Alex Martin charts three weekly shows still putting the sic and the rad in music radio
As periods in music radio history go, this is undoubtedly one of the least exciting.Christmas 1906, for example, saw Canadian-American inventor Reginald Fessendon broadcast himself playing ‘O Holy Night’ on the violin, a groundbreaking achievement, and the very first show of its kind. “A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn,” so t’went.
The 1960s saw rogue broadcasters take to the high seas off the coast of Essex and play millions of listeners the outlawed soundtrack to the foremost social revolution of the last century, tenaciously flouting the BBC’s attempts to blanket bleep-out popular music with some choice cuts from Elgar. “Lay some tambourine on me egg man. And send me the Rich Tea”.
In the early '90s the decorum of the airwaves was again disrupted by a new breed of couragious urban swashbucklers who scaled tower blocks risking life, limb, arrest and vertigo to bring the noise that was to define a new era in musically-assisted recreation. “L-I-V-E and direct, to the koo. Are you ready, wind-your-waist crew?” Oh how they were.
2011. At one point last year Chris Evans lost over one million listeners in three months. It’s probably not fair to blame the medium for that. But there hasn’t been a platinum development in music radio on a par with Fessendon’s carolling, Radio Caroline’s mass de-censorship or rave radio’s invective insurrection this millennium. Probably there never will be again. Sure the internet has re-invigourated the audio broadcast some, but by doing the same for other entertainment media it has served equally to assist in video’s ongoing patricide of the radio star.
But this doesn’t mean radio is obsolescent; the medium still has much to offer we over-stimulated moderns, whether it be a spiffing Radio Four docu-drama to be savoured over a Javan cafetière and an almond croissant, a spot of eavesdropping on Talk Sport-enthusiasts thrashing it out on their car phones on the return journey from an away match in Port Vale, or a means of inculcating the joy of music.
Here are a selection of three weekly shows that continue to affirm the value of music radio in a radically diversifying technological climate.
Heatwave – Rinse FM
bashment, dancehall, Jamrock-LDN crossover
This six-deep team have been playing on the legendary Rinse FM since 2009. They occupy something of a graveyard slot, spinning between 1 and 3am on Sundays. But you will thank yourself for setting aside a quantity of midnight oil to burn in their honour. With plentiful re-winds, copious wheels, charismatic guest MCs and more air-horns than a herd of stampeding rhinoceri, ‘the heatwave affair’ play infectious daggerism braying with swagger.
They are a rarity on Rinse, which has a predominantly electronic/dance/bass sound policy, and their anomalous presence stands as sterling acknowledgement of the debt owed to Caribbean musics by the London beat community at large.
Gilles Peterson – Radio One
world jazz, polyrhythmic innovation, phantasmagorical miscellany
The new John Peel? With one of the most impressive record collections in the world, his shows are as likely to acquaint you with a splice of rare Ethiopian jazz as they are with the razor edge of the underground bass music continuum.
Interspersed with interviews of international intrigue, his shows are broadcast on Radio One on Wednesdays between 2 and 4am, as well as in Austria, France, Serbia and Japan in various formats. His tastes are keynotes in themselves; Peterson is the definitive tastemaker. He hosts the annual Worldwide Music Awards in London, the delectable Worldwide Festival in Sète, France, and is – or has been – involved in running three different record labels of global repute. He also has quite an annoying voice.
DJ Petchy – LiveFMUK
underground house
LiveFMUK operates out of an undisclosed location in East London, one of the few remaining quality pirates in the capital. With the Coalition planning on enforcing a Digital Switchover in 2015 that would turn the FM wavelength into a Hiroshima-like auditory wasteland, their days may be numbered – but then again there is always the chance they will get busted by the feds or ransacked by rivals in the ensuing years, such is the perilous world of radio piracy.
LiveFMUK's shining light is DJ Petchy, one of the most accomplished house selectors around, despite his low profile and tender years. When Bristol’s premier progressive bass night Crazy Legs asked Joy Orbison who he wanted to appear on the bill alongside him at one of their parties, to whom do you think he turned?
Delineations like tribal, funky, tech, crack, minimal, micro and fidget represent opportunities not boundaries to Petch. Four-to-the-floor house music is most definitely back on the London scene, and in ruder health than it has been at any point since the emergence of the Amen break in ’93. By hook or by crook – but mostly by uncanny talent – Petchy has established himself as the burning spearhead of London’s incarnation of the Chicago sound. Bless up your aerials.
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