Wednesday, January 13, 2021

(Legacy ) hard rock statiosn in Greece

 

Writen  on 13 with many updatees and final removal update on  Sept17 (Im very sad for that) 


You surely  know my interest in Malaysian  music. But you possibly  don’t kow  that on 80s I was a fan of hard music  .
How I got contained with hard rock is here out of the question but I will just a little history of rock music stations  Thessaloniki in only one paragraph. .
 
 
The first radio  station  in town is Rock Radio  on 104.7 mHz  from ‘Joe  Joe’ Vaccaros. This station started in mid 90s  with light and easy rocks    Later   near to the  end of 90s 1055  rock has been started on the freq of 105.5 MHz . Tha later station is   located opposite to FM 100 same street with ERA 958  (close  to the International  Trade fair)
 
 



Since 2011 the station  1055  added a  ‘wild’  brother  on 106.5  under  the name ‘Extreme’ or ‘1055 Extreme Edition’  . This station  airs  only hard  core music such as  heavy metal  hard rock , gothic death  speed  thrash  symphonic  etc









 

After  the closure   of Mythos FM 93.4 on Feb 13  a rock bar named Woodstock Bar, in the western part of the city’s centre  , took the facilities of  Mythos (including  their live stream more recently  ) and  refurbished  it under the name ProckA FM  (proka means big nail notice the capitals !). The new station  includes  many kinds of the  rock scene  as old hard rocks , heavy metal , etc  but still  is lighter  than Xtreme .
 
Below  you will read a lot of fun   due to the amateurish technical approach  of both stations together with  program updates
 
Extreme in its start was with a very bad and muddy audio  (read: equalization curve ) comparing to  its brother  1055  and for a very lengthy time
 
This April ProckA was still experimenting  with their audio fidelity and modulation .
 
Their  volume  was  very low (more than 15 db sometimes comparing to other stations ) and very  very trebly .  And also during May /June  they had  connection problems (namely  loss of a channel !!)
 
On May Extreme   separated from  ProckA   with their thrash program and added punk rock and some Greek alternative rocks and metals  . But also Extreme   had  problems in their  transmissions . First  with some gaps in their  playbacks up to 1 minute (!!) in June – July   And on mid August changing to monophonic audio . That means for me as ‘killing’ their music
 
And another funny now with ProckA FM. As noticed above ProckA  is held by  a bar and located inside this bar. Visiting them mid August  on the noon   I found the  bar closed, As a neighbor told me  the bar opens on evenings / nights . That means  ProckA uses play list  most of the day  Found that there is live program everyday after 2000 till 0100 or 0200 . 
Procka meanwhile , was  very fast  on May top respond  to messages . IN just 2 minutes they could reply . BUt more recently they could respond to music requests very late. I have two  examples . The first on the start of September was 45 minutes after the call (requested a song from their advert )and the second never (a song from  two groups that possibly they dont have as KIz and Great Kat)! 
and the  audio gaps in ProckA  still continue . The bronlem seems tobe mainly from their computers ...
 
As for Xtreme it is sure they do play listing
 
Both stations during late nights (as eg after 00 or 01 localtimes ) calm  their music . ProckA plays classical rocks  and ballads while Xtreme  plays  hard  rocks or hard ballads
 
 
Advertising in  both stations  is minimal
ProckA  has about 6  adverts played in between 2-3 songs which is for me  quite annoying. Two  self adverts and two  adverts  for the  bar.
Extreme  has only 4-5  adverts played  on 30 min intervals. One of them  is the craziest advert heard ever. There are two short ID s (ca 5 secs ) played between  1-2 songs
 
MY verdict : ProckA   gets a higher  rate than Xtreme   7.5 vs 5   for two reasons : The later killed stereophony and plays sometimes  too hard music   (thrash  gothic  ) that gets  me quite tired  but ….not always!  I can add a third  reason as in my house its signal is low and has strong QRM from  the western part of the city. 

ProckA   can be  heard in the intenet  via  this link
(the  stream from Mythos  FM  )
There is also  a web page (only for sending messages ) and a page in Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Procka-FM-934/119475064898190?ref=br_tf
 
Unfortunately  Extreme  has not a stream.

Update 17: 
Bad news : 14/4/17  was the  last day of Extreme. This 6 years  project  shut down afer total  noninterest from anyone including hard core metal bands nor  producers,excpt surely a rather limited audience with me among them  . The owner of the station  posted   a quite long notice  in facebok  that he offer not any more of his efforts  or money to sustain Exteme's  life into the  band. However later  in te next  weeks  the project  returned as  one hour time program in 1055  Rock on 2300 . ON  Sept  same year Extreme's program  increasd by one hour after the midnight.  1065  now is used by Gold FM with oldies a station  with very limited information but more  diverse  classics playlist .Just wait on a new article with ollies stations in this webpage  . 


As you understand the projext Heavy Metal in Thessaloniki has been  stoped. anyone nw wishing to hear heavy metal  must 1) either use his mp3 player or 2) turn intto stream stations. Very sad.

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