It's only rock n' roll

But we like it!

We had to see the movie. Didn't we?

Linda and I toddled off to the nearest cineplex to catch Pirate Radio the other day. It was an okay movie....nothing great. Not much in the way of a story, but fun.

It's the tale of the constipated BBC refusing to play or acknowledge popular music during the mid 1960's and how a bunch of ragtag radio reprobates (Are there any other kind?) broadcast the hits of the day from an old rust bucket ship operating in international waters. Radio Caroline was one of the first ships, (there were at least two), to rouse the ire of the British government by blasting the Beatles, Beach Boys, Stones and other hot bands of the day to a proletariat salivating for them. The UK was proving even way back then that private enterprise is always superior to the usual government "spend too much and don't get the job done" situation.

The acting was fine; the equipment in sync with the era and the disc jockeys looked exactly like the kind of hoodlums I was proud to have joined here in the United States of America in the 1960's. God, it was a great time to be on the radio!

And that's what struck me.......

The business that was commercial radio in the middle of the last century was absolutely the most fun anyone could have with their clothes on. It became the tribal drum of the boomer generation and it infused everything.

Pirate Radio, the movie, brilliantly captures the pervasiveness of radio in the 60's, for that is precisely how it was. Transistor radios were everywhere! People had them on at work, took them to the beach, blasted them at home and went to sleep with them at night. Of course, we all listened in our cars too. The music united us and to be on the radio purveying the hits was like getting to be a perpetual party host and guest at the same time. (Perhaps that's why the bar always seemed to be open.)

As the movie ended it occurred to me how much has changed in the past forty plus years and how radio and the music no longer unites us.

It was a wonderful time, but it was a L O N G time ago. And, like a distant station at sunrise, it has faded..... probably forever.