
Crocodiles - Sunday (psychic conversation)
Sweet lights - Handle with care
Casiokids - Kaskaden
Spoek Mathambo - Let them talk ft. Yolanda
Martyn - Hello darkness
Simone Felice - You and I belong
Nada Surf - Looking through
Yppah - Blue Schwinn
Crybaby - We're supposed to be in love
If you missed the shows - no panic! Listen again via www.bcbradio.co.uk
And if you've got tunes you'd like me to play then get in touch: @laurarawlings or laura.rawlings@bcbradio.co.uk
See you Wednesday night at 9pm on 106.6fm (in Bradford) and online at www.bcbradio.co.uk
Lx