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MUSIC

California radio station brings cool music and ‘cultural exchange’ to Berlin airwaves

Now you don’t just have to get your news fix from The Local. KCRW went on air in Berlin on Monday, promising award-winning music shows and plans to delve into local current affairs.

Published: 17 October 2017 13:57 CEST
California radio station brings cool music and ‘cultural exchange’ to Berlin airwaves
Photo: DPA
As Berlin’s intimidating winter spreads its chilly fingers over the city, it’s not only transplants from California who might start getting misty eyed at the thought of the balmy Pacific coast.

Luckily, Californian public radio broadcaster KCRW have chosen Berlin as the location for their first partner radio station outside the US.

“We wanted to continue the dialogue between the US and Germany, especially at this crucial time,” Susan Woosley, the station’s COO told The Local, explaining why they applied for the licence for the 104.1 FM airwave previously held by US public radio broadcaster NPR.

While she said that KCRW Berlin planned to “carry on the tradition of unbiased, intelligent reporting” that NPR stands for, they also want to bring in a broad mix of cultural and public affairs programming including “KCRW’s world renowned music offering”.

The Berlin broadcaster will be airing eight hours of music from the award-winning Californian mothership station every weekday, and even more on the weekends.

“We think we can add tremendously” to the Berlin radio landscape, Woosley says.

And while the vast majority of the programming will initially come from California and other public radio stations in the US, KCRW Berlin also has plans to bring in local programming.

“The idea is to help integrate the huge English-as-a common-language community here into the city itself, so they can better understand it and take part on a bigger scale,” says Woosley.

They became aware of the demand for more English-language news and information in Berlin when they ran a survey on their website asking people what they thought of Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz.

“One poignant reply was that ‘we’d love to have an opinion but there is not enough information in English’”, says Woosley.

KCRW will start by offering four minute segments four times a day on a range of local topics from politics, to film, to theatre, as well as weather. Starting in November they will also have a news round up.

Meanwhile they have two pilot shows in the pipeline, one on Berlin current affairs and one on Berlin culture. While these will initially be weekly affairs, they hope to eventually make them daily.

The plan, Woosley explains, is to “gradually add and build”.

At The Local, we’re excited to see how it turns out.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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