The Opinionated Diner

One of the pleasures of having a blog is the ability to shameless plug things my friends are involved with, so...........National Radio (101.4fm if you are in New Zealand) continues its tireless struggle to provide some of the best radio you'll hear anywhere in the world (how's that Chris?) with a four part documentary series, "A Change is Gonna Come", starting on Sunday 22 January, 2005 at 3.04 (don't you love the way Nat Radio has programmes at 3.04? NZBC used to do that on TV too, years ago..."News at 6.23, followed by Town & Around at 6.34"), which charts the twists and turns and development of black American music over the past century (actually until 1980...I've already hassled them about no house or techno). Crafted by Chris Bourke, whose career itself deserves a program, he describes it this way:

I spent the winter working on a 4 part personal history of black music for Concert Radio. They were 55 mins each and I wrote as brief a script as I could get away with, preferring to let old news soundbites and black poetry to tell the story, and mix it together so it was fast paced enough to feel like two turntables, but not so fast that each piece of music got a decent spin.

And decent spin they do get...the soundtrack is mind boggling in its breadth and the research and detail astonishing. The topic itself encompasses such a spread of music, influences, styles and people who truely matter. Its a brave person to tackle WC Handy & Sly Stone, but the link is obvious and Chris draws that line between the two, and everyone in between, often using their own words . Looking forward to this