At the risk of returning to old ground - or am I now veering off topic since discovering the wonderful world of piped supermarket music - the recent Eurovision Song Contest from Basel, as each ESC happens to do, brought back memories from my own halcyon days of shortwave listening.
The mid-1990s was a tremendous time for listening to 76 metres (3 MHz) in the evening, or more particularly after midnight. Ironically, Steve Midnight of Radio Confusion then Subterranean Sounds would be one of the few predominantly but exclusively British stations that was regularly heard after sundown, but would more or less be on his own in broadcasting late evening - say 1030 pm onwards. There would usually be a broadcast, perhaps what might have been termed a Eurovision special, on the conclusion of that particular year's contest. These are small but nevertheless significant memories that represent just one leitmotif of a scene that brought about the creation of this blog.
Of course, Radio Confusion then Subterranean Sounds did not just broadcast once a year to coincide with what remains a rather dubious pan-European music fest that has now been hijacked by ideologies, and where contestants run the risk of being heckled due to the actions of their leaders, but for your correspondent would usually be as much about Eurovision evening as the contest itself. I also recall in the early days of Confusion broadcasting on 6 and 7 MHz a diet of Indie music, whilst Subterranean Sounds being more memorable for monologues on UFOs (the contemporary parlance being UAPs - Unidentified Aerial / Anomalous Phenomena) and tracks from Birmingham-based band Broadcast, as well as Papua New Guinea by Future Sound of London being regularly aired. Good days.
The night-time 76 metres scene was a bona fide extension, perhaps even an improvement, on the tradition Sunday morning 6 MHz scene, with Live Wire, Radio Armadillo, and Wizard's Magic Spell being amongst the UK-based stations who also grasped the nettle. Weekend Music Radio would often run 3 MHz in parallel with other frequencies, whilst Brian of SF03 would frequently pop up at the end of the night to call CQ to some of the aforementioned.
Although this has always been a strictly UK-based blog, honourable mentions must also be made for Radio Grensjager (Borderhunter), Radio Korak, and Radio Pirana, three stations I would consider to be at the highly acceptable, listenable end of the shortwave free radio spectrum, and whom were also synonymous with 3 MHz in the evenings.
Despite much water having passed under the bridge since, events such as Eurovision and UK Bank Holidays never fail to trigger positive memories of my listening past. As a new wave of UK stations complements the old guard, has the baton passed to a new generation of broadcasters and listeners? Of that I am not so sure, as presumably many still involved are those returning to the hobby, or who never actually left.
With the advent of on demand streaming, instantaneous messaging, and digital radio searchable by genre, it is now difficult to imagine that many, or any, younger people have discovered shortwave and particularly free radio as I did in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, whilst change is inevitable, a glass half full attitude would say that it is good to hear that free radio on shortwave is still going strong, albeit in its current form.
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