For my sins and perhaps much to my surprise, BBC Radio London seem to like me and I get periodically invited on to shows to do 'guest slots'. Today, I was invited onto the Eddie Nestor show, currently being hosted by Jim Davis, to do the trends at 12 slot. I have done this a few times and generally I enjoy a bit of banter with Eddie. I've spoken to Jim a few times, but this is the first time I've done the Trends slot with him. The slot involves me picking three stories that are of concern to me. A local one, something we should know about and something fun.
I do not need too much encouraging to get up on my high horse and tell the world my views. I know the format and I had three things that I was determined to discuss. The first was the appointment Laura Johnson as a senior housing officer for Barnet Homes. She was in charge of housing an Kensington and Chelsea Council and was involved in cost cutting measure at Grenfell Tower. Now clearly there were issues at many levels, but given the current state of play with the investigations etc, it seemed to me a very unwise move and on many levels an unfair one. Barnet Residents and Trades Unions were preparing a lobby of Council offices on 20th October. Last night, I was informed that she was "no longer working for Barnet". I felt that residents really should be aware of what has been going on. It is my view that where potential negligence leads to deaths, the Police should investigate from day one. This was my first story and I was delighted that the BBC have now picked the story up.
My second story? Something we should all know about. I chose the fact that TFL are consulting on a new passenger rail service, using existing freight only lines, between Hendon and Hounslow, known as the West London Orbital railway. This proposal has been knocking around ever since I started the blog, in various forms. Like all important Infrastructure projects in the UK it seems to take decades to bring absolute no brainers to fruition. You can read more about the consultation here.
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| The False Dots next gig |
The third story, a fun one, was about the relaunch of Nambucca as a fully fledged music venue. I am delighted that my band, The False Dots are part of this. We are playing on Friday. The full listings are here. I am really excited to see that 70's Stiff Records sensation Lene Lovich is playing. When I told Jim, he said he'd seen her recently supporting the B52's and she's great.
You can listen to the show again here. Now I mentioned a conundrum. Before we started chatting about my stories, we had a chat about music and vinyl. I could chat all day to Jim about records and vinyl. As I mentioned to Jim, I have a huge collection of vinyl and I love it. However, all of the recent False Dots releases have been done purely on line. The main reason for this is it is cheaper and we can connect easily with our fans. However, the purist in my says we should put stuff out on Vinyl. No record companies are interested in bands with 63 year old singers. They (to me rather foolishly) think there is no market and no money in bands like me. Whereas it costs a tenner to release an album digitally, it costs a significant sum to put one out on vinyl and you've no real idea if it will sell. So what do you think, should we bite the bullet and do it?
