This announcer spotlight was produced by Emma Peel and first published in our biannual member magazine, Easey Mag, December 2014 edition. We hope you enjoy reading this fascinating glimpse into the life of our remarkable PBS announcer, Lyndelle Wilkinson of The Afterglow.
Bum-shaking, love-making, heart-racing, catchy killer tunes – that’s how Lyndelle Wilkinson describes her musical tastes. And at five o’clock on a Tuesday evening, it’s exactly the type of music people want to hear as they’re grinding their way through traffic or standing under a stranger’s armpit on the train bound for home.
The Afterglow has been on air for a couple of years now, but Lyndelle has been hanging around the station for far longer than that. You could say she’s a veteran announcer. From 2005 to 2009 she co-hosted the Breakfast Spread. During this time she began collecting records. Fast forward to 2014, and everyone at PBS is gossiping about how insane Lyndelle’s music room is. For this reason, I thought I’d pay her a visit to see whether it lived up to the hype.
The first thing I said when I arrived at Lyndelle’s apartment was, ‘When can I move in?’ It’s seriously that good. Stepping in the door, I noticed that she’s obviously very organised – either that, or she’d gone on a massive cleaning rampage before I arrived. Her records are stacked neatly across the walls in custom-made shelving. Her CDs are arranged either side. But the pièce de résistance is the DJ set-up: I’m talking two turntables, mixer and speakers on a trolley in the middle of the room. The only thing that was missing was a disco ball.
Given that there were so many records in the house, I asked Lyndelle what LP she’d take if the apartment was burning down. Her first answer was the Deep Throat soundtrack, but then she contemplated how strange it might look to come stumbling out of billowing flames and smoke holding onto a seventies porn album, and changed her answer to Electric Wire Hustle’s Perception.
Her current favourite LP to spin is Yasiin Gaye – Mos Def’s latest project, which sees him rapping over the top of spliced up Marvin Gaye classics. In theory it sounds awful. In reality it’s very good, and highlights how beautiful Gaye’s voice really was. As Lyndelle describes it, ‘it’s liquid gold for the ears.’
Speaking of liquid gold and eardrums, we got on to speaking about Jeff Buckley’s album Grace. She bought the album after hearing various colleagues gushing about it non-stop. Once she put it on the turntable, she didn’t turn it off for about a year. Soon after, she saw him perform live at the Palais Theatre and ended up sharing a tequila shot with him at the Corner Hotel. I asked whether she’d ever drop the needle on Grace on The Afterglow and she said no. It’s definitely a dead-set classic, but it doesn’t fit her bum-shaking, catchy killer tune brief.
Here is my full interview with Lyndelle.
Lyndelle Wilkinson presents ‘The Afterglow’ from 5-7pm every Wednesday on PBS.
Emma Peel presents ‘Switched On’ from 1-3pm every Saturday on PBS.