Rocking my boat
Praying the volume was low enough I curled up under my candlewick bedspread to listen to my 'tranny' and read this week's Jackie by torchlight.
Nostalgia
The signal on my transistor radio from Radio Caroline, the new station all my friends were talking about, was brilliant.
Like most teenagers I'd been listening to Radio Luxembourg, but the reception was rubbish. Caroline was loud and clear - and I'd be in big trouble if my parents heard!
Kids today would find it hard to believe but in the early 60s there were no legal radio stations that played the music teenagers liked.
The BBC, if they played anything at all, only played the schmaltzy, saccharin stuff your parents listened too.
It wasn't much better on TV, with one of the first musicshows Juke Box Jury, hosted by balding DJ David Jacobs with a Rock-Ola Jukebox and bell for 'Hit' or hooter for 'Miss'.
It featured a celebrity panel, most of them your parents age, rendering judgement on the latest releases. Cringe worthy!
Top of the Pops, which was a bit better, had also just started, with DJ's Jimmy Saville, David Jacobs, Alan 'Fluff' Freeman and Pete Murray - who were generally considered to be the country's best.
At that time if the acts were in the studio they mimed, but the TOTP orchestra played most of the records while Pan's People danced, a recipe for disaster for the music.
Imagine your favourite record performed by an orchestra with some silly girls in hot pants wiggling to it?
The only way to listen to new hits in Chichester was to cram yourself into the music booth of WH Smith, but there were giant headphones that weighed a ton and crackled like crazy.
So you can see how enticing the new pirate stations were. And they were illegal!
My first 7" single, Try and Catch the Wind, by Donovan, cost 6 shillings and 8 pence. I used to ask for an LP for birthdays and Christmas presents, and they cost 1 12s 3d (the price stayed the same from 1964 to 967.
Help by the Beatles was the first LP I bought but eventually I owned every Beatles record they ever made, playing them lovingly on my portable record player.
It was such an exciting time for music. During the mid-sixties the No1 top ten list read like a hall of fame - July '65 Mr Tambourine man, The Byrds; August '65 Help, The Beatles; September '65 Can't get no Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones; November '65 In the Midnight Hour, Wilson Pickett; December '65 My Generation, The Who - it just went on and on. The times they were a- changing!
And just as the music was exciting, so were the DJs on the pirate stations. They were young, they were weird, wild and wonderful.
Many famous names started their days on the ocean waves - Dave Lee Travis, Emperor Rosko, Tony Blackburn, Dave Cash, Kenny Everett, John Peel, Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart, Johnnie Walker and Noel Edmonds.
We listened to them under the covers, in the playground, behind the bike sheds, round each other's houses, from inside the gym horse in the gym cupboard of the Lancastrian Girls School, and later in the air raid shelter of the Girls High School.
But all good things come to an end, and the 'pirates' were a short but important blip in musical history. By August 14, 1967, the Marine Offences Act had shut down every one of them, except Radio Caroline.
The BBC knew it would ignore this audience at its peril though, and on September 30, 1967, Radio 1 was born.
The first voice heard was ironically that of Tony Blackburn who had worked for both Radio Caroline and Radio London.
If you remember those times, 'you have lived'.
We didn't have Playstations, X-Boxes, DVDs, hundreds of TV channels or mobile phones, but we did have great music.
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Weather for Chichester
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 13 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: South west
