Listening to underground music in the late 60s.
So, how did I ever get to listen to albums such as, “Ummagumma” and “Stand Up”? It certainly wasn’t mainstream radio (‘twas ever the case!). Apart from a few early evening Radio 1 shows that championed all the underground artists, there were very few programmes aimed at the growing album market scene. This is a little surprising because, if you happen to peruse the album charts from the late 60s and early 70s, most of the album charts were filled with rock albums alongside “Motown Chartbuster” compilations and the perennial stage and film musical soundtracks such as “The Sound of Music”, “West Side Story” and South Pacific” which were in the charts for years on end.
From spring 1970, an early evening Radio 1 programme, “Sounds of the Seventies” introduced by different DJ’s each week day played album tracks and had studio sessions from bands and solo artists all appearing under the banner of the burgeoning underground scene. John Peel, Keith Skues, Pete Drummond and Bob Harris were regular presenters. Peel’s “Top Gear” was already revered as he had brought the format with him from Radio London where his programme was known as, “The Perfumed Garden”. He often played complete sides of albums and long album tracks with very little talking in between tracks. When he spoke, it was in a dry, Liverpudlian monotone. In the early years of Radio 1, many of the bands Peel championed did go on to become famous (Rod, T Rex & Floyd) but after the punk explosion of the mid to late 70s most of Peel’s favourites became more eclectic with fewer hitting the big time (Yeah, Bogshead anyone?).
Early on Sunday evening, “Pick of the Pops” introduced by the charismatic Alan Freeman was another early source of underground music. The show had been running for a number of years with Freeman as host and was split, usually, into four categories called “units”. Unit 1 was chart climbers where he played the week’s highest rising singles, unit two was for one or two new releases usually by previous chart hitting groups, unit three was an album track and unit four was the week’s top ten. It was in unit three that I recall listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” on at least three consecutive Sunday afternoons in November and December 1969. This was probably a life changing moment for me. I’d never heard anything like it! It was blues based but heavy! I recall that in one of these programmes he played a track off Man’s, “Two Ounces of Plastic with a Hole in the Middle” called “Prelude/Storm”too.
Freeman championed Zeppelin and within a few years he had moved onto what became the legendary “Saturday rock show”, where he played three hours of contemporary rock and prog between two and five o'clock in the afternoon interspersed with listeners’ requests every two or three songs. This was one of the few Radio 1 programmes to use the Radio 2 FM frequency thus providing listeners with a crystal clear signal. Freeman’s introduction on “Pick of the Pops” had been “Greetings, pop pickers!” but was changed to “Greetings, music lovers!” when he moved to the rock show. Between tracks, when most DJs babble inanely, he interspersed the music with snippets of classical music juxtaposed with bits of Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Edgar Winter amongst others. When I listen to these classical pieces nowadays, it always reminds me of “Fluff” in his prime. A true champion of the cause, he firmly believed he was playing something special covering hard rock, progressive rock, folk rock and jazz rock. Not ‘arf!
In 1978, the BBC moved the rock show to a late night slot on Fridays and was introduced by the mighty “TV on the Radio”, Tommy Vance. This show was more metal oriented but did include sessions and did more to promote the NWOBHM (“New Wave of British Heavy Metal”) than anyone else. All right then, nobody else was playing the likes of Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon and the Tigers of Pan-tang! My Friday nights were usually spent at the pub so I didn’t listen to Vance as often as I would have liked. One evening I was listening and entered and won the programme’s “Friday Night Connection” competition. The objective was to identify the connection between three songs. Part of the competition was to provide a connection yourself. What was better was, on the evening that I was announced as the winner, one of my work colleagues was listening and taped the historical occasion! (Yes, I’ve still got the recording on a TDK 90 tape too!)
Of the other radio stations, Radio Luxembourg on 208 metres on the medium wave (MW) played shortened versions of chart songs: their policy was to play a maximum of two minutes of any song and most shows in the late 60s were short, sponsored and pre-recorded. This format changed and by the early seventies had become similar to daytime Radio 1 with live shows up to two hours long. The station’s audibility depended on where in the country you were, what time of year it was and what time of night it was!
After the Marine Offences Act can me into being in August 1967 most of the off-shore pirate stations closed down. Radio Caroline carried on and did start to pursue a more rock oriented play-list. They were joined at the beginning of the 70s by Radio North Sea (RNI): the latter often transmitted through jamming from a variety of governments.
Further listening was provided by the Radio City’s, “Great Easton Express” a four nights-a- week rock show that ran in the mid seventies from its base in Liverpool. It was hosted by Phil Easton, who’s no longer with us. He latterly became Liverpool FC’s stadium announcer. On his death, a one minute clap preceded the 2009 Merseyside derby at Goodison Park. The show was broadcast on early evenings from the end of the six o’ clock news to nine pm. His selection of music was similar to that of the Alan Freeman Saturday afternoon show but he favoured Genesis and Rush. One of his jingles used a drum solo from the live version of Rush’s “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”. Sadly missed!
My younger brother was first to receive a portable transistor radio (“tranny”). His Ferguson model was well built had a good sound and included a Short Wave band (SW). This was my brother’s introduction to the world of short-wave radio listening and reporting: a hobby that he has pursued with great fervour ever since. I received a Crown transistor radio at Christmas in 1967 and a more substantial gift from a Sanyo cassette radio in 1973 which delivered an excellent sound. This was a relatively small device when compared to some of the “ghetto blasters” that came into prominence in the mid 1970s; the latter was more associated with the playing of disco music rather than rock or prog!
From spring 1970, an early evening Radio 1 programme, “Sounds of the Seventies” introduced by different DJ’s each week day played album tracks and had studio sessions from bands and solo artists all appearing under the banner of the burgeoning underground scene. John Peel, Keith Skues, Pete Drummond and Bob Harris were regular presenters. Peel’s “Top Gear” was already revered as he had brought the format with him from Radio London where his programme was known as, “The Perfumed Garden”. He often played complete sides of albums and long album tracks with very little talking in between tracks. When he spoke, it was in a dry, Liverpudlian monotone. In the early years of Radio 1, many of the bands Peel championed did go on to become famous (Rod, T Rex & Floyd) but after the punk explosion of the mid to late 70s most of Peel’s favourites became more eclectic with fewer hitting the big time (Yeah, Bogshead anyone?).
Early on Sunday evening, “Pick of the Pops” introduced by the charismatic Alan Freeman was another early source of underground music. The show had been running for a number of years with Freeman as host and was split, usually, into four categories called “units”. Unit 1 was chart climbers where he played the week’s highest rising singles, unit two was for one or two new releases usually by previous chart hitting groups, unit three was an album track and unit four was the week’s top ten. It was in unit three that I recall listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” on at least three consecutive Sunday afternoons in November and December 1969. This was probably a life changing moment for me. I’d never heard anything like it! It was blues based but heavy! I recall that in one of these programmes he played a track off Man’s, “Two Ounces of Plastic with a Hole in the Middle” called “Prelude/Storm”too.
Freeman championed Zeppelin and within a few years he had moved onto what became the legendary “Saturday rock show”, where he played three hours of contemporary rock and prog between two and five o'clock in the afternoon interspersed with listeners’ requests every two or three songs. This was one of the few Radio 1 programmes to use the Radio 2 FM frequency thus providing listeners with a crystal clear signal. Freeman’s introduction on “Pick of the Pops” had been “Greetings, pop pickers!” but was changed to “Greetings, music lovers!” when he moved to the rock show. Between tracks, when most DJs babble inanely, he interspersed the music with snippets of classical music juxtaposed with bits of Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Edgar Winter amongst others. When I listen to these classical pieces nowadays, it always reminds me of “Fluff” in his prime. A true champion of the cause, he firmly believed he was playing something special covering hard rock, progressive rock, folk rock and jazz rock. Not ‘arf!
In 1978, the BBC moved the rock show to a late night slot on Fridays and was introduced by the mighty “TV on the Radio”, Tommy Vance. This show was more metal oriented but did include sessions and did more to promote the NWOBHM (“New Wave of British Heavy Metal”) than anyone else. All right then, nobody else was playing the likes of Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon and the Tigers of Pan-tang! My Friday nights were usually spent at the pub so I didn’t listen to Vance as often as I would have liked. One evening I was listening and entered and won the programme’s “Friday Night Connection” competition. The objective was to identify the connection between three songs. Part of the competition was to provide a connection yourself. What was better was, on the evening that I was announced as the winner, one of my work colleagues was listening and taped the historical occasion! (Yes, I’ve still got the recording on a TDK 90 tape too!)
Of the other radio stations, Radio Luxembourg on 208 metres on the medium wave (MW) played shortened versions of chart songs: their policy was to play a maximum of two minutes of any song and most shows in the late 60s were short, sponsored and pre-recorded. This format changed and by the early seventies had become similar to daytime Radio 1 with live shows up to two hours long. The station’s audibility depended on where in the country you were, what time of year it was and what time of night it was!
After the Marine Offences Act can me into being in August 1967 most of the off-shore pirate stations closed down. Radio Caroline carried on and did start to pursue a more rock oriented play-list. They were joined at the beginning of the 70s by Radio North Sea (RNI): the latter often transmitted through jamming from a variety of governments.
Further listening was provided by the Radio City’s, “Great Easton Express” a four nights-a- week rock show that ran in the mid seventies from its base in Liverpool. It was hosted by Phil Easton, who’s no longer with us. He latterly became Liverpool FC’s stadium announcer. On his death, a one minute clap preceded the 2009 Merseyside derby at Goodison Park. The show was broadcast on early evenings from the end of the six o’ clock news to nine pm. His selection of music was similar to that of the Alan Freeman Saturday afternoon show but he favoured Genesis and Rush. One of his jingles used a drum solo from the live version of Rush’s “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”. Sadly missed!
My younger brother was first to receive a portable transistor radio (“tranny”). His Ferguson model was well built had a good sound and included a Short Wave band (SW). This was my brother’s introduction to the world of short-wave radio listening and reporting: a hobby that he has pursued with great fervour ever since. I received a Crown transistor radio at Christmas in 1967 and a more substantial gift from a Sanyo cassette radio in 1973 which delivered an excellent sound. This was a relatively small device when compared to some of the “ghetto blasters” that came into prominence in the mid 1970s; the latter was more associated with the playing of disco music rather than rock or prog!
A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE: LISTENING TO MUSIC 1964 - 1968
Pirate radio started on Easter Day in 1964 when Radio Caroline began transmissions. At this time the BBC played only small amounts of popular music. “Pick of the Pops” on a Sunday at tea-time which played the latest records, “Two-Way Family Favourites” on a Sunday lunchtime which played a mixture of popular music, light classics and songs from contemporary musicals and Brian Matthew’s “Saturday Club” at 10am on Saturdays (surprisingly!) were three of the programmes I frequently listened to during the early and mid 1960s. The last named programme followed ”Children’s Favourites” on a Saturday morning. The children’s programme was a request show introduced by “Uncle Mac”, Gordon McCullough, whose preference for children’s favourites were “Nelly the Elephant”, “The Runaway Train” and “Sparky’s Magic Piano”. The programme was re-named, “Junior Choice” in August 1967 when Radio 1 came on air. A best-selling double CD came out in the early 80s containing dozens of these tracks. Occasionally, a chart hit was played and the main reason Uncle Mac was pensioned off was his reluctance to play current hit records.
The BBC was a victim of “needle time” whereupon they were restricted to the amount of recorded music they could play each day. They got round this by recording groups and artists “in session”: recorded at the BBC in the studio and played throughout a show.
With this in mind and with the massive increase in popular music brought about by the Beatles in 1963 and with the post war “baby-boomers” becoming of music listening age, it was no surprise that there was a ready-made growing market for pop music.
At home, my brother and I were told it was illegal to listen to pirate music on my father’s HMV radio (now housed in a radio museum). In September 1964, some 6 months after the pirates started, I started a new junior school which was an hour’s coach ride away. Guess what the coach driver’s were listening to? Radio Caroline on 199 metres broadcasting from a boat anchored off the Isle of Man! We listened to the pirates for two hours each day playing the latest pop hits as we drove around the Warrington suburbs picking up other pupils on our way to and from school. From September 1964 to June 1966 I had round the clock chart music that, for the most part, has stood the test of time. Current “Oldies” radio stations seem play music from this era more than any other period.
The music of the time was mainly British beat covering The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who, Kinks, Hollies Yardbirds and Manfred Mann: all of whom were large influences on my future listening habits. The beat groups played R n B (when R n B meant the Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and The Who: not the R n B that record industry decided to use to cover pop/disco/diva soul music of the 80s and beyond) which over time became the British blues boom and thence morphed into Heavy metal and progressive rock of the 70s.
Other pirate stations were broadcasting on the seas off Britain: most were using low powered transmitters and were hard to pick up: even if you could hear them at all! The exception to this rule was Radio London based in the Thames estuary
The stations’ revenue came from advertisements, often jingle based, which became as popular as the chart hits. Examples of these advertisements are found between the tracks on the Who’s “Sell Out” album. Other sources of income were the monies received for plugging specific songs. These were promoted until they “forced” their way into the national charts! The plugged songs entered the station’s own charts by default! The term, “power play” was used to indicate those records that were receiving heavy rotation on the station’s play-lists.
The BBC was a victim of “needle time” whereupon they were restricted to the amount of recorded music they could play each day. They got round this by recording groups and artists “in session”: recorded at the BBC in the studio and played throughout a show.
With this in mind and with the massive increase in popular music brought about by the Beatles in 1963 and with the post war “baby-boomers” becoming of music listening age, it was no surprise that there was a ready-made growing market for pop music.
At home, my brother and I were told it was illegal to listen to pirate music on my father’s HMV radio (now housed in a radio museum). In September 1964, some 6 months after the pirates started, I started a new junior school which was an hour’s coach ride away. Guess what the coach driver’s were listening to? Radio Caroline on 199 metres broadcasting from a boat anchored off the Isle of Man! We listened to the pirates for two hours each day playing the latest pop hits as we drove around the Warrington suburbs picking up other pupils on our way to and from school. From September 1964 to June 1966 I had round the clock chart music that, for the most part, has stood the test of time. Current “Oldies” radio stations seem play music from this era more than any other period.
The music of the time was mainly British beat covering The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who, Kinks, Hollies Yardbirds and Manfred Mann: all of whom were large influences on my future listening habits. The beat groups played R n B (when R n B meant the Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and The Who: not the R n B that record industry decided to use to cover pop/disco/diva soul music of the 80s and beyond) which over time became the British blues boom and thence morphed into Heavy metal and progressive rock of the 70s.
Other pirate stations were broadcasting on the seas off Britain: most were using low powered transmitters and were hard to pick up: even if you could hear them at all! The exception to this rule was Radio London based in the Thames estuary
The stations’ revenue came from advertisements, often jingle based, which became as popular as the chart hits. Examples of these advertisements are found between the tracks on the Who’s “Sell Out” album. Other sources of income were the monies received for plugging specific songs. These were promoted until they “forced” their way into the national charts! The plugged songs entered the station’s own charts by default! The term, “power play” was used to indicate those records that were receiving heavy rotation on the station’s play-lists.
Albums, Man.
To increase your “street cred” and be seen to be rebelling during your teenage years at school you grew your hair and it was down to listening to the albums your cool and hip colleagues were seen walking around school with under their Great coated arms: “Best of Cream” and “Best of Elmore James” were two of the more popular albums. Other well remembered albums spotted were, Blodwyn Pig’s “Ahead Rings Out“, featuring a cover showing a pig’s head with sun glasses and headphones on a lurid pink background, “Colosseum Live” (Lost Angeles remains one of my favourite tracks) and the frightening cover of King Crimson’s classic “In The Court Of The Crimson King” (featuring three of my all-time favourite tracks, namely:”21st Century Schizoid Man”, “Epitaph” and the title track). The most sought after album and the most worm one as well as being the most sold-on one was “Led Zeppelin II” which changed hands four or five times in a single academic year. Each time it became cheaper as the number of scratches increased!
The multi-national labels had picked upon the new, expanding, underground market. Baby boomers born in the late 40s and early 50s were now becoming students and of record buying age. Students were rebelling against the establishment and main stream pop which was considered to be contrived as record labels promoted their own versions talentless, formulaic, pretty-boy pin-ups and put session musicians who played on the favoured bands tin pan-alley generated singles. Students wanted music created by musicians: so, as long as you were not conceived by a record label, you played your own instrument and wrote your own songs then, with some luck, you’d be attracted to the student audience and picked up by the big record labels. Thus squaring the circle!
The pre-requisite to success was that you were a psychedelic band, a blues-rock band or a singer-songwriter. It was only natural that the record labels went looking for any band remotely linked to any of the aforementioned genres. From the corporate recording industry perspective the large record labels had a new market to conquer and put alongside their established manufactured pop groups. Within a few years the large record companies had signed up all the underground acts and merged them into their organisations. In those days there were very few true independent labels: the ones that did exist and survive did so by using the larger organisations as their distribution channel. So much for giving two fingers to the man!
A good, cheap way of introducing the new bands to the record buying public, especially as the radio outlets were few and far between, was to put their music in low-priced sampler albums (often doubles). An excellent series of samplers between 1969 and 1972 showed off the talents of each label’s recently acquired roster of bands and artists. These included the CBS produced “The Rock Machine” series, Island’s, “Nice Enough to Eat” and “You can All Join In”. The Harvest label and Liberty/UA followed suite with “Breath of Fresh Air” and the “Gutbucket” series respectively. Artists covered the spectrum from blues rock to jazz rock to folk and singer songwriters. In the mid 2000s a series of triple CDs were issued by the same labels including the tracks that appeared on the original vinyl albums. All are highly recommended especially the Island collection, “Strangely Strange but Oddly Normal”. Very English with some bizarrely inspired music too!
The multi-national labels had picked upon the new, expanding, underground market. Baby boomers born in the late 40s and early 50s were now becoming students and of record buying age. Students were rebelling against the establishment and main stream pop which was considered to be contrived as record labels promoted their own versions talentless, formulaic, pretty-boy pin-ups and put session musicians who played on the favoured bands tin pan-alley generated singles. Students wanted music created by musicians: so, as long as you were not conceived by a record label, you played your own instrument and wrote your own songs then, with some luck, you’d be attracted to the student audience and picked up by the big record labels. Thus squaring the circle!
The pre-requisite to success was that you were a psychedelic band, a blues-rock band or a singer-songwriter. It was only natural that the record labels went looking for any band remotely linked to any of the aforementioned genres. From the corporate recording industry perspective the large record labels had a new market to conquer and put alongside their established manufactured pop groups. Within a few years the large record companies had signed up all the underground acts and merged them into their organisations. In those days there were very few true independent labels: the ones that did exist and survive did so by using the larger organisations as their distribution channel. So much for giving two fingers to the man!
A good, cheap way of introducing the new bands to the record buying public, especially as the radio outlets were few and far between, was to put their music in low-priced sampler albums (often doubles). An excellent series of samplers between 1969 and 1972 showed off the talents of each label’s recently acquired roster of bands and artists. These included the CBS produced “The Rock Machine” series, Island’s, “Nice Enough to Eat” and “You can All Join In”. The Harvest label and Liberty/UA followed suite with “Breath of Fresh Air” and the “Gutbucket” series respectively. Artists covered the spectrum from blues rock to jazz rock to folk and singer songwriters. In the mid 2000s a series of triple CDs were issued by the same labels including the tracks that appeared on the original vinyl albums. All are highly recommended especially the Island collection, “Strangely Strange but Oddly Normal”. Very English with some bizarrely inspired music too!
Me Mams!: the Rock Press Of The late 60’s and 70’s*
The rock press at the time was beginning to split into two main groups of magazines: the ones that incorporated the new, underground scene and those who remained focussed on pure pop. The “Melody Maker” had started as a jazz oriented weekly tabloid paper but had embraced the new student driven underground scene. Walking around school every Thursday with your copy of the “MM” under your arm was a sign of showing your “street cred” man! The MM was the serious musicians’ paper, full of classified advertisements for musicians of all instruments (“no time wasters!” and “ex-named band” were often quoted in their classified advertisements) and eloquently written articles supporting all the artists they considered to be real musicians.
It was joined in 1972 by a re-vamped “New Musical Express” (NME), which previously had been a pure pop music paper. A change of editor and wholesale reformatting of its content made the NME a serious contender as the provider of the best rock coverage, weekly music paper for the next five or six years. Remember, at this time there were no glossy monthlies! The two leading titles in the weekly music press were both produced as red-mast tabloid newspapers. The NME had contracted some of the journalists from the recently folded Oz and had taken on the philosophy of the revered American “Rolling Stone” magazine – championing almost anyone who fitted into the underground scene and ran long in-depth articles on favoured musicians: Jim Morrison and Brian Wilson were two who received this accolade. Under the editorship of Nick Logan, the NME made inroads into the growing readership of the music weeklies. Notable journalists at this time were Charles Shaar-Murray and Max Bell (the man who introduced me to Blue Oyster Cult). Nick Benyon provided some scathing cartoons mainly in the guise of the weekly “Lone Groover” strip and Ray Lowry drew single, memorable left field cartoons.
The circulation of the MM & NME peaked at around 200,000 copies each per week by 1973. A fete they were unable to maintain as the baby-boomers moved into their mid 20’s and the purchase of weekly music papers was no longer at the top of their consumer spending.
I have a large collection of cuttings from the NME & MM from 1970 to around 1980. The collection includes a number of complete papers (usually those that carried the Poll winners’ results). The cuttings are split into articles on favourite bands, album and gig reviews, tour and album advertisements, aforementioned cartoons and general interest articles. (Sad! I hear you say!)
Of the other UK weeklies, “Record Mirror” (RM) was a glossy pop paper and “Disc & Music Echo” a tabloid with a smattering of colour but, again, essentially a pop paper. I still have a few copies of each – I remember Disc reviewing, Wild Man Fischer’s “An Evening with…” album as it’s album of the week! To which I can only add, “Far out!” I once borrowed a school friend’s copy of RM to cut out an entry form so that I could enter a competition. The prize was, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s, “Willy and the Poor Boys” which I won!
The national press, for the most part, ignored popular music apart from lurid stories that hit their front pages. The broadsheets did occasionally write concert reviews but it was only in the late 70s that regular album reviews and interviews with musicians became common-place.
* "Me Mam's" was a school in-joke but the Melody Maker was often referred in this way because of its first two letters of each name!
It was joined in 1972 by a re-vamped “New Musical Express” (NME), which previously had been a pure pop music paper. A change of editor and wholesale reformatting of its content made the NME a serious contender as the provider of the best rock coverage, weekly music paper for the next five or six years. Remember, at this time there were no glossy monthlies! The two leading titles in the weekly music press were both produced as red-mast tabloid newspapers. The NME had contracted some of the journalists from the recently folded Oz and had taken on the philosophy of the revered American “Rolling Stone” magazine – championing almost anyone who fitted into the underground scene and ran long in-depth articles on favoured musicians: Jim Morrison and Brian Wilson were two who received this accolade. Under the editorship of Nick Logan, the NME made inroads into the growing readership of the music weeklies. Notable journalists at this time were Charles Shaar-Murray and Max Bell (the man who introduced me to Blue Oyster Cult). Nick Benyon provided some scathing cartoons mainly in the guise of the weekly “Lone Groover” strip and Ray Lowry drew single, memorable left field cartoons.
The circulation of the MM & NME peaked at around 200,000 copies each per week by 1973. A fete they were unable to maintain as the baby-boomers moved into their mid 20’s and the purchase of weekly music papers was no longer at the top of their consumer spending.
I have a large collection of cuttings from the NME & MM from 1970 to around 1980. The collection includes a number of complete papers (usually those that carried the Poll winners’ results). The cuttings are split into articles on favourite bands, album and gig reviews, tour and album advertisements, aforementioned cartoons and general interest articles. (Sad! I hear you say!)
Of the other UK weeklies, “Record Mirror” (RM) was a glossy pop paper and “Disc & Music Echo” a tabloid with a smattering of colour but, again, essentially a pop paper. I still have a few copies of each – I remember Disc reviewing, Wild Man Fischer’s “An Evening with…” album as it’s album of the week! To which I can only add, “Far out!” I once borrowed a school friend’s copy of RM to cut out an entry form so that I could enter a competition. The prize was, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s, “Willy and the Poor Boys” which I won!
The national press, for the most part, ignored popular music apart from lurid stories that hit their front pages. The broadsheets did occasionally write concert reviews but it was only in the late 70s that regular album reviews and interviews with musicians became common-place.
* "Me Mam's" was a school in-joke but the Melody Maker was often referred in this way because of its first two letters of each name!
Put that Tape Out: Recording Music
Copying music was done on a reel-to-reel Ferguson tape recorder that my parents had bought as a joint Christmas present for me and my brother. Taping has to be done on an “open mic” which explains why I’ve got ice cream van jingles in the middle of “Deep Purple in Rock”! The radio or my parent’s Dansette record player were lined up next to the tape recorder and, with the tape recorder’s microphone placed in front of the radio or record player’s speaker and the area covered with cushions, pillows or even an eiderdown to muffle any ambient sound, the subtle trick was to press the record button at the right time so you avoided missing the beginning of the song and ensured you didn’t leave a long, pregnant pause as the stylus ran over the vinyl before the song or album started. It meant that once the recording started, I had to sit in total silence or move quietly away from the ongoing recording. For singles it was two to three minutes but as album sides were anything from thirteen minutes to over twenty, there were often cases when cramp set in!
From a singles perspective, there was a science involved in taping from, “Pick of the Pops”. The secret was to know the chart position of the singles you wanted to tape and hit the record button at the right time avoiding Alan Freeman’s voice! In preparation for this Sunday afternoon activity, I had to be armed with the current chart positions that were announced just prior to eight o’ clock on the previous Wednesday morning on Radio 1 with the new number one being played immediately thereafter. As I travelled to school on a train at the time the charts were being read, one of my friends would note the chart run-down in a small Lett’s diary. I copied this later in the day into an orange, A5 Chemistry note book whilst at school. The weekday breakfast show was presented by Tony Blackburn who is remembered for not playing Hendrix’ “Voodoo Chile (slight return)” when it became number one!
It was by this process that I taped singles by Jethro Tull, Chicago, Canned Heat, Frijid Pink, Family, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Bear in mind that this was well before FM radio so recordings had to be done on MW (with its poor evening reception) or on LW for those select few programmes that were transmitted on 1500m: Pick of the Pops was one such programme! I was grateful for the introduction of FM to provide a recorded quality similar to that from stereo albums.
Apart from an EMI tape purchased with the tape recorder, which I found out was good in terms of little hiss but expensive, I usually bought cheap 2400’ International tape form Beaver Radio, a hi-fi store in Whitechapel, Liverpool. This allowed me to tape a full album on one side of the tape and still have space to record a number of chart singles too. Once I had purchased a cassette tape deck, bought as the final piece of my rig, I started recording friends’ albums using TDK AD90 tape cassettes: a brand used by all my friends too. These were hard wearing and excellent value allowing 45 minutes recording on each side so most albums could be recorded on one side. A sixty minute concert from Radio 1 caused a few problems, so inferior AD120 tapes were used for recoding, “In concert” programmes.
My first record player was a red and cream plastic battery operated device. This was specifically built for children’s records and my grandparent’s old 78 rpm discs. Memories of “The Sailor’s Hornpipe”, “A Cowboy Needs a Horse” and “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” come flooding back.
My father had a blue and cream classic Dansette player which had a modern styled turntable in various shades of grey. Even on this machine, I was worried that you couldn’t play stereo albums such as, “The Best of The Beach Boys Vol 1” as I presumed the mono system would destroy the stereo effect of the vinyl!
Once I left school in 1973, I immediately purchased a hi-fi separate system with money saved from my week-end and summer job at a local petrol station. 1973 was the year in which hi-fi sales took off with consumer spending amongst the baby-boomers increasing even though it was a time of rampant inflation in the economy. Albums such as “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Tubular Bells” providing the perfect products to test out your speaker separation. In passing, the best albums for testing speaker separation are, Led Zeppelin II”, especially “Whole Lotta Love” and “What Is and What Should Never be” and Hendrix’ “Electric Ladyland”: they’re stunning on headphones too!
From a singles perspective, there was a science involved in taping from, “Pick of the Pops”. The secret was to know the chart position of the singles you wanted to tape and hit the record button at the right time avoiding Alan Freeman’s voice! In preparation for this Sunday afternoon activity, I had to be armed with the current chart positions that were announced just prior to eight o’ clock on the previous Wednesday morning on Radio 1 with the new number one being played immediately thereafter. As I travelled to school on a train at the time the charts were being read, one of my friends would note the chart run-down in a small Lett’s diary. I copied this later in the day into an orange, A5 Chemistry note book whilst at school. The weekday breakfast show was presented by Tony Blackburn who is remembered for not playing Hendrix’ “Voodoo Chile (slight return)” when it became number one!
It was by this process that I taped singles by Jethro Tull, Chicago, Canned Heat, Frijid Pink, Family, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Bear in mind that this was well before FM radio so recordings had to be done on MW (with its poor evening reception) or on LW for those select few programmes that were transmitted on 1500m: Pick of the Pops was one such programme! I was grateful for the introduction of FM to provide a recorded quality similar to that from stereo albums.
Apart from an EMI tape purchased with the tape recorder, which I found out was good in terms of little hiss but expensive, I usually bought cheap 2400’ International tape form Beaver Radio, a hi-fi store in Whitechapel, Liverpool. This allowed me to tape a full album on one side of the tape and still have space to record a number of chart singles too. Once I had purchased a cassette tape deck, bought as the final piece of my rig, I started recording friends’ albums using TDK AD90 tape cassettes: a brand used by all my friends too. These were hard wearing and excellent value allowing 45 minutes recording on each side so most albums could be recorded on one side. A sixty minute concert from Radio 1 caused a few problems, so inferior AD120 tapes were used for recoding, “In concert” programmes.
My first record player was a red and cream plastic battery operated device. This was specifically built for children’s records and my grandparent’s old 78 rpm discs. Memories of “The Sailor’s Hornpipe”, “A Cowboy Needs a Horse” and “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” come flooding back.
My father had a blue and cream classic Dansette player which had a modern styled turntable in various shades of grey. Even on this machine, I was worried that you couldn’t play stereo albums such as, “The Best of The Beach Boys Vol 1” as I presumed the mono system would destroy the stereo effect of the vinyl!
Once I left school in 1973, I immediately purchased a hi-fi separate system with money saved from my week-end and summer job at a local petrol station. 1973 was the year in which hi-fi sales took off with consumer spending amongst the baby-boomers increasing even though it was a time of rampant inflation in the economy. Albums such as “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Tubular Bells” providing the perfect products to test out your speaker separation. In passing, the best albums for testing speaker separation are, Led Zeppelin II”, especially “Whole Lotta Love” and “What Is and What Should Never be” and Hendrix’ “Electric Ladyland”: they’re stunning on headphones too!
We’re All On-line Now: How The Internet Allowed Me To Listen To Non-Mainstream Music
At the time that the internet started to become a useful tool, the previously obscure world of prog took off again. You didn’t have to listen to radio stations to try to find adventurous new music to listen. You didn’t have to try to find a colleague who had an IQ or Pendragon album or buy on impulse (you couldn’t buy on someone’s review as there weren’t any reviews!) The internet opened up so many doors that you can now listen to anything at any time by almost anyone. It was this concept that brought progressive rock back into the limelight. I used the internet to catch up with the prog music I’d missed in the period between 1988 through to 2004. Firstly, the introduction of the wonderful website, Progarchives.com provided constructive reviews of thousands of albums and artists that never got a mention in the monthly rock press (yes, that’s you Q & Mojo). (Probably because journalists in those magazines and newspapers have to memorise the mantra which says: “Don’t even think about mentioning prog or metal. If you do, then make sure it’s done in a mocking manner and certainly don’t infer that you actually like any of the artists”). I can now find out what the set list was of Frank Zappa’s Liverpool stadium concert in 1973 just by a few clicks of my PC.
Secondly, the world of Spotify, You Tube, allmusic.com and other similar sites allowed me to listen and/or watch on-line and to read constructive critiques of some wonderful music I previously could only listen to by purchasing CDs on spec.
I read reviews on the excellent Progarchives.com, dprp.net (the former site I visit most days and the latter is a Dutch Prog site with an excellent standard of reviews) and allmusic.com (American and usually accurate and well-observed criticism). These are far better than the almost obligatory rave reviews that fill up the customer review columns of Amazon.
I used this new world to devour Krautrock (the moniker given to the amalgam of adventurous music being created in the late 60’s and early 70’s in places such as Berlin, Cologne and Munich), a new world of superb Polish, German and Scandinavian prog was waiting for me to as well as listening to dozens of deleted albums from lesser known artists that suddenly became available to everyone.
As well as looking backward to the early 70's German based rock, the internet sites allow me to discover a whole new world that opened up to me including bands like Arena, IQ, Porcupine Tree, Anekdoken, Discipline, College and Riverside. It enabled me to revisit obscure Krautrock artists unheard of for over 30 years such as Popol Vuh, and Agitation Free.
I was soon to realise that there was so much great music being made and played that was kept out of the limelight by the narrow minded agendas of the so-called rock critics: all there as long as you are prepared to search and invest time in discovering new bands.
Finally, the introduction of Classic Rock magazine in 2004 started to address the previously avoided genres and latterly has introduced a whole magazine, “Prog!” for the genre (so there must be a market!) which is tailored for people like me! It does beg the question, why did it take them so long to work out there were such markets? - we never went away!
Since the advent of the internet the whole experience how I, and indeed, everyone, listens and hears about music has changed so much. When I started listening to music you depended almost wholly on album sleeves for knowledge about an artist or by reading the rock papers. The NME, MM and Sounds came out weekly and what you were able to read when you bought them depended solely upon editorial policy or direction; no internet, no allmusic.com or Wikipedia, only three television channels, no programming after midnight - that was it. The result was that people devoured any information they could get, to the point where (unlike today) the average fan would be able to recount the entire personnel history of a band, who played what and when, and who manufactured the gatefold sleeve. It bred a sort of dedication to specific bands that seems not to exist any more. Music has become a more disposable commodity amongst a plethora of leisure pursuits.
It’s partially due to there being many more spending opportunities with PC games, DVDs being two areas that were not open to me and my generation.
Nowadays I listen to what has become known as "Classic Rock" by way of DAB radio. There are a number DAB radios dotted around the house but I have one, in the guise of a Marshall amp (!), where I can hear my current favourite station, "Planet Rock". My car is fitted with a DAB radio too so I can get two or three sessions a day listening to "Planet Rock" whilst driving to and from work!
Long may it continue!
Keep the Faith!
Secondly, the world of Spotify, You Tube, allmusic.com and other similar sites allowed me to listen and/or watch on-line and to read constructive critiques of some wonderful music I previously could only listen to by purchasing CDs on spec.
I read reviews on the excellent Progarchives.com, dprp.net (the former site I visit most days and the latter is a Dutch Prog site with an excellent standard of reviews) and allmusic.com (American and usually accurate and well-observed criticism). These are far better than the almost obligatory rave reviews that fill up the customer review columns of Amazon.
I used this new world to devour Krautrock (the moniker given to the amalgam of adventurous music being created in the late 60’s and early 70’s in places such as Berlin, Cologne and Munich), a new world of superb Polish, German and Scandinavian prog was waiting for me to as well as listening to dozens of deleted albums from lesser known artists that suddenly became available to everyone.
As well as looking backward to the early 70's German based rock, the internet sites allow me to discover a whole new world that opened up to me including bands like Arena, IQ, Porcupine Tree, Anekdoken, Discipline, College and Riverside. It enabled me to revisit obscure Krautrock artists unheard of for over 30 years such as Popol Vuh, and Agitation Free.
I was soon to realise that there was so much great music being made and played that was kept out of the limelight by the narrow minded agendas of the so-called rock critics: all there as long as you are prepared to search and invest time in discovering new bands.
Finally, the introduction of Classic Rock magazine in 2004 started to address the previously avoided genres and latterly has introduced a whole magazine, “Prog!” for the genre (so there must be a market!) which is tailored for people like me! It does beg the question, why did it take them so long to work out there were such markets? - we never went away!
Since the advent of the internet the whole experience how I, and indeed, everyone, listens and hears about music has changed so much. When I started listening to music you depended almost wholly on album sleeves for knowledge about an artist or by reading the rock papers. The NME, MM and Sounds came out weekly and what you were able to read when you bought them depended solely upon editorial policy or direction; no internet, no allmusic.com or Wikipedia, only three television channels, no programming after midnight - that was it. The result was that people devoured any information they could get, to the point where (unlike today) the average fan would be able to recount the entire personnel history of a band, who played what and when, and who manufactured the gatefold sleeve. It bred a sort of dedication to specific bands that seems not to exist any more. Music has become a more disposable commodity amongst a plethora of leisure pursuits.
It’s partially due to there being many more spending opportunities with PC games, DVDs being two areas that were not open to me and my generation.
Nowadays I listen to what has become known as "Classic Rock" by way of DAB radio. There are a number DAB radios dotted around the house but I have one, in the guise of a Marshall amp (!), where I can hear my current favourite station, "Planet Rock". My car is fitted with a DAB radio too so I can get two or three sessions a day listening to "Planet Rock" whilst driving to and from work!
Long may it continue!
Keep the Faith!