Mary's back in the Top Ten!

Mary was thrilled to hear that one of four songs she had entered in the 'Lyrics Only' section of The Great American Song Contest, 2002, had been a top ten finalist! The judges whittled the many entries received down to ten, finally choosing one outright winner and four commendations. Mary didn't make the final five, but was thrilled to have been selected as a finalist. Even her three songs which failed to reach the Top Ten were awarded high marks. The adjudication was very thorough and the comments made by the judges, (all professional songwriters) extremely constructive.

Mary is now looking for an Elton John or an Andrew Lloyd-Webber who needs a lyric-writer. If you should happen to be such a person, do please get in touch!

Right: 'She writes the songs' – Mary works beside her famous Big L '97 sunflower. Photo by Steve Young

Following a massive national publicity campaign, the BFBS telephone voicemail system became overwhelmed with thousands of messages from families and well-wishers in the UK. The major headache was that all of those dedications had to be transferred in real time, via a phone line, from the system and edited for broadcast.

Chris spent days in the Radio London studio, recording and logging over four thousand messages, saving them as audio files and transferring them to CD ready for editing back at BFBS.

He says:

Listening to all the messages brought me very close to services' families who went through very emotional times during the conflict. BFBS staff were very stretched with such a situation, and it was a privilege to be able to help.

Having worked with BFBS for several years, I have become very aware of how important radio is to people on detachment throughout the world. TV has its place, but the reaction to the offer of sending dedications direct to forces in the Gulf shows what a big part radio still has to play in the welfare of our troops.

In an email to BFBS staff, Alan Phillips, Managing Editor BFBS UK said:

I'd like to offer a big thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make our escalation service such an effective and flexible response to a testing time. Whether you became a mainstay of sustaining the network at weekends or overnight, were part of the news team, or were involved in other, less high-profile ways – thank you!

Caroline, Vanessa, Marcus, Amy and Chris Payne also deserve a mention in dispatches for their work in processing the many thousands of dedications to and from the Gulf that have come our way.

Well done, and thank you.

The most obvious title would be 'Dave Takes Five' but that would be too easy...

Even those who are not particularly jazz fans will recall the Dave Brubeck Quartet's 'Take Five', a Top Ten hit in 1961. Two subsequent singles made the Top Twenty in 1962.

When Paul Andersson, Chief Engineer of Hemel Hospital Radio, asked the Dave Brubeck Quartet's promoters for permission to broadcast one of their UK performances to Hemel Hempstead and St Albans hospitals, from the DeMontfort Hall in Leicester, he was staggered to find that it was 'all systems go'!

With a couple of days to go before the broadcast, Paul was at home wrestling with a big water leak in his house, and was not in the best of moods when the phone rang. He says that he answered it with a somewhat curt, "Hello!".

"Oh, hello. Good morning. Dave Brubeck here. Can you tell me a bit more about what this Hospital Radio is all about, please?"

You can imagine how Paul felt! A wonderful conversation ensued and Dave was very pleased at having spoken to Paul. The feeling was mutual, needless to say!

Of the Dave Brubeck Quartet's performance, Paul says,

Dave played at the DeMonfort Hall five years ago during the middle of very wet weather, so wet in fact that the audience had to wait outside while the fire brigade pumped out the auditorium before Dave could play. Even then they had to enter through the stage door and down the side of the stage past his piano – five-and-a-half thousand people! His first number was 'Sunny Side of the Street'!

On this occasion, in the OB truck we were joined by Russell Gloyd, Dave's Manager. Russell was giving me tips on when he thought solo parts were coming up. Asking Russell what tune was coming next, he gave me a blank look and said, "I've known Dave for 30 years and we have planned this tour very carefully. That said, I can honestly tell you I have no idea, and what's more neither do the rest of his Quartet!"

Paul also says that during the afternoon's soundcheck, Dave sat down at the piano and started playing and, for some reason, carried on for much longer than he usually does. Before you could say 'Raggy Waltz', the Quartet were jamming! Russell Gloyd said, "In thirty-odd years they've never done that!" The resulting spontaneous jam session has been recorded by Paul for posterity.

The other members of the Quartet were Randy Jones on Drums, Michael Moore on Bass and Bobby Militello on Sax/Flute.

Andy bows out
After almost 13 years of penning his Off The Record feature for Short Wave Magazine, Andy Cadier (right) (aka ex-offshore jock, Martin Kayne) has decided to quit.

I took up the page in July 1991, when the then editor Dick Ganderton suggested I did a few articles on a temporary basis to see how things went. I never dreamed it would still be going 12 years later, particularly as at the time the magazine seemed to be read by amateur radio enthusiasts rather than broadcast radio listeners. At one point the feature even attracted a written warning from the DTI's Radio Communications Agency for allegedly giving publicity to illegal short wave broadcasts!

Andy's final Off The Record feature will appear in the August issue of Short Wave Magazine.

Kute Keefers
Caroline South's Keith Hampshire has launched his own website, which includes a discography (as many of you already know, Keefers returned to Canada after his stint on Caroline and became a singing megastar) and a biography, containing some great photos. There are really cute pics of Keefers as a circus ringmaster, aged four, and a little older, but looking just as angelic, as a choirboy.

Left - Keefers in 2002. Still cute!

Keefers was proud to tell us that his daughter Laura has followed in his broadcasting footsteps and has just accepted her first radio gig as the morning show host on Country 96.3 in Kingston, Ontario, starting in June. Congratulations, Laura and 'break a leg'!