Happy Birthday, Beacon
Happy Birthday, Beacon
Forgive me: I get genuinely emotional when I write about memories of Beacon 303.
Launched in April 1976 it was the last of the first phase of independent local radio stations in the UK. Controversially, it was in the existing transmission area of BRMB. It was the first toe in the water for the legal onshore radio of audio competition - just like the USA had experienced for years.
But I was just a grubby-faced adolescent, so didn’t know any of that. All I sensed was that at long last there was something to listen to which wasn’t Radio One. In those early days it just played great music and felt like I imagined some west coast American station would have sounded. And in the long hot summers of 1976 and 1977 that’s what we needed - a sunshine sound.
Chris Harper, George Ferguson, Mike Baker, KKJ, Mick Wright, Pete Wagstaff, Dick Fisher, Bob Snyder - these were the names who shaped my listening life.
And the jingles - well, the jingles were just breathtaking. Those early Sunshine Sound cuts (modelled, I still believe, on JAM’s Magic Music) set a new standard for UK stations.
Then suddenly - to my utter disbelief and initial sense of mourning - they disappeared. Now it was all about “You” - a re-sing of the magnificently brassy TM series. Once I’d adjusted to the change, I loved them - especially those beautiful, stirring long songs.
UK radio had never sounded like this. It was a station that oozed a love of radio. Mike Baker and Mick Wright would spend their late night discussions talking about radio, and how we listened and learned, aspiring one day to work on a station like Beacon.
Of course, that never happened.
And now British radio has lost its ambition, become tightly over-formatted and allowed technology to push aside the importance of the human voice.
But those of us who grew up with Beacon 303 grew up knowing that radio matters, knowing that a real radio station does much more than an iPod Shuffle ever can: it shapes our lives, gives us entertainment, provides a soundtrack to our days and nights. It becomes a friend.
Beacon: you were my best adolescent friend. And now I’ve reached greying, balding middle age, I still remember you with huge affection. You were a class act.
Thanks for the memories.
Bob
Thursday, 7 April 2011
Happy Birthday, Beacon