Breakfast Club Blog
Archive for March, 2008
Not Everyone has Cereal for Breakfast
31 March 2008
One of the great things about broadcasting from overseas is the inevitable whack that you get on the side of the head.
By that I mean that you learn that all the things that you do are not necessarily what other people do.
Take breakfast for example. Many people in Australia will eat breakfast cereals (consisting of lots of sugar mixed in with a bit of oat or rice or corn and labelled as health food). Others will eat eggs with a slab of pig as a side. Others, like Addy, will have oats (after she’s scraped them off the inside of the microwave).
Our recent broadcast from the Water Festival in Phnom Penh opened my eyes to something else.
We were waiting to be interviewed by a local television station on the afternoon before the broadcast, when one of the people helping us out opened a packet of what looked like chips. But it wasn’t chips. It was a packet of dried spiders.
Did I say spiders? They looked more like tarantulas.
My vegan self abstained, but everyone else in our Australian contingent sampled the fare.
Mark Hemetberger:
Even the Cambodian in the group, Seda Douglas, didn’t look too convinced.
So how did they taste? Well our tech man, Steve Hassett had a spider’s leg and described it in the following way:
It tasted like MSG soaked in soy sauce and coated in a thick lacquer to make it taste remotely bearable.
All I can say is, we vegans miss out of some things like ice creams, but not having to digest lacquered spiders makes up for it.
The Joy of Loud Music
28 March 2008
This morning we played AC/DC on the program. Good, loud 1970’s rock.We love music here at the Breakfast Club. Every Wednesday we count down the Club’s Top Ten of Australian music, and often this new music makes our charts before they go national.And our chart is the first time that many of these artists get their music heard outside of Australia.When we get them in the studio for a chat, they get thrilled to get your emails from Phnom Penh, China and Moresby. You can just hear them telling their mums: “Hey, I’ve got fans overseas. And you told me nobody will ever hear of me.”We also go live with music too.Yesterday we had Brandi Carlisle on the program. She’s an American singer of great soul and feistiness. She brought with a pair of twins who are her backing group. They all brought their guitars, and belted out a couple of numbers for us. Man did they lift the roof.
Brandi’s bass player, Phil, who’s on the far left of the photo is an amazing guy. While he was singing, he managed to doodle at the same time.
What a multitalent!The very loud Brandi reminds me of the time we had Glenn Hughes from Deep Purple (he sang on the huge albums Burn, Stormbringer and Come Taste the Band). Glenn said he’d be doing the Moody Blues hit Nights in White Satin, which I thought was a pretty soft ballad, but he REALLY raised the roof. I believe you could’ve heard him from China, even without the microphone. Poor Geraldine Coutts from our sister program Pacific Beat was trying to conduct an interview in the next studio and could barely hear the interviewee.And what makes it even worse is that this superstar from the 1970’s looks as good as he does, while I look like garbage in comparison.
The Breakfast Club. Always raising the roof.
When Funny Ain’t Funny
27 March 2008
We have all kinds of guests here on the Breakfast Club.
Authors, actors, politicians, humanitarians, lawyers, people who help others.
Sometimes we have comedians too.
The expectation is that they will will always be a hoot. Sometimes they are, like Anh Do (who’s been on before and was a hoot, and is coming on again tomorrow and will be a hoot again).
Then again, sometimes our expectations are different to the reality, like yesterday when we had the Amercian superstar comic Arj Barker in the studio.
We love this guy. His speed of wit and great humour have made him one of the most successful srtand-up comedians in the world.
But when he came in the studio he wanted to talk all serious about things. It was a bit like having Jerry Seinfled in to talk about the Russian social system. We were geared up for a laugh and we got no quips, no New York style banter, no humourous asides. The only time he semi-smiled, was when I took this photo:
That all said, he was a lovely bloke who was obviously enjoying his time here in Melbourne. In fact the last thing he did before leaving the studio was to ask for directions to the casino. He told us he was a serious poker fan, and wanted to go play some hands.
Hope you won Arj.
Adelaine is almost back
26 March 2008
Her name is Ng. Adelaine Ng.
For the last week Addy has been in Malaysia and Japan trying to have some holidays, but in reality probably looking after assorted nieces and going shopping for the family (she’s so amenable).
Her impending return brings to mind some of the great moments we have had together. Like the first time we did an outside broadcast. It was from the G-spot (Games-spot, folks) during the Commonwealth Games two years ago. We were surrounded by athletes from lots of different countries. Addy was given a roving microphone, and showed her remarkable skill in being able to interview an African athlete with her eyes closed:
The broadcast was a success though, in no small part to Addy coming to the rescue when the power cut out, and she had to try to get the audience involved by doing a dancing demonstration. It was pretty cool, and I just wish I had a photo of it all. But by the end we were pretty happy:
I don’t know who gave us the flowers, and I especially don’t know who positioned them so rudely.
See you tomorrow Adelaine.
Hands Across the Water
25 March 2008
When we first started the Club way back in 2005, one of the first broadcasters to simulcast with us was Traxx fm in Malaysia.
To Addy and me this was something pretty exotic: speaking to two radio presenters live in Kuala Lumpur. As the date for the first simulcast approached we were awash with anticipation of linking up with these esteemed masters of the Malaysian airwaves; these people upon whom the ears of KL hang every day; these doyens of journalism and broadcasting.
Then we did our first link-up… and what we got was Nigel the Greenman and Navsta.
Let me start with Nige (seen here on the left with Jeremy who does all the work)
Nigel is a guy who enjoys having fun, so long as work is not involved. Nigel was the one who had the brilliant idea of having me taste my first durian live on air during my broadcast from their studio last year. (Durian, if you didn’t know is a pungent fruit that has been described in a surprisingly accurate assessment as tasting like heaven and smelling like hell). I survived that little stunt, and went on to do a broadcast from the top of the Eye on Malaysia. Another Nige brainwave. Me scared of heights too.
Then’s there’s Navsta “dude” Navvie.
Apart from having a machine-gun rapid fire delivery of the station’s phone-in number, Nav is also known for his personal dress code, and his religiousness, as seen here in the photo, which catches him mid-prayer during a broadcast. And no, the prayers didn’t help the show.
Every Thursday these dudes help lighten our loads, and we have a fabulous time giving away prizes to Traxx’s audience by getting the competititors to sing for us, recite for us, and basically get all silly.
We link up with other broadcasters too now, but our softest spot always goes to those soft guys at Traxx. Thanks Nige. Thanks Nav.
