Monday 3 May 2010

The future is radio

The future’s bright, the future is radio!



One of the delights of moving to the big city is that you have access to so much more in a cultural sense. Coming from Bury St Edmunds a conservative, and Conservative, market town in the middle of Suffolk I been deprived culturally all my life. You mostly had to travel to see bands, art, decent cinema etc. etc. Now I have it on my doorstep and I feel like a kid in a sweetshop.



I love radio. I’m a child of the fifties. I was weaned on it. For my eight birthday (in 1963) my parents bought me a transistor radio; an expensive consumer item in those days. It remained glued to my lughole like mobiles are glued to yoof these days. These were the heady days of pirate radio. They played exciting new music, and had adverts. This was a brave new world. I was hooked, and I still am. Radio is just so much better than the telivisual idiot box.



I love radio. So imagine my interest when I read in the local newspaper that John Osborne, author of Radio Head (a book I own but have yet to read) had a programme, entitled ‘John Peel’s Shed’, on Future Radio. I had to investigate. I searched the interweb and discovered that Future Radio is a Norwich based community radio station. So last night I dusted down our one remaining VHF (only twats call it ‘FM’) radio and tuned in. John’s programme is based around a prize he won in a competition that John Peel ran in 2002. His prize was “four foot of vinyl”. As you can imagine what John Osborne played was a “teen terrific” and eclectic mix. After his programme I carried on listening, and have done so again this morning. Joy of joys, this is truly wonderful entertainment. Yes it’s amateur, but that’s a plus. This is anti-celebrity, and that is the future.





If you live in Norwich you can listen on 96.9VHF. If you don’t live in the hub of the universe then you can listen online.

1 comment:

  1. John Osborne now has a blog for the show @: http://johnpeelsshed.blogspot.com/

    I'm now part way through his book, Radio Head, I find myself laughing on the train whilst reading it!

    ReplyDelete