Hard rock radio stations in local FM
Writen on 13 with many updatees and final removael update on Sept17 (Im ver ysadfor 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
http://184.154.202.243:8042/listen.pls
(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.