You are currently browsing the Celtica Radio Blog weblog archives for May, 2007.
31/05/2007 by Steve Edge.
Hi, Steve Edge here with an update about the latest New Music Radio Show. This month we’ve added all these tracks to the Celtica Radio Playlist. I’m also playing one or two “classics” from the vaults, Oh yes, and Bill made me play Doctor Spangles!
Kinky Durakee - The Things We Fear The Most
Maggie Khiane - Happy Day
Airiel Down - Into The Blue
Irritant - Voice of the Siren
The Lazerus Plot - Don’t Change a Thing
Koopa - One Off Song for the Summer
Urban Myth Club - Moon & The Night
Maria Miller - I Dont Want Tomorrow To Be Monday
Walter Mann - Honey
Kevin Kennedy - My Best Days
Maidens IV - Jolly Rover
Mispent - Saving for a Rainy Day
Kind of Girl - Slave to your Charms
Doctor Sparkles - Sail Away
Love and Kissies ~ Steve…
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31/05/2007 by Andrew John.
Sometimes, I talk a load of garbage. This moan, which went into Bill’s Underground Edition on 27 May, is no exception, as you’ll see.
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This really is a load of absolute rubbish. No, I don’t mean The Underground Edition, but the idea that councils think they ought to be able to get away with fortnightly collections of refuse. Notice how they don’t call it ‘fortnightly collections’ but ‘alternate-weekly collections’?
I heard the environment minister Ben Bradshaw use that self-same term on Radio 4 this last week. Talk about euphemisms – it just goes to show how politicians at all levels and of all political colours like to play with semantics in order to bury bad news – in the rubbish pile in this case.
The claim is that it will encourage recycling. Now here in Llanpillock in the wildest parts of the wild west of West Wales it’s easy to recycle some waste: with food you just dump it in woodland and let the nonhuman creatures have a go at it. It’s easier to compost stuff. We’re more likely to have real fires, so much stuff can be burned. In towns? Not so easy. The stuff can sit in a wheelie bin and stink for weeks in the summer.
So what’s the thinking? I’ll tell you: it’s to save money, that’s what it is.
Another stupid idea verging on the criminal is to charge extra for waste collection, because some people create more than others. I can see some logic in that, but aren’t you then in danger of saying those people with kids should pay for the schools, because their kids use them and others’ kids don’t? Well, I mean, those who don’t have kids.
What about street cleaning? We all pay for that, but we don’t get it in Llanpillock – or in nearby Llanbollock. Or, indeed, anywhere hereabouts. We just get a lorry twice a year – if we’re lucky – sweeping the lanes. Yes our streets are just that, lanes, and down them often walk cattle from field to milking parlour and back again, because many farms straddle roads – I mean lanes. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what’s left behind. Do we complain? Well, only those who’ve come in from the towns and expect townie ways, but those who love the countryside because it is the countryside don’t. They just accept it.
But I’m getting away from the point. They think that (a) they ought to be able to get away with the idea that they can save money with fortnightly collections and (b) that they can charge extra for this one service.
That’s politicians for you. I don’t really have to have a go at them in this little slot: they bring all the combined odium of the people on themselves.
Rubbish, the lot of ’em.
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19/05/2007 by Bill Everatt.
Hello again, thanks for tuning in, this is Bill Everatt, with the news about the May 20th update of the Underground Edition.
Ok troops, in this weeks show, we have an Urban Legend called The Visitor at Waunfawr, this actually means large moor/heathland in Welsh Its a large village on the outskirts of Snowdonia National Park, Gwynedd, in North Wales. The Marconi Company built a large high-powered Long Wave Wireless Telegraph transmitting station near the village in 1914 which worked in association with a receiving station at Tywyn. The building is now used as a climbing centre, although this weeks Urban Legend has a more supernatural than technological basis.
Andrew John seems to be hitting the target this week, you could say.
Also, who said this? “A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” Now who do you think said that? “A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”
Plus we’ve also got some great music and information on the artists from amongst others Christian Calcatelli, Bali, Talk Engine, Koopa, Public Symphony and Clarity.
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11/05/2007 by Bill Everatt.
Hello again, in the May 13th update of the Underground Edition, we have an Urban Legend called the Night Watch, a particularly creepy story from the Folk history of Wales.
Andrew John’s thinking about his grammar - and maybe his granddad, too.
Also, who said this? “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” Now who do you think said that?
Plus we’ve also got some great music and information on the artists from amongst others Mary Knickle, W Robert Peek, Michael Richards, Koopa, The Lazerus Plot and Larissa.
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10/05/2007 by Andrew John.
I had a bit of a go at those people who believe in the literal truth of scripture this week. I needn’t expand on it: the moan below says it all. Here is it . . .
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I read a couple of days ago that a Dutchman had built Noah’s Ark. Well, a half-size replica of it.
His name’s Johan Hubers, and according to one news report he’s put life-size replicas of animals in there: zebras, giraffes, crocodiles, bison. This ark is fifty metres long, and, according to the news story I read on the BBC news website no less, it’s half the length of Noah’s. My first question is, how on earth do they know? Even the BBC? Noah’s Ark didn’t exist. If anything can be said to have existed historically, it can’t have had two of each of the entire species of Planet Earth on it – even at a hundred metres long. This Hubers chap has built this thing – and good luck to him – out of his belief in the literal existence of Noah’s Ark. This bizarre tale has given rise to a lot of academic speculation over the centuries, even while people have doubted its literal truth. In the fifteenth century, for instance, a chap called Alfonso Tostada gave a detailed account of the vessel’s logistics, right down to arrangements for the disposal of all the poo and the circulation of fresh air, and asixteenth-century geometrician, Johannes Buteo, calculated the ark’s internal dimensions, allowing room for Noah’s grinding mills and smokeless ovens – a model widely adopted by other commentators. There’ve since been searches undertaken on Mount Ararat in Turkey and Mount Sabalan in Iran. Interesting, but all rather silly. Just how anyone can believe that one man and his wife and sons and their wives put a big boat together and literally gathered and crammed every creature on Earth – two of each – onto it defies physics. And, since these fundies believe dinosaurs and people existed side by side, why weren’t the dinosaurs saved, too? What of the smallest creatures? How about the amoeba? Did he find a couple of them, too? Considering it’s a single-cell creature that doesn’t need a mate in order to multiply, why would he? Yet we all know the jingle: the animals went in two by two. What of the mayfly? It dies within 24 hours. That’s its lifespan. In less than a day, it shuffles off this mortal coil. It becomes an ex-mayfly. So by the time he’d found a pair and set sail, his pair would be well and truly deceased. Yet we see mayflies by the kilo where I live.
I thought it was only in America that people believed in all this stuff in a literal sense. I mean, don’t get me wrong, everyone’s entitled to his religion, but in America the real frothies, the real right-wing fundies, will accept every contradiction in the Bible and take it as literal truth, even though there are, well, contradictions. Logical impossibility, but there you go. A huge percentage of Americans believe in the literal truth of the Bible: Genesis, Adam and Eve and the snake, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection. The lot. You know, I’ve often wondered about all that poo. The stuff the animals must have dumped, day in, day out, for forty days and forty nights – not to mention that of Noah and his wife, his sons and their wives. My theory is that it just piled up and piled up until they decided one day that they really ought to get to grips with it, so they trained some of the brighter animals to heave it over the side: the elephants and mammoths with their trunks and tusks, the primates with their opposable thumbs. And they stopped the Ark one day while the operation took place. Out it went, every last ounce of it. And it stayed there until 1492 – when Columbus discovered it.
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06/05/2007 by Fred Stacey.
This is my first Blog - anywhere. Mainly because I couldn’t be arsed! I ave just put a new show up on the server in the all new 64 bit clarity. Actually I think it needs tweaking but Bill thinks its ok - opinions either here or to my email addy. Can’t think of anything else to say at the moment but when something cheeses me off then you’ll know about it on here.
Have a good one (next show Wednesday)
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06/05/2007 by Bill Everatt.
Hello again, more news on the May 6th update of the Underground Edition from Celtica Radio.
In this weeks show, Keith Berry-Davies reads “The Fart In The Dark,” an interesting story which may be true or may be false, but definitely smelly! Don’t forget, you can get more details on this tale and others from a book written by Mark Barber which is called Urban Legends Uncovered.
Andrew John is here with news about the animals going in two by two.
And in the aftermath of the UK regional election results we thought this weeks who said this? Should have a political flavour… So, who did say this? “I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.” Who do you think said that?
We also discuss the incredible story of the Bloggers who dared to stand up to the AACS business group, and their alleged attempts at censorship.
Plus we’ve also got some great music and information on the artists from amongst others; The Merlin Bird, Hard Logic, Electron Love Theory, Quinn’s Uncles, 3 Blind Mice and in a moment Maggie Khiane.
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04/05/2007 by Steve Edge.
Hello again, this is Steve Edge here, Head of Music for Celtica Radio. We’ve added more great tunes to our playlist, and in the latest show I’m playing music by;-
Kinky Durakee - Dedication
Elena - Here Comes The Rain
Tieweb - MAPS
Margaret O’Brien - I Should Be The One
Ben Reel Band - Waitin For U
Charles P Hurowitz - Painfully Single
A True Story - An Evening With
Sunsoma - Summer Sun
Tieweb - Hey Hey
Hard Logic - Summersong
And if you are a New Music Artist, and would like to get your work on Celtica Radio, e-mail me, or post a reply here.
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03/05/2007 by Andrew John.
I have this thing about press photographers, especially those who get in your face. This was my moan for this week’s Underground Edition, which you can catch by going to the Celtica Radio home page and, well, looking about a bit and clicking. You’ll get the hang of it. Or you can read it here:
So – dashing, delightful, debonair Hugh Grant has been bailed after allegedly chucking a tub of food at a tabloid photographer. Good for him, if he did it.
I just wish that said tub of said food – beans, we’re told – had been first masticated, then ingested, then regurgitated and upchucked all over the bastard. This was near Grant’s home, don’t forget. Near his home. Not at a press launch. Not at a glamorous premiere. But near his home, where he was probably being perfectly legal and buying a newspaper or a lollipop, or taking the iguana for a walk in the park.
Now don’t get me wrong: we need our press photographers. But this chap was from something called the Daily Star. I mean, is that classed as a newspaper?
I don’t know about you but, frankly, I don’t give a toss what Hugh Grant gets up to and I don’t want to see photographs of him getting into or out of a car, coming out of a brothel, going into a gay sauna, emerging from a mosque, sneaking into a gurdwara or Buddhist temple or disappearing up his own fundament.
I like this star of romantic comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and About a Boy as an actor. He does a good job. He entertains me. My butcher does a good job. He provides decent meat. But I don’t wish to know whether he’s been seen doing this or that with Mrs O’Tool’s son or daughter or with a juicy sirloin in the back of the shop – as long as he doesn’t serve that one to me!
I can like and even respect someone but not wish to know what they’re doing 24/7, with whom or to whom or at whose behest, in whose garden or in whose bed or whose Jacuzzi.
So let’s hear it for a bit of privacy, shall we?
I’m not what you’d call a royalist, but I still believe that the royals deserve some privacy, along with TV personalities, actors, politicians— Oh, hang on a mo. I’ve got it in for politicians, haven’t I? Had a good old go at them last week, didn’t I?
No, strike that. Politicians deserve all they get – although I might draw the line at a photograph of one of them going down the garden path to the outside lavvy? What? They don’t have those any more? Not even in northern constituencies? My, things have changed.
But people doing very public jobs are still doing jobs. They do them as well, or as badly, as those of us doing non-public jobs, mundane jobs, jobs that no one sees us doing, or, if they do, they don’t take a blind bit of notice of us.
And if they deserve privacy, so do those doing jobs that are a bit high-profile. The royals have even done deals with the paparazzi: ‘Look, old bean, we’ll ponce about a bit and pose for your camera thingies, and then you can bally well bugger orff and leave us to our skiing, what?’ Easy. We all like to see pictures of our royals – well, some people do – but seeing them day after day in every conceivable situation (apart from nipping down the Buck House garden path to the outside lavvy, I assume) is just boring. Don’t you appreciate something all the more for not having seen it for a while?
But, then, I suppose the great unwashed are to blame for buying the rags that print this tosh. I loved it when just about all of Liverpool boycotted the Sun – another one of those frightfully intellectual organs – after it impugned Scouser soccer fans after the Hillsborough disaster.
Enough consumer power, and you could put one of these rags out of business. Now, a country without the Sun and the Star. That’s worth a boycott or two.
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