Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive
Open Free Radio Archive
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This full-length recording of ERI in Cork is from 96.9 MHz FM and begins at 2130 on 24th March 1986. The presenter is Ian Andrews and the segment includes news at the top of the hour with Emer Lucey (aka Lucy Potter-Cogan).
This recording is from the Skywave Tapes Collection. Skywave Radio International was a shortwave station broadcasting from Baldoyle in northeast Dublin.
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Liberties Local Community Radio (LLCR) began broadcasting in April 1986 from Weaver Square in Dublin 8. It was run by Sammy Prendergast who was well known for installing aerials for pirate stations. LLCR broadcast on 1035 kHz AM using the old Capitol Radio rig which had been on 1017 kHz until shortly before then. It was also heard on 104 FM at a later stage.
Although LLCR began by emphasising its community roots in the Liberties, it never sounded like long-standing community stations such as BLB and NDCR. There was a lot of chopping and changing in Weaver Square during its two years on air but the station had its followers nonetheless. One of its most popular programmes was a hip-hop show presented by Tony Christie.
There was a lot of variation in the station’s name as these jingles and idents indicate, from LLCR to Liberties Radio to Liberty Radio. The station also announced Liberty 104 for a while and was known as Gold 104 in the second half of 1988. The poor-quality jingles for ‘Super Rock 104’ seem to be from that period.
You can hear an aircheck of Teena Gates reading news on Liberty 104 here.
There were several stations calling themselves Capital or Capitol Radio at various times during the pirate era but one favourite of ours was Capitol Radio/Nitesky 96 which evolved from playing album tracks to indie and alternative music. Nitesky 96 was launched as a ‘sister station’ to Capitol on 1st July 1986 and initially featured specialist programmes before settling into its own style of niche music drawing on the lively Dublin band scene. Its ‘Alternative Night’ at McGonagle’s nightclub in South Anne Street was highly popular towards the end of the station’s existence in 1988.
Capitol broadcast on 1017 kHz until early 1986 before selling its AM TX to the new Liberties Local Community Radio which took up position on 1035 kHz. For the remainder of its existence Capitol/Nitesky broadcast on 94.1 and 95.8 FM. Capitol’s jingle package was from the station of the same name in South Africa. Here’s a selection of those jingles from our own collection along with some idents featuring Tony Allan and a Bill Mitchell ident for Nitesky.
Here is Capitol’s news sting. Like many others, Capitol downgraded its news service in later years and read a weather forecast at the top of the hour, using this sting. Other stations using this sting also included CBC in Clonmel and City Centre Radio in Limerick.
You can listen to an aircheck of Capitol here.
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There’s plenty of Radio Nova material available online already and we don’t intend to compete with that. Here is a selection from our the Pirate.ie collection of airchecks of Radio Nova from 1984 to 1986. We also include two recordings from the Nova satellite service from the UK in 1988 which was relayed on FM in Dublin and used as an overnight service by some stations.
Listen to interviews with former Nova presenter Tom Hardy (RIP) here and newsreader Bryan Dobson here. You can hear historian Eddie Bohan describe the growth of Radio Nova here.
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Q102 launched in 1985 with all the knowledge of Nova and Sunshine and a lot of investment, starting with a clean slate. See further information on DX Archive.
This was the imaging for Q102.
These files were donated to the archive on 1st January 2019. If you have similar tapes/carts/reels/files consider donating the audio to the archive here via donations@pirate.ie
