Welcome to Radio Geronimo on

The original Geronimo 'mission' or 'vision' is still relevant today:

"...Terry Yason and Hugh Nolan hope to explore areas of radio that have formerly been left untouched. They want to destroy the ego-basis of so many current radio shows. The contributors should have no more importance than the public to whom they are broadcasting. The content of the programmes should be the way of putting the message across, not the ebullient trivia of the disc jockey. They hope to add plays, news and other non-musical entertainment to their programmes. Musical collages and experiments in sequencing the records will be used..."

Click on ARCHIVES for audio library

Poet, Alex Barzdo reflects on Moonshine From Monaco

There are several 30-90minute archive recordings available via this website, including the legendary Radio Rupert/428 test transmission featuring Rolling Stones producer, Jimmy Miller, talking about the 'Let It Bleed' album. Incidentally, it was Jimmy, along with music biz entrepreneur Tony Secunda, who provided the original funding for the Geronimo project.

Some recordings were salvaged from rustic radio cassette recordings whilst others are taken from the original tape reels recovered from Monte Carlo and Andorra. You will also find selected short audio clips of Geronimo at this site (most are just extracts from the aforementioned full recordings), as well as a couple of Seagull droppings from 1973. We have access to the Geronimo/Revelations vaults and you'll find some pretty rare recordings at this site, including David Bowie from Glastonbury 1971. There's even a chance to hear Geronimo in Stereo courtesy of Pan American Airways Theater In The Air. It's all here, and if at any time you fancy a change of scene just click on 'SUN' or 'MOON'. Clicking on 'CHANCE' could take you anywhere. Geronimo broadcast from Monte Carlo, Monaco, and was therefore free of UK broadcasting restriction. Consequently 'everyday' language was used, so if you're easily offended, Geronimo is not for you. Enjoy the ride...oh, and check out the advert for the 'Foot Long Skins'..

OK, you ready? Let's go..

Music Press:

"Geronimo, formerly Jumbo Blimp (428 & Rupert), is the alternative radio. Not the pirate radio, the alternative. There are no ego-tripping DJs mixing their inanities with those of the banal music that they play."

"The only way of telling the quality of a radio is its programmes and Geronimo certainly provides, in its three hour shows, something no one else is doing, except possibly the Third Programme" (BBC Radio 3) Radio 3 Boards

"Geronimo gives a continuous trip. They don't play single tracks, or long ads. You can get the whole of an album, say Morrison Hotel, the still unreleased Doors album; or Tommy, or Buxtehude, or Bach. The intention is to let the audience get into the music"

"Most DJs are totally unnecessary. Perhaps the BBC should follow the precedent set by Radio Geronimo, and have announcers who give the relevant details about the records they play, and nothing else." J.Coleman, Lowestoft, Suffolk.

"A radio station called Geronimo which broadcasts late night pop from Monaco to Britain also runs a mail order business in gramophone records. The discs most in demand are Mozart's Horn Quintet in E flat Major; Bach's Italian Concerto and Handel's Choral Sinfonia and Fugue"

Quote, about refusal to take advertising, from Tony Secunda, station Director: "We've had various people offering to take time, but they've demanded that they had jingles and noises and all that scene. And to us, our format is sacred. If we want to play an album right through we're not going to have some baked bean freak come in the middle with his jingles."

In 1970 the floating radio station, Radio Nordsee International, (RNI ) briefly became Radio Caroline for the purpose of trying to influence the outcome of a British General Election. The Labour government had been jamming the transmissions of RNI & Caroline. Labour lost the election, the jamming continued for a few days, and Caroline became RNI again. That's one radio story from 1970. However, there is another story to tell of a completely legal radio station (initially called Radio Jumbo Blimp, Radio 428 & Radio Rupert, using the transmitters of Radio Andorra in 1969) broadcasting from the transmitters of Radio Monte Carlo. Broadcasting on 205metres Medium Wave this transmission was just next door to 208 metres (Radio Luxembourg) so it was fairly easy to stumble across Radio Geronimo.

If you happened to be listening after midnight at the weekend and you wrote to Geronimo, this is the letter you would have received:

Original text of letter sent to listeners in 1970:

HELLO!

Many many thanks for your letter...through your active support Geronimo can become your voice, to shout loudly and freely - politically free, socially free, absolutely free. By writing, Geronimo can feel your support and react to it. We can play the music that you dig but which doesn't normally get played, and we can also relay information that can help bring us all together.

Geronimo is Hugh, Barry, Tony, Jimmy, Jenni, Pat, you and three million other listeners. We began broadcasting on January 3 with one motivation: radio has no function if it does not broadcast GOOD music, and the amount of good music being broadcast in Britain was practically nil. We use the transmitters of Radio Monte Carlo with a power of 400 Kilowatts. For all the people on the road, take a pencil and draw a circle from the Transvaal in South Africa, to Israel, to Poland, to Finland, the Shetland Isles, New Jersey (U.S.A.) and this, including of course Britain and the mainland of Europe, is the range of Geronimo.

If you find your reception fades and sounds shitty, then don't completely blame our transmitter cuz it could be your receiver. If you listen on a Japanese tin box or something like that, then throw it in the dustbin along with your copy of the Radio Times, and rush off to your local junk shop and get an old granny type steam radio and settle back and listen to Geronimo LOUD - the way it is intended. If you can't get that together, then score 20 yards of coiled copper wire, attach it to your aerial, walk around the room for a bit until you find the perfect spot, and there you go. Remember that you might have to adjust the aerial every few days, as the weather conditions often change and affect our signal.

Geronimo does not accept advertising, and by doing this stops any commercial interests having control over the programmes. But the cost of your freedom is high - like £1,000 a week - and can only be overcome with your complete support. Geronimo is no ordinary radio station, but only you can keep this lunacy going.

So... join the Geronimo Society - it'll cost you 30/- and the bread goes directly towards keeping Geronimo on the air, and covers things like transmission fees, production costs, tape, airfreight, office rent, telephones etc. etc.
In return you get not only a radio station, but cut-price records, cheap festival tickets, and the possibility of more goodies in the future. The Geronimo record catalogue is being sent to everyone, and this is another way you can help Geronimo get it on - instead of buying your records from a shop, you can now buy them from Geronimo at reduced prices (eg: Dylan "Self Portrait" and Soft Machine "Third" double albums for 52/6d, the new Traffic "John Barleycorn Must Die" for 37/6d.)

We are now broadcasting Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights from midnight til 3 a.m. on 205 metes on the medium waveband, but we shall keep fighting til Geronimo is 12 hours a night, 7 days a week in FM stereo. But now it's up to YOU. Join the Geronimo Society, and tell your friends to listen - and then join - and we'll make it together. But we can only do it together.

Keep listening, keep trucking and for godsake keep smiling!

Happiness

P.S. Meanwhile we're selling our own T-shirts for 12/6 each, in small medium and large sizes, and very beautiful "Geronimo is summer sun" posters for 2/6 each.

Moonshine from Monaco

We were stardust, children

Moving Earth to Eden.

Disabused of stale mildew,

Smoking words where no guns grew,

Stroking music from disdain, hope from early dew.

We were golden in the silver;

Clutching a new voice in the darking river;

Nudging a dial to borrowed sleeves

Overswept with crested leaves;

Listening, glistening in ears that longed in sheaves.

Here the Garden’s sweetest flower

In tombs of rooms that once were sour,

At festivals we camped at Patching,

Respect for artistry newly hatching.

Nights the sun could smile, a sleepy kitten scratching

When the sheep lay soft in slumber

Seekers found a newer number,

Freedom in a void will die

Without the warming breath of love

Purer than crisp new snow, awaiting tracks for us to know

Radio Geronimo.

Ó Alex Barzdo, 2004

2003 - Webmaster & Website owner, Chris Bent at Mont Agel, (TX site for Geronimo, 1970)
Watch the Promo Video