The death of David Vine was announced last week and it was particularly sad - if not surprising- as it seems to come on the heels of losing another great voice that of Oliver Postgate who left us late last year.
The thing about both of these peole is that they are both very much part of my youth, and to me partners in shaping my world with me. The reason they feel that close, I think, is the magical power of their voices. In both cases the voices are distinctive, and in many ways not the classical BBC voice of their era. But each had a distinctive quality that was well matched with what they were doing. Postgate had that wonderfully grandfather like quality that spoke of comfort and friendship and whimsy, whilst Vine was able to invest even the most mundane sports with vigour vim and passion.
It took only the briefest snatch of listening to them to be transported away to nicer places. Happily recordings of the remain, so for me it is possible to experience that again, but importantly for me it is a reminder of how powerful the human voice is and why TESCAPE is so passionate about it.
We have also lost Tony Hart and I mourn his passing for entirely different reasons.....
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Happy New Year
Well that was a pretty poor performance in terms of blogging last year so perhaps my new years resolution should be to blog more regularly. Either way here it is, the firs of 2009.
Alistair Cooke must be one of the shining jewels of the spoken word world. His passing deprived us of the continuing joy of tuning in on Sunday morning, at least that is when I did, to listen in to his musings on life on the other side of the pond. Point of View is fine and I can listen to the idiosyncratic delivery of Clive James with a good deal of pleasure, but Cook is still king.
One of the good things about 50 years of broadcasting though, particularly with an organisation of the quality of the BBC, is that a good deal of archive material still exists of Alistair Cooke speaking at different times on a variety of subjects. As a result, and in the absence of anything better, the BBC do periodically dust off Cooke broadcasts and share them again with the nation and this Christmas has been no different. So it is with pleasure that I recommend to you the festive Alistair Cooke broadcasts. Introduced by the rather limp Justin Webb - but you can quickly overcome that to wallow in the honeyed tones of the master.
Find the broadcasts here.
Alistair Cooke must be one of the shining jewels of the spoken word world. His passing deprived us of the continuing joy of tuning in on Sunday morning, at least that is when I did, to listen in to his musings on life on the other side of the pond. Point of View is fine and I can listen to the idiosyncratic delivery of Clive James with a good deal of pleasure, but Cook is still king.
One of the good things about 50 years of broadcasting though, particularly with an organisation of the quality of the BBC, is that a good deal of archive material still exists of Alistair Cooke speaking at different times on a variety of subjects. As a result, and in the absence of anything better, the BBC do periodically dust off Cooke broadcasts and share them again with the nation and this Christmas has been no different. So it is with pleasure that I recommend to you the festive Alistair Cooke broadcasts. Introduced by the rather limp Justin Webb - but you can quickly overcome that to wallow in the honeyed tones of the master.
Find the broadcasts here.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Shun the frumious bureaucrat!
After such a positive and happy previous post about the joys of poetry recitals it is sad, but not entirely surprising, that this time I feel forced to report that there are those out there that clearly don't share my enthusiasm. Or at least cant rise above their own petty bureaucracy to embrace the joy of spoken word.
Apparently a poetry group meeting in the Royal Standard pub in Ely have been forced to suspend their meetings as the local council - East Cambridgeshire District Council - have decided that whilst the pub has a license for music this does not allow it run spoken word events.
This raises a number of points not least the idea that you can have a license to put poetry to music but this does not allow for you to speak the same lyrics unaccompanied. The absurdity of this position is clearly lost on the spokesman for the council who tries to defend the idea.
On a broader issue, from my perspective, is the question of why you should need a license for a spoken word event for anyway. Stealth tax perhaps?
More details of this case can be found here.
There are times when you have to fear that a country run by such small minded nongs really has gone to the dogs. I'm off to the pub for a beer to drown my despairing disbelief, but I wont make a joke with the landlord or anyone else at the bar because they may not have a comedy license.
One small note of good cheer, I did notice from the article that the poetry group was getting some Lottery Funding- huzzah!
Apparently a poetry group meeting in the Royal Standard pub in Ely have been forced to suspend their meetings as the local council - East Cambridgeshire District Council - have decided that whilst the pub has a license for music this does not allow it run spoken word events.
This raises a number of points not least the idea that you can have a license to put poetry to music but this does not allow for you to speak the same lyrics unaccompanied. The absurdity of this position is clearly lost on the spokesman for the council who tries to defend the idea.
On a broader issue, from my perspective, is the question of why you should need a license for a spoken word event for anyway. Stealth tax perhaps?
More details of this case can be found here.
There are times when you have to fear that a country run by such small minded nongs really has gone to the dogs. I'm off to the pub for a beer to drown my despairing disbelief, but I wont make a joke with the landlord or anyone else at the bar because they may not have a comedy license.
One small note of good cheer, I did notice from the article that the poetry group was getting some Lottery Funding- huzzah!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Poetry please
I have always loved poetry, even the stuff that doesn't rhyme! Learning poems by heart and being able to recite them out loud was something that we would do at junior school and the practice was part of the schools annual Eisteddfod. It was good for memory, good to develop confidence of public speaking and, for the more dramatically oriented, an opportunity for an early performance.
Whist I cant claim to have a huge back catalogue committed to memory there are still a few that stick with me and it is fun to be able to trot them out as a bit of a party piece. They have served me well at various Poems and Pints nights where an impromptu recitation has been rewarded with a drop of something from the bar. Interestingly enough when I suggested to a group of friends this was something everyone should be able to do, recite a poem that is, I did get some rather blank looks and I fear it was another of those opportunities for them to reinforce their view that perhaps I am a bit odd! On reflection most of these friends were considerably younger than me and we, as group, had just ridden a long way across Cuba on push bikes, so perhaps it was not a typical sample.
So imagine my surprise and happiness when I discovered that the BBC were running a competition called Off By Heart for school children aimed at introducing them to the joys of poetry memorized and recited out loud. The wonderful selection of poems has some enduring classics, The Way Through The Woods - Kipling, The Listeners - de la Mare amongst others that I recall from school, and some more contemporary stuff from the likes of Benjamin Zephania. Championed by the wonderfully named Daisy Goodwin this is surely one of those initiatives that is so welcome, so sensible ye and so entirely obvious it rather makes you wonder how it ever needs to be revived at all.
The BBC have the ability to shoot themselves in the foot sometimes and to be sure it is not the institution that it once was and thsi is to theri proudest week, but on this occasion I applaud them, and Daisy of course!
Whist I cant claim to have a huge back catalogue committed to memory there are still a few that stick with me and it is fun to be able to trot them out as a bit of a party piece. They have served me well at various Poems and Pints nights where an impromptu recitation has been rewarded with a drop of something from the bar. Interestingly enough when I suggested to a group of friends this was something everyone should be able to do, recite a poem that is, I did get some rather blank looks and I fear it was another of those opportunities for them to reinforce their view that perhaps I am a bit odd! On reflection most of these friends were considerably younger than me and we, as group, had just ridden a long way across Cuba on push bikes, so perhaps it was not a typical sample.
So imagine my surprise and happiness when I discovered that the BBC were running a competition called Off By Heart for school children aimed at introducing them to the joys of poetry memorized and recited out loud. The wonderful selection of poems has some enduring classics, The Way Through The Woods - Kipling, The Listeners - de la Mare amongst others that I recall from school, and some more contemporary stuff from the likes of Benjamin Zephania. Championed by the wonderfully named Daisy Goodwin this is surely one of those initiatives that is so welcome, so sensible ye and so entirely obvious it rather makes you wonder how it ever needs to be revived at all.
The BBC have the ability to shoot themselves in the foot sometimes and to be sure it is not the institution that it once was and thsi is to theri proudest week, but on this occasion I applaud them, and Daisy of course!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Remembering Not to Forget
Here at TESCAPE we believe that the amount of material that can benefit from being lifted from the page through spoken word is broad and rich. So I was particularly pleased to come across an initiative by the National Archives to produce a series of podcasts that commemorate the armistice of 1918 that ended the First World War. It is right that we remember the anniversary of such an important event that brought to a close such a grim period, and giving voice to the words that detail some of the human stories of that war has a particular power.
The podcasts are relatively short and so far have covered some diary and reportage pieces detailing the reality of being part of a fighting unit in the maneuvering and skirmishing of the conflict and draw upon the materials held at the Archives in Kew . But one of the most interesting, for me, was the very first pod which is a fascinating account of correspondence (the letters being read) between a war widow and the ministry, in her efforts to get an up lift to her pension and allowance. In between the starchy language and letter writing style of the time there is a desperate human story, a tragedy that seems to be made more so by the apparently mundane circumstances of the officers death ( if death can ever be mundane) in a conflict so renown for its brutality and senseless waste.
This initiative is a wonderfully evocative and appropriate way of helping to remember not to forget by bringing a human voice to a subject that can seem increasingly distant. I for one will continue to subscribe and wear my poppy with pride as we remember the sacrifices made by so many some 90 years ago.
The series is available as an RSS feed here, and I would strongly recommend it.
The podcasts are relatively short and so far have covered some diary and reportage pieces detailing the reality of being part of a fighting unit in the maneuvering and skirmishing of the conflict and draw upon the materials held at the Archives in Kew . But one of the most interesting, for me, was the very first pod which is a fascinating account of correspondence (the letters being read) between a war widow and the ministry, in her efforts to get an up lift to her pension and allowance. In between the starchy language and letter writing style of the time there is a desperate human story, a tragedy that seems to be made more so by the apparently mundane circumstances of the officers death ( if death can ever be mundane) in a conflict so renown for its brutality and senseless waste.
This initiative is a wonderfully evocative and appropriate way of helping to remember not to forget by bringing a human voice to a subject that can seem increasingly distant. I for one will continue to subscribe and wear my poppy with pride as we remember the sacrifices made by so many some 90 years ago.
The series is available as an RSS feed here, and I would strongly recommend it.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Empire and Silence
I had the good fortune of seeing collection of short films that captured the magic of the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition. They were shown collectively at the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), and the cinema was packed. The films had no dialogue with the exception of the last which was a contemporary film that explained a little about a project completed by the Glasgow School of Art to recreate the Exhibition in 3D using virtual reality software. The accompanying score to the films was suitaby jolly, and as a fan of that type of modernist architecture the experience was wonderful. The vision and ambition of the scheme demonstrated a confidence and purpose that seems so lacking today - rememerb the Millenium Dome. The results of this self confidence n 1938 was dazzling. It was also gratifying to watch an event that used the word Empire without the necessity to caveat it with some politically correct apology. Perhaps it had something to do with the average age of the audience, ensuring that some could remember the benevolent aspect of the commonwealth not having been subjected to the sort of revisionist education that seems very prevalent now. Not everything emanating from that era of empire was necessarily bad and we would do well to remember that. Some of the aspiration, confidence and values would be of use today it seems to me.
The concluding discussion where two architects debated the merits and ambition of the Exhibition with contributions from the audience, some of whom had attended the event, was again insightful and balanced.
The evening cost £1 and the quality of the films, mostly amateur, reminded me how a mix of ambition, quality and the willing enthusiasm of contributors generated a fabulous event in 1938 and 2008. It also reminded me that the GFT alone is one good reason for living in Glasgow.
The concluding discussion where two architects debated the merits and ambition of the Exhibition with contributions from the audience, some of whom had attended the event, was again insightful and balanced.
The evening cost £1 and the quality of the films, mostly amateur, reminded me how a mix of ambition, quality and the willing enthusiasm of contributors generated a fabulous event in 1938 and 2008. It also reminded me that the GFT alone is one good reason for living in Glasgow.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Darwinism
There has been a good deal of debate about the theory of evolution and the ideas of intelligent design and the literal interpretations of creationism. It has led to people stepping down from roles, and a good deal of fiery exchange but, to be honest, it is not something that really exercises me.
However, I have discovered something that comes from Darwin that really does. I seems that on the excellent Darwin Online site there is available for download a spoken word version of Darwin's Beagle Diary. It is five episodes as heard on BBC Radio 4's Book 0f the week back in 2006. Already started to listen and it is great. This just the sort of material that TESCAPE will be bringing to you, so in the interests of letting you know about the best why not visit the Darwin Online site and take advantage of this great offer.
However, I have discovered something that comes from Darwin that really does. I seems that on the excellent Darwin Online site there is available for download a spoken word version of Darwin's Beagle Diary. It is five episodes as heard on BBC Radio 4's Book 0f the week back in 2006. Already started to listen and it is great. This just the sort of material that TESCAPE will be bringing to you, so in the interests of letting you know about the best why not visit the Darwin Online site and take advantage of this great offer.
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