Today's surprise is...
PHOENIX FM!
Long time friends of Noisy, community radio station for Brentwood and Billericay Phoenix FM is essential listening for anyone in the area; not only because they have their finger firmly on the pulse of local happenings, but because of the quality specialist music shows they produce on a weekly basis. The Mix Tape, Vm and Curveballs are all alternative music shows we here at Noisy regularly tune in to, that offer up plenty of new music and from time to time, exclusive interviews with established artists. Phoenix FM even publish some interviews online for us to listen to again and again, below are links to just a few of our favourites in 2008:
- Eddie Curry interviews The Charlatans' Tim Burgess @ Chinnery's, Southend, October 2008 (mp3 interview + videos + photos)
- Eddie Curry interviews Gary Numan (mp3 interview + photo)
- Steve Mead interviews New York songwriter Rachael Sage (mp3 interview + session track)
Noisy issue 7 featured an interview with the man behind the station, Paul Golder, here's an extract:
Give us a brief run down of what shows you have and how many presenters are at the station?
The main idea of the radio station is to provide a radio service for the whole community of Brentwood and Billericay, about one hundred and fifty thousand people - during the daytime we have a lot of interviews from local councillors, schools, children, community groups, charities, businesses, theatre – Brentwood theatre come in and talk a lot – basically letting people know what is happening in town. There is a lot going on in Brentwood and Billericay and we are there to give a service about that. Musically, we try to play absolutely everything, we don't really want to pigeon hole ourselves as a particular genre or anything. We play everything from jazz, blues, folk, classical music, all the way up to rock, indie, metal, dance – we don't really leave anything out and a lot of the shows have a local angle, so even the classical music show will feature local choral societies and local orchestras, we have local folk singers and folk clubs and so on and that goes down to indie, rock. We have a lot of local bands come in and we play a lot of sessions and of course we are recording our own ones as well.
Phoenix FM are currently recording a new set of Creative sessions featuring songs by local bands and musicians which will be broadcast on the station in 2009. Phoenix FM can be listened to online via their website, or on 98FM in Brentwood and Billericay.