On Your Wavelength?

 

In my last posting, I lamented the state of today’s radio playlists, which have become increasingly focused on either contemporary music or a narrowing choice of over-familiar ‘greatest hits’. Where, I asked, were those more obscure items, the kind of songs you heard maybe once back in the mid 60s and never again? Where are those ‘rubbishy’ items that used to annoy us during their time in the top 20? Radio 2 has long since become Radio 1 in all but name: until a few years ago, Sundays were the only day of the week where one might find anything remotely resembling the station in its heyday, but with the deaths of presenters like Desmond Carrington and Richard Baker, and various scheduling overhauls, the ‘old school Sunday’ disappeared from national radio. But all is not lost... 

There is still a radio station where this kind of overlooked, easy listening music has a home. Serenade Radio is an internet station that models itself on the old Light Programme, with a schedule devoted to easy listening across the genres of pop, folk and jazz. Last weekend, I tuned in for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. In broadcasting terms, its nearest equivalent is the nostalgic TV channel Talking Pictures: but you won’t be annoyed by those endless commercials for Dormeo mattresses, because there aren’t any commercials on Serenade Radio: the station is run by professional presenters who give their time for free, and is entirely funded through donations from listeners. It’s been on air since 2015.

The station is the brainchild of Andy Marriott, a name I’ve known for years – he was an associate of my friend Tim Beddows, and would occasionally supply him with rare materials from the vintage years of television. Elsewhere in the schedule, we find Peter Tomlinson, a former continuity announcer from ATV in the Midlands, and a genuinely nice guy (he recorded a whole day of ‘in-vision continuity’ for my 60th birthday at the behest of Tim Beddows). There are even vintage editions of Sing Something Simple, a Sunday evening staple of Radio 2 that always followed the Top 20 rundown – and on weekday mornings, Music While You Work, originally launched during World War II as a morale-boosting programme of uplifting music.

I was tipped off about the station by Steve James, who presents a breakfast show on Saturday and Sunday mornings and posted a comment on my last blog, and last weekend I tuned in (if that’s the right expression when listening on an iPad) for the first time. The playlist was almost exactly what I was writing about last time – not that they play ‘rubbish’, but rather the kind of easy listening instrumentals that were once a staple of the Light Programme, from names like Tony Hatch, Percy Faith, Herb Alpert and many others. Alongside these items, there are pop records of that particular stripe once favoured by the Light Programme – so, no noisy rock bands (who are well served by the many ‘greatest hits’ style broadcasters). 

Much of what gets played is unfamiliar to me, but not unwelcome. I’ve caught a few personal favourites – the Johnny Mann Singers’ version of 'Up, Up and Away', and Reparata and the Delrons’ 'Captain of Your Ship', which I mentioned in a post back in 2021. Today, I even heard a track by Ken Dodd...

Perhaps most intriguingly though, I’ve caught a couple of records which I ‘know but don’t know’ if that makes any sense. Just this morning, I heard a track by the Tony Hatch Orchestra, ‘Maori’, a choral instrumental that struck a chord somewhere in the deepest recesses of memory. I was sure I knew this track, but had no memory of having heard it. This begs the question: if you hear a piece of music only once and never again, is it stored somewhere in the memory? Hearing songs like this is a bit like a benign form of hypnotic regression, recovering memories that had all but been erased: a kind of ‘Stone Tape’ of memory (for those familiar with the Nigel Kneale ghost story).

Serenade Radio is genuinely like revisiting the old Light Programme, which was a constant background in our home during the 1960s. It’s a welcome change from the state of modern radio, with its unashamedly ‘old school’ style of presentation. You even get the Greenwich Time Signal ‘pips’ on the hour, although, for pedants, they are the ‘post-1972’ variety, with the sixth pip longer than the others. Judging from the station’s website, there is a high level of listener engagement, with over 30 comments posted in the last seven days. This is unsurprising, as the BBC’s listener demographic has become increasingly biased towards the 30 and under age group, certainly as far as music radio is concerned, and there is little or nothing in their output with this kind of appeal to older listeners. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that the BBC might consider doing its own version of a station like this – there are, after all, no fewer than four iterations of Radio 1, and a ‘Radio 2 Extra’ would, I’m sure find an appreciative audience – but I think it’s unlikely.

You can find Serenade Radio here: https://www.serenade-radio.com