RHODcast: Jan 31, 2022

Up On the Roof — An Up All Night Flashback

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Sometimes things are too good to put away and forget about. Among the many legacy bits of audio from Up All Night on BBC Radio 5 Live is a half hour which shows what can happen when people with clear memories of a significant event are more or less left alone to talk. That doesn’t say much about my interview technique, but when the event in question was the one now supercharged by the dedication of Peter Jackson and his crew to a shade under eight hours of documentary, it begs to be heard again.

It’s a truism that without 1970’s “Let It Be” there would be no “Get Back.” On the actual 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ concert of the roof, January 30 2019, the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg joined Apple Corps’ Kevin Harrington and Ken Mansfield and Metropolitan police constable Ken Wharfe to make that day as fresh for our listeners as when it happened.

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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.

The Band Played On

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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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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