Traffic Island Discs

Traffic Island Discs

Radioactive, c. November 1992 – 12 July 1996

The year was 1992 and all Dublin was covered in bland radio waves. All Dublin? Not quite all. High up in a building near Temple Street Hospital was a flat from which a pirate radio was broadcasting an eclectic range of music, inspired by a spirit of revolution: Radioactive 95.5 FM.

I forget how I got involved, maybe it was through Donal, a founding member and an activist in Militant Labour. I was in the SWP at the time and the two organisations were bitter rivals for the far left space. Despite that, Donal wasn’t at all sectarian and had a real passion for pirate radio that led him to want the involvement and energy of revolutionary groups, so long as they didn’t try to take over.

I had good friends from the anarchist WSM at the station too, so maybe it was Krossphader or Dr Groove who first brought me along.

I remember being shown the studio: a 100Watt transmitter two record decks, two tape decks and a microphone. Also the emergency cable that ran out of the back window down to a strip of grass four floors below. In the event of a raid, I was to load the transmitter into a cage and let it slide down the cable. The hope was that it would survive the landing.

Under the name of KFR, my first idea for a show was one that showcased contemporary classical music. I’d been spoiled by having lived in Birmingham in 1990, where a new concert hall and Simon Rattle as conductor had been a venue for music by living composers. Classical music in Dublin in the early 1990s, whether on the airwaves or in venues was almost entirely composed before 1900. You’d be lucky to hear any early twentieth century music, let alone contemporary classical music.

I used to go to the ILAC Library and borrow whatever was the most recent composition, listen to it, and pick tracks for the show. This was a good experience for me and equipped me to be a reviewer for the Journal of Music in Ireland a few years later with the remit of listening to world premiers and attempting to decide if they were any good.

I made an effort to include recordings by living Irish composers and overall, it wasn’t a bad show. Although the sound quality is poor, I’m lucky that some tapes survive of the show and if you’re curious, here’s an early one.

Much more fun and popular though, was my version of the famous Desert Island Discs. Traffic Island Discs had a guest on every Tuesday night at 7.30pm and at 90mins in length, allowed the guest and myself to get into their favourite music in depth. The guest chose ten tracks and we talked about their choices. I always enjoyed the shows because invariably the music was good and it was always interesting to hear why someone had an affinity to a particular track. A biography of a person as told through their musical choices can be a much more honest one than a chronological one.

My friend Ian Moore was one of the early guests and out of hundreds of shows that have disppeared forever, this one has been preserved. Again, poor quality audio, but it’s tolerable enough to listen to for the conversation.

In 1995, I moved to Cork for a couple of years and that ended my show. The final episode saw my usual role swapped and I picked a top ten of my own, which my brother Gavin Kostick interrogated me about. I’d really love to find that again partly because I can’t remember my choices but also because the snapshot of my favourite music and explanations from when I was in my late 20s in comparison with today has the potential to be revealing about the person I currently am the times I’ve lived through.

In 1995, Radioactive was still powering along with some 50 DJs filling slots from 5pm to 3am but went under in July 1996. It still exists as a digital broadcaster and you can listen or even volunteer to DJ via this link: Radioactive International.