Mushroom Fm's new format, with cool new interactive features, explained
It’s a big day for us at Mushroom FM on Monday, as from 12 AM, we become the station we hope you’ll choose when you’re in the mood for four decades of magic Mushroom memories. So what exactly does that mean, and what is the station going to sound like?
Our primary purpose will be to bring you music from the 1950s through to the 1980s. Much of the time, you’ll hear a great blend of music from all four decades, and in a cool new interactive feature on our website, you can have a say in what we play. More on that in a bit.
We hope that you'll choose us when you're in the mood for a memory, because our music has also undergone a huge facelift, and has been carefully chosen by people with an intimate knowledge of music from each of those decades. This is not your average gold station with just a few tracks that play over and over. We'll explore the rich tapestry of genres from these four decades, going deeper into album cuts and songs that hovered on the lower end of the charts, as well as all your timeless favourites. So we'll expand your horizons as well as play the songs that make you smile and make you sing
We’ve gone beyond the music as well. Every so often, you’ll hear some great old ads from around the English-speaking world from the 50s to the 80s. After all, for those who grew up during this era, the ads were as much of a part of the cultural experience as the music.
While you can generally hear a carefully chosen blend of music from all four decades, some of our shows will specialise in one of these decades. In these cases, the shows are hosted by a knowledgeable fun guy who knows their stuff and can talk intelligently about the music. You'll be amazed by the factoids they'll pass on to you.
Bruce Toews and Steve Cutway, both of whom know and love their 50s, each bring you a dedicated 50s show every week day. Bruce at 9 AM Eastern, Steve at 5 PM.
Bonnie Mosen is an 80s lady, and she’s now here every week night at 8 PM Eastern with the music and the culture of the 80s.
Gordon Luke reckons that the 70s and 80s produced the best music ever made, and every week night between 6 and 8, he’s got a great blend of music from those decades he calls The Living Years. He’ll be featuring at least one album of the week, and harkening back to his Live through the Luking Glass days, featuring some great live content.
New shows such as Snowman’s 60s and 70s Selection, and Anthony Unleashed, will appear throughout the week.
Those of you who go way back will remember the Sunday Smorgasbord with Jonathan. The Smorgasbord is back every week-day morning at 3 AM Eastern, a great time for our many listeners in the UK, Europe and the southern hemisphere.
There are some great speciality shows to add a little variety as well. Mara Kelland has a great new classical show, Viva, which will be the perfect way to unwind on a Sunday morning.
As you will have read on the blog recently, world music and Celtic music put in an appearance too. And there’s more. Our refreshed schedule will be available online on Sunday evening, we encourage you to check it out.
Certainly in the 1950s, and even in the 1980s, few people would have dreamed that we’d be carrying devices in our pockets that effectively hold thousands of LP records. So Mushroom FM is bringing back some great old tunes in a cool new way.
We’re also modernising a much-loved radio feature. A highlight of radio back then was the ability to phone up and ask the DJ to play something for you. Then you’d wait with much anticipation until your song came on.
When our incredible computerised beast we call the Mushroom Pot is left on its own to dispense the music to you, you can now help it decide what to play. On the “now playing” section of our website, when no DJ is hosting, you’ll find a link to make a request. When you choose this link, you’ll be able to search parts of our library of 50s through 80s tracks. You can type in the name of a song, or an artist. If you get a match, you can request that we play it by submitting the form. The process is easy, accessible and fun.
Note that we play a limited number of requests per hour, so there will be times when the queue is long, and you may need to wait a while for your request to play. We also have safeguards in place to be sure that the same song or artist isn’t heard too often, so there may be times when your request isn’t played for that reason. You may only make one request per hour to be fair to everyone, and a maximum of 12 per day.
Building this new Mushroom FM has been a very listener-centric process. We’ve taken notice of the kinds of shows and music that our listeners like the most. Now we’re bringing you that content most of the time, and giving you a far more consistent experience. We hope you’ll give it a listen, and that through bringing you a great little radio station, we will earn your regular listenership.
We can’t wait to push the reset button, and bring you something very special.
See you Monday.