bhowells

What radio lover hasnt been bewitched by the magic of tuning into radio stations from Europe on long wave and medium wave. One of my favourtie hobbies as a teenager i loved the World Service and ZDR radio in Germany.

Recall getting very exited when I stumbled upon Voice Of America and AFN, thinking that they were being broacast directly from the states when in reality they were beamed from Europe.

I still radio surf now but on the internet, I love it but there was magic in radio surfing with a trasistor.

I have heard many people recalling the iluminated dials on a radiogrammes, where one would see magical names like Kalendburg and Oslo.

Van Morrison illustrated this in marvelous fashion on his song,"In The Days Before Rock and Roll."

Andy H

Ah yes, B!
I've been a radio nut since an early age and I loved tuning around MW late at night, just seeing what I could hear. It wasn't all cluttered up with local stations, so it was possible to hear many European stations. I recall a lot of German stations playing luscious orchestral music.
I was very much into the offshore pirate stations too. Radio Veronica off the coast of Holland was always good, and of course Caroline R. London, City, 390 etc and later along came RNI.
Absolutely marvellous. Thanks for stirring such cosy memories.

bhowells

Yes Andy it was the orchestral music which attracted me to the German stations plenty of Burt Kaempfert and James Last, the great thing aboutg these stations was that you got a nice range of music back to back mostly in English but ther was also the irestistable sound of the German Schlager music. I cant speak a word of German but I loved listening especially on a Saturday night when the metnioned the Autoban, Germany sounded likeg a great place to LIVE

Like you I was a fan of the pirates, RNI was my first taste of pirate radilo remembver their last night on air and subsequently bought a doucmentary on L/P on their turbulant history.

In 1975 and 1976 I was a Radio Caroline freak, the great attraction for me was the fact that you could hear them broadcast in the early hours of the morning beyond 3 O clock when Luxemburg closed down. I well remember hearing frequent airings of,"Jessca" by the Allman Brothers, "Dream Weaver," by Gary Wright and Tubular Bells played in its entirety, and an obscure track by my all time favourtie Gordon Lightoot called,"Cherokee Bend."

I was always saddened when due to technical diffiutlites they had to close down at midnnigt from time to time or on some ocasions went off the air entrirrely for days on end.

I was too young to appreciate Caroline in the sixties, I know it was an exiting time for an older generatio but the seventies incarnation was totally magical to me.

Do you still listen to Caroline on 190 on the intertnet, still a good station and you can obtain a few cds of snippets from Carolines golden days with Djs like Johnnie Walker, havent got round to buying these as yet, but I must. BIG L also sell some retrospecitve documentary albums.

Really nice to get feedback from a a like minded person.

Cheers

B.H.

Andy H

Hello B.
I was 11 years old when Caroline came on in 64 and it was an amazing time! Not just the fact that we youngsters could at last hear pop music almost anytime we liked (in great contrast to to BBC which only gave us the odd hour here and there) but the idea that it was coming from a ship at sea with record decks, microphones and a whacking great transmitter! This appealed to the radio/electronics side of my interest.
The MW band was much quieter then and it was possible to hear most of the Thames Eastuary pirate ships and forts here in Manchester even in the daytime if you had a good radio.
They all went in 1967 apart from Caroline which lasted til March 68 but ran out of money and both ships were towed away by the tender suppliers who were owed money.
And then it was Roger Day announcing RNI, what a night that was!
The Caroline of the 70's was a different thing, as it was run on almost no money and the dear old Mi Amigo was a wreck. But it did have a very special feel, especially those late-night album shows which had a very intimate sound.
If you can find a copy, get hold of Bob Noakes' 'Last of the Pirates' ISBN 086228 092 3 . It's out of print, but second hand copies turn up on E-bay and even Amazon. It's worth making the effort - I've read it three times now, and I always find myself choking up a bit as I read the final chapters. If you don't know, Bob Noakes was engineer/presenter on Caroline.
I've got hours of tapes of stuff from the 60's and 70's pirates and I sometimes see Steve England who helped run Radio Atlantis. We went for a drink once and his wife proudly showed us Atlantis's transmitter crystal which she always kept in her handbag!
Sadly we'll never see the like again, and I'm grateful that I was born when I was.