The Gary Stevens appreciation thread

[FMEnjoyer]

This guy used to operate a few stations in the early 90's. Various ones like Veronica 102, HITS FM, The music machine.
I will start this off, I am quite sure I heard this track on many occasions he loved Europop.



And this, almost seems like the same song:

[Albert H]

"Self Control" was written by the Italian hit writing team of Giancarlo Bigazzi, Raffaele Riefoli, and Steve Piccolo (the last name is actually one that I made up....). It was a huge global hit, recorded in several languages, and there are still substantial royalties paid out on it! The "Sandra" rubbish from the 90s is awful! It's certainly nothing like the Laura Branigan song!

[FMEnjoyer]

I like it and no one can ever take that away from me.

[duncanorak]

Hi FMEnjoyer, you might be interested to know (if you don't already ) Gary is still active in radio today. He runs several internet radio stations, some of which will play the 90s Europop. He also runs a Free/Pirate radio message board. Here are some links to his websites.

http://rni.vze.com/
http://355.vze.com/
http://atlantis312.vze.com/
http://www.266.vze.com/

http://members7.boardhost.com/PirateRadio/

Duncanorak

[Ironman]

I met Gary on a few occasions, indeed I picked him up a few times when I was involved with the now defunct FM service of Laser Hot Hits which is still broadcasting on SW and on the internet. I loved Veronica Supergold and The Music Machine and I still have quite a few recordings of these stations. I often check out his pirate boardhost site which is always interesting. I used to call The Music Machine to give reception reports and I remember one of the tower blocks it came from. He also did me huge favour sending me the studio masters of jingles from various offshore stations IE Caroline, Mi Amigo, RNI, Atlantis, Laser 558 and Laser Hot Hits, I'm sure he will remember me (DJ name Lee Richards)

[FMEnjoyer]

He represented a different and unique sound on FM. He had a jolly presentation style and the station always
sounded good. I would like to hear some of those old tapes if you could be bother to upload them Ironman.
Especially Veronica, we need someone like now that to reinvigorate an activity on its last legs.

I know it is easy to have rose tinted glasses as you age but radio in the early nineties seemed to be positively buzzing along.

I was replying rather tongue in check Albert, I do still like it though.

[radionortheast]

don't mind the Sandra song, maybe abit slow, have listened to similar stuff there was great channel on youtube a few years ago something disco in the title had all their stuff taken down, have a list some were. Roxanne - Charlene was one of my favourites

[FMEnjoyer]

I cannot seem to get this to play, it would be nice to find some old Veronica Supergold shows or HitsFM / Music Machine etc

https://80.229.172.103/veronica102/

[FMEnjoyer]

I found some old shows, Sunday afternoons re-lived Says Big L but not sure also that is Garry Stevens and Europop 1988



And this DJ was also on it

[radionortheast]

Great I hear modern talking, nice that this was going out across London or were ever, interspersed with 60’s music, they do sound like geezers, it did really amuse me when he was talking about the traffic camera been put up, someone burning their josticks to this, the echo on the mike, the jingles are unique not something i've heard.

[duncanorak]

I cannot seem to get this to play, it would be nice to find some old Veronica Supergold shows or HitsFM / Music Machine etc

https://80.229.172.103/veronica102/

Hi FMEnjoyer, I've spoken to Gary, he says he plans to put the steaming Veronica Supergold back on in the summer.
I first heard Garry when he was on North London Radio on mw back in 79, he then went on to run Radio Veronica 96.3 in London in 80/81 which was very popular.

Duncan

[duncanorak]

I found some old shows, Sunday afternoons re-lived Says Big L but not sure also that is Garry Stevens and Europop 1988



And this DJ was also on it

BIG L was a station run by Ruski on the Radio (Russell) but it also involved many of the crew from Hits/Veronica.
Steve Roberts first started on Radio Veronica 96.3 in 1980, sadly he passed a few years ago.

There is some info about Veronica and the Music Machine on these websites
https://garrystevens.vze.com
https://anorakcorner.com

[FMEnjoyer]

Sad story there to hear about Steve Roberts, thanks for the info. That's the links I thought that had vanished thanks, good reading about supergold etc. Maybe it was him where GS and another jock was triggering the rig on the block to have a 2 way chat on the FM band ? Or maybe someone called Ian St. John or something similar. They had a good chat about something I caught it randomly about 9:30Pm on a Sunday evening probably a test to see if studio switching worked.

A few rig pics digged out...

[FMEnjoyer]

I cannot seem to get this to play, it would be nice to find some old Veronica Supergold shows or HitsFM / Music Machine etc

https://80.229.172.103/veronica102/

Hi FMEnjoyer, I've spoken to Gary, he says he plans to put the steaming Veronica Supergold back on in the summer.
I first heard Garry when he was on North London Radio on mw back in 79, he then went on to run Radio Veronica 96.3 in London in 80/81 which was very popular.

Duncan

Superb ! I look forwards to that and a few other people as well. If you do find out when pop on here thanks Duncan.

And yes radionortheast Veronica Supergold and HITS FM were a real anoraky treat on a Sunday, completely different from all the soul and funk stations. They really had old school friendly and happy DJ type presentation and it went down well. I always got a solid 4/6 clear stereo on my signal meter in East London. The bright clear sound of europop worked well in stereo especially. I vaguely recall they were really close by at one point giving 5/6 maybe upped the power ? I thinkl that wa when they went to Pole hill - which is a bit of green land, epping forest maybe ? near chingford about 130M or so which if you think a 20 storey block would be about 90m tall is good going for a hill near/in london. I always listened to the very end of transmission carrier switched of listening to the technical bits, music stop, link switched off, carrier drops off few buzzes and clicks, that's what us radio weirdos like. I always knew someone was up my local block 1/2 a mile away by line of sight as they needle went off the end off the dial with most... then I would look out the window and see a double stack, those were the days.

Once someone put the most insanely large antenna pole up there like 3x taller than any average attempt. I could not believe my eyes i could see they guy lined it using binoculars.

Back then my evenings and weekend were filled with this activity, dial twiddling I loved it keeping tabs on who was on and any new stations that sprang up. It was quite literally end to end filled without any white noise at all and mostly pirates. Radio then was superb even the commercial stations had ideas, cause the pirates kept them on their toes with programming.

[duncanorak]

Veronica Supergold came from Pole Hill and blocks in Wathamstow and Chingford, now all demolished. Hits FM came from Stanmore, then Enfield and then Chingford. Big L was from Chingford. Music Machine was from an Edmonton block (still standing). You may have heard GS trying to link to Hits FM when it was in Enfield but struggled to get in. Also 2 rigs were installed at different times , one in Chingford and the other in Edmonton just for QSOing, they were used by half a dozen anoraks just for fun, no programming, maybe you heard that as well.
Mike St John was the DJ, a long time friend of Garry's going back to the NLR days

[FMEnjoyer]

Veronica Supergold came from Pole Hill and blocks in Wathamstow and Chingford, now all demolished. Hits FM came from Stanmore, then Enfield and then Chingford. Big L was from Chingford. Music Machine was from an Edmonton block (still standing). You may have heard GS trying to link to Hits FM when it was in Enfield but struggled to get in. Also 2 rigs were installed at different times , one in Chingford and the other in Edmonton just for QSOing, they were used by half a dozen anoraks just for fun, no programming, maybe you heard that as well.
Mike St John was the DJ, a long time friend of Garry's going back to the NLR days

Thanks Duncan, that's great info and yes it was surprising to hear CB type chat on FM band. Pirate moments you never forget, memories made for those inclined. Good to know the timeline as I loved both Veronica and Hits FM a lot, I knew GS was behind both so listened to them both for their style. What I do know is they sounded great the stereo was strong and clear where I was, not much hiss at all.

Most of the locations were about 5-7miles as the crow flies from me. Stanmore much further about double. Hard to know exactly as I suspect antennas and power changed as well as site heights. I always pulled them in HITS Fm was no problem even if from Stanmore. I imagine the stanmore site was on the nature reserve area as that is a high spot.

There were a few pirates using stereo but not as many as those using mono. I know Kiss did stereo pretty well when on 94, LWR was almost always mono as far as I recall, Q102 was stereo maybe RFM but that is so far back I cannot recall well. Other good stereo was 2 essex stations Unity Fm and in Southend Premier. I think Solar also did a good stint in Stereo.

Cannot wait till summer for veronica stream it will be like those hot Sunday afternoons, smoking fags and drinking mugs of tea and evenings listening on 102- oooo-oooo-ooo-oohhhhhhh with Veronica today.... Come now and sail away ooooo-ooooo-ooooo-oooh

I always thought the sig tune said "sailing on 102 oooooooo-ooo" which was the frequency they used.

It was great quite a haunting track and really made it sound totally different which is what you need to be, they used just the start of it usually as I am sure you well know.

[FMEnjoyer]

Interesting having 2 PA boards in that rig, wonder how that works ?

Here is a link that plays a different program from above, will need Read Player, VLC, Winamp or Media player or something that streams.

An RM file will appear on clicking.

https://80.229.172.103/Garry/Audiovideo ... pergold.rm

[FMEnjoyer]

Not a big hit over here I think but I think it rings a bell must have been big on the mainland Europe, sounds familiar like a lot of the songs back then had a certain sentimental feel to them.

[EFR]

Interesting having 2 PA boards in that rig, wonder how that works ?

Here is a link that plays a different program from above, will need Read Player, VLC, Winamp or Media player or something that streams.

An RM file will appear on clicking.

https://80.229.172.103/Garry/Audiovideo ... pergold.rm

If you look output coax, it is photoshopped.

[FMEnjoyer]

Yes you are right, duplicated PA board to make it look more impressive I guess.