Sounds
In 1982 I was a precocious 18 year-old who had already been broadcasting on community FM radio for several years. I approached Robert Calvert, a great hero of mine, and at the time recently lead singer of Hawkwind®, with the aim of producing a radio documentary about his music.
Bob sent me a 90 minute tape, which he had made at his house sometime earlier, seemingly in response to someone else's questions, perhaps originally intended to be transcribed into a fanzine. For whatever reason, that didn't come about, and I ended up with the tape, which I then used to create 'The Robert Calvert Special', a radio production consisting of three 45 minute episodes, which originally broadcast on 7 CAE FM in Hobart, Tasmania, in August 1982. A very great deal of this material was never used in the original production however, and is made available here for the first time.
It's very embarrassing for me now to listen back to my adolescent voice, and I also regret the suggestion of my engineer, that we orchestrate the thing to sound, at times, like a 'live' interview, with both Bob and myself in the same room. As a result, I have completely excised all of my vocal parts, and all of the music from this version. What you have here is the complete, unedited master tape from which the special was made. Bob wrote 'Ramblings at Dawn' on side A, and 'Further Ramblings' on side B.
The sound quality is not outstanding. Bob was using a portable tape recorder, with a single mic plugged into one channel. The volume levels fluctuate considerably, and to compensate for that, I have tended to set them a little low, as the highs are rather dramatic. Nevertheless I'm assured it's quite acceptable as far as a spoken word recording goes. I have used a highpass filter to eliminate some of the bass which tends to creep into real audio files. Still, for those curious, Bob's voice is just a little less bottom-endy than this on the original tape. You will also find that the quality improves somewhat after the first file.
I have not edited the tape in any way at all, except to divide into segments which seem topically discrete in one way or another. They appear, however, in exactly the order he recorded them.
Despite my aforementioned embarrassment about the original production (copies of which are in circulation, and which you may have heard. I assure you I subsequently developed a radio voice which I was more pleased with :). I am glad I was an audacious teenager back in 1982, because the product of it was the only substantial audio documentary on Robert Calvert still in existence.
Sit back, do some downloading, and enjoy the unique pleasure of an unfettered journey through the mind of a man who I still consider to be one of the great un-sung geniuses of rock music.
A couple of notes: *The copyright situation in regards to these recordings is somewhat clear to me. In Australia, at least, there is no performance copyright on spoken word pieces, and interviews are regarded as the property of the interviewer, if the subject of the interview granted permission for the recording. However, since Bob effectively interviewed himself, as far as I am concerned, the copyright of all of this material resides with Bob, his next of kin or the executors of his estate. I feel confident that I am using it in the spirit for which it was originally intended - for broadcast. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Finally, this is not meant to be in a definitive biographical page about Robert Calvert, nor an introduction to him; just a resource, mainly designed for those already familiar with him. For the definitive site on the life and work of Robert Calvert, visit Spirit of the P/Age (re-launched 19-08-2004)*. It's huge, and here is literally days of exploring to do there.
Tim Gadd, Tasmania, June 2000
* minor edits for accuracy in re-publishing, 2007
EDITOR'S NOTE: Tim's original page may or may not still exist at http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/university/222/radio/calvert/, only the audio files are long gone from that server. What we have are files I (Blaiddwyn) ripped a few years ago - unfortunately I subsequently lost Further Ramblings numbers 7 and 10 (files 15 an 18). If you have copies of either or both of those in any format, please .
After several failed attempts to reach Tim in Tasmania, I have elected to make these available again here. On my head be it. I've also taken the liberty of titling the tracks (to reflect what I feel is the gist of the content of each), and embellishing the descriptions. So it goes.