Behind the scenes of a station launch

Staff Writer

With the announcement this week that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing at the Big Day Out in January, it got me thinking about when those same 4 dudes – Anthony, Flea, Chad and John launched an Australian radio station.

It was 3pm on December 5, 2002 when Nova 93.7 in Perth officially started.

After months of planning and preparation it all came down to this…

The Red Hot Chili Peppers were playing in town the night after and were in Perth for a couple of days beforehand, the timing couldn't have been better.

As launch Music Director I remember we made the decision to let the guys choose the music for the first 20 minutes – no rules, whatever they wanted !!!

Someone in the team had spoken with their management to get a list of songs for us to source for the launch. Their manager told us…

"Don't worry about it, Flea can just plug in his iPod"

Our response ?

"His what ?" (iPod's were still relatively new and there was no way we wanted to plug that in and launch the station with it)

So instead, we went out and scoured CD stores all over Perth to find the songs they wanted to play. This is what we played during their time on-air…

 

Can't stop Red Hot Chili Peppers
Cities in the dust Siouxsie and the Banshees
Last Night Syd Barrett
Now I'm here Queen
Californication (live) Red Hot Chili Peppers
One Aimee Mann
Taught Us Quirk
By the way Red Hot Chili Peppers

 

Speaking of that moment when Nova 93.7 officially launched, which included an F bomb from Flea in the first few minutes, Tim Blackwell (now Nova network drive host) remembers…

"It was all very nerve racking!

Not only was I told I was going to be the first voice heard on the station, but in the same studio would be television cameras to cover the launch, Dean Buchanan, Lord Rothermere (the big cheese at DMG UK, the man in the suit in the pic below) and then throw in one of the biggest bands in the world – the Red Hot Chili Peppers!

They were running late (of course) and were only supposed to stay for 20 min but ended up hosting the entire hour with me. We played some of their favourite tunes and they called my mum live on air so Flea could ask if I was breastfed!

Then, they thanked us for having them and asked if they could play a song for us live. The only live act planned was Jebediah who had their instruments set up in the next studio… The Chili’s grabbed them did some minor re-tuning and played ‘By The Way’."

This was much to the disgust of some of the Jebs members who thought "who do they think they are ?"

They are the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS !

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