Rolling Interminable 6Music Daytime Canon

Another odd instance: about 15 years ago (?) when Jonathan Ross behaved dreadfully and was taken on air, much talk was that 'The BBC needs Ross to appeal to its youth audience'.

As some people pointed out, he was already in his 50s!

It might even be that young vs old is not the most helpful frame (though it is easy to perceive and it's somewhat logical to use it). There are lots of older people on 6music I don't like. And I'm not going to say that we need to campaign to preserve Steve Lamacq - who for me mainly has comedy value only. Nor Hobbs, whom I don't like, let alone 'Huey' - etc etc.

In my own case it's mainly that I happen to value Coe, and I think when you have a good thing, removing it is a bad idea. In a way the question is no more complicated than that, from my own particular POV.

+ Tracer: I wouldn't dare to say that not enough C86 music (even broadly defined) gets played. It's a niche. It's not as if I think I can demand that Laverne, Charles or others must play it (they wouldn't).

It's more that when I do hear Coe play it, in some form or other, I feel somewhat contented and comforted, to think that the BBC does, despite everything, still serve people who like this music.

Clearly it's moving away from that. Presumably it will say it needs to appeal to other people. Fair enough. By the same token, it will no longer appeal to me.

Last night I was thinking something like: "Pinefox, you've posted all these posts to an ILX thread about 6music, and got into discussions about audiences, which were beside the point in a way, because all you meant to say was that you liked Coe's programme -- and do you even like it that much? You haven't listened to him from the start, you only started a few years ago, you don't listen to him every night or all of every programme, and he sometimes plays things you don't like ... maybe this whole campaign is OTT at best".

Then I actually turned on Coe, live, halfway through, and heard the usual mix of music, much more diverse than I would usually hear from other sources: African pop, Latin music, reggae, electronic music, rock & roll, blues, folk-rock, some tremendous old acoustic folk ... and amid this, remarkably, a song by 1,000 Violins which, despite knowing this band better than most people would, I had never heard before. It was delightful to hear it: a very average 12-string riff in C much like something I've come up with myself, an old BBC session track. An old 1,000 Violins session - I wouldn't even hear that by listening to my own music collection, let alone anywhere else on radio. It segued into an acoustic, atmospheric track, driven by ukelele, that sounded curiously like Magnetic Fields, and after a while I started singing a random Merritt vocal over the top. Then after a while it turned out it *was* Merritt, with a solo track I'd not heard in a decade and, again, wouldn't have heard again even by delving into my own music unless I'd deliberately delved quite far. This also was marvellous.

I concluded that I had not really overrated Coe's programme, that it's by far the best popular music programme on the BBC in any format, it's a public service, and they're wrong to cut it.

Do you listen to any of the other shows?

Sometimes. Over the years, quite a lot.

I used to play Craig Charles' Saturday night soul / funk programme regularly but have got out of the habit (I assume it's still going).

African pop, Latin music, reggae, electronic music, rock & roll, blues, folk-rock, some tremendous old acoustic folk

I will say that sounds like Giles Peterson's show as well, though perhaps with less folk.

gideon coe, i've never heard, but he's been very generous with his airplay to friends of mine in bands / with record labels

Gideon Coe is a sweetheart and plays a wonderful variety of stuff, I unfailingly catchup with his show first thing as my work morning ritual. I honestly don't think its really a question of the vintage of music 6 music plays in general so much as blandness and dearth of invention? the playlist dominates during the day and is frequently deathly, and the old stuff they'll play seems to be similarly reaching for the same worn out, uh, classics. The irony of axing Marc Riley's show is he plays overwhelmingly the newest and most youthful bands (albeit quite a narrow furrow) and god help them, they all love him cos he played in the fall...

... which means he knows their life more than most.

Riley / Coe are still playing some of the most interesting stuff you'll find on the station, new and old. though Riley's post punk bent is probably going out of fashion even among nostalgists and maybe it's pushing luck to have a teatime radio show that might play the Fire Engines in 2023.

the "new music fix" sounds incredibly cringe and with no individual stamp on it there's sure to be daytime playlist creep (more of the blandest part of the station by far). "the best new music" has always felt like such a lame attempt to get down, esp in an era where music from every decade is getting rediscovered and repurposed by the Kids on tiktok. look son I've got the newest music on my MP3!!

unfortunately the optics + mini Craig Charles dummy spit from retrograde elements of the listener base will probably have a lot of casual listeners believing that this is a necessary freshen up / diversifying clear out of the male pale and stale rather than a blandening and narrowing step. feels like a decision made on paper.

Not really invested in 6Music but the lack of sensitivity in dealing with Coe’s move just days after his father’s death stinks.

Woke up this morning to give my dad his tablets and I told alexa to play 6music and Funkadelic - Standing On The Verge Of Getting It on was playing. Happy days!

Then sadly they went and spoiled it all by playing something stupid like Where's Me Jumper by Sultans Of Ping F.C.

That was cited as a 6music staple (I think) in the 3rd post on this thread.

Agree with koogs that Coe is supportive to various musicians who can't make a living from music. Perhaps to a fault, perhaps too loyal to the same old names.

Agree very much with cw's post.

Agree with verhexen who is quite right about 'new music' and to say that bad decisions making the station worse will be obscured by misleading publicity that will make people think it's getting better.

I don't know the Fire Engines but Coe the other night played a quite good track that turned out to be by a band from Fast Product 40 years ago who had just reformed and made their first LP.

Agree with Dan Worsley about the personal aspect.

Nice discussion. Don't care about 6Music but imagine this:

"Keep Steve Lamacq till he's 80."

The way the country is going I can see it.

Going to assume that Lamacq consistently pulls in listeners and might be the most popular show?

Disaster if so. I assume it's someone like Laverne.

Of the residual old guard, Coe's my favourite and Lamacq's easily my most bad and hated: the one show I simply cannot bear to listen to. (It was the same with daytime Radcliffe and Keaveny, and I've basically been on board with all the other recent major changes until this one.)

I never listen to the radio but, among Radio 6 listeners I know, Coe seems to be the go to guy.

... I'm more familiar with his dad tbh!

The day they shift Cerys Matthews from Sunday mornings is when I'll get outraged. (Apparently, it's the "biggest single show on Radio 6, and the most listened to digital show in the UK" so I guess she's safe.)

Would venture that she probably plays more records from the 1920s than anyone else on the BBC right now.

ok that makes me want to check her show out!

Her show is a wonder. It's given me so much pleasure over the years. Sure, it's geared towards Sunday morning and errs on the gentler side (a plus for me tbh), but she ventures more widely around the world and through time than 99% of anything else that's ever been on the radio.

ILM fave O Superman is being played right now.

re Matthews: Not having listened much for years, I think what she does with musical diversity, and even other sounds and literature? - is creditable. I just don't much enjoy her own voice and persona. I once heard her interview the Irish Ambassador, which was quite exciting for me as I'd met him myself. And coincidentally I saw him on the 10 o'clock news last night.

Tom D: I know nothing about Tony Coe, but he died recently and I think Coe played an hour of records he'd been on. (I think the news of cutting Coe's programme came about 3 days later.)

re Lamacq, I wouldn't choose to listen to him, but I think his continued existence has comedy value. He will still have features like "listeners recommend underrated records from the 1990s", giving him a chance to play Kingmaker and Senseless Things. Music that didn't sound good when we were 19.

Oddly I couldn't bear Keaveney, finding his voice, delivery, persona unbearable, yet many people seemed to like him a lot.

Last night Coe stated that his programme will end on 11th May. Sooner that I'd imagined. It was a sad moment.

something we can all agree on then: Keaveney is/was terrible

Good to hear!

I didn't like Keaveney's voice much either.

For a long time I thought he was Vernon Kay. Then I saw a photo and thought he was Chris Moyles. My mine has never quite settled on a coherent conception of Shaun Keaveny. No need now.

Cerys Matthews' show is a delight. I don't really understand why her persona rubs some people up the wrong way. I think someone said they find it too homely or something? I love home I do.

I think it's a bit "I'm just swept away by all of this wonderful music" which is admirable but starts to grate after a while, same deal but even more so with Mary Anne Hobbs.

Alba, I share this sense of Keaveney. I thought he was young and looked like Kay. Then when I saw a picture, he looked older than he should have done. I find his delivery of speech intolerable.

(I have always hated Moyles so much, including at a time when people were saying, for some reason, that he was the most talented new broadcaster in the country. Dire.)

re Matthews, for me it's not 'homely' but it could be a certain kind of 'twee' (not the C86 kind fwiw), which includes tentativeness and often not quite knowing what she's talking about. But I don't thus mean to knock her music content - I can believe it's worthy.

Tend to agree with poster Camaraderie. There is something fake, or if not fake at least grating for this listener, about Hobbs' breathy yet also slowly ecstatic sense of wonder.

Prefer covid to keaveney tbh

In a way it’s remarkable that anything that boring and low energy could also be so irritating

I think it's a bit "I'm just swept away by all of this wonderful music" which is admirable but starts to grate after a while, same deal but even more so with Mary Anne Hobbs.

I don't think I've heard gideon coe ever

seeing a potential audience here for creating a radio show with me saying between the songs that the music I'm playing is nothing that special really and there's no reason for anyone to get so excited

The anti-Zane Lowe

xp this was kind of John Peel's style? I mean, not really, because he was obviously enthusiastic about what he played, but he had that ironic, deflating tone, can't imagine him earnestly enthusing about his swept away by music, or at least only in an arch, indirect way.

I remember watching repeats of Revolver when I was a teenager, and I liked the way Peter Cook would slag off the music (which he genuinely disliked, apparently), I think DJs who openly loathe the records they're playing is the way to go.

The delating style was used by the dire Keaveney, and I think by Ravenscroft who plays on how monotone his voice is.

I think it's a bit "I'm just swept away by all of this wonderful music" which is admirable but starts to grate after a while, same deal but even more so with Mary Anne Hobbs.

― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Thursday, 13 April 2023 10:50 (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

some of the presenters on radio 3's 'eclectic' shows do something like this as well, and it seems to be creeping into the straight classical stuff as well, it annoys me but in a way where I worry that maybe I'm the one with the problem, particularly because it mainly seems to be women who adopt this style. But why are they trying so hard to convince me that they really love this music? It feels like someone trying to sell you something. I want the music to be introduced by a stern, formal academic type ideally.

stuart maconie does introduce music as if it were an open university module, but it's absolutely a bit

affecting indifference to downplay one's emotional connection to music def a traditionally male strategy yes. I do find breathless enthusiasm makes me cringe often but that's my problem. there's space for both I guess.

I don't think this is enthusiasm vs non-enthusiasm.

Laverne is enthusiastic and I don't mind her. Charles is enthusiastic about his soul and funk and that seems natural.

I just think it's particular tones. I think Alba was exactly right in saying that Hobbs sounds phoney even though she might not even be phoney.

Stuart Maconie: C or D?

So, did you ever like him? Still like him? Never liked him? Is there anyone else who's similarly annoying?

― John Davey, Thursday, July 5, 2001 bookmarkflaglink

I never heard of that son of a bitch!
― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, July 5, 2001

Good times.

are there any prominent male DJs who do the Mary Anne Hobbes awed wonder thing? Zane Lowe was mentioned above, and was relentlessly positive, but as far as I remember he didn't have the breathy wonder thing, he was too bouncy and yappy, like a hype-man or youtube vlogger. Not a DJ, but I guess this is Brian Cox's style in his documentaries?

the only time I find this style of presenting tolerable is when Mary Anne Hobbs does it, but I think that's mainly because of nostalgia