The veteran rocker Tom Robinson enjoyed a decent run of hits in the 1970s and 1980s, including the legendary 2-4-6-8 Motorway, Glad To Be Gay, my absolute favourite War Baby and Listen To The Radio. In the latter, he offered some salient advice: “So throw off your coat, butter some toast. Put another coffee on. We’ll lie down on the bed, lay back our heads. Smoke another cigarette and listen to the radio…” I was never entirely sure about the combination of eating toast, drinking coffee and lying on the bed smoking another cigarette – the image conjured was a little messy, confusing and potentially dangerous – but I kind of got where old Tom was coming from. Listening to the radio is what I have always done, today more than ever.
Today, thanks (or maybe no thanks?) to the new-fangled digital world, there are more stations than you can shake a stick at. You’d think that the sheer number of stations would represent incredible levels of choice and diversity – and among the smaller, lesser known stations, it does – but in truth the world of commercial radio offers a seemingly infinite choice of much the same thing. As has been the case for nearly 60 years, the genuine choice for radio listeners remains with the BBC.
Before 30th September 1967 when Radio 1 started, apart from the ‘pirate’ stations operating at sea and Radio Luxembourg operating out of, well , guess, there was only the BBC and it was grim. The BBC offered the Light Programme, which was essentially Radio 2 for old middle class pensioners, the Third Programme, which became Radio 3 and the Home Service, which was Radio 4. Young people did not exist, at least not officially. With two notable exceptions, I have loyally supported the BBC all the way, right up to today.
I did listen to Radio Luxembourg, on the medium wave (it was known as Fab 208), and the sound quality was patchy at best, drifting in and out of reach and later I listened to Bristol’s Radio West which was, admittedly, truly terrible, except for the presence of arguably (though not arguably with me) the greatest DJ of the lot, Johnnie Walker, who hosted the evening show. Walker not only appeared on a local radio station, he lived just up the road from me in Brislington, the Bristol suburb I lived in for the first 33 years of my life. The music that excited me, though, was on Radio 1.
As I got older, I moved to Radio 2, enjoying the warm and comfortable embrace of the likes of Ken Bruce, Simon Mayo and Steve Wright. Moreover, the music worked for me, too, or at least I thought it did. It was my musical comfort zone. Nothing threatening, nothing challenging, just the familiar. What was wrong with that? After all, what is my record collection if not part of my comfort zone? Bringing up a family, lurching into middle age, that’s what you did. Rock music was Queen, Bryan Adams and Phil Collins. Indeed, you could carry these artists into old age, too, to enjoy in your favourite armchair, smoking a pipe and dunking biscuits in your tea.
To be honest, I wasn’t that bad. I took a break from music – I think the 1980s, the worst decade ever in popular music saw to that – only returning it to it when my children took an interest in it. Somehow, my interest in music was rekindled. It was my kids wot dun it.
I had forgotten how much of an obsession music was in my life. While my mum and me didn’t have a pot to piss in during my childhood and my collection in the late 1960s consisted of a couple of albums (The Beatles and the Monkees) and a bunch of singles that I played to death, I could not get enough music. In the 2000s, the obsession returned, but this time on steroids (metaphorically, anyway). And to feed my returning obsession, the BBC launched 6 Music, a digital only station and its first new national radio station in 32 years. For the last 20-odd years, my appetite for music has become voracious. I cannot get enough of it. This, I know, is not normal.
Music is my model railway, it’s my stamp collection, my gardening, my favourite football team, my knitting, my crossword, my gardening, my computer game and every other hobby turned obsession you can imagine.
Many of us have hobbies, don’t we? Things we love to do, sometimes things we feel we have to do, that we need to do. There are things we like to do, like watch our favourite TV show but the big hobby is the obsession. For the last three hours – it’s 10.00 am at this point of the blog – everything I have done has been either accompanied by music or music has been at the heart of my morning.
My music collection is my comfort zone. It’s there for everything in my life, past and present. My music radio experience is me stepping out of that comfort zone. I know this is not for everyone. I know that many people never listen to music on the radio and listen to a very limited amount of music. They know what they like and stick with it. The last thing they want is music they don’t know. And that’s absolutely fine. That’s what commercial radio was invented for.
There is not a single major commercial radio station that does what 6 Music does. 6 Music offers new music from all genres but it also offers the comfort of some classics. Today, amid the challenge of the new, I have also heard Foo Fighters, Television, Radiohead, Lauryn Hill and Groove Armada. I love the unpredictability, but that’s just me, the obsessive.
I certainly went through a period when I started to feel that today’s music wasn’t as good as it used to be, looking at the world through a sepia-stained prism, where nothing can be as good as it used to be, forgetting that actually the old days maybe weren’t all as great as we imagined them to be. For example, in rock’s greatest year, 1971, Dad’s Army star Clive Dunn scored a big hit with Grandad. Nostalgia isn’t necessarily what it used to be.
I can’t be bothered to get into who is Gen X, Gen Z or a Boomer. I’m certainly not going to be defined by one of these titles, but it is true that there is a huge demand for radio stations that provide the reassuring and familiar. Greatest Hits, Boom, Heart, Smooth, Capital, Absolute, Planet Rock, Radio X and the like exist to provide the reassuring and familiar. Not everyone wants to hear the new single by Genesis Owusu on 6 when they can listen to Don’t Stop Me Now by the heroes of Sun City on Greatest Hits radio.
Anyway, I’m going throw off my coat, butter some toast. Put another coffee on. I’ll lie down on the bed, lay back my head. Smoke another cigarette, even though I haven’t smoked since 1993 and listen to the radio. Or at least the last bit. What’s that, the new single by Gorillaz? Play it, Lauren. That’s superb. I’ll have to buy that.
Enjoy your day, pop-pickers. I will.
