The Tribune

There’s a hole in my radio dial.

It’s where Island FM 102.9 used to be. I can’t even write Island FM 102.9 without humming the music in my head, drawing out the ‘point niiiiiine’ as if it were a word.

For 22 years, Island FM was the home of Bahamian music. In recent years, son of Island FM and culture icon the late Sir Charles Carter and host of the lively morning show, Eddie Carter became Island FM.

His was the first voice when the station opened in the year 2000 and the last voice when it ended with his closing show on January 31, 2023. He never missed a show, even on Christmas Eddie was on live. Even during COVID when everything was closed, Eddie delivered music and news and podcasts to keep us informed and entertained.

The story behind the Carter family and Island FM hits at the very heart of Bahamians supporting or not supporting other Bahamians.

Here was a radio station that played Ronnie Butler and Smokey ‘007’ Robinson and Blind Blake and Fred Ferguson. In fact, Fred Ferguson wrote Boil it up on the Morning Boil, the morning show lead-in that is possibly the best original Bahamian music ever created for a radio show drop.

Here was a station that played reggae even if the origin wasn’t Bahamian, but was close enough. Here was a station that delivered news with a different angle and here was a station with a host who did the news, the weather, sports, what was happening around the world and knew every piece of Bahamian music and a station that made history as the only one that ever got two candidates for prime minister, Perry Christie and Hubert Ingraham, to debate each other on the issues live on air.

And now it is silent.

Eddie’s excited high-pitched voice always tinged with what humour he could pull out of any subject, his quick wit, his willingness to let good causes have valuable air time without charge because he believed in community – all gone.

I asked him what happened and it is the same story he openly told The Tribune the day the music died. Business, he said, never fully came back after the pandemic.

“Some businesses never came back and I got that, some at less. So we were averaging 40% of our pre-pandemic revenue,” he said. “People were struggling and they still are.”

Yet here was a station like none other.

Even after Sir Charles passed away, the legendary interviews he did with the talented and famous continued to run on Saturday mornings and I’d sometimes find myself listening to the voices of two dead men thinking how much I was learning from them. There will never be another Charles Carter with the resonance in his voice as distinct as Sir Sean Connery’s – you could be in the other room and know it was him, it couldn’t be anyone else. There will never be another Island FM or an Eddie Carter who managed to bring his A-game 365 days a year.

Eddie’s first co-host was Christina Thompson, better known as Crissy Luv. She’s disappeared, too. His regular sidekick for years was Tribune reporter and writer Sancheska Brown. He called her Sanny and they bickered non-stop like an old married couple who could no longer remember why they wed, but her oft-toned down, near dour treatment of a subject brought balance to Eddie’s near hyper excited pitch. Both were keen observers and knew their stuff.

I also asked him what the high points were.

“I’m a sports guy,” he said, “and I once had Hank Aaron on the show, live. That was something for a sports guy like me. Another time I had Gino D and Ira Storr and they were in the studio, just jammin’ live. It was incredible. But you know what my favourite shows were? They were ordinary Bahamians just talking about life. I’ll really miss those moments.”

Maybe those who did not spend money advertising on Island FM never realized how many of us did listen to the station that was dedicated to ‘Keeping Bahamian music and culture alive.’

The voices may be silent now, but they left us richer for their decades of persistence, swimming upstream in a bed of competition of talk shows, hard rock, fast, upbeat everything from the sound of the deejays to the crescendo of heavy metal.

Maybe your business model wasn’t perfect but what you gave to community in helping others to promote events that supported worthy causes, describing needs and sharing stories – that was the best community model of all.

Thanks for the memories and do, please, take care of all that memorabilia, the signed posters that fill every square inch of the studio walls, the plaques, the cards and record covers, the entire irreplaceable Carter Collection that should become part of a national museum. Bahamian music could play in that space as locals and other visitors strolled, the voices of Sir Charles and Eddie Carter ringing on, recorded, lasting forever and ever without end living their mission, keeping Bahamian music and culture alive.

TALL, GRANDE, VENTI: KUDOS TO STARBUCK’S FOR HONOURING HISTORIC BAY STREET DESIGN

When Starbuck’s was headed to a vacant store that had once housed Fendi on the corner of Bay and Charlotte Streets in Nassau, some of us held our breath. We knew that Starbuck’s Bahamas parent, John Bull Group of Companies, had fine taste and had maintained the John Bull standard to which all others should aspire on Bay Street in its own luxury goods store. But would it be able to resist following the Starbuck’s signature circular disc signage and non-remarkable furniture and design culture when applying the franchise label and rights to a store in a high traffic area like downtown Nassau?

It did and not only did John Bull and its executives persuade Starbuck’s that the large round brand disc would not be necessary to attract business, the designers who worked on the project pulled out the old original blueprints and restored the building to original materials specified by the late architect Henry Melich. (There’s a photo of the building in the new book, Island Follies, released late last year and written by his daughter Tanya Melich Crone and historic architect, author and professor Alistair Gordon),

Thanks, John Bull and the team – Sir Fred Hazlewood, Inga Bowleg, Omar – all of you who made this project so outstanding. If only we could engage your services to help restore more beauty on Bay Street and remind us that there are treasures worth saving even if we have to uncover them at our own expense.

We’ll raise a cup of Joe to you and suggest that you place an historic Nassau plaque on the building creating a selfie photo opp with old Nassau Instagramming round the world encouraging others on the street of fading architectural treasures to follow your lead.