Probably the best radio news since her final guests on BBC were announced…
via Mary Anne Hobbs
I broadcast my first ever radio show for Xfm… it was simply the most exciting thing I had ever done, and it changed my life forever.
20 years ago, we were broadcasting for just 4 weeks each year with temporary Licences, on what was originally a pirate network. The station’s signal had only a 25 mile radius from our base on Charlotte Street in London’s West End. Yet the scent of Revolution was high in the air.
We truly believed we were about to change the world forever with Xfm.
Every major artist of the era felt it too – Radiohead, Mudhoney, The Stone Roses – and they backed us to the hilt.
Chris Parry, The Cure’s manager, had such passion for Xfm that he sold his record label Fiction and his beloved collection of boats to back us for 5 years before we won a permanent Licence.
This was a time before the internet was established and the only man in the UK doing anything meaningful on legal radio was John Peel. It’s hard to explain just how thrilling it was to be part of the family who created the first radical alternative radio network – a whole station – and changed the way we communicate about the music we love for all time.
So much has changed across our generation; music and culture enriched immeasurably by global internet access. Yet, 20 years later, the value of everything we stood for at the outset is as vital and powerful as it’s ever been.
In 2011, Xfm have given me the opportunity to deliver the music that I am so passionate about on a primetime platform. This is such a victory, not just for me, but for all the artists I believe in and all the live listeners who care so deeply. I’ll broadcasting from Manchester across the world at www.xfm.co.uk bringing future sound and guest mixes from the most forward thinking artists on earth. Dubstep, UK funky, minimal techno, deep house, hip hop, electronica, grime, neo-folk and art house rock… no holds barred.
We’ll be warming-up with ‘Audio Postcards’ from the festivals I’m performing and curating at this spring, beginning on my coast-to-coast Road Warrior tour of America in April… (all dates up overleaf on this site.)
My aim… to create some truly mind-blowing, redefining radio on Xfm.
Mary Anne Hobbs on Xfm:
Brand new Saturday show primetime from July 9th 2011
Audio Postcards beginning on the US Road Warrior Tour from April 13th