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The Whistle Test Years

Bob Harris
  • Posted at 4:23pm
  • 23 January 2008
  • by SarahDempster-RT
  • 2 comments

Ah, Bob Harris. Or rather: mmm, Bob Harris. What a guy. Or rather: mmm. What a (turns slowly to camera, smiling sheepishly) guy (sighs, leans forward slightly in swivel chair and rests clasped hands in lap, thus causing mild flapping of corduroy lapels and vague disruption to weft of beard).

In the epiglottal, bellow-driven world of the modern radio broadcaster, his is a voice without peer. In terms of brand recognition, Harris's leisurely, ale-brown murmur is as instantly identifiable as Wogan's twinklesome brogue or Moyles's nasal roar. It's a voice that immediately puts the listener at ease: a gentle, humble thing that speaks, quietly, of politeness; sincerity; understated professionalism and an unfathomable knowledge of forgotten progressive jazz troupes from East Anglia.

Listening to that downy whisper is like clambering into a particularly accommodating sleeping bag, an ineffably comforting sensation only mildly hampered by the knowledge that a) there will probably be at least one member of Camel in there too, and b) all that hair will invariably lead to some manner of rash, possibly a serious rash, perhaps requiring urgent medical attention or a restorative bout of something by The Edgar Winter Group.

Exposed flesh duly girded, BBC 6 Music rootled around in its dressing-up box and found The Whistle Test Years (6 Music Plays It Again, 23, 24, 28, 29 January, 9:30pm, BBC 6 Music), a dusty, snuggly, mushy-hearted old thing (it was first broadcast in 2001), in which Harris recounts the moments that defined the finest music series of the 70s. Yesterday's show - the second of six - found the DJ winding down the windows of his Triumph Dolomite (brown, naturally) for a whispery gander at 1973.

It wasn't the most pleasant of views. While the rest of the world stomped along to its glam rock singles, The Whistle Test was jamming in a greatcoat in a poorly lit studio behind a lift shaft in Television Centre, a copy of Yes's triple concept album Tales from Topographic Oceans tucked under its arm.

Marketing itself as a serious music show for serious fans of serious music, it naturally considered pop the antithesis of seriousness, and thus focused its attention on serious men who demonstrated their seriousness by wearing cheesecloth shirts and playing country-rock/Proper Blues/vague jazz/some manner of noodly neoclassical flimflam with crumhorns, seriously.

The sole glimmer of glam in last night's show came in the shape of Roxy Music, whose Do the Strand wobbled, shimmied, pounded, sneered and scowled with peerless, brilliant oddness. Harris, naturally, hated the b****rs. "I was less than complimentary about them at the time," he chuckled, softly. "It really did cause a big stir. Die-hard Roxy Music fans still have an axe to grind with me."

One imagines fans of Van Morrison feel similarly inclined. Here's what happened when the genial broadcaster interviewed the incorrigible japester.

Bob (quietly perky): "How are you enjoying the concerts you've been doing?" Van (bored): "Um… nice. Really good…(clears throat, violently). It's been, arr, (cough) very…(aggressive spluttering) umm…" Bob (quietly mortified): "Mmm. Are there any differences between British and American audiences?" Van (belligerent): "British audiences…gahrrr…more receptive…um…American…splutter…umph…(peculiar rustling sound - possibly that of 600,000 copies of Astral Weeks being removed from their sleeves prior to being simultaneously bludgeoned to death with toffee hammers)...mmm."

"Oh dear, oh dear," guffawed Harris, indulgently, as Van's "hilarious" diversionary tactics grumbled their way back into the vaults. "It just goes to show that not all people are the same as their music."

So to affability, modesty, sincerity, professionalism and an incomparable ability to convince the listener that she/he is lying in a sleeping bag, scratching, with members of an appalling prog-rock trio, we can add tact and diplomacy.

What a guy.

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  • Posted on 24 January 2008
  • at 11:21am
  • by SarahDempster-RT
Firefox1701, you are a man (lady?) after my own heart. The world would indeed be a less rubbish place were Harris, TOGWT and Prog allowed to roam unfettered. Not sure about ELP, though. The only thing of theirs I've ever been able to stand is Fanfare For The Common Man. Give me Yes or King Crimson any day. And the 'appalling prog rock trio' bit was supposed to be a reference to the aforementioned Camel, but I realise I may have muffed it due to extreme muso obscurity/vagueness. Oops.
  • Posted on 24 January 2008
  • at 7:36am
  • by Firefox1701

Just an afterthought, really.

Whilst I had, and have, no desire whatsoever to find myself in a sleeping-bag with them, one hopes that the parting reference to 'an appalling prog rock trio' is not directed at the group Emerson, Lake and Palmer - singly and collectively probably the most talented musicians of the twentieth century.

Notwithstanding that possibility, I say, bring back Mr. Harris, bring back the Whistle Test, and most significantly, bring back Prog Rock!

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