John Dolan (real name Tadhg Dolan) worked in the first Cork pirates CBC and CCLR in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He also did some shows on Sunshine Radio in Dublin as well as stints with RTÉ’s Cork Local Radio and licensed station Radio South (later Cork’s 96 FM).
This airchecked recording is of John’s first show on Sunshine Radio between 1955-2100 sometime in May 1981. Audio is fair as the recording was made by placing a cassette recorder up against a radio. John is introduced by the previous DJ, Tony Dixon (RIP) and the voice of Sunshine boss Robbie Robinson (RIP) is heard on some of the adverts. Broadcasting ends at 2100 with the iconic Desiderata song, which closed the station down each night.
Peter Walsh on Big Beat Radio in 1986 (photo Brian Greene).
Big Beat Radio is especially important to us as it involved both co-founders of Pirate.ie, Brian Greene and John Walsh. The station began broadcasting on June 17th 1986 in a room belonging to the community centre on the seafront in the suburb of Baldoyle in northeast Dublin. There were six founders, all of whom were 16: Brian Greene (Bobby Gibbson* on air), Dónal Greene, Michael Redmond, Peter Walsh, Brian Hegarty and Mark Tynan. John Walsh was a year younger and joined as a newsreader and occasional DJ.
Big Beat was on air for seven weeks of the summer school holidays. The original plan was to go on AM with the copper wires running along the seafront behind the studio but the station ended up on FM. Around the same time, the Carroll’s Irish Open Golf tournament was held across the estuary in Portmarnock about 400 metres from the studio. RTÉ set up a dedicated radio station for the tournament on 96.6 FM, forcing Big Beat to move down to 96.2 at the last minute.
Brian Greene (top) and Mark McGuinness set up the studio (from Brian’s collection).
Power was about 15 watts but the mast wasn’t more than 20 feet off the ground and therefore the signal didn’t travel far. Audio quality was poor with levels very uneven. The single microphone was wrapped in a cloth to prevent popping and taped to a wooden banister which protruded from a scratchy mixer dating from the 1960s. Two turntables, a cassette deck and headphones completed the studio set-up.
A radio theme prevails at the site in 2022. The studio was through the door (photo John Walsh).
The studio heated up easily and the door to the green outside was usually left open, with a result that passing buses were often heard during shows. The room was invariably crammed with friends of the DJ so keeping people quiet during links was a challenge. News was presented from 11am until 6pm each day and was lifted from RTÉ, BBC and other pirates. The newsroom was in a stifling disused toilet with no window.
There was no phone at Big Beat, so the telephone box across the road was used for requests. The postal address was 3A Brookstone Road, Baldoyle where co-founder Peter Walsh lived. Sunshine Radio engineer Peter Gibney (RIP) visited one evening because of interference caused to the transmitter in Portmarnock a few kilometres to the north. Big Beat also ran discos for visiting Spanish students at the community centre next door.
2016 reunion at the phone box. L-R: Dónal Greene, Brian Greene, Peter Walsh, Mark Tynan, Michael Redmond, Brian Hegarty (photo John Walsh).
Big Beat closed suddenly at 6pm on Friday August 8th with Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds. This recording is of the final hour from that day. Two of the Big Beat founders, Brian Greene and Peter Walsh, went on to set up Centre Radio, another part-time station that operated from Baldoyle and neighbouring Bayside from Christmas 1986 to the end of 1988. For more memories of Big Beat, see here.
* No, it’s not a typo: the extra ‘b’ in Gibbson was deliberate because the name was fake.
ABC Power 104 letterhead from c. 2000 (courtesy Ian Biggar)
ABC Power 104 was a Waterford station broadcasting between 1992 to 2001, one of the significant stations from the second wave of pirates following legalisation of independent radio. Its roots were in ABC, a professional pirate that broadcast from Tramore and then Waterford City from 1982 to 1988. The station returned under a new name in 1992, stating that it wanted to provide an alternative to local licensed service WLR. Full-time broadcasting began at Christmas 1993 and ABC Power 104 began campaigning for an expansion of local radio in the Waterford area. According to a station leaflet from c. 2000, ‘although Waterford already enjoys one excellent local radio service, one station cannot be all things to all people. The trade off is that the young people of Waterford are poorly catered for when it comes to programming as the existing local services target the older and traditionally safer demographic … without us there is no choice in local radio’.
In 1999, ABC Power 104 was invited by the Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC, the predecessor to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland) to prepare an expression of interest in operating a full-time station. The licence for a regional youth service for the southeast was eventually awarded to Beat 102 103, which was linked to ABC’s old rival WLR. Beat came on air in 2003.
This recording is of an interview from 1998 by Pete Reid (Simon Maher) and Gerard Roe with Andy Ellis of ABC Power 104, broadcast on Dublin pirate Phantom FM. Andy was one of the founders of the original ABC in 1982. Thanks to Gerard Roe for the donation and to Ian Biggar for background.
This recording of Kandy Radio from Ballinasloe in east Galway was made on 27th December 1986 from 1510-1556. An unidentified DJ holds a phone-in competition but there are technical issues with the line and some callers are barely audible. Adverts feature small businesses from around east Galway, giving the station a distinctive local sound. The recording was made from 1386, a frequency that suffered congestion and there is co-channel interference. Kandy Radio also broadcast on 98.2 FM in Ballinasloe. It closed in April 1988.
This recording is from the Anoraks Ireland Tapes Collection, donated to us by Paul Davidson.
Kandy Radio broadcast from Ballinasloe in east Galway from 1986 to 1988. This recording was made on Monday 13th October 1986 from 1320-1405 from the station’s AM frequency, 1386 kHz. Mark White is on air until 1330 and is followed by Paul Davis for the afternoon show. News is read by Tara and adverts feature local businesses in east Galway, south Roscommon and west Offaly. The music is a mixture of middle-of-the-road, country and chart hits. There is co-channel interference due to congestion on the frequency, suggesting that the recording was made outside Kandy’s core area of east Galway.
This recording is from the Anoraks Ireland Tapes Collection, donated to us by Paul Davidson.
