This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally Business News Media
Steve Penk checks the news daily for new acts to play on Radio Dead
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 31 March 2016
That there Steve Penk has been prolifically tweeting about his latest radio venture Radio Dead, which, as you might have guessed, only plays music by dead musicians. Though, says the DJ, when it comes to bands, only one member needs to have kicked the rock n roll bucket, and he’s not so fussy about whether the dead member actually appears on a track. So that means “all AC/DC songs qualify”. Which I’m pretty sure is cheating.
“The idea came to me at the start of this year when, in January, we lost so many wonderful recording artists”, Penk recently told Radio Today about the new station. “As is the case when a major music star dies, music radio stations will have a quick burst of activity for a few days, playing a few of their songs, quickly followed by nothing, as they return to playing Justin Bieber every ten minutes”.
“I saw a gap in the radio market for a radio station of this type”, he went on. “A radio station that plays, honours and celebrates music stars who have left behind a wealth of great music, but in certain cases get very little or worse, zero radio airplay. When I sat down to put the radio station together I was amazed at the list I was slowly building of dead music stars, and so many of them never get played on the radio anymore; how sad, what a tragedy”.
Though, talking of tragedies, Radio Dead is the one radio station that actually benefits from tragic pop star deaths, in that any one musician’s demise will expand the list of songs available to play. Meaning that, rather than keeping an eye on New Music Friday’s new releases, Penk will presumably be consulting the obituaries before his playlist meetings. “I check the news every morning just to see if I can add to the playlist”, he tweeted yesterday.
So that’s all good fun, isn’t it? Though, if I was a popstar who had had on air support from Penk’s past radio shows, well, maybe that’s a worry. The station’s slogan is currently “they may be gone but their music lives on”, but what about “we put out hits to play the hits”?
