Laughter is the key to longevity for Radio Pandora's chuckling Steve St. John

The hook line in the 1991 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark(OMD) track Pandora's Box posits that its subject, silent movie star Louise Brooks, was 'a long, long way from where she'd want to be'. Now, if there can ever be a tenuous link between this seemingly obscure reason behind one of the early 1990s most memorable pop tracks and shortwave free radio stalwart Radio Pandora, it would be my frustration that the station's signal during the mid nineties was a long way from being listenable, either because of my rather prosaic listening post or the station's extremely low wattage broadcasting capability. Maybe both. 

Yesterday evening I caught a few minutes of Radio Pandora's 28th anniversary broadcast, transmitting on 6935 Khz and heard via the North West Ireland SDR remote receiver. What a different a quarter of century makes! With a signal surpassing S9 and a shade under +10 dB Pandora was sounding more like Live Wire or Weekend Music Radio(WMR) from yesteryear than its previous incarnation where I would often not know the station had been on the air unless it had been logged in free radio publications. 

Pandora is now arguably more of a fixture on 6 MHz than it ever has been - or perhaps it is simply because now it has the capability to be heard by more listeners over a wider area - but the station's almost weekly appearances between 6935-6955 Khz betrays operator Steve St. John's renewed lust for broadcasting - assisted in no little way by the acquisition of a new 100 Watt rig.

In these days of continuous music, almost always canned IDs and when the DJ actually talks it is often only to say 'that was... the next record is...' Radio Pandora lends an almost old-school but very welcome antithesis to modern free radio broadcasting with a personable touch that doesn't take itself too seriously, complemented by a diverse choice of music and trademark chuckling. 

This is, was, and forever shall be my preferred style of free radio, and along with the Xenon Transmitting Company(XTC) represents the last bastion of its kind who broadcast on shortwave from the UK that actually have something of interest to say to the listener, without sounding like a polished but generic ILR station. Indeed, you can almost set your watch to Steve St. John namechecking Mr. XTC during a Pandora broadcast. 

There is currently a minor resurgence of UK-based stations including relatively new additions Radio Jennifer, Radio Clash, and Cruisin Radio to complement the now established Radio Nova and Radio Parade, alongside shortwave's fixtures and fittings Radio Pamela and Radio Merlin. When it is though considered that over the last two decades the likes of Radio Armadillo, Subterranean Sounds, Radio Orion, Station Sierra Sierra, as well as Live Wire and WMR have been lost to the scene, it is little wonder that UK-based broadcasting on shortwave has lost most of its lustre. 

Despite being a mere stripling compared to Steve St. John, XTC's Matt Roberts has though been broadcasting on shortwave as long as, if not for longer than the man at Radio Pandora's controls. There are plenty of broadcasting years ahead of both, but I hope that other would be operators out there in the wings can eventually serve as an adjunct to the more listenable elements of UK-based free radio on shortwave, and in the end take its reins. 

Here's to another 28 years, Steve! 

Next time: Buzz FM, the not so nowadays frequency modulated station currently operated on the medium wave band by a very familiar voice from the past... 

In conclusion: Is nostalgia what it used to be?

I have long pondered as to what made the UK's contribution in the 1990's to shortwave free radio what it was, but have concluded that there are too many personal and external factors for this to be succinctly and concisely encapsulated. Where though the hobby slotted into the mosaic of one's own life is a significant criterion on which to base any sort of conclusion, this can only ever precipitate subjectivity as to how individuals related to the stations they heard, taking personal taste into consideration and where their own 'jumping off point' into free radio began.

My experiences of pirate 'free' radio began in 1990; therefore, I had no other stations who began life prior to that date with whom to make a comparison. Many though listening in that era will already have 'previous' of doing so, and could weigh up the relative merits of what they were hearing then with stations from the 1980's. Far from being bowled over by the UK stations of the 1990's, especially those most prolific in the early years of the decade, listeners reared on 1980's free radio might have thought it an ersatz imitation. This scenario is obviously not just limited to the aforementioned decades, but very much relates to when the listener joined the party. 

This leads on into my thoughts of the current overall free radio scene on shortwave, and not just that which pertains to UK-based stations. Those who are completely or relatively new to consuming free radio may not be any the wiser as to what could be heard in the past, and its relative merits, and so will to take today's output for what it is. It is easy to be critical of this inadvertent ignorance, but it is just the same for contemporary audiences as it was for those of us who began listening thirty years ago, but engenders inevitable 'things ain't what they used to be' type emotions if free radio of today is viewed somewhat dimly when juxtaposed with what I initially titled the genre's 'golden era'.

It is not possible for this blog to step into individual circumstances, mindsets, and personalities other than those of your correspondent. This collection of memories and opinions has always been about my take on what I heard, and how it was regarded at the time and since. There are no rights or wrongs, nor can someone else's taste that is different to mine be regarded as inferior; in the last fifty years television and radio has always offered choice and the chance to 'turn over' or move the dial to something more palatable, with free radio being no different to that. I would though say that aside from the now infrequently heard Bogusman and Xenon Transmitting Company(XTC) listening options are far less diverse than perhaps at any time since pirate radio began broadcasting in earnest during the 1960's. 

There are though many reasons as to why shortwave free radio is vastly different today to what it was thirty years ago, reasons that transcend personal preferences and circumstances. Whilst my take of how the shifting sands of life have infiltrated and exerted influence over, imperceptibly or otherwise, the world of hobby pirates and their listeners, it will I am sure be far from exhaustive. 

When I began listening to free radio at the age of fourteen I was a naive, impressionable youth. It is now impossible, 25-30 years on, to put myself in the shoes of my teenage self. What was new and impressive then to an adolescent wouldn't necessarily hold the same appeal today. It is therefore difficult to ascertain if nostalgia ain't what it used to be, simply because the free radio I first received in 1990 was being heard by very different ears than it is today.

The world has dumbed down, and continues to do so at an alarming rate. Many in society are now impressed with the banal, crass, and vacuous on which much of social media is underpinned. It is hard to imagine listening to shortwave being regarded by the youth of today as anything other than an unnecessarily cerebral way to hear stations, both legal and some hobby pirates, that can be heard with greater clarity and less effort through web streams. The achievement of locating signals through the crackles and static could now be seen as a frustration that outweighs the benefits.

For some time now the world has been in the grip of a 'fast fashion' mentality, that demands instant availability of what is often ephemeral and shallow before being disposed of as quickly as it arrived. This symptom of our time has bled through into impatience and short attention spans, as what was in vogue yesterday becomes the equivalent of today's fish and chip wrappers. In this sense it is far easier to play back to back music than put the necessary effort into producing interesting, thought-provoking programmes.

Rampant housebuilding in the UK has put paid to both the broadcasting and listening side of radio by conventional means, and is something that has undoubtedly affected free radio. Stick with me on this! One prominent operator from the 1990's had fields at the bottom of his garden, which turned in the blink of an eye into a housing estate. As the UK government continues with a level of housebuilding which it believes will cure all the country's financial and accommodational ills, properties are being built closer together than ever which creates more electrical interference from adjacent sources - the flip side being of free radio transmissions bleeding onto telephones, televisions, and other neighbourhood apparatus common to most homes and complaints about antennas has made broadcasting 'from home' a very difficult or almost impossible scenario for many. Which leads me into...

Remote broadcasting, out in the field as it were, has always been an option for pirate stations already limited by personal circumstances and/or those wishing to reduce the risk of detection to a bare minimum. Finding a suitable location and powering up transmitters etc with car batteries or a generator was always a colossal hassle, and really puts an operator's long term commitment to the test. Curious hikers and dog walkers are by no means a new phenomenon, but continued urban sprawl, something particularly noticeable in the last decade, with many of those places classed twenty to thirty years ago as remote now no longer being so. It is undeniable that to find anywhere in the UK that nowadays is genuinely isolated takes a much longer journey than it used to.

It should though be remembered that much of life is cyclical. Where someone or something may have its fifteen minutes of fame before slipping back into the shadows, natural cycles of interest and being 'in fashion' soon turn into obscurity and the easily forgotten. Modern proof of this would suggest that the popularity of vinyl records is going through something of a renaissance, but I cannot help but feel this is more out of copying the habits of others out of a desire to fit in, to be de rigueur, or even to be deliberately contrary. Should free radio also be subject to being of a cyclical nature or not, it may now for many be as far from its apogee as it ever has been and due a rebirth, or alternatively the die has now been terminally cast.

All things in life to a certain degree and at one time or another will change and do. No area of life is immune to this, but change in the modern era is automatically seen as a negative consequence of the days we live in, and is often correct in saying so(in my opinion). Free radio is not insusceptible to this, either by circuitous or direct consequences of inevitable societal change.

Technological strides including an instant availability of music and speech-based podcasts has removed the element of anticipation redolent with for example waiting for the Top 40 chart and even our favourite free radio stations to return to the air. As with fast fashion and 24/7 supermarkets, everything one conceivably needs in life is now available at a minute's notice. I am not a complete Luddite, nor do I cling to the days of yore for all it represented, but it is undeniable that the internet and DAB have made it far easier for many to consume media than battling through the crackles and unfavourable propagation. 

Thirty years ago there were few other mediums of communication other than radio and television. The printed word was of course an important form of conveying the latest occurrences but that too has sharply declined since the advent of the blogosphere(no irony intended) - as have standards of English in all its orthographic and mechanical nuances. As the variety of platforms has broadened so has the bewildering choice from where the general public can get their kicks; it is not unfair to suggest that shortwave radio will now be a long way down that list, and an alien concept to many.

In what can be a construed as chicken and egg cause and effect, a lack of operators or at the very least a large reduction in their number will mirror the downturn in listener numbers. Which precipitated the other is moot, although I suspect it was a process that went hand in hand rather than either blinking first. Many free radio operators active in the early 1990's will have been influenced by their 1970 and 80's counterparts, who themselves presumably drew inspiration from the 1960's pioneers. I am aware that several stations from the 1990's were influenced by one of their contemporaries, for example XTC, Subterranean Sounds, and Radio Armadillo were in part shaped by Radio Orion and then the Bogusman - the common denominator being who we first knew as Mike Wilson. As though each decade has passed a net deficit of new stations have taken up the mantle, or should that be grasped the nettle? It is again moot, but will there be a future scenario where operators draw inspiration from today's crop of those who adhere to continuous music and minimal interaction?

In an attempt to distill the very essence of free radio from my own experiences of listening to it in the 1990's, I have probably found it easier, or less difficult, to ATTEMPT to get under the skin of the station operators to ascertain just what made them tick and offer psychological explanations for their individual motivation, than get a handle on my own reasoning for listening and for a time, how the hobby held me captive. Although imperceptible at first it soon became apparent to me as this blog developed that I had left it too long, perhaps by a decade, to get to the very heart of what free radio meant to me at the time and why, and to find it a position in the then prevailing zeitgeist of my life, either as a counterpoint or reflection of it.

I have though accused myself of attempting to find a deep, psychological, and academic answer to a question that simply doesn't require one, or even where one doesn't actually exist. Comparisons are odious; over thinking things in what is usually a fruitless pursuit of something that is at best subjective, at worst isn't even there to pursue, can be just as egregious. In that sense I conclude that I listened, enjoyed, and moved on. There is in the end no need to go any deeper to justify a harmless facet of one's life than that. The 1990's were often turbulent years in my life and at times free radio was a 'go to' solace, but a danger was always there of taking it too seriously and venerating those who were just normal people often broadcasting from their bedrooms. 

My rather prosaic conclusion would be to remember the past for what it represented for you(if indeed you are able to do that) and recall the great listening days that many of the early to mid-years of the 1990's represented. This should though be done in isolation to the rest of what made up life at the time, and not be seen as its defining factor. To do so will only engender greater disappointment that indeed, things ain't what they used to be. I see little point in rheumy eyed reminiscence of flicking through QSL collections and crackly recordings, for this will only itself draw out conflicting emotions of loss and negative comparisons with the present.

If the very tenets of what free radio stood for, although I admit that is a flexible definition and something of a movable feast, are still important to the listener supporting the stations that still align with what entertainment in their own preferred sense represents remains an important part of the quid pro quo relationship between stations and their audience, at least with those operators who wish to interest their listeners. In my case that would be XTC and the Bogusman, but for others it will involve different stations in keeping with one of free radio's philosophies: each to their own.

Be glad you were there in the 1990's, if indeed you were, but what made it what is was will not be coming back, in general or its free radio element, and the time to move on is at hand. This is as much a lesson for me as the one I am proselytizing. 

Thank you for reading.