9:00pm Thursday 7th May 2009
By Tom King
THE Eighties ended on December 31, 1989, and started again some time around June last year.
The boom in anything linked to that decade is now in full swing. Fashionwise, it has brought back Eighties’ colours and cuts.
Back to the Eighties is one of the most popular musicals on the circuit. In the cinema, a sequel to the film that defined the decade, Wall Street, is being shot in New York.
And here in south Essex, the phenomenon has also erupted. The return of the Eighties has stirred three no longer young DJs from that era into the realisation their time has come again.
Ian Reading, Mervyn Griffiths and Paul Marks were all in Ian’s words, “big names on the music scene” back in the Eighties.
They also have something else in common. As Eighties styles morphed into the different world of the Nineties, they chose to walk away from celebrity row and do other things with their lives.
Ian, 50, now runs a garage, Whitehart service station, in Hockley, and owns property.
Mervyn, 46, runs a building and shopfitting business.
And Paul, 42, has gone into business with radio presenter Martin Day, hosting weddings and other functions.
Ian and Mervyn prospered and have never had any regrets about departing the music business.
“It was good while it lasted, but it hasn’t stopped being good since then,” says Mervyn.
Yet suddenly, this group of mature, settled men has embarked on a nostalgic adventure.
They have walked back into the Eighties, throwing large amounts of time and money into the revival of a once celebrated name. The name is Zero.
If you lived in south Essex in the Eighties, you couldn’t not know about Zero, whether you were a teenager, or a parent waiting at midnight on Friday outside Zero’s doors to pick up your offspring.
As a club, it provided two separate sets of rite of passage – the night when you first went to Zero, and the night you were too old for Zero.
Between 1978 and 1988, Ian Reading was Zero’s resident DJ.
“I don’t want to sound big-headed, but when I left, the whole thing collapsed,” Ian says. “Zero’s was a unique place and I was Mr Zero.”
Now the Eighties are back, and so is Zero, though this time in the form of an independent, internet radio station.
ZeroRadio, in Ian’s words, “brings together fine music, teenage memories and a bunch of friends who refuse to grow old gracefully.”
Everyone knew where Zero’s, the Southend nightclub, was situated, but in this respect, the Eighties have moved on a bit.
To add to the sense of high adventure and perhaps provide an edge of danger, the trio have shrouded their operation in secrecy, for fear of being “hounded by fans”.
Nobody knows the whereabouts of new Zero. The music flows from a hidden location, deep in woodland, somewhere in south Essex.
Ian pleads that this location is kept secret. He briefly sounds more like a French Resistance radio operator in Nazi-occupied Europe than a showbiz pro.
Not that anyone is likely to find them anyway. The studio is housed in a sound-proofed wooden shed, but as with so many British sheds, the contrast between anonymous exterior and Tardis interior is stunning.
The sound may be Eighties soul, but the equipment and interior design, constructed by Mervyn are, as Ian puts it, “state-of-the-art 2009.”
A resident 22-year-old IT guru, Dan Bacon, makes sure the technology stays cutting edge and constantly updated.
“We’re not some teenager running an internet station from his bedroom,” says Ian. “We mean business.”
The shed is the operations bunker for world conquest. Ian, Paul and Mervyn believe the combination of Eighties soul music – “a sound that has never, actually, gone away,” says Ian – and online savvy, can develop into “something enormous.”
Ian, not a man noted for modesty of ambition, says: “Global domination is a real possibility.”
Less than a month since launch date, there are indications that ZeroRadio is indeed attracting a worldwide audience. After all, the one-time teens who frequented Zero nightclub in the old days are now dispersed around the planet.
Ian says: “I had one call from a girl I knew in the old days who said she was listening to the station, lying on Bondi Beach in the sun.”
Even more important than the music, may be the soul poured in by the three broadcasters.
Ian says: “Big stations are run by accountants these days, and DJs have to play by their rules. It’s about money and not much else. There are always people telling them do this, do that.
“We’re different. However big we get, it will still be about the music. It comes from the heart.”
The claim is for real. The operation started life as a family affair.
Ian recalls: “We had the shed originally to store furniture while my house was being done. When that was finished, my eight-year-old daughter wanted it as a disco. So we set that up, and then I got out my old vinyl from the loft.
“Then we started playing the music for a few friends, and I thought, we could do this professionally. “ Zero mark two is a 21st century business, but at its heart is nostalgia for the world of 20 years ago, and the experience of being young in that world.
So it is only fitting that the hardware at its heart is Ian’s much-loved, much-played, and now antique collection of vinyls.
Tune in to one of his Zero Magic sessions and one of these will most likely be playing.
Like the grown-up lads who run ZeroRadio, these LPs have waited a long time for the return of the Eighties.
Now their time has come again.
l To listen to ZeroRadio, go to: www.zeroradio.co.uk For a history of Zero, visit: www.thezeroyears. co.uk
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