Xmas and The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl

 

Christmas December 1977 is lodged in my mind for being the year I had a Christmas present that unlike a good number from that era I still own.

On May 4th 1977 following the previous years excursion into remarketing the beatles a new album came out that featured recordings of their August 1964 and 1965 performances at the Hollywood Bowl in California that had been recorded for posterity by Capitol records.

1977 was several years on from the end of the Beatles with each member moving on with their own solo careers and other interests to varying degrees of success but close enough for our generation to have known fleetingly about them first hand.

In the main I was more into Paul McCartney and Wings being swept away as mid Junior boy by My Love and Band On The Run three or so years before and loving this years Mull Of Kintyre single which I also had. 

While individual studio albums were still available and it was only three and a bit years since the now legendary 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 compilations had come out with myself having the latter myself in March 1977, their had been nothing that captured the feel of Beatlemania.

This album compiled of two shows, transferred from the vintage three track tapes to 24 track equalized and remixed, did capture the feel of being at a show with a typical half hour set complete with 17,000 young screams.

It was a deluxe gatefold sleeve edition that I bought on  Friday December 17 from the local record shop all by myself before handing it over to Mum for safe keeping until Christmas Day when it was played.

My copy is a first edition cut by Wally Traugott at Capitol mastering with -1/-1 matrixes rather the later recuts done by Harry T Moss at Abbey Road.

The inner sleeve of the UK edition I had and the North American differed with theirs having a mocked up live photo while ours showed the currently available studio and compilation albums complete with track lists on vanilla background.

This proved useful for a thirteen year old me to plan how to build over time his beatles albums collection and put on birthday and Christmas wish lists.

1977 and all that

1977 was an important year in lots of ways so this is one in a bunch that looks at aspects of that.

BBC Radio One had been launched on September 30th 1967 as part of an attempt to bring the BBC in to the modern age when teenage culture that had taken off since 1955 had been largely ignored by the radio and by 1964 offshore radio so-called "Pirate Radio Stations" had transmitted pop music and featured less staid presenters from just outside UK coastal waters gaining many listeners.

In 1977 I was thirteen years old, what would of counted as a teenager not that I felt nor ever really became anything stereotypically like one remaining more that young boy in Junior school in many ways.

The radio was a big thing in my life listening to music stations such as Radio One and Luxembourg at night from just under the age of six so while not there at the very start it had featured strongly in my life. There was magic on 247 metres medium wave.

Unlike today there was no music television just the odd music show such as Top Of The Pops, no internet only magazines aimed more at teens with news so the radio was the main player in our hearing new songs.

In that time presenters some being brought from those Pirate Stations or Luxembourg's UK based shows had a fairly free hand to showcase new sounds outside of playing top forty hits which you'd expect.

I liked David "Kid" Jenson, Ed Stewpot who did Junior Choice at the weekends, Tony Blackburn and listened at school to Paul Burnett's chart rundown.

Later in my teens I grew to appreciate Anne Nightingale's request show and Paul Gambaccini.

Key personalities in that included John Peel and Alan Freeman whose afternoon show on Saturdays I listened to and my brother taped things from John Peel's late evening show which he shared generously with me.

The station also had produced  programs that looked at youth issues, engaged with organizations such as girl guiding, scouts and boys and girls brigades to talk about concerns and pioneered broadcasting news in ways that were more interesting and understood for young people.

Thus in 1977 many felt that ten years had to be marked outside of books and a special edition of the BBC's listing magazine Radio Times and that include an album of music chosen by the DJ's and listeners that reflected the sounds we'd grown up listening on the station.

The selection was overseen by the the Radio One director Johnny Beerling and took n number one hits up to the end of 1976 with Mississippi by the group Pussycat and issued as a double lp with hand penned reflections by then current Dj's and a group photograph on the gatefold starting with Flowers In The Rain which was the first single played on the day it launched.

In all some 37 songs were featured which on two discs which is difficult resulting in some premature fade outs and limited bass which was less of an issue then than playing this disc which I bought and still own is today.

What it may lack in absolute quality it makes up for in nostalgia and an emotional link to that past.

BBC Radio One becoming ten as a big thing with me and why some forty years on today we're marking what and why that was in the age of blogging rather than scrapbooks.