October 2001: Second Procol Radio Marathon from UCLA

including a good Matthew Fisher interview

uclaradio.com broadcast their second internet Procol Harum marathon on 21 October. Owing to technical difficulties not everyone could receive it to start with, and BtP is sorry therefore not to be able to publish such a detailed account as we offered of the First Marathon. Read about the re-broadcast here.

All credit to UCLA however, that they responded swiftly to our disappointed inquiries: 'Try it now? Our tech guy came and it should be working now. We tried all three streams: some problem with our Digital male-to-male plug.'

Shortly after this the broadcast miraculously burst into life, but too late for us to capture the Fisher interview: some impressions of it are nonetheless reported below. We are very much hoping that UCLA will be able to re-broadcast the show, either from their archive or live again, on 17 November, including the telephone interview again … which had been taped a week before

The MF interview was about twenty minutes! Matthew would like to do a new Procol Harum album, but "It's really up to Gary."

When Number 6 said Gary had mentioned in his last interview that he had been contacted by a record company talking about a new album, that was apparently unknown to Matthew. "Met Gary just the other day, but the subject didn't come up. Maybe because the discussions were from a business point of view".

Matthew said he didn't want to work computer programming full time, as that would get into the way of Procol Harum work. He went on to say that a record company wasn't really needed in these days. You could sell through internet. "If you can keep recording costs down, you don't really need a record company. But could finance it yourself. And you'd end up with a much bigger slice of the income. And have much more artistic freedom". He would love to make an album under those circumstances.

Since BtP's plans for recording the interview didn't work out, the above is only glimpses from the interview. It doesn't even try to bring the most important parts from Matthew's talks with DJ Number 6. But it addresses things we know Palers are interested in.

Matthew also  said he and Carol would marry within a year, but he didn't know yet where they'd settle down.

Shine on Matthew and Carol!

DJ Number 6 … our Procol marathon man … then wrote to BtP:

As I'm sure you know there was a technical problem at uclaradio.com. today. Listeners with 128K windows media and Quicktime should have heard the whole show without difficulty.

Listeners with windows media 56K --and I understand this would probably include many listeners in Europe who get internet via a modem -- may have not received the first half of the show, which included the Fisher interview. I've discussed this with the radio station management and the plan is to redo the show in November, again including the Fisher interview.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, but unfortunately I have no control over technical, electrical, and computer aspects of the show. The radio station apologises for any inconvenience and will reschedule another broadcast of the second show in November.