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So, it’s true.

Erstwhile home of The Steve Show and favourite radio station of everyone who likes music, 6 Music is to be shut down by the BBC.

In a strategy report released today, the BBC announced that 6 Music and the Asian Network are to close, along with cutbacks to their website and various other tinkerings.

I fell in love with 6 Music the first time I turned on my brand new DAB radio and heard them playing Husker Du.  No-one plays Husker Du.  I woke up to the grumpy mumblings of Phill Jupitus, I nodded off to Marc Riley in the evenings, and often considered throwing a sickie just to tune in to the brilliant Gideon Coe.

And then, incredibly, we got the gig!  Where else would a bunch of utterly unqualified hangers-on like us be allowed to broadcast for two hours a week on national radio?  Apart from talkSPORT, maybe?

Now don’t get me wrong – 6 Music isn’t perfect.  I’ve never understood the point of 6 Music News Music News, the playlist can be a bit annoying during the week, and then there’s George Lamb.  Also, it took them ages to sort out our passes for the building, the security guards on reception were useless, and finding a pair of headphones that worked was always the toughest assignment of the afternoon.

6 also had a big part to play in the rise and rise of ‘landfill indie’, the dreary corporate alterno-fodder used in the trails for every E4 show.

But by playing interesting, often challenging stuff that you really don’t hear anywhere else, by giving a platform to hundreds of lesser-known artists to play live sessions, and by having some of the most musically articulate and passionate DJs around, 6 Music really is unique.  Maconie’s FreakZone?  The Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show?  The aforementioned Coe and Riley? Garvey, Cocker, Robinson?

And yet it has to go.  The BBC is shutting down a station that could not exist in the commercial world.  We sometimes received bleating emails from unhinged listeners carping on about how playing something that they didn’t like was somehow against the remit of the station, which was obviously bollocks, but at least proved the passion of the station’s supporters.  Today’s decision, to me, flies in the face of the remit of the BBC.  

If they’re going to shut anything down (in what is, let’s face it, a pre-emptive strike against a BBC-hostile Tory government which may not even be voted in), it should really be Radio1 – there are countless commercial stations that replicate the output of Radio1, and the cost saving would be off the scale of anything announced today.

Of course, everyone should join the Facebook group, but frankly, once businesses make decisions like this, they tend not to change them.  You might as well join a group appealing for the return of New Coke, or the abolition of Tuesdays. 

If I’ve learnt anything over the last 12 months, it’s that no matter how inept a business decision, the individuals responsible will fall behind it and defend it to the death, and hope that people eventually just give up the fight.

But wait – what’s this?  The chairman of the BBC Trust has said that the decision could be overturned if there is ‘massive public concern’.  And absurd shadow culture spokesman Ed Vaizey is now apparently a huge 6Music fan.

So take to the streets.  Daub pro-Nemone slogans on your duvet covers and hang them from motorway bridges.  Don Shaun Keaveney facemasks and storm the town halls of this fair land.  Raze the studios of XFM to the ground and dissect the corpses with sharpened Fall CDs. 

Let’s save 6Music.

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My Five And A Bit Musical Highlights of 2009

by

Stephen Merchant

5. This Tornado Loves You - Neko Case

I always think Neko Case sounds like a small piece of carry-on luggage you might find for sale in Muji.

Oh, what a charming fool I am. Ms Case is of course the flame-haired alt-country siren and sometime vocalist with The New Pornographers.

This, the opening track from her fifth album Middle Cyclone, sees Neko as a destructive tornado rampaging across the States in search of some missing beau.

Lovely.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FhVbyeWFvo

4. Leeds United -  Amanda Palmer

On February 1^st, as The Steve Show limped towards it’s unmourned end, we played host to a live session from Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls.

Amanda is a wild, wonderful presence, full of the same energy and eccentricity that infuses her solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer.

One of the highlights of the album is the song Leeds United, which she bashed out live on a keyboard in the studio and dazzled us all with her fiery performance.

On the album version, Amanda’s voice is frazzled by a long day in the recording studio, which injects a wild, ravaged passion to a song that feels like it’s lifted from some great gothic cabaret.

It’s on constant rotation round my way. Tremendous.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i62UF7uROGU

3b. Say Please - Monsters of Folk

Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, Jim James from My Morning Jacket and sing/songwriter M. Ward have formed Monsters of Folk, an alt-country super-group with a terrible name but some cracking tunes, including this rollicking indie/folk/rock/pop nugget.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgIUJpugr0

3a. Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear

My mate was like, “You should listen to Grizzly Bear’s new album” and I was like, “No, it’s not my thing” and he’s like, “No, I reckon it is” and I was like, “Yeah?” and he was like, “Yeah, totally” and I listened to it and I was like, “Yeah, it’s good, nice one” and he’s like, “Yeah, no problem”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjecYugTbIQ

2. The Breeze/My Baby Cries  -  Bill Callahan

As former listeners of The Steve Show will know, Tiny Dan believes we should all adore mindless pseudo-jazz electro-twaddle, Harry gets off on shouty American men and who knows what the heck Sammy is listening to in any given week.

They are all idiots, which is the reason I fired them all and quit the show.

The truth is there is nothing more affecting than a talented person, their voice, a guitar or piano, some quality lyrics and, if needs absolutely must, one or two session men. That’s why Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks and Neil Young’s On The Beach are two albums I carry on my person at all times.

Sadly, in our age of retro 80s synths and R n B loudmouths, it’s increasingly hard to wheedle out the raw beauty of a talented singer/songwriter.

My vampiric bloodlust for fresh singer/songwriter meat is rarely sated, so imagine how thrilled I was to stumble across Loving Takes This Course: A Tribute to the Songs of Kath Bloom.

Kath Bloom was a folkie with many admirers but no great commercial success who retreated to Conneticut to raise kids sometime in the 1980s.

The seductive, six-minute stand-out track from this recent tribute album is by Smog main-man Bill Callahan.

Over simple guitar, keyboard and low-key percussion, Bill’s whispering growl of a voice and Bloom’s heartfelt lyrics hypnotise me on every listen. “I’d like to touch you, but I’ve forgotten how…And said I didn’t need you, but look at me now…”.

I promise it will melt even the coldest of hearts. (Harry, that means you)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBiEMPXDAXM

Start the video at 1.25, ignore someone falling over out of shot at 2.43…

1. Because The Night – Bruce Springsteen Live At Glastonbury, 2009.

I nearly missed Bruce Springsteen at Glastonbury.

The plan was simple : race down to the festival Saturday morning, worship The Boss when he headlined the main stage that night, then crash-out in a tent for a few hours and drive home again the next day.

I woke up Saturday morning as excited as an orphan on Christmas Day when he knows Noel Edmonds is on his way round with a camera crew and a trip to Legoland in his back pocket.

I leapt in the car – and the bastard wouldn’t start. It just spluttered and choked and did nothing. Bastard.

I began a frantic dash around local car-hire shops to find a replacement, all the while sweating at the thought of poor Bruce saying “Good evening Glass-ton-bury” and not seeing my beaming face staring back at him. How would he get through the show?

Finally I paid some crazy price for a tiny car my 6’7” frame could barely squeeze into, picked up a pal en route and drove south like a demon (a demon who obeyed all speed regulations, naturally).

I made it to Glasto mere hours before Bruce and the E Street Band took to the stage but I couldn’t relax as I needed to pitch the tent before darkness fell. From bitter past experience I knew you don’t want to be erecting a tent in the dark at Glastonbury.

My friend had promised to pack his tent but he’d let me down. Luckily I’d had a distant memory of a tent that I had bought years ago for a previous festival but never used.

I had found it, unopened, in the back of a cupboard and thrown in the car. Now, as the sun began to set, I unfurled the tent and out fell ground sheets and metal poles and rubber hoops – and everyone around me started laughing.

Apparently, tents have changed a lot since I last slept under canvas. Now they are all bendy and pop-up. Mine looked like a proper old school Carry On Camping tent minus bubbly Babs Windsor and her poorly fastened bikini top.

“Nick that off some Brownies?” chortled a passer-by.

“Fuck off!” I said, brilliantly.

As more pointing and laughing rippled around the field, I slipped off into the night and tramped my way over to the main stage.

The Boss divided opinion. He played an uncompromising set, which was a thrill for die-hard fans but probably featured too few sing-a-long hits to convert all the heathens.

Some of the strangers around me seemed suitably impressed by Bruce’s unparalleled showmanship; others said they found his hard-working rock ‘n’ roll schtick corny, which I didn’t understand.

Oh well. I wasn’t going to defend the man.

For me it was an electrifying performance.

At one point, the cool night air hit Bruce’s over-heating body and he began to steam. Actual steam rose up from him. Backlit by the stage lights he looked like some glorious rock ‘n’ roll demon/angel and for believers like myself he seemed even more Messianic than usual.

There is nothing quite like Saturday night in front of the main stage at Glasto.

That vast, seemingly never-ending sea of expectant faces, the homemade signs, the setting sun, the overpriced beer — it’s joyful.

And as I finished hollering along to the chorus of Because The Night I remember actually shouting “This is the greatest night of my life.”

And I believed it.

But it wasn’t the greatest night of my life because I had to sleep in a tent that was 25 years old. With people constantly unzipping the flaps and peering in and saying, “Look, I told you, it’s that bloke off the telly. He’s nicked this off some Girl Guides”, and then swaying off into the night to tell more drugged up knuckle-heads where they could laugh at me.

But as their jeers and taunts spoiled my sleep I thought back to Bruce’s performance :

“They can’t hurt you now / can’t hurt you now / Because the night belongs to lovers…”

And everything was okay.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDiS33rxSG0

MERRY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL…

.

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I like it when the year rhymes with an adjective that I hope to describe the year with. 2008 was great, and I went around telling everyone oh nine would be fine. Now, history will take a pretty dim view of my ‘fine’ prediction, with the world’s financial axis spinning violently off course and more importantly, the Steve Show coming to an abrupt end.

I can’t think of an adjective that rhymes with ten, or eleven or twelve. Or thirteen, come to think of it. I’ll level with you and assert that the next one I have up my sleeve is that 2021 will be ‘fun’.

So, in no particular order then. Some highlights, mainly cultural, of 2009

10. Cricket. The Duckworth Lewis Method and their terrific album in praise of cricket. And England winning the Ashes in extraordinary and edge of seat style. And, I got good at cricket again, having not played since school, with The Thunderers. I even had a moment of cricketing and social pride that made me think I was living in colonial Kenya (I’m ironically pronouncing this Keen-ya) in 1925. On meeting the new chief theatre critic for the Evening Standard in a drinking club in London, we realised we had been at school together when we were 7, and he recalled that I’d taken a pretty memorable 9 for 14 against the villainous St Piran’s Under 11 team. My socks rolled up and down my legs with pride.

9. Barack Obama’s presidency. And Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Hat. The facebook group celebrating this hat was one I was proud to join. Although news on the group page has been a little slow recently.

8. Two films I wasn’t sure I was going to like as much as I did: The new Star Trek movie. And The Damned United. Both DVD essentials for 2010 if you haven’t seen them yet.

7. Great Britain. Yes, an odd choice- but this has been the first year I’ve ever been A Tourist in My Own Land (the potential title of the first book in my Bill Bryson style travel memoirs). Following my wife around the country as she embarked on a mammoth theatre tour meant that I saw and enjoyed the sights of, amongst others: Belfast, Glasgow, Torquay, Nottingham, Leeds, Northampton, Southend, Peterborough and Darlington. We live in a really crackin old country and I’m too London centred.

6. The Chap magazine goes from strength to strength. The shortlived but enormously popular Guide to Chivalry that I did on the radio show was closely allied to the Chappist way of life. The magazine itself is terrific, and an oasis of gentle gentlemanly humour and observation in a world where Society has become sick with some nameless malady of the soul. As an editorial stated in a previous issue:

“We have become the playthings of corporations intent on converting our world into a gargantuan shopping precinct. Pleasantness and civility are being discarded as the worthless ephemera of a bygone age – an age when men doffed their hats to the ladies, and small children could be counted upon to mind one’s Jack Russell while one took a mild and bitter in the local hostelry.

Instead, we live in a world where children are huge hooded creatures lurking in the shadows; the local hostelry has been taken over by a large chain that spe……es in chilled lager, whose principal function is to aggravate the nervous system. Needless to say, the Jack Russell is no longer there upon one’s return.

The Chap proposes to take a stand against this culture of vulgarity. We must show our children that the things worth fighting for are not the latest plastic plimsolls but a shiny pair of brogues. We must wean them off their alcopops and teach them how to mix martinis. Let the young not be ashamed of their flabby paunches, which they try to hide in their nylon tracksuits – we shall show them how a well-tailored suit can disguise the most ruined of bodies. Finally, let us capitalise on youth’s love of peculiar argot- only replace their pidgin ghetto-speak with fruity bons mots and dry witticisms.

It is time for Chaps and Chapettes from all walks of life to stand up and be counted. But fear not, ye languid and ye plain idle: ours is a revolution based not on getting up early and exerting oneself – but a revolution that can be achieved by a single raised eyebrow over a monocle; the ordering of a glass of port in All Bar One; the wearing of a particularly fetching cardigan upon a visit to one’s bookmaker. In other words: a revolution of panache. We shall bewilder the masses with seams in our trousers that could cut paper, trilbies angled so rakishly that traffic comes to a standstill; and by refusing the bland, watery substances that are foisted upon us by faceless corporations, we shall bring the establishment to its knees, begging for sartorial advice and a nip from our hip flasks.”

5 Spitalfields market in East London I ran a stall here for a while in the early ‘noughties’ (won’t miss that come the 2020s. But what are we going to call the next ten years? The ‘teens’? I hope not…) and it was permanently threatened with closure, the roof leaked and it was Freezing Cold. Now it’s a sprawling mass of stalls, it’s heated, there are loos and cashpoints (but just those weird charging ones, which are the only ones around when you really need one), and, aside from the fact that about 2 in 5 of the stalls are currently selling either cupcakes or charm necklaces, it’s really really good. And the variety of cooked food is the best I’ve seen- I’ll say it- anywhere in the world. Anything you could want.

4 My favourite author is William Boyd. Any Human Heart is a book I frequently go back to. And Ordinary Thunderstorms, which came out this year, is really good.

3 The fact that someone could be bothered to collect all the best one liners from The Edinburgh Festival and actually credited the comics that wrote them.
1) Dan Antopolski – “Hedgehogs – why can’t they just share the hedge?
2) Paddy Lennox – “I was watching the London Marathon and saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought: ‘This could be interesting.’”
3) Sarah Millican – “I had my boobs measured and bought a new bra. Now I call them Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes because they’re up where they belong.”
4) Zoe Lyons – “I went on a girl’s night out recently. The invitation said ‘dress to kill.’ I went as Rose West.”
5) Jack Whitehall – “I’m sure wherever my dad is; he’s looking down on us. He’s not dead, just very condescending.”
6) Adam Hills – “Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. You know you’re going to get it, but it’s going to be rough.”
7) Marcus Brigstocke – “To the people who’ve got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn’t invent it!”
8 ) Rhod Gilbert – “A spa hotel? It’s like a normal hotel, only in reception there’s a picture of a pebble”.
9) Dan Antopolski – “I’ve been reading the news about there being a civil war in Madagascar. Well, I’ve seen it six times and there isn’t.”
10) Simon Brodkin (as Lee Nelson) – “I started so many fights at my school – I had that attention-deficit disorder. So I didn’t finish a lot of them.”

2. The return of The Thick Of It on BBC2. A particularly strong turn by a spit and cough straight man in Episode 6 is worth taking a look at. I’m surprised they cut my favourite insult from the series. As it was never broadcast, Steve Show posse readers can enjoy an exclusive here: Malcolm: ‘You do that again, Ollie, and I’ll tear off your head, plant a palm tree in your neck, and fuck you tenderly in its shade’. (c) A. Iannucci.

1. Adam and Joe on 6Music are – if not the best thing of the whole year- a pretty good way to end the list. Their podcast and show – and the fact that George Lamb has been booted to the weekend and Lauren Laverne given the weekday slot- means our erstwhile employer is still a pretty good radio station.