So here we were, with a’ radio station’ in our house. The early days consisted of weekly shows, called The Irreducible Representation, which consisted of me playing electronica, electro and progressive drum and bass for 2 hours.
They also involved the entire front room being rearranged (until semi-permanent shelving could be put on the walls) to accommodate a begged, borrowed and re-appropriated collection of CD discmen, record decks and mixers. With deep thanks here to Capt Naked aka James Merriman and others.
I have little desire to revisit the archives of those programmes yet but no doubt one day I’ll drag them out and duly die inside at their awfulness…one has to cut one’s teeth somehow.
Pretty quickly, guests slots were conjured up; producers Accelra, Pete Um, Vacuum on Vacuum (more anon) and DJs/promoters Charlie Don’t Surf amongst the crew.
CDS were Toby Lloyd and Damo Hallsworth; both gifted DJs with complimentary states in music, mostly involving red LEDs and noise. Gabba was a genre riding high at that time for them…
Some beautiful (some scary) mixes and performances came from these shows but our first technical loss was marked by the Great Lost Um Session, where a harddisk failure lost what all who were present agreed was one of Pete Um’s best performances…
Pretty soon, I started talking seriously with Toby and Damo about putting on live events with some of the artists we were promoting on-air and streaming them live from the venue. We came out from The Junction and The Portland Arms in Cambridge and from the Norwich Arts Centre, all when the BBC were still having small difficulties with streaming live just over the web.
And so began a run of gigs with the likes of Dangermouse (might not be the one you’re thinking of), Global Goon, Debasser, Tokyo Windbag, Sam Dedbeat Himself, d’Damage (the last 2 in Norwich with our Norfolk Brethren Uncollected) with an outstanding one of these being Schneider TM, a German outfit.
Schneider left a whole bunch of DATs at the venue and they needed them for a John Peel session at Maida Vale the next night (one which prevented us from broadcasting our gig)…cue a wheeze of me and great friend Ed Woodhouse piling down to London and gatecrashing a live broadcast with The Man himself to save the day; a truly life-changing experience to see the grumpy old genius doing what he ever did but better than anyone else could ever dream…RIP JP.
That summer of 2003 came to an end and a natural lul in the Cambridge live music cycle began.
What to do next? I had already been down to the legendary Resonance FM in London, the arts based Comm Station, to do one of their Clear Spots to promote our work. We were learning so much and it all felt as if it could go somewhere…but where?
There used to be a legendary venue in Cambridge called the Boat Race on Burliegh St, which broke the regional duck of many an international live band; it had been a centre for gigs in the city for many years but was running into difficulties.
By now, we were out at gigs and events whenever we could make it and the Boat Race was a precious small-medium venue in a city where provision was (and still is) barely adequate and one which is dominated by the arts/music agenda of the City Council. Untold wonders also go on behind closed doors at the University with little access for the general town population…
I felt I had to do something and ended up running a petition against its closure, spoke at an Area Committee meeting and submitted a business proposal to Enterprise Inns, the landlords, for me to take it over as a broadcasting live music venue.
Obviously, this didn’t have my desired outcome but thanks to a lot of internet forums and the Cambridge News, a lot of support did come and a lot of attention was directed towards 209radio.
This resulted in a lot of people coming out of the woodwork wanting to find out more. It also resulted in me questioning what our little station was or could be in the future, an internal conversation which came out into the world after meeting one Gil Karpas, local musician and promoter who was then working at The Portland Arms.
“Can I have a show then?” “What do you play?” “Broken beat and jazz bizniz.”
And so began Phase 2…
