Pre-order Special Edition. 1 of 100 x ALFOS x SK8Cake! The tote bag.
'I'm not sure we're ready for COVID-19 lockdown nostalgia yet, but bear with me if I say that not everything that came out of those strange days was entirely bad...
Reeling from personal loss, and trying to navigate the uncertainties of enforced house arrest, the coming apocalypse, and an unprecedented amount of time on my hands, events propelled me into a frenzy of musical creativity. I still don't know if this was driven by a need for escapism or a need for connection, but this is how the ALFOS Emergency Broadcast System came to be.
A couple of days of YouTube research, (a lot of it was going on in those days), armed me with the knowledge of Open Broadcaster Software, the Twitch Gaming Platform and its indispensable chat function, and my friend, the designer, Logan Fisher, helped me with the visual identity.
John Peel's use of Grinderswitch's Pickin' The Blues and Andrew Weatherall's use of the No Tune by Cowboys International had taught me that any self-respecting radio show needs an audio anchor - mine came in the form of the Partridge Family's Doesn't Somebody Want to be Wanted. It seems innocuous at first but it's a genuine harbinger of the apocalypse, the bonafide end times sound.
Whilst conducting internet research I discovered a recording from Feb 20th 1971, of WOWO Radio, Fort Wayne, Indiana. While playing the Partridge's "Doesn't Somebody Want to Be Wanted," DJ Bob Sievers broke in to warn listeners of a severe national emergency. It turned out to be a false alarm mistakenly sent out by an Air Force employee who played the wrong Emergency Broadcast System tape. Sievers explained years later that when he received the correct confirmation code from the EBS, he had good reason to believe that the USA was under nuclear attack! To date, I've opened 45 broadcasts with this recording which has become synonymous with the show.
In the early days of lockdown, the show was regularly getting thousands of listeners from all over the world and connected me with Richie of 1 of 100 who proposed a merch collaboration that proved to be incredibly popular.
Now I'm no stranger to merch, as I had worked for one of the UK's largest independent companies in the 90s manufacturing swag for Oasis, The Manics, The Chemical Bros, and many of the other great and not-so-great bands of the time. As a result, we worked with many of the well-known record sleeve designers of the day, but designing a great album sleeve and a great t-shirt are two different things. By chance though, I met a young designer, Tom Hawke, who was a natural for coming up with a killer t-shirt design.
Time passed, and I got out of the tour merch game, Tom got out of the design game and left London. We lost touch. For a long time.
But at some point during Covid, Tom hit me up on Facebook and every day we exchanged YouTube clips of a pretty wild selection of music. It transpires that he'd moved out to the West Country and through some twists and turns in the road had a roller-skating epiphany.
Tom and his wife Daniela set up ‘SK8PZ Roller SK8ing School & Collective’ in 2021 to bring Soul & Funk on Wheels to their community and to fundamentally promote the deeper intrinsic values of roller skating to the people of Penzance & Cornwall.
When 1 of 100 approached me about another potential collaboration I thought it would be good to pull together all of these threads and to use it as a kind of lockdown exorcism. As Dr John said, accentuate the positive.
I'm proud to present this collaboration between 1 of 100, ALFOS EBS and SK8Cake and in tribute to this iconic and inspirational broadcast which helped us all get through some dark days.
It seems fitting to leave the last word with the Partridge Family';
You know, I'm no different from anybody else
I start each day and end each night
It gets really lonely when you're by yourself
And where is love?
And who is love?
I gotta know' - Sean Johnston
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