United DJs - The Station of the Stars

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Where do I start?

I

THE LAUNCH

I became aware of the intended launch of this station early in 2018. However, initially it did not appear and seeing that it hardly seemed enticing on paper it wasn't my priority to check on any developments. Eventually, I remembered it on 30th December and, not having anything better to do, decided to give it a whirl. Let's do the first of two negative posts first. The impetus was curiosity mainly based upon one of the most condemning articles about anything I have ever read. It was written back in April and published in "The New European".

Given that this highly priced publication sets out its stall so well, I am including a link to it here - https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top...nnel-1-5469567. But for those who cannot be bothered to read it, here are some of the key points. It was founded by former Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg DJ Tony Prince who immediately cut off 48% of his potential audience by describing it somewhat comically as "the Brexit channel". Quote: "It is just going to throw out friendship through the radio and embrace all the countries of the world".

The idea grew out of a meeting of veterans of Radio 1, Radio Luxembourg and Radio Caroline - the likes of Mike Read, Dave Lee Travis and "Diddy" David Hamilton at Prince's home - where they had discussed "how bad the scene had got for radio". When it commenced, it was with nine Radio 1 veterans, nine from Capital and 12 from Radio Luxembourg although in the months that have ensued many, including the at one time newsworthy DLT, have walked out. And it claims to be providing on a global scale the "next revolution in music radio".

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II

THE PERSONNEL

I will move to the positives shortly for there are far more than I anticipated. In the meantime, Tony Prince, 74, who moved from Radio Caroline to Radio Luxembourg following the Wilson Government's Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 became President of the International Elvis Presley Fan Club, interviewed Presley in 1972 and 1973,and played Presley songs non-stop following the singer's death in 1977. He continued to present programmes after becoming programme director at Radio Luxembourg in 1977. He was programme director until 1984, changing the station's format to play predominantly disco and soul music. Arguably more positively when it comes to forward looking - or sounding - initiatives, he launched the club culture magazine Mixmag which he later sold on and in 2002 established World DJ Day, set up to raise funds for the excellent Nordoff-Robbins music therapy charity.

Mike Read, 71, is the other presenter with a very high profile on the station and currently in pantomime. He is perhaps best remembered, not very fairly, for his criticism of the lyrics of "Relax" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood during his spell in the early 1980s on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show. This did not at the time endear him to swaths of young people who perceived themselves as cutting edge. But as Read points out on the station website, he has fronted three top-rated long-running TV series, Top of the Pops, Pop Quiz and Saturday Superstore, and not one but three national radio breakfast shows, including on Classic FM. He travels widely. He has written several film scripts, has had eight musicals staged, penned songs for over forty major artists and currently has a best-selling CD featuring his settings of Rupert Brooke’s War Sonnets, featuring the Kings College Choir & the Eton College Chapel Choir.

He was created a Knight of Malta in 2011 and as Chairman of the British Plaque Trust he devised and spearheaded the 50 Blue Plaques to music icons for BBC Music Day in June 2017. He is an Ambassador for the Prince’s Trust, founder of the Rupert Brooke Museum and Society, and was Chairman of the Lords and Commons Entertainment Committee for several years. He has twice been asked to stand as London Mayor and, oh, has worked for most members of the Royal Family. That is it in precis. For the detail you need to look at the website.

I suppose it is worthwhile saying here briefly who else is among the stars on "The Station of Stars". Emperor Rosko, 76. David "Kid" Jensen, 68. Singer Pearly Gates, 72. David Hamilton, 79. Singer Eddy Grant, 70. There are quite a few others. One feels apologetic for mentioning the ages but this can hardly not be relevant when it comes to revolutionary talk vis a vis broadcasting. Immediately there are questions about pitch and any game plan, especially when the BBC faffs around keeping the under 40s and commercial radio is abandoning anyone over that age. But we are in the same ball park here generationally as Trump, Redwood, Melenchon, Sanders and Corbyn. So maybe it is that anyone younger is incapable of change.

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III

THE MUSIC

And now to having had certain preconceptions challenged. I located the thing in the early hours of the morning, put it on, went to bed...and immediately fell asleep. I didn't wake up until many hours later. When I did, it was so odd. I was reminded of the stories about people who are long in a coma and somehow miraculously come out of it when being played a record they like. Coincidentally - or was it? - my introduction to daylight came via Miriam Makeba's "Pata Pata". This world music classic is not exactly a regular feature of any current conventional broadcasting. It was enough to keep me listening for a couple of hours. This was classic gold station stuff but with a bit of a twist. Not so longer afterwards, there was a song by Harry Belafonte. So, Makeba…..Belafonte. The link is fairly obvious. It has to be said that in era each was almost "pre gold". But that would not at all be an indication of the overall output. They claim to span six decades of music which of itself is unusual. From what I have subsequently heard, that claim is right. As to be expected, there is a plethora of Elvis. There is certainly more than one too many Michael Jackson megamixes. And for worse in my view rather than better, there is The 1975. That is roughly 1956, 1987 and 2018.

But so far as I can tell, they are minimising the autotune and hip-hop excesses that now blight "family orientated" BBC Radio 2. Additionally, there is not quite the repetitive churn one expects of "old hits radio". If so, this may well confirm what they say about how the music is selected. That is, that it is definitely not by playlist and is mainly chosen by the individual presenters themselves. Certainly the programmes are distinctively different from each other in respect of music content. That afternoon, I caught a bit of the David Jensen programme and was as astonished as I was pleased to hear him playing three tracks in a row from Van Morrison's latest album. He also played a number of records released during 2018 which I hadn't heard before and were not entirely without merit. One of the two broadcasts understandably appears to be timed so as to provide competition with Radio 2's "Sounds of the 70s" but the Jensen show appears to occupy a halfway position between that show and the fairly reasonable programme he himself used to present on Radio 1 in the 1980s. The biggest revelation, though, has been the programme presented by Eddy Grant. It's quite wide ranging but if you want to hear classic songs by the Mighty Sparrow and similar on the radio, this is precisely the place for it. I suppose there is some small cross-reference to be made with Don Letts's current programme on 6 Music but in many ways I personally found it better.

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IV

THE APPROACH

None of the above is to say that the music on the station is so "wowing" that one would travel the world to listen to it. At most, it is better than one might have expected and more rangy than has been experienced in very mainstream radio for quite some time. And that is on an initial impression. It could easily be that it would disappoint with a few more hours of listening. But......but there are some highly significant differences in my view in terms of the overall approach. Here I am talking about presentation style and especially the station architecture. There are, it has to be said, quite a few nonsenses. The first perhaps - and it is a perhaps - is its global aspirations or pretensions. All parts of the world are name checked. Friends of the station, supposedly, are in every country. Time checks are consequently provided for every corner of the globe. This is, as it were, a no deal with the proof that it is full of opportunity rather than falling over a cliff edge. Still, it does also align with the nature of business now in whatever arrangement, let alone media and culture, and the BBC World Service has been doing this sort of thing in a mainly non music way since long before global economics were invented. It is just that it wasn't the vision of a few pensioners with egos.

Then there is all that stuff about Prince being "the royal ruler" or "your royal ruler" and an American sounding presenter in the early hours boasting about his memories of music from every decade back to the 1950s. People can get too stuffy about this sort of thing. Obviously in the case of the former, it is a pun on his surname. Just let him be on it - he has been playing that particular parlour game for half a century. As for the latter, well, it probably means that he does have more knowledge than many. But crucially, the verbal linkages are very brief by editorial policy. There isn't the huge amount of unnecessary chat one gets in other places. And there are varied definitions of inane. I am not so sure that what I am describing is worse than some trite thing about being a mother and feeling tired at this time of year - "I am sure you are too when with the kids" - before introducing a song by Whitney Houston. Nor is it to my mind as headbanging as that fake "are we all here gang?" zoo style of broadcasting in which there are eight people rather than one or two in the studio. Equally - although leave it until 2nd January if deciding to check this out as currently there is just music interspersed by New Year messages from around the globe - we are not in the area of just music here via playlist or mixtape. That sort of broadcasting which isn't broadcasting but like Spotify for people who can't be bothered to do their own individual or team lists.

THERE IS NO NEWS!!! How fabulous is that. As far as I am aware, no other music station with presenters provides us with that privilege. We only really get that anywhere with Radio 4 Extra which on a bad news day has been the only radio place of retreat hitherto. And ever since whatever Parliamentary committee it was which decided not so long ago that all other BBC stations should have substantial chunks of news in almost every hour, most programmes of every sort of content have, of course, become far less listenable. Additionally, and this could become a double edged sword. THERE ARE NO COMMERCIALS!!! Or few of them. The picture here is a little hazy. Allegedly there are a few and they are almost all from very small scale public sector institutions. Perhaps they are heard in some formats and not others because there is an occasional gap where the presenters say the words "after this" there will be x yet x is immediately played. Some of the programmes are recorded beforehand but, whatever, the combination of these things does lead to a slightly strange listening experience. It is not unlike that on various pirate stations in past years. THERE ARE NO WEATHER FORECASTS!!!! AND NO TRAVEL BULLETINS!!! SPORTS BULLETINS ARE ABSENT!!! End of capitals!

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V

VIABILITY

Viability. This word comes with a question mark. Let's start with the lack of commercials first. By all accounts, most of the presenters are making their programmes for free or minimal payment or using the station as a vehicle for syndicated productions. In the latter case, it is not quite just a labour of love but not far from it. In contrast, the ambitions as stated are not so much greater as almost monstrously huge. To ever move wholeheartedly from the internet onto DAB - and I think that this has begun on a small scale regional basis - will cost and surely it could only be achieved by the attraction and acceptance of comprehensive advertising. This should, in my view, be time restricted so that advertising slots are more along the regulated lines of radio in the 1970s and accentuate the upbeat rather than reflecting the modern trends of bombarding us with lawyers and serious illness. Only in this way can the happy, occasionally vibrant, character of the station be maintained. One thing listening to the station underpins is the sheer amount of miserabilism the average radio listener endures.

The other main point concerns demographics. On one level, I feel that as a 56 year old I am at the lower end of their natural cohort or even below it. On another, I do think that the BBC's obsession about holding on to younger people is overdone. This is to say that I realise that those of my age and older "came through" many of the music eras covered. As a consequence, they are personally meaningful. I also know that I am absolutely in the generation that went from the NME onto Q and Mojo and Uncut and Folk Roots and Classical Music Magazine. Such publications helped broaden for us our personal music palettes and the considerable number of hobbyists among us - it was almost an extension of life for many or most of a certain age, especially perhaps male - were hardly led into such things against our will. But it never ceases to amaze me just how many people I meet on the internet or in real life who while only in their 30s and early 40s have an extraordinary knowledge of a wide range of music from the past and often strong preferences for it. It is the likes of Spotify and You Tube which have supported this. These sites largely took over from the magazines. Even in the mainstream, a quarter of the biggest selling CDs in 2018 were by pre 2000 artists.

But bluntly, you can't "grow" a radio station successfully without any sort of updating and with people who are of such an age that they aren't going to be around forever. While there is a certain unexpected charm in the combination of nostalgia, positive energy, personal enthusiasms and arguably inflated ambitions among those there, it is the case that some of it is inevitably a bit old hat. That is even where there has been a conscious reining in of excesses although there is some debate to be had about which parts are not relevant for the future. Personally, I am not among those who loathe the so-called transatlantic drawl in some and I do believe that it can actually suit this kind of radio. I do see a place for it being brought back professionally in an updated, moderate, fashion. But I also think other things can be done. There could be far more ambition with the music content so that it really does range as widely as conceivably possible from the 1920s to the 2020s. And the global aspect needs building on so that it isn't just another vision of the world as an extension of Britain/America.

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VI

A VISION

To go along with their more grandiose ideas - that this is if not a world takeover then a happy embracing and incorporating of the world - it does need to be authentically international and vibrant. I think in those circumstances - and only in those - that there is some potential scope for almost taking on and challenging the international music industry on its own turf. For far too long - 20 decades, even 40 decades - it has rested on its laurels. It has been serving up the same stuff. It has essentially assumed that people will continue forever more to buy in to what it has increasingly narrowly been given. Key sections of younger generations have been culturally claimed. In fact, only one of the best selling top 40 albums in Britain in 2018 was by a current band. The Arctic Monkeys, as it happens, and they have been around for a while. That situation is ludicrous. Elsewhere, it is autotuned solo singers of no songs - even Elton John in his unfathomable adulation of current "voices" recently diluted it with the phrase "I just wish they could write a bloody song" - and unexceptional so-called street poets accompanied by beats. From Brazil to Nigeria to China, the colonialism has been extreme. Now one has the opportunity to put the past in its modest context, that isn't rock n roll.

So, yes, I think if it is possible via internet and/or other radio to launch a grotesquely sized avalanche and set it riding along the equator like a juggernaut, it is just possible that the genuine future can be about linking back to broader roots. Blues based rock and soul and melody and electronica but also a resurrecting and taking forward of all kinds of diverse musical traditions, new and old, be that South African township jazz or latin dance or Scandinavian violins. It will ultimately require younger presenters, of course, with the willingness to take things in a different-from-the-norm direction. I do recognise that I am pasting on my own agendas to a new radio vehicle that is not especially close to them at present. But I'm open minded here for the time being and even mildly enthusiastic on the basis of limited listening. "Just because" it is Tony Prince and Mike Read and so on is not sufficient in itself to be cruelly critical when some of the motives may actually be right minded or at least well intentioned. Whether one is a lover or hater of Brexit, we'll see - as with everything else.

I conclude.

[Roderick]

I listened so that others don't have to. It offers 96 kbps with heavy compression and the frankly awful sound quality with a distinct treble cut and lots of lip thump on the mic makes it reminiscent, perhaps unsurprisingly, of old, unlamented AM pirate radio. It is everything you might expect from such an enterprise. The playlist is dire and they're even flogging branded 16 GB (yes, a whole 16 GB) flash drives.

Radio Paradise has no reason to feel threatened is my verdict.