Radio LBB: Let's Talk About Love

Let’s not talk about advertising, let’s talk about Love.  

When people ask: ’What did you do during lockdown 1.0?’, Absolute’s chief engineer, Tom Spenceley, will answer "I set up London City Island Radio." The call for DJs followed and I was amongst one of the first to put my hand up. From that point on, my wife and I spent our Friday nights digging around the internet discovering musical gems to assemble into a one-hour Saturday morning reggae show.  

We made new discoveries, such as the extraordinary Phyllis Dillon, a stunning voice who recorded hits for Duke Reid in Kingston Jamaica, even after she had moved with her family to become a bank clerk in NYC. Then there were the revelations about famous musicians. I’d listened to Bob Marley as a teenager but had never really dived into the beautiful spiritual wellspring of Bunny Wailer’s music before.  

The music connected us to our community. I’ve been a proud South-East Londoner for over twenty years and it turns out the very building I live in has a strong claim to being the birthplace of reggae sub-genre, Lovers Rock.  

But more than anything, the music connected me to my wife. And to our friends, who were all tuning in to listen to the music we’d assembled with love. Six months after the last show aired, our twin daughters were born, and one of our shows formed the soundtrack to the next stage of our lives.  

If there is a lesson for advertising, it is perhaps that you can’t always make a heartfelt connection to all people all of the time. So, take a little time out and make something that’s meaningful to you, for someone you love.