1. Tangled Up In Blue , Bob Dylan 2. Ernie , Benny Hill 3. Wish You Were Here , Pink Floyd 4. On Wings of Song, Mendelssohn, Kiri Te Kanawa and Utah Symphony Orchestra 5. Fake Plastic Trees , Radiohead 6. This Charming Man , Smiths, 7. Perfect Circle , R.E.M, 8. All these Things that I've Done , The Killers If the Conservatives win tomorrow's general election that list will be the musical tastes of our new prime minister, David Cameron. He chose those tracks in 2006 for the BBC's long running Desert Island Discs programme. It prompted a wonderful rant from Peter Maxwell Davies who described it as 'musical garbage' . Gordon Brown appeared on the programme back in 1996 and his choices were only marginally more inspiring: at least there was no Benny Hill and there was Bach, albeit predictably the Suite for Orchestra No 3 in D major. When Nick Clegg appeared on Michael Berkeley's Private Passions programme on BBC Radio 3 in 2008 his selection was notably eclectic ...
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQnd5ilKx2Y
Here we have an example of the failure to show visually whence came our music and how the whole of it came to be. A small matter, of course, for young people now go out into the world almost nescient about how the world as we know it came to be and how they themselves might find a place in it, for they were never properly taught such in the years of their 'schooling'. I'm an ex-pat retired historian who sometimes dreams of the A-Levels of yore (my yore). I kid you not that one september three decades ago, I started the first tutorial of a first-year European history course
by asking someone, anyone, to tell me what they knew about Hitler and Nazism. Nothing - not one could tell me anything at all.
I hope no one is asking what the hell that photo has got to do with history, for it has everything to do with it, including the fact that there are now people thinking Nielsen looked like an avuncular, bearded Scot with a shirt and photographer way ahead of their time.
The description "Radio 2.5" has achieved widespread currency in connection with this and other changes. When I read that description while travelling last week I had a feeling that it originated On An Overgrown Path some years ago. My feeling has been confirmed by a poster on the independent BBC Radio 3 forum -
http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?3294-Brian-Sewell-joins-the-throng!/page2
Here is my 2006 post, which was somewhat ahead of its time -
http://www.overgrownpath.com/2006/12/bbc-is-performing-badly.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039794/BBC-Radio-3-Breakfast-Radio-2-5-say-listeners.html
http://www.overgrownpath.com/2008/01/great-music-making-doesnt-need.html