We shall celebrate with a rather ambitious eleven hour all night fund raising radio broadcast – “The Eleven Hour Itch”.

An Eleven Hour all night Organ radio show broadcasting to the world via London’s Resonance 104.4fm

We shall celebrate the Organ’s 20th birthday on Nov 4th 2006 via a small radio station studio in Denmark Street (London) from 1.00am FRIDAY NIGHT/SATURDAY MORNING through to Midday Saturday on Resonance 104.4FM and www.resonancefm.com

We’d love you to help spread the word, we’d love you to get involved, we’d love your fundraising ideas. Hey even if you don’t care that much about Organ, you’ve got to love the idea and spirit of Resonance FM.

Sean, Marina and the Organ team
 

ORGAN 20th BIRTHDAY - Here’s the long ass press release...

Twenty years of Organ zines, gigs, Organ Radio compilations, Organ TV, ORG Records and loads loads (loads!) more – you know (some of) the history, ah, we don’t really care about the history that much, we’re about what’s happening now, the next things, tomorrow’s bands – we always have been, always will be. Actually no, that’s wrong we’re fiercely defiantly proud of our history and all the great bands that have passed through here on their way to fame and fortune (or glorious obscurity)

Anyway, we’re not here to blow our own trumpets or look back (too much) or any of that, we just wanted to mark the occasion of our 20th birthday and celebrate with some of our friends and collaborators in some kind of positive creative FUN kind of way... I mean how many messy handmade zines manage to evolve and live on against all the odds for twenty years without ever compromising the original idea?

And what better way to celebrate than to tie it all in with something that really does catch the diverse spirit of the London’s every evolving underground and alternative music culture in 2006? 

We shall be on air all night fundraising for Resonance 104.4fm. You probably know we have a weekly Organ show on this unique and rather special station already. Resonance FM is different, we love Resonance and so do others...

- Guardian Guide
"The sort of station you imagine the corporates and market researchers who dictate the drearily breathless glut of conventional radio programming would have snuffed out a long time ago." 

- British Archaeology
Features sinister nocturnal activities and bogus archaeology. 

- The Times
"Twenty-fours hours a day of wide-ranging cultural reportage and opinion... There's no denying that what this country needs, now more than ever in these troubled times, is a dedicated arts coverage station." 

- The Guardian
"A great home for avant garde wit and mischief." 

-The Sunday Times
"Resonance does try to do something different, displaying a bit of originality that more mainstream stations could well heed."

Resonance is a unique and very special radio station, listened to all over the world, and run on a shoestring by the some really dedicated volunteers (no one pays those dedicated engineers or anyone else to sit there all day holding it together, it’s a real labour of love for everyone). Equipment breaks down, things wear out, electricity costs money (last week a hole in the roof and a rain storm to the station off the air, the flood damage has to be paid for... We shall be on air for eleven hours and we hope we’ll be able to raise some money whilst on air to help keep “the best radio station in the world” (New York Village Voice) functioning... 

Are you with us?

We Organ team shall broadcast throughout the night and in to the morning of Saturday November 4th starting at 1.00am (after Friday night’s Black metal show and the regular two hour Coldcut/Ninja Tune collective set). We shall be on air all through the night until to the start of regular Resonance FM broadcasting at midday Saturday 4th Nov when Dexter Bentley takes to the air with the rather fine Hello Goodbye show. 

The all night Organ Eleven Hour Itch radio show will be a combination of special guests playing their music and talking, items from our huge archive spanning twenty years of underground/alternative music, chaos, riots (ah yes we had our tape recorders switched on that time at Pullens), unique live recordings and lots of new things, new bands - other rock, found sound, self indulgent tales of chaos. We’ll have guest DJ slots and who knows what  – give us a moment to make some phone calls and watch this space for news - we have some rather special things in mind... Sorry about the short notice on all this - we should have come up with the idea months ago!  We only came up with it in the pub last Saturday dinner time.

Why is it called THE ELEVEN HOUR ITCH?

Remember the Eight Day itch? Eight days of underground gigs all over London put on by Sonic Relief, the TLF (Tortoise Liberation Front) and Organ? The Anti Seen gig/riot was my favourite day – beautiful chaos for eight days and all culminating in a packed out all-dayer with 2000 people in the New Cross venue watching some the best underground bands of that year - Cardiacs, Map, Credit To The Nation, Poisoned Electric Head, Homage Freaks... Or the two day itch that was the tenth birthday party extravaganza at the Astoria with a weekend consisting of two all dayers and Cardiacs (again), Pulkas, Charlie’s Angels, Dream City Film Club, Sleepy People, Porcupine Tree, Timeshard and loads more? Or that time when Creaming Jesus kicked off, or Mint 400 or Huge Baby or that tour with PJ And Duncan (really!) or Atom Seed or the time none of you believed Metallica were playing a first on support slot (oh the people who were too cool to turn up for the first band on were pissed that night!). Or that time back in the days when the Chilli Peppers were still good and that motorway service station got trashed on tour and we got blamed, or the brilliant Mass gig last year at RoTa or that all day Riot Grrrl punk thing we got involved in that time over at Hammersmith.... ah those damn itchy ideas!  There’s a thousand Organ stories, never mind all that though. No time to look back, we’re about the next things... Optimist Club, Leave The Capital, Invasion, Vessels, Holy Smokes, Smears, Retching Red, Viking Moses and all the bands and people who are exciting us now... 

Yes indeed, hard to believe but Organ started as a very messy, handmade, badly typed on broken typewriters, D.I.Y, spray-painted A5 fanzine way back twenty years ago. The first issue emerged on November 4th 1986, it’s been a been a beautiful roller-coaster ride of chaos, it was a stupid idea to start it it, it was stupid idea ot print a second issue or to start a tape label or that time when we said “hey why don’t we put on a gig?” (I suspect we’ve put on about 1000 gigs now) The original Eight Day itch was one of our more ridiculous ideas and broadcasting all night is probably as ambitiously silly as well, but hey, what the hell, it’s all been ambitiously stupid and we wouldn’t have missed the ride for anything. We’re still here twenty year later - too right we’re proud of it all and we’re ready to celebrate it all big time and hopefully raise some money for Resonance FM 

We shall celebrate the Organ’s 20th birthday on Nov 4th 2006 via a small radio station studio in Denmark Street (London) from 1.00am through to Midday on Resonance 104.4FM and www.resonancefm.com 

We’d love you to help spread the word, we’d love you to get involved, we’d love your fundraising ideas. Hey even if you don’t care that much about Organ, you’ve got to love the idea and spirit of Resonance FM.

Sean, Marina and the Organ team
 

Its brief? To provide a radical alternative to the universal formulae of mainstream broadcasting. It features programmes made by musicians, artists and critics who represent the diversity of London's arts scene, with regular contributions from Billy Jenkins, Savage Pencil, John Bisset, Mike Barnes, Matthew  Glammore, Peter Cusack, Caroline Kraabel, Clive Graham, Viv Corringham, Chris Cutler, Charlie Dark, Magz Hall, Harmon E. Phraiser, Paul Hood, These Records, Dave Draper, the Kosmische Club; guests like Faust, Gavin Turk, Shirley Collins and The Magic Band; and numerous one-off special broadcasts by artists on the weekday "Clear Spot". 

Resonance104.4fm is bringing a multitude of experimental sound, new music, radio art and interaction to the capital's airwaves. Resonance104.4fm broadcasts from the heart of London and is simultaneously streamed on the web at www.resonancefm.com where you can also check out our full programme listings.  Resonance104.4fm is the only station of its kind in the UK, providing access radio for London's arts community.

Imagine a radio station like no other. A radio station that makes public those artworks that have no place in traditional broadcasting. A radio station that is an archive of the new, the undiscovered, the forgotten, the impossible. That is an invisible gallery, a virtual arts centre whose location is at once local, global and timeless. And that is itself a work of art. Imagine a radio station that responds rapidly to new initiatives, has time to draw breath and reflect. A laboratory for experimentation, that by virtue of its uniqueness brings into being a new audience of listeners and creators. All this and more,  Resonance104.4fm aims to make London's airwaves available to the widest possible range of practitioners of contemporary art.