The Waiting Room

Hello you, the listening few, & welcome to a cut&paste history of what you have come to know & recognise as The Waiting Room.

What follows is a pool of answers to questions you probably never asked — you can at least now go A-ha! Quite interesting when an on air reference pops up.

Introductions, then

I, me, typing this, albeit in third person for most of it, am one half of Drunk Country* & I, by dint of luck & accident, have found myself the tongue-tripped host of said aforementioned weekly radio-style music + chat show on that there wonderful USA/Canada/Sweden-based on-line radio station ErrorFM.

* For the sake of answering a number of emails posing the same question week in/week out: Drunk Country is a troublesome yet underachieving musical acoustic twosome (one half of + the other half of) what poorly compose & quite viciously execute instrumental-type fiddly strangled twang-type music down in this here Cardiff, Wales, UK. Musically it resembles (being extraordinarily generous & at a hefty push) the sort of thing you hear as incidental scoring in proper indie movies. To date their music has been played on programmes on Channel 4 & BBC, as well as a stupid amount of college radios Stateside & some local English & Welsh ones.

Prior to ½DC taking a grasp of these here reins there was the Essex-born/Edinburgh-based one-time stand up comedienne (+ single mother of twins) princess Ms Hope Eternal fixed astride the helm. Ms Eternal, (with her well-established connections in Stand Up PR + management, Club + Radio DJing, club & festival event PR & whatnot), cut a nicotine rasp through an otherwise US-accent heavy ErrorFM schedule. Of, Breath, A, & Air may just be a list of words to you but, to the listening few regularly tuning in at the office or as housebounds, they were the meat & bones of a sentence uttered on an ever more increasing frequently regular basis.

Beginnings

The Waiting Room, such as it is, originally shat into life as Mind The Crack — a thoroughly successful stand-up comedy/techo-cum-chill out-style music show on Edinburgh-based Leith FM local radio station — hosted, as if you hadn’t guessed, by none other than Ms Hope Eternal. The name changed to The Waiting Room when the show transferred from Leith FM, following some mild tomfoolery resulting in the station’s loss of a broadcasting licence, to ErrorFM one dark & stormy night in January 2006.

Ms Eternal, with her trademark Billy Goat/Sid James gargle of a laugh + acerbic British humour, quickly built up a loyal following & listenership, & immediately established The Waiting Room as the highest listened to/streamed non-US show on the station — a feat & accomplishment proudly maintained to this very day (in fact, we are now the most listened to show, US or otherwise, for its entire output).

During one of Ms Eternal’s on air outings she happened to give over some airtime to a little ditty entitled Saw Saw Saw Saw Saw Saw Ouch!, by none other than the entirely unknown Drunk Country. Astoundingly, not only she but they, you, the listening few, responded rather positively to the experience &, as a result, Ms Eternal approached one half of with the notion of conducting an interview (later transcribed & posted on the myspace space profile blog entry page).

Common ground, music taste-wise, was firmly established via MSN, & one half of began supplying Ms Eternal with half a dozen or so tracks of new (read “unknown” to Ms Eternal) bands/artistes per show for the weekly playlist. A task, Dear Reader, that rapidly grew from providing a handful of songs per show to one half of compiling the entire playlist (for moreorless every show) in a matter of months; not least due to the myspace sluttery & brown-nosed toadying employed by one half of in his success at securing MP3s & permissions to airplay tracks from artistes, bands, PR bods, management companies, record labels & their dogs. A glut, shall we say, of talent was harvested & Ms Eternal’s The Waiting Room became that harvest’s festival.

It was during said aforementioned late night computer screen eye-numbing ramblings that vast amount of trivia/knowledge was shared & one half of’s fascination-cum-clinical obsession with cover versions came to light. Buoyed by a now established mutual thirst for the new, & the effortless ability to have someone else to do all the donkey work, Ms Eternal invited one half of to compile a playlist of cover versions for her next show’s on air outing, & one half of duly obliged.

Enamoured by the speed of delivery & dedication to pointless detail displayed in one half of’s playlist submission, Ms Eternal invited one half of to join her as co-host for said pencilled in show — therefore guaranteeing a deluge of track-based trivial blither blather courtesy of that over eager puppy in the back of a car: one half of.

Thus, Drunk Covers was birthed. Naturally. At home, sans gas & air.

Drunk Covers & Beyond

The response to Drunk Covers was overwhelming — more listeners tuned in & emailed appreciation of that show than any of the previous. Plans were, naturally, made for a follow up Drunk Covers in the middle distance future. For, goshdarnit, Ms Eternal & one half of clicked & riffed off each other like a couple of seasoned, End o’Pier pros jostling for an extended season.

It was around about then that Ms Eternal hit upon the idea of recording each show for podcast (although, she didn’t proper utilise this here Podbean facility until much, much later). Unfortunately, what with a terminal lack of technical know-how & a rather lame operating system to play with, most of the earlier shows were never recorded correctly (levels), in full (crashed mid-show), or at all (forgot to click record).

Many months, playlist submissions & the odd odd haircut passed (see previous pictorial evidence of Ms Eternal’s flirtation with barbershop style) until, on Wednesday April 4th, Ms Eternal granted one half of some airtime once again & Drunk Covers II was let loose on the version-starved ear-based public. Suffice, & despite a now very much established technical difficulties/issues with our Father Who Art In Skype playing random level drop out & feedback buggerations during the live shows, it was another triumphant outing for The Waiting Room & another rip-roaring example of Ms Hope Eternal & one half of’s woozy yet quirksome repartee. Naturally, a third instalment of this fast becoming stupidly popular series was pencilled in for the thereafter future.

Alas, very much like the inaugural Drunk Covers, a recording/podcast of Drunk Covers II was never produced (technical schechnical nonsense abound, if memory serves) — partially rectified some many months later by one half of hosting a Drunk Covers Redux show (featuring a re-hash of the original playlist), with a Drunk Covers II - Director’s Cut in the offing for an anytime soon slot. Keep ‘em peeled, kids.

It was following the original Drunk Covers II show that Ms Eternal first proposed the idea of one half of becoming a regular co-host of the show &, a few weeks later, one half of became firmly established as the Laurel to Ms Eternal’s Hardy. Soon after, armed with passwords galore, one half of, took it upon him’s very self to give the old myspace space profile page layout a much needed spruce job, which reflected the new laidback, acoustic direction of said show.

With a newly designed logo & ident, & a newly composed & recorded theme tune, you, the listening, were now met with a brighter, crisper &, importantly, more people-friendly facade for what was, conveniently, simply just that — a facade of professionalism. Chaos, ladies & gentlemen of the listening few, as you should well know by now, is the mother of all things hatched & nested within these sticky-back plastic Blue Peter walls of The Waiting Room.

one half of also invested some cold hard green & precious time in setting up, designing & establishing the The Waiting Room podcast podpage, what you be stationed at & reading right about now.

Finally, then, The Waiting Room looked sharp, sounded sharp (albeit from the musical point of view & not necessarily that of the co-hosts’ babble) & was something artistes/bands & you, the listening few, could relate to & interact with.

Future Sailors — or, Abandon all Hope ye who enters here

One thing you quickly discover whilst producing & hosting a show for radio, even if it is only once a week for a measly 2hour slot, it’s that your free time diminishes considerably. The admin alone (contacting bands, management, record labels, updating myspace, podcasts, emailing listeners, advertising each show on-line via forums + blogs + aggregators + pod directories, etc., designing 2 fliers per show - one for show proper & one for the podcast - investigating new music via Hype Machine & all the hundreds of bookmarked reference musi-blogs, reading & responding to listener/band/label emails/enquiries, looking for & listening to emailed music, downloaded music, mailed music, pre-recording, editing & producing each non-live show, etc. & so forth) is quite, quite astonishing.

Many an unwashed weekend morning has turned into an unfed afternoon, then an evening, then an early hours of before you eventually stop & sit back & realise you’ve lost another entire day/weekday evening strapped into the computer, fuss-arsing about on a show you’re not even getting paid for.

So, it was with no real surprise, after a considerably enjoyable & healthy yet exhausting 5 month run (20+ 2 hour shows) of 80% live broadcasts (& 20% pre-records to cover simultaneous holidays), that — coupled with the ever increasing demanded requirements (multiplying on a daily basis) of twin 2yr old girls, the sheer HELL of an Edinburgh Council Estate to circumnavigate, & the onset of an intensive, long-term Radio Production college course & all THAT entails — the Essex Princess Ms Hope Eternal decided to call it a day, just three days after the One Year Anniversary of one half of’s cherry-popping stint way back in January 2007.

As if to complete the circle, on 11th January 2008 Ms Hope Eternal properly resigned her involvement with The Waiting Room via an MSN message. Therefore ending the glorious one year association utilising the same communication medium by which it began. Ms Eternal’s giddy tenure was at an end. Over & out. Said & done.

She, her filthy laugh, her sexual tension, her belching, her missed cues, her crappy microphone levels, her tantrums & her general gruff Essex loveliness shall be sorely missed.

Since then, of course, one half of has forcibly introduced you, the listening few, to a handful of new accents, skewed viewpoints & poisonalities yanked from the myriad corridors of Drunk Country House to fill Ms Eternal’s hole. A hole, you understand, thought to be rather deep & cavernous &, therefore, it would follow, rather a task to fill. It was certainly spread out on the table that one half of could easily make a fist of it, & this was something he did certainly not want to ever find himself doing.

What, as it turned out, nonsense.

All it needed was 3 other men, + 1 woman, & Ms Eternal’s hole was not only effortlessly filled (to the point of tearing the seam), but it felt entirely natural for the survival of TWR to have so many ‘new’ people (strangers, if you will) on a loose roster, popping in & out of Ms Eternal’s old hole.

For further info on those we persuaded to milk their talent in aforementioned hole, click here for photos (yes, that’s right, PHOTOs) & a not exactly detailed Who’s Who + biog of those on board the TWR sunshine coach.

Anyways, that’s pretty much it for now.

There’ll be a show to compile, no doubt, so we won’t waste any more time typing this bollocks. Bet it’s sunny outside, too, where you are & here you indeed are reading this when you could be running topless in the park, throwing frisbees for dogs to catch mid leap. Go on, piss off & get some sun on your face.

Cheers & Many thanks for your support &, especially, you, the listening few, for listening.

one half of Drunk Country + the TWR Team.