to thing two on Radio On too

The second part of the Radio On interview with John, and loads of music, repeated daily at different

times every day for a month: As the station guide says - "People working in the street, a new gas pipe, a van parked, doors open, loud techno for everyone. What a relief to put on headphones and listen to the new Lord Litter show. Songs in every graduation, introverted, nostalgic, fun, loud, weird and a nice interview over a cup tea to round it off. You don't find people irking in your street everyday of course, but if you'd like to take a holiday from your daily environment then this show is the place to go." Track list here Schedule and listen button here

one more thing on Radio On

93 radio airplays on Radio On in Berlin throughout December, the interview I recorded in Germany last month is on daily rotation for a month at different times every day.

Where-in Lord Litter virtually reconstructs a bar in Berlin. It’s a place where people talk more and smoke less. There is no wi-fi signal, and the clients are encouraged to leave the smart phones and tablets at home. Old friends talk about old times, and when the new times press their noses against the window, also the spleen of today gets discussed over a glass of beer. The music that sounds over the thirty year old loudspeakers is produced in a garage or in a small home studio. No majors will be heard here. In weekends a band plays, it is still possible, because the neighbors know that the neighborhood can’t do without a bar like this one. It is their Kneipe. Welcome to the Lord Litter Café. Ask for it the next time you visit Berlin.


Check the schedule and listen in at http://www.radio-on-berlin.com
As well as interesting and new music you will hear about a very new Artist Virtual Community and the 'then and now' of underground music.

song by song - Checkpoint Charlie

Imagined as the soundtrack of a dark and bleak unmade cold war spy film, Checkpoint Charlie crunched and kicked its way to be the opening track of the bonus CD of the Everything Changes LP. The Berlin Wall lurked in the background of my childhood, through the teenage years and half of my 20's. It was a stark symbol of the the ever present threat of nuclear winter and of course a physical

barrier and a significant cultural reference point, through the writing of Len Deighton (and the Michale Caine films) plus Quiller, John Le Carre and the binary appearance of 'western' freedom with David Bowie and Iggy Pop creating art and expression, while just over the border an average of one in any six people was a Stasi informant, while the cities of opposites competed with each other to be best; if one built a TV tower the other built a taller one with a restaurant in it; if one had a zoo the other had to have more spectacular animals in theirs.

An insular self-contained city deep inside a separate country, divided into four different administrative zones and split from itself by a wall would be the stuff off science fiction if it wasn't real.

The first EP was released in September 1989, and one of the first places it was broadcast was on Kentucky Fried Royalty alternative radio in Berlin, just before the wall came down on 9th November. The following month the Romanian regime collapsed and the Soviet Bloc was crumbling, and with it the cold war. There was a sense that the world had come to it's senses and nuclear war receded into the background... little did we know.
The former site of Checkpoint Charlie - the transit point between the US Zone and East Berlin - now has a recreation of the border crossing booth and a MacDonalds, it is a Grade One listed tourist trap. If you are ever in Berlin try Checkpoint Charlie in the late evening, when the tourists have all gone and the streets are deserted, there is at least a whiff

of the atmosphere of menace as you walk across the street that was an open tract of land between the East and West checkpoints of the wall.

The tune for Checkpoint Charlie was born on a visit to Berlin in 2012, I met up with Lord Litter (the DJ who had played us there 23 years earlier) did an extended interview for his show on Radio Marabu and left a guitar riff on his hard drive. We both recorded very different versions (you can hear them on Soundcloud), mine became the demo-version for the recording for Everything Changes. It evolved and the final LP version has Lord Litter provided the voice of an East German border guard on the introduction, speaking the phrases he had heard so many times before as a native Berlin resident, sometimes while he was smuggling

East German bands master-tapes into the west... I can't think of anyone better qualified to have on the recording.
The closing moments of the album version of Checkpoint Charlie are JFK addressing the people of Berlin and the world's media on 26 June '63, many thanks to the Miller Centre University Of Virginia for providing and allowing use of the audio. Ich bin ein Berliner.

Checkpoint Charlie also appears on this Detour Records compilation album 

If you want to know more about life in former East Berlin try Anna Funder's Stasiland

Radio On

Radio On broadcasting 24 hours a day from Underground Berlin, and worldwide

on the web at http://www.radio-on-berlin.com/

The May edition of Attack Of The Moths show features The Speed Of Sound, twice, 'Little Miss Restless' and 'The Changes' and it's repeated daily so thats a mere 62 plays in May. (Thanks!) Check the schedule for your local broadcast times (here) 
the Radio On website says of Attack Of The Moths: "the tracks he plays are made by people who operate far away from music industries always focussed on their own sound, their own expression. That is a way of resistance." It feels good to be counted in that number.

Radio podcast from Berlin

It was a top gig with The Transmitters on Friday with a good turn out despite Manchester blocking all the roads and turning on their xmas lights. We're back at the Kings Arms Theatre in January, but more on that later. 
Thanks to Don Campau for featuring Maid Of The Grey in the No Pigeonholes show on Radio Marabu in Berlin (and broadcast across Europe). 
There's a listen link here we're on at 21'00" but there's some very cool stuff in there; for example if you've never heard Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing played on a cello? Now's your chance.

We were first played on the radio in Berlin on Lord Litter's Kentucky Fried Royalty show in late October 1989, just before the East/West frontier was opened. Twenty five years after the wall came down its cool to still be on the airwaves there. 
Radio Marabu has been going for 30 years its eclectic, risk taking and alternative if you're fed up with commercial radio blandness give it a go.

 You can stream Radio Marabu live here