BBC Radio feature on 'First Book of Songs'

[pljms]

If you click on the link below and then once at the page click 'Listen Again', from about 35 minutes into Russell Davies's 1 hour BBC Radio 2 show you'll find a short feature on the 'First Book of Songs' compilation. Four of the tracks are played, 'Keep Me in Mind', 'These Desperate Hours', 'Uninvited Dream' and 'Magic Moments', and for those who live outside the UK and not familiar with the presenter Russell Davies, I'll say that he's someone who's steeped in jazz and the classic American songbook (Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart etc etc) and has what I've always considered a mildly condescending attitude towards Bacharach. Still, at least he plays his work and he's quite fair here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/davie ... aphy.shtml

[Sara D]

Yes, I happened to hear the show on the night without knowing in advance that the album was going to be featured. I've always thought that somehow Russell Davies has never quite 'got' Bacharach mainly because he's one of those presenters of a 'certain age' who like to make the distinction between the classic American songbook of Porter, Berlin etc and what they like to refer to as 'pop' music, while the rest of us are content in the knowlege that a great song is a great song regardless of its source and what era it came from.