Billy Jam sez:
In the first part of this series
(posted a week ago) I included an MP3 of people on the streets of Jersey City
speaking on their knowledge (or lack thereof) of the origins of the name of New
Jersey. This time I am including an sample of what the folks I stopped on the
streets of St. Hélier in "old" Jersey had to say when quizzed on
their knowledge of New Jersey (MP3). I am also including my new favorite old Jersey song which sums up so perfectly the unique
and special place that is the small island of Jersey, Hedley Le Maistre's
"Jersey, Mon Vie!" (MP3).
Friday, October 2nd's WFMU live remote broadcast (during
Doug Schulkind's timeslot) from Jersey's capital of St. Hélier during the Channel
Island's 2nd annual Branchage Film Festival was an amazingly wonderful event to
be a part of, and a rewarding one on many levels. First off it was a really
great idea of the festival's director Xanthe Hamilton to link "old"
Jersey with New Jersey via WFMU - something she presented to a receptive FMU
station manager Ken Freedman about five months ago, and whose concept grew in
scope since. And secondly for the dialog it began between the two Jerseys - one
which we hope to keep going on the air here at WFMU. Expect to regularly hear
"Jersey Bites" on Friday afternoons during the new WFMU Fall/Winter
season which kicked into effect Monday, October 12th.
If you missed last week's broadcast it is archived -
in playlist and audio forms - here, and
includes a wide variety of guests getting on the FMU airwaves to share insights
on the island of Jersey; a place that may only be 45 square miles in size but
is incredibly rich in culture and history. A British Crown dependency the
Bailiwick of Jersey, as it is officially known, is 100 miles south of England
and lies only 14 miles west of the coast of Normandy, under whose rule it was
once governed.
The WFMU remote show guests included Philip Malet de Carteret whose ancestors - several centuries ago - owned the land now known as the Garden State and were the ones responsible for giving New Jersey its name. The interview I conducted with him at his historic manor in the parish of St.Ouen (Jersey is divided into parishes, not counties) ran a lot longer than the segment included in the remote broadcast. Hence snippets of it will be played over the coming months on the air. Same for the organic Jersey dairy farmer Ian Mitchell, who was a live guest during the October 2nd remote but whose farm I visited the following day (see video below) and recorded more footage about the Jersey cow (a highly intelligent & unusally friendly animal) and its rich dairy product.
















The painting I had in mind was "The Death of the Poet Rainer Werner" by Conrad Felixmuller -- a leftist Expressionist whiz kid in his Weimar day. While the painting has a grim backstory -- the subject is the painter's friend who was an addict and leapt from a high window in Berlin -- I can't help but find an uplifting quality to it -- quite literally that the figure is rising more than falling. It made me think it appropriate. I replaced the syringe with an I-Pod.















