16/06/2024
Last night my radio days at 897FM came to an end
After 13 years or 608 shows of Joining the Dots my nights at 897FM are over. It was a wild and eclectic ride through the musiversum with many twists and turns. Regular features like the “Vinyl Resting Place”, “the Psychedelic Cove” or “Music Released 50 Years ago this Month” found many fans and regular listeners all over the world. From our home shores of Western Australia, across the Nullabor, throughout Asia, Europe and North America, and not to forget soldiers defending their country in the Ukraine people listened, enjoyed and learnt interesting or trivial facts about the eclectic music coming to them through the wireless or digital streaming, live or at a later time.
I met many like-minded people; many enjoyed the weird music I would through at them and many discovered music they never knew existed. And I always tried to find the or a connection of what I was playing. I received many messages over the years of support, corrections when I made a mistake and sometimes criticism as some listeners complaint that they did not know any of the songs I was playing – which was the nature of my show.
After I announced that “Joining the Dots” would be hanging up the headphones a regular listener wrote some very nice words about the show on our website:
Such a shame one of the best shows on radio and what community radio in Australia is all about. Playing obscure songs you don’t hear on commercial radio. The misguided management has brought about an end to a show that was an absolute pleasure to listen to and enjoyed by many, many people in the Northern suburbs. I hope they have planned to bring in a show that equally displays the absolute reason why community radio exists in Australia.
With the above I say a farewell and thank you so much for keeping my company for so many years. I made many friends in and outside of the station.
All the BEST
Stefan
PS: I started my DJ days way back in the 70ies, in the 80ies I had gigs in a number of clubs and was involved in a music magazine, associated with the DMC, for DJs. Then I had a long break, but never stopped buying music, until I started radio in ‘teens (2011)