James Morrison live on 2SER 1986 with Greg Poppleton
Between midnight and 2am on 13 March, 1986, Greg Poppleton made a one hour live recording in the old studio 2 for The Phantom Dancer (though it wasn’t called The Phantom Dancer then). In the band was James Morrison AM playing double bass, his brother John on drums, Ian Date on guitar and Andrew Speight on sax. This snippet was an improv session titled “2SER Blues”.
The sound recordist was Helen Bucknall, using only the room (which acoustically was excellent) and the desk mics to create with these musicians a recording that went straight to ancient quarter inch tape without any further editing. Then dubbed to a second quarter inch tape for the announcement inserts, then to cassette (tapes needed to be re-used) and then dropped it onto CD in 2015. Greg chats with Jono here to provide additional context to this archival recording, as well as his long-running Phantom Dancer show approaching its own milestone 40th year on-air, as part of 2sER’S 45th Birthday Week celebrations.
John wrote of the piece, “I can say with no hesitation that you are free to use any (and all) audio and photos etc for the exhibition. Indeed we would be honoured if 2SER saw fit to include our work. Please also extend our congratulations to everyone on the team at the station on reaching this incredible milestone.”
You can still listen to Greg Poppleton live on Phantom Dancer to this day — every Tuesday, midday till 2pm right here on 2SER.
