If you were cruising London's airwaves in June and July, searching for something a little untoward, you might have been lucky enough to stumble across Resonance FM. Broadcasting out of Dressing Room 49 of the Royal Festival Hall, it was an under-publicised part of John Peel's Meltdown Festival [www.meltdown.co.uk], hosted by the South Bank and the London Music Collective.

Being free from the constraints of commercial programme planning, unhampered by conventional broadcasting rules and an advert-free zone, Resonance was able to give airtime to some of the music scene's more eclectic and outlandish DJ's and performers.
Highlights were the God slot on a Sunday morning, featuring Xentos Jones with his manic mixing and preaching - he played anything with a religious title and performed to a crowd of zealous hecklers. Negativland, broadcasting live from San Francisco, hosted a three-hour slot on Fridays with the notorious Weatherman mixing many sound events at once against a background of frantic discussion.

Richard Ward played covers for an hour a week including Rolf Harris' Stairway to Heaven and New York, New York for car horns. Other notable events were the axing of a play mid-broadcast because of bad language. A few days later the programmers thought 'Shit Happens', presented by J. Yoshimoto, was actually shit, so they pulled it. Despite initial misgivings about supplying a live audiostream to the internet, programmers were surprised that over 8000 people a week logged on.

Audiostream proved crucial to the station's success because conventional radio signals could only be received within Central London and pirate stations drowned out the weak 10KW radio transmitter at week-ends. What was wonderful about the venture was that it was free of vested interests so a wide variety of interesting and original artists could be heard by whomsoever might be listening. Village Voice called it 'the best radio station ever'.

Georgina Brett