So, I’ve had this project bubbling away for a few months now. Myself and a friend DJ a weekly radio show.
I’ve not talked about it at all on DragonDrop so far. I guess I’d been waiting till it hit critical mass – something other than us ‘having a go at doing a show’ to us ‘doing a good show’. Whilst it’s still in its absolute infancy and a bit rough around the edges, as far as ‘radio shows’ go, it’s now something, Thanks particularly to the last few shows, it’s now something I’m proud of (or at least OK to spread the word about). We had a record 113 listeners last week, hardly BBC Radio 1, but for a non commercial NFP station born out of nothing, No promo, just word of mouth, it’s AOK. We’re getting some good feedback and people seem to be quite complimentary about the whole gig and… we love doing it. It’s one of the highlight of our week.
Over the last six months, we’ve produced over 48 hours of radio involving hundreds of tracks, several special guests and quite a few tins of lager.
The RIFE story
Friends and stalwart readers of DragonDrop will remember a regular club night I used to put on / promote /run with a guy called Allan : FIRE. In the afterglow of FIRE (I’m not saying those embers have totally died down, for the record), Allan and I continued to put up with each other and generally love each others musical tastes and ideas. We were approached by station controller Andy Backhouse (who’s also attempting a blog 365 – give the man some props!). He’s an all round nice guy from what I’ve seen, and internet based Harrogate Alternative Radio station controller. He’d heard about us through DragonGate Festival and FIRE. He posed the question -do you want to do a show? A weekly show? I’d heard about the station independently and loved the concept.
We parked it for a month – as we were both busy in the run up to DragonGate 12. After the fest, we thought about it – and what we’d actually do with a radio show slot, then, trialed a pilot – for a laugh. It went well, and the rest, as they say is history. Since the Allan (who runs an excellent AV / audio hire business) has built a rather cool studio in his cellar, and this is where we dwell every Wednesday evening, pretending it’s Saturday night when the show goes out.
We describe the show as “State of the art Techno, House, Dubstep, Breaks, IDM, D&B and Electronica ruined by a couple of bumbling idiots who are old enough to know better. Overground underground, wobbling free – Saturdays, 8 ’till 10, GMT.” but it’s often nothing like that. Apart from the bumbling idiots. We are the naughty dads club.
If you fancy an ear look, tune in to the latest show every Saturday at 20:00 GMT on HAR. If you fancy listening to a couple of example shows;
I can vouch for the fun, quality of tunes and that I am very happy to be wearing the wrong glasses!