Cobwebs and Strange Radio Show

“The philosopher Albert Schweitzer concluded: ”There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” In my house there are three cats and a lot of music.” So says Ronnie Carnwath, presenter of Cobwebs And Strange, Tuesdays at 4pm UK time. He saw the title Cobwebs And Strange on an LP by The Who and vowed that one day he would use it as the title of a show. It sums up the thinking behind the show – half forgotten oldies and oddities from his own personal collection and beyond, rubbing shoulders with the latest independent releases.

He believes radio should be entertaining, informative, and educational, and he makes all his own jingles and sources the little links you hear between songs from his favourite TV shows and movies. He likes to keep the show fresh by throwing in the odd curveball – where else would you expect to hear Shirley Bassey next to Throbbing Gristle?

Ronnie has been collecting records for over forty years, and every day he discovers some new gem he was hitherto unaware of, and that’s what keeps it exciting. “People send me music all the time,” he states. “The only criterion I employ is: “Do I like it?” If the answer is yes, it goes in the show.”

He started collecting at the age of eleven, when he purchased “Kings Of The Wild Frontier” by Adam & The Ants whilst on a school trip to London. In his teens he discovered the joys of finding an obscure 45 in a dusty old forgotten box in the back of a second-hand store, and would regularly spend all his pocket money on records and music magazines, which he would devour from cover to cover. He would lie awake in bed at night, with a tiny transistor to his ear, listening to the John Peel show on the BBC. The sense of achievement when he manages to find something he’d heard on the veteran presenter’s programme never gets old.

He firmly believes that every artist has one good song – a theory which he fully intends to explore. “I mean, it’s entirely possible that Nickelback have one good song – but I’ve yet to hear it…”,  he says, half-jokingly.

Ronnie thinks the term “DJ” (or disc-jockey”) is too much of a throwback to the days of radio host as showbiz personality. “I present information and let the audience draw their own conclusions.”

All his previous shows are archived at cobwebsandstrange.weebly.com, and these get updated every week, each show getting its own unique artwork. In addition to this, he has a Spotify playlist, which he updates weekly, and which now boasts in excess of 12,000 songs, with a playing time running to over 745 hours

He also makes music of his own occasionally, having released four CDs to date – three with Lulubelle III and one with La Bella Luna. He hopes to find a way to contain the carpal tunnel syndrome which prevents him from playing guitar or typing for more than a few minutes at a time.

He and his long-suffering wife Martha live in Derry, Northern Ireland with their three cats Zorro, Dalí and Gizmo.