Hans
Knot's International Radio Report - October 2006 (1)
Welcome
to another edition of the Knot International Report and thanks a lot for
the enormous response. In the e mails I could see that a lot of you are
longing for the day in November we can meet up at the 28th version of
the Annual Radio Day,
organized by Martin van der Ven, Rob Olthof and myself.
Just to mention two names. On the morning after I sent last issue there
was a photograph in the mailbox from a guy I haven’t seen since 1986.
John Dwyer, who worked on
Radio Caroline as well as the Voice of Peace, will be attending this
years VOP reunion, too. In the early years of internet it was
Dave Burke who was one of
the first to make his own memory pages to offshore radio. It was Radio
Scotland memories, to be precisely. I meet Dave every three years since
the eighties and it’s good to hear he’s also planning to take a visit to
the Radio Day for the very first time!
Of course the VOP reunion will be getting the most attention on November
4th. It’s Bill Danse,
former technician on the Voice of Peace, who wrote me: "I’m longing for
the Radio Day. Could you also tell me where this ‘first hours’ of the
VOP came from, which I found on internet?"
Those
programs were originally recorded in Tel Aviv and were sent to me in the
seventies. A lot of other programs were recorded by various people
through the period 1973-1993. On the Radio Day a special Voice of Peace
DVD with very unique air checks and programs will be available, so I am
told. So, look out for that.
‘down under in the VOP ship’ (Hans Knot Archive)
Going back to the Bill Danse memories: ‘It was wonderful to listen to
the first hour again and a lot of memories were relived. At the
background I heard the noises from what we mentioned the conference
room. The whole under deck, where the studio and control room were
situated was built with wooden joist and plywood. And when it was a bit
choppy you could hear the cracking. Also, when the microphone was open,
on the background there was the noise of the diesel generator. In the
program I heard, which must have been the very first day on the air, no
English deejays except Tony Allen were there. A lot of the programs were
presented by Abe and I did the technical side as well as spinning the
records. Later Abe did self-supporting, but then some things went wrong,
including working with the card machine. The first weeks were very
relaxed as we didn’t start too early and went off the air around
midnight. One thing is very striking when
Abe is telling the people, during the ship’s trip to Marseille, about
the difference of characters the people on board had. Those who were on
the Peace ship in those days exactly know what he tried to say as almost
every day there were rows. But also optimism could be heard back from
the program. Good memories, once again thanks, Bill Danse.’
VOICE OF PEACE MEMORIES
AND ABIE NATHAN’S WORK
HANS KNOT (Editor)
During the past year a lot of work has been down to research not only
the history of the Voice of Peace but also the various humanitarian jobs
Abe Nathan has done through the past 4 decades. With assistance from
people next to Abe, deejays and staff of the station in the past, Hans
Knot has succeeded in writing a 250 pages book. In the book are many
exclusive photographs, but as there were hundreds of photos sent in by
many people, a ‘photo cd’ will be included. The book, which will be
officially presented at the Annual Radio Day in Amsterdam on November
2006. The book can now be ordered from the publisher. The price for
people in the Netherlands will be 30 Euro, including postage and
packing. For people outside the Netherlands the price will be 33 Euro.
You can sent in your money by sending it in an envelope to SMC, PO Box
53121 1007 RC Amsterdam. Also you can pay your money to Giro account
4065700 on the name of Mediacommunicatie Amsterdam. Don’t forget to
mention IBAN number: NL 37 PSTB 0004 0657 00 BIC: PSTBNL21 . This to
avoid high costs.
In last issue there was the question from Mr Barnes from Caroline Sales
about Jack Spector.
Remember there were tapes still around from 1965 and 1966 and it was
asked during which period he could be heard? Well first from Australia,
Sydney it’s Ian MacRae who wrote: ‘Hi Hans. Unless I’m delusional I
pretty certain that we played the Jack Spector Show on Radio City up
until it was closed down in 1967. I think I still have some old reel to
reel tapes of his
program
around here somewhere. I know I have no tapes from Caroline from that
period so they have to be from Radio City. Cheers, and keep up the good
work. Ian MacRae.’
Thanks Ian. Well I can assure you that Jack Spector hasn’t worked for
Radio City but only on tape from New York with Caroline North and South.
I think you mixed Jack with the sound of Gary Stevens, who also came
from New York. He taped his programs and sent them off to Great Britain.
Gary was heard on Radio City as well as Radio England.
Jack Spector (Hans Knot Archive)
Next to Ian there was also response from the
Emperor Rosko from
Hollywood who wrote: ‘Hi Monsieur Knot, Jack Spector was on when I was
on so that makes it 1966 -67, my guess is Mike Ahern will know as he was
friendly with him. Good luck, EMP.’
Thanks Mr. Pasternak, I recall the mentioning of the tapes which are
around from 1965 and 1966. Probably he was heard in 1967 too, but no
recordings of that, so maybe someone else knows the ending of the period
Jack Spector did programs on Caroline. If Mike Ahearn remembers, he’s a
reader too, please respond.
Animals again and this
time Chris from England who remembers: ‘Firstly, as always, greetings to
you and yours and I hope that you're all keeping well.
Regarding animals at sea, I remember when the Fredericia first arrived
off the Isle of Mann, the M.V. Caroline had a dog aboard who was named,
strangely enough, Caroline. Sadly, she didn't stay aboard very long as
the jets from the local airbase used to make her bark as they flew
overhead to get a look at the ship. I can distinctly remember the
problems they used to have with her, obviously, not a well soundproofed
studio in those days! Many thanks for your eagerly awaited report. Best
wishes. Chris Faulkner. ‘
Thanks Chris and any more memories about animals related to the offshore
stations are welcome. You can sent it to
HKnot@home.nl
Maybe some of you are missing their own memories in this issue, this
because I had a problem with 3 pages of information which were on a disk
but disappeared when I filed something wrong. Sorry for that. As I had
only put it on a small disk yet it couldn’t be corrected by downloading
it from the computer.
Two
more nicknames by
listening to an old show from 1973 and Radio Caroline. It was on the
Dutch Service that Dennis King was named: Dennis ‘the king himself’
King. It was him who gave Norman Barrington Smythe, from the
International Service of Radio Caroline, the nickname ‘our lord’. But
talking about King, it was Allen West who mentioned himself ‘King West’
on RNI in 1971 and on the same station we hadn’t listed yet Don ‘Your
old country cousin’ Allen.
It was Steve Leyland who did sent the message that John Dwyer is coming
to the Radio Day and I thanked him in an email: Hi and thanks for the
photo from John Dwyer and I will forward it to the webmaster. I haven't
seen John in 20 odd years! For the last time onboard the Ross Revenge.’
John Dwyer on the VOP (Hans Knot Archive)
So Steve came back to me with: ‘Now you're making me feel old, Hans! I
first met John via land-based pirate radio around 1979 when I was
working with Radio Jackie North with the late Eric Haydock:
http://uk.geocities.com/a1kc_radio/rjn.home.html
I never got involved with any radio ship stations though, I always
preferred to do local stations here in Liverpool and got my first bust
from Ofcom in 30 years of illegal broadcasting last year, mainly because
I'd run out of TX locations so I attached a 50 foot mast to my home and
broadcasted live:
http://www.radioxanadu.tk/
I was told unofficially by Ofcom that a local RSL station had complained
that I was ‘stealing their listeners’, well if they were any good why
would they have to worry about a pirate station? 73s. Steve Leyland.’
The people behind Radio Rainbow
want to mention they helped and will help the people with the programs
from Laser Hothits to transmit LHH in the future. Test transmissions
have taken place already, received in Belgium, Netherlands and Germany.
Several well known frequencies are tested, including 6275 kHz. However
the e mails from Radio Rainbow are always short of real information and
I’ve to go and ask them for more which led to just short answers, so for
the future: remember people behind Radio Rainbow, that only complete
press reports will be published and not the short ones you used to sent.
One of the Liberty Radio Transmitter sites have been blown up recently.
It was Andrew Emmerson from Northhampton who sent us the following link
to see what happened:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZWWTRmOM28
Again we go back to mid August 1967 and it’s
Andy Archer who does
remember Spangles coming
aboard the MV Mi Amigo: ‘I think Spangles actually stole a boat from one
of the seaside resorts - Frinton or Walton to get out to the Mi Amigo.
He probably won't want to remember that these days! Maybe Robbie Dale
will remember? He was always taking risks. I still have happy memories
from 1967 - 1968, but I was very junior then. In fact I was lucky to
stay there. Philip Solomon thought there were too many disc jockeys on
the south ship and told Robbie Dale that one had to go. Bud Ballou and I
thought it would be one of us as we were the newcomers. To our surprise,
Robbie fired Glenn Adams. Robbie had to go into hospital for an
operation (gall stones) and I had to take over the mid morning show. I
think too that Robbie was fed up with the long tender journeys and
wanted to stay on land with Stella. I also believe that towards the end,
Johnnie Walker regretted staying on after August 14th. He would have
probably got a job with BBC Radio One as so many of the sixties pirates
did. Ronan did a good job in persuading him to stay! Gerry Burke (Henry
Morgan) replaced Robbie as senior disc-jockey/head of news.’
Thanks Andy and good hearing from you on a regular base.
Next it’s Ian who wrote: ‘Thanks for the report, interesting as always.
The Ray Cooper debate is
quite interesting. I always thought that he was
Ray Sebastian as there
were a few who used different names after the MOA like Ross
Brown/Freddie Bear, Spangles Maldoon/Herb Oscar Anderson etc. It is
true, as far as I know, that he did not appear on Caroline before the
MOA so interesting that the photo shows him on the ship.
Kilroy is also
interesting, the snippet on the Pirate Hall of Fame does sound like a
taped programme and the deejay is trying to sound hip and cool. Sounds
to me like an Englishman trying to sound American so the theory on those
pages could well be right. Why then does Johnnie remember ‘Kilroy’ on
the ship? Did somebody else adopt the name after the MOA?’
Well the memory Walker told about him rolling a joint must have been one
which made him impressive and so I think this is a real memory. But
maybe others like Spangles do remember him and can maybe reflect to the
question about Kilroy.
Long time since we heard from
Peter Moore but here’s another update from Highgate: ‘Dear
Hans, I seem to have taken on extra work with the Caroline sales
section, so I have little time to write to you. Presently Radio Caroline
seems very popular with the media. You may recall that a company Titian
Red Pictures produced a film script called ‘Pirate Of The Airwaves’,
loosely based around Caroline, but telling the fictional story of a
young man who became a hero as a result of becoming a radio pirate. This
script is doing the rounds, gathering bits of finance here and there
with the hope that a movie will be made. Then some people flew in to
London to see me about a factual documentary of Caroline. These were the
same people who made the Dylan documentary called ‘No Direction Home ‘.
They went away full of good ideas but then called to say that their
director wanted to turn the project from a documentary in to a drama.
Now a young lady has been in touch with yet another film idea. Her name
is Saschia Vischer and since she is half Swiss and half Australian she
has an absolutely delightful accent and since in truth most of the
people I have to deal with in my job are fat old men, she is great fun
to spend time with by comparison.
She has viewed and photographed the ship and has gone away to work on
her project which is basically a drama between a brother and sister, one
of which gets in to politics and one gets in to offshore radio, with the
resultant clash of ideology.
What I have told all these people, not that anyone takes any notice, is
that the true story of Caroline has so many twists and turns and so many
interesting characters and events, that they may as well just tell it
the way it was. Perhaps all three projects will happen and perhaps none
will, but my job is to follow up any possibility that is put to me.
Now, as if enough is not happening, a British TV company have been in
touch, thinking about making a programme about the present day Caroline.
Once on a time I would have jumped at this chance, but as I get older
and hopefully wiser I am more cautious. I know that when these people
take 50 hours of footage to condense down to half an hour of programme
material, they can at the editing stage make us look good or make us
look like idiots. Often that decision is taken before the filming even
starts. I remember clearly the programme that was made about station LBH
for British TV, where Ray Anderson and his colleagues were all portrayed
as complete fools.
So, while I would obviously like to have four million people made aware
that Caroline is still operating, I adopted a rather negative stance
with these TV people. In the event that they decide to go ahead anyway,
they will at least know my opinions in advance. It may be that we have
not yet fully exploited our presence on Sky 0199. We are waiting for a
notable event that we can use to maximise the publicity. A move of the
ship to a good new location would be such an opportunity. In the
meantime our man Dell Richardson says that 0199 is the best thing that
has happened for him and for response to his show since he joined us six
or more years ago. All the staff are noting new listeners making contact
and the mail I get here reinforces that. Better still, since this is an
immediate tangible benefit, new supporters are joining up. OK, this is
one here and one there every few days, but when you add those one’s and
two’s together over a period of months, it starts to help our situation.
At Tilbury Port we are asked to move Ross Revenge to a new location.
This is a disused inlet of water called the Old Barge Dock. That is fine
by us, we go wherever we were told but I did complain that the dock edge
was overgrown and dangerous and the Port offered to install a gate,
steps and a walkway for us.
However the man I am dealing with a clearly a commercial man not a
marine man, since I now find that the barge dock is actually an old dry
dock. Like all dry docks it has ledges extending out, so as the dock
gets deeper it also gets more narrow. Since Ross Revenge needs 18ft of
water to float in and since she has bilge keels that stick out each side
of the hull, we have to decide how we fit her in to this new place and
how once there, we get on and off.
In the meantime, the crew are doing great work on the ship. It is a
pleasure to go there and see continual improvement. I think that the
lads have learned the trick of taking on a task that they can handle and
doing it properly. So instead of painting 50 square yards badly, on the
grounds that it will look better for a while, they tackle 10 square
yards and do the job perfectly so that it will not need doing again. In
the cabin area they are refurbishing just one cabin at a time and while
the panels are all stripped off Alan Beech is putting in new wiring to
reduce the fire risk. For years we have been talking about
recycling
the waste heat from the generator room, to warm other parts of the boat.
Now, rather than just talking about it, the crew have actually done it.
Obviously I am not critical of previous crews. Sometimes the working
conditions in the past were such that it was all but impossible to make
progress. But it is great to be able to take people to the ship without
the fear of what horrors I may find when stepping on board.
Our lady Pandora has identified the relevant opinion that we may be so
busy trying to recruit new supporters that we may be neglecting those
who have been helping us, possibly for decades. One problem is that we
do not have much of a budget with which to indicate our gratitude, but
we are hoping to start some prize gift weekends, where we choose
supporters at random and give them a free gift to thank them for their
loyalty.
Peter Moore and yours truly in old days (Photo SMC)
We are extending our products in the web shop. Our new T shirts are very
popular. They were designed by Alexandra Armstrong, wife of my old
colleague ‘ Mike Dundee ‘. Alex designed our very first ‘ five ships ‘
design of shirt all of fifteen years ago. We are also extending our ‘
anorak ‘ range of goods, including with the permission of the station,
the full audio history of Radio Jackie and with your kind permission we
are reviving the ‘Legend Lives On’ CD. All sorts of archive stuff keeps
appearing so we hope to build a big archive of nostalgic audio
recordings. So, that is our present situation as we head in to October,
I will send you more information when I can. Yours, Peter Moore.
Well some sports now and an e mail about a football game, way back in
the sixties: ‘Dear Hans, I
came
across 5 photo's for sale on EBay, of
Radio Caroline North. Two
of the photo's show a charity football match being played between the
DJ's/Crew of the Fredericia and an unknown team. The seller does not
know any details about the photo's such as the name of the other team,
the charity event, the venue or the date the photo's were taken. Could
any reader of your Report offer any information on the 2 photo's? Anyone
recognise the football ground, the team strip or any of the players ?
Any jocks faces that seem familiar? Any Fredericia crew-members that can
be identified?
The
first photo shows a guy to the right of the referee, if you look at the
hairstyle & the body language, it could be Daffy Don Allen.
The second photo shows team members in fancy dress-fake beards, fake
moustaches, dark glasses and pom-poms on the knees. This fancy-dress
disguise makes it al the more difficult to identify any crew or jocks! I
have consistently hated all sports since birth so I know nothing at all
about football
The rear of the photo's says, "FRA copyright", which takes us back to
the days of the Free Radio Association {my membership number was 25504,
yet I never saw these photo's within the FRA merchandise. My guess is
that they are early FRA, from the time when it was first formed. ‘Sloopy
Radio Caroline North’
Well thanks ‘Sloopy’, hope someone remembers his local stadium on the
photos and can answer more of the questions.
*********************************************************************
The Medium Wave Circle has
just published two more new CDs of interest to radio enthusiasts in
addition to the three published earlier this year.
* Offshore Radio Collection CD
* Reprint CD
You can find more info on the cd’s with pricing information on our
website here:
http://www.mwcircle.org/mcd.htm
Our website also includes full ordering information - orders can be by
mail order or on-line. We have recently introduced secure on-line
payment via credit card or Paypal account at
www.mwcircle.org/shop.htm.
All previous CDs, including Radio Caroline 1983-1987 and Laser 558
1984-1986, are still available.
********************************************************************
Remember I wrote last time about the chickens on the MV Fredericia? Well
another animal was on the
ship. John Bennett reported about the dog and the problems with the
captain. This time Martin Kayne
reports on the same subject: ‘I was not on the Caroline North ship when
this event happened, however Daffy Don Allen did relate this episode to
us over a few beers one evening. I have no reason to suppose this is
untrue and perhaps someone else will be able to supply their version of
this event. The marine crew had been drinking in the ships main mess
room and commenced teasing the dog, an Alsatian bitch (German Shepherd
dog) called Caroline. The dog subsequently bit a member of the crew and
the animal was almost immediately disposed of by them allegedly
fastening a heavy chain around the poor animals neck and chucking her
over the ships side. Some of the radio staff were deeply upset by this
and did mention it on air, listeners reported the case to the RSPCA
(Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) who were
powerless to do anything as the incident happened outside of UK
jurisdiction. The dog could not have been returned to England or the
Isle of Man without the expense of it being placed in quarantine for 6
months. I can only guess the constant playing of Cat Stevens 'I love my
dog' was the result of DJs trying to disassociate themselves with what
happened. Andy Cadier (Martin Kayne)’
Just a few weeks before the
Radio Day will take place in Amsterdam on November 4th and I hope
to see a lot of our readers in Amsterdam. For all the latest info, you
can go to a special site:
www.offshore-radio.de/radioday/
As it stands now the program will be as followed:
11.00 Opening
11:15 Interview with A.J. Beirens about his time on RNI and Atlantis
12:00 Interview with Martin Green about his time on Shivering Sands
(Radio City)
12.45 Tom Edwards about his time on Radio City and Caroline
13.30 interview with Ferry de Groot about his time on RNI
14:30 VoP Reunion part 1 with chairman Bob Noakes
15:30 VoP Reunion part 2 with chairman Johnny Lewis
Of course also a lot of memorabilia will be for sale including the book
about the Voice of Peace and Abe Nathan’s work. Martin van der Ven will
be coming with a lot of new and
interesting
DVDs and CDs including:
mp3-DVD - The Voice of Peace - A kaleidoscope of 20 years of
broadcasting (with 73 hours of recordings)
From the series ‘The Offshore Radio Heaven’:
mp3-DVD The Late Daffy Don Allan (69 hours)
mp3-DVD The Late Crispian St. John/Jay Jackson (54 hours)
mp3-DVD The Late Stan Haag (110 hours)
mp3-DVD The Late David Lee Stone (43 hours)
Audio-Double-CD (WDR production) ‘Radiopiraten - Abenteuer auf hoher
See’.
Also
organisations like the Foundation for Media Communication, The Society
for Radio tunes and Jingles, the Tony Allen Memorial Fund and others
will be present.
An e mail came in from Roel Jager who want you to sing along with a new
song about Radio Caroline: ‘Found this interesting tribute to Radio
Caroline, not sure if any on here have seen this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pgeeBigxb0&search=helen%20shapiro%2060%27s
An interesting photo was sent from Germany: ‘Dear Mr. Knot, I've just
returned from my long trip to the Cook Islands and New Zealand. The four
of us had a wonderful time there working in the dental centre as well as
experiencing the Maori culture. During our time in Auckland I noticed an
ad poster for a concert that
Radio Hauraki is hosting this week. I thought you would like to
know that this former offshore station is well established around
Auckland. I hope you like the picture I attached. My best wishes,
David’.
Well David thanks a lot for this memory to the former Offshore station
off the New Zealand coast and hope the rest of your study will be of
much more experience and good luck for the future.
A long internet address for a French language special including
Rosko story is to
click here.
Rosko’s comment: ‘Not too shabby, they got a few facts cocka hoop, but
better than being ignored. Hope you stick it in your next global news
report, EMP’
Well Emperor for your ego, there you go!
Watch and listen to the next one where one of the Hollies members is
interviewed by another Caroline deejay from the Sixties, Keith
Hampshire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byy4M1d2oHY
1964-1967
EXCLUSIVE!
MADE IN ENGLAND
SHIPPED FROM ENGLAND
to Europe and the USA only (at this time.)
T-SHIRT
3 SIZES: SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE
(PLEASE AND READ DETAILS ON HOW TO SPECIFY YOUR SIZE AND SPECIFIC
SHIPPING INFORMATION BELOW)
BACKGROUND: In 1964 Don Pierson of Eastland, Texas visited London.
England with the intention of bringing the first top-forty, hourly news
and weather station to the people of London, much of England and the
western seaboard of Continental Europe. This was something that not even
the BBC could provide listeners with! So it was that in December 1964,
just around Christmas, a 50,000 watts station patterned after stations
"Wonderful KBOX" and Gordon McLendon's KLIF, both in Dallas, Texas,
suddenly boomed in to the British mainland from a transmitter and studio
located on board the motor vessel Galaxy (a renamed former US Navy
minesweeper) that was anchored just three and one half miles off the
coastline of southeastern England. The era called "Swinging London" by
TIME magazine and sung as "England Swings" by Roger Miller, had arrived.
Big D for Dallas had become Big L for London!
Now you can salute Don Pierson's creativity as you proudly tell the
world about the legacy of Big L - Don Pierson's Original, Wonderful
Radio London. When the station came to an end at 3PM on Monday, August
14, 1967, Mick Jagger was on its airwaves lamenting its loss and he was
joined by many other stars of the day including Ringo Starr. That day
over 10 million listeners tuned in!
In the 1980s a group that included the original Station Manager and Don
Pierson himself attempted to bring the offshore station back to life,
but although several attempts were made, none were successful. It was
during the end of these attempted rivals that the exclusive and
copyright artwork for this T-Shirt was created. Now we are bringing the
artwork back to life on new T-Shirts for men and women in small, medium
and large sizes. All info can be found on the next internet site:
http://wrln.1964-1967.com
Once again I go back to ‘animals
and offshore radio’. It was Ian Smith who remembered that he once had a
girlfriend who loved her poodles and ran a kennel. One day they went to
a Winsor Dog Show in the seventies and Ian told his girlfriend Marilyn
about his ever lasting love Mi Amigo. She must have been very impressed
as a new born poodle was registered at the Great Britain Kennel Club as
Springett Mi Amigo.!
As I’ve written for many years for Monitor Magazine in the eighties I’ve
got the permission from the other members of the team, who ran the
Monitor Magazine for many years, to republish small bits and longer
stories from the former issues of the then very popular publication from
Benfleet in Essex (Thanks Don and Jean). So in this issue we go back to
1977 and the Royal Family: ‘What would you think if one morning you
discovered the postman had deposited on you doormat a letter bearing the
impressive crest of Buckingham Palace? After realizing it was unlikely
to be an invitation for the Monitor Staff to come to a Royal Garden
Party, we opened it to find inside an epistle from none other than
Graham Kaye. Yes, he
somehow seems to crop up everywhere eventually is now residing with
royalty. He’s got himself a job as a palace attendant. How did he manage
that: “I first had contact with Buckingham Palace in 1973 in reference
to a post when I arrived over here. A polite letter came back from the
Queen’s Assistance for the Household, saying that although they were
interested in my letter there were no suitable positions available. In
June last year I was reading the ‘Sun’ when I came across a very small
advertisement requesting staff for the Palace. I wrote away for an
application form and attended an interview and then I was accepted as a
member of the Royal Household Staff. “
So you see from offshore deejay, which was heavily illegal, to a member
of the Royal Staff, wasn’t a too big step. But was the new job also a
total step outside the music industry? Read more about it in another
issue of the report.
Who has more memories for the next issue? Just send it to
Hknot@home.nl
That finishing this October edition for the Knot International Radio
Report, next month more. See you at the Radio Day!
Hans Knot
Offshore
Deejays' Nicknames
Female
Offshore Radio Deejays
Radio London Commercials
Offshore
Radio Programme Names - Programmanamen Zeezenders 1958-1990
Read Hans Knot's
former report