Monitor

In the 1970s and 1980s Fanzines and Newsletters were the means of communication for info about hobbies/interests etc. “Monitor” was one of a number that specialised in the (even then) minority interest that was dubbed Pirate Radio or Free Radio or Offshore Radio.

Issues 1 – 9 have already been posted on the Internet by others and you can find them quite easily with a quick “google”. As slightly more recent issues haven’t yet been made available here are five issues from 1976-1977. Originally typewritten on coloured foolscap paper hence the hazy reproduction quality.

Monitor 10

Monitor 11

Monitor 12

Monitor 13

Monitor 14

PS: Much of the above concerns Radio Caroline when the station was broadcasting from the Mi Amigo. Of course Radio Caroline continues today from the Eurobird 1 Satellite (at 28.2 degrees east and possibly alongside the Movies4Men channel).  Living on board a satellite must be worse than being 3 miles out to sea for weeks at a time. Instead of a rusty old tender I suppose they commute via the space shuttle ??  I was amused to read that as the nation prepares to migrate to digital radio, Radio Caroline would like to return to the Medium Wave. Sounds like a good plan to me. I’ve always had difficulty in getting my Sky Decoder Box out onto the back lawn and setting up portable satellite dishes on the beach is tedious.

More Nostalgia 1975

What happened in 1975? There was an oil crisis. Inflation inflated. Some things never change. On Saturday the 8th of November 1975 the weather couldn’t have been very good either. Radio Caroline’s ship the Mi Amigo broke her anchor chain, and, (most likely un-noticed by DJs/crew) began drifting ending up almost beached on a sandbank. Without any of the modern technology that would be used to get accurate bearings of their position today they were lucky that they managed to start their engine and move into deeper water.

Announcements of their plight began around 6pm on Saturday the 8th November with requests for listeners to call the coastguard. These requests continued for an hour or so until the ship was once again afloat, although still drifting without an anchor. With the DJ Simon Barrett getting more worried as the evening progressed it made for entertaining, if morbid listening. I fully expected that Radio Caroline would finish for good that evening, a mere 3 years after their return to the North Sea. Michael Lloyd began his evening’s programme at 10pm. Shortly afterwards he was interrupted by Peter Chicago who announced that they would have to go off the air as it was suspected that they had drifted within the 3 mile limit and could risk falling foul of the 1967 Marine Offences Act.

Here is a lo -fi recording from the 8th November 1975, beginning and ending with BBC radio news items about the incident.

Radio Caroline didn’t return to the airwaves until the following Thursday 13th of November 1975. Something must have happened on November 14th …..possibly a visit from the Home Office…..as that evening and the following week or so 259m remained silent.

Here is a short recording of Michael Lloyd on Radio Caroline on the 13th of November 1975.

Radio Caroline finally returned to “normal” with regular programmes from the North Sea on the 26th of November 1975. The Mi Amigo would continue to somehow weather further storms and various crisis and Radio Caroline would continue to broadcast if not quite continuously then at least reasonably regularly until March 1980 when the stack of beer cans the ship was precariously balanced on gave way and the ship finally sank.

More Tape

In 1968 the average weekly wage was £23. If this tape cost a staggering 10% of the average weekly wage what would it cost in today’s money ?? There’s no wonder I endlessly taped over things. You can see why even the BBC re-used tapes rather than archive everything.

What was on the tape ?, I hear no-one cry. Side one contained surprisingly crisp mono copies of ELPs Trilogy and Focus’ Moving Waves recorded by the incredibly technical technique of dangling a microphone in front of a record player’s speaker. Side two contained some of the world’s worst recordings from the radio of Radio Atlantis, Radio  Caroline and Radio Mi Amigo International(though perhaps in mitigation neither were broadcasting at very high power at the time). Having wasted the best part of an hour transferring 15 minutes worth to mp3 file before giving up I may as well add them to my audio scrapbook and post them here for anyone who likes listening to radio static. 

Radio Caroline 1974

Radio Caroline 1977 

The many closedowns of Radio Caroline

I’ve just unearthed an old cassette tape with an off-air recording of Radio Caroline from 1985 featuring a fascinating documentary entitled “A tribute to Roland C. Pearson”. On the other side of the tape were other odd recordings, a couple of which I’ve placed here. Co-incidentally I’ve also been reading this book entitled “Shiprocked”. And as the feature film “The Boat that Rocked” is currently showing on TV it seems appropriate to post the following. As usual, if you’re looking for a history lesson try Wikipedia etc. This is merely a few paragraphs on a page of my scrapbook containing a brief overview about one of the numerous things that once upon a time I used to find interesting……

The first phase of Radio Caroline began Easter 1964. Within months the station was incredibly popular and broadcasting from two ships to ensure coverage of the whole UK. Like all the other Offshore Commercial Radio Stations of the mid 1960s Radio Caroline fell foul of the Marine Offences Act, quickly lost DJs and advertising revenue and struggled on until finishing in early March 1968.

Radio Caroline Phase Two began in late 1972 with the Mi-Amigo back in the North Sea. A far more low-key operation this time. An initial Top 40 format was soon replaced by a Hippy/Loving Awareness/Album Station/Freeform anti-format. When the old, badly maintained ship finally sank in 1980 I assumed the era of Pirate Radio was over.

Radio Caroline Phase Three began with a blaze of publicity in 1983. A new, bigger, better ship, the Ross Revenge, had been sourced.

Here is an audio only extract from a news report on UK TVs Channel 4 News in 1983 just before broadcasting re-commenced with Ronan sounding optimistic.

The impetus of the 1983 re-launch slowly petered away. Ronan’s much-promised advertising never really materialised. Technical problems were numerous with most of the enormous 300 foot mast eventually collapsing and never really being successfully repaired. On August 19th 1989 Radio Caroline was raided by UK/ Dutch authorities and much broadcasting equipment was smashed up or removed.

Here is an audio clip from August 19th 1989 during the boarding and forced closedown of Radio Caroline.

Over the next six weeks the studios and transmitters were cobbled back together by Peter Chicago and broadcasts re-commenced on low power on 1st October 1989.

Here is a lo-fi audio clip of Radio Caroline from October 9th 1989. Peter Chicago is closing down for the night at the rather early time of 6pm. The time and the fact that Chicago (who preferred engineering) was having to present a show is evidence that the station was still struggling back into operation after the troubles with the DTI and the Dutch authorities in August (They had been off air between August 19th and October 1st 1989).

The Radio Station never really recovered from the subsequent loss of Dutch daytime programming which had paid for food, fuel and tenders and had supported the English broadcasts. Despite the best efforts of a small, dedicated band of enthusiasts the station finally faded from the airwaves in November 1990 when the fuel, money and willing staff finally became too depleted.

I’ve just finished reading this interesting book. Its a first-hand account of this third phase of Radio Caroline by Steve Conway who spent a lot of time on board the Ross Revenge in the second half of the 1980s and was there until the bitter end in 1991.

 A visit to this detailed site will provide you with a timeline of the major events happening to Radio Caroline in the late 1980s showing how often they were on/off air. And there’s loads more info all over the Interweb. Even YouTube has some fascinating video.

In the 1990s onwards another phase of Radio Caroline began utilising local limited-period broadcasting licences and via Satellite (Sky Radio Channel 0199) and the Internet (www.radiocaroline.co.uk).

Radio Caroline Postcards

Sometimes change creeps up on you and you suddenly remember things you used to do that you never do anymore. (Like listening to Radio Caroline for instance……..). And it isn’t too long ago when a holiday entailed sending postcards to people back home. There’s not much point these days with the constant communication of mobile phones and texting. Now you see people sitting on beaches or at the side of hotel swimming pools with their laptops checking their email (or perhaps writing their blogs!!)

I’m sure you can still get postcards but one day in the not too distant future they’ll completely disappear like the telegram. stop.

PS: I always thought his name was Bob Noakes. And I don’t think they achieved an output of 50kW very often !!

Loose Ends

ITEM:   WordPress gives you some basic statistics about the numbers of visitors to your blog. I seem to get a reasonable number considering the odd subject matter and my amateur IT skills. There’s a daily running total of how many “clicks” are made but that could be a few people looking at lots of stuff or many different people arriving here by mistake and clicking away to somewhere more suitable. Other stats available list the different catagories in total visits from the most to the least. This is interesting if only for the fact that  the majority of the subjects I’ve most enjoyed mentioning on this blog languish way down at the bottom of the list. There’s no accounting for taste……

ITEM: For instance nobody seems very interested in John Spencer comics. They have no value and little merit. But in the face of total indifference I am going to put a complete issue of Spectre Stories No 3 right here (pdf) . I doubt there is any copyright in force now and only a madman would ever reprint it. Its rubbish !!  I thought Solson Comics were the worst comics ever made until I re-read this UK comic pile of ____ from 1966. So although I find the subject of John Spencer comics fascinating  no doubt this post will remain firmly at the bottom of the stats list.

For the record Spectre Stories was one of 4 titles issued by John Spencer Publishing. The other three were Fantasy Stories, Macabre Stories and Strange Stories. Each lasted for approx 6 issues. Much of the odd artwork in No 3 was allegedly completed by Michael Jay (although the artwork reproduced above from No 1 isn’t by him…it looks more like the work of Ron Embleton). John Spencer Publishing were better known for their range of pulp paperbacks which were churned out monthly under the imprint of “Badger Books” by just a handful of prolific writers. The paperbacks were mostly Horror or Science Fiction and as they were numbered as if they were monthly magazines some people collected them in the 1960s (and even today??).

ITEM:    Last year I mentioned L.Miller & Son Comics of London. Between the late 1940s and approx 1966 they published numerous black and white comics in the UK, mostly reprints of Fawcett and Charlton comics (especially Captain Marvel and many many Cowboy comics). They did however commission some UK sourced books..most notably Marvelman who ran from 1954 to 1963. The “& Son” part of the company was Arnold Miller who also published his own stuff as The Arnold Book Co. An extremely unexpected place to find an exhaustive index of all the Miller/Arnold comics ever issued is within Nos 15 and 16 of Peter Normanton’s UK Horror magazine  ”From The Tomb”. The index along with a  fascinating article is by Frank Motler. There’s even a photo (thanks to Alan Austin and Steve Holland) of the less than scintillating premises where these comics originally emerged from !!

ITEM:    Still talking comics I’ve just finished re-reading some early issues of the small circulation UK underground(ish) A5 magazine “Escape” from the 1980s. One contains this fascinating article by Alan Moore regarding his first ever visit to the USA (and Marvel and DC of course). I hope they won’t mind my sharing a couple of pages here.

ITEM:     I see that Joan Alexander died recently. She wasn’t quite the first Lois Lane but evidentally a very popular one appearing as the damsel in distress and the thorn in Clark Kent’s side for more than 1600 episodes of the american “Superman” radio serial. Superman’s popularity must have been virtually instantaneous as the radio show began in 1940 and along with many of the other famous fictional characters on the radio moved over to TV in the early 1950s. Of course I never ever heard any of the Superman radio show episodes until this very week when I discover there are a number of  “Old Time Radio Serials” now sloshing around the Internet as mp3 files.

ITEM:   Another subject that is belatedly receiving more coverage on the Internet along with more interesting downloadable mp3 files is Offshore Pirate Radio. As far as Europe is concerned this probably all began in Denmark in 1958. In the UK it began in 1964 with Radio Atlanta and Radio Caroline. They quickly joined forces to make Radio Caroline North and Radio Caroline South. They, and numerous others, sailed on the crest of the 1960s pop music explosion in the UK. Here is an audio clip from Radio Caroline of an advert for the NME from perhaps 1965. It may have been the swinging sixties but doesn’t the announcer sound as if he’s just escaped from the BBC’s Light Programme or Third !!