08/03/10 - PRESS PRAISE FOR NEW BBC RADIO BALLAD
From Elisabeth Mahoney in The Guardian, Wednesday 3 March 2010:
THE BALLAD OF THE MINERS' STRIKE
This superb documentary is an early contender for a programme of the year mention, says Elisabeth Mahoney
It feels a bit early to be naming something as a radio highlight of the year but The Ballad of the Miners' Strike (Radio 2) is surely set to be one. A blend of new folk songs, archive footage from the strike and interviews with many of the protagonists, this richly textured programme touched on every dimension of the dispute.
Everyone talked about the strike with a still raw intensity. "It was a civil war, to be quite honest," said one former miner, "between the rich and the poor." We heard from those who crossed picket lines, and how thoroughly "scabs" were always shunned. In one village, a man was known to have broken the earlier strike in 1926: "To this day, nobody speaks to him."
A policeman spoke with regret about his part in the conflict, and women described how the strike changed their lives. "I were just a wife," said one. "It woke things in me and my friends that we didn't know were there." With the plaintive songs, these recollections formed an intensely moving tapestry full of passion, pride and anger. The loss of a way of life, and the tight-knit communities it sustained, was powerfully articulated. "Sons of miners and grandsons of miners are fighting for fuel in Iraq," said one man. "It's a damned disgrace."
From Chris Maume in The Independent, Sunday 7 March 2010:
THE BALLAD OF THE MINERS' STRIKE, RADIO 2
Coal-war voices bring a lump to the throat
On the Home Service in the Fifties and Sixties, Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker put together a series of "Radio Ballads" in which different communities were portrayed through interviews and the songs inspired by them.
Over the past few years the formula has been repeated on Radio 2, on such subjects as the decline of shipbuilding and steel, the Troubles, fox-hunting, living with HIV, and Britain's fairground community. Now the 25th anniversary of the end of the miners' strike has been marked with an astonishing piece of work.
The reporter Vince Hunt conducted interviews up and down the country, with policemen – "I wonder, could they ever forgive the police for what we did to them?" – and scabs – "walking by friends, that was the hardest thing" – as well as the strikers and their wives. These were fed to folk musicians, who wove sad, beautiful songs from them. "The Ballad of the Miners' Strike" was stuffed with fantastic lines. "It was the nearest this country has ever been to civil war since 1641 to 1649," one miner said. "It's just a shame we didn't have anyone's head to chop off at the end of it."
The wives responded with strength and resourcefulness. "We were expected to go back to normal [afterwards]," said one. "But I'd forgotten what normal was. I stayed in the new world and that's why I became a councillor ... I'm still proud of what I can do as a local person in politics." But the tone was elegiac rather than bitter: "It was the most exciting thing that ever happened in my life," another wife said.
The programme was rounded off with a mournful, minor-key rendition of "Here we go, here we go" with a brass-band setting. I listened for most of the hour with a lump in the throat. It was, simply, one of the best radio programmes I've ever heard.
From Gillian Reynolds in The Telegraph, Monday 8 March 2010:
Of all the BBC networks Radio 2 is the one competitors would like to bump off. Its audience is vast, loyal but unusually varied. Fans of brass bands, organ, jazz, folk and dance band music will still find shows for them there. It has documentaries which unfold social history in ways no other radio service does. Last Tuesday’s The Ballad of the Miners’ Strike was one such, part of a BBC regional tradition going back 50 years. Charles Parker at the BBC in Birmingham employed singer/songwriter Ewan MacColl (whose BBC radio career began in pre-war Manchester with Joan Littlewood), American musician Peggy Seeger, plus the cream of jazz/folk musicians and of Midlands studio technicians, to develop a unique radio form. They researched a story, recorded interviews, blended that speech into new songs written from the spoken words, made it into a continuous whole, using no narrator. The authorial voice, therefore, was closer to that of the people whose story it was than of an outsider. They were expensive, riskily radical. Singing the Fishing won the Italia Prize in 1960. Most are remembered still.
In 2006 Radio 2’s then controller, Lesley Douglas, revived the tradition, commissioning six new ballads on such subjects as the steel industry, fox hunting, fairground workers. They, too, won prizes. None the less, after Douglas’s controversial departure in 2008, the decision to commission a new ballad to mark the end, 25 years ago, of the bitter miners’ strike, took courage. Would it pass strict new “compliance” rules? Would it get onto the air? It did. It was marvellous, telling the story with all due care through the words of miners, their wives, policemen, politicians. We heard what it was like, both then and as seen from now, in real words and strong music. It shone with the complexity of truth. Produced by Oldham independents Smooth Operations it sprang from the BBC’s deepest roots and finest traditions.
02/03/10 - NEW BBC RADIO BALLAD FROM SMOOTH OPERATIONS
The Ballad of the Miners' Strike – a new one-hour BBC Radio Ballad commemorating the 25th anniversary
of the Miners' Strike through first-hand memories and original
song – airs tonight on BBC Radio 2.
From The Guardian Editorial, Tuesday 2 March 2010:
IN PRAISE OF ... BBC RADIO BALLADS
At a time when the BBC is talking of cutbacks, it is a reminder of its strengths as a broadcaster and the power of radio itself
On the Buxton platform at Chapel-en-le-Frith station a small plaque records the death of driver John Axon, killed by his own runaway train in February 1957. Axon won the George Cross for his bravery – he refused to jump off the engine and fought through scalding steam to apply the brakes as the train accelerated downhill – but his story would have been forgotten by now had he not been the subject of the first and most famous BBC radio ballad. Ewen MacColl's fire and steel folk voice is not to everyone's taste, but he, along with his partner Peggy Seeger and producer Charles Parker achieved astonishing things in the series of ballads that followed on from John Axon. New songs and old were mixed with the voices of working men and women, until then excluded from the airwaves. The programmes covered things such as the building of the M1, fishing, coal mining and boxing. In 2006, after MacColl's death, the BBC revived the tradition with a series of new ballads, including the Horn of the Hunter, on the foxhunting ban, and Thirty Years of Conflict on Northern Ireland. Tonight at 10.30pm on Radio 2, the latest BBC ballad is broadcast, marking 25 years since the end of the miner's strike. In the tradition, it includes interviews with people involved in both sides – miners who broke the strike and the van drivers who took them to the pits, as well as the police and union leaders. At a time when the BBC is talking of cutbacks, it is a reminder of its strengths as a broadcaster and the power of radio itself.
See BBC programme information at Radio 2 online.
19/02/10 - SMOOTH OPERATIONS NAMED INDIE OF THE YEAR
 What an amazing way to receive recognition for a year of incredibly hard work and start a bright new 2010! We're absolutely delighted to announce that Smooth Operations, as part of UBC Media, won Independent Production Company Of The Year at the inaugural Radio Production Awards last Thursday.
These new awards, organised by The Radio Academy and the Radio Independents (RIG), aim to recognise and celebrate the work of UK-based radio and audio producers. The event, held at London's The Venue on February 11th, was hosted by John Holmes and the panel of judges was chaired by The Daily Telegraph's Gillian Reynolds.
 Jonathan Wall, commissioning editor at BBC Radio 5 live (presenting the award on behalf of BBC Director of Audio & Music Tim Davie who was unable to attend), praised Smooth Operations' creativity, mentioning in particular our production for GMG Radio, Blogs From The Bunker. UBC's Tim Blackmore received the award on behalf of UBC and Smooth Operations.
Huge congratulations to everyone at Smooth Operations and UBC for their dedication and hard work, and for striving against all odds to reach the pinnacle of creative broadcasting.
(Photos: Radio Academy)
16/02/10 - MORE PRESS PRAISE FOR BBC RADIO 2 SERIES THE OCEAN
From Miranda Sawyer in The Observer, Sunday 14 February 2010
Also on Radio 2, Richard Hawley began his four-part series on The Ocean. He could have done a four-part series on Ocean Colour Scene and I wouldn't have minded: his voice is like Sheffield chocolate and he has the same ponderous, witty delivery as his friend Jarvis Cocker. And what a lovely topic: how the sea and seafaring culture have shaped the music and art of the British Isles. Gorgeous music, lovely quotes, a delicious programme. To make it, Hawley toured around the coast in seven days, a far more interesting companion than those overenthusiastic divvies on the telly. Have a listen, see just how soothing a documentary can be.
10/02/10 - PRESS PRAISE FOR BBC RADIO 2 SERIES THE OCEAN
From Elisabeth Mahoney in The Guardian, Tuesday 9 February 2010:
THE OCEAN
Richard Hawley's tour of the British coastline is genial and quirky, says Elisabeth Mahoney
Richard Hawley isn't, by his own admission, the most obvious choice of presenter for The Ocean (Radio 2). He lives in Sheffield – "one of the most landlocked places in the UK" – and doesn't often take to the water. "I can't even remember the last time I got on a boat," he admits.
And yet he makes a genial, charismatic host for this tour around the British coastline, taking in artists, poets and musicians inspired by the sea. It's quite quirky, and Hawley leaves in some of the material that others might edit. "The weather's too bad," he tells us flatly in Falmouth, unable to go for a boat ride. In Devon, he visits a pub where 25 men have gathered together to sing sea shanties. "It was an absolute nightmare to find," he complains.
But the result is a programme that's as soothing as the sea itself, and as quietly sensual as Hawley's music. He travels, in "seven fairly mad days", from Cornwall to Aberdeen, stumbling upon intriguing people paying tribute to the sea in their own ways. Folk singer Norma Waterson sings in her lounge which is, Hawley notes, "a stone's throw from the open sea". Everyone is humbled and spellbound by the sea. "Any turmoil I've got going off inside me," says Hawley, "it just dwarfs it."
From Gillian Reynolds in The Telegraph, Monday 8 February 2010:
THE OCEAN (RADIO 2)
Richard Hawley is a fine singer-songwriter. He lives far inland but is fascinated by the sea as a theme, as a source of British history and as a theme in literature, art and song. In a six-week journey around the UK, from Cornwall to Aberdeen, he meets poets, singers, fishermen, folklorists and historians to talk about the mighty deep. He starts in Falmouth, hearing about the sea as a means of transportation, tracing mass migrations and trade routes. This is a considered and important four-part series, lovingly produced by Elizabeth Alker.
12/01/10 -
STARTING THE YEAR WITH A SUCCESSFUL COMMISSIONING ROUND
FOR THE BBC
Smooth Operations is pleased to announce a promising start
to the new year with another successful BBC commissioning round.
Among the programmes we will be producing in 2010 (in addition
to our regular output) are:
Sing When You're Winning (1 hour, BBC Radio 2, June)
Laurel Canyon (2 x 1 hour, BBC Radio 2, July)
I Can't Live (1 hour, BBC Radio 2, September)
Guy Garvey's Rainy City (1 hour, BBC Radio 2, September)
George Formby ( 2 x 1 hour, BBC Radio 2, February 2011) |
