I try to have a routine where I spend my Saturdays with great music - it takes me back to when i first got into music, aged about 10 and looked forward to spending Saturdays at the under age Disc Club, or whatever they called it, at the Locarno Ballroom in Hull. Saturday was also the only day that I got to hear much daytime radio in the 60s, which is when it really happened !
Most Saturdays now I have a couple of radios going and listen to all kinds of stuff. My days starts with Louise Davies on Radio Seagull, a progressive rock station from a ship in Holland. Then maybe a bit of Radio 10, and Radio 192 - a tribute station in the style of Radio Veronica that is run by what it calls de oude medewerkers (old staff or colleagues).
Radio 192 runs old charts, jingles and have some of the best of the old DJs. Adje Bowman is the king, and there is even an hour of Joost de Draaijer, my dear old friend for many years now. Most of their output on Saturday afternoons is a lengthy programme, called Zaterdag Middag Gebeurtenis - which translates as the Saturday Afternoon Happening. Right up my street! One of the shows majors on what I call NED-POP; it's crammed with the Dutch beat bands of the 1960s.
After a few hours of that I swap to the BBC local in Leeds, which has a guy called John Kane playing some excellent Northern Soul and a sprinkling of Motown. This is just the stuff I played in numerous clubs and similar venues in the 1960s (and in the noughts in the Triton Ballroom!).
John spins some excellent stuff, that usually sends me running to the library to dig out tracks. I believe the programme is also available on BBC Sheffield in the south of this illustrious county of Yorkshire, but not on BBC Radio Humberside, which is a bit more of the sort of station that John Reith wanted the BBC to remain forever: Lots of talk about religion and Rugby League, which quite a few in Hull think are one and the same thing! With a couple of notable exceptions, Radio Humberside is not what you would call 'hip'.
If we are at home later in the evening (we do stop in sometimes!) the radio goes over to BBC Radio Sheffield where another good friend, Diana Luke enters her 'Diana Luke Loves the 60s' mode for three hours. The strip invariably includes lots of RnB (the old style RnB - not 'lazy rap' crap) as well as quite a bit of heavy rock too, so long as its from the 60s.
Diana has developed an interesting "instant feedback" relationship with a hard core of listeners, who even meet up and visit the studios. (I've not been on one of these jaunts yet, but I'm sure I shall one fine day!). The music is mainly chosen by the listeners, who first of all select a featured artist, and then after midnight every track is a listener 'free choice'. Diana's show has several features - a Beat the Intro, Cryptic Clue, with entries possible on text, email or a Facebook page, but the best are when she's joined by her partner Tim Hollingworth.
Freelance photographer and film cameraman Tim selects three rare old tunes, including an instrumental, and astounds Diana and her listeners with some little known facets about, what are always cracking pieces of our music heritage. There is also a rather surreal feature where Diana and Tim each hum a sixties hit and the listeners have to guess what it is. Well, Tim usually gorgets any melody at all, which makes it nigh on impossible. Most weeks Tim's tune is guessed by a solitary listener and you can almost hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth all over Yorkshire as listeners cary out in unison "That was never any thing like . . ."
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