Dumpster Diving : Songs they NEVER played on local radio (1994-1996)

What was the worst thing about working in local radio in the 1990s?

 

The long hours and unpaid overtime?

 

The commute - sitting on pissy buses week after week after week?

The passive-aggressive pushiness of sales people?

 

The visits from slightly creepy ex-Radio 1 presenters?

 

No.

 

The worst thing about working in a local radio station was listening to the radio.

 

All day, every day.

 

 

 They had speakers in the corridors and in the canteen so you HAD to listen to the station output.  

 

Working for a local 'hits' station in the mid-1990s, this meant hearing a LOT of Simply Red and Wet Wet Wet. They also seemed to play We Built This City by Starship* ten times a day. In the late 90s they'd develop a similar obsession with Shania Twain.

 

Local radio stations weren't in the business of finding new music or taking risks - they were giving the public what they thought the public wanted.

 

 A big turning point for commercial stations came when Radio 1 cleared out a lot of their old presenters. There was still a market for something that sounded a bit like Radio 1 did in the 80s. All of a sudden, Simon Bates, Bruno Brookes, DLT and erm... Jimmy Savile were making networked shows for local commercial stations.

 

And they were still playing the records that were popular when they'd been on Radio 1.

 

 We always told advertisers that the playlists were chosen using carefully selected focus groups but as far as I could see, it was all down to the bloke in charge. 

 

In 1995 our Programme Controller refused to playlist Wonderwall because Oasis sounded 'punky' and anything by Pulp was deemed to be too 'sleazy' for our core listenership (which, to be fair...)

 

This was during the height of Britpop - but you never heard Elastica or Supergrass on our station. Mike & The Mechanics and Belinda Carlisle were 'perfect'  for 'commuters and housewives' but Common People would clearly have caused a traffic accident or the breakdown of law and order in Middlesbrough.

  

   

Probably the best thing about working in local radio was FREE MUSIC.

Even stations in Stockton-on-Tees and Gateshead were sent free CDs by the big record companies. Maybe that's why music was so expensive - they were giving away so many CDs to people who didn't want them.

 

Every few weeks I'd go and have a look in 'the basket'. Any CDs that the presenters didn't want (or couldn't give away as competition prizes) were left in a basket on the floor in the programming department. It was great. The stations I worked for never played anything I liked, so I used to end up with a massive haul of stuff. 

 

 
And it wasn't all music by people that nobody had ever heard of - CD singles and albums by Leftfield, Elvis Costello, Bjork, George Martin, New Order and Shirley Bassey all bypassed our listeners and went straight in the bin. 

 

One of my colleagues suggested we approach the Programmes Department with an idea for a new show. We wanted to call it: 

'A load of Rubbish! Songs They'll Never Play on The Radio'.

The Programmes Department was very confused by this; 'but why would we play songs that we'd never play?'  

Indeed.

 That brief glut of free stuff helped shape my musical taste in the mid 90s. I never heard Soul Coughing, Juliana Hatfield, Paris or Garbage on TFM but thanks to the 'basket' I did get to listen to them during my long commutes. 

Sadly, most of my promo singles and albums were lost when I left home and my folks chucked everything away. Twats.

 

Perhaps Morrissey and the Longpigs were always destined for the bin. 

*My boss was particulary furious about the Starship situation. 

"It makes no fucking sense" he'd say, "'Marconi plays the mamba?' What the fuck does that even mean? It's a pile of shite! 'Who rides a wrecking ball into our guitars?' Who gives a fuck? It's a load of wank!"

 

He'd get himself all worked up about pop songs - just because we had to hear the same ones so often. 

"Have they only got five fucking CDs down in programmes? 'Today's favourite music' my great big hairy bastard balls." He had a nice line in exasperated rage - like Tony Hancock on Red Bull.

He was also brilliant at changing lyrics and took his revenge on 'Love is All Around' by singing 'I feel it in my gonads, I feel it in my balls...'  

The bloke had a highly original line in threats and insults. If we ever messed up he'd threaten to 'whack our balls with a hot ironing board' or tell us that he'd found the letter 'S' next to our name on a database (the 'S' stood for 'Scunt' or 'Scunty-boy'). One of the very best things about working in local radio was the creative swearing of my first boss. The selfish old twat left after I'd been working with him for about ten months and at that point the job became almost completely unbearable.

 

My sweary boss had stopped buying records in 1982 - The Nightfly by Donald Fagen was just too perfect and he didn't think anything else would ever come close.

NB: All of the songs featured in this post were things I heard for the first time because I found them in the basket/bin - apart from We Built This City and I didn't need a copy of that, because I just had to turn on the radio and there it was.