BBC Radio Ballads 2012

Subject: BBC Radio Ballads 2012
From: ChrisJBrady
Date: 29 Jun 12 - 09:02 PM

BBC Radio 2

The Ballads of the Games

The Ballads of the Games is a six-part series for BBC Radio 2 exploring the agony and the ecstasy of the Olympics, in the words of people who were there and through songs inspired by their stories.

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Mon 2 Jul 2012 22:00

Episode 1 of 6 - Olympia

The series begins at Olympia in Greece, with great athletes receiving laurel wreaths when the Games were staged in a period of regional peace known as the Olympic Truce.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jyt8h

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Mon 9 Jul 2012 22:00

Episode 2 of 6 - Berlin

Gretel Bergman, the high jumper dropped from Germany's 1936 Olympic team for being Jewish, tells her story in the second of a six-part series which re-visits events from history through eye-witness accounts and new songs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kjhkc

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Subject: RE: BBC Radio Ballads 2012
From: ChrisJBrady
Date: 02 Jul 12 - 05:18 AM

Tonight is the first one ...

Subject: RE: BBC Radio Ballads 2012
From: GUEST,Will Pound
Date: 02 Jul 12 - 04:47 PM

Hope you enjoy.... you might hear some of my harmonica playing on some tracks! :)

Cheers

Will

Subject: RE: BBC Radio Ballads 2012
From: ChrisJBrady
Date: 03 Jul 12 - 01:21 AM

The music and songs of ep 1 were OK albeit the latter's words were indistinct. Were they specially composed for the programme? But the style was more of a musical documentary than a Charles Parker-type Radio Ballad per se. Who were the presenters / historians(?) who read the scripts about the original Games in Greece? What were their sources of such information? Who were the supposed athletes from the 1948 Games who were interviewed? Were the interviews from still living participants or taken from previous recordings? There was so much that didn't fit in with the traditional Radio Ballad format. If the programme was two year's in the making it was disappointing. For people who are already sick of the 2012 Olympics before they've even begun these pseudo-RB these programmes needed to be far better researched and informstive. If they eventually appear on CD I would not buy them. I didn't even bother to record this one. IMHO not a good start.