Francis Wheen's Guardian column today...

[Aidan Warner]

(Personally, I'm much more concerned about the crappy, repetitive
playlist, and the times to which decent presenters are exiled, than
specialist dance music shows, but anyway...)

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,326631,00.html

 Radio ga-ga 

On the dumping of Andy Kershaw | where bobos really come from? 

Wednesday May 31, 2000 

Radio ga-ga

Over the bank holiday weekend the BBC was blowing its own trumpet
fortissimo, claiming that the "Music Live" extravaganza demonstrated its
 unflagging passion for music-making of every kind. How odd, then, that
Radio 1 chose this moment to sack Andy Kershaw, who embodies that
enthusiasm and eclecticism. "Kershaw is the undisputed expert in his
sphere," the station's controller, Andy Parfitt, announced last week,
"but there are always new DJs and new forms of music looking to break on
 to a packed Radio 1 schedule. It is essential that Radio 1 keeps moving
 and keeps changing . . ." 

If only it would. In 15 years at the station, Kershaw never ceased to
seek out and promote new talent from all over the world. Under the dead
hand of Parfitt, however, the rest of Radio 1 has become rigidly
formulaic and narrow-minded, with a daytime menu of boy-bands and
girl-bands to attract the pre-pubescents, followed in the evenings by
"indie sounds", hardcore hip-hop and dance music. 

Parfitt has something of an obsession with dance music. Though in
reality he's a 41-year-old suit, his alter ego is Kevin the Teenager -
or perhaps Ravey Davey Gravy, the Smurf-hatted berk from Viz magazine,
who is continually mistaking the noise of reversing lorries, police
sirens and pneumatic drills for the latest block-rocking beat. ("Oowa!
Kickin' it large! Give us the bass in m'face!") Like all truly
ridiculous characters, Parfitt is bliss fully unaware of his own
absurdity. As one BBC colleague told me, "he's the embarrassing uncle
disco-dancing at a wedding reception". 

Since Parfitt took charge a couple of years ago, the Kershaw show has
been consigned to a graveyard slot between midnight and 2am on Thursdays.
 Now we are told that the "packed Radio 1 schedule" cannot accommodate
even this smidgin of musical diversity. It isn't only Kershaw who has
been expelled: Parfitt has also effectively axed the dozens of artists
who were championed by Kershaw and might not otherwise have been heard
at all on "the nation's favourite music station" - figures as various as
 Youssou N'Dour, Kate Rusby, Pops Staples, Liza Carthy and Richard
Thompson. 

Kershaw's final programme, last Thursday night, was a fitting monument
to his infectious pluralism. Where else on Radio 1 would you hear, in
one show, music from Sierra Leone, Sweden, Zimbabwe and, er, the Isle of
 Man? Which other DJ would include, as if they were the most natural
companions in the world, songs from Big Joe Turner, George Formby,
Emmylou Harris and the Rebirth Brass Band of New Orleans? ("Dance music
- I'll show you dance music!" Kershaw growled.) There was also a
memorably magnificent session from Warren Zevon, who joked to his host
that "I haven't been burdened with a great deal of commercial success". 

No doubt the wretched Parfitt regards Zevon's remark as a damning
confession: I wonder if Greg Dyke, the new director-general, would agree.
 In the very week of Music Live, is he happy to learn that Radio 1 has
abolished the one remaining programme which actually broadcasts live
performances by neglected geniuses, in order to make yet more room for
computer-generated monotony? Parfitt has been described as "a forgettable
 little squirt who rose without trace" - from a radio station in the
Falkland Islands, apparently. Is it too much to hope he will soon be
sent back? 

Or, failing that, be pensioned off to Ibiza, where he can "have it large
 to the totally banging Balearic Bora-Bora" all night long?