Band Aid Banned from radio station for being Bland
real change not bland aid | 18.11.2004 09:34 | Culture | Globalisation
The Scotsman runs PA news story about radio station banning new re-recording of Band Aid - Do they know it's christmas...
Station Bans 'Bland Aid' Song as Listeners Complain
By Antony Stone, PA
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3766163
A radio station banned the new version of Do They Know It’s Christmas today after being inundated by listeners claiming it was “rubbish”.
Minutes after the updated Band Aid classic was broadcast for the first time the station switchboard was jammed with listeners calling for it to be axed.
Bosses at Pembrokeshire Radio, based in Narbeth, quickly bowed to listener-power and pulled the plug on the new festive single.
They pledged to continue backing the single’s charitable aim and are advising listeners to buy it anyway – even if it is never played.
The new version mirrors the 20-year-old original with a line-up of current top recording stars including Rachel Stevens, Jamelia and Daniel Bedingfield.
While the original was a 3.5 million single-selling-phenomenon, the new version is raising passions for all the wrong reasons.
“We played it for the first time at 8am today and were amazed at the response from our listeners,” said Keri Jones, station DJ and managing director.
“People were saying it is awful rubbish. They were quite passionate about it – it was quite overwhelming.
“All the lights on the switchboard lit up and we had about 50 calls within minutes of it being played.
“In the end it got so busy it was pointless answering, everyone was saying the same thing anyway. It’s rubbish, more Bland Aid than Band Aid.
He added: “We are telling listeners to go out and buy it anyway because it is all in a good cause.
“It may well end up as being this year’s Christmas number one, although it’s more likely to be used as a coaster rather than be listened to.
“We banned it because we believe in going with what out listeners say. In the meantime we will continue playing the original.”
By Antony Stone, PA
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3766163 A radio station banned the new version of Do They Know It’s Christmas today after being inundated by listeners claiming it was “rubbish”.
Minutes after the updated Band Aid classic was broadcast for the first time the station switchboard was jammed with listeners calling for it to be axed.
Bosses at Pembrokeshire Radio, based in Narbeth, quickly bowed to listener-power and pulled the plug on the new festive single.
They pledged to continue backing the single’s charitable aim and are advising listeners to buy it anyway – even if it is never played.
The new version mirrors the 20-year-old original with a line-up of current top recording stars including Rachel Stevens, Jamelia and Daniel Bedingfield.
While the original was a 3.5 million single-selling-phenomenon, the new version is raising passions for all the wrong reasons.
“We played it for the first time at 8am today and were amazed at the response from our listeners,” said Keri Jones, station DJ and managing director.
“People were saying it is awful rubbish. They were quite passionate about it – it was quite overwhelming.
“All the lights on the switchboard lit up and we had about 50 calls within minutes of it being played.
“In the end it got so busy it was pointless answering, everyone was saying the same thing anyway. It’s rubbish, more Bland Aid than Band Aid.
He added: “We are telling listeners to go out and buy it anyway because it is all in a good cause.
“It may well end up as being this year’s Christmas number one, although it’s more likely to be used as a coaster rather than be listened to.
“We banned it because we believe in going with what out listeners say. In the meantime we will continue playing the original.”
real change not bland aid
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
do they know its unlistenable ?
20.11.2004 15:32
on the grounds of POLITICS, im equally glad. why ? because nobody seems to have any notion of POLTICAL CONTEXTS. its odd how the original band-aid appeared at a critical juncture in the progress of the miners strike; either geldof must have known he was confusing the major event of the time, or he was so unaware that he failed to notice it.
and
why now dabble in the matter of sudan ? dont these rock stars have ANY undertsanding of contexts ? i say "let them know its part of a geopolitical great power ploy".
its
all very well to plead for the starving, but it seems in 1984 geldof forgot to support those people, the coal miners, precisely fighting against the threat of poverty (go to almost any old mining town nowadays and the effects can be seen)
thuji okiju
hear, hear
20.11.2004 18:46
Enter, Sir Bob to be. One colleague (now a recognisable TV actor) is overcome with grief and proposes we switch the donation to the 'Ethiopia appeal'. Tedious debate later and the verdict is a 'personal choice' which the donation goes to. Message of course being - those of you who insist on supporting the British strikers are some sort of not-good-enough uncaring bastards bordering on racist.
I suspect this kind of scenario went on all over the place. In our case it was academic as the administrator was a complete incompetent and never sent off any of the donations, or paid our national insurance contributions either come to that. But I have remained convinced that Sir Bob's main role, witting or unwitting, was to sabotage support for the miners. And that anyone really concerned about fighting for the people of Africa would have been sending donations to the ANC, PAC, SWAPO, SWANU, or the liberation movements of the day whose names I cannot now recollect but who were doing battle in Angola, Mozambique, Sudan and 'Spanish' Sahara to name but a few.
old enough to remember
Shocking!!!!
10.12.2004 08:32
Steve, old enogh to remember, still young enough to care!!!
Steve Porter
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