What music did you listen to?

john_west · 28 August 2018 23:28

Born in 1948, the sixties were for me the best sounds ever. The Beatles onwards.

In '69 I was 21 and called the world my own. I had a Radiomobile which I set in the dash of my Leyland Comet. I noticed that when I clicked the 2 speed - axle it seemed brighter.

It was only when I rolled it over on my way from St Boswell’s to North Shields one morning that I realised that the Leyland was 24 volts, not 12! 2 underseat batteries leaking acid, not one. After releasing the chains on my timber load, pulling the Comet back on the road and reloading the long timber I was on my way again, with very little damage to my truck.Later in the day, my clothes turned to rags.

Loved all the ‘Bubble gum’ pop of the time - the Archies- Sugar, Sugar. Foundations, Neil Diamond - Rod Stewart, Beach Boys.

No music between about Johnstonebridge and Crawford - no signal!

Then brother Andy fitting a tape player maybe 1970. Recording all my favourites - heading out of London on Friday evening loaded out of Bowater Scott, Northfleet for Barrow. Stuck on the 2 lane M1 until Watford.

Status Quo ‘going down the dust pipe’ , Cat Stevens ‘here comes my baby’ , Jim Stafford, ‘Spiders and snakes’.

Also Classical music - Beethoven’s 9th, the triumphant march into Aida. All played at full volume - no wonder I have terrible tinnitus! It wasn’t just the noisy engines, we added something on top.

I am immediately transported to those happy days!

John.

carryfast · 29 August 2018 02:12

John West:
Born in 1948, the sixties were for me the best sounds ever. The Beatles onwards.

Loved all the ‘Bubble gum’ pop of the time - the Archies- Sugar, Sugar. Foundations, Neil Diamond - Rod Stewart, Beach Boys.

No music between about Johnstonebridge and Crawford - no signal!

Then brother Andy fitting a tape player maybe 1970. Recording all my favourites - heading out of London on Friday evening loaded out of Bowater Scott, Northfleet for Barrow. Stuck on the 2 lane M1 until Watford.

Status Quo ‘going down the dust pipe’ , Cat Stevens ‘here comes my baby’ , Jim Stafford, ‘Spiders and snakes’.

Also Classical music - Beethoven’s 9th, the triumphant march into Aida. All played at full volume - no wonder I have terrible tinnitus! It wasn’t just the noisy engines, we added something on top.

I am immediately transported to those happy days!

John.

Born end of 58 unfortunately for me but still think 70’s,or at least as near the 70’s as makes no difference,music had the edge over 60’s.With some exceptions which proved the rule,Motown and the Brit female singers like Sandie Shaw,Dusty Springfield,Petula Clark and Cilla Black were some of the best that the 60’s had to offer.While the Tremeloes’ version of Here Comes My Baby beats Cat Stevens’.

As for Neil Diamond together with Glenn Campbell and Rod Stewart I think he was also more associated with 70’s music than 60’s ?.With I am I Said making an obvious ‘contribution’ to Vicki Leandros’ Eurovision song contest winner Apres Toi.With Rod’s Handbags and Glad Rags beat by Broken Dream.

As for the Beatles,with the exception of Hey Jude,George Harrison made some better records on his own especially What is Life.

As for Beach Boys,1st class did the surfing stuff better with Beach Baby which I’ll always remember Capital Radio playing repeatedly during the hot Summers of '75 and '76.

Which leaves Status Quo Caroline v Down The Dustpipe.Both were 70’s records though.

john_west · 30 August 2018 17:42

You’re right, it wasn’t just the sixties music. I liked the Seventies. I started overland and internals in Saudi in January '76 and really missed the next few years. I didn’t understand ‘the clash’ or the ■■■ pistols, punk or those things.

It is of course a generational thing. My Dad, born 1905, said that radio and records were a new thing for them in his late teens. His father, born about 1875 would say ‘turn that rubbish off.’ And he would do that immediately. He in his turn would call our music ‘repetitive noise’, but we would play it anyway, and he would go in another room. My daughter, now 30, listened with earphones (she has long left home) so I have very little idea of Ed Sheeran or Adele or any of those, because even in the car, I rarely listen to the radio.

So, here I am, 70, CF, and you’re almost 60. Enjoy the next 10, I have!

John.

john_west · 30 August 2018 17:53

Rereading your post, I always think that the version of a song you like the best is the one you heard first and the Tremeloes made a huge hit of ‘here comes my baby’ and yes I liked that first, but brother Andy did a compilation tape including Cat Stevens’ version and I listened to it so often I loved it.

A friend of mine lent me George Harrison’s ‘All things must pass’ on tape. Tipping in Middlesbrough one Saturday morning, heading back empty to Barrow, maybe 1971, the A 66 was coned off and we were waved on down the A1.

I turned off at the A684 and went home to Barrow via Hawes and Sedbergh. I think that tape was the only thing that kept me sane! Not a road I recommend except on a motorbike!

John.

eddie_heaton · 30 August 2018 20:56

I’d have to agree that the sixties was one of the best decades music wise as far as I’m concerned, but then again, I’m biased, having been born not that many months before you were John.

I’m also prepared to concede that the Beatles turned out some brilliant stuff, some of their more obscure songs being far better than their more mainstream stuff in my view. I think they went off the rails to a degree with their sergeant pepper album, but that’s just my opinion.

There can be little doubt that both Lennon and McCartney were geniarses, genii, geni…, really clever blokes when it came to songwriting. George Harrison also had the talent and ability to stand alone. Richard Starkey excelled at being a very good voiceover for Thomas the tank engine as well as having a rare talent for giving his kids daft names.

I can’t possibly be alone in thinking that music, or specific tracks at any rate, provide a reliable indicator for ones progression through life. I can name many songs by certain artistes and link them to a particular point in my journey.

Just to give one example. The very first time that I heard ’ Morning has Broken ', by Cat Stevens was on the juke box of a transport digs in the port of Aberdeen. I have no idea what the name of the place was, as I only stayed there the one time, but there can’t have been that many digs on the docks so no doubt someone will remember. The year would most likely have been '71. Feel free to correct me if I’m in error.

Another one with an Aberdeen connection would be The Scorpions’ ’ Wind of Change ', listened to on the CD player of a Scania many years later, on the way back down to the paper mill at Ramsbottom overnight fully freighted with bales from Dyce.

I could give lots of other examples, but I won’t, as there appears to be a crust forming on top of my beans on toast, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.

Oh! But before I get stuck into my Cordon Bleu supper, does anyone remember when the BBC insisted that any artiste appearing on top of the pops had to perform live?..well Cat Stevens made some cracking songs over the years, ( Matthew & Son excepted of course ), but hearing him live on TOTP,…well…I’ve heard a cinder trapped under a door emit a more tuneful sound…but that’s just my opinion of course.

Eddie.

carryfast · 30 August 2018 23:01

John West:
You’re right, it wasn’t just the sixties music. I liked the Seventies. I started overland and internals in Saudi in January '76 and really missed the next few years. I didn’t understand ‘the clash’ or the ■■■ pistols, punk or those things.

It is of course a generational thing. My Dad, born 1905, said that radio and records were a new thing for them in his late teens. His father, born about 1875 would say ‘turn that rubbish off.’ And he would do that immediately. He in his turn would call our music ‘repetitive noise’, but we would play it anyway, and he would go in another room. My daughter, now 30, listened with earphones (she has long left home) so I have very little idea of Ed Sheeran or Adele or any of those, because even in the car, I rarely listen to the radio.

So, here I am, 70, CF, and you’re almost 60. Enjoy the next 10, I have!

John.

Like the 80’s some of the late 70’s stuff was a bit naff and I never liked punk with the exception of the brilliant intro of Pretty Vacant.You’re right about the generational thing my dad usually didn’t like what I did with the exception of some 60’s which I can remember playing on the radio at home and when I was sometimes with him when he was working on cars in a garage in the day while he preferred the Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra and Rat Pack stuff of his youth.

Some of my favourite 60’s here.I guess I’d have been happy enough driving an 8 wheeler then with those playing on an old portable valve radio as a soundtrack.

youtube.com/watch?v=pN9_WwkKARY

youtube.com/watch?v=SQcPtpqRUpo

youtube.com/watch?v=71qt9D2qBX0

youtube.com/watch?v=578cg6yRLzA

youtube.com/watch?v=1gZlmUtEMLs

youtube.com/watch?v=lDm-x3E3g0U

youtube.com/watch?v=Qqyx4TW4Ptw

youtube.com/watch?v=xTeI65yrhGw

oiltreader · 31 August 2018 17:43

Of early 1935 vintage, my first introduction to music would have been my dad twiddling the knobs on an accumulator battery powered Cossor radio and in rural Aberdeenshire on a clear frosty night it was possible to get Radio Athlone, (looking back it’s hard to believe with the equipment available then) way down in Co Meath, home of John Count McCormack the Irish tenor one of his favourites, another one was Paul Robeson on our wind up gramophone, an overwind and the governor spring would go ping. Sheet music was popular then, anyway forward to my mid to later teens and an appreciation of most types of music, vocal and instrumental, names like Lita Rosa, Matt Munro, Frankie Laine, Brenda Lee, Guy Mitchell, Johnny Ray, Andy Williams, Paul Anka, Lonnie Donegan etc etc not forgetting Elvis, Frank Chacksfield, Mantovani, Lawrence Welk, Ken MacKintosh, Glenn Miller etc. Through the 70s big collector of James Last, especially his classical LPs, fav being youtube.com/watch?v=kBIs2x1Fjxg. Nowadays, mostly country vocal and instrumental, any easy listening and of course a life time fan of Scottish Country Dance Music(no pipes ). Spotify member for listening then buy/download from Amazon where it’s cheaper… Still got quite a collection of 78s from way back, must count them.
Oily

backsplice · 1 September 2018 02:59

Ah Oily …most on here would,nt know what a ■■■■■■ was ■■? I had to take ours to the local bike shop to charge up !!!.. them were the days… Jeemie Shand and his Scottish dance band

jelliot · 4 September 2018 23:34

So here’s the story so far… Recently I stuffed up my left hand in a fairly bad way… at home unfortunately… if it had been at work their insurance would have paid full wage for the duration of recovery. but as it is I have a private policy which is a bit crap but better than nothing… Yesterday I went to the hand clinic wearing a home made pirates hook which I built round my plaster … Talk about a bunch of guys with no sense of humour… So now I have one good hand and a couple of free fingers on the other,and they told me to stop taking the painkillers which I wasn’t taking any way…Still have wires and a half cast on my left hand so it’s still illegal to drive anything on the road… I’ll probably be on here quite a bit for a while… you can either get back to me or just ignore me…

Music … I started driving a Ford D series and as was regulation the gear stick gattor was stuffed… there was a radio in it … The radio was always on but most of the time it was a bit of guessing game as to what was being played… and radio one was on AM 275 if I remember… before it had two frequencies…A few blank spots round the country as you travelled about, Northumberland moors, bottom of Shap to Forton,mid Wales wasn’t particularly good either…DLT in the morning, cant remember the other guys… at 7 in the evenings as long as the sun had gone down it was 208 Luxemburg… Everything changed when I got my F 7…cassette deck and a 7 band graphic equalizer which was a gizmo which let you change a half decent musical master piece into an inaudible piece of crap that would kill dogs at 50 meters…

Radio Lazzer 558… not sure where they transmitted from but they hit the southern part of the east coast pretty well. and didn’t have pompousness of the BBC… BBC sent Simon Bates round the world in 80 days and I was a bit jealous of that… but listened in every day to here where he was transmitting from. He used every form of transport except a truck… not even a road train in Australia… Wane Kerr… Mid 80’s there must have been some kind of shake up in the Beeb cause the programing got IMOHO a lot better. Nicky Campbell in the evening slot always had some interesting guests including the reverend Shawn Manchester who was a vampire hunter that used to hang about in North gate cemetery. Later on Mark Radcliffe took the slot with the ever entertaining Lard …I never got into radio 2 Wogan. and always thought JY was up him self…but there were many that did like that kind of stuff… and they were well catered for… Andy Kershaw scoured the whole of Africa and used his findings to inflict himself upon late night listeners with the most dreadful renderings of primal plinky plonk sounds that I have ever heard. I believe it’s now called World Music… best listened to while sitting on a Moroccan throw rug in Chelsea while working out where you should go on your trust funded gap year( Please don’t let it be the endangered temperate rain forests in southern Tasmania)

Out into Europe… round the main cities there was a fair bit of variety on AM and FM. but mostly English language pop rock… Even some of the local bands were recording in English which I thought was a bit strange… Eastern Europe was a bit the same in the mid 80’s onward. after the overzealous government propaganda programing died of a bit…and of course who could forget American forces radio… Usually available in about a 50 k radius of any US base… If you were up on top of the Blonk late at night you could get a pirate station that played the most eclectic mix of stuff ever heard… no egotistical radio announcers or adverts… Just a gilgle that would fad in and out from time to time "Cool A Twa " and the frequency would often change as well. so I just put the radio on scan until it picked it up…

Never liked the American format radio and when I was driving there always missed the variety of the Beeb. Radio stations would only play one kind of music and usually only from a couple of record labels as well… so if you wanted to here a song from another artist you hand to listen to another station… Never got into talk back radio or the shock Jock stuff… cause I’m quite capable of coming up with my own self opinionated ball-ux…

When I was doing Oman, China later on… I used my sisters house as an address and she used to tape the radio at random for me on a 2 hour cassette tape. She used to bung one on in the evening and record everything , songs, news, talk back. what ever was going on… Radio 1, Jazz FM usually … my girlfriend ( now wife) used to do the same thing for me from Australia I ended up with about 60 of them in the truck… I was getting round Bishkek one blistering hot summer day listening to Danny Baker doing a Christmas day special…
Never had a CD player in the truck always cassette… other stuff I listened to … in no spacial order … Shadows ( not Cliff though ) Jethro Tull, Led Zep. Eagles, Joe Walsh. quite a lot of Jazz ( especially guitar) Ian Dury. Doctor Feelgood ( Not just because I went out with his daughter for a while ).AC/DC .Glen Campbell. Daft Punk, Stereo lab . Portishead. Hawkwind. Pink Floyd. Abba. Loads of Blues. Ed Kupper. Cruel Sea. Hunters and Collectors. Powder finger. Aerosmith.

Jeff…

carryfast · 5 September 2018 01:10

Jelliot:
Out into Europe… round the main cities there was a fair bit of variety on AM and FM. but mostly English language pop rock… Even some of the local bands were recording in English which I thought was a bit strange

80’s/90’sItalian pop.

youtube.com/watch?v=b1BFE1cGz48

youtube.com/watch?v=u1k00UA51Pc

youtube.com/watch?v=bKj82imMg80

While this lot were big in East Euro.

youtube.com/watch?v=k9p4B6s0j4U

jelliot · 5 September 2018 22:14

Thank’s for that Mr Fast. I wasn’t implying that all euro pop groups were recording in English, but it did seem to me to be a bit strange that so many were. It may have been that they were hoping to get picked up by the many of the younger tourist that often visited their countries. Mediterranean countries are the ones that spring to mind… I did hear an interview with one of the ABBA boys and he said it was a lot easier to fit English words into a song than most other languages. And also most pop record buyers (UK America Australia ) spoke it as a first language… I’m not going to get into Asian pop and at that time I wasn’t aware that China had a pop scene… When I was up on the China Border at Korgos there was nothing on the radio at all Just white noise. There was a bit round Almaty and Bishkek, but mostly spoken word and my local language skills weren’t good enough to really understand what was going on …They were speaking some kind of dialect Russian…

When I visited Australia there were a lot of of Irish Artists that had a massive following. I remember Nicky Campbell used to play a bit of Christy Moore on his late night show… but in Australia there were half a dozen big radio stations that had him and his brother Luke O Bloom on high rotation. as well as the Water Boys… Cranberries. infact one station in Sydney often used to play 3 or 4 album tracks back to back a couple of times a week…Also Jimmy Nail could be heard ten or fifteen times a day as well…

Australian radio has some peculiar quirks… I used to airbrush live on air… When I was living up in Newcastle I was asked to do it and thought the producer was barking mad …however I was asked back a further three time and eventually got a regular spot on a weekly evening chat show that talked about local affairs. It seemed that quite a few middle aged woman had a Scottish accent fetish… I did that for about a year and a half, until the show was re-formatted… I was quite happy to get out of it…as local supermarket shopping was getting a bit problematic…

Russia and their ex southern ( free independent states ) had numerous “Kontrol points” which you could either be through in a few moments or spend days there for their own amusement. It wasn’t unknown for suspicious devices to be removed from vehicles before being allowed to leave the Kontrol area… National security and all that kind of stuff…CD players and CD discs were obviously very suspicious, especially the newer and more up market versions…Old beet up looking cassette players with the front ripped of… not so appealing… However Marlboro was an internationally recognised currency. especially the real deal and not the cheep Russian fake ones…

Jeff…

carryfast · 6 September 2018 00:30

Jelliot:
I did hear an interview with one of the ABBA boys and he said it was a lot easier to fit English words into a song than most other languages.

Check out these versions of these.I’d bet the English versions will sound more alien after hearing them.

youtube.com/watch?v=Zu7IlF0_Agw

youtube.com/watch?v=Z3EqHI3yRQA

youtube.com/watch?v=HYvuWlOnBjI

ramone · 6 September 2018 11:19

American Punk and a little bit of English Punk too and Tom Petty The Beach Boys The Kinks …

lespullan · 6 September 2018 16:31

ramone:
American Punk and a little bit of English Punk too and Tom Petty The Beach Boys The Kinks …

Didn’t know you were so young.

star_down_under · 5 December 2019 15:29

Before CDs, ipods and the plethora of storage devices or streaming services, all we had was radio or tapes, including the short lived 8 track.

Khe Sahn was an absolute anthem.

star_down_under · 5 December 2019 16:02

A little more sedate. The first one could have been written about my young fella (born '80) and me.

buzzer · 5 December 2019 17:44

As I have been known to say on many occasions, Mary Hopkins moments for all you posters " those were the days my friends " seems pretty appropriate but I always like ABBA and still do today suspect that’s cos I know most of the words and when your in the cab singing along it don’t matter what you sound like as your on your own. IMHO if you have driven a truck most of your working life you have probably listened to all sorts over the years.
The other thing that was paramount to a lot of my mates was to park up when the Archers were on, think it was 1/4 to 2 in the afternoons on BBC world service, did any one else do the same, cheers Buzzer

dieseldog999 · 5 December 2019 18:00

While this lot were big in East Euro.

youtube.com/watch?v=k9p4B6s0j4U
[/quote]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
these two lots were big enough for me at that era…

youtube.com/watch?v=v0mdEZ-Nu2Y

youtube.com/watch?v=LVDpREeZUfI

ramone · 5 December 2019 19:07

lespullan:

ramone:
American Punk and a little bit of English Punk too and Tom Petty The Beach Boys The Kinks …

Didn’t know you were so young.

Yeah , I was born very young Les

rigsby · 5 December 2019 19:11

dieseldog999:
While this lot were big in East Euro.

youtube.com/watch?v=k9p4B6s0j4U

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
these two lots were big enough for me at that era…

youtube.com/watch?v=v0mdEZ-Nu2Y

youtube.com/watch?v=LVDpREeZUfI
[/quote]
Definitely showing your lecherous tendencies there DD .