Have to say I like the sound of 2012. It has a nice, round ring to it. And I’m ignoring the Mayans. Despite all the doom headlines and endless projections for despair I’m feeling optimistic about this year and planning a few resolutions which include cycling more, driving less. I also want to learn to play a musical instrument. Its never too late! And I want to write that book that has been promising to emerge for so many years but is still in gestation. If I say them out loud I may have to fulfill them.
I’ve just spent the last two weeks without TV or a computer and that also reminded me that while I love both it is great to withdraw and think. Silence has a profound value. And perhaps the noise of our digital age can allow us to avoid silence too easily. Coming back into work and listening again I feel I listen better; hear radio more carefully and watch TV more discerningly. Less is more.
My January deadlines include finishing our radio series ‘Death of an Empire’ the story of modern Russia. I was intending to do it before Christmas but the events in Russia were so fluid we decided to wait until the New Year and make it closer to transmission. 2011 was marked by some outstanding radio projects for us including High Fidelity - the century of recorded song - which is currently being repeated on RTE Radio 1 and the Made in Ireland series which goes out now the RTE Digital Radio. What comes next depends on lots of commissioning rounds which are in the air but we’re also engaged in a lot of digital media and online content training with booking right into April 2012. A sad end to 2011 was the news that Capital D, the RTE TV series we have worked with since 2006, has come to and end. We’ve had a lot of fun making features for the series and we’ll miss working with the Cap D people, Mary Butler and Ann-Marie O Callaghan. But things changes, evolve and re-shape and 2012 promises a whole new beginning. (Keep me to my commitments on bike, music and book!)

It’s December 8th so time enough to get into the Christmas spirit. We’ve wrapped the Adelaide Chambers offices in tinsel and the potted plants are sharing space with a nice little plastic tree, baubles and lights (thank you two euro shop!). It’s been a busy year. More radio than TV this year and we’ve a host of radio shows coming up over the Christmas and New Year. We’ve even got multiple shows on the same day. Phew.
We’re still editing our latest radio baby ‘Death of An Empire’ which goes out on RTE Radio 1 on Jan 7th. its a 5 part series presented by Seamus Martin (formerly of the Irish Times) and we’re tracing the story of the Soviet Union, twenty years after the dissolution of that Union, and finding out how its legacy has shaped modern Russia. The series starts with ‘Becoming Soviet’ and traces the state built by Joseph Stalin which once covers one sixth of the planet and had a range of 11 time zones.
But before “Death of an Empire’ goes on air our big radio baby (now a toddler) from this year, the 26 part music history series ‘High Fidelity - a century of recorded song with Jack L and Julie Feeney’ which went out on RTE lyric fm from May to November, gets a second life on RTE Radio 1. The series will begin after Christmas with a run across the week starting Dec 27th and has a full repeat on Sunday nights at 11pm from New Years Day. So that keeps us on the air right to the end of May!
We’ve re-edited the series to match the RTE Radio 1 slot and we’ve also created a podcast channel which you can access via iTunes or www.podcastingireland.ie. Which means we’ve effectively edited it three times! Thanks Lochlainn and Naomi.
But just after High Fidelity starts on RTE Radio 1 our current series ‘Made in Ireland’ which goes out Mondays on RTE Radio 1’s Today with Pat Kenny show - it gets its own re-fashioning and goes out as a re-mixed stand-alone series on RTE Choice, RTE Radio’s digital radio services. This 13 part series finishes its run on December 26th and episode 11 goes out on Monday -with lace-makers in Ireland talking to Ella McSweeney about their craft. Its a series which has prompted a great response from listeners particularly this week’s episode on poitin and the story of poitin makers in Ireland. Made in Ireland is supported by the BAI Sound & Vision Scheme (and thank you very much for that licence-fee payers!). Made in Ireland goes out on RTE choice form Jan 4th, every wednesday at 3.15 and then repeated on Saturdays at noon. So that’s High Fidelity, Made in Ireland and Death of an Empire all making weekend appearances from January.
But if all of that is not enough listeners in Carlow-Kilkenny region will also get a second chance to hear our ‘Opera for Carlow’ programme as KCLR is broadcasting the opera on Christmas day between 5-6pm (we’re chuffed with that and again thanks to BAI Sound & Vision for letting that production happen). We were delighted to share the broadcast with KCLR, the local radio station in the region, as the original broadcast was with RTE Lyric fm and went out in mid November.
So lots of output, lots of our 2011 work coming on air at Christmas and New Year.
Now just the small business of trying to find new projects to excite us all in 2012 and begin the whole process again of making great programmes and telling engaging stories.
Have a wonderful Christmas and a better New Year.

In the digital evolution we’re all experiencing, our words are struggling to keep up with and capture the changed world and meaning which is unfolding in news media, communications and even journalism. We make up words all the time to try and convey the change but whether these words fit or not only time will tell. The one thing that we should probably let go of is the very term ‘new media’ as if the digital technologies and processes happening every day have somehow just landed in from a local planet. Old media and new media have pretty much met in the middle and are trying to figure out how to marry and raise a family. New is no longer new and the term itself creates distance and misunderstanding.
At a seminar last week called ‘can digital deliver democracy’ people kept talking about digital and ‘the future’ as if we’re still craning our necks to see around the corner and in a science-fiction like manner attempting to envisage a world where we fly around in cars powered by water.
“The future’ we’re talking about is also here and now. Many of the things people talk about as future outcomes are already evidence and common (if not here in Ireland then look outside).
One of the biggest adjustments in any change, any process of change, is how long it takes our heads, our thinking, to catch up with the realities of that change.
And this is acutely true in terms of the digital transition where the ‘traditional’ media; newspapers and broadcasters are still struggling to come to terms with the idea that digital media, and in particularly social media, is a two way flow. The people formerly called audiences are not just talking back but creating and shaping their own content. Newsweek recently said that most of our received images are taken by bystanders. We live in a time where users are not ‘citizen journalists’ but simply people who can contribute to story-telling and via the availability of digital tools like smart phones can add audio, video, text and photos from their own stories and distribute them globally. A survey this week from Pew Research in the US shows most news media are still not using or embracing the idea of two way flows in information. Newspaper and broadcast journalists still see places like twitter as vehicles to spread their own reputations rather than actively engage with users. Emily Bell, the former Guardian Digital Editor who now heads the Digital Journalism Centre at Columbia, talks of a re-booting of journalism which calls for a new type of journalist who embraces transparent or see-through journalism and welcomes a more active equal relationship with citizen/consumers. Imagine a journalism which welcome a questioning public and the concept of an active and engaged citizenship. News is no longer a passive exchange from news gathered to news consumers. Its a flow between both with news being gathered in collaboration with users - or at least that is the potential which organisations like Pro Publica is grasping.
In Ireland digital democracy is in its infancy. Local government frequently resists local decision-making being made available, freely and openly online. We still struggle to get open access to information, data, facts and figures. NAMA and the lack of clarity around its operations is a point in example. There’s a real lack of digital leadership in ireland where digital media is seen solely as an economic good, which will generate jobs, and not as a social and public good. That requirements real transformational thinking at the top and as we know changing our thinking come a way after the technological and process changes which are facilitating a new era of communications across the world.

In the midst of the all the nonsense that surrounds the Presidential election I’m wondering exactly what has changed since the last time around and I quess the answer is the expansion of the media outlets and social media itself. Before the debate was largely the Late Late Show which played such a significant role in the election of both Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, now it seems its reality TV time and the candidates, or characters, are popping up on everything ready to ‘debate’ at the pop of a paper bag. It’s a campaign without substance. The office is all about symbolism and status, the final point of command in our democracy, and yet the campaign seems to have begun and continued as a soap opera of crimes and passions. There’s lots of little white lies or half truths and some great, big, huge denials of reality. We won’t even go there. But beyond that it is increasingly hard to find anything close to status and national symbolism in what is on display. The media’s role seems to be to see the candidates as fresh meat to have a chew on everyday. And its a case of the more exposure there is the less dignified the whole engagement looks. It was always a tough and bitter battle but now it seems the purpose of each media encounter with the candidates is to reduce them to a sobbing heap. Its a little like the Roman ampitheatres where people were pitted against lions. They did not have a choice. And sometimes its hard to understand how anyone would willing put themselves in front of the assault the wannabe Presidents get. Maybe they should club together, stop assisting the attack and actually be respectful to each other. It could, by example, encourage the media to both follow the public’s interest but equally to respectfully follow the public’s interest and remember that while some people may prefer otherwise - this is a campaign and not a public trial we’re all participating in. Paper, they used to say, never refuses ink and in an era of social media and morning to night radio and TV it most definitely seems cyberspace no more than the airwaves abhorrs reflection. In a campaign without substance it seems the media must relentlessly fill each second of silence with chatter and noise and the candidates are all too happy to help them.

Its been some week. This time last week in Helsinki talking the dissolution of the Soviet Union with Finns, Russians and Estonians and today running our one day social media and online content workshop. In between came half a dozen things like a panel discussion in DIT on radio production, chatting to NUJ journalists about turning into audio-makers, the BAI one day ‘consultancy’ at Croke Park on its strategy document where everyone who is leading in radio was there (well just about everyone) and a full day’s studio recording with Jack L and Julie Feeney for our radio music series High Fidelity. Diverse to say the least.
Helsinki is fascinating. We could all do with being a bit more Nordic. They drink their heads off but remains quite orderly and Helsinki has to feel like one of the safest places to be at any time. You know you are in Finland when the bus and just about everywhere else has free wifi, there’s three forms of public transport and your morning latte costs four euro! Helsinki is about the only place I can go and feel Dublin is not bad value. But its a city that works, with wonderful friendly people and a language which must be great in scrabble as it uses so many uuuus.
The interviews are for our series called Death of an Empire, on twenty years since the end of the Soviet Union. Seamus Martin, ex Irish Times correspondent, is leading the project and he was recording in August in Moscow and we’ve done quite a few interviews here in Ireland. The series goes out at Christmas/New Year on RTE Radio 1.
Straight off the plane and a few hours sleep and it was into edit the Capital D special on Mark Pollock with video editor Barry MacNeill. The piece went out on thursday and its available on the home page and it has to one of the most meaningful TV pieces we’ve done this year. Mark is an incredible guy and it always feel we’re lucky to have known him and to have had the chance to work with him. Mark gets out of rehab hospital very soon and hopefully it will signal a much needed move towards an independent life again. Monday it was participating in a DIT panel on how the radio independent production sector works aimed at journalists coming largely from a print background who are looking to shift into radio work. Good session and nice to meet up with old colleagues like Michael Foley, now a media lecturer who I started life as a journalist with in the Irish Times. (many fish and chip wrappers ago)

We had a busy day Tuesday recording High Fidelity, episode 21,22,23 with Jack and Julie and our wonderful audio engineer Lochlainn Harte. On Monday episode 19 goes out on air on RTE Lyric fm at 7pm. This times its Motown and how music got soul. Great music and lots of extraordinary life stories. We’re nearly at the end of this very long journey - just three more episodes to record and our final show is listeners choice so if you want to submit a song we’ve overlooked let us know via the High Fidelity facebook page or twitter account. On wednesday I met Michael Gallen of Irish band Ana Gog (its their music in the Mark Pollock feature) and what a talented person. Currently based in Paris Michael write both contemporary classical and rock music which is some achievement. I somehow feel everyone will hear a lot more about him.

By thursday (after I had managed to wreck my bike) it was over to Croke Park and the conference centre for the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s one day consultation with the broadcasting sector about its new services strategy. Since Athena Media did a lengthy economic landscape report last year it was a bit disappointing to see how little, if anything, was taken on board from that work and depressing to see the lack of cohesion within the sector. It was a disspiriting day with lots of heat but very little vision and Ireland seems to have a very long way to go to fully understand the concept of ‘consultation’. As I say we all needed to get a little more Nordic. In Ireland it always feel people are just ticking boxes when it comes to ‘consultation’. The one highlight of the day was that the session was chaired by the utterly delightful John Bowman who is still the most learned person with the sharpest mind around broadcasting or any business.

And then to today and a very uplifting group for social media workshop. Its always a treat to get people who start to work together from different backgrounds and experiences and really problem-solve together. By Sunday its London for sessions with the BBC and the whole, wonderful world of work beings again. But bored…..we will never be!

It feels cold and autumnal today. But I quess September is just one week away so perhaps we need to adjust and let go of the idea of Summer. Largely it was just an idea.
September 1 is one of my favourite dates in the year. Its the day we set up Athena Media back in 2003. So its our 8th birthday. Which seems mad. We don’t feel that old. My nephew Adam turns 8 in a few months and he said 8 is different - 8 is grown up. So I quess we must be grown up as a company. We’re still small and perfectly formed. But its good to know that on this September 1 we’ll be filming with one of our favourite people - Mark Pollock, the adventurer and motivational speaker, who is in rehab after a major spinal injury one year ago. Mark inspires us because he refuses to be limited by his physical life. Its tough, frustrating and hard but he sees more than most of us who still have working eyes. And I am sure that he will out-reach most of us despite his broken back and wheelchair. Life is about what we do with the cards we are dealt not about the ones we don’t get. Its how we face the day which counts.

Athena Media is now happily living in Adelaide Chambers and exploring the delights of Camden St cafes. We’re in the midst of several big radio projects including wrapping up our documentary on Fighting Words which is called ‘Word of Mouth’ about the creative writing centre in Dublin started by Roddy Doyle. It goes out on RTE Lyric fm later this year and 2011 has been a good year for our connection with RTE Lyric fm as our 26 part music series High Fidelity is reaching its endgame. We’ve recorded and edited 20 episodes and next Monday night showcases episode 16 a Jack L special on movie composers. Its been wonderful fun working with Jack and Julie Feeney and a great focus for our work. We’re also in the midst of a big series on the fall of the Soviet Union called Death of an Empire which is being presented by Seamus Martin, the ex Irish Times correspondent in Moscow. Seamus and producer Laura Haydon have been recording in Moscow this month and we’ll continue with more recordings in Dublin and beyond in the coming months. The series goes out over Christmas/New Year on RTE radio 1 so we’ll keep you posted about transmission times and dates when we get them.
Our other big radio baby is called ‘Made in Ireland’ with Ella McSweeney and that is a 13 part series for RTE Radio 1 which starts in October and goes into the Today with PK Show. We’ll also be re-editing the content for RTE Choice, the digital radio channel so you’re bound to be able to hear some of it.
Other radio projects in the pipeline include a series for BBC Radio 4 which we’re currently in development on and which will be very exciting if it happens. We’ll let you know.
Our training workshops continue with the new twitter half day workshop ‘twitter business’ and we’re also running our social media workshop - call Lisa and Niall for bookings and details on 01 4883350.
But back to September 1 - our shoot with Mark is for a new Capital D feature for RTE TV which goes out in mid September and focuses on Mark’s rehabilitation training as he works to re-build his independent life again post the accident. Our videographer Barry MacNeill will once again be behind the camera and edit desk .Barry was behind our recent ‘Drimnagh is Good’ feature and he is also editing our Belmayne documentary and just did a beautiful short introduction to the piece. You can check out our work on vimeo www.vimeo.com/athenamedia.
So we’ll be celebrating on our eight birthday with a great story - which is how we like to do things anyway. Inspiring stories told well. What more could a birthday bring?

Its been one of those weeks. Brown boxes and sealer tape. Everything tagged, marked and labelled and then the trek up and down two flights of stairs to get the office out of 10-13 Thomas St and over to Adelaide Chambers, Peter St. Its still Dublin 8, we’re only a stone’s throw from The Digital Hub, but its a big marker in the short seven year life of Athena Media. We moved into the Digital Hub in May 2004 after I started the company in September 2003 just a couple of weeks after coming back from a year out in the US, at Harvard University. I left the relative comfort of management in RTE with the idea of starting my own thing, my own little thing and growing it step by step. I had always wanted to focus on story-telling and to get the chance to run my own company so Athena Media, from day one, was called a content engine with the emphasis on stories rather than the medium. From day one we did radio, television, print and online seeing the future of content as being about stories that could flow from one medium to another rather than being defined by that medium.
In the beginning there was just me and a couple of freelances, then quite soon after the shift to the Hub Sarah Mulkerrins joined the company straight out of DCU. Sarah is now with the BBC in Manchester and she has gone from one achievement to the next since her time with Athena Media and her director role in our TV series ‘Winning Women’ 2008. Along the way Anita Walsh joined us when Sarah went off the Oz for a year and again Anita like Sarah came back and worked a few times with the company. Anita is now in New York and occasionally freelancing with us. She played a big part in who we are and in the TV programmes we have made from ‘Winning Women’ and ‘My Private Everest’. Gill Quinn, multi-media graduate from DCU joined us for a year or more post her internship with us during her degree and again she’s gone on to great things and along with Anita was the force behind our Joyce’s Dublin podcast project and website. Sarah, Anita and Gill all work as producers on our one time music podcast channel Making Waves, a weekly show which ran for three years, and that’s how we met Jack L and Julie Feeney the current stars of our 26 part radio series High Fidelity, a century of recorded song with Jack L and Julie Feeney, running on RTE lyric fm. That series is being edited by someone we’ve worked with since 2007 - Lochlainn Harte . Lochlainn is now part of the Athena Media family but he was the audio editor behind our Gold winning radio documentary ‘Tower Songs’ in 2009 and he is the editor of ‘An Opera for Carlow’ a major project and documentary we just completed for RTE Lyric fm. Niamh Kinane was the researcher on ‘Tower Songs’ and we’re delighted to see her now at the heart of Amnesty Ireland. Niamh was back with us for a stint in the summer and lovely to re-connect with her. One of our other regulars who had several stints with us is Linda Stanley, the researcher on ‘Women and Words’ our 2008 series for RTE Lyric fm on women writers and a recordist for the series ‘Urban Beauty, Urban Blight’ for Newstalk in 2009. Linda when to 4FM for a time and was back with us until last September when she moved to London and now works with the London Olympics planning - which is pretty impressive!. Another star recruit is Paula Cunniffe who freelanced with us during her degree and worked as an assistant on the TV series ‘is it just me?’ about young people coping with tough times, along with Chris Clarke. Paula came on board full-time when she graduated and spent a year with us before heading to Florida to complete her Masters there. She even came back and did some work over Christmas on ‘An Opera for Carlow’ which had very much been her baby.
This time last year a wonderful young woman Lisa Essuman came to work for us and she went from freelance to full-time when Linda went to London and Paula went to Florida. Lisa is a DCU communications graduate and we’re extremely lucky to get her full-time. Lisa took over ‘An Opera for Carlow’ and is now the recordist on a new documentary for RTE Lyric fm called ‘Word of Mouth’ about Fighting Words, Roddy Doyle’s creative writing centre in Dublin.
We’ve had some great interns like Sean Sweeney and Niall Brew. Sean worked with us on ‘Belmayne: Gorgeous Living’ our film which we’re still editing and Niall is working with us as a freelance. Our video editor and cameraman since 2006 is Barry macNeill who is very much part of the Athena Media clan and one of our recent projects was a lovely piece for RTE Capital D called ‘Drimnagh is Good’.
A great recruit this year has been Naomi Maccleod who is a pro-tools editor and worked me every day in The Irish Times right through February when we helped the Irish Times put out a daily audio podcast and mentored their staff on online content. Naomi had been the key force on high Fidelity before her had a horse-riding accident at Easter but thankfully she is coming back for a few half morning next week in our new offices and she is nearly healed!
So great people, great projects and the years have flown. We launched Podcasting Ireland in March 2006 with associates Joe Conway and Simon Factor and while we’re all doing our own things now we still love to work, whenever we can, with Joe and Simon. In the move we had the support of another new face Natalia Pulber who is a wonderful person and very supportive. Natalia has just completed her Masters and did her placement with us and now freelances with the company along with Sean Corcoran who also came to us via his college work placement.
The move is a big shift; leaving the digital hub which has been home, but its time for a change and for a new beginning. We’ll miss the lovely company of all the staff at the digital hub, Lynn in the digital depot coffee shop and the regulars like gary and andrew in kavaleer. But Adelaide Chambers beckons and this bright, big new space offers us the room to grow and flourish even in these tough times.

A lot of fuss this week about Dublin’s Social Media Day which I have to say seems a lot of hype and nothing else. But on the other hand beneath the endless lists of social media news a lot has changed in Ireland online this year. There’s an incredible 1.9 million Irish facebook accounts (Now they may not all be active but the growth and sustained activity on facebook in Ireland is significant given that half a million is a massive audience in any Irish broadcasting rating. On twitter we’ve anything between 200,000 to half a million twitter accounts depending on what analysis you read. twitter is still small compared to facebook but extremely influential given that figures earlier this year showed there about two thirds of all Irish journalists on twitter! The general election in February was a turning point for twitter in Ireland (Neworld, 2011) and traffic/engagement on that platform jumped. Increasingly a company without a twitter account or social media strategy is seen in the same way companies without websites where seen about ten years ago. It is no longer an option but something which everyone who needs to communicate has to engage with, embrace, learn and develop.

One of the interesting pieces of content around this I’ve seen this week is this video Social Media Revolution 2011 which provides an interesting bird’s eye view of the global transformation. The current internet/social networking battle is between facebook and Google and with the launch of Google Plus its clear google is determined to re-shape the social media environment based on its own mantra of ‘the future is search’. While Google Plus is still brand new and in development many were quick to rubbish it this week and one digital expert described it as the ‘wedding seat plan’ approach to social networking. But do not dismiss Google. Their view that social relationships are niches rather than one big happy facebook umbrella may yet prove true and while the terminology they are using seems cumbersome the concept is right. We connect based on emotional trust and have different layers of relationships in business and personal lives and our social media interaction needs to have that same level of intuitive knowledge. People, in our social media and online content workshops, are always asking me ‘what’s the next big thing?’ The reality is we often miss it because we’re so busy dismissing it. The big lesson for all of us is that the platforms are not permanent. The social patterns driving change, the push for interactive and intuitive communications and inter-relations is constant, but the platforms are grow and fall depending on how well they adapt to user demands. Look at MySpace - now a bargain basement sale. While facebook today seems unstoppable new challenges and innovations will keep pushing forward. It is not a given that the future has to be facebook and twitter. We, as users, will shift if other places become more adaptable and useful. Don’t get too attached to the platforms. It’s the patterns of behaviour which are constant, which will drive change. The platforms may come and go as MySpace and Bebo already have.

I’ve been asked to do a training course in making radio. Simple you might say. Only this is a group of Chinese radio peope and the workshop is based in Tampere, Finland. I’ve been making some form of radio or another since 1988. Which is a long time. And a lot has changed. But its still a medium I love and when it works, nothing is better. When I started in RTE Radio 1 as a trainee producer in 1988 one of my mentors was Alex White, now a TD for the labour party, but who long ago was a brillant current affairs producer who had the coolest head under crisis of any producer I’d ever met. I remember doing an OB in Brussels with Marian Finucane where Alex was the senior producer and it was a complete and total disaster. Everything that could go wrong technically went wrong. if we were on ten minutes in the hour of Liveline it was a disjointed ten minutes of signal drop out and collapse. Alex remained cool and unmoved while I worried about the consequences. It was a lasting lesson. Nothing is gained by losing your head!
So what’s the point? I’ve been thinking about all the things I should include in the workshop. Technology, social media, interactivity and marketing. Yet in the end radio is still radio. Lots has changed but it remains a medium driven by story and good story-telling best told by cool heads who understand sound and seek to find the best ones to tell a story and engage an audience. At present Athena Media is making quite a bit of radio .We have High Fidelity on RTE lyric fm every Monday at 7pm. Its in week six by next Monday and its growing in momentum all the time. Which is just as well since its a 26 part series! We’re also making the final documentary for ‘An Opera for Carlow’ which goes out on RTE lyric fm on July 1. (I have still to edit it and I need that Alex cool head as the deadline is racing towards us at speed). We are in the end stages of a recording a documentary on Fighting Words, Roddy Doyle’s creative writing centre in Dublin’s inner city. Its called ‘Words of Mouth’ and hits a hard punch. it took us to New York last month and our old colleague Anita Walsh even did some recording for it in San Francisco where she has been living for the past year. We’ve also got a brand new radio series, just commissioned by Sound and Vision Fund for RTE Radio 1, called ‘Made in Ireland’ with our old colleague and friend Ella McSweeney. Its still all new and under discussion, a celebration of everything bearing the ‘made in Ireland’ brand and background and we hope to have it on air for RTE in late Autumn. Lots happening but what unites them all are great stories, some wonderful voices and a commitment to carrying people, listeners, on a journey. I hope I can share some of that with our Chinese colleagues in September as well as some of things they want to know about the digital radio sphere and re-inventing radio in a digital age.

We’ve been buried in music for the last while and finding out some amazing things. Like Al Jolson earned 2,000 dollars a week in 1916 and was the highest paid celebrity in the world by 1920 with a theatre named after him! Our music trivia is not just for pub quizzes. Here in Athena Media we’ve been preparing for the launch of a new radio series on RTE lyric fm called High Fidelity - a century of recorded song. It is the story of recorded music and song from Edison to iTunes and we’re lucky enough to have two of Ireland’s most dynamic vocal performers presenting the series, namely Jack (Jack Lukeman) and Julie Feeney.
We had the idea of bringing the two of them together and creating the story of sound, song and singers some time back and ended up pitching it to RTE as an independent production. In the end it has become a 26 part series stretching from Caruso to Pavorotti with Lead Belly, Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan in between! We’re mapping a narrative which begins with Thomas Edison and his invention of the phonograph in 1877. Edison has to be one of the most fascinating characters in the history of invention and science. He left school early, basically took to the trains at 14 selling his won newspaper which was the best of all the official ones - kind of a Google aggregator of his day! By 15 he saved a small boy from the path of an on-coming train and the father, the train operator, is so grateful he teaches the boy Morse Code. In that time knowing Morse was a bit like having all the web code of silicon valley at your fingertips and it was this doorway which gave the innovative and lateral thinking Edison the key to his telecommunications inventions including in sound. But the battle for sound was one between him and Emile Berliner and in the end it was Berliner’s gramophone and gramophone discs which won by by the close of the 1920s.
For us the research is a journey of discovery, not just about the technologies which have given us sound recording and which today allows us to shift time and location and effortlessly move songs from cyberspace, but about the histories of song and singers. We got lost the other day in Robert Johnson’s story. The blues composer and guitar player who was said to have ’sold his soul to the devil’ in order to the play the blues and who was dead by 27 at the hands of a jealous husband of a woman he was seeing. Johnson may not be first in your books when it comes to music but his legacy - for such a short life - is stark with songs like ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ which you all remember from The Blues Brothers movie in the 80s but also because he remains the revered musician hero of people like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards who say Johnson’s playing was so good it might just be true the devil was involved. Of course the only reason we know anything of him - or his playing - is because he recorded songs. Recording a bunch of them in the early days of sound when he had little money and better things to spent it on.
Recording captures sound but it also captures the song and the voice of the singer. Poor Scott Joplin never got the chance to record. His legacy is all in piano rolls rather than sound recordings and what we see from the story of recording is that those recordings in wax or shellac are what have preserved our musical history. Caruso embraced recording and made a batch of records in 1902 when many of his peers were afraid it would destroy their audiences and keep people out of the opera houses. After all if people had your voice on a record they reasoned why would they pay to come and hear it? Ironically in a digital age where music flows like water the live performance has once again become supreme and artists know that recordings drive people to performance and the ‘live’ experience rather than anything else.
Its a 26 part series and a vast canvass of stories and lives from Paul Robeson,Marian Anderson, Hoagey Carmichael, Edith Piaf, Judy Garland, to name just a few. Jack and Julie will be on with Pat Kenny on Wednesday talking about the series and may even perform so tune in if you are about a radio or come and join us Facebook High Fidelity a century of song with Jack L and Julie Feeney