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. 

1st April 1991

How ever you slice it, 30 years is a long time in anyone's life. To be looking back on UK-based hobby pirates from that length of time ago is undoubtedly unusual if only for its own sake, but where and how they figured within the patchwork quilt of my life at the time, and to varying extents since, has very much been the basis of my blog.

To undertake this project simply to give my slant on the shortwave free radio scene of the time would have been insufficient reason in itself, but the early 1990s represented some of the most influential and tumultuous years in my life to date. The overlap of an outstanding period for music a few years either side of 1990 with free radio certainly resonated at the time as it still does to some extent today, but my stumbling across of pirate radio would not have had the same effect upon me if it had been in a different era, perhaps even a different year, as its unique selling point captivated my life as much as the football and music scenes of the time, and the discovery of the pluses and minuses associated with teenage relationships with the opposite sex. 

A symbiotic existence of  the constituent parts of my life was held together by one area predominating when perhaps another fell short of expectations and desires, which would be commonplace in the ephemeral worlds of sporting success and musical mastery. Free radio would also at times frustrate, as it only ever could if by that point one was so immersed within it, but the relative joy and dejection of hearing, or not as the case may be, stations that became favourites would neatly mesh in with the ebb and flow of teenage years, although I perhaps did not think of it like that at the time. 

The April Fools' Day of 1991 has brought back many memories for me, including how my rapidly burgeoning interest in shortwave free radio had manifested itself. It was a wild, windy, and wet Easter bank holiday Monday in the UK, and I was staying at my grandparents' house during part of the school holidays. How much radio had become part of my life only 6 months after first hearing pirate stations on the 48 metre band was demonstrated in the way I turned my grandparents' library/second sitting room into a radio shack, complete with a long wire antenna projecting from my Russian-issue Venturer 2959 multi-band analogue receiver that actually came as standard with a shoulder strap - the irony being it was anything but a easily portable radio even with this unorthodox appendage.

Despite my grandparents' house being in a semi-rural location compared to my then anything but rural place of residence, reception conditions had never in the past been what I hoped them to be. Perhaps I had previously just been unlucky, or that I expected too much from what was an extremely modest and at times frustrating piece of listening equipment. Either way, I didn't expect a great deal of listening success on April 1st thirty years ago, but fortunately that proved to be unduly pessimistic. 

In the absence of my now long gone logbooks, I am indebted to a copy of FRS Goes DX from the 22nd April 1991 recently sourced online to jolt my memory of the stations heard that public holiday. To say it was memorable but I couldn't otherwise have recalled those broadcasting that day without the Dutch-based publication sounds rather counter-intuitive but in my defence it has of course been thirty years, but I always knew it to be a significant day of listening, as born out by the loggings from that day.

As with most of the defining moments and facets of my teenage years, a Venn Diagram could be drawn as to how the individual influences tied in with each other. That my listening post was at the home of my late and much missed grandparents' isn't lost upon me, but neatly dovetails as a microcosm of the fluctuating emotions that reverberated from such interdependent memories of the time. 

My abiding recollection of the day was hearing Wee Guy Radio, a spoof 'station' operated by a well known Scottish gentleman whose presence on shortwave was synonymous with the 1990s shortwave hobby pirate scene. With little compunction bound up in an astute ability to mimic, gently mock and even deride several other free radio operators of the time, Wee Guy's yearly appearances were as brief as they were entertaining through an ability to subtly and blatantly point the finger at those who took themselves too seriously, and where extremely minor celebrity had gone to several heads. It was though the harmless and gentle satirizing of the late Norman Nelson of Radio East Coast Commercial as Norman Nesquik of a West Coast equivalent which has stayed with me, along with other more derogatory caricatures of those whose blushes I will spare. 

Elsewhere on 48 metres that day, Weekend Music Radio(funnily enough...!), Live Wire, Radio Confusion(later Subterranean Sounds) and a Mike Wilson(Bogusman)-inspired Radio Orion were also heard, along with fellow UK-based broadcasters Rocket 48, Radio Stella, and Midlands' Music Radio. Not only was this a day for quantity, there was no lack of quality within the output of the aforementioned - which more or less came as standard. To have so many listenable stations vying for attention during one morning reflects just how different the scene was then to what it has become today. 

It is unfair of me to say that the forthcoming Easter bank holiday Monday is not worth the effort of tuning in, but as the aforementioned leviathans of the 1990s slowly drifted away into semi or permanent broadcasting retirement, those of a similar calibre or who showed signs of having the potential to take up the mantle have generally been few and far between, and increasingly conspicuous by their absence. 

As with any decade the 1990s branded the most impressionable growing up in that era with an imprint which whilst not defining the road subsequently travelled in later life, certainly had a guiding influence on lives which in my case make the decade, especially its early to mid-years, so memorable for their own sake, but often depressing when contrasting like for like with today and the emotions engendered that will, just like the familial and radio protagonists of the time, never return.

It is said that comparisons are odious but if conditions and circumstances allow, only the Xenon Transmitting Company(XTC) of the stations that have that unique listenability so commonplace in the 1990s but now which are more or less absent, lost, and/or unavailable has the potential to be heard this forthcoming Easter Monday. That though is through arriving at the rather unrealistic conclusion that all who listen to free radio or have previously done so demand the same things from it as I once did. To many who tune in today the output on offer will be entirely to their taste and represent an exciting alternative to the homogenized mainstream. When though you can remember the glory days of one's own listening, and which now seems like a half a lifetime away, that is because it actually is, representing changes in taste, technology, and the importance or otherwise free radio plays in the lives of its listeners. 

There is no way of returning to the past but unearthing the FRS Goes DX publication was to me akin to an archaeological find from another age. When reminiscence goes beyond fondly remembering the past into territory of deriding the present, it is there where it must stop. There is a always a time to remember, but also one from which to move on. Being able to recognize the boundaries between the two is the difficult part. 

Going underground - with the Subterranean

It was to be several months after first hearing Subterranean Sounds' forerunner Radio Confusion before I got around to contacting the station, specifically its operator, Steve Midnight. As I have chronicled in a previous blog post, our first contact was to say the least somewhat inauspicious.  

The date would be around the beginning of April 1991. Your correspondent, then a rather naive 14-year-old with a style of contacting stations that betrayed my neophyte status as a free radio listener, wrote to the inimitable Mr. Midnight, solely it would seem, with the intention of procuring an at-the-time highly coveted QSL card. I now freely admit that I felt justification in my immature brain to request a tangible verification of receiving Radio Confusion, albeit probably only by dint of hearing the station identifying itself and its contact details. Nothing else. I obviously did not elaborate further about the programme, on what subject Mr. Midnight was holding forth, nor the musical content. With complete justification, these were the kind of begging/grovelling letters that the operator rightly gave short shrift to.

Yes, I did receive a QSL - at the time this induced in me a 'job done' mentality - but attached was a mild rebuke, along the lines of 'yes, you can have a QSL card; after all, if you hadn't heard the station you'd just be kidding yourself'. Feeling chastised but understanding the aforementioned words of wisdom and my own, rather embarrassed sensibilities, I doubt I ever wrote again to a station purely on the hunt for a QSL, instead turning my hand to what to me at least were interesting letters. Whilst these may have been grist to the mill for some operators, others remained more concerned that their signal had reached my area of the world. Even though my slavish desire for verification cards had been staunched, many station operators still assumed, even though one was never requested, that the underlying reason for contact was to add to my then QSL collection. 

I don't recall corresponding with Mr. Midnight again until Radio Confusion had morphed into Subterranean Sounds. I had though missed many of Confusion's broadcasts which took place on 7 MHz, an area of the band that my analogue National Panasonic receiver struggled with unless stations were running high power. Only when I had upgraded my listening station, albeit modestly, and that Subterranean Sounds was primarily heard on 3 MHz, usually around 3945 kHz, did I become a regular listener and correspondent, including several telephone chats with Steve.

The early days, in other words during the Radio Confusion-era, a music policy that centred upon the 'indie' genre was particularly evident, drawing inspiration from labels such as One Little Indian, now renamed One Little Independent in the wake of George Floyd's death. It is though Subterranean's varied output that included tracks by The Future Sound of London, Broadcast, and a period around 1995 where jungle/drum 'n' bass was give airtime, that particularly resonates with me to this day. Far though from being a continuous music station only interspersed with the occasional identification, Mr. Midnight would not be averse to including speech-based content to complement his musical taste, nor to launching into polemics on subjects that especially exercised his interest or displeasure. 

There would also be variation in Subterranean Sounds' programmes from the occasional guests who would join Steve in the studio - live and unleashed. Including Radio Mutiny/XTC operator Tommy Teabags/Matt Roberts, Live Wire's Bill Lewis, and Radio London/Aires' Andy Winter, the one name that stands out from the aforementioned free radio leviathans is Des Francis/Steve Collins of The Nitrozone, a station formerly known as Total Control Radio(TCR). Despite the conspicuously infrequent broadcasts by TCR and then under The Nitrozone name, I was never able to receive any broadcasts by either. The only time I therefore heard the station operator on the air was when he took part in a broadcast by another.

As is common with most of the stations that I have written about over the last couple of weeks, I cannot really put a date to when I last heard a broadcast by the station that was far better known as Subterranean Sounds than its former identity; I would though estimate it to be over twenty years ago, which seems highly implausible but sadly more than likely. There is almost a complete absence of information online to complement this abridged overview of one of the UK's most listenable free radio broadcasters during the 1990's, but I am sure some of those reading will be able to flesh out the detail from their own memories of the station.

There is nothing to suggest that Mr. Midnight is planning a triumphant return to the airwaves any time soon, with the station's period of operation adjourned sine die. I have though often pondered as to whether a resumption of broadcasting by many of the leading lights of the decade would tarnish or embellish their respective legacies, and if such an eventuality would give a much-needed shot in the arm(a somewhat poignant idiom) to the current scene that relies more on continuous music and canned announcements than producing diverse output that also includes, shock horror, interaction, opinion, and comment. Sometimes the past is best left just there and whilst nostalgia isn't always what is used to be, the feelings and enthusiasm generated in the 1990's will never be replicated by an attempt to reboot the scene thirty years later.

For me free radio in the 1990's embodied a spirit of a time which has manifestly moved on. There is little doubt that speech-based content accompanied by personal music taste was already a dying art thirty years ago, but was underpinned by the likes of Radio Orion(later the Bogus Jobseeker and the Bogusman), Subterranean Sounds, and XTC. Although the Bogusman can occasionally be heard via Channel 292, it is really only the evergreen XTC who now bucks the trend with programming that the audience won't seek alternatives to after a few minutes of listening. 

There will be many reasons why decade by decade the free radio scene has, although subjective and inevitably compared to a time that I regard as a golden era, deteriorated to a point where it seems many stations exist solely for the pleasure and satisfaction of the operator, instead of being a means of entertainment for shortwave listeners. I do still have to keep reminding myself that free radio can never be all things to all people, but at the same time those stations operators who are not overly concerned with what their listenership thinks must not just assume that an audience reared on dire and formulaic legal FM fayre simply wish to hear a replicant, ersatz version on shortwave.

It is though the unique take on shortwave broadcasting so personified by Subterranean Sounds that encapsulated a free thinking and nonconformist antithesis to the already homogenised legit radio of the time, which has subsequently taken boring genericism to new depths. It is not to what we yearn for now but will no longer come to pass that should occupy our thoughts, but how fortunate those of us who listened to UK free radio stations in the 1990's actually were.

What's in a name?

By the time I had stumbled upon the shortwave free radio scene in the autumn of 1990, change was very much in the air. The Berlin Wall had fallen just a year earlier, with the UK rave music scene exploding in many northern towns forgotten by Margaret Thatcher's divisive 11 years in office. Freedom of expression and the desire for self-determination gained significant momentum, as the first, ultimately terminal cracks in both the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Federation foreshadowed the chaotic and ruinous years that lay ahead.

The music charts were not to be left out. Is was two Scottish bands, Primal Scream and The Soup Dragons, who opined through their respective tracks Loaded, and the Rolling Stones cover I'm Free, that they, and not just the post-Thatcher nation but also throughout Eastern Europe and beyond wished to be 'free to do what they want to do' and be 'free to do what they want - any old time'. Accidentally or otherwise, these two tracks matched and spoke for the prevailing zeitgeist of the time.

To define free radio would perhaps be self-contradictory; the idea, after all, of being a 'pirate' station was/is to not conform in terms of style, musical content, and within the confines of a broadcast schedule. In that sense there are no definitions, templates, or modi operandi to satisfy, but it would be surprising if the motivation of some station operators wasn't to play devil's advocate to the British Broadcasting Corporation's(BBC) hegemonic grip on legal shortwave operations emanating from the UK.

I always favoured, as I do to this day, speech-based programming interspersed with diverse music and to some extent, audience participation. That though is a personal preference, and reflects a desire on the part of the station to not only air his favourite tracks that more than likely would not be heard on legal radio stations, but to also please the audience. There were stations in the 1990's, some of whom are still around today, I felt were more interested in 'rocking for themselves' than for those who might be listening, but in the spirit of free radio, a medium without constraints or policies, this 'each to their own' approach to broadcasting is neither right nor wrong, but will obviously suit some of the listenership more than others. That again reflects a freedom of choice usually absent in legit but identikit FM and MW stations.

I dis though nevertheless find it surprising that many operators, who had obviously gone to significant effort to construct a transmitter and acquire all the associated hardware, had relatively little to say once they hit the airwaves. I understand we are not all the same, with some being more gregarious, opinionated, and curious about the world around us than others, but to simply play continuous music with often only canned IDs, or limiting verbal participation to saying who the last track was performed by, was not necessarily the entertainment I sought in the 1990's. I must though again remind myself that freedom to broadcast how one likes runs in tandem with being able to choose who to listen to; that is as just as much the wont of the audience as is the broadcast style which the station operator decides to pursue.

Freedom came in many forms for the UK shortwave free radio scene during the 1990's, although one aspect that might have escaped the attention of some listeners was how several stations during the decade changed their operational names. There was probably a variety of reasons behind these decisions unrelated to each other, ranging from clashes with stations of similar names, putting distance from a past that might have included visits from the authorities, or simply wishing to move on and present a more mature image than one which a previous name might have suggested. It was not obvious that a change of music or type of programme precipitated certain stations to broadcast under different names, although as with all the content in these blog posts, I am happy to be proved wrong by those with greater knowledge and who had the inside track.

One such station began life as Total Control Radio(TCR), before moving on to be known as The Nitrozone. Now, it is particular odd for me to write about TCR, what with their broadcasts and those under its future moniker always being elusive to my best attempts to hear them. I only knew about both names from loggings of their broadcasts in various free radio publications from the time. The mystery to me was that I would usually be listening to shortwave at the time TCR/The Nitrozone were broadcasting, but only knew they had done so after the event. I can only put it down to the station running very low power which my extremely modest analogue radios of the time could not receive. In fact, the only time I heard the station operator, who I believe also changed his name from Des Francis to Steve Collins, or vice versa, was when he guested on a Subterranean Sounds broadcast. 

Those who listen to the 48-metre band in the modern era will be all too familiar with the almost omnipresent Radio Merlin International, very much a staple of a UK free radio scene that has noticeably dwindled in the last 20 years. What many people will not realize is that Merlin has been around in its current guise for the best part of the last three decades, but was originally known by me in 1990 as Radio Galaxy. Station operator Paul Watt has been the man at the helm since the mid-1980's, and whilst raids by the authorities presumably brought about a desire to change to a name shared by the Ontario town which once acted as a mail drop for the station, Galaxy and Merlin have in many ways remained indivisible from each other. Just as Merlin can now be heard any day of the week on 6305 kHz, sometimes day and night, I recall Galaxy being an ever-present on or around 6240 kHz. The effort Paul Watt goes to to keep the station on the air is perhaps taken for granted, but over 30 years of broadcasting is not something to be taken lightly. That in itself is not a reason alone to pay Merlin excessive reverence, but broadcasting is obviously an obsession for Paul that doesn't show any signs of being on the wane.

Radio Orion was one of the more interesting UK-based stations that in many ways ticked the boxes of what I preferred from a free radio broadcaster. With an excellent music policy that was often procured from record store bargain bins, presenter Mike Wilson laced his programmes with chat that ranged from the highly intelligent to the plain silly but always with an articulate delivery, if albeit one that bordered on the apathetic and world-weary. For several years in the early 1990's Orion was a Sunday morning fixture on 6290 kHz, before a period of absence - I forgot for how long and the reason behind it - from which Mike reemerged as the Bogus Jobseeker, not just as a change of name for himself as such but by what Orion would go on to be known as. At the time those who were registered unemployed in the UK would receive Jobseeker's Allowance(JSA) - unemployment benefit by another name. In return for receiving the pittance that was designed for those in receipt of it to not be able to financially manage and therefore be coerced on that basis into taking any work, rather than from actively seeking a role they wished to undertake, it was alluded by 'Bogus' that he was so self-named because of feigned attempts to secure work whilst receiving these state benefits. 

It was very much the change of identity which gave the Bogus Jobseeker an almost cult following, with wry observations about walks/bike rides along canals to the mannerisms of neighbours which complemented an eclectic taste in music that betrayed a deep knowledge and appreciation of what he played. Later known simply as the Bogusman, listeners were perhaps left from another change of identity to conclude that the man himself was now in employment, or had if nothing else ceased claiming JSA. Radio Orion would also spawn an offshoot broadcaster, the uncompromisingly named Vic Hitler, who would by this point need a separate vehicle away from the eponymous Bogus Jobseeker, and eventually broadcasted under the name Fresh Air 2000, an example of the QSL issued at the time can be seen on Will Phillips' excellent website: Fresh Air 2000 - QSL card

A station I heard less of during its first identity than its second coming, Radio Confusion was initially known for playing 'indie' music from labels such as One Little Indian, now itself renamed as One little Independent in the wake of George Floyd's death. When broadcasting on 6 MHz I would at times struggle to receive broadcasts fronted by operator Steve Midnight, but a move to night-time transmissions on 3 MHz coupled with an improved receiver, a Sangean ATS-803A, enabled better reception of who had by then become Subterranean Sounds. Musical highlights included the only place on shortwave where I heard drum n' bass/jungle tracks, and Mr. Midnight's liking for recordings by, for example, the Future Sound of London and Birmingham-based collective Broadcast. 

Where the likes of Subterranean Sounds have called time on broadcasting another station, one I first heard in 1991, and whose past bears little nominal relation to its current semblance, continues to this day. The Xenon Transmitting Company(XTC) has if anything had something of a renaissance since the advent of the novel coronavirus, resulting in several lockdown special broadcasts which have not only rolled back the years to when shortwave free radio had several UK-based stations whose musical preferences dovetailed with interesting, speech-based content, but has also been a welcome (re)addition to what in modern times has become a somewhat depleted UK presence on 48 metres. 

Starting life as Radio Mutiny and under the guidance of the exquisitely named Tommy Teabags, what eventually became XTC is now in the hands of Matt Roberts, an archetypal-form of DJ name that often uses two Christian names as a 'stage' identity. It also represents, by Matt's own admission, a name more in keeping with someone of his age than the previous, though somewhat time-limited nom de plume could realistically do. 

In recent years broadcasts by XTC were usually restricted to bank holidays, but the last ten months have arguably represented the station's most prolific period, something which worldwide and personal circumstances have undoubtedly precipitated - to the benefit of those interested in speech-based output laced with an outstanding taste in music. Even my rather twee requests for tracks by the KLF and yes, Primal Scream's Loaded, have been met with subsequent airplay of both. Of a similar vintage to me, albeit a few years hence, Matt himself grew up on the relative fine dining experience of the early to mid-90's UK shortwave scene, and is one of the last bastions of what not only first attracted me to listening to free radio, but which held my attention for the best part of a decade. 

Notwithstanding several Dutch operators who change names like the wind, the altering of what they are identifiable by is now a feature of the past for the UK's free radio presence on shortwave. There are stations who are ostensibly recent newcomers but that I suspect were around in the past and are now potentially labouring under different aliases, but that is only a theory rather than a fact, and anyhow does not represent a seamless change of name which many of the above examples demonstrated. 

Each station had its own reason for a change of titular direction, but a desire to do so neatly encapsulates a facet of free radio where evolution, and indeed revolution, ensured that it remained fresh and very much a movable feast, as opposed to the now horrific generic offerings on FM where 'The Hits' and 'Heart' have engulfed many local, individual presences and identities. 

NEXT TIME: Who's still around?