Radio Hour Blues

The Vile Arts Radio Hour began in January 2011. Recorded live at Subcity between 3pm and 5pm on Friday afternoons, it combines my enthusiasm for contemporary classical music, Glasgow's dynamic arts scenes, My Producer Harry's laconic wit and technical knowledge and Subcity's idiosyncratic approach to post-student radio. Modesty, and a residual honesty left over from my time training under the Jesuits, forbids me from praising my contribution too heavily. The guest list, however, is very impressive and I think it is the generosity of musicians, actors, theatres, art galleries, cultural pundits, film and festival programmers that have made it the top rated arts-based show on the station.

Today's blog has three tasks: to parade my ego, give a brief guide to the show's vision and ethos, help future guests know a bit about what they can expect on the Hour. The best thing to do would be to listen to it. You can  fast forward over my voice.

When Harry and I started the show - we used to be called The Skinny Radio Hour, until my arrogance decided that it ought to be called Vile Arts and concentrate on whatever aesthetic butterfly had landed on the stamen of my consciousness - we had a very clear vision. We wanted to investigate the various scenes that interlock and define Glasgow. I come from a Performance background, fascinated by the possibilities of the live event. Harry is an engineer, musician and philosopher. That the scenes and places we cover are very much our choices seems to connect with the way Glasgow operates: subjective, eclectic, chaotic. The addition of Nick Spaghetti broadened the playlist, but kept us partial.

The Radio Hour is very much an extension of the critical writing I have been doing for The Skinny over the past five years: I still plunder the Skinny for information, keeping an eye on Dave Kerr's articles and recommendations, and write from a deliberately personal perspective. Lately, I have gotten into politics. Not party political: I read all the manifestos and decided I preferred my fiction more realistic. In line with my overall attitude to life - confused, partisan, selfish - my politics are Radically Subjective. I have no idea what I am talking about, but I am willing to begin a conversation until someone with the facts turns up.

I am broadly evangelical about the arts. We don't invite artists or curators on to tear them apart. I am hoping for a few more guests from the worlds of cultural politics in the future, so I can get spiteful. I don't like everything I play on the show (viz. the Swedish House Mafia Incident). But I think that anything that gets people away from the TV to share an experience is a Social Good.

Alongside the advocacy of Glasgow creativity, we emphasis work that is cross-platform. We are also keen on New Media - online radio, podcasts, blogs, social media. As an Old Media critic, the best jokes I hear are in the area of print publications trying to understand the internet. Oh, and the record companies trying to protect their hegemony by claiming to be all about developing bands. I assume none of them have read Steve Albini's comments on the A'n'R men.

The Radio Hour lasts two hours and features between three and five guests per episode. Most of our listeners tune in "on demand" - that is, in the week following the live broadcast. This is why the show tends to focus on work in the fortnight ahead, and not the weekend approaching. We prefer live interviews - they seem to go better.

He Builds, She Dances, They Love, They Part

Although she took the dance world by storm at the turn of the century, Isadora Duncan occupies an uncomfortable place in the dance pantheon. Less influential than Martha Graham, or even Mary Wigman, she was once the ideal of the contemporary dancer, a wild, free spirit who lived as she performed, refusing tradition. These days she is remembered as a  relic of a naive early twentieth century modernity, full of romantic ideals about the ancients, flaccid mysticism and for wearing a scarf that was ignored health and safety requirements for car journeys.

Nevertheless, she remains an inspiration. Robert Shaw discovered that Duncan had had an ill-fated romance with Edward Gordon Craig, the revolutionary set designer, and has used their letters as the basis of Teddy and Topsy. Part love story, part study of theatrical mavericks, Shaw has homed in on a great meeting of minds and desires.

“Peter Brook says that  most contemporary theatre design owes its origin to Craig’s  ideas, although they have never truly acknowledged,” Shaw begins.  “Duncan's influence on dance (she's often called "the mother of modern dance") is equally important and more widely recognised.  I was fascinated by the fact that these two outsiders, who forced their respective establishments to change, gravitated towards each other emotionally and romantically.”

Part of the problem with Duncan is that she was so determined to be a trail-blazer, much of her official writing comes across as egotistical. Fortunately, Shaw discovered a more personal revelation. “In her autobiography, she writes in a rather grand and portentous style,” he admits. “But in her letters we get an authentic voice.  You get the clear feeling that she writes exactly as she thinks and speaks, making the letters a dream for any actor to perform.  She is funny, romantic, creative, poetic, whimsical.  She describes everything going on around her very clearly and entertainingly.  It's like being present in the same room with her.”   

Even the title of the play emphasises that this is not the Duncan of official record: however, she perhaps reflects herself more closely in these unguarded missives. “Her letters reflect exactly the freedom she looked for in her dancing,” believes Shaw. “And I was especially drawn to the fact that she was quite determined to succeed on her own terms. A lot of what Isadora stood for seem very contemporary but was most unusual in her day.  For example, she was an unmarried mother of two children and she made a career without a man behind her or guiding her.” 

Perhaps her lifestyle, more than her dance style and idiosyncratic interpretations of Classical Greek religion, makes Duncan our contemporary. Even the relationship with Craig faltered for very recognisable reasons. “I think their romance was fated to fail, as so many also are today, through pressure of work,” Shaw concludes.  “Duncan was always on the road.  Craig was looking for a location for his school.  Duncan was constantly touring northern Europe.  Craig was in Italy.  In the end, it was geography that did for them - and Craig's notorious promiscuity.”

As Shaw notes, his project is very different from the many organisations around the world who seek to preserve Duncan’s choreography – a thankless task, given the lack of documentation she cultivated. And rather than a hagiography of two greats, he strives to represent a powerful love affair between two individuals who made great changes to their art-forms and came together in a passionate and intimate, if doomed, embrace.