East Village Radio, the influential streetfront online radio station that broadcast from 2003-2016 and Mark Ronson hosted an influential show for several years, has announced it is planning to relaunch next month.
The station, formerly located in a tiny studio behind a glass window at the front of a restaurant on First Avenue in New York’s East Village, opened directly onto the sidewalk, offering an almost surreal intimacy between passersby and the DJs. featured countless guest appearances from artists over the years — including Amy Winehouse, Duran Duran, members of the New York Dolls and the Smiths and many others —and was a longstanding neighborhood institution. Owner Frank Prisinzanois now working withveteran program director Brian Turner, formerly of the iconic free-form station WFMU.
In an announcement reflecting its longstanding and rather idealistic policies against corporate radio, the station stated: “EVRremains committed to its original cause: a grassroots source of independent minded DJs and programmers that serves its community. Free of dictated playlists, our hosts come from a wide and diverse background, schooled and deeply knowledgeable about their passion. Just as the NYC’s East Village itself has been a crossroads of a myriad of fused cultures, revolutionary ideologies in art, music, film, poetry and more,EVRlooks to focus itself on this legacy with a freeform approach to radio that will blur boundaries and take cues from the great FM stations of the past and amplify the mission of the few truly independent minded stations that exist in the present.”
If interested in hosting a show, contact brian@eastvillageradio.
Launched by Prisinzano, the restaurant’s owner, the station initially began broadcasting 2003 on a low power transmitter at 88.1 FM —apparently in violation of FCC rules, so the station moved online. Amid the many guests and guest DJs in the studio, Ronson’s “Authentic Shit” was a classic BBC-style radio show featuring rare music, demos, guest appearances from his collaborators like Winehouse and Duran Duran.
Prisinzano says in the announcement, “My plan is now to relaunch the station with sponsors, which is how we should have done it from the beginning. We’re starting again & considering all the problems we had before and implementing new solutions. We’re hoping to relaunch in April 2024.” Co-conspirators onEVR’s home page will include London-basedClash Music.
