My name is Gary Drew and I have been a part time radio presenter and broadcaster since October 1984. I have worked on many radio stations over several years both legitimate and pirate. Some of the stations I have aired on include inland London pirate stations Melody FM, Soul FM and Base FM. In 2002 I did lots of shows for Radio North Mid North Middlesex University Hospital radio in Edmonton North London.
Since I was a young I was always fascinated by the way radio works. I had a kit bought for me one Christmas which taught me how to build an FM and AM radio. This was very basic but as I grew older I began to take radios apart to see how they worked. Most people I knew were not happy to tune their receivers to another channel in case they lost the place of their favourite station on the dial. Even with presets available, I noticed an older generation were happy to leave the radio tuned to just one station all the time. I later began to find out about offshore radio stations which got me interested in pirate and clandestine radio and I became a bit of an anorak in this field.
By the time the 80's had come I was tuning into to various pirates mostly on the FM band and I was DXing the shortwave bands. In 1984 I began experimenting with cassette tapes editing pieces of music together and recording inserts to make jingles. Later that year I was listening to my favourite pirate station Solar Radio. It was by the Autumn that the Brother of a friend asked me to make some programmes for a station he was starting in the Walthamstow area of East London, This was the short lived W.F.R. - Waltham Forest Radio. Most of the time it was broadcast from a portable tape recorder rigged to a transmitter behind the Walthamstow Town Hall in the bushes by the Chestnut playing fields.
By early February 1985 WFR had ceased broadcasting due to lack of interest but at least my shows had been put out on the air. By August 1985 I got my second turntable and a mixer, this is when my DJ career began properly. I was making commercials and jingles onto cassettes for many pirate stations across London and mix tapes for friends. By late summer 1985, I became involved in being a lookout for people testing low power FM transmitters and microwave links for local pirates from low level roof tops of housing estates in East London with friends. A popular test channel used by many pirates at the time was 88.6 FM.
Later on I found myself more regularly broadcasting live on London pirates instead of just doing pre-recorded shows playing soul & dance music which I had a large collection of. By September 1987, I found fame on Soul FM which started on 91 megahertz but ended up on 96.9. The reason I remember the frequencies so well is because I used to be the lookout when the rigs and antennas were installed on many tower blocks. On Bank Holidays we used rigs of up to 100 watts power which had a range of some 50 miles. As 1987 drew to a close, I had established myself with my DJ name Mixmaster-G after mixing records into each other continuously and keeping it going for hours on end and in 1988, I began to get work in nightclubs. I enjoyed the hip house explosion in 1989 after the acid house scene had died out. I never really got into the rave scene but admit to buying a few dodgy records.
By 1990 I had bought my own mobile disco rig and began doing private parties and disco's around East London, Essex and Hertfordshire. This lasted until about 1992 when it all got too much and I decided to take a little break for a year. By mid 1993 I got back into the game but the music scene was changing fast and I had to change format slightly to please my audience even though the kind of music I was playing wasn’t always my own personal choice. In 1995 a friend started a station called QBC this stood for the Quality Broadcasting Company and came from the woods at Hollow Ponds near Whipps Cross hospital from pre-recorded cassettes which we reverted back to as it was becoming harder to maintain stations from tower block studios due to DTI raids and penalties. Sometimes a site in the forest near the waterworks roundabout in Forest Road Walthamstow was used.
QBC was just a bit of fun and no-one really took it seriously which is why it only lasted the summer of 95 but it was fun to do something different by using some old fashioned methods again. I gave up mobile disco's shortly after that and sold all my gear by mid 96 due to work and personal commitments. By 2000 I started learning how to do broadcasting from computers. I started radio presenting on a more professional level again by 2002 using my real name this time on hospital radio and I did some voice over work for some small legal stations. Which brings me to today where the legend continues as I continue to broadcast on the internet with live and recorded programmes as well as finding time to DX the radio bands to find new stations of interest.
I am involved with various other radio projects, websites, and forums as well as providing many rare and restored radio materials to various organisations across the UK. To see an example Click Here You can purchase many recordings from the offshore pirate era by paying a visit to Pirate Radio Sales or Radio Fab. To hear music and jingles from the offshore radio ships tune into Offshore Music Radio
There is more to this story but my radio knowledge is what gave me the idea to create and launch this radio station 'South Herts Radio' I hope you enjoy it.
