The Great East Midlands

The response to my Holiday Cut on Jinglemad has been pretty good and despite the fact I've given him a bit of stick on this site, I'm really flattered to have it approved by
a certain Mr Len Groat and it's even written in standard type!.
I reckon he could have benefitted from having a few jingles from that package done for Trent FM as you could easily sing "Stereo Trent eehhh-fehhhhem" over the WNSR melody logo.

Len being Len however gives us a rendition of one of his own resings from JAM's
"The Best Show 2" as done for the Trent FM stations in the early 90s, which like my jingle was also composed by Bruce Upchurch but the lyrics of course were written by Len himself.
Just in case you're interested the solos are done by Chris Kershaw and Abby Holmes, or Abby Anderson as she was known when it was recorded.

I do think that there is a line however between sentimental and cheesy and that's why I'm not such a great fan of jingles which are songs as such, with the possible exception of those done by Chris Moyles and Music 4.

Len actually ordered a Century 21 package for Trent FM and Sound FM in Leicester, almost exactly 20 years ago to this date to be aired from the start of January the following year. These were the first to be recorded with the name "Trent FM" after Radio Trent split it's AM frequencies to become GEM-AM and the package itself consisted of some superb Alfasound custom tracks with Dallas vocals and resings of Century 21's "Proton" and "Miami's WAXY" pacakages that can be heard here.

There were a few cuts from the original Proton demo that weren't included however, and would have sounded great, especially cuts 5, 10, and 14.
10 being another superb example of a seasonal jingle.

However by the end of the year Alfasound were now UK representatives for JAM Creative Productions and with Len being a big fan they went to JAM for their next package which for me was not as good as the Century 21 jingles.

The aim of the previous package was to take the station into the 90s where as the JAM package seems to take the station back 10 years earlier.

However the following JAM package was on top form with more recent JAM demos being resung and some superb station songs mentioning the likes of Madonna, Deacon Blue, and Level 42 in the lyrics. The one near the end as it slows down has actually had me breaking down as it's so well done. Barely any jingles or current records for that matter can have in similar conditions.

Although you would have thought Len would have asked the vocalists to sing the "T" in "Great Britain".

At the same time GEM AM had their first JAM package to complement their earlier PAMS jingles with a song based around the Four Season's "Candy Girl".
And it's more or less obvious that the sports theme is based around "Garden Party" by Mezzoforte.
The news jingle is a bit overly dramatic however and it has "news" sung it, which fits into the criteria of how not to do news jingles.
Although it's nowhere near as bad as Radio 1's from back in the day.

Overall the above examples prove the superb selection of jingles used by the East Midlands stations in the late 80s/early 90s and are still well regarded by jingle fans as such.
Hopefully they'll use the opportunity to bring more sung stuff back on air as they won't be affected by the Heart rebranding.