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| I’m an anorak’s wet dream, I am. |
Jeeez.
Spare me.
It’s August the 14th.
Noooooooooo.
Back in 1967 this was the day that all the pop pirate radioships fell silent (except those operated under the callsign “Radio Caroline”).
Sigh.
Radio enthusiasts (anoraks) celebrate or mark this day every year as if it was the day of the passing of something or someone important.
Yet, it was only radio.
It was radio that was very easily forgotten and not missed by anybody but the lonely young spotty youths of the day with no life and no friends.
Pretty soon the ordinary folk were completely happy with whatever a mixture of the BBC and Radio Luxembourg were able to bring them.
Alas, a couple of hundred ‘anoraks’ were left behind and to this day mourn the passing of these ships that did nothing but steal copyright and put marine workers in peril from their jamming of distress frequencies.
These old aged pensioners, well the ones that are still alive, spend this day sitting with their old fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorders and playback recordings they made nearly 50 years ago as they all but re-enact Krapp’s Last Tape.
Very sad or what?
England's England 
Fair comment Chris,
But ! Offshore radio from 64 to 67 was a hugely influential thing. I am not saying that it was very good, but it was new and unlike anything that had been heard before.
Half the country listened and the Government killed something off at the height of its popularity.
I remember seeing, in 1970, a massive rally in central London in support of offshore radio that had experienced a revival at that time via the brief return of Radio Caroline. It still motivated people in large numbers.
In my case, with a close involvement with Caroline, I am certainly ' all commemorated out '. I can no longer think of a single fresh and relevant thing to say about Aug 14th or 19th, or Easter Saturday 1964.
Those who still do commemorate, do fit the profile you mention. A small number of diehards for whom the era was so important that they have to remember it and believe that it may one day return.
Leave them with their memories and dreams.They harm nobody and what they remember was a happy time and a good time to be young.
Peter Moore.
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Why would 'half the country' have listened to offshore radio in the 1960s? Surely the stations were playing music that anybody over 35 mainly hated? Was half the country under 35?
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Perhaps the worse thing is that some old blogger went and reminded us about August 14th, eh Chris?
😉
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Not really Chris,
The sixties pirates were not cutting edge, at least not at first. Early Caroline was very bland and both the music and adverts were targetted at housewives. Remember also the Tannoy systems that piped music to the factories and production lines that we used to have. Radio 390 was an easy listening station, not even targetted at the youth, or ' yoof' as me must now call them.
But really it was just that suddenly there was something new and with lots of music.
Actually, the BBC gave a very good service, the comedies were outstanding, but the BBC were providing what they thought the public needed and not what they wanted.
By 67 the stations were getting a bit more freaky, since the music was going that way.
Who knows what the outcome would have been if the situation had been allowed to roll on. Some would have prospered, some would have failed or changed their format to target a different audience. We shall never know.
And so, old men ( always men ) grieve over ' what was cruelly taken away from us'. Even now I am sure there are people tuning AM radios up and down the band, stopping at every distant signal or test tone and thinking ' Oooh, that might just be a new pirate radio station coming from the sea '.
But then there are people in the USA flying flags which say ' The South Shall Rise Again'.
Oh Boy ! why didn't I choose a different hobby ?
Peter Moore.
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