Rip it Up

WORDS ANDY TAYLOR

PHOTOGRAPHY SARAH LANE

Video did not kill the radio star, the radio star is doing just fine thank you very much, but a couple of Tauranga tearaways are in the process of ripping up the radio rulebook and reinventing it. Plenty tuned in, turned on and, um, popped over to hear all about it.

Grant Hislop and Rawiri McKinney are not your typical media types. No thousand dollar designer eyewear, oversized smart phones glued to their ears, or glib radio voices here folks. Instead, to all appearances they look just like two kiwi blokes on their days off. We’ve arranged to meet in the Vinyl Destination record store, and when we arrive we mistake McKinney for just that, albeit a Kiwi bloke on his day off buying a coffee. It’s only when he slips into the DJ booth and starts, well, DJing, that we realize he’s actually not just a customer. “That happens a bit,” he says with a smile. “It’s not a bad thing.”

Rawiri KcKinney and Grant Hislop at Vinyl Destination

Photo Sarah Lane

McKinney’s background is in education, all the way from teaching to departmental level, but music has been his passion since his childhood in Hamilton where he attended school with Hislop.

But before we can start to find out more, he interviews Plenty – live on air, on the radio station that lives in the record store. And that is a good thing, because across town his partner in crime Grant Hislop is listening in and has just remembered what he was supposed to be doing today: ten minutes later – no mean feat in Tauranga traffic – he’s joined us on the couch.

Hislop himself comes with a bit of history in the biz. He’s worked at more than 25 stations in his time, he founded The Rock, Coastline FM, and KiwiFM, co-founded Radioworks, and has worked at stations across the country, including programming stints at ZM and Hauraki, as well as managing the likes of Kiwi bands like Goodshirt and Opshop. So yes, he has a bit of history in the biz.

And it is that very business that the duo’s latest venture is turning on its head. The Station 105.4 FM is radio Jim, but not as we know it, and the first thing that strikes you is its physical form. While most stations broadcast from hermetically sealed studios up high in anonymous buildings, The Station, as Plenty found out on arrival, lives in Vinyl Destination on Devonport Road in Tauranga.

Walking into The Station is both a step back in time and a glimpse of the future. The walls are a collage of album and magazine covers and band and tour posters, including a floor to ceiling reprint of an iconic 90s Rip It Up cover. Record bins – yes record bins! – run down one side of the room for the vinyl junky in us all, there is the aforementioned coffee counter with barista station down the other, and nestled next to the counter is the DJ booth. There is also a stage (because every good record store/radio station/café needs a stage), and someone has nicked the furniture from a student flat and turned the centre of the room into a lounge/drop incentre. You tend to need a lot of /s when you enter the world of The Station. It’s a bit chaotic, things are hybrids and kind of hard to explain, but it’s also totally brilliant. It harks back to the anarchic roots of radio and points towards a future where radio has chosen to live amongst us once again.

While most stations broadcast from hermetically sealed studios up high in anonymous buildings, The Station, as Plenty found out on arrival, lives in Vinyl Destination on Devonport Road in Tauranga.

Pull up a chair and sit a while.

The walls are a collage of album and magazine covers and band and tour posters, including a floor to ceiling reprint of an iconic 90s Rip it Up cover.

“The Station gives us a chance to connect,” says McKinney, “having a physical presence – and one that is literally just off the street – is not usually possible in radio. It’s probably not even advisable when you think about it! But we like to get to know our listeners a bit, and they can get to know us. The desk (that’s the DJ-ing/music playing bit for you non-DJ types) is on wheels with a 30 metre cable, so we could actually take it out into the street and broadcast from the footpath. But we might wait for the weather to warm up.”

Hey DJ - Hislop on air.

Photo Sarah Lane

Until summer comes there is still plenty going on inside. In addition to the ridiculously silly thrill of watching someone juggle live radio DJing with making the perfect flat white (let’s see you do it matey), there is a regular stream of acts filling the stage. “We thought there was a real lack of a space for live music in a smaller setting,” says McKinney, “and certainly the response we’ve had has proven that was something of an underestimation! There’s nothing like getting your music in front of people to help an act gel, and it’s also great to come out and see new bands in a venue like this. It has a bit of the 60s coffee house thing going on and that is pretty rare these days.” Recent months have seen everything from high school bands to up and coming local acts dipping their toes in the live scene, as well as established performers who love the intimate vibe of the space and the laid back approach of the crew who run it. There may not be a green room, but they do bloody good coffee.

If The Station in the flesh is good, then what they are doing on the airwaves is even better. For a start, a whopping (and we don’t use that word lightly friends) 30% of the playlist is music made here in Aotearoa. “Ever since I started in radio, that has been the goal,” Hislop says. “I’m a music person who got into radio, while most people in the radio industry are radio people first and foremost. And that’s OK. For most commercial stations music is important, but it’s not their main reason for being, they’re more interested in building a ‘demographic’.” And despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that he’s spent 30 years in radio, Hislop doesn’t believe in demographics. “When you see the kind of people who come into the store and hear about what they are listening to and see what they are buying, you realize demographics only exist in a very, very broad sense. So instead of looking at that stuff, The Station is all about introducing people to great music, and lots of great Kiwi music.”

It’s easy to forget that in 1995 just 1.6% of music on our radios was made in New Zealand – despite the fact that we had a thriving music scene complete with a wildly popular pub touring circuit. “Getting Kiwi music played on air has been a long struggle for a lot of people,” Hislop says. “And it’s nice to see that a lot of the things we set out to do back in the day, the things we said would work, are now a reality.”

The Station harks back to the anarchic roots of radio and points towards a future where radio has chosen to live amongst us once again.

And there is more on the horizon. The next phase of The Station’s development is to include a video stream of the music being broadcast, kind of like what MTV used to be like before it jumped the shark, and then later this year will come the welcome return of the Kiwi icon Rip it Up. For many years it was the bible for all things music in NZ, and Rip it Up’s arrival in small towns across the county was eagerly anticipated by fans hungry for info in the pre-internet Jurassic period. Like many a print publication it stumbled in the digital era, but now Hislop has plans to revive the title he bought back in 2013. “It’s a bit of a moving feast at the moment,” he says, “and we’re still looking at whether it will be a weekly or a monthly or what the frequency will be, but there will probably be a listings and possibly ticketing part to it, and definitely a print version. Watch this space.”

Watch this space indeed, and you would be well advised to keep an ear tuned to The Station 105.4 as well.

PLENTY.CO.NZ // AUGUST2018