I’ve been following the events unfolding at radiocaroline.com (here) and on Twitter @radiocaroline (here). As far as I can tell, a fully loaded Radio Caroline is set to return. Yay!
But, here’s the disappointment for people like me. Why the fetish for oldies?
When Radio Caroline returns it will be 1960s music during the day. Yes, songs from over 50 years ago. Over 50 years ago. WTF is that about?
Heck, if Radio Caroline had come on the air way back in 1964 just playing songs from 1914, who would have listened or considered it daring to be different?
I used to enjoy Radio Caroline back in the 1970s, well, the early 1970s, when it was introducing me to a whole new collection of brand new albums. Tunes and artists I’d never hear anywhere else. Tunes that weren’t just the standard format of being 3 minutes long and consisting of verse,chorus,verse,chorus,instrumental,chorus,verse,chorus,chorus,fade. Nope, Radio Caroline was airing a new form of music that maybe we’d read about in the music press, or get a quick taster of from the Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC2. Some of it was weird and electronic, tracks were long, some were mystical. It was not available anywhere else.
Yep, in the early 1970s Radio Caroline was certainly daring to be different. By the mid to late 1970s it had turned into a soft pop station playing safe soft pop sounds like Paul Simon and Toto. Bor-ring.
From then onwards, until it closed, Radio Caroline became an oldies station. Shame.
So, my personal dismay is that the returning is not only an oldies station, but apparently it’s playing the same damn oldies.
Having said all that, I’ve had the test stream on in the background via my Pure radios (as a certified anorak, I manually set it up and added it to my favourites!) and it’s been an interesting collection of oldies. Different genres, from slightly different eras, despite all being verse,chorus,verse,chorus,instrumental,chorus,verse,chorus,chorus,fade. No dubstep. No electronica. No new genres.
But, not too shabby.
However, it’s obviously not for me. When is somebody going to start a radio station for those of us who hate oldies and yearn for exposure to the new and the exciting and the different, presented by people?
England's England 