Jingles Archives - Page 2 of 9 - Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive

19th March 20216th August 2021

Pirate Pioneers: early Radio Dublin jingles (update)

A few weeks ago, we featured the first Radio Dublin jingle package courtesy of Kieran Murray. Kieran has been researching the background to this package and has sent us the following report.

Radio Dublin was the very first pirate radio station in Ireland to play jingles. I heard these myself at the time. The jingles played on air referred to ‘WDEE – The Big D’. At that time, Radio Dublin used the tag line ‘The Big D’. So, having managed to locate my copy the Radio Dublin Jingles (The Big D) from the early 1970s, I set about trying to locate the original master recordings – the source of these iconic jingles – and also to find out a bit more about their origin and where they came from.

My search took me to jingle expert Norman Barrington. I downloaded his jingle database and set about searching for a radio station that used the call-sign ‘WDEE’ (you can hear this clearly on those jingles used by Radio Dublin in the early 1970s). Within a short time, I identified a set of jingles with just one listing on the jingle database matching ‘WDEE’. It transpires that a jingle company called SPOT Productions (located in Fort Worth, Texas, USA) was one of many jingle companies around that time that used to send out 5″ demo tape reels to various radio stations, touting for (jingle) business.

The reels were generally recorded in mono, as they were only intended as a demo and also because most broadcast stations in the USA at that time were on AM. SPOT may have sent this particular ‘WDEE’ jingle demo to lots of radio stations and it is not even certain that WDEE-AM 1500 (a country music station in Detroit, USA, from 1969 to 1980) ever received a copy of this demo or even ordered a jingle package from SPOT.

Thanks to Bryan Lambert, I can now reveal what happened that 5″ jingle tape reel. He takes up the story:

‘It was Mark T. (Mark Story) who gave that tape reel to me as a present several years ago. The reel travelled to Wexford with me between 1992 and 2001 where I transferred it to cassette. The reel remained in the filing cabinet I used at South East Radio with my carts and some other tapes. I’m sorry to say I left all of these behind me so they were all probably thrown out after I went home to Dublin when my father became ill in 2001’.

So, now you know what happened to that jingle tape reel. However, the mystery continues. How did that 5″ demo tape reel from SPOT Productions, manage to make its way over to Ireland? Who brought this reel over? How come Radio Dublin chose to use this tape as their jingle ID? Plus … how did Mark T. (Mark Story) get possession of this demo tape reel?

Anyone?

Kieran Murray (April 2021)

Credits:

Photo – SPOT Productions original demo tape box: http://www.normanb.net/

Jingle Master Copy, WDEE Jingles Demo: http://www.normanb.net/

History of WDEE: https://www.early70sradio.com/2011/09/station-spotlight-wdee-in-detroit.html

Aircheck of WDEE-AM 1500 (1971, Tom Dean): https://www.mcrfb.com/?p=55840 (you can hear the Big D jingles being used here).

27th February 20216th August 2021

Capitol Radio jingles from 1978

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Capitol Radio broadcast to Dublin on weekends only for the second half of 1975 and returned on a full-time basis in 1978 from studios on Bachelor’s Walk in the city centre. At first it used its original wavelength of 220 metres but due to night-time interference from Radio Moscow it moved to 226 metres in October/November 1978. Capitol had an eclectic output of music and talk and continued to broadcast until 1981.

One of the station’s founders Alan Russell recalls: ‘In the early days we had a basic studio setup which gradually progressed over the months. Later we had a top of the range Citronic twin deck, built in mixer with LEDS & tape-deck, the only problem was when we modified our transmitter and increased power, the RF feedback made the Citronic decks reverse & generally go crazy. A few filters or carbon rings eventually solved the problem’.

Here’s a selection of Capitol jingles and idents from 1978 including ones for Chris Barry and Ed McDowell, the other station founders. This was before the station adapted and modified the Capital Radio London IDs in 1979. We thank Alan Russell for the information and donation of the recording.

23rd February 20216th August 2021

Pirate Pioneers: early Radio Dublin jingle package

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In our ongoing series about the pirate pioneers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, here’s a real piece of radio gold: a jingle package used in the early days of Radio Dublin. In the early 1970s Radio Dublin used the tag line ‘the Big D’, which can be heard in these jingles. The set may be originally from WDEE, a US country music station on air around this time as that callsign can be heard in some of the cuts.

These jingles pre-date the pirate named Big D, which was set up after a split in Radio Dublin in 1978 and went on to be a successful station in its own right. Many thanks to Kieran Murray for his donation of this valuable recording, which was taken from a 5-inch reel tape machine.

4th February 20216th August 2021

Liberty 104 jingles

Thanks to Kieran Murray who has edited jingles from Liberties Local Community Radio (LLCR) on Pirate.ie along with images of the station into a video on his YouTube channel. LLCR broadcast from the Liberties area of Dublin from April 1986 until the end of the 1988 and went through several incarnations and name changes. It was known variously as Liberty Radio, Liberty 104 and Gold 104. This jingle sweep contains many well-known voices such as Tony Allan and Gerry Moore.

Kieran worked at Liberty in 1987 and you can hear his memories here. For more recordings of this station in our archive, click here.

19th January 20216th August 2021

Jingles for Twiggs FM in Galway

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Twiggs FM broadcast from Salthill in Galway for about six months at the end of 1987 and beginning of 1988. It was based at the Eglinton Hotel on Salthill promenade and was called after the hotel’s popular nightclub. Twiggs FM regularly broadcast gigs from the club and there was a student vibe from the station with promos for events at University College Galway (now NUI Galway) and the Regional Technical College (now GMIT). The station was set up by local man Shane Martin and Alan Russell from Dublin who had established another Galway pirate, Atlantic Sound, in 1984. Sound engineer Roland Burke from Dublin was also hired. Many DJs were enticed away by the bigger and more professional station Coast 103 and Twiggs FM closed in March 1988 due to financial difficulties.

Here’s a set of clever Twiggs FM jingles and liners from 1987, featuring the voices of the late Roland Burke and Gerry Moore. Gerry Moore did voice-overs for many pirates in Dublin during the 1980s. We thank Alan Russell for this donation.