Home • About • Archives • Best Of • Subscribe

A post about JLS. Really.

Published 25th April 2013

Jingles

Never let it be said that Dirty Feed isn’t topical. To, erm, celebrate JLS splitting up, here’s some audio from their appearance on The Chris Moyles Show back in 2011, where they sung the show’s jingles live – in front of an audience at the BBC Radio Theatre.

[mejsaudio src=”https://www.dirtyfeed.org/audio/jls-jingles.mp3″ volume=”false”]

Download “The Chris Moyles Show (18/02/11) – JLS Jingles” (9MB MP3, 4:44)

To be honest, it’s a case of “nice thought, pity it’s JLS”. (I prefer the BBC Concert Orchestra playing the jingles live the following year, 17:20 into this clip.) But it’s worth it purely to hear Moyles being extremely rude to JLS over their ability to sing. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Pips from the end of the show are kept in at the end of the clip. Because playing the pips in front of an audience at the end of your show is bloody great.

Read more about...

# Serving the South West… #

Published 10th April 2013

Jingles

Last Wednesday was Pirate FM‘s 21st anniversary – and to celebrate, they dug out a bunch of their old JAM jingles from their 1992 launch. I wish I’d managed to record the whole day, but sadly I only captured a part of Hometime with James Dundon – of which the below is just a small badly-edited snippet:

[mejsaudio src=”https://dirtyfeed.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/piratefm21st.mp3″ volume=”false”]

Download “Pirate FM 21st Anniversary – 3/4/13 5pm” (10MB MP3, 8:16)

Highlights include the amazing Pirate FM song at 1:45 (“The future’s looking great, at Great Britain’s Western Gate…”), and a hilariously sniffy contemporary BBC Spotlight report of the launch at 3:35. The whole day was a fantastic, heartfelt celebration – I only wish every radio station celebrated its anniversaries by having so much fun on the air.

The main thing I’d point out though, is how wonderful those jingles – now 21 years old – sound today. And more importantly, still work with a huge variety of different music – from Prefab Sprout in 1988, to a 2012 Pink hit. They made the station sound bloody fantastic. And, dare I say, deserve bringing back for more than one day…

See ya, YouTube

Published 6th March 2013

Internet

I’ve been uploading things to YouTube for a few years now. Hardly a heavy user, mind you, and I was never eagerly chasing views: it was mainly just a place to store small bits of video easily that I didn’t especially want to pay the hosting costs for.

This was was the case tonight, where I had recorded a fun bit of video I wanted to share with the world. So I go to the YouTube upload page, and was greeted with this. Pay special attention to the right-hand column:

YouTube account creation with Google+ profile screenshot

[Read more →]

.faxmachine

Published 15th February 2013

Internet

Yesterday, I bought the domain name for my upcoming internet radio show: 80track.fm. There’s only a holding page there at the moment, though TV pres geeks should recognise the font used for the logo. (For more, check out this post by Dave Jeffery.) There will be plenty of time for more about the actual show, however – let’s talk about simply buying the actual domain itself.

As it’s a radio show, I decided to go for a .fm domain; domain hacks make me feel a bit dirty, but I just couldn’t resist it. My usual domain registrar doesn’t deal with .fm domains, so I decided to go with the official domain registrar. OK, so the website looks like it was designed in 1485, but no matter. So I got to work filling in all my details, and was told my fax number was required. I got a vaguely amusing Tumblr post out of this, typed in “none” in the Fax field, filled in the rest, and awaited a confirmation email. Ah look, there we go…

[Read more →]

A Few Notes on a Tour of BBC Television Centre, 28th January 2013

Published 12th February 2013

Life / Other TV

I often ponder what my ideal job would be. Perhaps it would be working in TX for BBC One in the 90s, at TV Centre. Or working in BBC VT in the 80s, at TV Centre. Or being a BBC cameraman in the 70s, at TV Centre.

You may have spotted a subtle link between all those jobs. Sadly, I will never enter TV Centre – as it stands now, anyway – as a professional rather than a telly nerd. So a telly nerd I remained, as I walked into the reception of TV Centre in January, to take part in one of the last BBC Tours of the building. I won’t try to detail everything that went on in the tour, but I thought a few observations may be of interest.

TV Centre from outside

[Read more →]

Blackadder II: Extended Theme

Published 8th February 2013

Music / TV Comedy

Every so often, a DVD release gives you a lovely surprise. Sometimes, that surprise may be quickly skipped, with most people not even noticing it.

Take, for instance, Blackadder II – and specifically, the opening title music:

Delightfully, the DVD menu of The Complete Blackadder has a clean, extended version used for the main menu of the Blackadder II disc, giving you a good 15 seconds or so extra. Anyone want to have a listen? Of course you do.

[mejsaudio src=”https://dirtyfeed.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/BlackadderII-Extended.mp3″]

Download Blackadder II: Extended Theme (1.7MB MP3, 0:52)

AWESOME EXTRA ELECTRIC GUITAR NONSENSE. Somebody, somewhere, went to the effort of tracking down Howard Goodall’s original recording, rather than just lazily ripping it from one of the episodes. Whoever you are: I love you.

(Incidentally, the Blackadder Remastered boxset does not have the extended version of the theme – just a slightly awkward looped version, with sound effects clearly indicating it was ripped from the episode Beer. One of many, many sloppy things about that boxset, but don’t get me started on that one.)

So, my question: anyone got any other examples of extended versions of music only showing up in the DVD menus of film or television releases?

Read more about...

Self-Righteous Twitter Rant #782332

Published 7th February 2013

Internet

Robert’s Web. Safely one of the worst television programmes I have ever seen. Not that that’s my main point here, but I’ll take any chance I can get to slag off that wretched show. No, my point here is to do with the show’s Twitter account.

Let’s ignore the fact that the last tweet there is advertising the third show of the series, despite there being four episodes – a sure sign the team had given up by the last one. More importantly: there’s no goodbye message. No “thanks for watching, hope you enjoyed it”. Nowt. Zilch. Abandoned. Production office wound up, nobody there to even tweet a farewell.

Which altogether gives the impression that the account meant nothing to the makers of the show than what they could get out of it. Nobody could spare a minute to even pretend they gave a fuck, and post a goodbye. There is little more transparent than an account just abandoned like that. They never really engaged; it was all a front to try and whip up interest, then abandoned when the show failed.

In comparison, when the online game Glitch had to wind up, their Twitter feed was full of updates, proper goodbyes and fun stuff. The absolute right way to go about ending a project. Engaging with your audience to the last, not running away with your tail between your legs. It was obvious that the people running that site cared about their audience.

It’s not a hard and fast rule, obviously. I’ve seen excellent Twitter accounts run by TV people, and I’ve seen awful ones run by web companies. But it happens enough to spot a pattern, and it’s not a pleasant one when it comes to television shows.

Which makes me sad. Telly can benefit hugely from social media, done right. Done wrong, it exposes some rather uncomfortable truths.

Read more about...

BEST. ADVERT. EVER.

Published 21st January 2013

Adverts

I have posted this on Twitter. I have posted this on Tumblr. But I will not rest until I have forced as many people as possible to watch this.

Stay right to the very end for the best bit.

Sitcom Recording Leaflets: New Yes, Prime Minister

Published 16th January 2013

TV Comedy

As regular readers of this site will know, I have lots of little obsessions – and one of the more obscure ones is the leaflets that used to be handed out to the audience at sitcom recordings. I’ve already detailed such little leaflets for episodes of The Brittas Empire and Every Silver Lining, but sadly these just doesn’t seem to be made any more – I have certainly never been given any since I started attending audience recordings in 1999.

Up until last year, that is. Imagine my delight when I went to see the first episode of the new Yes, Prime Minister series recorded, and a good old-fashioned leaflet was waiting on each audience member’s chair. Whether this was a holdover from the series’s roots as a stage production, or simply because Gareth Gwenlan and Jonathan Lynn like doing things the old way, it was a lovely little souvenir to take home to remember the recording.

Anyone care for a scan?

Yes Prime Minister Episode 1 leaflet - Cover
Yes Prime Minister Episode 1 leaflet - Inside


Lovely stuff. I wish every sitcom recording still did this. I’m still on the lookout for more of these, by the way – if you have any hidden away in drawers, why not hunt them out and scan them in?

Read more about...

, , ,