Happy new year...

New years resolutions: Take up smoking, eat more salt and fat, and ... stop quasi-lurking and start posting some MP3 files from MY collection for a change.

What I have here first... It's my oldest BBC World Service show from 1983, and then two from 1991 or so. The 1983 show - and this is the only time I'll post one of these (unless you beg for more, ha) is taken right off the old 6.175 MHZ World Service frequency from the isle if Antigua that we used to depend on in the southeast US.

So it is wooshing and phasing all over the place, very very very pre-internet (which we now sorta take for granted dont we?) And the main reason I held onto this one for so long is he plays some Dub Syndicate produced by Adrian Sherwood - one of those old Rior Records cassette-only releases - and oddly enough, the mad dub effects are actually helped along by the shortwave artifacts (!)

It also makes me think about all the poor souls in eastern Europe back then listening under similarly poor conditions. They may have had transmitters that were closer than the Caribbean, but they likely had poorer quality SW radios.

By 1991 a friend with a backyard dish antenna had found BBCWS relayed on a TV subcarrier. So we had a direct link without all the SW noise, but still MW and mono. Still, a huge improvement, and there were certainly plenty of people listening to domestic BBC on MW then too. But...  I think my friend's cassette deck was off speed a bit, as both shows here run a touch fast. If anyone wants to pitch-correct these and repost them, great.

I've also included the continuity announcers intro and outros, as this was at the height of the WS announcers thinly disguised disdain for John and "his sort of music."

So here you go... Ragga Twins, Moonshake, Babes In Toyland, Mav Cacheral (which I raced out and bought) and even the Shamen, and of course Grinderswith at the top and bottom. And John in quite humorous form throughout...

I have a few dozen more of these shows....

cheers from across the pond,

tom in atlanta