Dream Targets - Eakring Broadcasting Authority

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Eakring City

The Eakring Broadcasting Authority - EBA One
[Dream target date 1978]

A prolonged burst of white noise gave way to familiar voices as the receiver locked onto the EBA's radio frequency. The Eakring Broadcasting Authority perpetuated a schoolboy myth originally conceived by Paul Billiard, Cavan Bartle and Ramon Frith in the early 70's. Eakring was essentially a quiet farming community located a few miles north of Blidworth. It was a sleepy village where nothing very much happened.

However, in January 1977 a school-bus was involved in a serious road accident whilst travelling from Eakring to our school in Rainworth. The crash made the front page in the national press. Both drivers lost their lives, but miraculaously all of our school friends survived.

Joseph Whitaker was an impersonal school and one of the largest Comprehensive's in the country. If you were anything other than a brilliant sportsman or a convicted criminal, then you could certainly pass through the system unnoticed. Before the accident, Ramon Frith was just another face in the crowd, but when the severity of his injuries became known, his name was on everyone's lips.

Detained in hospital for several days and in danger of losing his sight, his recovery established him as a school hero. Life for Ramon would never be quite the same. Having tasted notoriety, he would seek it again by transforming his native village into a thriving metropolis, a fictional city where he could proclaim himself as King.

When I started art college in 1977, Ramon and I kept in touch. Our letters were full of references to the Eakring Royal family, its warring factions and paramilitary groups, its tranportation system and of course the Eakring oil wells. The oil wells were real enough and part of British Petroleum's inland oil reserves but hardly in the league of the North Sea oil rigs.

Unwilling participants in organised youth activities, Ramon and I began mailing each other fictional radio broadcasts. They were fun to make and in their basic form the EBA tapes provided a vehicle for sharing music. The playlist bore little relation to mainstream pop music; a mixture of rock, punk, new-wave and reggae. Typically, you would have a weird burst of the Faustus Tapes and then a triumphant burst from a Queen LP preceding the muffled (and sometimes intoxicated) voice of the self-proclaimed King of Eakring.

"Good evening, this is EBA One from the LR studios in downtown Eakring city."

By 1979 things had moved up a gear, with Ramon enlisting the services of a punky DJ from neighbouring Bilsthorpe. Soon, record decks and sound systems were being hastily erected in several houses in the village, where recording sessions evolved into full-blown drinking parties. For the next couple of years, on occasions at least, Eakring did closely resemble the metropolis of our dreams.