At school at ten years
old, I had music lessons via a regular radio program with an
accompanying book of lyrics and stories about the songs. That was
multi-media for the sixties! Thirty of us sang a large variety of
folk songs, so-called “Negro” spirituals, and sea-shanties from
around the world. In later years, I was to find out that the lyrics
had been cleaned up quite a bit – I suppose that references
to the ladies of the night in English seaport towns was a bit
shocking to teachers even in those swinging times.
Other musical experiences
were at the daily religious service. All English state schools were,
by definition, Anglican and had daily prayers and hymns. Later on, I
joined the school choir. Hymns, ancient and modern, Christmas carols.
I can't say I hated it - until I learned the error of my ways.
This revelation came with
my adolescent realization that the music I had experienced thus far
was crap. I blamed the government. At this time there were only three
radio stations in Britain. The BBC had a monopoly on radio
broadcasting, for reasons to do with the National well-being. The
Home Service had news, serious talk and drama. The Light Programme,
old-people's popular music, some good comedy, some soap operas. The
Third Programme featured classical music. Music that was actually
popular with the under-thirties didn't get played at all. This was
1967.
Little did I know that the
recording industry or copyright reasons enforced a legal limit of a
total of only five hours recorded music daily on the BBC, for fear
that it would cut into sales of records. The Beatles had become
practically has-beens by the time they were heard on the BBC (we may
think of their music as a bit pedestrian now, indeed I have heard it
in elevators, but then it was characterized as “not what the public
wanted”).
As a young child,
listening to the music on the radio was alright, quite jolly really.
Sometimes uplifting sometimes hummable. However, at thirteen I
learned that the BBC was a tool of the capitalist repression
of...whatever it was that was being repressed. I decided that it was
soft, wet, lying and hateful. I rebelled. I started
listening to Pirate Radio! I lived in the south-east corner of
England from where one could hear the broadcasts of Radio Luxembourg,
and from the “pirate” ships, Radio Caroline and Wonderful Radio
London.
The music was new, fun and
exciting. The disc-jockeys were American sounding and irreverent.
They had interesting sound effects, jingles and, yes, advertising!
Good heavens! Nothing so exciting on the BBC!
I bought several really
bad record albums based on a single hearing of a single song. So much
for advertising. Funnily enough, hearing new music on the radio
actually made people go out and buy records! The recording industry
was in turn shocked and appalled and quietly banking the proceeds.
Now I wasn't a complete
fool. It was illegal to listen to unlicensed and
unauthorized radio stations. I planned this law-breaking step very
carefully. I decided to listen but, I would only do it in the bath,
where I thought that I and my little battery-powered transistor radio
might escape detection by Big Brother. The signals were really barely
audible even with an earpiece. I felt like a wartime spy in enemy
country. My family were puzzled and annoyed that I spent so much time
locked in the bathroom. I expect that they thought I was smoking.
Eventually, the BBC fought
back against my campaign of terror. They opened a fourth radio
station that was called, rather oddly, Radio One. They hired a few
middle-aged disc-jockeys and they had strong, stable signals. No
teenaged hipsters like me were fooled. The smarmy, smiling faces of
the “housewives' friends” were all over the the “Radio Times”,
a publication that I eschewed. Although as the official organ of the
BBC which carried the exclusive weekly listing of all forthcoming
programming on the 2 TV stations and 4 radio channels, I also
frantically consulted it when it was delivered each week.
Further salvos came from
the British government which pushed to prosecute the advertisers who
supported the pirate stations and they gradually went out of business
(thus fulfilling my paranoid view of a nanny state that suppressed
all the fun.)
In reality it wasn't the
BBC that was a tool of the capitalists. Music had become a commodity
with vast profits, to be bought and sold, together with the audience.
The model had been set in the United States and the pressure was
mounting to cater to, and to fleece, the large and growing "Baby
Boomer" population. Over the next few years pressure to sell
music by radio broadcast had become enormous. People were being
bribed, or demanding bribes, to promote music. By 1973, independent
private radio stations were permitted and they followed the old
pirate radio formula. Some of the hosts were former pirates. It was
all fun, laughs and advertising.
Since then, popular music
as fashion has seen wave after wave of rebellion, consolidation,
stagnation and rebellion once more. It's interesting to think back
and realize how my tastes were manipulated into liking things that
were derivative, stolen, silly and actually pretty bad. The radio
stations of today are like the fossilized remains of these eras. We
now have a large number of formulaic commercial radio stations each
of which contains the exact flavour of music that will appeal to a
particular age group with the advertising to match. These are mass
produced by a California company called Clear Channel. I look forward
to the “Classic Rock” station that features advertizing for
incontinence products for seniors and retirement homes.
And for today's
thirteen-year-olds, the rebellion of Pirate Radio is on the high seas
of the Internet. The music continues.
