If you love musical theatre you'll be delighted to know that Radio 4 Extra is set to start a five-week Summer run of classic musicals. We've been given access to Radio 2’s extensive – and impressive – back-catalogue of exclusively-recorded works from the mid-'90s including Sweeney Todd, Guys and Dolls, Carousel, Jesus Christ Superstar and Kismet. 

Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Saturday 16 July 2016 at 09.00am

The season starts with Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Starring Denis Quilley and Julia McKenzie, this is an exclusive recording of the Royal National Theatre's hit production of Stephen Sondheim's musical thriller.

It's the tale of a half-mad barber who returns home after escaping from an unjust imprisonment, to take vengeance on the corrupt judge who sentenced him, ravished his wife and now plans to marry his daughter. However, Sweeney doesn't limit himself to one victim: he takes revenge against the whole world for his family's suffering by slitting the throats of his customers, and dispatching them from the barber's chair down a chute to the cellar, where the corpses are made into delicious meat pies by his enterprising accomplice, Mrs Lovett. Sondheim’s 1979 thrilling musical was based on an original book by Hugh Wheeler and subsequent play by Christopher Bond; it's one of Sondheim's most complex scores, with over 40 numbers including A Little Priest, My Friends, Epiphany, Worst Pies in London and Pretty Women. 

In London, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" received Olivier Awards for Best Musical Revival, Best Actress in a Musical [Julia McKenzie], as well as nominations for Best Director and two for Best Supporting Performance in a Musical.  

Front Row: Stephen Sondheim in Conversation

Saturday 16 July, 11.35am

To accompany Sweeney Todd, you can listen to a Front Row interview with Stephen Sondheim and Mark Lawson recorded at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in October 2010, when the composer was celebrating his 80th birthday. First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2010.

 

Don't miss these programmes on following Saturdays on Radio 4 Extra:

Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls [Sat 23rd July 9.00 – 11.30]

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel [Sat 30th July 9.00 – 11.50]

Rice and Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar [Sat 6th August 9.00 – 10.40am]

Wright and Forrest’s Kismet [ Sat 13th August 9.00 – 11.30am]

‘Queens Of Noise – Get It On’ is the story of all-girl band Velveteens as they clamber up the slippery slope to success in the late 80s /early 90s.  It maybe fictional, but a lot of their experiences are based on fact, as the writers - me and Louise Wener - were both in bands with expert clambering skills, who managed to negotiate the slippery slope to success in the late 80s /early 90s.

Louise's band were babe-lead, Brit-pop chart-storming indie aces Sleeper.  Mine, those Baggy-tastic loveable Scousers The Farm (adjectives courtesy of Smash Hits magazine). It's twenty years since I swapped being in a band for writing scripts and producing films, but as I wrote my episodes, reflecting on personal experiences, I came to the conclusion that not much has changed … not much, apart from maybe everything.

Ok, so the fundamentals are the same.  Determined young bands still have to fight for attention – but rather than desperately trying to attract record labels and the weekly music press – bands now use the internet to spread the word (rather than fanzines, stamps and envelopes).  Today, a band can build a fan-base who can all chip in to fund the recording of their album.  

I’m sure that achieving success in 2014 feels much the same as it did in 1994 (or even 1964).  After years of hard work, everything suddenly clicks.  It's at that point where we find Velveteens at the start of the new series (having previously met and formed in the original pilot episode). When we pick the story up, they've signed a big deal with a major label - which does still happen, but less frequently and with much less money up front (big advances are sadly a thing of the past - though so are un-recouped royalty advances). 

The three girls are the hottest new band in the country (did / do people ever actually describe a band as "the hottest band in the country").  They are about to make it big.  Very big. In my experience, this is by far the most enjoyable period - when it finally feels like your 'moment' has arrived and the momentum just sweeps you all along.  Suddenly, for the first time, success feels as inevitable as being on the front cover of the next NME.

If I could give our fictional musicians advice, I'd say relish this magical moment, before the complacency, fatigue and cynicism kicks in - but unfortunately I can't give them any advice, mainly because, well - they're fictional characters - but also because happy, well-balanced, functioning musicians don't make for good drama. So, just as Velveteens are on the verge of making it, Louise and I had to throw as many spanners in the works as possible. Some of these obstacles were based on experience - some were based on the experiences of bands we knew or knew of.  

It's not all a big downer, they do still get to enjoy themselves - the first sell-out tour (which I'm sure hasn't changed that much), hearing their first single, reading their first feature in the music press - although stuff like big budget videos (larking about with your mates - what's not to love) aren't what they were, and Top Of The Pops has long gone. I loved Top Of The Pops. I'd watched it all my life, and suddenly there we were, on telly, miming with the biggest bands around. When we did our first TOTP, it had probably passed its peak, but at least the scary presenters had moved on and we had DJs with musical taste presenting it - like Peel, Mark Goodier and Janice Long (who makes a guest appearance in the first series playing a very convincing Janice Long).  The scrapping of Top Of The Pops was an act of cultural vandalism. Arguments that it was past it, and was naff, don't stand up because it was always naff, but that collective experience of watching the current hits being 'performed' every Thursday - and the whole nation actually knowing what's at number one - ended abruptly when the plug was pulled. Criminal, but at least Velveteens still get to enjoy it.

Another high, that Beth (independent, Scottish), Sylvie (Scouse live wire) and Rain (Cockney. Lead singer - enough said) all share with any band who's ever had a hit (even a minor one), is gathering around the radio in nervous anticipation to hear your first chart entry being announced. I'm sure that still happens.

When the series transmits, it will be exactly twenty years since The Farm last toured America - and lots of my own memories went into that episode (in series 2, transmitting in September).  Packed-out gigs on the East and West coasts, but deserted venues in the Midwest, drunken close-calls with the local police and fights with obstructive pay-phones (after filling them with endless amounts of quarters, but not having enough time to say, "everything is ok, honestly - don't believe everything you read"). 

On reflection, the main thing - maybe the only thing - that has changed is the means of communication. An emerging band today, say like The Sugarmen (the hottest new band in the country - well, in Liverpool at least), unlike The Farm, Sleeper or Velveteens, Sugarmen will be able to Skype home from an American tour, tweet their fans about an upcoming gig, and not have to stuff thousands of fanzines in thousands of envelopes just to tell people about the new demo cassette.

One thing that will never change, is that being in a band is exciting, writing 'Queens Of Noise – Get It On’ gave me the chance to relive it - although The Farm still do get together to play festivals and gigs and generally misbehave. Maybe in 20 years time I'll be writing about Velveteens reforming to play festivals as a 'heritage' band.  Maybe not.

 

Roy Boulter

Roy Boulter is the writer of Queens of Noise: Get It On and drummer in the The Farm

 

Listen to Queens of Noise: Get It On 

What were your initial impressions of Frank Zappa?

I was working for business people mostly, although I had worked for celebrities, like Gregory Peck, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Terence Rattigan and Marcel Marceau, so I wasn’t fazed by celebrity. But when Frank opened the door with his hair down to his shoulder blades, pitch black ringlets and dressed in a pink t-shirt and orange trousers, I was somewhat taken aback and thought I’d come to the wrong room.

He had this wonderful spoken voice that was so quiet and commanding and he was just very, very nice. I’d got a lot of his lyrics wrong and had made up my own, but instead of being cross, he thought it was hilariously funny. He laughed out loud, really laughed, and debated with me for half an hour about the lyrics to one of his songs, Brown Shoes Don’t Make It, and whether they were immoral or not. I was so stunned by the fact that he was willing to listen to me, take in what I had to say and engage with it. Nobody took any notice of secretaries, you were invisible. So from that point on I was hooked. He was IT as far as I was concerned.

 

Why do you think you got on so well?

His manager told me that it was because I wasn’t a groupie and Pamela Zarubica (Zappa’s friend) said it was because I was more intelligent than most of the other girls around him. And I was obviously quite attractive. I mean I wasn’t beautiful or anything, or pretty, but I was very attractive and I had a certain way with me. I’m sure he initially thought I was going to spend the night with him, but I wasn’t. And I’m sure that made him take notice.

Los Angeles must have been quite a shock to the system. How did you find it?

I wanted to go to university. I told Frank that in the beginning and he pooh-poohed it, saying education is a waste of time, teach yourself and all that business. And then when I got to Los Angeles I thought - this is better than university, this is real life.

I was an observer. I was totally outside of the scene and I was a bit snotty-nosed about it all, frankly. I thought they were all like a bunch of teenagers, even though some of them were nearly 30 years old. They scorned American education and scorned the government. Nothing was any good, parents were dreadful… I just didn’t have any time for it.

But as the time went on, a year and a half later, I gradually got drawn in to it. I became very hippified.

The atmosphere in Laurel Canyon changed in 1969. Why? 

The Manson murders absolutely changed everything. It really was a very friendly place before that. There were no buses down Laurel Canyon, so to get to Hollywood you just stuck your thumb out and any car would stop and take you down. And you didn’t feel nervous. We had no locks on our doors. People wandered in and out of the log cabin and I didn’t take any notice of them because I was so besotted with Frank Zappa. Charles Manson may have come in – Frank would have been mad enough to have given him a record contract.

But as soon as the murders happened, every house became a fortress. Frank put a speakerphone outside and really fortified his place. Everybody did.

What impact did feminism have on you?

When women’s lib came out, it was absolutely stunning to me - I embraced it totally. I waded my way through Sexual Politics and thought it was fantastic. And I thought Frank would agree with me, because he was for the downtrodden and the disenfranchised and I thought he would see women in that light. And he didn’t. From that moment on I thought, “I know more about this than you do. You’re talking rubbish.” And it was the beginning of my moving away from him.

What made you decide to write about your time with Frank?

I’ve always listened to radio plays and I wanted to write. A BBC producer said, “Write something that no-one else can write. That’s your best chance of appearing on the top of the pile.” And so I thought the only thing that no-one else could write is this story of me working for Frank Zappa.

I got the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and I wrote to every publisher that was suitable in there, about 50 or 60 letters. And about 12 of them wrote back and said “Yes, send a chapter”. So I knew I had a marketable product.

And then I sat outside in the beautiful weather in Singapore, where I was living, and just wrote for ten hours a day, practically. Did my back in, but that’s that. I really learned how to write while I was doing it.

Listen to Frank Zappa And Me from Tuesday 6 May

Download 'Freak Out - The Frank Zappa Story' - a Radio 4 on Music podcast

“Quite a different sound especially in the Mary Poppins number… Strange choice of material. Amateur sounding vocalist who sings wrong notes and out of tune.”
No.

2. Elton John

“Pretentious material, self-written. Sung in an extremely dull fashion without any feeling and precious little musical ability. Thin piercing voice with no emotional appeal.”
Yes

3. Marc Bolan/Tyrannosaurus Rex

“This, unless you understand exactly what they are trying to do, is crap. And pretentious crap at that.”

4. The Who

“The first two members of this group turned up 25 minutes late. Quite co-operative once started. The lead vocalist seemed quite ‘with it’ in the R&B field although the voice quality was harsh and rather unpleasant. Backing not so good, although lead guitar seemed to be more sure of himself. Overall not very original and below standard.”
Yes

5. Pink Floyd

“The Producer gives me to understand that one member of the group left our studio without explanation during the recording of the first number. Despite attempts by the rest of the group to find him, he did not return for the remainder of the session… [I] wonder… whether you would be good enough to tell me which gentlemen ‘freaked out’ - this strange expression was being bandied about the studio - together with any explanatory comments which may come to your mind.”

Taken from Auditioning for Auntie presented by Pete Paphides
From Armstrong to Zappa, get more music from the Radio 4 archive

Harry Nilsson is one of those names that most of us vaguely know, but can’t quite think why. Yet each of us can probably name one of his songs, or some of the facts about his life. We might remember his two most successful records, “Without You” and “Everybody’s Talkin’”, which were both chart successes as the sixties faded into the seventies. The first was a number one hit, the second also made the charts, but is more famous from the opening titles of “Midnight Cowboy”. Or we might know Nilsson as the crafty songwriter who created ”Cuddly Toy” and ”Daddy’s Song” for the Monkees, “The Puppy Song” for Mary Hopkin, and “One” for the cult American rock band Three Dog Night.

Fans of children’s films might hum along to “Me and My Arrow” from Nilsson’s fantasy cartoon “The Point”, or his music for the Christmas special “Ziggy’s Gift”. And Beatles fans might remember him as the man whom both Lennon and McCartney once described as their “favourite group”.

 

All of which goes to show that although Nilsson sits somewhere in our knowledge of the 1960s and 70s pop world, he’s not particularly well-known or remembered today. Ironically, he is most often mentioned in terms of the rock and roll lifestyle: a roller coaster of drink, drugs and sex, which he shared with John Lennon, Marc Bolan and Keith Moon. “Raising hell with Harry” became a tabloid catch-phrase, helped along by the mysterious deaths of both Mama Cass and Keith Moon in his London apartment — stories that were splashed all over the red-top press.

To some extent Nilsson’s relative obscurity was something he created along with the hits and a string of albums. In the era of stadium rock, he refused to appear live. He also wilfully altered his appearance from one album cover to the next. The clean-cut, suited, former bank clerk of “Pandemonium Shadow Show” morphed into a barely recognisable drawing on “Aerial Ballet”, and reverted to a school photograph on “Harry”. The shambolic, bath-robed figure on “Nilsson Schmilsson” gave way to a Dracula costume on “Son of Schmilsson”, and the angelic-voiced album of standard songs “A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night” features Nilsson in the cap and overcoat of a tramp. Nobody was going to recognise a star who disguised himself on record sleeves and was seldom in front of the cameras. And that way, Nilsson could walk the street of London or Los Angeles anonymously, without the paparazzi or jostle of attention that constantly surrounded his friends - The Beatles and The Monkees.

I have long been intrigued by Nilsson, and his creative urge. He produced over fourteen albums at the height of his career, all of which pushed the boundaries of studio craft and invention. Having the chance to delve into his family papers and write his biography was a wonderful experience for any writer. It is a privilege to tell the story of this remarkable singer and songwriter for the first time, and to share it with BBC Radio 4 listeners.

 

Image of Nilsson sitting reproduced courtesy of the estate of Harry Nilsson and RCA Records.

 

Image of Nilsson and Lennon reproduced by permission of the estate of Harry Nilsson.

 

Hear Alyn Shipton discussing Book of the Week on Front Row.

 

Listen to Alyn on Radio 3, Jazz Record Requests.

 

Listen to Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter from Monday 19 August.

Last week I was in the lavatories of St George’s Church in Bristol when I came upon something really impressive. (Don’t worry it is safe to read on). It was a sign above the air dryer which said –“Please do not use when a concert is taking place”.

I was impressed because there was a considerable amount of stone flooring between the loos and the concert hall, and it would require superhuman hearing to detect the low hum of the dryer.

Perhaps superb hearing is what most Radio 3 listeners have, or else they have particularly sophisticated listening equipment.

Even from the outside, St George’s is an impressive building. Built in the 1830s just up from the Cathedral, and at the heart of Georgian Bristol, it claims to be one of the best musical venues in the country. It is certainly one of the most beautiful.

I was there to produce a feature for this week’s Feedback about what Radio 3 provides for the listener at home during the intervals of live concerts.

Audience members at St George’s popped out to the lavatories, now free to use the dryers, and picked up their drinks from the bars in the crypt, happy to chat to friends about what they thought of the concert so far. (The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment had been playing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 4 and Cantata No 161. “Komm, du süße Todesstunde”, as part of the Bristol Baroque Festival of Music.) The Bristol audience had plenty to do but what about the audience listening at home or in the car?

On this particular evening there was to be an interval discussion in situ about Bach, featuring the concert’s conductor, John Butt, and the former Controller of Radio 3, Nicholas Kenyon. I talked to some of those involved about the features.

Many listeners told us they remember with great pleasure the interval talks given for many years by the composer Anthony Hopkins. I met the 90 year old last week and I am delighted to say that he is very well, extremely lucid, and that he got married recently. Perhaps there is more music to come.

By the way the Controller of Radio 4 will be coming on Feedback in a couple of weeks to answer your questions – so please let me have some!

Roger Bolton

 

•Listen to this week's Feedback

•Get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback website

•Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts

Striped bodysuit for Aladdin Sane tour, 1973. Design by Kansai Yamamoto. Photograph by Masayoshi Sukita. © Sukita / The David Bowie Archive 2012. Showing at David Bowie is at the V&A

This is a story about heroes and how they change us. As a little girl I grew up in the 70s & early 80s south London suburbia terrified and fascinated by David Bowie.

I navigated my way through a decade that often ignored but more often didn't seem to like "coloured" people very much, with National Front support at its peak. And I fixed on rare and hugely inspirational Asian role models, like the bold and charming TV presenter Shyama Perera.

A year ago, Shyama and I finally met. I confessed my hero worship of her and we found we shared a love of David Bowie. But where I had watched from a suburban distance, through the TV screen and the music charts, Shyama, an inner London girl, a few years older and bolder, revealed how as a teenager she had hung around outside his house chatting with Bowie and his wife Angie, breakfasted with his bandmates, and sent in costume sketches. One day David Bowie ruffled her hair on his doorstep and told her she'd have a surprise at the gig that night. The story of I Dressed Ziggy Stardust was born then and I pitched it to Radio 4.

Childhood photos featuring (clockwise from top left): Rupa Huq, Rupa Huq, Samira Ahmed, Shyama Perera and Rupa Huq

As well as re-visiting the old locations from Shyama's Ziggy years, producer Alice Bloch broadened our search for fans and found Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty and Chandrika Joshi. There aren't many female Hindu Priests, but, Chandrika a refugee from Idi Amin's Uganda, growing up in Wales, saw resonances of Lord Krishna and the easy androgynous beauty of Hindu avatars in Marc Bolan and Bowie. Who could have thought Top of the Pops could lead to her challenging the gender expectations of her faith and culture?

Rupa Huq, a colleague at Kingston University, grew up in the Queen of the suburbs – Ealing. She shared fascinating insights into both how Bowie intruded into her own Bengali upbringing, and through her own research as a sociologist, explained how suburbia was not the dull, conservative space as portrayed in 70s sitcoms, but a radical "edge" where immigrants made their homes and youth formented rebellion. Punk, like Bowie, came from the 'burbs.

Suzi Ronson, Bowie’s costume mistress during the Ziggy days, his publicist Cherry Vanilla, who managed the fans, and photographer Hy Money filled in the gaps. Hy had taken her children to Bowie’s south London “Arts Lab” club on Beckenham High Street. It was where Bowie and Bolan jammed with sitar players in suburbia. Being Asian could be cool, after all.

Throughout the making of the documentary I carried round 2 photos. One of a teenage David Jones in one of his many failed pop prototype incarnations - more Tommy Steele than Ziggy Stardust; a suburbanite desperate for fame. The other, a famous Mick Rock portrait of David Bowie, jaffa-haired and skinny, holding a photograph of himself in yet another persona. I saw the same suburban hunger for success as the immigrant child forging her own identity.

Promotional shoot for The Kon-rads, 1963. Photograph by Roy Ainsworth.Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive 2012. Image © V&A Images. Showing at David Bowie is at the V&A

So while he's everybody's hero now, it's good to remember the time when grownups often hated and feared David Bowie, and he seemed to be speaking just to girls like me and Shyama, daring us to love the alien within.

Listen to I Dressed Ziggy Stardust

Hear Front Row on David Bowie - The Return

View Front Row's David Bowie gallery with pictures from the BBC archive and the V&A David Bowie exhibtion

Listen to The People’s Songs on Radio 2: “Starman – Androgony Arrives in the Living Room”

Find out about 6 Music's Bowie celebration this Easter

Visit Samira Ahmed's site or follow her on Twitter

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

I started writing this book in about 2005. Five years since I'd last performed live or recorded anything, I hadn't written a note of music or a single line of lyrics in all that time. People kept asking me, "Have you got a new record coming out?" "Are you going back on tour soon?""Don't you MISS singing?"

No, no and no, I replied, content and immersed in the quiet, domestic life I was living. Still, as time passed, and the questions repeated themselves, I began to wonder, "Have I done something foolish?" and "Am I wasting my time?"

Even, "Have I disappeared?"

Being at home with small children, something of yourself inevitably disappears. In my case, it seemed that the person who'd once cared more about music than anything else, who'd summoned up the courage as a shy, suburban teenager to buy an electric guitar and barge her way into a local band, then form another band, and then another, had been lost somewhere along the way. I started to think that was a shame, and so I set about trying to rediscover her.

This meant a lot of trawling through diaries, and cassettes, and fanzines, and copies of the NME, and tour itineraries, until finally I built up a picture of the girl I'd once been, and in doing so, discovered I still was, somewhere deep inside. Writing the story of that person brought her back to life, and so before I'd even finished the book I tossed it aside and started recording again.

Finally, years later, I finished what I'd started and here it is, "Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up And Tried To Be A Popstar". It turned out to be so much more than I'd ever intended it to be, and in the end, all the looking back got me moving forwards again, and I'm very grateful for that. 

Listen to Bedsit Disco Queen

Explore more Books of the Week

For as long as I can remember, whenever my father and uncles spoke lovingly of their motorbikes, of speed and the wind in their hair, the road they spoke most of was the A127, the Southend Arterial, with its three-mile straights, out beyond Gallows Corner. It was where they could push their Nortons and Triumphs up to 100mph, ‘doing the ton’ down to the Halfway House roundabout and back.

For their sons, the Boy Racers in their two door Ford Capris and jacked-up Escort Mk1s, the road to ride was one of sharp bends and swift change-downs, of New Towns and land fills – the A13. This was the main drag out to the Promised Land of the Goldmine Discotheque on Canvey Island, caravan capital of the world. This was the route to the Kursaal at Southend and a plate of cockles or a cup of whelks. This was the road to the paradise of the Kiss-Me-Quick Never Never Land of the Essex Coast.

The A13 begins life as the Commercial Road at Gardiners Corner in Whitechapel where the City of London meets the old East End and, travelling eastwards, it is possible to read the progress of London’s development as a metropolis like the growth rings of a tree. Late Georgian squares give way to Victorian streets full of cottage terraces in areas pock -marked by the post-war high rise flats that replaced the dwellings destroyed by the Blitz. Hawksmoor churches built in the early 18th century nestle next to Peabody Buildings beneath the shadow of Canary Wharf.

Here the A13 is a bustling thoroughfare, constantly clogged with trans-continental juggernauts looking in vain for a cross-London link road.

Once past Poplar Town Hall, the A13 becomes the East India Dock Road, recalling a time when the wharves of East London bulged with the plunder of empire. Where, in the late 19th century, the Labour movement was born in the struggle for the docker’s tanner, huge printing works now stand, escaping from the high rents of the City. Nearby a newly arrived workforce are living in penthouse flats on the Isle of Dogs in places with such evocative names as Marsh Wall and Mudchute.

It’s at the end of this stretch, just past where the mouth of the Blackwall Tunnel gorges on traffic, only to spew it  out again into Greenwich, that the A13 proper begins. As you cross the River Lea at Canning Town with its fine views of Bow Creek, for the first time the full glory of this road can be savoured. From here on, it's dual carriageway, flyovers and underpasses, four lanes wide, all the way to the M25.

As you speed up the Newham Way and onto the Barking by-pass, you are afforded a fine view of the Beckton Alp, where the upwardly mobile residents of East Ham can practice their moves on the artificial ski-slope. When I was a child, this commanding height was the soot-black slag heap of the Beckton Gasworks, once the biggest in the world. Now, grassed over and with a ski-lift plonked on top, it aspires to become the Cockney Klosters.

Crossing the River Roding, just beyond the junction with the new North Circular Road, the A13 takes on the title of ‘Alfred’s Way’, linking the area to the time when Viking longships glided through the creek mists to loot and burn the great Benedictine Abbey of Barking during the reign of Alfred the Great.

Where once the Abbess held sway over the fortunes of south west Essex, now stands Henry Ford, who built his mighty motor works on the Dagenham marshes in the 1920s on the site of the aptly named America Farm. Rumour has it that on the wharves at Fords there are super rats, as big as tabbies, immune to poison and hunted with rifles by men who work best in darkness and no matter what time of day it is, there are some parts of Fords where it is always night.

 

It is around here that the A13 becomes a spiral arm of the London conurbation, a strung-out collection of warehouses, haulage firms and post-war semis. The badge of Essex County Council, a red shield emblazoned with three curved Saxon swords , was a common enough sight on public works and school workbooks in my childhood, but in 1965 an act of parliament banished it from that part of Greater London that is forever Essex.

The M25 forms a triumphal arch over the A13 near Aveley and, once through this symbolic gate in the new London Wall, you find yourself in a land steeped in history. Although the inhabitants of nearby Mucking were only too pleased to change the name of their village to Stanford-le-Hope, it was here in May 1381 that the Peasants Revolt began, when locals attacked the King’s Commissioner who had come to levy the hated Poll Tax.

The land here is flat right down to Kent. One Tree Hill, the highest point in southern Essex, is a small ridge left by receding glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. Down by the cold grey waters of the Thames Estuary, the remains of several Martello Towers still wait for Napoleon to sail up the river and attack Tilbury Fort. Meanwhile, the Circus Tavern at Purfleet waits for the Four Tops to play a return engagement at ‘Essex’s Ritziest Nitespot’.

 Around Canvey Island the mudflats of the Thames Estuary end and the beaches that make Southend-on-Sea so popular begin. Originally the south end of the village of Prittlewell, the town rose to prominence during the bathing boom of the 1790s when the aristocracy flocked to the coast in order to benefit from the medicinal properties of sea breezes.

 

They built the Grand Hotel overlooking the Promenade and when the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway was completed in 1856, the town became the holiday destination for generations of East Enders looking for some respite from their everyday urban existence.

Southend is the mecca of Essex, with its Golden Mile and longest pier in Britain. However, for my family, paradise was to be found beyond the arcades and winkle stalls, past the coloured lights that flashed out a welcome on even the wettest, windiest days. Go along the East Beach, past where Edwardian beach huts still stand in rows, through Thorpe Bay to the hamlet of Shoeburyness. Here, out of the mouth of the Thames Estuary, facing the North Sea itself, you will find the finest beach in the county.

It was here that I came with my parents as a boy to sit on towels on the sand and watch the Thames sailing barges lazily cross the horizon, listening out for the big Navy guns being tested on Foulness Island, eating sandwiches from Tupperware containers.

One of the fondest memories of my childhood concerns the time my father let me drive his green Morris Oxford very, very slowly across the field that served as a car park behind the beach. It was my first ever driving lesson and it ended abruptly when I nervously stamped the brake pedal down to the floor and father banged his head on the windscreen.

I must have been about twelve years old yet I can still feel the leather of the driver’s seat warm on my bare back and hear the bonk as father, sitting half-sideways and caught unawares, hit the Triplex hard. What great days. Every visit we would buy a plastic football and lose it before we went home and sometimes, if the tide was out, my little brother and I would walk almost to Holland it seemed, watched over through parental binoculars as we jumped in the puddles all the way back.

Shoeburyness. That name brings back memories of days spent far away from the cares of home, when everything was fun except bedtime. The beaches are still there but the green Morris Oxford has gone the way of so many precious things and I shall never see it again. Me and my dad have joined the Saxons and the Peasants Revolt in history but the A13 is still there, rolling through a Springsteenesque landscape in which riverine Essex takes the place of the New Jersey shore, a tarmacadam trail to the Promised Land.

 

Listen to Billy Bragg's Lyrical Journeys: 'A13, Trunk Road to the Sea'

My name is Shaun Keaveny, I am a music broadcaster, and a long-term sufferer of a sometimes debilitating condition. It is devastatingly virulent, indiscriminate, and can strike the patient down at any time, anywhere. It is the Earworm.

An earworm is a parasitic little fragment of music that burrows its way into your cortex. It can be impossible to remove and can remain in its host for days.

Do the Conga!

As I play music for a living, I am particularly susceptible to earworms. One morning on my 6 Music Breakfast Show, after a particularly extended bout of earworm-related torture involving the Thin Lizzy song Chinatown, I mentioned the phenomenon to my listeners who replied in their droves with their own maddening inner soundtracks. The collection and playing of listener Earworms has been a mainstay of my programme ever since.

The Macarena!

My earworms are often caused by audio-visual stimuli of some kind. The aforementioned Chinatown seizure happened as I was strolling through London's Chinatown, inevitably. But other things can kick them off too... the note of a screechy brake, a pinging sound from a malfunctioning computer, a phrase someone utters... anything can plunge your mind into a musical reverie that can be difficult to extricate oneself from.

The Birdie Song

In the documentary we put together on the subject, we managed to get some very interesting answers from scientists as to why they happen, what function they may serve, and who is most susceptible. We also hear some harrowing and amusing first hand accounts from the pitiable wretches whose lives have been blighted by an incessant loop of Bananarama or My Lovely Horse.

Of course, earworms are ultimately harmless, and it can even be argued they should be enjoyed. But its hard to see it that way when you have been whistling the theme tune to the Muppet Show for fifteen solid hours without respite.

I can only hope that

THE ARCHERS THEME!

you can get to the end of this article without picking one up. If you are a sufferer, why not share your experiences. Don't suffer in silence. (Chance would be a fine thing).

Shaun Keavney is the presenter of Earworms. He also has a regular show on BBC 6 Music

• Listen to Earworms presented by Shaun Keavney
• Find out more about Shaun Keavney's 6Music show
• Download Science programmes from Radio 4

The Craigie Community Choir perform in 2008's Last Choir Standing

If you're in a choir why not learn and sing a brand new choral work available from BBC Radio 4 for Easter this year? It's all part of The People's Passion - a project that's been growing over the last few months and just keeps getting more exciting as more choirs sign up. It wasn't this big at the start...

Cathedrals, what they're for and what they mean to people in modern Britain has become a really hot discussion point since the St Paul's story broke, but we've been thinking about what's special about cathedrals for well over a year.

Working with BBC Drama, we started with an idea for five plays based around a fictional cathedral which could go out in Holy Week - one each day leading up to Good Friday. Then we added five features, in which we take a couple of people into one of Britain's real cathedrals to explore life in our great cathedrals now; looking at the music, people, belief and belonging, art and heritage.

One of the storylines in the plays is the rehearsal of the music for the Easter Sunday service and it was then that the idea was born for Radio 4 to commission a new choral work that would get the nation singing. All of a sudden we could see a fantastic opportunity to get as many choirs as possible around Britain singing the same piece of music for Easter 2012.

We brought together Manchester Carols composer Sasha Johnson Manning and the celebrated poet Michael Symmons Roberts and they've written a wonderful mass setting of Sanctus, Gloria, Agnus Dei and Anthem - all of which can now be downloaded as sheet music or recorded versions - including a simplified version for less experienced choirs or schools. There are also backing tracks in case you don't have your own pianist so it's all there to get you started!

BBC Local Radio will be helping us to spread the word and following choirs in their area, looking at their own local Cathedrals and linking to The People's Passion website. We're also using social media to link choirs to each other and log performances. Plus, programmes like Radio 4's Sunday, The Choir on Radio 3, and Good Morning Sunday with Aled Jones on Radio 2 will all be covering progress around the country.

We're aiming for as many performances as possible of our beautiful signature anthem, if not the whole setting. And we've got over 60 signed up on our choir-ometer already! Go on. Have a go. Singing makes you feel great and it's fun.

Go to our website and click on Contact Us to register so we know who you are and whereabouts your choir is in the country. And listen out for the broadcast premier from Manchester Cathedral on Radio 4's Sunday Worship on Easter Day at 8.10am.

Christine Morgan is Head of Radio, Religion and Ethics

• Visit the People's Passion website to hear the new works, download the music, backing tracks and more.

Sayyid Darwish (Picture courtesy of the Friends of Sayyid Darwish Association)

Since childhood, I've had this love-hate relationship with Arabic music, and it was two factors which brought me closer to the 'love' side of it. The first was old Palestinian women, whom I call the Big Mamas, who taught me traditional Palestinian songs. The other factor was the Egyptian composer Sayyid Darwish (1892 - 1923), whose music has been inspiring people across the Arab world for almost a century.

What connects these two vital components, is the collective, the context which gives purpose and meaning. Add to that, the music stands in its own right as great art.

The legacy of Sayyid Darwish has infused the repertoire of most Arab singers, me included. Eight years ago, I embarked on a project that's so far taken me from the British Library to Syria, Turkey and Egypt, researching his music within the following framework:

• Darwish's contribution to Arabic music, including group singing, dialogue, musical theatre, expressionism and, albeit untrained and instinctive, counterpoint, harmony and polyphony;
• Darwish's attachment not just to Egyptian folk music, but to Egyptian folk, the people. Many of Darwish's songs were written for manual labourers and builders, as well as for marginalised communities such as the Nubians. He also wrote songs for the Egyptian Labour Corps which was forcibly enlisted to serve the British in the First World War;
• The influence of Greater Syria on Darwish, especially with regard to the two years he spent in Aleppo between 1912 - 1914;
• The importance of Darwish's music and the lyrics of his librettists, notably Badi' Khayri and Bayram al-Tunisi in the 1919 Egyptian Revolt against the British.

It was with the above focus that I have been travelling to Egypt over the past two years. It was music for musicians like me, a Palestinian from the wider area of Greater Syria, music for the people and music for the revolution. And on 28th January 2011, the first day I'd ventured out to join my husband (who had himself been in Tahrir Square on 25th January), I found those four elements before me, with an urgent and bewildering kick!

Demonstrators faced tear gas, buck shot, water cannon, and even live fire, not to mention volleys of rocks thrown by the security forces themselves; at the same time, they came up with ingenious slogans and chants that spread 'like fire', as we say in Arabic. Sayyid Darwish's music was not the only music that was sung in and around Tahrir Square. True, I felt overwhelmed to hear echoing around me, the very songs which I had been researching, but I was especially moved by two other types of music rising up to the skies over Cairo:

• New music, some of it written, performed and filmed in the midst of the protests. Here was something fresh and novel, an emergence into the open of the underground arts scene which had been building in the latter years of Mubarak's regime;
• Other music which had similarly been sidelined by the regime because it was seen as subversive or anti Western. Songs by Umm Kulthoum, and El Shaykh Imam, for example, rang out across Tahrir Square; either played through amplified recordings, or sung 'grunge-style' by the people. Abd el-Halim Hafez's songs from the days of Abdul Nasser were sung with special vigour and pride. I knew that the initial phase of the revolution had succeeded when, on the morning after Mubarak's resignation, a presenter on a local radio station said: "I've never been allowed to play El Shaykh Imam's music on radio, and so today, I open the programme with a song by Imam. Long Live Egypt!"

Women singing at funeral procession in Tahrir Square, minutes before the announcement of Mubarak's resignation (Picture by Chris Somes-Charlton)

During those 18 pivotal days leading up to Mubarak's ouster, I tried to keep a blog, but the task was not made easy by the authorities who cut mobile telephone and internet lines from 27th January onwards. One famous Sayyid Darwish song from 1919 spoke of the revolutionaries who cut the telephone and rail lines to isolate Cairo from London. The irony was that this time, it was the regime that cut the lines of communication.

When I finally got back online, I found an email from producer Megan Jones, with whom I had worked before on Salome: Dance of the Seven Veils for Radio 4. She'd heard my interview with Mary Ann Kennedy on BBC Scotland, which included some of my field recordings from Tahrir Square. Thus, Megan and I came to be in Cairo in November 2011, arriving on the very night when, by chance, demonstrations flared up across Egypt.

If Megan was a little apprehensive on arrival, it took less than four days in Egypt to make her rue the prospect of leaving Cairo so soon. It's this feeling about Egypt and its on-going revolution which we tried to capture in this programme. Our aim was not so much to offer a comprehensive survey of all the music that accompanied the revolution, an impossible task, but to shed light on elements which had perhaps gone unreported in the Western media. These elements included independent artists and many unsung heroes who put their lives at risk to make their demands in a courageously creative manner.

We provide below links not just to our contributors and their music, but also to other music that I heard around me during this time. The old line that we had more wonderful verbal and musical contributions than the scope of this programme could allow, was never more true.

A propos of Sayyid Darwish's music, Aladdin El-Kashef, Grammy Award winning sound engineer for Youssou N'Dour's album Egypt, opined that "Good art never dies". Singer Maryam Saleh, whose voice combines the prehistoric and postmodern as heard with the Choir Project, showed us the strength of the people's resolve: "Although we may not win, we'll keep protesting and singing".

Special thanks to Dr. Fathi Alkhamisi, Professor of Musicology at the Academy of Arts in Cairo, for his expertise and his insights into Sayyid Darwish and the history of nationalism in Egyptian music. His last words to me were: "Mubarak and his army may be thousands... but we, the Egyptian people, are millions."

Reem Kelani presents Songs for Tahrir

Related Links
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites

Our Contributors

Khaled Abol Naga, Egyptian film actor, producer and filmmaker
www.NagaTime.com

Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, Cairo-based Palestinian musician and composer
http://www.facebook.com/tameragh

Zein Alabdin Fouad, Egyptian poet
http://www.facebook.com/zafouad

Sally Hamarneh, Syrian-Jordanian architect and urban planner
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=809310480&ref=ts

Samia Jaheen, singer with the Egyptian band Eskenderella
http://facebook.com/samiajaheen

Lina Megahed, Egyptian student activist
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=615710111

Salam Yousry, Egyptian painter and theatre director
www.ebs-art.com

Performers featured in the programme
The unsung heroes of the Egyptian Revolution, the old masters Sayyid Darwish, Ibrahim Hammouda and Muhammad Bakhit, as well as:

The Choir Project
http://www.thechoirproject.webs.com

Eskenderella
http://www.facebook.com/EskenderellaBand?sk=info

Maryam Saleh
http://facebook.com/mar.yamm.baraka

Massar Egbari
http://www.massaregbari.com

Ramy Essam
BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14254564

The Strand on BBC World Service
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00hwsbt/The_Strand_21_07_2011/

Outlook on BBC World Service
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hz33y

World Routes on BBC Radio 3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018sqq0

Video clips of music featured in the programme

The Choir Project, singing Hayaat el-Midaan [Life of Tahrir]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCBVwJ4DT10

Eskenderella, singing Itgamma'ou el-'Ushshaa' [Lovers Have Come Together], lyrics by Zein Alabdin Fouad and music by El Shaykh Imam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkgqGG_reNI&feature=youtu.be

Massar Egbari, singing Sayyid Darwish's classic Aho Da Lli Saar [This is Where We're at]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brw2yZoEdBs

Trailer for the award-winning film 'Microphone', featuring the underground music and arts scene in Alexandria, released in 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjWqHm66xfM

Ramy Essam, singing Irhal! [Leave!]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrNIF4gLkvo

Other musical highlights of the Egyptian revolution that were not included in the programme due to time constraints

Cairokee & Hany Adel, singing Soat el-Hurriya [Voice of Freedom] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgw_zfLLvh8

Muhammad Munir, singing Ezzay? [How Come?] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9TOi3EwRQw

Ramy Gamal & Aziz al-Shaf'i singing Bahibbik ya Blaadi [My Homeland, I Love You] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btXZMh5tHDA

Some of the revolutionary oldies that were revived during the 2011 revolution

Abd el-Halim Hafez (1929 - 1977), singing Ahlef bi-Samaaha ou bi-Trabha [I Swear by Her Sky and Her Sand]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRFANvYRD6Q&feature=related

El Shaykh Imam (1918 - 1995), singing Ya Masr Oumi [Rise, O, Egypt]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2lTs4tWnVY

Umm Kulthoum (1898 - 1975), singing Ana al-Sha'bu [I am the People]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnIS9-kxbFI

Najah Salam (b. 1931), singing Ya Aghla Ism fil Wugoud [O, Most Precious Name in the World]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO8nTq4DD2I&feature=related

Shadia (b. 1931), singing Ya Habibti Ya Masr [Egypt, My Love]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cHUlR4B37Y

Sayyid Darwish in his own voice

Oum ya Masri [Rise, O, Egyptian]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIb_PvQ_kcE

Special Thanks

Khaled Abol Naga: for fitting us into his tight schedule (on his birthday!), and for his helpful suggestions.
Aladdin El Kashef, Ultra Productions Studios, Mohandessin, Cairo: for technical assistance, and for talking to us about the music scene in Egypt.
King Hotel, Dokki, Cairo: for kindly providing space to conduct our interviews.
Fergus Nicoll & Helen Merriman, BBC World Service: for allowing us to use their recording of our sing-a-long in a local café on the eve of Mubarak's resignation.

The view from Hindscarth, over High Spy (High Scawdel), Grange Fell and Great Crag to Helvellyn.
Picture by Peer Lawther

I do wish I could call myself a proper fell runner. The truth is that I'm very slow and want to give up on every hill I climb. But something rather wonderful keeps me pushing forwards.

Part of my life, the non-BBC bit, is driven by a compulsion to exhaust myself on the fells of Cumbria and experience occasional moments of supreme joy and one-ness.

My chunkiest achievement to date is to knock off 50 Wainwright Fells continuously for my 50th year - it took 27 hours which is 3 hours too long. But I'm no athlete, I just have to get another fix, and another and another.

The fix is the moment when you crest the top of a hill that felt impossible and all below you is revealed in a wonderful patchwork of highly defined colours; or a moment in a cold, misty, rainy, miserable run when your head leaves your body and the synapses connect in a new way and all is right with the world (then the moment passes and it's cold and miserable again); or a moment when you're belting down a hill like a 10 year old; or in the middle of the night when a beautiful moon lights your way. Joy unconfined. In a 24 hour period this lift happens maybe 4 times - and lives in the memory forever.

Even the names are full of magic: Dollywagon Pike (a high level promontory that gives a perfect view of the stars); Sergeant Man (yes, you need to be forced to slog there from Calf Crag); Helvellyn (the most beautifully named hill on the planet?); Green Gable (a moment's respite from wind and scree); Yewbarrow (the clue is in the name); and Steeple and Red Pike, my personal favourites, with their views and dizzying drops all around.

These are a few of the 42 fells that make up the 70 mile Bob Graham Round, a personal challenge to be completed in 24 hours.

There's something highly creative about using your body and surroundings to achieve a transcendent state.

Not unlike listening to long-form symphonic music as in the symphonies of Bruckner where musician and listener invest a great deal in the apparently repetitive to achieve occasional nirvana.

This is fell running for me and I'm looking to Maurizio Malagnini to transport me there at the premiere of his Lakes inspired commission for the BBC Philharmonic.

To hear the stories of the great, great fellrunner and shepherd/farmer Joss Naylor is to hear the voice of deep culture straight from the rocks and grass and sheep and mud and rain and lakes and scree.

For me the only comparator to this is music; both can move you to experience your unalloyed deep self.

And now I find that words become hopelessly inadequate. You have to find this place for yourselves and that is why this non-runner seeks out pain and magic on the fells.

Richard Wigley is the general manager of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

• Maurizio Malagnini's composition airs on BBC Radio Cumbria on 14 January 2012 (live broadcast of the world premiere) performed by the BBC Philharmonic in the heart of the Lake District.
• You can hear extracts of the piece in The Bob Graham Round this Friday on BBC Radio 4 at 11am and shortly afterwards on the Radio 4 website.
• The Northerner Blog: The Lake District's mighty Bob Graham Round is set to music
• Thanks to Peer Lawther for the use of the picture under this licence

Last week Rhys Thomas interviewed Simon Day; this week Simon Day puts the questions to Peter Hook (Hook's on the left in the picture), best known for playing bass in Joy Division and New Order.

The interview covers the early days of punk, Joy Division becoming New Order after the death of Ian Curtis, and Hook's current DJing career:

"I thought DJs were arrogant and overpaid", he says, "So when I became one I fitted right in".

You can listen to the Rhys Thomas-Simon Day and the Simon Day-Peter Hook episodes of Chain Reaction until this Friday on the Radio 4 website when Peter Hook puts poet and fellow Salfordian John Cooper Clarke in the hot seat.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Chain Reaction - Simon Day and Peter Hook is available as part of the Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 podcast until this Friday when a new one will become available.

On Twitter Paphides reflected on presenting the show and the difficulty of doing the interviews in situ. Apparently Status Quo singer Francis Rossi "..would lose his thread every time a young woman walked past the window."

Supermarket Symphony is available to listen to for another two days on the Radio 4 website. You can also hear Late Nights at the Blue Boar online.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Radio 4 blog

* Supermarket Symphony was one of Graham Seed's choices on Pick of the Week but I was away and missed that too. Graham said "it was a little gem of a documentary... specially composed music reveals the surprising beauty of its everyday sounds". There's also a story from the cheese counter that will move even the most hard-hearted supermarket hater to tears.