Get It Off ( air)
First of all, apologies for the break in transmission during tonight's Get It On which was due to a major technical failure in our radio studios....and not down to me pushing the wrong button. Honest.
I knew we had the gremlins in halfway through the first song when Ken, our continuity announcer, appeared at my window with a sign that said:" Your mic is OPEN!!!".
I knew it wasn't, as all my faders were down. Somehow, even though the mic was switched off it was picking up my private conversation and broadcasting it to the nation. How embarrassing is that then? "Stop muttering during the songs", said Paddy on the text. I knew at that point it was time to call in the engineers.
Meanwhile, producer Barbara was passing me notes as any chat between the two of us would have gone out on air. She scribbled that the plan was for me to play the next song in another studio.
As the engineers set to work on my dodgy mic, we moved studios and started the next song. But halfway through Madness everything died. And I mean dead in a dead parrot, bereft of life, shuffled off this mortal coil, If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies kind of way!
On air, you would have got sixty seconds of ear piercing white noise followed by a long period of silence ( It was like no music day all over again). Finally and seemingly out of nowhere we got a blast of Irma Thomas doing It's Raining.
It's a great song under any circumstances, but tonight hearing Irma sing was the sweetest sound I have ever heard in my life.
Behind the scenes it was like something out of the Keystone Cops meets ER, as teams of engineers ran up and down the corridor pulling plugs, producer Barbara scoured the building looking for a studio that might work, while me and continuity announcer Ken just stared in silence at the lifeless mixing console.
What was great was that you kept texting and e-mailing through the silence. There were lots of requests for 'rain' songs and then pages and pages of messages saying, "Bryan, it's all gone quiet"," Turn the mic back on" and "Help! U've went off air!"
I have now asked for tonight's show to be removed from the 'listen again' site. It was embarrassing enough going out once.
Once again, sincere apologies for the loss of service and for not being able to get round to most of your texts and e-mails tonight. As I mentioned on-air we will continue with this theme on Monday - unless it's jinxed forever. Tune in if you can. It should be an interesting listen...
