It's all Aarron's fault! My nephew. Exactly 10 years my junior. He went and joined the flippin' army, didn't he? I mean, come on, just because he was the son of a soldier, he thinks "Oh, I think I'll have a go at that." No imagination some kids! So, the year is 1990. Aarron is a 16 year-old raw recruit, and his Uncle Graham gets this idea into his head that Aarron might like to have a taped letter to listen to. You know, just to lighten the burden of being away from home long-term for the first time in his life. That's me on the left, by the way. When I had more hair. And there on the right is a piccy of Aarron in his army dress uniform! Easy, girls.
So..., a tape gets recorded with some (probably very mundane) news from the life of Graham and Denise, interspersed with a few tunes from Graham's record collection. A few comments relating to the music may have crept in, but that's about it. Nothing fancy, and no frills. Robert wasn't even there, and Denise was probably in another room. So, it was just me, my hi-fi, a home-made audio mixer, and a microphone.......
Humble beginnings indeed, and no inkling as to what this was going to be the start of! To the best of our knowledge, the original first recording no longer exists (attempts have been made to track it down, but to no avail). However, the original audio mixer does still exist - it has even survived a lightning strike! I kid you not! It was in regular use as the GobFM mixer until at least August 1997, when we used it in the middle of a field to record the only 100% battery powered GobFM: "In God's Country" at the Greenbelt christian music and arts festival. As God is my witness!
The earliest recording we have in the GobFM archive dates from January 1993. This was kindly returned to the bosom of its creators by GobFM listener Lee. From January 1993 to March 1996 eleven seperate GobFMs were recorded, including: a quiz; a "Light Programme"; a special one-off for a guy called Carl we met at Greenbelt 1994; and a Brits versus Yanks show.
As the GobFM concept grew and developed, the idea of doing an inlay for the tapes was born. So, from August 1997 all GobFMs were sent out complete with an inlay. The first few were created using an Amstrad NC100 Notepad computer, and printed out on a Star LC10 9-pin dot matrix printer. The picture below shows a composite of the 4 covers which were created on the Amstrad Notepad (which you can see on the left).
Right, well that pretty much brings us to the end of "The History Of GobFM - Part One". Hopefully I'll be able to peice together Part Two fairly soon, which should bring us up to the present day.
If you have any recollections of your own which you think warrant inclusion in the above potted history, then do email The Gobmeister by
clicking here and using your common sense..
I know there's loads of fantastic stuff I've missed out, but I'll get it all compiled eventually. Maybe we need a GobFM classic moments section!