Dal 10 e fino al 14 agosto è on air sulle onde medie (729, 765 e 1530 kHz, tre frequenze per niente facili; tra le 18 e le 5 del mattino i programmi vengono ripresi da BBC Norfolk, su 855 e 873 kHz) e via Web Pirate BBC Essex, straordinaria maratona rievocativa del 40esimo anniversario della legge che nel 1967 portò al sequestro delle stazioni pirata off-shore britanniche. Devo scusarmi per non aver dato questa notizia in tempo più utile, ma fortunatamente ci sono ancora diverse ore per cercare di ascoltare la trasmissione, alla quale partecipano molte delle vecchie glorie di Radio Caroline e compagnia navigando. Per questa trasmissione, la stazione locale della BBC in Essex è salita a bordo della storica motonave LV18, ancorata al largo di Chelmsford, insieme a quelli che allora furono suoi acerrimi rivali. Dal sito della stazione è possibile accedere allo stream e un mucchio di altre informazioni, fotografie, interviste e diari dei DJ che si avvicendano nell'impresa si possono trovare qui.
Ecco come il Guardian ha presentato, con tanto di playlist dei brani in scaletta, l'iniziativa:
Smashing. And nice. Four decades on, pirate radio returns to the North Sea
BBC sets sail with former rivals Radio Caroline and Radio London
Lee Glendinning
Friday August 10, 2007
The Guardian
The teenagers trapping crabs on the Harwich shoreline were blissfully unaware of the rebellion breaking out in a rusty red lightship lolling on the horizon. Hearts filled with nostalgia, vinyl was reverently held aloft at 6am yesterday as pirate radio began all over again. Sleeping in shifts on wooden bunk beds, veteran pirate DJs will broadcast the sounds of the 60s for the next five days from the LV18, 40 years since the Maritime Broadcasting Offences Act forced them off air.
Stars from the days of Radio Caroline and Radio London fill the bill, including most notably Johnnie Walker, who hung on to the pirate life in defiance until the last. Dave Cash, Emperor Rosko, Norman St John, Mike Aherne, Gordy Cruse and Keith Skues will work with local DJs Steve Scruton and Ian Wyatt to bring it all together. In a neat twist, it is their old foe, the BBC, with which they will collaborate, resulting in Pirate BBC Essex - a broadcast which can reach audiences worldwide on the web, or locally through medium wave. At their peak, when the illicit Caroline and London were moored in international waters three miles off the Essex coast, they attracted up to 15 million listeners. Over the next week, they hope to draw an audience of quarter of a million.
The playlist will stay faithful to the time - only songs from 1964-67 will be played, and in their original vinyl format. News will be read out in bulletin point style, and jingles will be sung as they were. The hum of the generator will recreate the unique reverb quality of the broadcasting, although this time it is powered by biofuel. Norman St John, a former DJ on both Caroline and London, has flown from Australia to be involved. Preparing for his set yesterday, he brushed the dust from a Mersey Mania album and with a slight scratch it shunted into life. "She was just seventeen/you know what I mean/and the way she looked was way beyond compare ..." As he danced in his seat along with his friend and fellow radio pirate Gordy Cruse, their eyes glazed over into the world of their youth, and they twirled around singing, bumping into each other's shoulders as they went.
Fickle
They both know now, they say, that publicity and fans are "as fickle as the wind". St John said: "Today on radio you can be a megastar and no one will remember you in five years. That didn't happen then." When they worked on the pirate stations they would do two weeks on board, and then have one week off, and there would be 300 or 400 fans waiting for autographs when they arrived in town. "When you first walk back on, the atmosphere hits you straight away," Cruse explained. "The smell of the salt air and the ship, the diesel fumes, the rough seas ... "On the day it closed it was almost like it wasn't happening. Grown men cried - and they were real tears. I still remember the headlines around the world - 'England's radio pirates off the air'."
Only weeks later Radio 1 was launched in an attempt to plug the hole created by the end of the offshore broadcasts, but despite some high-profile crossovers many dedicated fans feel it never really recaptured the spirit of pirate broadcasting. Long-time pirate fans Gary Horrigan and his wife, Sally, both have time off work next week, enabling them to tune in once more. "I will be listening to it as much as I possibly can," Mr Horrigan said yesterday. "It was just this pioneering thing at the time, and now it reminds me of a more innocent time in my life, of going down to the pub with your mates, and your girlfriends - when everything was carefree."
A big difference for listeners is that they will be able to communicate directly with DJs via a broadband link, replacing the thousands of handwritten letters the pirates used to receive three times a week by tender.
Foggy
When it all ends, they plan to do it in the same way they did "the day the music died" - at 3pm on August 14, playing the Beatles' A Day in the Life. While the foggy round windows of their rooms reveal only the green North Sea, from the broadcasting booth they can see the shoreline, where once fans would flash their car lights to show they were listening. "We would ask them to do it during a night shift when sometimes we could feel isolated," St John said. "We couldn't see the cars and we couldn't see the people, but there would be thousands of flickering lights. "It meant we were in touch with the real world. I really hope they do it again this time. It was just like being in heaven."
On the playlist
We Gotta Get Out of This Place The Animals
I Believe The Bachelors
Pop go the Workers Barron Knights
Trains and Boats and Planes Burt Bacharach
As I Love You Shirley Bassey
A Picture of You Joe Brown and the Bruvvers
Rhythm of the Rain The Cascades
Limbo Rock Chubby Checker
Sweet Talkin Guy The Chiffons
Another Saturday Night Sam Cooke
Summertime Blues Eddie Cochran
Then He Kissed Me The Crystals
Rebel Rouser Duane Eddy
I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night The Electric Prunes
Um, um, um, um, um, um Wayne Fontana
Halfway to Paradise Billy Fury
Mrs Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter Herman's Hermits
Soul Bossa Nova Quincy Jones
Waterloo Sunset The Kinks
Hoots Mon Lord Rockingham's XI
Do Wah Diddy Diddy Manfred Mann
Tobacco Road Nashville Teens
See Emily Play Pink Floyd
Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa (Sad Song) Otis Redding
Walkin' Back to Happiness Helen Shapiro
Itchycoo Park The Small Faces
Walk on By Leroy Van Dyke
She's Not There Zombies
Ecco come il Guardian ha presentato, con tanto di playlist dei brani in scaletta, l'iniziativa:
Smashing. And nice. Four decades on, pirate radio returns to the North Sea
BBC sets sail with former rivals Radio Caroline and Radio London
Lee Glendinning
Friday August 10, 2007
The Guardian
The teenagers trapping crabs on the Harwich shoreline were blissfully unaware of the rebellion breaking out in a rusty red lightship lolling on the horizon. Hearts filled with nostalgia, vinyl was reverently held aloft at 6am yesterday as pirate radio began all over again. Sleeping in shifts on wooden bunk beds, veteran pirate DJs will broadcast the sounds of the 60s for the next five days from the LV18, 40 years since the Maritime Broadcasting Offences Act forced them off air.
Stars from the days of Radio Caroline and Radio London fill the bill, including most notably Johnnie Walker, who hung on to the pirate life in defiance until the last. Dave Cash, Emperor Rosko, Norman St John, Mike Aherne, Gordy Cruse and Keith Skues will work with local DJs Steve Scruton and Ian Wyatt to bring it all together. In a neat twist, it is their old foe, the BBC, with which they will collaborate, resulting in Pirate BBC Essex - a broadcast which can reach audiences worldwide on the web, or locally through medium wave. At their peak, when the illicit Caroline and London were moored in international waters three miles off the Essex coast, they attracted up to 15 million listeners. Over the next week, they hope to draw an audience of quarter of a million.
The playlist will stay faithful to the time - only songs from 1964-67 will be played, and in their original vinyl format. News will be read out in bulletin point style, and jingles will be sung as they were. The hum of the generator will recreate the unique reverb quality of the broadcasting, although this time it is powered by biofuel. Norman St John, a former DJ on both Caroline and London, has flown from Australia to be involved. Preparing for his set yesterday, he brushed the dust from a Mersey Mania album and with a slight scratch it shunted into life. "She was just seventeen/you know what I mean/and the way she looked was way beyond compare ..." As he danced in his seat along with his friend and fellow radio pirate Gordy Cruse, their eyes glazed over into the world of their youth, and they twirled around singing, bumping into each other's shoulders as they went.
Fickle
They both know now, they say, that publicity and fans are "as fickle as the wind". St John said: "Today on radio you can be a megastar and no one will remember you in five years. That didn't happen then." When they worked on the pirate stations they would do two weeks on board, and then have one week off, and there would be 300 or 400 fans waiting for autographs when they arrived in town. "When you first walk back on, the atmosphere hits you straight away," Cruse explained. "The smell of the salt air and the ship, the diesel fumes, the rough seas ... "On the day it closed it was almost like it wasn't happening. Grown men cried - and they were real tears. I still remember the headlines around the world - 'England's radio pirates off the air'."
Only weeks later Radio 1 was launched in an attempt to plug the hole created by the end of the offshore broadcasts, but despite some high-profile crossovers many dedicated fans feel it never really recaptured the spirit of pirate broadcasting. Long-time pirate fans Gary Horrigan and his wife, Sally, both have time off work next week, enabling them to tune in once more. "I will be listening to it as much as I possibly can," Mr Horrigan said yesterday. "It was just this pioneering thing at the time, and now it reminds me of a more innocent time in my life, of going down to the pub with your mates, and your girlfriends - when everything was carefree."
A big difference for listeners is that they will be able to communicate directly with DJs via a broadband link, replacing the thousands of handwritten letters the pirates used to receive three times a week by tender.
Foggy
When it all ends, they plan to do it in the same way they did "the day the music died" - at 3pm on August 14, playing the Beatles' A Day in the Life. While the foggy round windows of their rooms reveal only the green North Sea, from the broadcasting booth they can see the shoreline, where once fans would flash their car lights to show they were listening. "We would ask them to do it during a night shift when sometimes we could feel isolated," St John said. "We couldn't see the cars and we couldn't see the people, but there would be thousands of flickering lights. "It meant we were in touch with the real world. I really hope they do it again this time. It was just like being in heaven."
On the playlist
We Gotta Get Out of This Place The Animals
I Believe The Bachelors
Pop go the Workers Barron Knights
Trains and Boats and Planes Burt Bacharach
As I Love You Shirley Bassey
A Picture of You Joe Brown and the Bruvvers
Rhythm of the Rain The Cascades
Limbo Rock Chubby Checker
Sweet Talkin Guy The Chiffons
Another Saturday Night Sam Cooke
Summertime Blues Eddie Cochran
Then He Kissed Me The Crystals
Rebel Rouser Duane Eddy
I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night The Electric Prunes
Um, um, um, um, um, um Wayne Fontana
Halfway to Paradise Billy Fury
Mrs Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter Herman's Hermits
Soul Bossa Nova Quincy Jones
Waterloo Sunset The Kinks
Hoots Mon Lord Rockingham's XI
Do Wah Diddy Diddy Manfred Mann
Tobacco Road Nashville Teens
See Emily Play Pink Floyd
Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa (Sad Song) Otis Redding
Walkin' Back to Happiness Helen Shapiro
Itchycoo Park The Small Faces
Walk on By Leroy Van Dyke
She's Not There Zombies
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