BBC 6 Music to Launch New Music Show with Deb Grant and Tom Ravenscroft

I used to be an avid listener of 6 Music, but in recent years I’ve found myself tuning in less and less in favour of streaming.

Partly because I find the constant jingles and trailing of upcoming shows as irritating as local taxi firm adverts on commercial radio, but mainly because they don’t play the music I listen to.

But there’s a new show coming in June which may just tempt me back into regular listening.

New Music Fix Daily promises a 2hr show from 7pm-9pm Monday-Thursday dedicated to new releases of all genres from around the globe.

For me personally, the most interesting music in the past few years has come from overseas. Aside from my obsession with Skating Polly from the US, bands like Beach Bunny (US), Kaelan Mikla (Iceland) Krakow Loves Adana (Germany), Emika (Czech), Glume (US) have been quietly making music which seems a perfect fit for a 6 Music audience, yet have been largely ignored by the station.

Of course “all genres” and “around the globe” is a pretty wide remit – it could be all obscure pan pipes and oompah bands – and be the show that finally kills off 6 Music. 😉

However, the presenters are DJ Deb Grant and Tom Ravenscroft – both passionate music heads with eclectic tastes and encyclopedic knowledge of music, so it could well prove to be the kick up the arse 6 Music has needed for some time to freshen it up.

With the 6 Music Playlist system which means that bands have to spend months or years climbing up through the BBC Introducing system I often feel that by the time a decent sized audience gets to hear the bands, they’ve gone a bit stale. And IIRC presenters normally only get 1 free choice per hour.

I miss the days when an exciting new band could send a tape into John Peel and get played just because he liked it, rather than because a committee feels it fits an audience demographic or because a label are pushing the band. Of course he did play some shite (IMHO) but in amongst the shite I discovered some of my favourite bands of all time, and it just added to the excitement.

So it’s particularly welcome news that this show promises that the presenters will hand pick their “latest new music obsessions”.

Will Skating Polly finally get some airplay on a “proper” radio station that has more than a dozen followers on Facebook, in time for the release of their hotly anticipated 6th album which is sure to be album of the year? Well I imagine the new show will be inundated with suggestions for bands to play, and the presenters might not like them (Nah, don’t be silly!) so I’m not getting my hopes up yet. But who knows?