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Something in the Air1x45'
Playwright Peter Nichols explores, in a unique personal memoir of the Second World War, the strange, chilling, now almost comical recordings of the Nazi swing band, Charlie and his Orchestra, perhaps the oddest-ever surviving examples of black propaganda. Nichols was a teenager in Bristol during the Second World War, listening to the wireless, always eager to hear the latest swing music. At that time the airwaves also carried attempts from Germany to undermine the morale of the British: talks by William Joyce, the so-called Lord Haw-Haw, and recordings of Charlie and his Orchestra, a swing band put together by the Nazis -- ironically, since they regarded swing music as decadent and utterly deplorable -- with re-written lyrics to well known songs of the day. These recordings now sound almost comical and at the same time distinctly chilling. Peter Nichols feels sure he must have heard them at the time and hearing them again -- admittedly with a good deal of hindsight -- stimulates a distinctive personal memoir of the War, of how we survived it, and most intriguingly of how memory works, featuring many of the oddest recordings of the twentieth century. Producer: Pete Atkin Broadcast: Broadcaster: |
