No Rock And Roll Fun

SIX MUSIC FOR ANY PEOPLE: Let's hope this time they stick with it, but the BBC are on the point of launching a music station that sounds like it could have been one of those ideal stations you used to draw up on the back of your school exercise books during dull moments. BBC 6 Music - though restricted to DAB, net and Sky - has a lip-smacking prospect taking it beyond the archive-hugging station that the working titled Network Y had threatened. Instead, while promising to make use of the BBC's music archive (and about time too, of course) the station is going to function a bit like the old Night-time Radio One meets GLR meets the old Radio 5 - indeed, most of the presenters come from those three stations (Liz Kershaw, Janice Long, Long's holiday fill-in Tom Robinson, Sean Hughes, Phil Jupitus) and the promises of performance speak of a station that will still be down the shops each Monday to rummage through the new releases, as well as emerging from the attic carrying long-forgotten Hendrix recordings.
Of course, we could quibble - clearly, Danny Baker should be doing the breakfast show, and it would have been nice perhaps to have a daytime rerun of the previous evening's Peel programme, for example - but the plans seem to offer something coherent (unlike the old Radio 5) and seem to have been a labour of love. We can't be certain until it's launched, of course, but this could be the closest we've yet got to the sounds in our heads being let out into the air.
Coming soon... - Also features Collins and Maconie. Let's hope they get together and recreate the Hit Parade...