By Phil Creighton
LONG, long ago, when mobile phones were tin cans and a bit of string pulled taut, I used to get calls from music PRs wanting me to take an interest in some bright young thing.
The trouble was, I told them, my musical knowledge starts and stops with Steps.
Yes, it’s a Tragedy – something I’m convinced they sang better than The Bee Gees.
But pop music, especially the barrage of noise that masquerades as the current hit parade, is not my forte.
When it comes to listening, I’m easy.
During the pandemic, BBC local radio underwent many detrimental changes. Presenters now do four-hour shifts, specialist shows have been axed – no more Irish Eye on BBC Berkshire, they’ve brought in the worst jingles ever known to mankind, and they’ve also updated the playlist.
Anything remotely decent – sorry, pre-1980s – has been dumped. Instead it’s stuff that makes me immediately reach for the off-switch.
And that makes me sad.
The flipside is BBC Sounds allows you to tune in to any BBC local radio station programme of your choosing.
Such is my appetite for music from the best decade ever, during one of the cold snaps when schools where axed and the mercury plummeted while the white stuff fell, I’d run out of Tony Blackburn’s Sound of the Sixties and stumbled upon BBC Radio Manchester’s Sweeney’s Sixties Classics.
And from there, BBC Northamptonshire’s Bernie Keith Roll n Roll Heaven, BBC Radio Cumbria’s Joe Costin, and BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Club with John Bennett.
Even that wasn’t enough … and it wasn’t quite right either, especially when the shake-up happened and Mike Sweeney’s sublime show was axed in favour of bland modern stuff.
You see, when I say my listening is easy, that’s exactly what I like. Easy listening.
Light classical music, bit of the Rat Pack, music from the 1920s to the 1960s … it’s an eclectic mixture of stuff, but I seem to be on my own. After all, Radio 2 is now more like Radio 1 was, while my favourites including The Organist Entertains, Big Band Special, and Sing Something Simple have all disappeared. Radio 3 doesn’t even come close to filling the gap.
Enter the internet. I’m not sure how I stumbled upon it, but Serenade Radio has entered my life, much to the bemusement of my nearest and dearest.
It launched in 2015, and is only online. The station is loosely based on the old Light Programme. A sentence that will mean little to people used only to Radio 1 to 5. Prior to September 1967, BBC Radio was the Light Programme, the Home Service and the Third Programme.
Pirates, broadcasting pop from the sea, meant Auntie had to revamp its offerings, but initially Radio 2 was fairly similar to what had gone before. Certainly, easy listening was on the air well into my childhood.
That’s possibly why I’m so fond of it. There’s some nostalgia attached to these 100-year-old tunes, but not for their original performances, but for the 70s and 80s on daytime Radio 2. That and there was an antiques and curios shop in my home city of Canterbury that sold vintage newspapers and had a gramophone outside playing some equally vintage tunes.
While the BBC’s musical playlist doesn’t do it for me any more, the wonder of the internet means there are niche stations out there playing something that does. So while Serenade is a safe haven of musical loveliness for me – ad free too – there’s equally an online station that will cater to your niche tastes.
Whether any of them play nothing but Steps I’ve never quite looked. Looking for it has been the Last Thing On my Mind, but if there is, I’ll be there in a Heartbeat. And as those music PRs will say, I know Him So Well.
