BootsnAll Travel Network



The Sound of Music

It’s a day of housework in preparation for a belated summer visit to Borth. We are not lucky with the weather: the rain has driven me out of the garden where I have effectively lived during the last three days whenever I wasn’t at the computer. To top that, I have yet another lose tooth and am forced to contemplate dentures at the age of forty and I’m in a ratty mood anyway. So I turn on the radio for some music and an illusion of company. One advantage of living back in England is that the reception for Radio 1 is reasonable, most of the time. I feel a little bit closer to London, not that we get the pirate stations here, but still…

I hesitate, with my hand still hovering over the knobs. The voice of Sara Cox, thirty-something blonde ‘yoof’ presenter, simpers and babbles out of the speakers, ocassionally slurring the words. When she was on Breakfast, I assumed Sara Cox talked like that because she was still pissed and stoned from the night before. Along with about 2 million other listeners, I switched off, but they kept her on and awarded her a pay-rise. She appealed to the new ‘target audience’ of 15-18 year olds and Prince William, who was about 15 at the time, liked her. At present, she is standing in for the mid-morning show and she has a kid, so that must be how she really talks. I switch off the radio and brood in silence. These moments make me miss the ghetto, and the music.

Pirate radio, illicit and everywhere in Greater London, plays the latest in Underground sounds. Back in the late nineties, it was Garage ringing out from the doorways of every local club and every car that passed on the streets: both from the radio and from records which somehow found their way into the stalls on Lewisham market. You could not get that sound anywhere else, but the whole ghetto pulsated with it; South London was a hot-bed for this new music like LA was for early rap. It had a special energy. It would be over a year before Underground Garage broke into the mainstream and when my mates’ favourite samples hit number one in a dozen countries and became the sound track to a Hollywood blockbuster, I cackled all the way. That was our sound. Strangely, the one record that brought back all these memories when I was stuck in Stirling was the title single of ‘Original Pirate Material’, even though it isn’t Garage as such. Yet, it has the same vibe. Mike Skinner was based in Brixton, which was around the corner, and the same energy pulsated through his music. Makes me bawl, but those days are over.

Garage has moved on, but Radio 1 has not. The DJs still act exactly as they did ten years ago, as if no time has passed at all. The same tired club sounds, the same tired messages, the same tired cheefulness propagated by people who are approaching my age. Even the music hasn’t changed: ‘Flashdance’ and early nineties techno. Indie sounds that are timeless but trite.

I don’t think Radio 1 has employed any non-blondes on daytime shows since the departure of Lisa L’Anston over ten years ago. With it’s digital ‘sister’ station, 1 Extra, it clearly feels under no obligation to do so—and it’s playlist is more-or-less interchangable with Radio 2. Doubtlessly, the sound of 1 Extra is fresher, but I don’t have digital radio—it’s kind of expensive. So I’ll remain in silence until the mid-morning show is over. Let’s be honest, the pirate DJs didn’t use to get out of bed until mid-afternoon anyway.

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