Alice's Restaurant Rock Radio

Alice's Restaurant Rock Radio ^[1] is an English pirate radio station, based in London and whose history goes back to the 1960s. The station broadcast with a conventional AM transmitter on short wave, producing a 3.2 million watt signal. Their aim is to broadcast a rock-radio service which can be received on a non-digital radio (that covers 9290 kHz) and is directed at a European audience as well as a UK one.

History

Alice's Restaurant Rock Radio was inspired by Europe's first big album station Radio 428/Geronimo (1969/70),^[2] originally run by The Move's manager, Tony Secunda, and Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller.^[3]^[4]

In the 1980s, Alice's Restaurant was an FM pirate station and, with a team which includes members who have provided album rock programming on various land-based pirate rock stations since the 1960s, it had a reputation for playing 100% album rock, including folk rock, blues rock, jazz rock, progressive rock, space rock, hard rock, and heavy metal.

Together with Tommy Vance^[5] and Neal Kay,^[6] Alice's Restaurant Rock Radio was one of the few broadcasters in the United Kingdom to champion hard rock and heavy metal in the early 1980s. The station originally broadcast via a 100,000 watt transmitter, plus a Gainey curtain array antenna which amplifies the signal. This enabled a signal in excess of 3 million watts, on 9290 kHz from Latvia eastern Europe.

In the mid-1990s, Alan Freeman, who was a fan of the station (which he had plugged on his rock shows more than once), and an acquaintance of Bear Freeman,^[7] Alice's station organiser, had expressed willingness to do programs for Alice's Restaurant,^[8] before ill-health put paid to the project.^[9]^[10]

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