Anoraks Ireland Collection Archives - Page 44 of 44 - Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive

Hugh Hardy on KLAS 98 — The late Hugh Hardy in the KLAS studios in Sutton in 1987 (courtesy DX Archive).

KLAS 98 (later Class) was an easy listening station which broadcast to Dublin from November 1986 until the closedowns of December 1988. It was set up by the founder of the Radio Carousel network, Hugh Hardy, and based first at a garage behind his home in Sutton in northeast Dublin. News bulletins from KLAS and overnight programming were relayed on occasion from Dublin to the Carousel stations in Navan and Dundalk. After Hardy stepped back in early 1988, KLAS moved to Dame Street in the city centre and was managed by David Baker. It then moved to Harcourt Street where it was taken over by television aerial salesman John J. May and relaunched as Class 98.

This recording from 98.5 FM is of Hugh Hardy presenting on St. Stephen’s Day, 26^th December 1986. News on the hour is read by a very young John Walsh, co-founder of Pirate.ie and the voice of the late Bob Gallico is heard on an advert. There are no time checks or references to St. Stephen’s Day in the links so this show could have been recorded for one of the automated 8-hour VHS tapes used by KLAS overnight. John Walsh has written his memories of KLAS here.

Part 1 of the recording above runs from 1637-1725 and Part 2 below from 1740-1828.

Part 2 from 1740.

The recording is from the Anoraks Ireland Tapes Collection, donated to us by Paul Davidson.

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The Anoraks Ireland Digitisation Project — A small part of the enormous Anoraks Ireland Collection as photographed by Eddie Bohan.

Anoraks Ireland was a one-stop resource for Irish radio enthusiasts of the 1980s and early 1990s allowing them to buy or swap cassette recordings and other materials relating to the hundreds of pirate radio stations that existed back then. The organisation extensively documented the unique golden era of pirate radio in the form of photographs, magazines, detailed bandscans, station surveys and much more.

Earlier this year, Anoraks Ireland founder Paul Davidson agreed to donate his vast collection of Irish radio materials to the Irish Pirate Radio Archive at Dublin City University. The materials, primarily from the pirate radio era of the 80s, offer a fascinating insight into the Irish broadcasting landscape of the time and consist of thousands of cassette recordings, photos of DJs, studios and transmitter sites, advertising rate cards, newspaper cuttings along with lots of other materials. The Irish Pirate Radio Archive, in association with ourselves at Pirate.ie and with Radiowaves.fm, are in the process of digitising the huge collection and are about to start archiving it across the three websites. We all look forward to making this invaluable collection available to historians, students and visitors to our websites. The digitisation teams are John Walsh and Brian Greene of Pirate.ie, Eddie Bohan of the Irish Pirate Radio Archive and Irish Broadcasting Hall of Fame and John Fleming of Radiowaves.fm.

We kick off with recordings of Cork super-pirate ERI from 1456-1542 on Thursday 3rd November 1988. On air are Pamela Wilson, previously of WLS in Galway and Radio West in Mullingar, and Joe Reilly on news. These were recorded from 97.7 FM in stereo and ERI also broadcast on 1305 kHz (announcing 225 metres). The recording above runs from 1456-1542 and the one below from 1543-1629.

2nd part of Pamela Wilson recording.

These recordings are from the Anoraks Ireland Collection, donated to us by Paul Davidson.