Radio Presenters' Diary 28th July 2011
I turn up at the studio unusually early ready to prepare for the first interview. Our first guest Alek from Scrim then arrives around 10 minutes later. By this time I was in a bit of a panic as the printer was out of paper so I would be unable to print a bio off. I noted down the things that Alek wanted mentioning (including Scrim's recently released EP) and eagerly awaited the arrival of my co-presenters’ temporary replacement. I stood watching the clock, as 3.45pm arrived I began to think I may be without a co-presenter and as I have always worked alongside someone else presenting, the thought of presenting the show alone terrified me. After a stressful call to my usual co-presenter he reassured me that his temporary replacement was almost there.
Not the best of starts to a show we started slightly late with my co-presenter introducing the show as “I don’t even know what this is called” while I scrambled to get a bio printed off onto a piece of paper he had given to me on arrival (lifesaver!). Dropped in the deep in a bit, this was one of the few shows where I was expected to do a majority of the presenting and even having done months of co-presenting on the show this was no less nerve racking as the pressure was on me to guide the show to follow the same structure as usually presented by my co-presenter.
The first 20 minutes of the show weren’t too stressful as Alek was really easy to interview and had prepared lots of songs which made a great gap filler for if there was ever a point I had run out of questions. Luckily the questions even though slightly hesitant as I was really nervous, flowed quite well. It was only when we got to the last part of the show that I began to have memory block but as Alek still had a few more songs to perform this was not an issue, in fact it was a nice change to have more songs played than our usual 2-3 songs (I think Alek performed around 4 songs in the end).
Next up were After Hours, a band of which I have worked with a few times previously. Two of the three members took part in the interview as the third member was at work. I introduced the band and the band introduced themselves again as my co-presenter had not quite caught it the first time (must be my broad Sheffield accent). The singer/guitarist then went into his first acoustic song and as usual he sounded really good. With his broad Sheffield accent very dominant in all of the songs similar to the likes of the Arctic Monkeys I felt the need to give this a mention and ask if they thought that the Sheffield accent may put off people from their music. They went on to explain that they felt that maybe people would group them as a generic Arctic Monkeys covers band because of their accents but that was not their intention at all. Even though influenced by the Arctic Monkeys, the band has developed their own unique style of music.
For the very first time in ages on the Local Talent Show, we were running early and I had run out of questions to ask. After taking a short music break I introduced Oliver from Young Music to the show to allow him to get used to presenting ready for the first show he will be presenting alongside me in four weeks’ time. I’m happy to say that I should have no problem presenting alongside Oliver as he seems to have a natural talent for it.
After arriving home and downloading the podcast from the Sheffield Live website it was judgement time, how well did I do at presenting the show? I cringed (as always) as I listened to the sound of my own voice but all in all I thought it was a pretty good show considering the problems with the printer and the fact that me and my co-presenter had only met two minutes prior to the start of the show. The quality of the audio on the podcasts helps the listeners to hear how flawless the singer songwriters' performances were, needless to say though it doesn't quite live up to the real life experience of sitting in a tiny studio with the performers sat a tables length away from you singing their hearts out (love working on this show!).
Can’t wait for next weeks’ show presenting alongside Graham!
Click the links below for more information on the acts/organisations mentioned in this blog:-
After Hours
Scrim
Young Music
Sheffield Live (To listen to the show again click on podcasts > The Mix > 28th July 2011
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