Tag: Ace Records

Givin’ up Free! for funk (radio) : 1989-1991 : Free! magazine / Touch magazine, KISS FM, London

 August 1989. There was a momentary lull in the usually frenetic activity at the [former London pirate radio station] ‘KISS FM’ office, whilst we awaited the next Independent Broadcasting Authority [IBA] announcement that would give specific details of the application procedure for the two new London FM [commercial radio] licences on offer. [KISS FM co-founder] Gordon McNamee turned his attention to other matters, since he understood that there was still no guarantee of KISS FM winning the licence, even on its second attempt.

On several occasions, I had mentioned to McNamee my belief that there existed significant untapped commercial potential in KISS FM’s magazine, ‘The Written Word.’ A year earlier, the publication had started life as a single A3 sheet newsletter, entitled ‘94,’ that had been produced on a word processor and had been printed without photographs. At that time, it had been intended solely as an update for the station’s fans and its main feature had been the KISS FM programme schedule. As the station’s mailing list increased in size, so too had the content of the magazine. By the final issue of The Written Word, the thirty-two pages had included lots of photos, record reviews, interviews and information about the London dance music scene. There were also several pages of paid-for advertisements which had helped to defray the increasing costs of printing and postage.

For several years, I had been fascinated by the proliferation of free magazines in London, with weekly titles such as ‘Ms London,’ ‘Girl About Town’ and ‘Midweek’ handed out during the morning rush hour to thousands of commuters at London’s railway and underground stations. For revenue, these magazines depended entirely upon the advertising space they sold, but their distribution costs were low and their print runs were huge. An increasing number of more specialist magazines were being produced and financed in this way. Travelling through Waterloo railway station one day, I had been handed a free entertainment and what’s on magazine that was aimed specifically at high earning commuters living in the suburbs. In my area of Northwest London, I regularly received a free copy of a general interest, colour magazine aimed at homeowners in the locality.

One of the problems KISS FM had encountered with The Written Word was the huge cost of sending out thousands of copies of each issue individually to every person on the station’s growing mailing list. I believed that these expenses could be reduced dramatically by distributing the magazine as a free giveaway to a wider readership that would pick it up from dance music record shops, music venues and clubs in London. Many more copies would have to be printed to circulate the magazine in this way, but the advertising space within it could be sold at a much higher price, since it would be reaching many more readers. Instead of being solely a KISS FM publicity vehicle, the enlarged publication could be London’s first giveaway magazine to be aimed specifically at the city’s dance music community.

McNamee liked my idea and could see the potential it offered him to earn much needed revenue to cover the overheads of running the KISS FM office. After several weeks discussing with him my proposal for the magazine, McNamee asked if I would like to launch the project and be its editor. I had experience in this field, having been editor of the student newspaper [‘Palatinate’] and student handbook whilst at university, and having launched an independent music magazine [‘N.E.’] in Northeast England. I accepted McNamee’s job offer and handed in my notice to the record company where I had worked during the last two years. McNamee said he would pay me £100 for three days’ work each week, plus eight per cent of the net profits generated by the magazine. Although this worked out to be less money than I had earned from the record company, I believed that the new job would improve my career prospects and provide an opportunity to be more closely involved with KISS FM.

Besides, my recent experiences with the record company had left me frustrated and eager to explore a new work opportunity. Back in 1985, whilst working in Israel, I had discovered a female singer named Ofra Haza whose music, a kind of ‘Middle East meets West’ sound, I believed would be marketable in Europe. Since then, I had worked hard promoting her music and had succeeded in achieving airplay on national radio in the UK and positive press coverage. By 1989, one of the Ofra Haza songs I had found in Israel four years earlier had reached number fifteen in the UK singles chart. It was released by the independent record company for which I had been working. I asked the company for some compensation towards all the work I had done to make this artist a success, including a UK artist interview tour I had arranged in early 1989. The directors had met and decided to offer me a cheque for £200. I felt insulted by this amount, particularly as my years of work had given the company its biggest chart hit in a long time. Worse, the credit for Ofra Haza’s chart success was being taken in press interviews by someone else working at the record label. Now, all I wanted to do was quit the company, having earned almost nothing from four years of work having created Israel’s biggest international pop music star, and yet not having even gained any recognition.

I started work at the Blackstock Mews office on 22 August 1989, the first occasion I had earned money from KISS FM, despite having been involved in the business since the beginning of the year. I had been spending more and more time in the office, working with the other staff, but had never been offered remuneration. I looked forward to becoming a proper employee, although the one person in the organisation who did not seem to welcome my appointment as editor of the new publication was Lindsay Wesker [son of playwright Sir Arnold Wesker]. He had been editor of The Written Word, until its recent closure, and he probably felt that this experience, combined with his previous work for the ‘Black Echoes’ music paper, should have made him the ideal candidate for this new post. McNamee told me privately that he was well aware of Wesker’s antipathy towards my appointment, but assured me that he wanted fresh blood to be in charge of the project.

The day after I handed in my notice to the record company, I convened an evening meeting at the KISS FM office to discuss the new magazine. After a considerable amount of brain-storming, [co-worker] Heddi Greenwood suggested it could be titled ‘Free!’ reflecting not only the fact that it was to be a giveaway magazine, but also the notion of personal freedom to which dance music fans would be able to relate. Her suggestion was accepted unanimously. It was agreed that the first monthly issue would be published at the beginning of October 1989, that the print run would be around 30,000, and that the magazine should divorce itself entirely from the KISS FM campaign for a radio licence that had dominated The Written Word. Everyone felt that it was most important for the magazine to be viewed as an authoritative, independent guide to the London dance music scene. Heddi Greenwood would handle the advertising sales for the magazine, and McNamee had appointed Lindsay Wesker its deputy editor in a gesture of reconciliation. I set to work writing a substantial business plan that outlined the magazine’s purpose and ethos, which would also be used in presentations to potential advertisers. Over several pages, I defined the editorial content of Free!, its intended readership and the reasons I believed it would prove so successful.

Now that I had become the fifth paid worker in the KISS FM office, McNamee arranged a second-hand desk and phone extension for my arrival. I was now working at Blackstock Mews on a regular basis, from which I gained a greater insight into the way in which the members of the KISS FM team worked and their respective roles within the organisation.

I was busy putting together the blueprint for the new Free! magazine. I visited a cheap photo-typesetting company in Brighton, commissioned quotes from printing companies, called meetings in the office of potential contributors, and commissioned a logo design. McNamee was becoming increasingly enthused about the potential profit offered by the new magazine, and so he quickly became more involved in its day-to-day running. He had almost stopped talking about KISS FM altogether and, despite our awareness that the new London FM licences were in the pipeline, McNamee directed the whole office’s efforts into this new publishing venture.

One extremely hot and sunny weekend in late August, the KISS FM staff spent the whole of Saturday and Sunday transforming the hitherto unused downstairs room at Blackstock Mews into an office for Free! All the accumulated rubbish was completely cleared out and the dark, dreary room was repainted – ceiling, walls, floor, everything. McNamee bought a job lot of small second-hand desks, which were moved outside to the Mews for us to paint in gloss black. The office stereo system was rigged up outdoors to provide us with musical entertainment, and McNamee dug out some old cassette recordings of programmes from KISS FM’s pirate days, which he had kept in his desk drawers, to entertain everyone.

Some brand-new shelves and storage units were purchased from the IKEA furniture store, which McNamee and I assembled in the new downstairs office. There was one piece of furniture with which McNamee became obsessed: the construction of a huge, rectangular glass-topped table, more than six feet in length. It was the closest he could achieve, for now, to the impressive pieces of furniture he had admired in the opulent boardrooms of KISS FM’s new, corporate shareholders. Between the clear glass table top and its felt underlay, McNamee spent hours carefully positioning press articles about KISS FM and pages from The Written Word magazine, along with some of the station’s publicity materials. Once the glass top had been screwed down to the base, the whole thing looked remarkably like a personal shrine to the KISS FM pirate radio station that McNamee used to run and to the commercial radio business to which he aspired.

One chapter in his business career now having ended, McNamee seemed determined to bury the deep disappointment of the failed [first] KISS FM licence bid and, instead, to put all his energies into turning my idea for Free! magazine into the money-spinner he longed for. The dream of KISS FM radio was very quickly being forgotten.

When I had accepted the job of editor, McNamee had promised that I would also be spending some of my time working on the second licence application, but the launch of Free! was proving to be very demanding and there was still little sign of action within the organisation about the radio licence. 

McNamee hardly ever mentioned KISS FM any more, and the only aspect of the second licence application that seemed to occupy him was satisfying the chairman’s desire to assemble an advisory committee. Since the failure of the first bid, there had not been a single office meeting to discuss what had gone well or badly in the previous campaign, or to analyse what had been the good and bad points of the application. Whenever I broached the subject of the second licence bid with McNamee, he would shrug it off and change the subject to the potential success of Free! magazine, which had overtaken KISS FM as his pet project. This state of affairs frustrated me immensely, because it seemed as if McNamee had lost interest in making a second licence bid at all. He had already discarded KISS FM’s past and the possibility of winning second time around. In fact, McNamee had confided in a close friend, Joe Strong, manager of Dingwalls venue in Camden, that losing the licence had left him “absolutely devastated” and “absolutely inconsolable.”

I was perplexed. I arranged to meet a fellow journalist and radio worker, Daniel Nathan, whom I had known since moving to London in 1986, and with whom I felt I could discuss this problem. As the two of us walked across Blackheath one weekend, I ranted to Nathan about how incredibly close I thought KISS FM was to winning a licence on this second occasion, and how frustrating it was that McNamee seemed intent on wasting the opportunity. I had been the only member of the KISS FM team to attend the IBA press conference announcing ‘London Jazz Radio’s win (Nathan had been there too) and it was obvious to me how much enthusiasm some of the IBA staff had shown towards KISS FM’s bid. This time, there was likely to be a similar number of applicants for the two new licences and, unless KISS FM could submit an almost perfect application, the IBA would feel duty bound to award licences to other groups who proved that they were better organised.

Talking to Nathan clarified, in my own mind, the gravity of the situation. These two new London licences were likely to be the last on offer until sometime in the mid-1990’s. To throw away the chance of winning a black music station for radio listeners in London at this stage would be utterly crazy, particularly after so many people had campaigned for so many years in the hope of just such an eventuality. I decided that, even if McNamee was prepared to remain slumped despondently in his office chair, consigning KISS FM to a space in his glorious past, I certainly was not. If he wanted to wallow in his own despair, that was fine with me. He could carry on playing nostalgic tapes of his old KISS FM shows to everyone in the office, as he had been during recent weeks, but I was determined to do something more positive about winning the station a licence.

On returning to work the following week, at the first opportune moment, I confronted McNamee across his desk in the open plan KISS FM office. Why was he not doing anything about the second licence bid? Did he not believe KISS FM could win? If everyone else still had faith in KISS FM, was he not letting them all down? Was any work being done on a revised application? Was not Free! magazine merely a short-term distraction? Almost anyone could start a new magazine, but how many people could win a radio licence? Why had he slumped into total inaction? As I questioned McNamee, I could sense the other staff at their desks in the office trying to bury their heads in work and look as if they were not listening to our conversation. I explained to McNamee that I thought he was throwing away the biggest business opportunity he was ever likely to encounter in his life. I told him that, of the people within the KISS FM office, I seemed to be the best qualified person to organise and co-ordinate the second licence application [having previously researched and written successful project applications to Durham University, Manpower Services Commission, Northern Arts and Princes Trust]. For the moment, that work seemed to me to be a far more appropriate use of my skills than editing Free!, particularly as nobody else seemed to be doing anything about the KISS FM bid.

I suggested to McNamee that someone else should be brought in to edit Free! magazine while I devoted my full attention to re-working the KISS FM licence application. I had already prepared the groundwork for the new magazine during the last month, and the project could easily be handed over to another editor at this stage. On the other hand, if we did not act on the KISS FM bid now, we would never be offered another chance.

During this monologue, McNamee listened to me, smiled a lot, but said virtually nothing in reply. I could sense that, deep inside, he was incredibly angry that anyone should even dare to challenge his authority in this way. I had seen him act this way before, but only when directing his anger towards others who had displeased him. Instead of showing any response of anger or emotion, McNamee just glowered at you and clammed up. It was his usual cold shoulder treatment – ex-communication rather than confrontation – and you had to wonder whether he was already plotting some ghastly revenge to extract upon you in the future for your supposed crime. McNamee continued to be wholly unresponsive to my questions, so I told him that I planned to start work immediately on KISS FM’s application and that, initially, I planned to do some research in the comparative peace of my home. I promised I would willingly explain and hand over all the tasks I had completed on Free! magazine to whomsoever he wished. After all my suggestions, McNamee still offered me no response, so I gathered together my work and left the office.

After that ‘meeting,’ it was almost a week before I heard anything at all from McNamee. I had been busy working at home, as I had planned, and although I had regular telephone conversations with the other staff in the KISS FM office, McNamee had carefully avoided any contact with me. To me, this sort of behaviour appeared incredibly childish – McNamee seemed to be putting the vanity of his own ego above the need for his radio station to win a licence. Then, late one evening, he phoned me from home. He offered no explanation or apology for his attitude towards me that day in the office, and he gave no reason as to why he had failed to contact me at all during the intervening week. Our conversation was unemotional and business-like. He told me that, from now on, he would pay me £100 for spending three days each week working on the KISS FM licence application. He said he wanted more of my time, but I explained that I had other work commitments during the week on which I could not renege. He made it sound as if this arrangement had just come to him in a flash of inspiration, and that his offer was obviously too good for anyone to turn down.

He also told me that I would no longer be involved in Free! magazine in any capacity. He wanted me to visit the office and hand over all my paperwork to the newly appointed editor, who would be Lindsay Wesker. Finally, he disclosed the caveat that must have taken him almost a week to concoct. When my work on the licence application ended in November, I would no longer be paid by KISS FM, and neither could I resume the editorship of Free! magazine. In essence, I was being allowed to have my own way in the short term but, in the end, I had been made to sacrifice a permanent job at KISS FM. I would be forced to look elsewhere for work once the licence application process was over. This did not worry me excessively because I sincerely believed that KISS FM could win the licence this time around, whereas McNamee seemed already to have resigned himself to failing on the second occasion. This new arrangement cut my pay to a basic £100 per week, because I would no longer draw the percentage of profit that McNamee had previously agreed I would derive from Free! magazine. I was not told the details of the deal that McNamee had struck with Wesker to take over editorship of Free!, but Wesker could not hide his delight at assuming the position he must have felt he had always deserved.

However, when the much delayed first issue of Free! was eventually published at the beginning of November, Wesker’s tendency to indulge himself shone from the inside of the magazine. He contributed one page of his own photos and three and a half pages of his record reviews to the beginning of that first edition. These reviews included glowing critiques of a single released by KISS FM’s own label ‘Graphic Records’ and of a track recorded by Wesker’s partner, Claudette Patterson. I was no longer allowed any involvement in Free! and my name was deleted from the magazine’s masthead, in disregard of my work developing the original idea and setting the project in motion. Free! had been my ‘baby’ and I had had to sacrifice it for KISS FM. From then on, Wesker spent most of his time in the downstairs Free! office at Blackstock Mews, while the rest of us continued to work upstairs on the business of KISS FM and Goodfoot Promotions [Limited].

Personally, I was very disappointed to no longer be involved in the launch and organisation of Free! magazine. However, I firmly believed that KISS FM would win the London licence if I could come up with the necessary facts and figures in this second version of the application form. There would always be another opportunity in the future for me to launch a new publishing project. Right now, this might be the last opportunity I would have to win London a black music radio station. The hard work had only just begun, and a lot of responsibility was suddenly resting upon my shoulders.

February 1990. During recent months […], Lindsay Wesker had become totally absorbed in his role as editor of the monthly magazine Free! and he was now spending little time on KISS FM matters. The February 1990 edition of the magazine presented the first opportunity for KISS FM to explain, in its own words, exactly how it had won its [second application for a] radio licence. Wesker wanted to write the article, but McNamee intervened and insisted that I should pen the two-page feature. Despite the magazine having been my original idea, this was the only occasion I was asked to contribute to Free!, and then only because McNamee had insisted. Wesker seemed incredibly territorial about the project he now viewed as ‘his baby,’ and he appeared to like to do as much of the work on the magazine himself as was possible.

June 1990. The next job appointment I needed to make was the station’s record librarian, who would be supervised by KISS FM’s head of music, Lindsay Wesker. Since taking over the editorship of Free! magazine from me the previous year, Wesker had had little involvement in the re-launch of KISS FM. He seemed almost obsessed with the monthly magazine, spending many late nights in the ground floor office writing articles and reviewing records. Since Wesker had no prior commercial radio experience to contribute, I had not been particularly worried by his absence. However, the person appointed as record librarian would report to Wesker, which is why it was vital for him to be involved in their selection. I loaned Wesker a large folder of all the applications I had received for this job [I had advertised in ‘The Guardian’ newspaper] and I asked his opinion of which might be the most suitable to interview.

The next day, Wesker returned the folder to me, having marked the handful of candidates he felt were most suitable. I looked through his selection and was puzzled by his choices. I asked him why he had chosen those particular applicants, none of whom had previous library experience. He explained that there were two qualities he had been looking for – the candidates had to demonstrate knowledge of dance music, and they had to be female. At first, I thought he was joking, but I quickly discovered that he was not. Wesker explained to me his theory that a record librarian had to be a woman, and stated that he was not interested in working with someone who was not a proven expert in dance music. I was shocked that Wesker could be so irrational in choosing a suitable person for the job. His method of appointing staff was proving to be as bizarre as that of McNamee.

February 1991. Gordon McNamee [now KISS 100 FM managing director] suddenly announced that the station would no longer publish Free! magazine after the January 1991 issue. I was proud to have created the idea for the magazine a year and a half earlier. Although I was no longer associated with its editorial team, I was sad to see Free! close just as KISS FM was proving to be a success with listeners. McNamee explained that the magazine was no longer earning sufficient revenues from advertising to cover its printing costs. However, there were rumours of other reasons for the closure. It was alleged that two KISS FM directors wanted to close Free! because it clashed with their publishing interests. Tony Prince owned the monthly ‘MixMag’ magazine which had recently switched from subscription-only to retail sales. Free! would be a direct competitor. It was also alleged that KISS FM shareholder EMAP [plc] planned to launch its own monthly dance music magazine. Free! would be a direct competitor. Fortunately, Free! found an alternative financial backer and was reborn [under new ownership] as ‘Touch’ magazine, which published similar editorial content.

Once Free! had moved out, the large downstairs room on the ground floor of the [KISS 100 FM] Holloway Road building suddenly looked very empty. I spent an evening picking through the debris left in the office of the magazine that had started life as ‘94’ in July 1988, and which had been such an important part of the pirate station’s campaign to win a licence. Free!’s sudden closure was a bad omen. Staff in the building started whispering about further cuts that might be made to save the company money.

FREE!, nos. 1-15 (November 1989 – January 1991), London.

[Excerpt from ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story Of A London Pirate Radio Station’s Path To Success’ by Grant Goddard, Radio Books, 2011, 528 pages]

POSTSCRIPT

Having purchased my first soul record (‘Time Is Tight’, Booker T & the MG’s, Stax 119) in 1969, I had been thrilled in 1973 to find a new homegrown monthly colour magazine ‘Black Music’ on the shelves of my local newsagent. I devoured every issue cover-to-cover until its closure in 1984 and wrote to many of its advertisers selling soul and reggae records. I could never have imagined then that, almost two decades hence, I would become the founder of Britain’s longest running monthly black music magazine, created as ‘Free!’ and renamed ‘Touch’ until its closure in 2001.

KISS FM boss Gordon McNamee’s cruel obliteration of my name from the magazine’s history has since empowered his long-time colleague Lindsay Wesker to claim online “I created a magazine called free!” and to have “created free! Magazine” and “Created free! Magazine” and “created free! Magazine”. I am reminded of the iconic Norman Whitfield soul song ‘It Should Have Been Me’. Evidently, history is written by the vipers.

[First published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2025/07/givin-up-free-for-funk-radio-1989-1991.html ]

Congratulations on the birth of music genre ‘world music’! : 1987 : The Empress of Russia, London

 WORLD MUSIC? The phrase is used with such regularity by the media in recent times that you might think the term had existed forever. But ‘world music‘ was in fact a name artificially created by a small group of music industry people who met monthly during 1987 in a public house in London, England (somewhat appropriately named ‘The Empress Of Russia’). ‘World music’ was devised as an appropriate answer to a simple problem.

Since the early 1980’s, a handful of small, independent record labels had sprung up in Britain that were releasing music recorded in Africa, East Europe, Asia and Latin America. These record companies were not interested in the traditional music or quaint ‘ethnic’ recordings from these continents that western record companies had dabbled in since the earliest days of the phonograph. Instead, upstart labels such as Earthworks, Globestyle and Sterns were interested in bringing the vibrant, contemporary, popular music from other continents to the attention of music fans in Europe and North America. The problem was that record stores throughout the western world had no obvious place to display or file such recordings in their inventory. A record-buyer looking for an album by, for example, The Super Rail Band in music stores had no obvious place to find it. It could be in the ‘folk’ section, though it was not folk music. It might be in the soul section (“well, the musicians are black, aren’t they?”) but the music certainly was not soul. So The Super Rail Band was most likely to end up in the ‘S’ division of the huge ‘rock/pop’ alphabet, lost in a sea of pouting, preening third-rate mediocrity.

The independent record companies were frustrated by this situation and hurting financially. The potential buyers of their releases were failing to find these albums in record stores. And the record stores were caught in the middle of the situation. If they ordered this type of music product, where should they file it to maximise sales? It was a real problem for all parties. By 1987, a label such as Globestyle had developed an extensive catalogue of 25 album titles, and there needed to be an obvious single point in every record store where potential buyers could find its releases.

The result was a series of regular meetings in ‘The Empress of Russia’ attended by the managers of twelve pioneering British record labels, as well as DJ’s of the few radio shows that played this music, and representatives of record distributors that specialised in this music. By the third meeting, the ad hoc group had agreed upon the name ‘world music’ as descriptive of all their releases, and each record company contributed £50 per album title towards a jointly funded generic marketing campaign.

Twelve-inch plastic divider cards with the words ‘WORLD MUSIC’ emblazoned across the top were distributed to every record store across Britain, enabling each to establish a brand new section in its display of album sleeves (this was the pre-CD era). 25,000 copies were distributed of a single-sheet, monochrome leaflet that listed 73 albums available from the twelve record companies. Press releases explaining and describing this new genre called ‘world music’ were sent to everyone on a media list created by pooling the contacts of the individual record companies.

The interest from all sections of the British media was overwhelming. Many magazines and newspapers ran feature articles about the campaign, as well as spotlights on individual artists whose recordings were being promoted. In October 1987, the popular weekly music newspaper ‘NME‘ produced a special ‘NME World Music Cassette‘ which acted as a sampler for all the record labels’ individual releases. By the end of the year, the term ‘world music’ had been adopted as a new genre of music, not only in Britain, but across Europe.

And what exactly did the phrase ‘world music’ mean? One of the press releases produced in the marketing campaign explained: “Trying to reach a definition of ‘world music’ provoked much lengthy discussion [within the committee], and finally it was agreed that it means practically any music that isn’t, at present, catered for by its own category e.g.: reggae, jazz, blues, folk. Perhaps the common factor unifying all these world music [record] labels is the passionate commitment of all the individuals to the music itself.”

Eleven years later, the debate about the meaning of ‘world music’ continues to ignite much passion, but the original campaign succeeded beyond its participants’ wildest dreams. A section of ‘world music’ – whatever it is – can now be found in music stores across the western world.

[First published in ‘Toronto World Arts Scene’ magazine, August 1998(??)]

POSTSCRIPT: How do I know? Because I was there.

[Original blog published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/08/congratulations-on-birth-of-music-genre.html ]

Land of a thousand cockroaches : 1986-1987 : Deptford Housing Co-operative, London

 “Gimme your money!” he shouted, pointing a pistol at me. He had jumped out from behind some bushes. It was a dark winter evening. I was alone. Nobody was about. I was ten metres from the entrance to New Cross railway station, about to return home, having walked my girlfriend to her train after an evening together. Street lighting beyond the railway was abysmal. I jumped with surprise. It was my first mugging. It was my first year living in London. I was aware of the advice: hand over your wallet and do not argue. I knew the fate of Thomas Wayne.

Except that I had no wallet to give. I had a five-pound note in the left pocket of my black Levi 501’s and some loose change. That was it. No credit cards. In London, I knew to carry as little as possible. I had not carried a wallet since an embarrassing incident in 1978 when I had parked my little yellow Datsun at the end of Upper Gordon Road, opposite Elmhurst Ballet school, and walked into the town centre. Within the hour, I returned to the car and drove home, only to receive a phone call from Camberley police station. Somebody had picked up my wallet from the gutter and handed it in. It must have fallen from the side pocket of my jacket as I stooped to enter the car. I had no idea it was missing. I collected the wallet and found it intact. I have never forgotten that anonymous ‘good Samaritan’. After that, I gave up carrying a wallet.

Later that same year, I had robbed myself through carelessness as a twenty-year old student union vice-president. Following an extensive survey of the photocopier market, having used such machines since the 1960’s, I decided that the Rank Xerox 3600 was the most modern and robust to rent and install on the mezzanine level of the student building in Durham. Once the company’s technicians had set it up and departed, I was so keen to test it that I wanted to make the first copy. However, I had not been carrying any papers so I reached into my pocket and pulled out the only banknote I had. It was £50 because, in the pre-debit card era, I would withdraw £100 monthly from Lloyds Bank’s cash machine opposite Dunelm House. I put the note on the platen, pressed the button and out came a perfect monochrome copy which I then rushed off to let my peers admire. Minutes later, I realised I had left the £50 note in the machine and returned to find it … gone. The copier’s first student user must have been delighted!

Now, accosted in the shadow of South London 24-storey high-rises, within seconds I had to decide how to react. I had no wallet. If I were to offer my meagre five-pound note, this highwayman might become angry and violent. It was never a good idea to argue with a man pointing a gun at you. I stared at my mugger, his face mostly hidden by a blue bandana. He was barely five feet tall. Was he even an adult? 1981’s ‘Stand and Deliver’ music video flickered in my head (no relation). I recalled childhood streets that encompassed Gibbet Lane where, times past, robbers like him on the main road to London had been hanged. I took the rash decision to simply turn and walk away … briskly. I might be shot in the back. I might be attacked from behind. My heart was beating so fast but I knew not to break into a run. And, incredibly luckily, nothing at all happened.

Home was five minutes’ walk away. On the payphone inside the front door, I immediately called 999 to report the incident. While I was sat waiting in the kitchen for a police officer to arrive and take my statement, one of my female co-tenants arrived. I explained breathlessly what had just happened. She quietly recounted that she had suffered the same experience in precisely the same place, a few days previously, and had been relieved of her handbag. Had she reported the robbery? No. I was aghast. Why not? I waited several hours, no police arrived. In the weeks and months that followed, my crime report was never followed up. I lost my faith in ‘the Met’ that night.

What the hell was I doing living in this rundown, sometime scary part of London? It was desperation. In January 1986, I had taken my first job in London, managing a job creation scheme at ‘Radio Thamesmead’. The daily commute by coach and multiple trains from my mother’s home in west Surrey to southeast London was hellish, consuming four to six hours per day. My government pay was too low to afford private rented accommodation in London. Neither could I register for council housing because I was not already dwelling in a London borough. I consulted ‘Yellow Pages’ directories in Camberley library and typed individual letters to every housing co-operative in London, enquiring whether I could rent a room. There was only one encouraging reply, from ‘Deptford Housing Cooperative’, telling me it would contact me when a place became available.

Months passed without a word. I wrote again. I was invited to a meeting. I was eventually offered a three-metre by three-metre room in a ten-person house at a reasonable rent. I took it. My travel-to-work time was cut from hours to minutes and my cost to very little as I was journeying the opposite direction to suburban commuters. The morning trains I was now taking to work were almost empty, whereas I would never forget my first day at Radio Thamesmead when, changing trains at London Bridge station, I had been knocked down the staircase of platform six by a hard briefcase wielded like a battering ram by a descending bowler-hatted gentleman. It had been my first lesson in commuter rage.

Some of my nine new housemates were lovely, some not quite so. Before my arrival, they had jointly decided at a ‘house meeting’ to rent a colour television from ‘Radio Rentals’ but, within weeks, it had disappeared one night from the living room, allegedly stolen and fenced by housemate Knollys. There were characters. One young bearded dropout seemed to model himself on ‘Citizen Smith’, railing against capitalism whilst living on benefits, wearing a denim jacket covered in badges and smoking roll-your-owns. One young woman attended a friend’s Berber wedding in the mountains of Algeria and returned with amazing photos and stories.

My room in the house was thankfully dry and secure, though somewhat noisy as it was adjacent to the railway line. However, I quickly learned never to use the ground-floor kitchen. Switching on the kitchen light triggered a loud sound like the noise of a receding wave washing pebbles down a beach. I learned it was made by cockroaches scuttling to hide from the light, a phenomenon new to me. Not dozens of them. Hundreds! We contacted the housing manager who ordered a pest control specialist to come and fumigate the kitchen. Days later, the noise was still occurring. If you opened any kitchen drawer, you could watch them scatter.

A further visit by pest control was organised. This time, the kitchen and adjoining living room were fumigated simultaneously and cordoned off-limits for a whole day. We were more hopeful. But hope proved not enough to kill the vermin. Within days, the expert had to be recalled to examine our evidence that bugs were still present in massive numbers. He looked. He saw. He told us: “the only way to get rid of so many of them would be to demolish the building”.

Demolition was not going to happen. Our house was in the middle of a terrace of eight three-story units on Rochdale Way that had only been constructed in 1978. Yet already our unit should have been condemned as unsanitary. But notification to health inspectors would have made all ten of us homeless. Instead, we suffered the bugs and I saw some housemates continue to use the kitchen for preparing meals, despite the evident health risk.

Filth and crime quickly became my initial impressions of London living. When my cassette deck developed a fault, I returned it to the closest branch of ‘Comet’ in nearby Lewisham which agreed to repair it under guarantee and return it within a fortnight. A month later, I was still waiting. The shop stonewalled me for a few weeks more before admitting that its lorry, with my equipment inside, had been stolen. Would I accept a brand-new replacement? Yes, I would and selected a top-of-the-range model that would substitute perfectly for my vanished bottom-of-the-range purchase.

After having started work in Thamesmead in January 1986, it had taken until September for me to be offered this room in Deptford, six miles away. However, my one-year work contract there ended in December, after which I took a seasonal job at ‘Capital Radio’ in central London. Then, in the new year, I started a long commute three days a week to work at ‘Ace Records’ in Harlesden, twice as far away on the opposite side of the city. Once again, most of my earnings were being spent on travelling to work. I would have saved more money if I could have used my house’s kitchen, rather than having to buy takeaway meals every evening.

It was time to find somewhere to live nearer my new workplace, hopefully a self-contained flat rather than another house share. My one year in Deptford had proven interesting – Deptford High Street market, Pearlie kings and queens, Jamaican patties, second-hand record shops, pirate radio, nearby Greenwich Sunday market – but it would be nice to sleep soundly without worrying whether thousands of cockroaches could climb the staircase overnight to invade my bedroom. I started buying the weekly ‘Willesden Chronicle’ local newspaper from the stand outside Harlesden station to scan the small ads. Presently, my house was not a home.

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2024/02/land-of-thousand-cockroaches-1986-1987.html ]

I’m gonna git you sucka : 1988 : Ace Records, Harlesden NW10

[my pyjama top, 1988 to 2023]

I recognised the tune. Not only did I recognise it, I knew all the words and would have happily rapped along with it. But not here. Definitely not here during rush hour on a crowded Underground train. I was seated in the end carriage on the Metropolitan line at Baker Street station, where the service often paused for around ten minutes before heading northbound. A man had just plonked himself down on the seat next to me, put on headphones and started his cassette player. The volume of his music was not excessive but, sat in close proximity to his headset on a stationary train, I was able to recognise the tune.

We were still awaiting our departure when I overheard my neighbour’s next track. I was even more surprised to recognise that tune. Not only did I recognise it, I was shocked that the two tunes he had just played were in the same order at the start of a cassette compilation I had created only weeks earlier. Once a third tune started, I had absolute certainty. The chance that a stranger would be listening to three tunes in the same order as mine was infinitesimally small. This unknown person must be listening to my cassette. I wanted to turn to him and explain this coincidence, but he would have thought I was a crazed madman. I had no idea who this man was. I had no idea how he possessed my cassette. Instead, I just sat there, smiling to myself that somebody seemed to be enjoying my music choices, until the train moved off and I could overhear his music no longer.

At the time, I had a job working three days a week at Ace Records, a small independent record label that specialised in reissues of American black music from previous decades. My task was to promote its releases to the press and radio by writing press releases, designing marketing materials, maintaining contact lists and sending out sample copies of records (tasks which I enjoyed), as well as cold-calling journalists (which I hated). I had been hired by the company’s co-founder Roger Armstrong, one of the best bosses I have worked for, with whom I shared a huge modern office. The Ace team were friendly and the building was a delight to work in, located on an industrial estate in Harlesden NW10, overlooking the Grand Union Canal. Opposite was the United Biscuits factory where you could determine which biscuit brand was rolling off its production line by the smell that permeated the air.

Harlesden had long been one of the hotspots of London pirate radio as a result of its significant Afro-Caribbean population. Walk along Harlesden High Street and you would see tall FM antenna masts installed atop roofs of the numerous record shops, transmitting live soul and reggae shows across London. All these stations were illegal and had to play cat-and-mouse games with authorities who sporadically shut them down and impounded their equipment. Working at Ace, I would often listen all day to Harlesden’s stations alone in my first-floor office because Roger spent a lot of time in the States copying master recordings from tape archives. I got to know the names of the pirate radio DJs and the styles of black music each of them played.

My colleagues at Ace were fans of the music the company released and we often shared recordings of music we had discovered. Brian Nevill, a musician with a deep knowledge of black music, worked in the ground floor stockroom and generously gave me a cassette of R&B/soul singles issued on the Sue and Chess record labels recorded from his record collection. His tape launched my ongoing search for music released by these companies, many of which are now my favourite tunes from this era. As a return favour, I recorded a 1970s reggae compilation from my record collection that I named ‘DJ’s Choice’, wrapped it in a cassette cover that I had designed and printed on Ace’s photocopier and gave it to Brian.

In my office at Ace, I particularly liked listening to one pirate radio programme of roots reggae oldies from the 1970s, unusually for the time presented by a female DJ. I had a bright idea! Maybe she would enjoy my cassette compilation. I made another copy and mailed it to her at the station. I never knew if she received or even listened to it. What I did know was that, within weeks, the man sat next to me on the Underground train was playing this cassette. For all I knew, copies might already be for sale on somebody’s market stall somewhere. Such was the world of pirate radio.

Then, one day at work, I heard a commotion and shouting from the reception desk at the other end of the corridor. There were loud voices and suddenly, behind me while I was sat at my desk, I heard a man’s loud, angry gruff voice:

“Are you Grant Goddard?”

I turned in my seat to see a large man looming over me, evidently angry in the belief that I had somehow wronged him. In between cursing me, he was shouting that I had refused to send him free copies of records that he had requested for a pirate radio show that he presented. Aha! I knew what this was about. It was true. He had written a letter asking for a long list of Ace Records’ 1950s and 1960s American R&B reissues, informing me that he worked for a Harlesden pirate radio station. I had written back, politely explaining that I was given limited numbers of free records to distribute because Ace was a small company that was forced to carefully select a minimal number of radio DJs to supply. This was all true. But there were additional truths I had not explained to him: Ace Records had a policy of not supplying records to illegal radio stations; the music he was asking for I had never heard played on ANY Harlesden pirate radio station; and I had never heard his name mentioned on ANY of the pirate stations I regularly listened to.

“I’m gonna [expletive] kill you,” he was shouting in my face. This hubbub attracted colleagues from adjacent offices who came to see what was happening. They demanded this stranger leave our building immediately, but he was not finished with me yet.

“How dare you refuse to give me the records I asked for,” he was shouting. “You’re gonna pay for this because I am gonna [expletive] KILL you.”

I realised that if I caved in now and gave him some records, he would simply return here again and again to demand even more from me. It was essential to hold the line. I calmly restated the reasons I had sent him in my written reply. Naturally this had no calming effect on him. He repeated his threat of violence. My colleagues repeated their demand that he leave. I noticed from his clothing that he must have come to our office straight from work. On his lapel was a Royal Mail badge with an identifying number, the type worn by postmen collecting and delivering mail. 

After venting his anger so violently on me, and seeing how many of my colleagues were now present, he thankfully decided not to kill me and eventually stormed out of the building, just the way he had barged his way in. Once my adrenalin subsided, I realised how frightened I had been by this confrontation. My colleagues comforted me and suggested I leave work early that day. I wanted them to call the police and report the incident. I felt that if he knew he had got away with such threats, he would feel encouraged to do the same at some other record company. However, they refused steadfastly to involve the police. My colleague from the adjacent office, Chris Popham, kindly gave me a lift to the nearest railway station.

My journey to/from work at Ace required a one-kilometre walk between Harlesden station and the last building on a cul-de-sac through a sparse industrial estate. During winter months, I walked in darkness along these poorly lit roads. Following the incident, I was scared that this angry man would jump out and attack me as I walked along side roads that had little traffic. Not only could I no longer listen to my Walkman on my walk to work, I would constantly look left and right, and even over my shoulder, to be certain I was not being followed. The incident had transformed my enjoyable working environment at Ace Records into one where I was now living in fear.

It did not take long to decide to quit this job. There was another factor in my decision. After three years’ work promoting world music artist Ofra Haza, whom I had discovered in Israel and persuaded Ace Records to release her recordings, I finally achieved a UK Top Twenty single. I then asked Ace Records’ directors for a bonus because I was receiving no royalty from record sales and such chart success was a rare occurrence within its business. However, all I was eventually offered was a small payment to cover my promotion expenses to date. Furthermore, a colleague at Ace had taken credit in press interviews for Haza’s success. My role had never been mentioned. It felt like the right time to move on. Lesson learnt: the music industry fails to acknowledge or reward those who create success.

Still unsatisfied with Ace Records’ unwillingness to report the incident, I wrote to Music Week, the weekly trade magazine of the music industry, explaining how someone who had claimed to work for a pirate radio station had burst into my record company office and threatened my life. It published my letter anonymously. I was sad to leave Ace Records but it was time for me to start a new job … working for a London pirate radio station!

[My curated Chess Records R&B and soul playlists are on Spotify. A detailed history of London pirate radio is a significant part of my KISS FM book.]

[Originally published at https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/2023/04/im-gonna-git-you-sucka-1989-ace-records.html]