Hooold...
Dusting off the needle…
Hooold...
Dusting off the needle…
Six decades of Manchester music, and only that.
Julian Allitt ran Piccadilly Radio and Key103 before this, and then watched what came next: local stations folded into regional brands, and regional brands into playlists assembled in London. Quay.Radio was registered in 2019 as a company limited by guarantee and built as the correction — a permanent home for the city's records rather than a token local hour. Marilyn Comrie, a former BBC journalist and series producer, and the football broadcaster Damian Johnson sit on the board alongside him.
The catalogue runs from sixties beat-group pop through post-punk and synth-pop, the Madchester years and Britpop, to the jangling indie, big-room guitar bands and polished pop the city has turned out since, every one of them a Manchester record, played back to back. Nobody introduces any of it. There are no presenters, and the running order is the whole argument.
A city talking to itself.
