| Description | Charles Parker speaks to an audience of dockers. He tries to persuade them to take part in the recordings for 'The Maker and the Tool'.
Tracks 1-2: Charles Parker introduces himself, talks about the Radio Ballads, explains about talking with ordinary men and women about working life, that when he talks to them 'poetry is released', things which have been hidden for 500 years by the dominance of the written word.
Track 3: he talks about making 'The Ballad of John Axon' which was originally intended to be a play or musical, but when he met a railway worker who told him that 'railways go through your life like Blackpool goes through rock', he realised that he didn't need to go to dramatists but could use 'the language of the common people', 2.21 mins
Track 4: he says that industrial audiences don't believe that this is significant, but it is the real voice of Britain, the 'unique experience of the common people' and the tape recorder allows us to capture these voices, 2.13 mins
Track 5: he talks about using music from the folk tradition and explains how Ewan MacColl soaks himself in speech in order to write songs, and the orchestration used, mentions other programmes he's made - 'Dog in the Manger' and 'Coventry Nativity', 2.59 mins
Track 6: he says that his drama is about communicating experience and aims to shake people out of their lethargy towards words, 2.07 mins
Track 7: he talks about using pictures, words, and dance, working with Birmingham schools, using modern technology, that this is the art form of the future, 2.38 mins
Track 8: he talks about 'The Lonesome Train', his documentary show about the life of Abraham Lincoln, which uses historical and contemporary photographs, he says he believes that we have been 'corrupted by the art forms to which we're subjected', which are presented as entertainment or escapism, 3.31mins
Track 9: he talks about organizing the Centre 42 festivals in six towns, the importance of creating relationships with local people and letting people hear authentic voices, 2.46 mins
Track 10: he talks about working people's personal relationship with the tools of their trade, 2.33 mins
Track 11: he talks about men being denied relationships with the tools that they can touch and the importance of humanising our environment, 2.40 mins
Track 12: he talks about Birmingham being ashamed of its industrial past, 2.42 mins
Track 13: he says that the tape recorder 'puts a bomb under the universities'; gives a new power to manipulate the human voice and develop new art forms, 3.09 mins
Track 14: he talks about the need to involve local photographic and cine clubs to give images of working life, talks about the beauty of the movement of a shoemaker or a woman working with a pair of pliers, the beauty of economy of movement, 4.13 mins
Tracks 15-22: several men from the audience argue with Charles Parker about his ideas about beauty and the content of the programme.
Total: 1.06.41 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0872480 |