Out on Blue Six

[Nigel Spencer]

Hi Mark,

Thoroughly enjoy your show with Mr Maconie, even though the move to Six Music is a pain in the bum for us workers who can't get to a radio in the afternoon and have to remember to use the iPlayer...

But that's not my question - this is. Out on Blue Six was a fab programme and I don't know how you got away with playing an hour of non-stop garage rock, psychedelia and punk on Radio One (unless I'm misremembering with psychedelically rose-tinted specs)! Is there any chance it might be resurrected in some form, even as the occasional Out on Blue Six half hour as part of the current show? And if you had to take one garage rock classic to a desert island, which one do you thing it would be? (Mine would be 'You're Gonna Miss me' by the 13th Floor Elevators or 'Good Times' by Nobody's Children...)

Cheers

Nigel

[Dave Brzeski]

I loved that show. Have a few on tape, but sadly they're on C120s & are unplayable now.
I remember really loving the Star Power version of Some Velvet Morning, which you played a couple of times at least. It's been a source of constant frustration to me that this track & whatever the B-side was) has never been available on CD.

Out On Blue Six was a vital part of the 90s Psych revival. There really should be a CD (maybe even a box set) release of the best tracks you played on the show (as long as it includes that Star Power track, otherwise I would have to hunt you down & speak sharply to you!)

Failing that, maybe BBC 6 could repeat some of the shows.

[djmahone]

Out on Blue Six has a very special place in my heart as it was the first show I presented on radio 1 and they just let me play whatever I wanted.
My sadly now departed friend from Bolton Steve Bridges introduced me to the Nuggets album compiled by Lenny Kaye - and I was hooked.
Steve was about 5 years older than me and introduced me to so much great music and was my sort of elder brother/mentor in bands in Bolton in the 70's and then again in Manchester at the end of that decade. I miss him. there is a song about him called 'Gone Stevie B' on my new album plus an older song we kind of wrote together about a quarter of a century ago.

But I loved the mix on OOB6, and I'm kind of trying to do the same thing with my Music Club show on Radio 2 on a tuesday night between 11 and midnight.
 
It's hard to pick one song from that scene but I really do love 'Little Girl' by The Syndicate of Sound.

[Nigel Spencer]

Excellent! I know what I'm going to be doing at 11 on Tuesdays. I remember how bowled over I was when I first heard Nuggets... and I'm convinced that everyone who first heard that album on vinyl (some time in the early eighties in my case) was introduced to it by a slightly older friend with a phenomenally good record collection. I think it helped that I was young enough that hearing a new album, especially when it was passed my way with a sense of ceremony almost, was a real event (something that still happens from time to time - hooray!). And of course, it as wasn't possible to hear anything you wanted to with a couple of clicks of a mouse, discovering something amazing that you'd never heard of before was real buzz. Which reminds me - I must get a copy of Simon Reynolds' Retro Mania.

[djmahone]

Read Simon's 'Retromania' by all means but I have to say, as I have said to him, that in some ways I think the book is based on a flase premise.
His basic point is that with so many re-issues/re-releases/re-masterings/box-sets/b-sides, rarities and session tack comps - that pop is in danger of 'eating itself' - that new music is stifled becuase of the amount of archive in the market.
I'm sorry but I just don't believe this. technology and the internet means it has never been easier for new music to be created and, crucially, heard.
In the old days you would write a song, maybe record it on a cassette and the only real way of getting it heard was at a pub gig to 10 people - which is fine in its own way. Now you can record at home to studio standard, stick it on MySpace or whatever and if you can direct people to it somehow, you have a potential global audience.

I also think that what Simon doesn't confront is that there may well be all these reissues etc and let's say, though I'm guessing really, that they account for 80% of music sales. That still means that 20% (which is probably a low estimate) are sales of new music. Now, it may well be that the market has grown to such an extent that this 20% actually constitutes more new music than 100% of what was available in the late 50's/early 60's at the dawn of rock and roll. There was no archive then as it had only just begun. This I think is the point that rather pulls the rug from under Simon's nonetheless enjoyable and thought provoking book.

[Nigel Spencer]

I'm about 100 pages into Retromania now and I think you've hit the nail on the head, Mark. As ever, its beautifully written and well argued, but definitely overly pessimistic!