1979 and more Radio One

Today is the forty-second anniversary of the launch of BBC Radio One  on September 30th 1967 and to which two years ago we wrote an entry about including a special two  record set.

In 1979 it was decided to issue a second set as of necessity only a handful of hits per year at most could of been programmed in its four sides and this is it.

As with the original Ten Years of Radio One set the cover links the stations Dj's which were classroom currency at the time to the music which several decades on takes us back to those days with pictures too.

I was by this point fifteen going on ten so I was listening to more of the specialist shows in the evenings and weekends and getting a bit more up to speed with current affairs and would borrow colourful pop music magazines and buy even the likes of Sounds and the New Musical Express following the New Wave and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

In the main it was a retrospective selection with more from 1969 onwards as that first set did devote a lot of space to the first couple of years music so we have a mixture of rock from the likes of the Rolling Stones and Jethro Tull, more early 1970's singer song writers, funk with soul, the ever popular euro pop of Abba and 1979's break out act Dire Straits with Sultan Of Swing which I really liked.

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.