RHODcast: Jan 12, 2021

Republic of Broken Windows, 1 – Rep. Seth Moulton

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Happy new year – an earnest hope. This week, change of plan brought about by much more than the TV shots that have drilled themselves into our brains since last Wednesday. The present crisis challenges most everything that Americans have come to understand about their One Nation Indivisible. Right now the focus is on simply getting through to the inauguration of a new president who is serious about governing with the consent of the governed, which he secured in November by 7 million votes. Time for a series of short conversations with some people I respect who can shed some light on what we are living through. First, a conversation recorded Monday January 11 with US Representative SETH MOULTON. If you listen, I’m sure you’ll gain a sense of the mood in Congress right now, and perhaps of where things are going. Stay safe.

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Tim’s Comedy Links

Early in 2002, Tony Staveacre proposed a radio show to his friend, the beloved British comedian Tim Brooke Taylor. They would celebrate at least two of Tim’s great loves, after his family – golf and comedy – by playing a round together at the club where Tim grew up and learned to play, the Cavendish in Buxton Derbyshire. Actually Tim would play and Tony would caddy for him. Tim’s Comedy Links is a celebration of some great radio comedians who were to Tim what he was to a new generation.

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On the Titanic eight members of Bristol’s charmingly named Savage Club sat down at their instruments in the city’s Red Lodge and started to play. The resulting entertainment, scripted by Tony Staveacre and thick with the atmosphere of an Edwardian parlour, was The Band Played On. Here Tony and I recreate this paeon to White Star Orchestra, the band on SS Titanic.

Astor Piazzolla – The Last Interview

In July 1989 the Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla flew from Berlin to Bristol, UK, at the invitation of a BBC producer. Tony Staveacre was convinced that Piazzolla would make an excellent subject, and so it turned out. One July night, Piazzolla and his sextet played a memorable set before an invited studio audience. He also sat for an interview and talked frankly with Tony about the troubled birth of the musical form he invented – New Tango. It was to be his last public conversation, and never broadcast. Here is that interview for the first time, stirringly illustrated from the sextet session – more than thirty years since Piazzolla’s death.

Allan Schiller – Music Made Me, part two

ALLAN SCHILLER launched his professional career as a concert pianist at the age of nine, playing Haydn’s D major Concerto with the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra at Leeds Town Hall. He went on to make his name as a soloist, playing for audiences near and far with great international orchestras. In this second part of “Music Made Me” we can hear a shy and gifted young student grow into his illustrious career while coming to terms with life in 1960s U.S.S.R.

Allan Schiller – Music Made Me, part one

ALLAN SCHILLER is a modest maestro, acclaimed in The Guardian as the best Mozart interpreter of his generation. Now aged 80, and still playing his Steinway for several hours a day in his Bristol home, he has taken time out to write and record an account of his life in music. Here it is, read by the author, who also provides the elegant musical illustrations.

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Our House – Robert Moore

Robert Moore of Britain’s ITV News stepped out one January morning a year ago into quite possibly the biggest scoop of his career. By luck and judgement he and his crew would be there in the Capitol reporting on the first time in US history that the building had been breached by a hostile force: a force of self-described American patriots.

The Revolution’s Black Soldiers

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