Sunset Radio and The Hacienda

Sunset Radio? 102 fm Keepin the dream alive - yeah baby! You never heard of it? What about The Hacienda in Manchester? Mad for it you twisted my melon man!

A little context first.

My first proper IT job started on March 13th 1989, at a well known insurance broker based in Manchester, see below couple of pics from the computer room. I was a computer operator on a Honeywell DPS7000 mainframe. In the days when you sat with the computer in the noisy and cold room!

We all started at the same time, quite a young workforce and it was just a laugh a minute! Really nice people and fun times.

We worked shifts that included nights. Let me just say you have not seen Manchester until you work nights! Some things you never want to see.

During the night time we had the radio on. I discovered this new radio station playing my kind of Soul and R&B and Dance music (that blog hasn't been written yet), it was called Sunset Radio and yes I wrote off for some car stickers which I just found still unstuck/unused. Must be worth 2 pence on fleabay?

The station was set up by Mike Shaft one of my favourite DJ's at that time, it was years ahead of everyone. They played not only my stuff but House, garage and all that Mad Manchester stuff before it really took off!

Some of the middle of night shows were a little suspect, flowery language, pretty sure they were either drunk or on something. Either way it was a little loose on structure but good because of it.

When I finished my shift I drove home, stopping at the lights immediately opposite The Hacienda night club. I had no idea what it was and often wondered why people would queue all the way around the building late on a Friday or Saturday night in the pouring rain?

Naive of me but wasn't until later I found out why. Personally never went in, not really my scene maaaaan but at least I was driving past it during its heyday early 90's (suppose that is something?) Now its a block of flats with just the Hacienda logo in the window, progress eh.

Hacienda seems to have become the cornerstone of Manchester Pop culture since, a little overblown for me. I liked the music but not until a few years later after realising there is more than Soul music out there.

Below a tape someone did from Sunset Radio (bit hardcore for me)

Sunset Radio extract