onionbagblog

Week 3 of Wiv Chat and woh - here we weigh in with a Wivenhoe BIG HITTER: It’s only Mayor Bob Needham.

Blimey.

I say Week 3 of Wiv Chat, but really what I’m doing here is storing these interviews up while I have a head start, before the (probable) launch of Radio Wivenhoe on 4th July.

Online experience on similar projects has taught meet to make the most of the content whilst it is there. Lean weeks will no doubt arise - that’s when your backlog comes into play.

The plan all along has been to publish the audio content here, as well as sending it on to the good folk of Radio Wivenhoe. I really want this to be an online archived project of Wivenhoe voices.

It’s not a radio project per se - it’s mixture of local voices meets the modern interweb, via the good Radio Wivenhoe. What exactly is a radio station anyway in 2011? It’s all about online audio, Comrades.

Speaking of which, the big booming voice of Mayor Needham was actually quite a calming one as we sat down in my front room parlour / makeshift studio.

We spoke about wartime memories of Wivenhoe, Bob’s career progression through the Essex police force, and then something of a full circle direction with Bob finding himself back in Wivenhoe and wearing the civic chains of Mr Mayor.

Many, many thanks to Bob for being such a brilliant and engaging guest. I was quite conscience of the time, but I feel we could have carried on for another hour at least.

The sound quality is still hit and miss, much like my heart rate when I realised that the whopping 300+ MB file was a little too large for me transfer via my iPhone Dropbox connection.

Whoops.

Ways and means, and soon I has a huge chunk of the lovely Mr Mayor to feed into Audacity. I don’t want to take the risk in future of losing an entire conversation, and so I’ve invested in some new tools for the trade.

It’s not quite the Mr Mule method of using Radio Wivenhoe as a justification to buy a new studio (ouch!) but I have bought a more robust, professional mp3 portable recorder. I’ll be giving the Zoom H1 something of a test at the Funny Farm this Thursday.

And so once again, the call goes out for any local folk who would like to sit down for a VERY informal and friendly chat and to explore ideas about the Wivenhoe way of life. You will of course have the right of deletion, but I hope to keep these conversations a friendly affair.