BBC Radio 1 and the Charts Show

So it is the 50th anniversary of BBC Radio 1, a milestone and I am actually older than the channel, which I didn’t know. Growing up the radio was an important part of our daily life in our house it was on most of the time as for Watch with Mother there was no TV until the early evening.

I was only seven when radio 1 started broadcasting I probably listened to it at some time that day possibly at breakfast the radio was always on then. BBC Radio 1 was launched as a pop music station giving official competition to the likes of Radio Luxembourg and the pirate stations who had a monopoly on pop before the BBC launch.

Growing up surrounded by all different kinds of music gave me a good all-round grounding in music you couldn’t pick and choose your music like today on the many music platform the youth have today. You would have to sit and listen. Has I grow one show become a regular must, the Sunday chart show.

As a young teenage come a Sunday if I were home I would listen to the last hour of the top 40 charts on the radio intensely back in the day. It was three-hour show called Solid Gold Sixty that featured new releases, climbers and chart entries below the Top 20 and the last hour was the Top 20 itself from 6pm–7pm. Tom Browne was the presenter at the time.

I remember the fun in trying to tape it … I would sit there, finger poised on the pause button to stop the tape whenever the presenter talked over a song! You had to be quick but still you wanted to get is much of the song you could get and not be too premature with the finger. Youth today would have no idea the pains we when through for our love of music.

Today I couldn’t give a toss about the chants most of in bores me in fact I could tell you who was number one people just don’t care. Below there is the top ten on this day for October 1973.

1 EYE LEVEL - SIMON PARK ORCHESTRA

2 BALLROOM BLITZ - THE SWEET
3 MONSTER MASH - BOBBY (BORIS) PICKETT AND THE CRYPT-KICKERS
4 MY FRIEND - STAN SLADE
5 NUTBUSH CITY LIMITS - IKE AND TINA TURNER
6 ANGEL FINGERS - WIZZARD
7 FOR THE GOOD TIMES - PERRY COMO
8 LAUGHING GNOME - DAVID BOWIE
9 JOYBRINGER - MANFRED MANN'S EARTH BAND
10 ROCK ON - DAVID ESSEX