Our Glorious Leader was interviewed on the radio last week. I
touched on the subject of our recording experience at the BBC a couple of blogs
ago and I was looking forward to the broadcast as, along with the Radio Suffolk
drive time listenership, this was when I’d be able to listen to our performance
for the first time, the band having eschewed such bourgeois concepts as
playbacks and monitors in the studio in favour of the wholesome and robust
“Well, that one felt okay” approach
so beloved of recording engineers the network over - especially ones who’ve
already put in a full shift that day and are required to hang about for an extra few hours in order to
preserve these sorts of occasions for posterity due to the unique way in which
the BBC is funded. Unfettered from the need to defer to the rabbit-mouthed talk
show interventionist who usually accompanies him on such occasions (*waves*) James was free to converse in a leisurely
fashion with host Stephen ‘Foz’ Foster not only about Songs from The Blue
House, but on matters such as the perils of gig promoting, the opportunities that
technology affords the modern music archivist (an aside concerning The Who and Little Richard during a diversion regarding the processed
nature of modern recordings was particularly apposite) and how much it cost him to pay
off Carly Simon over that little matter of the single.
Obviously all of these recordings remain the property of the
BBC, although I’m sure we’re meant to have signed some sort of form in case
they want to release them as part of a boxed set or something in future. Not
everyone would ‘fess up with such a disclaimer - avuncular recording guru Dave
‘Butch’ Butcher (to whom OGL rightly pays fulsome tribute in the interview
itself) noted at the time of our original visit that he only realised that he’d
just recorded one band’s next album when he counted back the number of songs
they’d crammed into the session and after they insisted on taking a CD copy
away with them at its conclusion.
So,
here are four acoustic session songs by SftBH and an interview of about a half hour’s duration as
originally broadcast, during which Foz also plays our version of Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain;
You
can, of course, purchase your very own copy of the single here;
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