Raised on rock
Meander Valley Community Radio has listeners and streamers all over the world, and they also have a regular presenter who lives in a strange, exotic place – well, Geelong.
Mark O’Neill was born in Connecticut, US, and then moved to Victoria in 1998. He started broadcasting his rock music program while still living in New York in 1990.
His earliest music memory is of Franke Valli with The Four Seasons, and then it was the Beach Boys, Buddy Rich, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Mark’s mother loved Elvis and country music, and Mark soon learned to do so. He managed to attend two of Presley’s concerts.
On the other hand, Mark’s father was into hard rock, Led Zeppelin for instance, and listened to a good deal of 1950s music. One of the sources of amusement among Mark’s young friends was that Mr O’Neill senior listened to more up-to-date music than his son. They said, “Mark is a stick-in-the-mud, but his father is sooooo cool.”
But they made the most of living in New York. The cool dad also introduced young Mark to other genres of music – they attended opera performances in one of the great opera houses of the world, for instance.
Nowadays, living in Australia and making a rock music program, Mark has little time for listening to a lot of “new stuff”. His listening audience is vast; he broadcasts from 40 Australian stations, and this number will increase, probably including some in the US. He says that Covid restrictions gave him the chance to expand.
Some years ago, Mark almost moved to Tasmania (“the cooler temperatures sound good to me”) and declared that his next visit outside his home state will be to this “soooo cool” state.
Mark’s MVFM program may be heard on Saturdays from 7 pm to 9 pm.
And what is his program called? Perhaps something related to his upbringing would be suitable. Oh yes – “RAISED ON ROCK!”
