{"id":2948,"date":"2022-12-09T07:55:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T07:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/?p=2948"},"modified":"2022-12-09T07:57:50","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T07:57:50","slug":"everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2022\/12\/09\/everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was as startled as you by the death of Christine McVie<\/a>, but I also didn’t notice that she left Fleetwood Mac for – hang on, checking again – about 15 years. Simply did not notice.<\/p>\n

That’s pretty bad, even for a man. But she was with the band, then later she was with the band, and in between it seems they did bugger-all. I’m going to let myself off.<\/p>\n

And instead remember that McVie grew up about six pixels away from where I am right now in Birmingham. And instead also remember that I only recently got into her 2017 album with Lindsey Buckingham, the imaginatively titled “Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie<\/a>” album. But I really got into it.<\/p>\n

Plus there is this. It might be a running joke for anyone who has ever worked in a radio station, but I used to call out “they’re playing our song” whenever any one of about 11,000 tracks were played. Something like 11,000, or however many singles there were in the BHBN Hospital Radio<\/a> library where I met my wife.<\/p>\n

There were actually special ones in that library, though. I will forever remember having to carry a show on past time because the next presenter was running around the library trying to gather up their singles while I was playing out “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”.<\/p>\n

I’ll also remember who faded out John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” before the end and so wrecked the entire narrative structure of that song.<\/p>\n

But maybe mostly, I’ll remember “Everywhere<\/a>“. By Christine McVie.<\/p>\n

It was released in November 1987 when I was 22 and initially it was in heavy rotation on every station because it was new and because it was good. Later it became a favourite for a reason I’m half proud of, half not.<\/p>\n

There is a skill in talking up to the vocals on a song, to knowing just by sense and feel when the lyrics will start and so being able to speak up to that instant while making it sound like that’s just when you would’ve finished and shut up anyway.<\/p>\n

It’s just not a skill that has any use outside of a radio station. Since I’d rather listen to the music than to a presenter, I’m not 100% convinced it has any use inside of a radio station either.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, you could either do it or not, and the fact that every single record in the library had a note of how many seconds the intro lasts, was no help.<\/p>\n

Except in Everywhere, it got a little trickier and therefore — by some measure, anyway — more satisfying.<\/p>\n

For although Everywhere has a 22-second intro, its then first lyric — the very soft “Calling out your name” — lasts for exactly 1 second and is followed by another 6 seconds before the vocals really get going. So you can talk up to the 22-second mark, you can say a huge amount up to there, take a one-second breath, then drop in a 6-second station ident.<\/p>\n

Make even a one-second mistake and you crash the lyrics, it sounds awful. Granted, get it perfectly right and you’re still talking over an excellent song and so you sound awful.<\/p>\n

But it was irresistible. The average speaking speed of a presenter is 3 words per second, so you could say 66 words up to the first lyric — even if you didn’t begin until you started the track. And you could then say 18 words in the gap, if you didn’t have a cart with a pre-recorded ident to hand.<\/p>\n

Of all her accomplishments in writing, I suspect Christine McVie didn’t even know about this one.<\/p>\n

Plus while I remembered all of this about the radio station, I did just have to go listen to Everywhere to check those timings. The memory of the radio work is faded, the music remains clear.<\/p>\n

It is astounding to me that I can just listen to it now, to call up pretty much anything I want, certainly anything I’ve heard of, and listen immediately.<\/p>\n

And listen without some prat like me firing off a jingle at 23 seconds into the track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was as startled as you by the death of Christine McVie, but I also didn’t notice that she left … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[1936,343,622,1961,1935,1960,746,284,1021,198,180],"class_list":["post-2948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-selfdistract","tag-amwriting","tag-apple","tag-author","tag-christine-mcvie","tag-dramatist","tag-fleetwood-mac","tag-ipad","tag-iphone","tag-mac","tag-writer","tag-writing","has-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/12\/Fleetwood-Mac.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-Ly","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2957,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2948\/revisions\/2957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}