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This is another recording of the early days of Waterford super-pirate ABC, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its humble beginnings in March 1982. The recording was made from 12 noon on 30th March 1982 on a drive towards Tramore from Waterford City and begins with a crackly signal on 729 kHz AM. Transmitter power was low and covered only a few miles but the recording later switches to a patchy 101.3 FM and reception improves as Tramore is reached. One of the station founders Clive Derek has just finished his show and reads news headlines at midday before handing over to another of ABC’s instigators, Andy Ellis. The station was located in a caravan in Tramore for the first two years of its existence and moved into Waterford in mid-1984. It went on to become one of Ireland’s most popular and successful pirates of the era.
ABC is discussed by author Brian Kennedy in Radio Blaa Blaa, a history of Waterford pirate radio published in 2012. An extract from the book gives a flavour of how the new station shook up the local radio scene:
Straight away the station’s approach to broadcasting made people sit up, if only for the fact of hearing foreign voices over local airwaves. The structure of ABC in those early days was a format brought over from stations like Radio Caroline and the Voice of Peace which the guys had been part of. Everything would be playlisted, bar some weekend shows, which worked perfectly. Nobody could go off on a tangent or deviate from what they were required to play for fear of losing the crucial listenership which was so important starting a new radio station.
Several hundred LPs and 45s would be purchased whilst local man Dick Cole, the owner of Buywise Carpets, donated his old singles collection. With money needed for equipment, vinyl, rent and food the four guys were soon down to the bare bones. There was a single £20 note in the kitty when the lads obtained their very first advert from Heffernan’s Fuel Centre in Tramore.
One DJ, Andy McCloskey remembers:
ABC certainly had its own sound. We were playing Bryan Adams’ ‘Reckless’ album before they started pumping singles off it. We created a huge buzz. Again you were talking about the American import singles that we mail-ordered from the States (you needed an adaptor when you put the 7” single on the deck.) It was just one example of us picking singles left, right and centre before the songs actually became huge hits and got airplay from other stations. On that album we had tracks like ‘Run to You’, ‘Somebody’, ‘Summer of 69’ in constant rotation before they truly hit over here. And that album was huge, one of the biggest sellers of 1984. So it actually gave us a good bit of credibility.
Thanks to Ian Biggar and DX Archive for the recording and Brian Kennedy for permission to use quotations and photos.