As Wikipedia can confirm, my brother Matthew Robinson (born 27 July 1944) is a British film & television executive producer, producer, director and writer. Nicknamed "The Pope of Soap" by The Sun, he was director of BBC1's EastEnders when it launched in 1985. He later masterminded the teen drama serial Byker Grove, casting Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly as young heroes P.J. and Duncan, and…
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Sorry folks - due to a (routine) hospital operation I'm now on leave from BBC 6 Music and Fresh On The Net until Saturday 28 Sept 2019. Our inbox here will reopen on Monday 16 Sept and Team Freshnet will still be choosing the tunes for our Listening Post as normal. And - don't worry - all Listening Post tracks this month will still get…
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Here’s the new single from enigmatic steam-powered beat maestros The Gaslight Troubadours - which features a spoken-word guest vocal from, er, me... It comes from their second album Stranger Swings, which is due for Halloween release on 31 October 2018 via their own Purblind Productions imprint. One Big Con features a wild sonic and visual collage of samples, clips and conspiracy theories. The lyric's my…
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Sorry - another piece from me that isn't anything to do with music. But several people have asked for more info on Finchden Manor - mentioned last week in my piece about mental illness. So here's an article I wrote for The Times in 2003 about the the visonary educationalist George Lyward who founded it... One night in the winter of 1966 I swallowed a handful…
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Photo and text from Mind Out for Mental Health‘s 1 in 4 project, 2002. One way of looking at mental health problems is as a gap between the way we view the world internally and the way we experience it externally. If there’s too big a gap we get into trouble. I went to a co-ed boarding school in the 60s and fell in love…
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This is a quick heads-up to artists and bands that I'm going to be away from Fresh On The Net until November. Next week I'll be co-hosting the BBC Introducing 10th birthday party at Brixton Academy and presenting two sessions at The BBC's Amplify event in London next week, and hosting my weekend radio shows. But after that I'm heading out on tour with my…
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Once again, Monday finds me sitting down to build next week's BBC Introducing Mixtape, and as usual it's a case of trying to cram a quart into a pint pot. That's the expression we used in the old days before decimalisation: somehow trying to cram a litre into a half-litre pot doesn't quite have the same ring. But you get the idea. Each week I…
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Benji Kirkpatrick is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who performs on guitar, mandolin and banjo although his favoured instrument is the bouzouki. Born in Shropshire, England in 1976, he is the son of renowned English folk musicians John Kirkpatrick and Sue Harris, and his entry into the recording business suitably came about on his father’s 1994 album Earthling. Benji subsequently formed the acoustic band The…
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Today's guest blog post comes from Stephen Gilchrist of Brixton Hill Studios and founder of new label Brixton Hillbilly Records. "...tracks arrive hotfooted from Brixton Hill Studios – perhaps the funkiest creative hub to be found anywhere in South London." Tom Robinson - BBC 6music Not our words, but the words of hero and musical mentor Tom Robinson. What a brilliant endorsement to get -…
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The Listening Post will open on Friday, 1st December
Closed until Dec 4
The KLF – The White Room
The KLF - or Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu as they've always preferred to be known - are simply unique. That said, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty always had that anarchic Malcolm McLaren vibe of “destroy, subvert and undermine expectations…” and of simply improvising their strategy in response to each new idea or opportunity as it cropped up. That's why The White Room - far…
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