[IainJohnston]

While rummaging through some disks, I found this demo for the much-aligned/discussed UK MU-compatible production company of the 1970s, YAMCO

Did any/all of these actually air in Newcastle, apart from the “John Miles rip-off” news instrumental? ( Len ??? )

https://soundcloud.com/allthebestjingles04a/yamco-whoareyou-metroradio

[LenGroat]

Interesting Ian !

Yes about 1/3 of these (the shorter ones based on ripping-off song intros) were part of the package used in mid-1976 to replace the 2 PAMS jingle packages I ordered in 1974 and 1975.

Basically, Sir John Hunter (Swan Hunter Shipyards) had ‘let go’ most of the original managers, and a Canadian radio company owned Metro by this time. A Canadian consultant, Tim Burge was brought in (read-up about him by Googling his name…) and when I realised what was going to happen I resigned.

Yamco / Jeremy Rose were used for the jingles as by this time the IBA, its arm twisted by the MU, said the PAMS jingles had to go…. another reason I left.

I suspect the naffest cuts on the demo were rejected by Metro OR done on spec by Yamco as this was clearly designed to make them look important, at a time there were only about 12 ILR stations to sell to anyway! Thankfully I moved on to Piccadilly in 1976 and there got to know Steve England, discover JAM jingles, and by 1980 Alan Fawkes… Thank goodness they came along as the jingles by Yamco were truly awful.. and WHO was the girl singer!?

The rest is history….

[GrahamCollins]

That’s Mike Allen, on Capital Radio at the time, doing the VO…..

[UKJinglesMember]

While we’re on the subject……..
Can somebody tell me if YAMCO was a completely different Jingle company to EMISON?
As I have material in my collection that states EMISON/YAMCO?
Also does “YAMCO” stand for anything (apart from Great Jingles of course!!)

[ratnobMember]

https://soundcloud.com/allthebestjingles04a/yamco-whoareyou-metroradio

Fascinating as a reminder of just how awful UK jingles could be. Funny and sad.

[IanF]

Didn’t YAMCO do Beacon Radio’s early jingles in the 70’s? They were quite good, although some of them ripping off JAM jingles….

[IainJohnston]

YAMCO did…

The (enforced) re-do’s of the Radio Orwell PAMS composite (utterly ghastly), most likely illegally
The UK-recorded re-do’s of the TM You package for Beacon (good marks for effort), probably legally
The Metro stuff as discussed above

Apart from that…er…

The original Beacon custom was EMIson, but some items had a “nod” to JAM Magic Music, as discussed somewhere on JM

And despite the IBA/MU “rule” that no ILR station could have resings of a “custom” made for another, the Beacon
EMIson and the Metro EMIson packages have many cuts identical, or at least the backing tracks are (I still have an
original EMIson 7.5 IPS sampler reel of them here). But a damn good package for its time :^)

[mbMember]

Thanks for that Iain – not heard that before and a fascinating demo

[IainJohnston]

“…not heard that before…”

I do have to say the file with that YAMCO demo was marked Embargoed and a datestamp of 2011.

One does wonder how long our informal but often deadly-serious “classifications” can run before we let things out a bit?

[GrahamCollins]

Check the Dropbox Iain…..

[m_hodgeyMember]

Thanks for sharing the demo Iain. Incidentally, there’s some information about YAMCO on the following JingleMad thread from 2004; apparently the name stood for ‘Yer Actual Music COmpany’.

http://jinglemad.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/530/yamco-radio-orwell/p1

[IainJohnston]

1) Thanks Graham – will listen tonight :^)

2) Just looking through Mark’s back-link to the 2004 thread, having once seen “The Janitor” video years ago for some US station,
I looked online for that and the Amaz*ng Mo*th” station videos.

Unfortunately the latter provided links to items of a very dodgy(!) nature, but try the “Remarkable Mouth” and loads of a
more “radio-related” items appear…here’s a small selection (and no prizes for spotting that most of them are very similar to
each other!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFvWB3DGKc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9977DLZIz0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcAn0J8laCY

[IainJohnston]

…Thats weird – the links in my above post won’t show – or at least not on my ISP’s browser!
Anyone else able to see 4 https links to tooyube locations?

[radio_blokeMember]

Working for me Ian

[gameswizardMember]

The YouTube videos are showing here too.
I’m using Mozilla Firefox.

[rakMember]

While rummaging through some disks, I found this demo for the much-aligned/discussed UK MU-compatible production company of the 1970s, YAMCO

Did any/all of these actually air in Newcastle, apart from the “John Miles rip-off” news instrumental? ( Len ??? )

https://soundcloud.com/allthebestjingles04a/yamco-whoareyou-metroradio

There are 2 Metro packages here. On the demo you get to hear the 1979 package before the 1977 one. I don’t think the cut at 1’07” was ever used (it’s pretty awful). I think the 1979 package was quite well recorded, and they made an effort to record tracks that stood up to the music of the time. I don’t think you can fault the segue into Gary Numan (at 5’50”) ?

3’14” is the start of the 1977 package.

After the YAMCO packages Metro had a couple that were recorded (I believe) in the recording studio on the ground floor in their own building. Sadly those masters have never materialised, and probably never will now.

[Bigdave]

While we’re on the subject……..
Can somebody tell me if YAMCO was a completely different Jingle company to EMISON?
As I have material in my collection that states EMISON/YAMCO?
Also does “YAMCO” stand for anything (apart from Great Jingles of course!!)

YAMCO – didn’t it stand for Y er A ctual M usic CO mpany ?

Yes, agreed, some of them are terrible, but some of them aren’t bad considered against what else was on air at the time across ILR.

Now, if anybody’s got any Sue Manning demos in pristine quality..they’re worth giving a second opinion to…

[TheBigCheese]

Interesting to briefly hear the end of the ‘Lets Go Transalpino’ jingle at 5′ 09″ on the demo. I didn’t know YAMCO were responsible for that.

[Author]

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