Greenbelt Phlegm Vol 2: Greenbelt Day the Second

Welcome to the second of my post-Greenbelt/Greenbelt FM related musings. Read the first one here. In the last post I talked about Billy Bragg's Friday night performance, here's a video of him doing a random Carpenter's cover at the request of a possibly ironic Greenbelt crowd.



Saturday dawned sunny, bright and (because I was getting up at an ungodly hour) bloody freezing. I was terribly excited as at 9am I slunk in behind the microphone for the first of my Greenbelt Today shows. These shows were a bit of a departure for me in terms of radio. If you've ever heard any of mine and Eyan's podcasts (if not, click here), you'll have discovered that our radio style is a bit ramshackle, with lots of banter and generally very silly. Greenbelt Today is more like a Radio 2 thing with live guests talking about serious things.

In my first show I interviewed various people, most notably a gentleman with the superb moniker of Greg Valerio. Greg is the founder and CEO of a company called Cred Jewellery who make ethically sourced and produced jewellery. He was our favourite guest because he was interesting to interview and he actually brought real gold with him to show us. Sadly, he took it with him at the end of the interview. We also met two randomly selected lovely people who were to become our Greenbelt Today Guinea Pigs. Mark and Katie kindly agreed to go to something at the festival every day that was selected by us and then come on the show the following day, tell us about it and receive their next assignment.

My show passed without a crisis but then, due to a mix up, I found myself staying on the air afterwards to present a music show for which I was completely unprepared! It was great fun as I got to meet Kit Ashton and the Greenbelt Minstrels who came on and chatted for a bit and played a couple of marvellous live tunes. Later in the day, I randomly ran into my old vicar and boss from my youthworkerin' days, bought an exceptional hat (brown fedora!! Just like Indiana Jones - yay!), edited stuff for other shows and generally worked till about 9pm.

Despite being shattered, in the late late evening I visited the beer tent and met up with various Manchester bods. It felt strange, as I was sitting with them I felt out of place. Just a couple of years ago, these were people that I felt very comfortable around. But it really hit home to me how much I have changed (for the better I think) since I separated from my wife in January 06. With a few notable exceptions (including the legendary Fil the Destroyer and his long-suffering better half Di), I felt I just didn't fit in. I didn't feel bad about that, just thoughtful.

Anyhoo, I took myself off to my tent and was asleep shortly after midnight as I had to be up at 6:45am the next morning.....

In the next installment of Greenbelt Phlegm:
Something or other happens.....

Back in the real world however, I have started my new job. This is exciting and extremely tiring. I also had a rather silly flat-warming party roughly themed on the Big Lebowski (which was mainly an excuse for guests to wear dressing gowns and drink alarming numbers of White Russians.

Movies
The Bourne Ultimatum *****
Next *
Back to the Future Pt 2 ****
Back to the Future Pt 3 ***
Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom ****

Greenbelt Phlegm Vol 1: Greenbelt Day the FIrst

I have just returned from a fantastic weekend at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham this weekend. For those of you unfamiliar with Greenbelt, it is a music and arts festival that takes place once a year at Cheltenham racecourse. I've been attending for a while, but the last two years I've been working at the festival radio station. So many exciting things happened that I am going to beg your indulgence and present you a blog post for each day of the festival.

Greenbelt is really like nothing else I've ever experienced, the closest I can imagine would be a smaller, more Christian Glastonbury type thing. Click on the link above to find out more. Each year the festival has a theme, this year's being Heaven in Ordinary. This last 6 days, especially with the glorious weather we had, has been the closest to Heaven I have experienced in a long time.

I won't talk about the Thursday when I arrived on site much, except to say that it involved setting up many many tents in the wonderful sunshine, then an evening in the Organic Beer Tent (a recurring event you will find over the next few posts).

Possibly due to the combination of lots of sun and a moderate amount of strong organic beer; myself, Eyan and Anna from the Greenbelt FM team woke on Friday morning with horrific hangovers (like "Urrrrrggggghhhh, I think I'm actually dead" type hangovers). I emerged out of my tent like a George Romero zombie groaning and stumbling around in my search for liquid replenishment (and a banana).

However, on with the show as it were. I had no presenterly duties, so I was dispatched round the festival site on various errands to help prepare for the afternoon's shows. I also did my bit for GB FM publicity by lending my meagre erection skills (oo-errr) to the placement of banners.

I think this picture really does bring out my best features. The 2 inches slightly below my knees. They can be admired on the left of this picture purloined from the official Greenbelt section on Flickr.

I was assigned to help out on Eyan's Live Lunch Show, which went very well. He interviewed some excellent guests including a particularly striking young lady called Alicia from Christian Aid. She was promptly booked to come back in for the remaining Live Lunch shows. This went down very well with the straight male members of the Greenbelt FM team (oo-errrrr. OK time to stop now....)

The rest of the day flashed by in a flurry of activity, including some frenetic planning with my excellent team for my show Greenbelt Today (the first of which I will blog about in the next post).

In the evening I met up with a friend and went to mainstage to see Billy Bragg, which was amazing. The man may not have a great voice, but his songs are as powerful and passionate as ever and he can work a crowd brilliantly. My favourite line from Billy that night was a throwaway comment about how that as he has aged, his music has been upgraded from punk to folk. It had me chuckling quietly under my breath like a lunatic for 5 minutes.

We also tried in vain to go and see something young and trendy in The Gentlemen, who are a very exciting young Sheffield band who Eyan and I cruelly labelled as the Christian Busted on Refresh FM at Easter. They are much better than that and deserve to do exceedingly well. Sadly about 7 million people had the same idea as us and we couldn't squeeze ourselves into the venue to see them.

Finally, the evening started as the day had begun, in the beer tent. I met up with various Manchester people who all commented on the belisha beacon sunburn look I had assiduously cultivated during the day. Thanks go particularly to Stephen Devine who managed to mock my excessively red face despite it being near pitch dark in the beer garden.

In the next thrilling installment of Greenbelt Phlegm:
More beer! I actually get unleashed on a microphone! I interview some Minstrels (not chocolate ones)! I hold real gold in my hand! We inflate chairs! I eat a jacket potato! I buy a hat!

#Working Niiiiinnnne to Fiiiiiiiivvvvvveeeee#

(Well actually more like 7-2....)

I am more excited than a bucket of hamsters running over a bucket of pigeons today. In less than an hour's time I will be cramming my many-pocketed rucksack into a small car full of lovely people and winging my way to the Greenbelt Festival. Like last year, I am working for the festival radio station Greenbelt FM (see last year's post about my adventures here) which will no doubt be great fun once more.

This year I am presenting a daily show called Greenbelt Today and also producing regular radio partner-in-crime Eyan's daily Live Lunch show.

Despite last minute tent related travails (Damp tent + tent bag + 11 months = tent ruined by thick black mould.... I was quite cross with the person who borrowed it and then told me it was dry when they put it away!!!!), I am really looking forward to this year's festival. The weather looks like being fantastic and I'm rather looking forward to seeing Aqualung too.

I might try and blog while I'm away, but if not have a picture of a penguin kite (Christmas present perhaps?) to tide you over till I get back...

Working with Auntie @ Greenbelt

Last weekend I was at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham. Greenbelt is a wonderful thing and I encourage you to check out the website here. While there, I lent my meagre talents to the festival radio station Greenbelt FM.

Well it was really hard work, but I had an amazing time and I ended up gettting the opportunity to do some really cool stuff! I pre-produced and then live produced a daily morning show called Greenbelt Today, live produced an insanely busy one-off lunchtime show and then presented my own daily evening music show. It was a bit strange flying solo from regular radio partner in crime Fat Roland who was also working for the station, but still very good.

The BBC help Greenbelt with the radio station and provide equipment (mmmm nice toys!) and professional staff (mmmm professional BBC... sorry, I'll stop that now) to work alongside a team of volunteers. I think they try and run the station as close as they can to a real BBC station, but encourage us volunteers to do as much ourselves while being available to help us when we need it. This is often! I'd never had the chance to do any radio producing before, and it was a eye-opener into how professional radio stations work. For your delectation I will run through a day in my life as a Greenbelt FMer.

7am. In the studio to finish my pre-production for Greenbelt Today, this would entail writing all the cues and information for all the pre-recorded items I'd ventured out to record the previous day as well as tweaking the show's running order to make sure there was enough to fill the show. If we had any live guests, I would finish sorting information and questions for the presenter. I'd collect the music playlist and cds from the music team and then make sure everything we needed was together. This would normally take till...

9am. Live producing the show. This meant making sure the show ran to the schedule and that the presenter had all the information and music he needed. I'd liase with guests when they arrived, checking through what they were there to be talking about and introducing them to the presenter. I'd also liase with Super Charlie the Engineer about what we needed when we had live musicians on the show. I would also run round like a headless chicken from time to time. This, I am assured by professionals, is a key and regular part of the job...

10am. Once the show had finished I would probably mainline some coffee then take part in production meetings for the next day's shows. This would then lead to me spending a few hours sorting out guests and interviews with the press team and then bobbing off with a groovy BBC recorder to interview some lovely people. Including over the weekend: Martyn Joseph, Dr Simon Mordern - a genuine rocket scientist , very affable author Nick Thorpe and festival bigwig and ex Eden Burning legend Paul Northrup. I'd then come back to the studio and get the editing geniuses to help me turn the rather rough interviews into something useful (they really are amazing, they managed through the editing process, to take my patented 'stuttering moron' interview style and turn it into something approaching normal! I'd normally be pretty busy till about...

2pm. Escape with Fat Roland for some lunch and try and catch something around the festival before nipping back to the studio at 4ish to do some pre-booked interviews and then get ready for my show at..

6pm. Ha Ha Ha Ha (Evil laugh) Unleashed upon a microphone at last! In my evening music show I played lots of music obviously and had a selection of excellent guests live in the studio. Often they would have come straight from playing mainstage or stage 2. I had yFriday, LZ7, Stop! Thief! and my personal favourites, Fire Fly along over the weekend. I'd just like to say here that yFriday were absolutely lovely, particularly as they had literally just come off mainstage and staggered up to the studio to talk to me. LZ7 were a tad chaotic (Lindz was riding a chopper around the studio man! )and I entered into a contest to improve Daniel Bedingfield's (festival headliner!) Gotta Get Thru This with heavy-metal roaring with Fire Fly. Predictably, I lost horribly. After my show at...

7pm. I would start pre-production for the following day's Greenbelt Today and also finish off any items I'd done for the Breakfast show. I'd normally do this till about...

10pm-10.30pm. At which point I would either check out something alternative worshippy and then head to the organic beer tent or cut out the middleman and then go straight to the organic beer tent. Once at the tent I would catch up with friends I'd not seen for ages, talk with my fellow radio bods or randomly talk to complete strangers (a greenbelt tradition) and generally consume far too much strong organic beer and have a great time till about 3am. I would then stagger back to my tent to catch a few hours sleep before starting again in the morning.

It may sound like just hard work, but I had more fun than I have in ages. Highlights not mentioned include watching Fat Roland chase an escaped goat at the petting farm in an attempt to secure an interview (not with the goat of course!), drinking unusual tea in the legendary Tiny Tea Tent at some silly time in the morning talking nonsense with great people and many others too numerous to mention.

I have learnt loads about radio which I can take into my Refresh FM shows at Easter 2007, I met loads of cool people and had a ridiculously good time into the bargain. Big up to Mary Corfield and the BBC team. Look out for Fat's & Lee's Greenbelt podcast that pulls together some of the stuff we both did over the weekend in next month or so.

Roll on Greenbelt 2007!