The first hour of the Joe Blog is typically spent featuring a brand new album by a Joburg band with the main singer-songwriter in the studio telling the stories behind the songs.

The second hour is a Joburg gig-guide, playing music by bands performing live in the coming week in Gauteng venues.

The music played is strictly local as in Joburg (Pretoria maybe if it's exceptionally good) and current. I sometime go as foreign as Cape Town and Durban bands, but only for bands gigging in Joburg that week. International bands never get played even if they are performing in Joburg.

My real name isn't Joe Blog. It's Robert Laing and the 1485AM Monday night show is an offshoot of a website I started www.joeblog.co.za to scratch an itch. The website came about because local entertainment press has degenerated into TV guides and Speer Britney wire copy with minimal effort at informing Joburgers about all the great music made in our own backyard. The radio show because Commercial radio stations here simply cut and paste Billboard Top 100's list of international pap, so 1485AM is the only available platform for local talent. People will never appreciate how good the music coming out of Joburg right now is unless they get to hear it.

I write up articles based on the interviews done on the radio show which I put on my website, and an anthology of these is underway through Penguin's editorial process, so a Joe Blog paperback will hopefully be in bookshops later this year.

My day job is financial journalist. I'm currently business editor of both the Sowetan and Daily Dispatch.