It was exhilarating to go aboard the Lightship Planet in
Liverpool this week, the host boat for Radio
Caroline North’s month-long RSL (Restricted Service Licence). Nicely rigged
out with Caroline insignia and slogans and a 30m mast, the ship was proving
popular with radio anoraks and the public in general.
It’s moored there in Canning Dock usually anyway, as a café and
bar, but it was the first time I had boarded a free radio /pirate radio/offshore
radio ship, which meant a lot to me. Ok, I know it’s all legal this time around
but let me have my daydreams please.
I was too young to know of Radio Caroline and the other 1960s
offshore stations at the time but fully appreciate that they changed the face
of radio in the UK and beyond forever. At the time there was no radio choice
other than the 3 BBC radio stations (Home, Light and third Programme)- rather too
staid for most of the youth of the day, and only Radio Luxembourg on 208 in
hours of darkness with any pop music at all- and that was all pay per play by the
big record companies. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of websites and accounts
of the offshore days, so if this is all new to you, just look them up for far
better details than my scant post here.
Radio Caroline North on 87.7 MHz (and streaming online at) this
time around was playing old school , music,
Leonard Cohen, Pink Floyd, some 60s rock and roll I didn't know but the
spirit of free radio was alive: technical problems persisted too, with the generator
periodically cutting out, and a host of workmen lugging on massive wooden table
tops and legs to refurbish the ship’s entertainment areas for when it reverts
to being just a café and bar once Caroline North has gone.
Terry Lennaine rounding off "The Afternoon Cruise" programme
The gift shop was well stocked with a range of t shirts, stickers,
key rings, 50th anniversary pens, CDs and a mini library’s worth of offshore
radio books and it was great to look around the production rooms and studio. Some rather lovely polished wooded sleeping quarters too.
I realised that my era of
Caroline was the mid 1980’s version on medium wave, playing plenty of album
tracks and a firm favourite of mine in my car, as I drove around London suburbs
or on day trips to the Brighton coast. I hadn’t heard Caroline on a real radio,
over the airwaves, for the best part of 30 years; so it was a joyful trip home
from Liverpool to Salford hearing Emily Play, Brass in Pocket and some lesser
known but quality music on Carl England’s The
Beat Goes On.
Of course, nowadays this type of music is far removed from the
cutting edge, but the spirit of pirate radio continues, with today’s youth playing
sounds that the dull commercial stations and BBC steer away from or have no idea
of. I was tuned to free radio station Mixology, based in the Manchester area on
101.4 MHz at the weekend, and it’s stations like this
and another Manchester station Buzz 88 that carry the future of free radio.
Hand in hand are the long time established free radio stations such as Merseyland
Alternative Radio and the shortwave pirates in the 48 metre band.
Links:
Text 07984 199 259
