Rhod Sharp, Kevin Anderson and Chris Vallance blog for Up All Night

Chris Vallance - 01 March 2006

Pods and blogs was a bit of roller-coaster ride...for various technical reasons I shalln't go into I ended up reading the news (ugh) and reading Rhod's 205 "All Over Britain" intro that's such a signature bit of Up All Night, something that's not nearly as easy as Rhod makes it look! Hopefully long suffering listeners won't be treated to a repeat performance.

The show was a very special one for us because all the audio was supplied by podcasters and bloggers. The standard was very high, easily up to "professional" standards. And we're very greatful to all those who helped us out. We began with a podcast from seminarian Chris Decker . Chris spoke to us from his home in Baton Rouge when the hurricane hit. Now he's back studying in New Orleans and sent us some audio that really made us think about the deeper issues Karen and Jeff of the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund provided us with a podcast of musical reflections on the year past. Wonderful stuff. There are more podcasts of a high standard on their site.

Matthew Nolan is a poet and blogger. Displaced to Alabama he still found time to find a headset, download some free audio editing software and record a reading of one of his poems from his book Crumpled Paper Dolls Blogger Editor B sent in a few thoughts about the celebration of Mardi Gras and what it means, and doesn't mean, to the people in his neighbourhood of the city. From Texas Damien Randle of The Legendary KO (the band that remixed Kanye West's statement about George Bush) told us how the evacuees from New Orleans were doing in Houston, and Charles Pizzo an evacuee also in Texas joined us live to tell us how he felt about the past and the future.

Finally we closed out with an interview with Chris O'Connor of the Ochsner Clin ic in New Orleans who told us about the challenges facing the medical system. It was a technically difficult evening with disappearing satellite links to NO. A big thanks to Craig of Metroblogging New Orleans and George of Humid City for helping us to connect the podcasts with some thoughtful contributions. A big thanks also goes to Dan of Neworleansabands.net and Ashley and Peter Spencer. Both of them took the time to record material for us - but the technical hitches took up so much time that we didn't get to play the audio that night. Hopefully it will get an airing later on the programme.