Blog 1 website 0 (late result)

Today is the first day of the Venetian season of sprrrng, so I've been doing a bit of sprrrng cleaning.

I have dusted away my main website. From now on, www.fatroland.com will link here. This is probably not permanent, but my blog gets all the hits, and it seems silly having two sites doing the same thing.

So temporarily-rest-in-piece (TRIP?) the Fat Roland website, 2nd February 2002 to 25th April 2007. You could always visit the old site, here. I'll polish it every now and then, just in case of dot com withdrawal symptoms and I feel the need to return it to the netosphere.

I have also elongatified the list of links on the right of this page. Below the usual links to other posts on the blog, you will discover to your delight and defecation* some downloads. These are podcasts of the shows what I did and that.

I've also posted some lovely piccies that should have you following through** with delight. There also be, in them thar links, some musical recommendations to make your ears frolic with glee.

Sprrrng has sprrrng.

*sorry

**sorry

I don't believe you; you're either showing it to friends, family or idiots

An animation what was done by the talented tentacles of Mutated Monty (good webbingsite, there, old Monty).

I'm not sure what this animation means. I think it is about the end of the world. It could be about sandwiches.

Either way, I'm out.

Fats & 'Fresh 4: rivers of desolation always start with little pools of disappointment

The shattered remnants of radio shows crumbled off the broken window of time onto the floor of history, forever to be a painful trodden-on memory for the denuded soles of the future.

In other words, it has come to an end. The rest of the programmes went off without a hitch. Read about previous radio experiences here, here, here and even here.

We all suffered a second-week sap as our energy levels seems to drain into little pools around our aching feet. It could just be that I had wet myself again. But we ended on a high, and unlike my Greenbelt FM experience last year, I didn't become a quivering wreck of illness.

Podcasts of my shows with Lee are available on this page. Look for The Quite Early Show (that's the baby we are proudest of) and some of the Wind Downs and Late Breakfast Shows.

So thanks to all those at Refresh FM that made the previous two weeks possible. You are all gorgeous fluffy bunnies, which is a nice co-incidence because you all have cotton-ball tails and you all mate like there's no tomorrow.

Did I just say that out loud?

I'm sorry. Just to keep the lawyers happy, no-one at Refresh FM has a cotton-ball tail and no-one mates. Ever.

Next on my calendar is a jolly down to Nottingham to meet the good people of Greenbelt FM to discuss my multi-million pound contract to present their lunchtime show. Sadly, I think that's pounds of fat rather than currency.

Greenbelt FM: So we'll give you 10 million pounds to do the show.

Me: That's brilliant.

Greenbelt FM: Starting with this.

(Greenbelf FM pushes a pork pie across the desk.)

Me: What?

Greenbelt FM: Nathan! Marjorie! Wheel in the skip of lard!

Me (muffled): I want to go home now.

Greenbelt FM: I'm not sure if that's an upset voice or a voice with its mouth full. It had better be the latter, bitch, otherwise the deal's off.

Fats & 'Fresh 3: never get bobsleighs and tractors mixed up. Seriously

I'm heading like a driverless bobsleigh into the second week of Refresh FM.

You will hear me every weeknight from 9pm on 87.7FM (Manchester) on the Quite Early Show. This is the flagship show and has the most giggles per square inch. I know. I've measured.

I'm also doing these extra shows throughout the week:

Monday 11pm: Wind-down
Tuesday 9am: Late Breakfast Show
Wednesday 11pm: Wind-down
Thursday 9am: Late Breakfast Show
Friday 11pm: Wind-down
Sunday 12noon: Wesley Owen Chart Show

Meanwhile, I am skiving off work so I nipped down the road to see Danny Boyle's excellent Sunshine.

It's a scrumptious, tense film; like The Straight Story if Alvin had been chased by a pack of marauding dogs throughout. Yes, it was that good.

Fats & 'Fresh 2: All planning and no Eddie-oodles makes Fats a dull boy

The chart show was as successful as a heavily armed bull in a china shop, which you could say is quite successful indeed if only for the fact I deliberately played a dire classical version of dire worship song Shine Jesus Shine without any hint of irony.

It was also a whole bunch of hard work, and after spending the rest of the day planning other shows, I made the fatal mistake of setting up my new DVD player (thanks for the gift, Pam) and watching oodles of Eddie Izzard instead of sleeping.

On Monday morning, I presented Refresh FM's Late Breakfast show with a friend called Caz. Considering she hadn't even dipped her toe in radio before, Caz took to the airwaves like, well, radio.

(Bad simile, sorry. I should have mentioned something that swims to follow on from the 'dipped her toe' image, but then I would have likened Caz to a graceful sealion, and one thing Caz is not is a sealion.)

I really enjoyed working with Caz. It was only brought down a notch when someone complained because I had the nerve to suggest that Cosimo Cavallaro's My Sweet Lord was (a) a clever statement on the commercialisation and trivialisation of Christianity and (b) a subtle metaphor for consuming the body of Christ through the sacrament.

It seems that if you don't side with the bigotted Christian 'majority', then there's something wrong with you.

If you're the one who complained, then please deal with this: homosexuality is fine in the eyes of God; Christians don't have an exclusive claim to heaven; a lot of the Bible simply isn't true, it's just poetic metaphor and storytelling.

There, that should get the phones ringing. If you want to argue with me, I'm happy to talk about David and Jonathan, Mahatma Ghandi and the Creation story respectively.

You can tell I'm annoyed, can't you?

Actually, I'm not annoyed now, but these are some of the thoughts that were spinning round my head earlier on today. Then I realised that "evangelical-baiting" isn't very Christian and is better left to the likes of Religious Freaks.

After more plan, plan, plan, I reeled off another presenting slot, from which I have just returnified. This time it was the Quite Early Show with Lee, which involved a bastardised Pictionary game called Sin Lose Or Draw, and a bastardised Call My Bluff game called Diagnosticate My Braggadocio.

You don't get sued if you change the name, says my lawyer.

I've already printed my schedule on a previous post, but just in case you left your memory at the post office, I'll see you on Tuesday night at 9pm then Wednesday morning at 9am on Refresh 87.7FM.

And I don't have a lawyer.

Fats & 'Fresh 1: Counting down to the countdown

It's rather strange sitting at home and listening to your voice on radio, but that's exactly what's happening as my pre-recorded show called Sunday Waffle hit the Refresh 87.7FM airwaves just half an hour ago (see previous post).

At lunchtime today, I'll go live for the first time in this year's broadcast. The Wesley Owen Chart Show is a top 40 based on sales of music at the Wesley Owen bookshop on Deansgate, Manchester. I spent an hour yesterday collating sales information, and I'm looking forward to the challenge of counting down a top 40 within a two hour slot. It'll be all about pacing and ...timing.

My only problem is this: most of what I'll be playing isn't my taste in music. I hope I'm not too acerbic in a Wogan-on-Eurovision or Amstell-on-Popworld fashion.

Or maybe that'll be a good thing.

Still, amid all the cut-and-paste worship, there's some reggae, soul and even classical. Actually, by classical, I mean classical cover versions of Graham Kendrick songs. You see? The acerbicity is already rising within me... and that's not even a word.

Even dental mouthwash drowning victims will be listening to Fat Roland on Refresh 87.7FM

The spirit of the late Tony Blackburn lives on. No, not that Tony Blackburn; he's still alive. I'm talking about Anthony Blackburn*, the Cirencester hospital radio DJ who died in a pool of dental mouthwash in a terrible, terrible medical accident.

I'll be burbling my way though radio shows from this weekend. Refresh FM is a radio station which plugs Christian music, and for the fourth year they have allowed me and my co-presenting ferret Lee loose in their studio.

Lee and I try to bring something different to the broadcasts. Although a Christian viewpoint informs the our general outlook on life, I like to think we're both a bit left of field from that culture. I'm sounding poncey now, so here's when you can hear me.

It's all on 87.7FM in the Manchester (UK) region:

• Wesley Owen chart show. The first three Sundays of April, 12 noon - 2pm. Manchester's top selling Christian albums, as based on weekly sales at Wesley Owen Books & Music.

• Late Breakfast Show. Every weekday for the first two weeks of April, 9am - 11am. Banter and thoughts for the day with my fabulous co-presenter Caz. I'll be job-sharing this with Lee, so don't expect to hear me every day, no siree.

• The Quite Early Show. Every weeknight for the first two weeks of April, 9pm - 11pm. Vague silliness and games. Except for Wednesdays when it's Theatre Of Noise, which involves loud guitars and destruction.

• Wind Down. Every weeknight for the first two weeks of April, 11pm - midnight. Chilled out acoustic to send you to sleep I'll be on every other night; Lee's doing the other days, so we can take shifts sleeping like what they did in the war.

Oh and I'll be DJing under my name Eyan not Fat Roland. Just so you know.

I'd like to dedicate all of my shows to Anthony Blackburn**, who no doubt will be listening from his brightly coloured watery grave. I must toodle off; the children in South Park are trying to understand transubstantiation. Stan: "Jesus didn't want us to eat him so he turned himself into crackers?!"

*doesn't exist

**still doesn't exist

Temple Of Transparent Balls and the black, brooding Book Of Dogma

I cut my techno teeth on The Black Dog (artwork for an interview pictured).

Although I was transfixed by Orbital's repetitive repetitivity, there was something irresistable about The Black Dog's Temple Of Transparent Balls. Maybe it was because it was less obvious; its awkward habit of breaking away from a 4:4 structure made it as dancefloor friendly as a rabid bouncer. I liked that.

So it is with frothing delight that I hear their Parallel album, released two years after 'Balls, is being unleashed today in the black, brooding shape of the Book Of Dogma. Along with the classic Parallel, the new release also includes old EPs Virtual, Age of Slack and Techno Playtime.

Some of The Black Dog went on to gain fame as Plaid, and for that reason alone, this is an important release. The fact that they practically invented IDM / techno in the first place makes it more than important. It's essential. It's electrifying. It's greased lightning. You'd better shape up because I need a man. What? Um...

...I was lost in a haze of hair gel and leather for a second there. Anyhoo, The Book Of Dogma is old fashioned techno at its dull, dour best. As funky as a poodle doing jazz-hands.