When I was still only a kid i loved to listen to the radio. Even at the tender age of seven there was a little brown Bakelite valve radio by my bed, which i used to listen to avidly. I loved the smooth warm Bakelite that never needed polishing, the comforting low hum which my mum could hear from downstairs when she used to call upstairs and tell me to turn it off and go to sleep. But i always turned it back on again, and slowly and carefully spun the dial through the Long, Medium and Short wave bands lit in red green and white with lines of exotic station names such as Athlone, Moscow, Dublin. and of course Luxembourg. We had no FM at that time, but at least there was the Light Program from the BBC and of course the Home Service.
I loved it all, especially the early Rock and Roll tunes from Luxembourg and the American Forces Network which were the only sources of such music in those grey British prim and proper, post war days. Even when there was no interesting music there was always the proto psychedelic sounds of the short waves, fading in and out of the BBC World Service in a couple of dozen unknown languages. motors and generators, overhead power lines, the piping and whistling of morse code and the ever present ionosphere as the solar waves ebbed and flowed. and this even stimulated an early interest into electronic and ambient music. Yes, from the earliest days i loved my radio.
Later i discovered, Presley, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, and Carol KIng and in the sixties, the globally successful sound of local bands from Liverpool and Manchester "making it big" For me, motorcycles, football, gangs and tribes were of little or no interest. I had my music and my radio. As the Pirate stations, Radio London, Caroline, et al arrived round our coasts, the Beatles and the Stones ruled the world. FM's clear and interference free tones made it possible to be much more discerning and selective. I even built my own stereo and found popularity because of the music I collected and the clear stereo that made it so much more accessible. I discovered Reel tape machines and made my own recordings, copied illegally of course all my favourite tunes and then made my own music with my friends who were also addicts. The invention of the cassette tape machine made it all much easier and We recorded and listened to blues and R n B when our schoolmates were listening to Billy J Kramer and Adam Faith, I became knowledgeable in folk and blues music, (even supplying music for Northern TV documentaries) and later Jazz, I went to clubs met wonderful artists and musicians, and eventually ran a couple of clubs myself which were excellent although not really hard nosed enough to become a regular source of income. But that was never really my reason.
When Progressive rock turned into hard rock and heavy metal with screaming guitars and feedback, i made my excuses and left and found the much more mellifluous land of West Coast Country Rock, and collected, Country Joe, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia, The Doors Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, etc and all this from FM radio and the specialist programs which emerged from the deeper end of the musical gene pool. I hung with poets, musicians, philosophers, smoked some of the best dope in the world. I worked as a DJ, a sound engineer and a broadcaster. I watched rather amused as some of my closest friends became famous singers, musicians and bands in their own right, found my specialist love of black music in its many forms and to this day give thanks and praise to the Lord for giving me the BBC and FM Radio. I couldn't have done it, whatever it was, without that eclectic and ambient soundtrack that kept me sane and brought me and my friends such joy.
And why this long preamble you may ask? Well now after digitising, recording studios, film and TV they have finally got round to planning the digitising of our radio networks and local stations and for me this is quite simply, a bridge too far. FM radio may not be quite as bright as a CD or a high quality tape recording, but both vinyl and CDs sound pretty good in stereo FM. If they hadnt how would our heroes such as legendary DJ John Peel or Andy Gillett have become such a vital part of our Radio experience. OK maybe there was a little interference on FM when there was a thunder storm or some idiot was using an un suppressed power tool but for the most part FM was crystal clear with a good stereo image. Then along came Digital radio and its handful of inferior sounding stations.
There was no clamour from the public for this because most people were quite happy with FM. It worked at home and passably well in the car with the cassette player or CD. The clamour seemed as usually is the case from business interests. No doubt the recording companies thought it would help them cut down the amount of illegal copying or downloading. Ditto the manufacturers of radios which often worked for decades with no problem other than a bent ariel or a lose volume control. But now we had to have new Digital radios, which always sounded rather dead and certainly not vibrant. All they had done was digitally suppress the hiss and compressed the rest using a codec which made everything sound like it was coming through a pipe of insufficient diameter. In the process resonance was lost, harmonics were lost and consequently some of the art was lost. Of course idiotic government ministers, probably with too close a connection with the manufacturers got behind this Gadareen stampede to make more shedloads of money and full digitising of radio with abandonment of FM by 2015 became the goal. They just don't get it do they ? Digital radios just have no charisma, they look and sound crude, ugly and cheap like many of the digital programs which were spawned early in the scramble. Not surprisingly several of these stations quickly disappeared from the air waves, or should that be chunks and packets.
As I am writing this I hear with some relief that the Governments proposal to switch off FM and lose hundreds of stations has been relaxed and possibly (or hopefully ) abandoned. The BBC was in on the research early on but the Codec of compression they decided on was crude and gave up much sound quality. This is not just my own crackpot idea, its one shared by many professionals in the recording and broadcasting industry. This is always the problem with early adopters. Being first is not usually the best in audio technology, its just being the first and becoming legendary. As the truly legendary music producer Adrian Sherwood of On-U- Soundz said to me, its usually much more profitable to be second rather than first. Possibly more research can lead to much improved sound quality with the minimum loss of bandwidth space but of course this kind of research is better placed on the net where it seems much happier. Until such time however the government should abandon silly ideas of making redundant tens of millions of FM radios and replacing them with energy munching, second rate sounding audio, and plans to dump these older radios on the third world as usual and start listening to the public or the electorate if they prefer that word.
All government decisions whether they concern banking, the economy, trade and employment and especially the Arts and Music should be guided by the public, by artists and in some cases by scientists and they must listen to these people who know what they are talking about and plan accordingly. Just because you are in a governmental or merely a leading position does not automatically give you the key to the cupboard holding the Holy Grail it gives you the responsibility to consult those who know things, not just about personal profit and loss but about real progress and quality and only then should they attempt to make changes. If they continue with the Nanny Knows Best philosophy, they will find it increasingly difficult to get re-elected or to be listened to. Government and leadership should be actually more about consultation and co-operation and most of all, Service. That is what they sre elected to do. People are tired of seeing everything dumbed down. So my message to the newly elected Coilition Government is simplle. I dont claim to have the key to the cupboard with the Holy Grail in it, but i certainly can recognise the box containing the dead rat. so please take your inferior, money grubbing, art strangling Digital Radio with all its waste and loss of choice and quality and stick it where the sun dont shine. Innit!
