Alice's Restaurant Rock Radio
Alice's Restaurant Rock Radio 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), originally run by The Move's manager, Tony Secunda, and Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller.
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 and Neal Kay, 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, Alice's station organiser, had expressed willingness to do programs for Alice's Restaurant, before ill-health put paid to the project.