The Other Third

[DracoM]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0801l4q

The whole Folk Revival movement owes a huge amount to Bert Lloyd, the field recordings - Jack Elliott etc - and R3.

Thought Dean was a tiny bit off target here: I listened to many of these programmes and the Charles Chilton spin-offs with Ewan McColl etc etc and did NOT think they were nothing to do with me, my education, 'class' at all. They told me about where I lived, what was part of MY culture, the implicit culture, as well as what I learnt at school.

BUT I was new to R3, and it was just 'radio' as far as I was concerned. Nobody told me R3 was 'not for the likes of us' at all. We did not make such distinctions at all. I suspect the internet is having much the same effect on many of today's younger generations. It's just different musics, not necessarily better, or 'not for the likes of us'. They just dip in and out to find what intrigues or excites them. Maybe the BBC are the paranoid ones?

Or have I got his wrong?

[DracoM]

Did nobody listen to the programme?

[french frank]

Did nobody listen to the programme?

I thought it was just 'finger-in-ear' folk music from your post, and wasn't interested. This was the full description:

"Alan Dein explores the 'other voice' of the Third - not the plummy accent, or the rarefied readings and art music, but the articulate and expressive voice of so-called ordinary people, brought to the airwaves via a group of producers fascinated with everyday lives and the wild sounds they could collect beyond the confines of the radio studio.

There's a significant omission to most studies of the life and times of the Third Programme. In the words of a title of one of the Third's own history programmes, there are 'Gaps in the Record'.

The gap which the Third helped to fill - through the work of figures like Douglas Cleverdon, Philip O'Connor, AL Lloyd, Alan Lomax and David Thomson - was to harness the stories of ordinary people's lives with a collection of creative and ground-breaking radio features and talks spanning the Third's two decades.

These programmes changed our conception of what radio should sound like - and their influence continues in the programmes we hear today."

[Tevot]

Hello there, I caught the very end credits of the programme as I was waiting to hear Mahler 8 on Listen Again.

I will certainly give The Other Third a listen to Draco and many thanks for providing the link.

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[Lat-Literal]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0801l4q

The whole Folk Revival movement owes a huge amount to Bert Lloyd, the field recordings - Jack Elliott etc - and R3.

Thought Dean was a tiny bit off target here: I listened to many of these programmes and the Charles Chilton spin-offs with Ewan McColl etc etc and did NOT think they were nothing to do with me, my education, 'class' at all. They told me about where I lived, what was part of MY culture, the implicit culture, as well as what I learnt at school.

BUT I was new to R3, and it was just 'radio' as far as I was concerned. Nobody told me R3 was 'not for the likes of us' at all. We did not make such distinctions at all. I suspect the internet is having much the same effect on many of today's younger generations. It's just different musics, not necessarily better, or 'not for the likes of us'. They just dip in and out to find what intrigues or excites them. Maybe the BBC are the paranoid ones?

Or have I got his wrong?

I will be listening to it. Records by people like AL Lloyd don't half hold their price as I recently discovered on reviewing what was available. There is definitely a "market" for them.

What I have already heard is a programme about the whole history of R3 and its versions. I don't know what it was called or whether it has been discussed on the forum?

It was a repeat, having been made quite a number of years ago. I think this time it went out on a Sunday night but I could be wrong on that point. Anyway, it was really excellent.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What I have already heard is a programme about the whole history of R3 and its versions. I don't know what it was called or whether it has been discussed on the forum?

It was a repeat, having been made quite a number of years ago. I think this time it went out on a Sunday night but I could be wrong on that point. Anyway, it was really excellent.

I don't know if you mean Humphrey Carpenter's 1996 two-part series, The Envy of the World Lats, but the programmes are available on the R3 website, and well worth a listen:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04992w0

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p049944w

[Lat-Literal]

I don't know if you mean Humphrey Carpenter's 1996 two-part series, The Envy of the World Lats, but the programmes are available on the R3 website, and well worth a listen:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04992w0

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p049944w

1996. That would be it Ferney - thank you - and I didn't realise it was in two parts. Now I can listen to it all.

What the vagueness in my posts now partially reveals is that I am listening more to R3 on the radio than I have ever done, that is on many occasions rather than using the I-P. I'm therefore catching bits and pieces here and there without knowing what exactly. I am not one of the droves who are abandoning R4 on the basis that "The Archers" has left its fan base. However, what I can say is that there are chunks of Middle England who have rigidly stuck with that station and a lot of its content purely on the basis of that soap since the demise of Grace in the barn. It was inadvertently the pull in for everything else. Frankly, when you can no longer hear anything of previous generations of your own family in it, odd things happen and the BBC is playing with fire there. Expect increases in the figures not only for R3 but R2 and, goodness me, even Magic/Smooth, not to mention television.

(I'm not personally heading to Magic/Smooth but I do feel R3/R4E/6M/BBC RL are now my constituency - R4 is increasingly at risk of going the same way as R1/2 did 20 years ago)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What the vagueness in my posts now partially reveals is that I am listening more to R3 on the radio than I have ever done, that is on many occasions rather than using the I-P. I'm therefore catching bits and pieces here and there without knowing what exactly.

A sentiment many of us are finding ourselves sharing, Lats.

Incidentally, Carpenter also adapted the series for a book with the same name:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Envy-World-Fifty-Years-Programme/dp/0297817205

[french frank]

Incidentally, Carpenter also adapted the series for a book with the same name:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Envy-World-.../dp/0297817205

He wrote the book first, then adapted bits for the two talks. Incidentally, Nicholas Kenyon was then controller of Radio 3 and commissioned the book for the 50th anniversary of the Third/R3, so he presumably commissioned the two radio programmes too (so he was not all bad! ) to coincide with its publication. I guess several of the 'Third Programme' programmes will remain in the archive: I notice there's no time limit on e.g. The Other Third. And the two Envy of the World programmes are downloadable.

[DracoM]

I did not intend to give the impression that The Other Third was about the folk revival movement at all. It most certainly wasn't. Something was made of that factor, but it was not the whole thing.

I was merely picking up on one aspect the programme touched on, and trying, obviously ineffectually, to extrapolate from that the notion that at least for me, the Third Programme was just that - another source of listening material, as R4, R2 were / still are, and had few overtones of 'elitisim' in any way. It was simply there for the taking. My family listened to anything, and no-one much cared what 'brand' mark it may have had. Third Programme was simply one of many.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It wasn't just called the Third Programme. That was always an evening only service (and was annoying in that we couldn't receive a decent AM signal in out party of NE Cheshire).

In the 1960s, the Music Programme began, broadcasting on the Third Programme frequency during the daytime, but in early evening, there was yet another section - I think it was called the Study Programme (though I could be mistaken, but it definitely began with "S"). The irony of it was that Third, Music and Study could be abbreviated to "T.M.S.", which also happened to to be the initials of the frequency's fourth function: Test Match Special.

[Lat-Literal]

It wasn't just called the Third Programme. That was always an evening only service (and was annoying in that we couldn't receive a decent AM signal in out party of NE Cheshire).

In the 1960s, the Music Programme began, broadcasting on the Third Programme frequency during the daytime, but in early evening, there was yet another section - I think it was called the Study Programme (though I could be mistaken, but it definitely began with "S"). The irony of it was that Third, Music and Study could be abbreviated to "T.M.S.", which also happened to to be the initials of the frequency's fourth function: Test Match Special.

Yes - it was called Study Session.

I am wondering if one were to choose a year for the gold standard what would it be?

Sometime in the early-mid 1950s?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0801l4q

The whole Folk Revival movement owes a huge amount to Bert Lloyd, the field recordings - Jack Elliott etc - and R3.

Thought Dean was a tiny bit off target here: I listened to many of these programmes and the Charles Chilton spin-offs with Ewan McColl etc etc and did NOT think they were nothing to do with me, my education, 'class' at all. They told me about where I lived, what was part of MY culture, the implicit culture, as well as what I learnt at school.

BUT I was new to R3, and it was just 'radio' as far as I was concerned. Nobody told me R3 was 'not for the likes of us' at all. We did not make such distinctions at all. I suspect the internet is having much the same effect on many of today's younger generations. It's just different musics, not necessarily better, or 'not for the likes of us'. They just dip in and out to find what intrigues or excites them. Maybe the BBC are the paranoid ones?

Or have I got his wrong?

I have now listened to this fascinating programme.

Highly recommended - especially for those intrigued by unsung pioneers in radio.

(one minus point - I felt Jonathan Miller's taxi driver wasn't real as presented).