I’m pretty lucky in that my relationship with radio as a listener started at a time when there was some great radio around and some great things happening… (the introduction of FM and (cough) AM stereo)… I was 13 in 1983 and that was probably the first time I started listening to radio on my own (I’d been listening to my own records prior to that but mostly it was just zoning into the same music that Dad had in his record collection and the same stations my parents listened to - 3YA, 3ZB and 3ZC.)
I felt quite a rebel when I’d change the radio in the car or kitchen to 3ZM or Radio Avon. I’d get a clip round the ear and have to change it back swiftly…
There was a dodgy old valve radio in the basement I started listening to that at night.
In addition to ZM I soon found (to my great delight) that once the sun went down my radio took on a life of it’s own… and amidst the crackle would boom stations like Hauraki, 1ZM, 77ZK…
And then to cap it all… the excitement then of hearing the Rock of the 80s - 2SM. Mark Gillard. Then Julie Brodsky.
Wow. I was gob-smacked, The music was so new and fresh, the announcers slick, and the excitement of hearing Australian ads!.. 1341 2NX soon also became a fave… Magic 11 2UW… Stereo 10… also 1422 3XY - Hot Hit! Shirl and Irvine…
I moved to Brisbane in 1988… which was the best of times and the worst of times…
There was good music around but it was also the year Australia became a CHR-free zone. FM104 was a great station… but their no repeat workday used to annoy me.
Fine with no repeats if it was Toto and Rosanna - good song - quite happy to only hear that once… but other songs that were big at the time… such as the Venetians ‘So much for love’ you knew you were going to have to wait ages till you heard it again… Martha Davis - Don’t tell me the time (Don’t tell me the time I’m going to have to wait till I hear this great track again today?) You’d regret if you heard it earlier in the day - just meant you had to wait much longer to hear it! FM104 had no problem playing ‘Simply Irresistable’ at 8.45, then 4.45 then again at 5.45… and so on through the night…
And as for 4BK… only one song in three was a new track… so good old Fleetwood Mac and Doobie Brothers dominated… From the joys of CHR radio in 1984, I’d come to a wasteland…
Where 1988 will always be remembered for hearing more from the Rumours album than any single ‘single’ from the latter half of that year.