Soul Jam - Mickey Nold Interview with Moke

Moke # 3 Interview with Mickey Nold (Spring 1999)
Northern Soul is going though a renascence similar to that of Acid Jazz, some years ago. There, I've said it - and it will annoy the regular fans of Northern no end, but it's happening right now.
Take a walk into any mainstream music shop, and you will find at least a dozen or so compilation albums (which is so un-Northern Soul, the use of the long-player!), each album containing over a grand's worth of rare singles, for less than a tenner.) The phrase has entered common usage now, and is offered up constantly to us at mod-nights, countrywide, by DJ's fresh from exploratory weekends at Cleethorpes or Wigan - so much so that the sound even has it's own backlash movement, claiming it doesn't deserve so much needletime, at events - a sure sign of are revolution in our midst!
Northern Soul describes an era, a way of life that could only have happened in the UK, primarily because the genre grouping is a purely British ideal.
Scoured from record fairs and dusty top shelves in the US, the sound is derived from the outpourings and rarities of obscure soul labels in the States. The Northern tag being a reference to the fact that the fans of this sound congregated mainly in dancehalls in the North of England, such as Manchester, Wigan or Stoke.

Recently in GQ magazine, the experience was described thusly.....

A night at the Casino in Wigan often started with a lengthy journey, with many soul fans chartering their own coaches. On boarding the coach you were likely to be met by a horde of like minded individuals dressed in baggy trousers (a good 30" wide), shoes with toes resembling duck's bills (Pods), brogues, bowling shirts, vests, tight T-shirts, and of course, a lot of tattoo.

Some carried kitbags adorned with Mitre, Puma, Lonsdale or Adidas logos, whilst others made do with a check bag nicked from dad, in which lurked the required kit - spare clothes, toiletries,a bottle of Old Spice or Brut  (my personal favorite!) and talc to apply to the floor to aid the fast footwork and aid the essential splits.

Off the bus and up the unbearably long staircase, with your heart pounding and adrenaline pumping. The dancefloor was packed, with all the participants facing the DJ, heads down, breaking into a move whenever a gap appeared in the beat. By the stage were the real deal, the top dancers - performing the likes of which had never been seen before. Spins and splits, then handstands, backdrops, pirouettes, the lot.
There was also a lack of alcohol due to no bar, and anyway- drink slowed you down.
Northern Soul meant style, attitude and pharmaceuticals. It was totally impenetrable by squares and as a result, a real camaraderie existed amongst its fans. Which may or may not be how the real deal see it, for several years now, since moving to Birmingham, I've been listening to the work of one man's radio show, on the local pirate network - "People's Community Radio Link" or "PCRL" for short.

Davi 'A' & 'Beat Ballad' Bob

Mickey Nold hosts a regular Sunday lunchtime slot on the station, with a fluctuating posse of Northern Soul comrades in arms - "Mickey Nold's Basement Soul, with The Consortium" - a two hour feast for your jaded weekend ears, of only the finest soul and related R&B sounds. Somewhere in the house I've piled hours of tapes of the show (which others tape, and send world-wide), and have to admit, that I have become a fan, with each contributor's obviously well thought out knowledge of the music (like listening to Radio Three, sometimes), essential raw beats, all hosted affably by Mickey himself equally at home commenting on the background of the next track, or putting-up with the good-humored flack from his Consortium, as they spin the music of the heartbeat....

One day I took the plunge, and called up to ask for an audience with the man himself - and after having to send a few previous articles to a secret address in Birmingham, to establish that I was a legitimate fan, and not from the authorities who regularly raid the premises - I got the word from Mickey ("I like to spell it, as in Mouse!"), to meet up in an out of town pub, just north of Birmingham (where the sight of me pulling-up, on a silver Vespa Sprint, certainly raised a few eyebrows, with the clientele.)

All shadiness aside - merely a precaution, that most underground operators have to allow for, in the flesh Mickey is an just a music fan like you and me. Not something that could be said for the commercial interests who regularly hinder the work of PCRL, by complaining to the Department of Trade and Industry, and cause yet another confiscation of expensive radio equipment. 

Other features of the station, are discussion programmes, Black history from a Black perspective, and an eclectic mix (no repeats, it's too varied!!!) of the many styles of Black music, from vintage ska, to modern soca and anything in-between. Mickey's involvement with the pirates began in the sixties, with his own station "Radio Nold", which consisted of Mickey and various friends gathering together for a party, and MC-ing on-air, using a portable Discatron record-player (which I'm informed, looks not too dissimilar from a pop-up toaster!), and he also wrote lyrics to a vocal version of "The Worm", which is an old gem from Jimmy McGriff. Maybe if I can pin him down long enough, I'll go into more depth on the scene then, as that would undoubtedly make an interesting article, but for the time being, I'm pleased enough to have him give me some of his time (even while the interview proceeds, he is checking the PCRL output, on a portable radio.), and I'm also busy being careful not to get in over my head with someone who will obviously know more about the subject than I will!

Introductions over with, we settle down on a couch away from the noise of the bar, and I start by commenting that Northern Soul is getting played more  at Mod gigs, more so than ever before,... "Really!.... I'm narrow vision, I only see what happens on our spectrum. If things are happening then tell me about it, I'm interested." Well, there's a night called "Hitchhike" in Digbeth, every other Saturday, put on by a Brummie mod-DJ called Pid, and he's been playing mainly Northern Soul, for years on the mod-scene, and he really knows his stuff....."It's a great name for the night! A Marvin Gaye title."

They play mainly soul on that night "You see on that sort of night, the mods used to play anything really, that's what it was like in the early days, which was really nice. But with the Northern scene, it wouldn't happen, because of the snobbery YOU CAN'T PLAY THAT, you've been listening to that for 30 years, nobody wants to hear that. Which is true in a way, but young people that are in there haven't heard them, it's a shame that they can't get to hear the stuff as well."

You get a song like "The Snake", which is played to death in a soulset at a mod-gig.....

"You very rarely hear that at a Northern Soul night, except maybe an oldies set, when the DJ couldn't find ANYTHING else, and he'd throw that on, just because he couldn't find anything before the end of the record, by accident perhaps.....

'The Consortium' Bentley's, Dudley 1992

But I hate the snobbery apart from all that, I'd rather not get involved in talking about how much this cost, and how much that cost, or this is good because it's rare - it's a total load of rubbish!" You can't tell how ,much a record costs, when you're dancing to it..... "But there are the snob-dancers, that will dance to something they hear that night, only because they know they'll only hear the song that night, because that's the only DJ in the country who has got a copy of that record.
But if they..do like it, they'll travel miles to hear that record played." Short pause for me to relate how I used to shop in Uncle Sam's Album's, a strange  little record shop in my hometown, who imported vinyl from bargain-bins in America, and sold it in the shop for next to nothing (I was picking up copies of Parliaments 45's, or New Colony #6 originals for under a quid... ..).

"To be honest it's really nice when you find stuff cheap, you get excited and you try to buy as much stuff as you can. In some shops in America, as soon as they hear the English accent, when you go up to the counter with a load of records, they'll take them off you, and say - these aren't for sale. And then the stuff will appear later, with the price bumped-up, because the dealer will know it's sought after.I've been buying albums for a pound recently, it's great - I can't get enough of them.
I've spent so much money on albums over the years, when you've been collecting albums for a while, obviously you get all the good ones, then there's the real good ones that are really rare, and they want bigger money for them.

Mark Murphy & Ella

So the only thing for you to spend your money on are silly amounts on one album (you know already.), or take the risk and spend a couple of quid on a few albums, and find nice things, which is what I tend to do!"

I mention some jazz favorites of mine, and Mickey tells me about his writing the words to "The Worm", which I relate to how Mark Murphy works, singing his own lyrics, over a jazz standard.

"We used to have a club in Birmingham, called the Triangle Club (related to the Arts Lab), and I went to see Mark Murphy there. Great stuff, just a couple of musicians, a guitar and a drum and a bass - you don't need anything else with a voice like he's got.

It was a nice little club, they did it all out, and lots of obscure artists appeared. Live music just don't happen anymore." The trouble with Birmingham is , that it doesn't have any middleground, since the Hummingbird venue closed."

"When the Hummingbird closed, we lost a good venue for soul. When there was a national tour, they would be at the Hummingbird  - but now Birmingham doesn't get included, that size venue doesn't exist.

I remember going to Birmingham Poly-tech, and seeing Curtis Mayfield!"

What sort of music policy do you have on PCRL?

"We try and balance the soul with the reggae, and reggae has now turned into raga, but ten years ago, all the reggae was lover's rock.

It was really nice, just endless amounts of mellow reggae - but now the guys that play that are few and far between, it'll be late-night music for them. But they have to be playing the hip, kicking tunes."
It's all a good mix of music on PCRL, I'm not into all of it, such as soca.....

"It's a specialist market, and if you come from one of the Caribbean Islands, you'd be enthralled by it- it reminds you of home, and you know all the artists. You can visualise it you know how you can visualise people dancing to the music you know, well that's exactly what they see, when they hear it - and that's where the love of the music comes from in a lot of cases, the good times and the bad.

1950's Palladium Club, New York

Latin music, unless you can actually see people dancing to good Latin jazz, you can't appreciate that." I get this situation when I'm talking to people about older music, such as ska, that they can't figure out how I know about certain old tunes and I get asked, "How come you know that old song, how come you've heard it?"
"You get the Spanish Inquisition! But do you think, if you weren't a Mod, you wouldn't take any interest or you wouldn't have gone up that path?"

Good point, I'm still doing it years later, so I must like it - it's just that without the Mod-thing, I may not have had access to any other music. Ska was big in the eighties, Tamla was big in the seventies, but in the eighties the emphasis shifted to psyce, and now it's the turn of Northern Soul.
"What's happened to the jazzy instrumental side of it, is that still happening?"
People play that (last year I saw The 3 Deuces, at a mod-gig), but mostly it's soul that's been given the priority. I think that the DJ's go to soul nights, and see how good an atmosphere it is, and they want to bring a little of that to their club, back home.
"
It'll never happen - cause they're all snobs on the scene! To attract them, you've got to have exactly what they want.The venue would have to be a well established one on the scene, the promoters usually have to be well established, otherwise they won't trust you, and then your DJ's have got to be national names.....
We had a revival programme on Wigan Casino, 20 years to the exact day that it opened, with Davie 'A' and myself."

When I was 11 or 12, I was given a soul-compilation album for my Christmas, and that's what got me into Donnie Elbert, Marvin Gaye, The Coasters, Sly Stone etc was lucky, the other choice was a Top Of The Pops album! "There's no doubt about it, you do get a certain age, when you're influenced. I think when you start clubbing, you are influenced a lot by your clubs at the time, and if you've got no musical inclination, then obviously you are going to take on whatever you hear in that club. It could be a bit of rave, or jungle or that sort of thing, but if you've got a bit of background, then you can pick your clubs, and sort your groove out."
Would you say that the Rave scene followed on from where Northern Soul left off - with the all-nighter aspect, the euphoric music and even the drugs..? "As far as popularity of music goes, I'd say yes.
But it's just a bloody noise!!!

The only comparison is the numbers, I think."
You can have a good time at a Northern Soul club, they have convivial atmosphere.
"But there's skills as well. People are doing good dancing, there's the acrobatics, you needed to get respect to be on the dance floor. You couldn't just walk on, because people would be looking at you.
But I can't comment on raves 'cause I've never been to any, and so I can't comment on it, and I don't read the media rubbish, because you can't believe anything you read in the papers.
But it (Northern Soul), is certainly going through a revival at the moment. People keep saying to me, is it a Northern Soul programme, it's not really, it's a sixties soul programme, it's just that the Consortium are mostly into Northern Soul.
We did have a couple of years back, a guy on the show who was into the Mod-stuff, and he played a few hammond organ tunes, from the sixties - it broke it up a bit y' know." Have you DJ'ed at any Northern nights?
"Well no, not really. Because I'm an album collector, I haven't got the singles. I did a few nights about ten years ago, when I had some singles, but I sold them all off now.
A lot of DJ's who go on stations like ours, do it to promote their DJ'ing skills, and it does help them - but it's never been that way for me, it's just been to hear good music played on the radio.
Birmingham has been a black-hole for a long, long time, as far as music on the radio is concerned - we had Radio Birmingham and BRMB, for what seemed like 100 years, and that was it.
Nothing ever happened, when you think about what was happening in Manchester and London, and other parts of the country - you could play a tune on the radio now, and everybody in Manchester knows what it is   but nobody in Birmingham will have ever heard it!
Simply because they haven't been exposed to it, they've never been able to appreciate it."
Birmingham is very cosmopolitan, we have so many different cultures on our doorstep.

What sort of response do you get from the show?
"You've got the listeners that have been with from day one, and if you say hello to them, they are always there. They phone you up." I dropped my bacon sandwich when you mentioned me the other day..... "They don't really push for requests, as it's a bit awkward - I do tend to say;  "it's so-and-so's birthday", and dedicate a record to them.
We don't really get a lot of calls, not like in the early days of the pirates, when the phone didn't stop ringing. There was a survey in the early 90's, with Which Magazine, they just asked people in the street, and our station had got half a million listeners, and that's when the shit hit the fan!!!  figures - and that's what pays the bills."Was it because the commercial stations weren't playing what people wanted to hear?
 "Well, yeah. They get a set-programming format, and it never changes. The same thing, if they get a new DJ, he's plays the same thing it just went on and on."

Ted Massey - Mickey's Consortium

The thing I like most about PCRL is, you rarely hear the same song twice in one day - each show has it's own content. "Well Ted was complaining to me, the other day, about last Sunday's programme. He said we're not playing enough of the things that people really know - we need to play more….."

You've been playing some Quincy Jones.....

"Well it was his birthday recently. But I said, yes Ted, we've got to play those classics, as well. Because we all tend to find new things and want to play them, but we need to spin those classics, now and again.Ted always has a little moan - if he doesn't think things are right, which is good, we all need to talk about these things."

Soul fans are going to hate it - but there are other people listening y'see.

And that's the way I look on it. There's so much soul in other categories, that to stick to one format is a crying shame."

There's soul-jazz, Latin-soul, garage-soul such as the Human Beinz, "Nobody But Me!"
What is the difference between a beat ballad, and big city soul?
"A beat ballad tends to be a big city production, but with a medium paced tempo. A beat ballad, is never going to be a stomper - it's never going to be really fast, but it's still got to have enough tempo to keep people's feet going. Big city soul, is a really polished production, it won't be just bass guitar and drums, it'll have strings, fugal horns - and they tend to be from New York.

I've always loved soul music - but there's too much around to go and buy it all, it's the same with jazz, there's no way I could go out and buy jazz, there's too much, I could never catch up."
Do think that in the seventies when soul music hit a commercial peak, it also hit a creative peak, that with the added output, there was better quality?
 "At the end of the seventies, it all turned to disco didn't it. Early disco was really good, it was creative, and there was good melodies, things like The Tramps, Tavares - but then big companies saw there's money to be made here, don't bother with a good song, the sound of the last hit song word, it'll do it again, give it a different lyric - and that's what happened, it just ruined it.
And it got a bad reputation then, which is a shame, you never hear good night of disco-tunes now, nobody will dig out those good ones that were never hits."

What's your favorite period in music?
"I love them all. I go through phases, at the moment I'm into the fifties and the rest of the crew are hating me for it! Stop playing that rock 'n' roll, they keep saying, and I have to remind them, it's not rock 'n' roll, it's R+B." Such as the work Buck Ram did with The Platters, who started in the fifties, and yet stretch all the way into the later soul-scene."Look at the stuff that The Platters did at the end of the sixties, you wouldn't believe it's the same group. Jackie Wilson however, was one of the people who couldn't handle that. He'd got a good niche in the fifties, and he got involved in the sixties, but in the seventies he couldn't handle it."
Frankie Lymon for instance, who ended up a teenage alcoholic. "With the musicians they are 'the artistic types' aren't they. They tend to have weaknesses like drinking and drugs and drugs do help with creativity, but you just burn yourself out after that, because obviously it's a downward spiral after that.There are the survivors though, that are still around." Geno Washington?

"We booked him at Dudley Town Hall, a couple of years back, and to be honest, they booed him off the stage. They had the Soul Survivors as support, and they were big five years ago, playing all the Stax stuff, and they did a much better job of entertaining the audience, than Geno Washington did - which is a shame really."
He's playing scooterist dates now, and he's obviously cleaned up his act, as he's getting a lot of respect again.
Have you been to any all-nighters recently?
"We used to, originally the programme was on at breakfast time, between six and nine in the morning. And that gave me a bit of room the weekend, to go to all-niters, but now that it's a Sunday, if you've been up all night, well there's just no way. A few members of the Consortium are rolling back at six in the morning."How do you meet the members of the Consortium, for the show?
"A lot of them were listeners like yourself. Who approach me, and send me tapes.
Brian Goucher - sent me a tape, and I was  well impressed with this, and the next thing you know, he was on the programme with Jodie is she's in her early twenties, a big difference from the rest of the Consortium - and she's just as keen with 60's soul music, there's no stopping her!"

Northern nights are famous for everybody having a good time..... "Yes, it's sad to say that in a lot of cases, people go out, and they just want to get drunk, and a good night is getting drunk; and falling over - but Northern Soul isn't about that, the bar shuts just after you've arrived!
If you go to Keele All-nighter, you've got probably 30 minutes of bar time - and the rest of the night, it's just soft drinks, and everybody is still happy.
I can remember at Wigan, they were drinking pints of milk - because that's all you could buy at the bar!
People on the dance floor, with a pint of milk, incredible !!!"
Did you spill my pint !?!
"No point in crying over spilt milk!" Do you think that mods evolved from an aspect of the northern scene?
"Obviously they were into their 60's beat as well, but there was a good percentage that said - Goodbye scooters, hello soul!
But there was your big soul collectors in the sixties, and they come from the blues-period.

There was quite a split in the soulscene as well, there was your Mecca crew who were into the sophisticated new releases, and there was your hard R+B - who didn't want to hear anything else but the old stompers.
And it was a hard split at one point, and there was venues for one, and venues for the other.
But over the years it's got back together."

Wigan was known for it's up-tempo soul, and the Blackpool Mecca, for it's sixties soul - but it broadened it's sound, is that true? "Wigan was a bit of a fusion of the two, because you had all your strings and instrumentals, so it was a bit sophisticated, albeit a bit simple.So Wigan wasn't really a good example of what was going on, it was just the one that got the most
Publicity - there was lots of other venues around the country.
Some venues do develop their own sound.
The classic one is Stafford - they had like a 'horn sound', everything that was taking off in Stafford was heavy on the horns, and horns in an echo chamber!
And when Bretby took off in the early days, they had a slow tempo feel. People would say - that's a Bretby tune!
Venues do tend to get their little niches, and they do tend to look back on those venues with a little more fondness - and they think that a tune was discovered there.

I met Georgie Fame at a soulnight down south, a couple of years back. He came up to me (I was the DJ), he was actually in the place! - but he'd come to see Edwin Starr really, and he was asking me if I'd got this and that - (my Mom brought me'Yeah Yeah' when I was a kid -  Lol.) He's one of those true musicians, he can play the piano - and it made him survive.
I used to love his cover versions, y'know -  "Papa's got a Brand New Bag", I used to prefer it James Browns'.
Davie A is a big fan of good pop-music from that period, hence the other week, he was dying to do a Dusty Springfield tribute."What's your favorite combination of sounds, that go into a record? "I haven't got any favorite, I like them all! At the moment, I'm loving fifties R+B - but I still have to look for 'two-step' stuff for my Tuesday night show.
Two-step is a category that belongs to the Jamaican side of things. They'll tend to spin two or three tunes on a reggae night - so I like to construct a programme around it, because I love them myself.

I can remember being very young, and liking only one type of soul, and not touching any other, and I sadly missed out a lot from those days. Over a period of time, I've realized what those records have got, and I can now appreciate them. If anybody ever asked me to do a top ten - I'd have to do a top ten of all the different styles that I love - lots of top tens! There's always new things to discover, otherwise you can't be a true soul-fan!

There's a series of northern soul, "For Millionaires Only" - and they've done about three of them now, they won't put anything on there, unless it's worth more than a thousand pounds a track!" How do they get to be so expensive?

"Well, they're usually one-off copies, in most cases they're singles, and just one exists.In the early seventies in America, they had the oil crisis, and they were recycling the vinyl, melting down old records, and repressing them as something else - and the quality of the vinyl was terrible, it really crackled. But some of those original tunes that never saw the light of day ended up there. Some of those tunes that go for big money, when the Consortium bring them in, I do savour over looking after them, because I'll never see them again - Sometimes they'll just play it a few times, and sell it on, because they can't afford to keep it!"

And with that, my audience was over, as it was chucking out time in the pub, and Mickey had some work to do back at the station, so I sped off into the night on my silver, if not slightly rusty steed.
Seriously though, it was a pleasure to meet someone who has spent so long being involved in something he loves. Mickey Nold's Basement Soul with The Consortium, broadcasts every Sunday from 12-2 on PCRL (103.5 FM), and has a radius of over 40 miles - LISTEN !!

 (Gordon@Moke - photo's not in original article)

Radio Soul - Moke Interview with Mickey Nold

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN UNDERGROUND BROADCASTING, MOKE #4 1999

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.

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.

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.

Drifters - (Johnny Terry front left)

What was it like having someone like Johnny Terry, on the programme?

 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 make an interview, plus he was the bass voice for the Drifters. A group sound constructed around the doo-wop style, with harmonies around his voice.

 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 of 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 the male group sound, his holidays are 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!  A few years back, I said to him, "Why don't you take a tape recorder along 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. His questions aren't the typical interview questions, he knows their 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.

  But 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?

Exactly, and 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 (Tina that is).

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 for me with the lack of decent music played on the radio, frustration with the Light Programme {which evolved into Radio 2 after the onset of Radio 1 - ed}, the audience would hear shows like "Sing Somthing Simple" by the Mike Sam Singers (they were an aging vocal group singing cheesy hit songs). 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. 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 the clouds 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 Radionic set, which is like a teen 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. If that 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 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! The difficulty was that the transmitters needed 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 hidden in-between the trees.

  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 13 amp socket into a box. 

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.  The next day, having buried the cables, 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 bar with 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?

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.Good soul music - things like Moses and Joshua "My Elusive Dreams", and all the Motown classics, Stax groups & funky jazz instrumentals.

  There was a few of us that used to do this broadcasting, some of them would bring some rock tracks 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. 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 really.
 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 to do 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 carry on 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 mostmoney 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 mic.

  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?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!

Transmitter with 200w valve amp to drive  it

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). 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!" Who else had thought of that.

I had friends, Pete & Tom 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 listening to the programmes, somebody's Auntie or Uncle and with the 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 main stream stations.

  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 bread-bin!,
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 bread-bin, 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 his trousers for the George Michael shuttlecock look !?!

Beat Ballad Bob & Davie A (Studio 37)

 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 -  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)