We lost our Thrill...

Two years ago a good friend asked if I could record an interview with his mother who was celebrating a milestone birthday at the time.

Of course I was happy to help, and spent the following weeks liaising with his mum via email and planning a conversation about her life built around pivotal moments and the music most associated with them.

The day came to do the interview, and we finally sat down face-to-face in my friend’s home office at the bottom of his garden. What followed was an absorbing conversation revealing a life well lived, and with no signs of it slowing down any time soon. One life-changing moment centred around a visit to Africa and her reaction to the appalling standards of basic healthcare she encountered in one particular region. On returning home she used her connections and pharmaceutical knowledge to mobilise support so that the necessary supplies could be sent to where they were needed. All of this was self-motivated, entirely voluntary and done through sheer force of personality. But what stuck with me was her modesty about all of this. It was almost along the lines of “it’s what anyone would have done”. Well, of course Bob Geldof did do this back in the 80s but then he was famous, and had fellow celebrities and other resources at his disposal. My friend’s mother’s actions never made the headlines but they achieved the same outcome. And all done whilst bringing up a family.

In a month which celebrates women, this story is a reminder of how their achievements are often unshowy and go unsaid. Furthermore, great heroines are closer than you think. As the holders of one of the most difficult jobs going, Mums have an amazing tale to tell – one that my friend and his family have now captured for posterity. So, as you order the flowers or book that table for afternoon tea with Mother’s Day approaching, consider for a moment the life story behind it all that could be shared.

After all, you could see the person who’s always been there for you in a whole new way…


Extraudionary allows you to capture the life stories of friends or family members in an amazing and unforgettable way. Find out how...

If New Year is about the future, Christmas gives us absolute permission to wallow in the past. And besides Morecambe and Wise, the other guaranteed re-run of the holiday are those stories that get embellished with an extra coat of creative varnish for each year they’ve been told; such as the time the turkey had it's revenge, or when I was ‘laid low’ by the neighbour’s industrial-strength mulled wine (particular favourites in our family). It’s a season defined as much by memories as Father Christmas, the Nativity and tubs of Quality Street.

Extraudionary has been making its debut at several Christmas Markets around Bristol over the last month. I’ve loved talking to the many people who've visited my stand about how I capture life stories and turn them into amazing audio programmes. Besides a unanimously positive reaction, one of the things I’ve heard most goes along the lines of, “This would be have been perfect for…”, or “I wish I’d discovered you last year…”, referring to a parent or grandparent now departed whose voice and legacy would have made for audio gold.

It doesn’t always have to be so.

A customer of mine called Andy recently got back in touch to say how much his grandparents were enjoying the programme I recorded with them. They were amazing people, not just that they offered me a lunchtime sherry after the interview, but also because they shared some truly astonishing stories about life during the Second World War – some harrowing and others heart-warming. Andy told me how much he would treasure the recording for years to come, particularly as something he’d share with his children ( you can read Andy’s testimonial here ).

Whilst Extraudionary captures programmes for all sorts of occasions – and milestone birthdays from 40 upwards – there’s something particularly powerful about committing a full life to audio and having that saved for the benefit of future generations. It’s one of the most rewarding things about this job!

So whilst I wish you and yours many happy Christmases to come, this holiday why not consider someone whose legacy you’d like to capture and whose voice and story becomes a festive classic in its own right?

In this age of box sets and binge-watching, it felt a bit old-school to hold out recently until 9pm every Thursday on BBC2. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way about television, so I’ll miss The Mighty Redcar now that it’s reached the end of its 4-week run.

Before I go on, and for reasons of transparency, I should make it clear that I grew up outside Middlesbrough so will always feel fiercely loyal towards this area. But it could have equally been The Mighty Workington, Cleethorpes or Ilfracombe, and I’m sure that in the hands of the same filmmakers (72 Films) I’d still have loved it.

There’s nothing new about the story of a coastal town that has seen better times. However, in The Mighty Redcar  our narrator is a local teenager (Madison Cooper, pictured above) who guides us through life in the one-time seaside resort as experienced by her generation. It doesn’t shirk from crime, food banks or unemployment but it doesn’t dwell on these either, instead showing young people trying to make something of their lives with the help of local community leaders, business people, parents and all-round good samaritans. Their stories were punctuated by a mixture of footage that contrasted between derelict industry and stunning aerial shots of Redcar’s coastline, and peppered by some of the finest music to have emerged from the 1980s.  

There’s been a positive response not just from the TV critics but also Teessiders who have long seen their region cast in a negative light by the national media. The consensus seems to be that The Mighty Redcar has been the antidote to those ‘reality’ programmes claiming to represent so-called ‘benefits Britain’. Yes, the north east has more than its fair share of issues, but programmes like this give back regions and their people a sense of dignity and worth.

I've always been a great believer of 'greatness in the everyday' and The Mighty Redcar had it in spades. Consequently we followed the lives of real people with very human stories to tell, trying to get on in life like the rest of us – just in a different town and different set of circumstances. For this reason, and better than any soap opera, the people of Redcar were a cast we found ourselves rooting for such as troubled teenager James, genuinely wanting for a better life but held back by circumstances and a life of petty crime.

In an era when there's so much TV you might simply become numbed by it all, this was moving and powerful stuff. The frequent shots of the town's railway line were a metaphor for escape - one which some of the people featured took advantage of - but the series concluded on an upbeat note. The Mighty Redcar had a prevailing sense of dogged pride running through it like a stick of seaside rock (the programme's title says it all), and I hope that this kind of storytelling goes beyond being great TV and gives the town some sort of optimism for the future.

I really hope we get to go back too.

Image: Madison Cooper, narrator of The Mighty Redcar (Middlesbrough Evening Gazette)

This week see the release of Now (That’s What I Call Music)! 100.

35 years ago in November saw the release of the first Now! album. It wasn’t as if compilation albums hadn’t existed before this point, but the Now! series served to package up the biggest hits of the time in an appealing format and it quickly gathered momentum.

Now! is one my earliest memories of buying music. Things like Now! (and the rival ‘Hits’ series) were the equivalent of pick’n’mix sweets – a taster for all genres of music which found themselves side-by-side in one place. They were great at introducing me to stuff I’d either never heard of or would have considered buying. On Now! 10 for example, there was Johnny Hates Jazz, The Style Council, Whitesnake, Jan Hammer, Nina Simone and The Pogues all conveniently in one place.

It’s easy to laugh in 2018 but back then Now! felt like the biggest thing ever. Whenever the latest Now! albums came out with their vivid covers it felt like a major event. Even someone as musically discerning as my sister bought them which added extra kudos. They were the soundtrack to early teenage life. I still vividly recall Derek B ('is a bad young brother') and James Brown during a Dorset summer holiday of 1988 (for the record, both on the B side of Now! 12).

The great irony was that once you’d attached yourself to a particular musical tribe, Now! became irrelevant and lost its cool factor.It was the equivalent of quitting Radio 1 and heading off to 6Music.Years later, you’d keep seeing the bus-stop adverts and wonder in amazement how the series was still going.

But it still is. 

30 years on I have the original cassettes and regard them fondly. They were part of my growing up. Even from reading the track listings I can vividly recall where I was and what I was doing all those years ago. They hardly get played these days, but represent little plastic time capsules – a 2-hour slice of a past era and the sounds that filled it. I’d wager that most people have a Now! album knocking about in a box somewhere. And it’s a testament to the founding principles of Now! that it’s hanging in there, even if less units are being shifted compared to the glory days of the 80s and 90s, and in an era where music streaming effectively allows people to create their own Now! albums. Even 'Hits' is limping on somehow.

Now that is some achievement.

 

Create your own time capsule - or one for someone special - with Extraudionary! Capture the stories, memories and music that defined life, all in one amazing audio package. Find out more…

Question: How do you tell the world about an amazing and many-splendoured thing that you cannot see or hold?

Answer: Invite a film crew into your kitchen one Sunday morning, throw in a tub of brownies and several pots of coffee, and you have Extraudionary’s first big screen outing.

Such has been the reaction of people to their Extraudionary experience that I wanted to capture this for a wider audience. After all, why attempt to explain how it feels to have the most precious things committed to audio when your customers can do this for you? So it was only right that my very first subject, going way back to when Extraudionary wasn’t a glint in anyone’s eye, should be the person you see on screen.

Distilling the essence of Extraudionary into a 90-second film was always going to present a challenge. But in a city blessed with creative types the solution was out there in the form of Kando Creative Collective – by day holding down sensible media roles and, at all other times, a team producing some visually arresting music videos and short films (one of whom - Harriet - I knew from my Bristol Community FM days).

The story began back in February, huddled around a café table next door to the BBC’s Whiteladies Road buildings. It was over hot drinks, and subsequent telephone calls, that we plotted our film and built it around the memories and emotions of an Extraudionary customer.

That person turned out to be Mark. A close family member, I’d interviewed Mark on the occasion of his 40th birthday in 2011. Life was very different back then, particularly as in the time since the recording one special voice in that programme had sadly left us. Inadvertently – along with all the other voices and moments captured – it gave the recording added poignancy but also power and meaning that is impossible to quantify (Mark has subsequently ‘gifted’ Extraudionary experiences for some of his family). It’s a reflection of how Extraudionary captures the most precious things for life (even if it doesn’t always feel apparent at the time).

7 years later, once again I faced Mark across the same kitchen table, this time with a film crew for company, as we recreated that recording from back in the day. And from there Kando created a thing of beauty that I’ve recently enjoyed sharing with online audiences ( you can watch the film here ).

The beauty of Extraudionary is that the experience gifted and created is what you want it to be, and totally personal to either you or the lucky recipient. I could make a different film for each person I’ve interviewed.

Which means, I’m always open to a sequel…

Extraudionary creates a wide variety of amazing experiences for life's big occasions. Take a look at what we create here...

My challenge to you this month. Dive into your collection of vinyl, tape or CD singles and pick out 6 at random. What’s the story behind each one?

A new record store has opened nearby. It’s a sign of the times (and property market) that someone felt confident enough to begin trading solely in vinyl, but then Friendly Records is one of several new niche businesses that have appeared alongside more established retailers at the grungier end of North Street.

Living the urban dream, I called by and immediately saw a rack of old vinyl singles on sale for a bargain 10p each. I never planned to buy 6 records that effectively charted my life but, 30 minutes of rifling through dog-eared record sleeves later, that’s exactly what happened (I could have bought more). Nick Hornby couldn't have been prouder.

Here are my purchases, in chronological order of release;

• Rivers of Babylon – Boney M . My first musical memory, walking through a shopping centre aged 4, clutching this single for Mum. Almost 40 years later I bought it again for myself.
  
• Jealous Guy – Roxy Music . Having discovered Bryan Ferry in the mid-90s, Jealous Guy will forever remind me of an emotional farewell with my then-girlfriend. I was disappearing abroad for 3 months, and we were driving along when this came on. The floodgates opened.
  
• Wishing (If I had a Photograph of You) – Flock of Seagulls . To me, this track captures that early 80s electronic sound. It’s an era I’ve become very nostalgic about, even though I was only at primary school and it was Madness – rather than Flock of Seagulls – that was played at our school discos.
• Hold me Now – Thompson Twins . It’s easy to forget how huge the Thompson Twins were in 1983/4. This purchase can be attributed to my sister who had their album, ‘Into the Gap’, and ensured it was never off the cassette player back then.
• Hymn to Her - The Pretenders . I always remember this being on an early ‘Now’ album (#9 to be exact). ‘Now’ always seemed to reserve the cooler, less ‘poppy’ stuff for sides 3 or 4.
• Don’t you want me – Felix . Something I bought originally through no-one’s influence other than my own. It reflected a time when I’d fully embraced house music and recorded tapes of Pete Tong’s Friday night Radio 1 show.

Besides their significance to me, all of this second-hand vinyl has been a chapter of someone else’s life. Flock of Seagulls once belonged to Allyson because she’s written her name on both sides of the record sleeve. Felix cost someone £2.39 at Woolworths (the price label is still on), back when they were moved enough to go out and buy this single. Every record tells a story.

As the vinyl renaissance continues, I really hope Friendly Records cements its place on North Street. It’s a reminder in the all-pervasive digital age that buying music was once – and can still be – an act loaded with meaning.

Right, ready with your six?

(Image credit: tapedeck.org)

Somewhere in the depths of my parents’ cupboards in Yorkshire lies an old tape. It has the appearance of a blank cassette at first, but stick it in the tape deck and you’ll hear the voices of two children. The children are singing nursery rhymes and other songs, with some background encouragement from adults and occasional laughter. It’s not a long recording but enough to capture a moment in time. The children in question are my sister and I, the adults in the background my parents and grandparents. Sadly, some of the voices are no longer around. But they’re saved for posterity on a tape cassette that, almost 40 years on, is now worth its weight in gold.

That compact little rectangle of black plastic recently got me thinking about recording my own children. After all, given the years spent interviewing people for various radio stations, it would be remiss of me not to capture their voices also – particularly at a formative stage of life.

My daughter’s third birthday recently provided the perfect opportunity to do this so, armed with a digital recorder, I captured a rendition of Happy Birthday as the cake was paraded out at a party, the unwrapping of presents, a bike being ridden for the first time in the back garden, a few words from some slightly bemused grandparents and, finally, Mummy and Daddy sharing their thoughts.

Once some deft  editing is complete, there’ll be a seven minute picture of her life aged three captured for ever long after the final piece of birthday cake has been eaten. In many ways we were making a programme for - and speaking to - our 18 year old daughter, 21 year old daughter, 40 year old daughter and so on. Watching by coincidence Interstellar over the weekend, and of all the profound themes covered by Christopher Nolan’s brilliant film, the thing that moved me most was the relationship - and communication - between a father and his daughter over time and space. In a very earthly sense it made me think about what we were doing, capturing something that would last for as long as people wanted it to exist.

All of my Extraudionary programmes to date have featured people aged 40 and upwards reflecting on lives well lived. But I think there’s real value in also capturing the voices of those lives still many years away from reaching their full potential. Because one day in the future, even if tapes don't make a comeback, these recordings will be the gold to be rediscovered at the back of the cupboard.  

 

Extraudionary creates amazing programmes for people of all ages that capture life stories, family histories and special occasions. If you know someone who has a story to tell get in touch…

It’s January, it’s grey, and everyone’s either broke or at the gym. Are there any reasons to be remotely cheerful? Well, let me try to warm your online cockles and share at least one piece of good news. Extraudionary is one year old this month.

Convinced that I should take a unique programme-making proposition to a wider audience, Extraudionary was created to capture precious untold stories. One of the benefits of this job is meeting people with fantastic tales to tell. In virtually every case they are very modest about their lives, yet once the microphone is on and we get into conversation the stories that emerge are wonderful (you can hear a sample via this link and clicking on the radio icon).

For the benefit of this birthday blog, I wanted to share five defining things from year one:

• The first assignment involved interviewing David who was celebrating a milestone birthday. I got horribly lost on the way there, but persevered to his smallholding on a hillside overlooking Monmouthshire. After recording had finished, I enjoyed some true Welsh hospitality with a bowl of hot leek soup. The leek had been growing in the garden an hour previously until David’s wife ensured it had a date with destiny – and her saucepan. It was an act of great kindness – plus I think they were worried I was going to get lost again.

• I met John and Dorothy in June, and heard some fascinating – and occasionally harrowing – memories from growing up in Bristol during the Second World War. It brought home the reality of life during this often-romanticised period of history, and also the importance of capturing these stories for future generations before they are lost for ever.

• Besides Extraudionary, I was lucky enough to work with Worthy FM, Glastonbury Festival’s dedicated radio station. Being my first Glasto, I walked around in the Somerset heat like a child in a sweetshop and met both punters and performers. Two particular highlights were interviewing Dr John Cooper Clarke in a smoke-filled static caravan that hadn’t been upholstered since the 1970s, and capturing the wisdom of ‘Merlin’ after witnessing a near perfect sunrise on the Summer Solstice.

• You think you know someone… I recorded programmes with several people who were already familiar to me. You might think this makes interviewing easier, but it’s actually more difficult because you have to treat the subject as if you’ve never met them before. What did I learn? That what you think you know about someone is merely the tip of the iceberg…

• And finally some stories that stuck in the memory... the unsung heroine who tackled “the worst poverty they’d seen” in Malawi, how a failed medical saved the lives of two evacuees during the Second World War, the pop star who drowned out the terrifying sound of conflict in Gaza, a couple who are proof that the Good Life wasn’t just a TV show, how Beethoven got one man into trouble with the neighbours, and a rare harmonica performance that showed it’s love that makes the world go round.  

My heartfelt thanks once again to everybody who supported Extraudionary in its first year, and I look forward to discovering many more lives in 2018. Why not make it the year to tell your story?

Extraudionary captures the stories of people’s lives – for life. Start your Extraudionary journey here…

Photo credit: Tiffs Wicked Cakes

Two recent events highlight radio's power to take us on journeys of discovery...