Cracker: "It says 'Let's b friends', and it's got a b on it"
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Shame it has taken this long. It was a retrograde step and showed little courage. Surely "student" radio should have someone at least younger than thirty. My pick would be Ritchie Hardcore.
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Mike has the personality and presence that keeps people like me going back to bfm
... and switched me and many friends right off at the time. If we had wanted braying and blathering in the morning, there was plenty of commercial radio around.
I believe that if bfm had properly reflected the dance music that came through in the early 90s (like Radio Active did) rather than propping up derivative rock, the other stations like George would never have got a foot in the door. Not that I mind having options.
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Shame it has taken this long. It was a retrograde step and showed little courage. Surely "student" radio should have someone at least younger than thirty. My pick would be Ritchie Hardcore.
To which, for all his talents, most people would go "Huh?". At least Mikey had his pseudonym thoroughly established before arrival.
I'm not involved in any way in bFM governance now, but it does seem to me that it's not necessarily an easy job to meet everyone's demands.
You need to keep being the talent factory, serve the student body, keep longtime listeners happy, keep bringing in younger listeners -- and make money for your shareholder, the AUSA (or at least not lose money).
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And if bfm had properly reflected the dance music that came through in the early 90s (like Radio Active did) rather than propping up derivative rock, the other stations like George would never have got a foot in the door.
Okay, here's where I probably piss someone off. Active is dull, and has been dull for a long time. Every time I'm in Wellington, I listen to it and it sounds flat to me. bFM has refreshed itself multiple times while Active has trundled along. There's just no comparison between the two.
I also usually (with notable exceptions) find George dull. The way people use it as aural wallpaper creeps me out.
And Sacha, the thing about "derivative rock" is that kids seem to keep on making it in little clubs and bars. There was a point after 2000 where Auckland social life emphatically swung back to bands playing, and bFM was there.
b also ran sold-out dance parties through the 90s. I recall them being good fun. Ironically, one of the major complaints about MIkey's Breakfast has been that he plays too much dance music.
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Having worked at b in the 80s, and listened ever since, this feels personal, so I'm trying to be careful what I say. In the words of Mozza, 'It's time for a change...' but 'please, please, please, let me get what I want this time.'
Is that Matt Heath? Not yet. But Hugh when he was calling up people with last names that rhyme with 'muck' to make fun of them live on air used to drive me nuts also. He grew on me. It took time. Marcus, Jude, Dom & Paul will forever be my heroes.
I am old. I'll go roll my trousers. Oh look, they already are.
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Bfm's commitment to gigs of all sorts has been a welcome feature for most of its life. And its scale has always marked it out.
There was a point after 2000 where Auckland social life emphatically swung back to bands playing, and bFM was there.
I was talking early 90s - and I contend it was bfm that failed to refresh at that stage, not Active. It seemed that rather average rock bands got disproportionate help pushing their music, at the expense of electronic artists. Of course when the pendulum swung back to rock, bfm was well placed. Happy to take your word about whatever Active is doing now, Russell, as I don't follow them.
I'd have to say that Mikey's idea of dance music has always been rather mono-dimensional, especially compared with the specialist shows that I am grateful bfm has maintained throughout. Ooonst is not what some of us seek out in the morning any more than yapping is. Others obviously love it.
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b also ran sold-out dance parties through the 90s.
Yes but called them Oonst which was seen as very condescending by the dance community and the DJ lineups tended to be rock survivors playing that funny dance music. They were less than dance-credible.
There was a point after 2000 where Auckland social life emphatically swung back to bands playing, and bFM was there.
Yes and no. On any given weekend night over the first decade of the 2000s I'd wager there was, and likely still would be 20 kids in Auckland entertaining themselves in the clubs along K Rd, Pons Rd, and down High Street for everyone at a live venue that night. But surely the two are complementary.
For me, B was my home for close to 16 years, and for at least 6 of those I was its only dance show and we had to cover house AND hip hop because nobody else on the station did. In the early 1990s Phil Bell, DLT and later P-Money were given a hip hop show so we then played the house and techno on B for another decade. It was, I'm still continually told, hugely influential but the programmers at B used to try and push us later and later and we, both us and the hip hop guys, were continually battling being re-slotted.
We (the beat orientated shows) used to call ourselves the ghetto because nobody at B showed the vaguest bit of interest in what we were doing and 'forgot' to invite us to things like the DJ meetings and, worse, always seemed to overlook us when those Ooonst gigs were put on. We were the only dance show on B and we were not even given tickets to the bloody things. So we'd make fun of them on air, which caused some mirth amongst the dance community, but hell, nobody in B management ever listened to us anyway.
And when George arrived and they were both welcoming and offered a warm sympathetic home, we all jumped ship (I did B AND George for a year), with Nice'n'Urlich (who actually paid B a small royalty on the albums I released but got rather shoddily treated for doing that), Roger Perry, Greg Churchill, Soane and just about anyone else who was involved in the electronic scene all moving across to something that was more home.
Even Mikey talked but was lured back.
I was encouraged to do very much my own thing and enjoyed being able to play a Public Image track next to a Derrick May tine at 10am without odd looks from staff or shitty txts and calls snarling about disco.
I loved B and still do, although musically I've found it heavy going for a few years. But the words and the specialist shows still work.
I also find much of George pretty heavy going these past two or three years and think it's lost its way and edge. It's increasingly formulaic, bland and yes, wallpaperish.
But then I listen to Roger Perry or Murray Cammick and I'm convinced there is no better radio in the world.
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I believe that if bfm had properly reflected the dance music that came through in the early 90s (like Radio Active did) rather than propping up derivative rock, the other stations like George would never have got a foot in the door. Not that I mind having options.
As I mentioned before, I helped start George, and without putting too fine a point on it (and some people might remember it differently) it weren't dance music before I got there: it was cafe jazz. I took over management of the nights which was previously just a computer playing cafe/acid jazz, and slotted in techno shows (Chelsea), D&B shows (Riddle and Pots), House shows (Roger & Soane), Big Beat (Timmy Schumacher), NZ Music (Kog), Hip Hop etc etc. When I left George it became almost exclusively house for a long long time. Aural wallpaper as Russell points out.
The thing is, I wouldn't have gone to George if the PD at bFM (Bill Kerton) had given me a chance when I'd asked him - I'd come from doing the news and co-hosting breakfast on Active, but it didn't make a difference. Years later Bill kindly acknowledged that might have been an oversight.
Not saying George wouldn't have become a dance station (and therefore a challenger to bFM which wasn't playing *much* at the time), but it's an interesting link. To me anyway.
I spent a lot of time at Active, and I have friends there, but yes, fuck that station has some issues. When I moved down there a few years ago and started playing the stuff I'd been playing from bFM, the feedback I got was extraordinary. It's like they hadn't heard any indie music for the past ten years. They've got the same issue there too, people who have been doing the job for so long they were probably spinning records there when Mikey was in Push Push.
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MUST add Stinky Jim and Dubhead in here, those fellas just kill it every week. Outstanding work, week in, week out.
Specialist shows are where it's at on stations like the b and Active. For some reason both outfits seem to struggle with regular shows IMNSHO: too much talk, too many ads. It's not rocket science... No one wants to hear blather and endless commercials on student radio.
For a tip on how to do it properly, I'd recommend Radio One - I heard a bit when I was in Dunedin last month and apart from some fool who started ranting about socialism (and was hopefully taken out back and shot by the fascists he was railing against), it sounded just like student radio should.
Disclaimer: worked at R1, volunteered at bFM and Active. Now work in public radio and comm radio.
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it was cafe jazz
That fits. Someone told me George was initially aimed at providing daytime background music for Ponsonby retailers, which in turn generated the advertising goodwill. Props to anyone who gets a station off the ground, including the mad buggers who started radio bosom.
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I think on the brighter side of b what it did do which was cool for while in Auckland was quite incredible, it was everywhere here for a while it seemed. BFM Auckland was a cool place to be.
It was at many times brilliant radio with a big listenership strangely filtered through it's very popular Sunday talkback. -
Yes and no. On any given weekend night over the first decade of the 2000s I'd wager there was, and likely still would be 20 kids in Auckland entertaining themselves in the clubs along K Rd, Pons Rd, and down High Street for everyone at a live venue that night. But surely the two are complementary.
Oh, for sure. But the club scene got quite grim at times in the noughties, while a lot of cool, arty kids went to see their friends play in bands. (Looking back, I'm embarrassed at how we dressed in the old days.) The P craze didn't help. I recall having the occasional night out, sitting in a club room full of people glaring at each other, thinking, well this sucks ...
And I'm not sure if everyone in a bar where a DJ is playing on Ponsonby Road can truly be said to be there for the music ...
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When I left George it became almost exclusively house for a long long time. Aural wallpaper as Russell points out.
Ah, that explains it then. I found it frankly unnerving. And I like house music.
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When I left George it became almost exclusively house for a long long time
Not really true though Damian. When I arrived there in 2002 there were tons of specialist shows on the station, killer jazz shows on Sunday, Victoria's Sunday show, ambient shows, drum'n'bass, hip hop shows which went for years, a NZ electronica show which went from the late 1990s for a decade or so, funk shows, Cian, the saturday morning shows which were hilarious at times, brekky, which pre-Urlich was quite rocky, Bevan's shows which have always played a huge range of black music.
The house shows were mostly afternoon and drive, and I guess that's when large numbers were listening hence the stereotype.
I'll always be grateful when I released the Welcome To NZ house comp, which was the first time many of those acts had had any release in NZ, in 2000, George, at no cost to us, came to me and offered a weekend of free support, with every track on the album being carted and played repeatedly by Thane and others over the next month or so.
BFM, even though Greg and I hosted their dance show, and Greg featured on the first track strongly, didn't playlist a single one even though some 5000 people bought it. Ever.
I don't want to bitch about B as they've been hugely supportive of so much I've done, but y'know, it irks..
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If RadioWorks didn't had the sense to put contractual steps in place to stop that happening, then they've got bigger problems than Thane
The advice I've had in the past is that restraint of trade clauses are hard to enforce, especially for longer than a few months. They also have to protect the employer from something other than the employee just taking their skills somewhere else.
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Active is dull
It's *variable*. I suspect (somebody can put me right) that it's almost entirely a volunteer operation, so it's up to who volunteers.
Like I mentioned upthread, *I* think that Liam is pretty good in the mornings. Some of the others play stuff in daytime that isn't really daytime radio. Then there's the guy on Saturday mornings. Nuff said...
I notice the dance music / rock music divide popping up. They both have an audience, and in Auckland in the middle of the last decade, dance had a large one. I guess if you don't like dance music, then it's crap, and nobody will tell you otherwise. Same for rock. Plus if you're 19, then this is spiritually important. If you're one of the cool kids who goes to (insert current Jafa cool kid rock band name) gigs, then attending Our House is gonna get you ostracised.
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Also, while we have the attention of the NZ radio gurus, what's with the Sunday Lunchtime Jazz Closed Shop?
Do the programmers get together and agree that on Sunday lunchtimes, if you want to listen to the radio, it will be jazz?
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I'd wager there was, and likely still would be 20 kids in Auckland entertaining themselves in the clubs along K Rd, Pons Rd, and down High Street for everyone at a live venue that night.
@Simon - I think you're probably right, although I'd argue - in terms of one's relationship to the music - there is a difference between me sitting at the bar at 4am that happens to be playing dance music, and making a conscious decision to head along to a gig (whether a band or a DJ gig). I think the days of people heading out to hear certain DJs have definitely waned.
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@Simon: Not really true though Damian.
The weekends (which include Cian, Victoria, the funk shows, the jazz shows) have always been a bit of an exception on George (and I did say "almost exclusively"). What did happen though, was a number of the shows that I had set up with specialist DJs, were replaced with house shows. The night-time shows, I'm talking about.
I remember having an argument with Pam about it (who had taken over the PD role from me), she was replacing I think it was the drum and bass or hip-hop show at the time, with another house show (there were about 6 during the week by this stage, not including daytime shows).
"But it's a different kind of house, doll", was her response.
When I left doing Drive Monday - Friday in 2000, Drive was divided up into 5 different shows too, and became once again a whole lotta bedroom house DJs. For at least a few years the sound of George FM was that of two house records slowly slipping out of time from each other. It was really depressing after what we'd started.
Then a few years later, you're right Simon, things changed a bit. You came along, so did others, things got a bit better. Honestly though? I'd given up listening by then. I had a job at bFM, my music tastes were changing too, and I've never been one to listen to much radio in the evening where those good specialist shows are. And I've never really gone back to George.
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always seemed to overlook us when those Ooonst gigs were put on. We were the only dance show on B and we were not even given tickets to the bloody things.
Acts of kindness perhaps :)
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Having listened to b since my lunch times spent hiding in the art room at high school, I get an oddly personal sense of disappointment when listening to it for any length of time - sometimes for very short lengths.
Like some have said, you can't 'F' with the specialty shows, but the breakfast show for the reasons mentioned above, and a swag of daytime programming just leaves me cold. I figure it's part getting older and part a more fashion orientated approach to the programming.
As for George, since it was bought and renovated by RadioWorks, it's taken on a whole new commercial timbre that has doomed it to fitting in with the commercial dross around it on the frequency - it just sounds cheesy. Though George too has some stunning shows on the weekend and latenight roster.
Anyway, for a more relaxed, conversational and homely breakfast show, listen to Chip Matthews and Tyra Hammond on BaseFM (107.3 & Freeview Channel 71). Musicians playing music - it works.
And lastly, Rich, the Sunday jazz lockdown does NOT apply on BaseFM, my show, "Sunday Sounds" 12-2 every Sunday, fits hand in glove with Automatic over on b with his show kicking off at 2. Four hours of music for Damian to drink to.
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The thing that sets the b apart from all the others is that they have never taken themselves that seriously but when they do serious stuff they do it seriously well. Mikey epitomises that. I, for one, will miss my dose of conspiracy theory in the mornings mixed with a certain madness that resonates with those of a suspicious mind and resembles nothing of the false prattle of so called pirates that proves the point that the others are shit.
Good luck Mikey maybe you'll get a haircut and a proper job now.
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And I've never really gone back to George.
I think we've had this discussion before several times, maybe it's not one for a forum, and I know you had your issues with George, which I respect. But when I arrived at the station in 2001 I'd go as far as to say that it was waaayyy more interesting than B at the time, which seemed stuck in a bygone universe, as Sacha implied. I remember being ecstatic at my new freedom.
So, diversity? I get a bit grumpy when I get this, as I've had many times over the years, mostly from non electronic music listeners who think it's all the same (which, before you get tetchy, I know does not apply to either you or Russell).
My first show on George was at 6pm on a Monday night, before I was moved to Weds morn, and I was followed by Mark Burgess and Andrew Shearer's eclectic mix of all sorts of things black an rhythmic, Tuesday had the mighty Kog NZ Show at the same time as mine. The UK garage show was after that I think and then a d'n'b show. There were a couple of mighty fine purist techno (just "a different kind of house" to most non listeners to electronica I guess, but well targeted to those that loved that genre) shows week nights (Matt Drake and Miles Cuen did one and Silverbeat another) and a couple of specialist funk shows. Before me, Paul Dean pulled txts in a way I'd never seen a drive show do on B, the few I'd either sat in on or co-hosted. People loved it .. I remember sitting in a cab at 4am after Calibre, and the driver was rabbiting on about how much he loved Paul on the radio. Paul was asleep beside me :)
Yeah samey at times, later in the week (and some of the very late night here-is-my-new-record-I bought-this-week shows), until they pulled Philipa in on Fridays (my suggestion and it really worked) for drive but for me around 2001-2 the station really began to gel, and it's hard to overstate how immensely popular Bevan Keys' Fridays were. And to look in there during those drives, across the week and watch the incredible volume of txts rolling across the screen. George found an audience that B had missed, urban kids thoroughly dedicated to their black and electronic music mostly and I think you'd be surprised how many of them were those faces you saw at club venues each weekend. I'd go to clubs and get a stream of people coming up to me asking about tracks I'd played and I know Greg and others get the same still.
Cian's visibility on his 10+ years of George shows has helped keep what may be the best record shop outside Japan alive..no mean feat.
Still mates, huh?
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As for George, since it was bought and renovated by RadioWorks, it's taken on a whole new commercial timbre that has doomed it to fitting in with the commercial dross around it on the frequency - it just sounds cheesy.
Indeed. It was not good when I was back earlier this year. But it was inevitable when they bought in. I was asked to do a guest show but declined .
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Simon, no doubt you're right. Yes, I had issues with George, being screwed over majorly by Dave and Thane at the time (after setting up all the weekday nighttime shows - including half of the ones you mention - getting them all sponsored in return for a share of the profit from it they said "thanks, we'll take it from here" which was my bad being naive and thinking we were all in it together...).
Maybe the house was "limited" to the daytimes, drive, and half a dozen specialist shows. It still represented about a 1000% increase of house music from what precededed it. I still saw shows like the drum and bass show be scrapped or pushed into the wee small hours to accommodate more house. It definitely got less diverse for a while.
At the same time I agree that bFM had big issues when we started up George. Massively defensive, they seemed to almost dig in and play less electronic music to spite the audience. Even today they have a Nocturnal Dominion death metal show, but no drum and bass show....
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