Audio gems found in dusty cabinets
Piccadilly Radio and Key 103 tapes archived at Central Library
A few weeks ago, as part of the upcoming Saving Piccadilly Radio project, I was lucky enough to be invited to the Bauer Media newsroom at Castlefield. It’s the news-reading home of Greatest Hits and Hits Radio. My contact there said they had a couple of filing cabinets of tapes. This turned out to be over 350 items including the continuation of the Piccadilly/Key 103 archive through the 1990s into the noughties. They are now safe in Central Library’s specialist vaults.
Archivists often tut when media stories use clichés about ‘dusty archives’. But these cabinets were thick with red brick dust, and tapes were even piled high on top of them! But the boxes hold some real gems – sports, news and politics coverage from the Greater Manchester area including everything from the 1996 Arndale bomb and the Moors murderers to interviews with the Spice Girls and Oasis. All this material will be digitised next year and made available at Central Library thanks to lottery players and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The collection includes a couple of Noel Gallagher interviews, both recorded shortly before Oasis played in Manchester in the 1990s. The first is an in-depth interview by football correspondent Brian Clarke with Noel about his Manchester roots and what it’s like to play in his home city, recorded ahead of Oasis played two nights at Maine Road (broadcast on 27 April 1996, reference 2024/8/36).
The second is a shorter piece with Noel and Pete Mitchell recorded at St Andrews in Birmingham, before Man City play Birmingham City. Noel has some forthright things to say to Francis Lee! Soon afterwards Oasis played at the GMEX.
You can listen to both of these interviews in the Sound & Vison pods at Central Library – just search for Oasis.
