An Update from James - My Crazy Week 6
As the rather strange photo of myself looking rather erratic alongside the uber-cool Tinashe suggests, this week I got to meet the lovely Tinashe whilst working on Zane Lowe's show.
Working on Zane's show is unlike anything else I've done thus far - his show is unashamedly music-driven, and working on projects this week to do with his 100 Hottest Records vote only highlighted this. The 100 Hottest Records is an annual feature whereby Zane picks out his favourite 100 tracks of the year and invites listeners to vote for their favourite from the list; all before a week of shows is dedicated to counting them down from 100-1.
Zane's show falls under the 'specialist' umbrella, but a cursory glance of the 100 hottest records demonstrates just how many genres and artists that Zane has supported over the year. From big pop artists like Clean Bandit, Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith to huge house tracks from Second City and Route 94, rock from Foo Fighters and Mallory Knox, Hip-Hop from Kendrick and all the sonically-strange beats and bleeps in between from the likes of FKA twigs, Jon Hopkins and Banks - every corner of 2014's musical landscape has been represented in the list.
Apart from meeting Tinashe and Idris Elba (!!!!), who was participating in one of Zane's famous 'battles', I also got to see Zane in the studio. His broadcasting technique is truly incredible - if you ever need to watch someone make incredible radio using the studio to it's absolute full potential, look to Zane and his almost encyclopedic musical and technical knowledge!
Alongside working on Zane's show, I also attended the playlist meeting again this week to feed back some of my thoughts on the selection of potential additions to the BBC Radio 1 playlist - both Becky and I will be heading back into another final playlist meeting in a couple of week's time.
This morning, I also sat on the panel of a talk about young people and radio alongside other members of the Radio 1 team. Rather strangely, as I was delivering my presentation to the rather large audience of BBC employees and bosses I was interrupted, rather surreally, by a passing Jim Carrey who proceeded to crack some jokes and watch me deliver part of my speech from the balcony/corridor that looks down onto the space in which the event was being held. I can say categorically that of all the things I've experienced at Radio 1/1Xtra HQ thus far, delivering a presentation on young people and radio to Jim Carrey was by far, the most surreal.
This weekend, I'm working on Annie Mac's show before I move to the documentaries team next week. Becky and I are also going back over to BBC3 to take part in some of their meetings as well, so it's set to be another busy week for us interns.
Be sure to keep checking back to our blog. Thanks for reading, as always.
James