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BACK An
article taken from Moke #4 Modzine Summer/Winter '99
Goto: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 also
read Moke #3 Interview |
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RADIO
SOUL |
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Mickey
circa. 1967 on Radio Nold
FURTHER ADVENTURES IN UNDERGROUND BROADCASTING,
An interview with Mickey
Nold, who hosts "Basement Soul - with Mickey Nold and the
Consortioum", every Sunday on PCRL (103.5 f.m.), an essential
mix of grooves of soul, interviews with soul stars past and present,
and information on allnighters/events. Last issue, we spoke to Mickey
about the scene as it was - but this time, I concentrated mainly on
his exploits in the sixties. Also Moke gets to spread the word on the
airwaves, and spin some tunes, with members of the Consortium. |
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Last issue in Moke, I
interviewed. Mickey Nold, the d.j. who hosts, the mainly Northern
Soul orientated programme "Basement Soul", on local pirate
radio station PCRL.
We
got such a response from people, about the article, that it was only
right to follow it up with some more Mickey.
This time round. it was slightly harder to get a hold of him. as the
station was recently raided by the D.T.I. This involved seizure of
very expensive and much needed broadcasting equipment. And
subsequently involved an "all hands on deck" situation for
some weeks. just to keep the station on the air.
But due to Mickey's geniality and also my persistent harassing him
on the show [sorry Mickey...]. I did finally arrange to meet up with
him, once more...In the interview, last issue I concentrated mainly
on the show that he currently hosts (on a Sunday lunchtime with the
Consortium, a loose (in many senses of the word) group of various
Northern DJ's, and occasional listeners with taste...., as well as
his Tuesday late night session.
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In
that interview, Mickey had intimated that he had been a pirate DJ
back in the 60's - which intrigued me enough to ask more about what
happened then.
This time however, I got to venture into the mysterious Studio 37,
somewhere in darkest Birmingham - a quiet little room, the walls
bedecked in albums such as 60's Quincy Jones Stateside releases
[Mickey is a fan of Quincy]. "Live On Stage" featuring The
Miracles/Marvin Gaye/The Marvelettes/Mary Wells. The Motortown Revue
Live In Paris Album, Grady Tate albums, The Magnificent Men and
original 60's copies of music mag "Downbeat".
Behind his seat at the mixer is a ceiling height shelf unit,
groaning and bowing under the weight of hundreds of classic albums.
Rule one of interviewing - NEVER turn up empty handed so I brought
Mickey a vinyl copy of "My Prayer" by The Platters
(featuring excellent tracks such as "Alone In The Night".
"Doesn't It Ring A Bell" and an early version of "Magic
Touch")
To begin with. I asked him about the recent interview on his show
with Johnny Terry of The Drifters, which was conducted by Bill
Randle, who also works on the show.
What was
it like having someone like Johnny Terry, on the programme? |
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He left The Drifters in 1965, so he was with them when they had
their major early successes, Saturday At The Movies, Under The
Boardwalk and all that great material, so it was really nice to have
a member of the group.
And plus he was the bass voice, the Drifters are constructed around
doo-wop, and the sound is constructed around his voice.
And it was just pleasing to show the listeners those tunes, and his
contributions to the records, and make them realise that he was an
integral part of that sound, although they had probably never heard
his name.
How did you get in touch with Johnny Terry?
Bill
Randal who did the interview virtually lives in Detroit, he's just
such an enthusiastic fan of male groups, his holiday is devoted. to
seeing people like The Dramatics live on stage, in the States - and
after that, he'll pop backstage and chat to them, and they'll say to
him "Do you know my mate, who's so and so..." and he's
probably someone who recorded about three tunes, about three hundred
years ago, and he gets to meet him. Bill's such a lovely guy, that he
gets on with anybody, and I've yet to meet someone who dislikes him, |
so it opens doors for him, and he's met so many people over the
years. And a few years back, I said to him, "Why don't you take
a tape recorder with you?" We've done thirty interviews now,
over the years.
What
sort of people has he interviewed?
Brenda
Holloway, C.P. Spencer, George Williams, Barrett Strong, Joe Hunter,
many of these are producers from Motown; Mike Terry, Ivy Joe Hunter
and singers; Caroline Crawford, The Dramatics, Martha and The
Vandellas, & Edwin Starr.
And his questions aren't the typical interview questions, he knows
the background, and he talks to them from the perspective of a
friend, rather than an interviewer, which is good, because they can
relate to him, and relax, so that he will get things out of them that
normally, anyone else wouldn't.
And he's careful, he doesn't want to expose people to things in
print, that they'd much rather not discuss.
As
recently shown, when Ike Turner came to Britain to promote his recent
music, and the interviewers all concentrated more on his alcoholism,
drugs and wife-beating? |
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Exactly, he has had his bad press, and that was all they wanted to
talk about.
The
fact that he made a major contribution to the scene, from day one,
nobody wanted to discuss which is fair enough, as he shouldn't have
beat her.
Getting
back to the original reason as to why I came here, tho... 60's pirate radio?
It's
a long time ago, I was thinking about it the other day, I hope I can
remember anything!
It
started really with the lack of decent music on the radio,
frustration with the Light Programme {which evolved into Radio 2
after the onset of Radio 1 - ed}, the audience would hear "Sing
Somthing Simple" by the Mike Sam Singers (they were an aging
vocal group singing cheesy hit songs).
FRN
Mk
II console Circa. 1968
Horrendous it was, and the only way you counter that was to listen
to the odd pirate that had started, such as Caroline, or Radio London.
The other alternative was the American Forces Network (AFN) [see
"Good Morning Vietnam".], and that really was kicking stuff.
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They
had black American Forces DJ's playing the tunes, and they were
playing things that hadn't come out yet in UK. But, you could
only get it for about half an hour in the evening, if theclouds were
right, and the sun had gone down! So the only alternative was to do
it yourself, with what records you managed to find, and put them on
the air.
I happened to be electronically inclined, so l built my own
transmitters - starting with a Radionics set, which is like a
children's kit for building your own radios, that had a transmitter
circuit, which could broadcast for about forty feet, and in the
instructions, it said - "DO NOT Connect To An Aerial
Longer Than 12 Inches!"... so straight away, you put a 30 foot
aerial up, and you find that the range goes from 20 feet, to 100
feet! Later by adding a valve output stage, miles.
In those days, it used to be the General Post Office (GPO] that used
to chase down pirates, and they were hot on your tail - they were
having a hard enough time with the ships out at sea, so if there were
any land based pirates, it was a piece of cake for them.
They didn't have to get a boat out to get you, they would just drive
round to your house!
We used to have some wild parties, and broadcast over the weekend -
always keeping an eye on the street to see if there were any green
Post Office, Morris vans around.
But it was too hair-raising though, plus the fact that your parents
had all the noise that was going on whilst you were doing it. So in the |
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end
we decided to go and do it in a field somewhere out of the way,
where we could see the detector vans coming and leg it! But the
difficulty was that the transmitters wanted a lot of power to run. So
what we actually did was tap a street lamp (outdoor wall light) [VERY
illegal, don't try this at home, kids!]. We went along a canal-towpath,
found a nice quiet little spot, where we could erect a 200 hundred
foot aerial between the trees.
And then we needed a power socket, which you don't find many near to
many trees - so I managed to tap a light switch on the side of a
building belonging to Birmingham University at the time, and we ran
this wire up a little dirt track, along a canal bank, dug a hole in
the ground, and put a thirteen amp socket into it.
We put a piece of turf on the ground, and covered it up - so that
all you had to do when you arrived, was uncover the turf, plug in the
transmitter, and you were away.
And the next day, low and behold, the council had came and laid a
new tar-mac road over where we had put this cable we couldn't believe
our luck.
The difficult part then, was finding record players, so what we used
to use was a couple of 'Discatron's', which were portable record
players, [made in Aston, Birmingham] that could carry on your
shoulder, just like a transistor radio basically. They looked like a
toaster really, you dropped the record in the top, like a piece of
toast, pressed the button - it didn't have turntable [a bit like a
jukebox], the stylus floated on a spring across the record - and you could |
spin the thing around your head by the straps and the record
wouldn't jump!
They
were incredible - but they wore the record down pretty quick.
We
had a couple of those when we were broadcasting, and when the GPO
came down the towpath, we legged it the other way.
What
sort of music were you playing then?
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Well
it was whatever was happening at the time really - just good stuff
that you couldn't hear on the radio, it wouldn't have been too up to
date, as you couldn't find it in the local shops. |
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Mickey
& his beloved Discatron |
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Good
soul music - things like Moses and Joshua "My Elusive
Dreams", and all the Motown classics, Stax groups & funky jazz.
There was a few of us that used to do this broadcasting, some of
them would bring some rock, or whatever they were into.
What was
a good shop for records in Birmingham in the sixties?
Well,
it was always the Diskery [still going strong! - ed], it used to be
in Hurst Street, but it's moved round the corner, next to the
Wellington pub, just off the Bristol Road.
Birmingham wasn't a good place for soul music.The only place you
could hear a good soul tune was on Radio Luxembourg, or A.F.N.
- and as the record would come to the end, the signal would fade, and
you wouldn't get to hear what it was called, just at the crucial
time. There was the Top Ten Shop, in Selly Oak, which a friend of
mine [Funky Dunk] later became it's owner. |
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The
original owner [Joe Beckett] made all his money selling the Beatles' singles.
It was a
singles market then, wasn't it?
Albums
were seen as an adult thing.
They
were a party thing as well, especially the Geno Washington Live
albums - you try and find an original Geno Washington album that
hasn't been scratched to hell, simply because it's been to that many parties.
I like
the James Brown At The Apollo album, the one with the 28 second
version, of "I Feel Good!"
I
was much influenced by James Brown I've got about 180 of his singles.
I was playing soul music to death, and everybody was saying - you
don't want that, no... but it was my transmitter!
So what
happened to Radio Nold?
Well,
you get married, and have 2.4 kids, you get a proper job,
responsibility, a mortgage - you can't afford to get into trouble.
Plus everybody else around you gets married, and it doesn't help if
you want to carryon doing the things you want to do.
It
didn't pick up again, until I started pirating on PCRL. I did them a
demo tape and sent it to the c station - I'd just left Enterprise,
which was ,an offshoot of PCRL. PCRL went for a license, and the
Government said that if you went off the air for about six months,
you could apply for a license.
But they didn't get one, it usually goes to whoever has the most |
money
and influence, really. So that was 10 years ago now.
The
1966 Medium Wave transmitter
I was doing similar things in the 60's to what I'm doing now passing
microphone around, while a nice Hammond organ instrumental record
playing in the background and people would just ad-lib, they would
have a pint of beer each, and after a few, they would be more free
and easy on the mike.
At the start of the programme, nobody would have anything to say,
but half ten, eleven o'clock - it would get out of hand, there was a
lot of swearing going on!
But all these people having a laugh and a giggle broke up the music.
People wanted to hear something like that, but it just wasn't heard
on the radio - it was all the BBC stiff upper lip. It was so easy to
find a pirate on the radio, in those days.
The BBC
ended up having to hire loads of the pirates, didn't they? |
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Yeah,
they're all on Radio 2 now! Johnny Walker, Tony Blackburn had his
day, Kenny Everett was an absolute dream the things he used to get up
to, but it was the American Forces Network, that I used to like.
But you were lucky to hear a whole tune, so you would buy a bigger
transistor radio to get better reception, or you'd have a longer
aerial. You could hear the pirates in the day then, as well. I found
out that if you connected your radio aerial to the lightening
conductor at school, the signal would be wooo-aaah!
So at playtime, everyone used to rush round to hear the latest music.
There were a lot of pirates around at the time, more people
experimenting with the medium, than being behind a station and the music.
A lot of them was technical whiz-kids experimenting with equipment,
seeing who could have the biggest aerial, the most powerful
transmitter - that sort of thing.
The tricks you could do with transmitters - you could put a
fluorescent tube twenty feet away from a transmitter, and it would light |
up, without wires being connected to it.anything, there was that
much energy in the air!
And people talk about mobile phones now!!! I can remember sitting
near the transmitter during a thunder storm, and there was a flash of
lightening - it didn't strike my aerial, but it was in the area - and
huge blue spark jumped out, and just missed my hand where I was
sitting at the table.
How has
the pirate scene changed, since then?
We!l
in the 60's, it was the Medium Wave band that pirates would be on -
that was the only radio that the people had got.
FM had arrived, but it was only for someone who had real nice hi-fi
equipment, and not many people had that. Plus you needed a separate
aerial for it, and if you came from a working class background, you
couldn't afford it - it was like a colour TV.
We used to pirate on the TV channel as well as on the medium wave.
What you used to have in those days was channel 4 and channel 8 on a
twist knob. Eight was ITV, and four was BBC1 (In the Midlands area). |
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So what we did, was we used to broadcast on one of the numbers
in-between, so that when you were twisting from one channel to the
other - you'd find us, and think "Oh, music!"
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And
that was on a par with the power that we broadcast on the radio now.
So that was VHF, the old black and white TV frequency, and it was
good, because nobody |
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Radio Nold
on-air 1972 |
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else
had thought of that. I had a friend who
owned
a newsagents in Bournbrook (K.A.Windridges - now closed after 100
years trading), and we used to send listeners in there, to post their requests.
Everybody would listen to the programme, somebody's auntie or |
uncle, and withthe TV it was your accidental people tuning in, with
the radio, it was people who wanted alternative music - they were so
fed up with what was on the other station.
But you couldn't do it over along-term-period, because the GPO were
on your tail all the time.
If you were caught, you would get an enormous fine, and ALL your
equipment would be confiscated and not just whatever you use to
broadcast with, but anything in the house, with a plug on it!When
PCRL were recently busted by the DTI, you said they even made off
with your breadbin!,
Oh, that was a bit of a laugh...with the stereo decoder for the
stereo transmission when we used to have a cassette player running,
it would pick up interference from the computer-monitor, and would
come over as a whistle.
So what we did was put the two cassette players for the adverts in a
stainless steel breadbin, to screen it from the interference.
It was a Wedding Present, as well! You spend about 12 months getting
a studio right, getting all the levels right, and people are making
less mistakes, because they're happy with the set-up, and then the
DTI come along and take it all away, and we'd have spend another 12
months putting it all back together again!
And with that, the interview was over, as it was time for one of his
contributors, Davie A, to do some session work for the programme.
Later,
Mickey asked me if I'd want to be on his show and do a session of
tunes that I like... well do Danny The Mad Badger ride a yellow
Piaggio Zip, does Alex from The Trypt Up stuff broccoli down |
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his
trousers for the George Michael shuttlecock look !?!
And
so it was that a week later, I found myself broadcasting to the good
people of Birmingham on the show. Naturally, I was just a bit
nervous, not having done any broadcasting for years [since my own
days as a C.B. Radio pirate, when you could buy all the equipment
from Tandys!] and the last time I was on the radio was introducing a
Corduroy track on Radio Tip-Top [no shit!].
To begin with Mickey introduced me, and asked me a few things about
Moke (not easy to answer, as I haven't finished it yet.), and I
played my first tune - "Soul Power" by Li'l Ray and The
Fantastic Four, a foot stomping Hammond workout, with soul clapping
and a crazy flute, the melody being not a million miles away from
"Champ" by The Mohawks.
Next up was Herbie Goins & The Nightimers with
"Cruisin'" - which I played due to it's mythical status for
me,. as a young modster (and the funky Hammond that kicks it off!) -
and sure enough Mickey only goes and pulls out a copy of the original
album from the shelf (I'm suddenly overcome with an "We are not
worthy!" feeling). Next up is "Back At The Chicken
Shack" by Brian Auger, from 1966, a suitably cool slice of
mod-jazz, from the Aug [which I've got on Japanese import, on Flavour
.. Records.) And finally to finish, what else but some guitar
crunching soul from the Faces, with "E too D" - beat
that! Apologies |
to anybody in the Birmingham area tuning in to hear expert knowledge
on soul, and instead getting some bloke rambling self-consciously in
a strange accent - but it was a blast! !!
Listening back to the show, it's weird as anything to hear my voice.
on this radio show that I'd been listening to for years.
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I
sat in the squeaky green chair, with a can of Doctor Pepper and a
list of recording details (' am in the presence of REAL soul DJ's -
so am going to have to at least |
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Davy A &
"Beat Ballad" Bob |
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pretend
to know my stuff!).
My voice came across as if I was eating a plum or something, and it
sounded like I was really nervous which I was, funnily enough.
I tickled the ears of Soul Sam, the studio dog, and made a joke
about Oasis - so all in all, it was cool!
Mickey had to do a voice-over on the Auger track, to announce that
the local Marcus Garvey event had been cancelled, and that Sue from
Newtown had lost her camera - as we are on real community radio. It
was interesting to hear the way. Mickey had mixed it all together,
and he finished off with a shortened version of "E Too D"
as the last song on the programme - what a way to finish...
RESULT! (Gordon@Moke) |
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