Then versus now

As I like to say, comparisons are odious. To outright compare eras, people, individuals, and even free radio stations suggests one is approaching from an analogous perspective to reach negative, pejorative conclusions, coming from a 'better in my day' standpoint, if you like.

There are many variables to consider when standing up the 1990s free radio against its modern day iteration. Societal changes, particularly but not exclusively perpetuated by Social Media have altered humanity, and of course how people access and produce aural content. The advent of internet radio stations obviously involves a different form of technology required to bring an 807 valve rig into life, but unless one is misty-eyed about the ways of the past and lamenting how Social Media and Machine Learning AI have dulled individual and critical thinking, there are few if any compelling arguments to state which is 'better'. Preferences are one thing, what is actually better is quite another, but that only really stands up if there are two (or more) different approaches (traditional and contemporary) that ultimately arrive at the same outcome. 

My longwinded way of attempting but failing to get to the nub of comparison when in effect standing one era against another is, yes, odious. If I was going to find a criterion to laud one scene over another, it involves the wider significance of everything now being instantly accessible, rather than one having to work for it and wait. If only from an intellectual perspective, I feel it is correct to suggest that what is pondered over and then actioned is preferable to the instantly achievable. 

Leaving aside tech, societal change and the changing face of media consumption from linear to one-demand - heck, I even listen to Weekend Music Radio on catch up - this blog post is going to look at the respective shortwave free radio scenes, and how they stack up against each other. Not from a critical standpoint, but merely how they have changed, or perhaps have not.

Firstly, there are still plenty of familiar voices on the bands that in some cases were taking their first tentative broadcasting steps in the 1990s, whilst others have been around even longer. Radio Pamela, Pandora, Weekend Music Radio, and the Xenon Transmitting Company (XTC but previously Radio Mutiny) as a collective are arguably more active on shortwave than they were 30+ years ago, whilst further afield the likes of  Radio Delta / Delta Radio, Voice of the Netherlands, and even Radio Barones are still 'out there'. 

It is obvious to me that several stations from the UK that have only appeared in relatively recent times involve older operators who were first introduced to the hobby in perhaps the 1980s, or earlier still. I am not suggesting that there weren't any older operators in the 1990s, but in those days 'start up' stations such as Radio Confusion (later Subterranean Sounds), Live Wire Radio, Radio Blackbeard, Station Sierra Sierra, and so on were founded by a much younger demographic than those today who are introducing new names to shortwave. This obviously suggests that the nuts and bolts of building a free radio station is not appealing to younger age groups, with the technology and processes to get on the airwaves in general, not just shortwave, being far different to what they were. 

This leads me into broadcasters who like to relay other stations, not from cassettes sent to them a la the Northern Ireland Relay Service, but seemingly random choices from the internet that presumably correlate with the operators own interests / tastes, if albeit without the knowledge of  anyone involved with the inadvertently relayed station. There was an example of this only the past week, as Dance UK, an internet collective of DJs, found itself being relayed onto 6.9 MHz. Another illustration of this is the intermittent relaying of Coast FM, a Tenerife or Canary Irelands-based station, for reasons only known to the relayer. If you enjoy a station, why not just listen to it in the comfort of your own home, rather than feeling the need to be a conduit between the originator, and a somewhat bemused shortwave audience?

I am not saying the relays other than those pre-arranged and paid for didn't occur in the 1990s, but I would say that in the main it is a far more recent phenomenon, and obviously reflects the number of stations worldwide instantly available online, and their commensurate accessibility. Perhaps the rig owner simply wants the thrill of broadcasting on shortwave, but without the effort of putting out their own programmes? 

It has often been a moot point as to whether shortwave operators actually want to communicate with listeners, many of whom are slavishly devoted to QSL-card collecting rather than spending a greater length of time listening to what used to be semi-curated programmes, with a dash of off the cuff chat for good measure. I am though not a hypocrite; in my far younger days I was impatient to hear an ID, write down a track or two, before combing the band for other stations. To receive demands for a QSL on this basis must have really grated with some / many operators, to several of whom I was probably a borderline pain. This contrite author is now very much a poacher turned gamekeeper. 

However, for those stations that did / do like to receive feedback (no pun intended) about their signal and modulation, listeners were far more important in the past than in the contemporary SDR waterfall times in which we live. It is now extremely easy to monitor your own signal using a remote SDR from just about anywhere in the world, which severely restricts the need to solicit contact from listeners. If a station operator can self-monitor whilst playing music they presumably like, where is the motivation to put out an email address? Talking of such, in the early 1990s until about 1996 contact was all about writing to 'snail mail' addresses, often to locations synonymous with the time: Victoria Road, Salisbury; Green Park, Bath and so on, along with often heard P O Box drop offs in Wuppertal, Merlin, and Herten. There would also be a few stations that would risk their own addresses being announced, or that of a trusted associate, but there would always be a risk that a listener would, for example, put Midlands Music Radio on the envelope, instead of the more vague but safer MMR. 

After 1996, I recall mobile telephone numbers being announced and just before the turn of the millennium, email addresses would become more common. Nevertheless, when I left the hobby in 2002/3 (until about 2015) mailing addresses were still common, if albeit complemented by their email equivalent. Nowadays, it is exceptionally rare to hear a postal address or a mobile number being announced. The change from traditional to electronic mail is understandable, and of course is instantaneous, but phone contact, or the lack of it, suggests that many programmes are pre-recorded, removing the element of live interaction between operator and listener. There will though be individual reasons depending on the station in question, but the phone ringing in the studio during a live broadcast certainly added a frisson of interest, at least to this listener.

One counterintuitive downside to instant messaging is just that - its immediacy. Gone are the days when listeners would have to accept quite a wait to hear from operators, who in most cases would have to twiddle their thumbs before their box number or remote address forwarded their mail. Nowadays, listeners know that stations that announce an email address will receive their email straightaway, and in their minds will assume that a reply will be just as swift. For all the good things that Weekend Music Radio has brought to free radio, prompt replying has never been one of them ! However, I think I am right in saying that Jack has received emails complaining that a very recently sent previous email has not been replied to, even if it was only sent a day or two before. This is now though a societal norm; the instantaneous nature of technology and a cutthroat marketplace has brought up a generation hardwired to expect everything yesterday. 

There will I am sure be other areas of free radio that are very different in the modern era to what is four decades ago, but the use of 3 MHz in the 1990s during the evenings precipitated a significant amount of enjoyment I gained from the hobby. As far as I am aware, 76 metres is not characteristic with the free radio scene of today, but back in the day was the backbone of much of what was broadcast from the UK. It has been addressed ad nauseum within this blog, but the likes of Subterranean Sounds, Radio Armadillo, Weekend Music Radio, Wizard's Magic Spell, and Live Wire made Saturday nights something to look forward to. If one station wasn't active, others would be. There was, it seemed, an etiquette of not broadcasting when one of your aforementioned  contemporaries was active, compared to today when all the technology in the world doesn't seem to be enough for some operators to check a frequency before deciding upon it.

Previous posts have reminisced about bank holidays and shortwave free radio. Of the few bank holidays we have in the UK, this is perhaps the one that I associate the least with listening to hobby pirates, as conditions often worsened before rebooting in the late summer / early autumntime. Maybe I just had other things to do during the brief spells of nice weather normally associated with late May / early June. The realities of adult life means that will probably involve visiting a garden centre.

Has free radio changed of its own accord, or is it simply mirroring wider social change ? I personally think the latter, and whilst the Alan Deutschman book screams Change or Die, free radio will continue to buck trends in some ways, but in the end be just as influenced by moving with the times as any other part of life. Putting aside the futility of stating which era was better, I am though sure, for me at least, which I prefer.

Eurovision x Subterranean Sounds Redux

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. 

Show me the way to (Radio) Armadillo...

Once described as 'an unsung hero of shortwave' is it not unfair of me to say that more people will have heard of Radio Armadillo than who actually received the station. Whether that is due to the somewhat quirky appellation that would have enabled it to stand out amongst the usual suspects in free radio publications, and/or the notoriety attached to the station bordering on being an urban myth due to only being heard by a small listenership, I cannot conclusively say. 

It was though a privilege to happen upon a Radio Armadillo broadcast. A poor response to broadcasts can if anything be a backhanded compliment to some free radio station operators; in a nutshell, those occupying more idiosyncratic terrain who do not subscribe, acquiesce, or limit themselves to formulaic utterances such as 'the next record is by' and canned identifications but instead lace their broadcasts with humour and a discursive taste in music and topics of conversation will not necessarily snare the attention of the average free radio adherent, especially those who demand a QSL card after hearing approximately 6 minutes of a broadcast whilst undertaking a 'bandscan'.

Those of a similar bent to Radio Armadillo, with whom I would bracket Radio Orion(latterly the Bogus Jobseeker and the Bogusman), Subterranean Sounds, and the Xenon Transmitting Company(XTC) would, if I may be so bold to say, have appreciated more letters(now emails) of greater depth and interest, even if this meant receiving fewer missives overall than they actually did. Indeed, even in my early days(approximately April 1991) of listening to free radio on shortwave, I myself was upbraided by Steve Midnight, the operator of Subterranean Sounds' predecessor Radio Confusion, for in effect begging for a QSL. I was bang to rights, but had heard the station so in my mind at least warranted the receipt of a verification for doing so, but putting myself in the station operator's shoes I can now completely understand his annoyance at the motivation of my letter, and no doubt at the time of those received from many other listeners. 

If though Armadillo didn't get the recognition it deserved, if this is to be measured by the amount of contact the operator received, there was also an issue of the station being restricted to using low power. I would though say, without romanticizing free radio in general or any of its component parts, that this added to the station's mystic and lent greater credence to its fabled reputation. The same mien would not have been effectuated by, for example, the strains of heavy metal punctuated by extracts from the 1980's children's show Rainbow, or the musings of Kermit the Frog if Radio Armadillo was a powerhouse station that wiped out other operators 10 kHz either side. 

Free radio stations were and are to this day restricted by local circumstances as to how much power their transmitters radiate. I would surmise that should the driving force of a station operator be to receive hundreds, maybe thousands of letters, then greater power will always facilitate this outcome, regardless of programme content. Quite simply, whatever the proportion of listeners who actually write in actually was/is, this will  always be higher by dint of a commensurately larger audience. This greater quantity does though in no way equate to correlative quality; on the contrary, anything but. 

I have no doubt that Radio Armadillo wanted more correspondence, if only at least in the early days of its existence to prove the transmitting equipment was in full working order and that the operator wasn't talking to himself. As the likes of Live Wire Radio's Bill Lewis will probably testify, broadcasting entertaining programmes coupled with outstanding technical values can in the end be a curse rather than a blessing, but where the line is crossed for being careful what you wish for, in the sense of the amount and quality of letters received, will always be different for each operator. 

One of Radio Armadillo's defining qualities was the need to be different, not simply by playing devil's advocate as a counterpoint to so many other stations of the time, but through a genuine desire to step outside the tacitly-set boundaries of programming and where on the radio spectrum the station could be heard, and when. Broadcasting away from conventional weekend norms, in particular the 48-metre band on Sundays, would also reduce the size of listenership to those with whom the penny had dropped that free radio could at times be heard on shortwave during the week, people between employment, and still in education. These demographics would amount to fewer overall listeners, but ones with potentially more interesting things to say. There was undoubtedly method in Armadillo's 'madness' but where I am hypothesizing about the station's modus operandi and raison d’ê-tre, it might simply have been easier for the operator to broadcast on 6292 kHz on a Friday afternoon or 3947 kHz at 2 am than the usual, more common or garden times and days. 

As is common with most of the free radio stations of the time, I cannot recall the last time I received Radio Armadillo. I am though convinced that we have not heard the last from "the Middle A" - a pet name(please note that Armadillo's do not make good pets) adapted from Radio Orion's self-styled "Big O" sobriquet-itself cribbed from Roy Orbison's album of the same name - and whilst the station is for the time being absent from the airwaves, the operator's involvement with the scene lives on in the form of being Bogusman's amanuensis. 

Further information, zany and otherwise, can be found at the Radio Armadillo website - with an added bonus of continuous streaming of archived Bogusman broadcasts also kindly brought to us by a station that defied convention and exemplified within its programming a freedom of expression that didn't seek approval from the free radio cognoscenti, but which deserved far greater recognition than it ever received.