Pebbles, ponds and ripples ....

Having had the opportunity to go through the mountains of collected data from researched topics that all began by curiosity arising from the subject of offshore 'pirate' radio broadcasting, and then looking at another mountain of books about this subject, and that is in addition to the vast back-numbers of newspaper and magazine articles, not ignoring all of those documentaries both on radio and television, well it is enough to confuse anyone looking at this topic for the first time.

Any person trying to make sense of all this would need to self-isolate and shut out the world to look at all this material afresh. But who has time for that, in this busy world? 

However, thanks to the Chinese gift to the world of their pandemic, nearly everything has shut down in fear, of what is not very clear. Sounds like the old Buffalo Springfield record from 1967 called 'For What It's Worth', which begins with: "There's something happening here; What it is ain't exactly clear ..." I lean to the famous explanation by President Roosevelt on March 3, 1933, when he said: ".... the only thing we have to fear is ... fear itself ...." and that fear has led to what he further defined as: ".... nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

That digression brings me to another one. It is a published academic article by members of 'The Trio', which begins with these words:
"On April 6, 1917, the United States of America began assembling a fighting force to engage in WWI. This American Expeditionary Force would eventually total almost 5 million men under arms, of whom 116,000 would die and 230,000 would be wounded when combat came to an end the following year. As if this was not enough mayhem for any generation, an influenza pandemic swept the world during this conflict and it killed more people in weeks than the sum total that died in combat during The Great War." See: http://foundthreads.com/04.html

So, thanks to the Chinese dictatorship and their Wuhan lab; plus the wonders of the Internet (which is still functioning), and to memory sticks; the cloud, and a laptop; I have been able to sequester myself without worrying about the time, or a schedule, and I have immersed myself into a bygone time: the years of the Cold War following the aftermath of World War II. It is from within that same time-frame that the sub-theme of offshore commercial broadcasting to the British Isles began to emerge, and finally it found success, albeit of a very limited duration, between the years 1964 to 1967.

But that story line does not begin a vacuum, and nor is it a story that is merely about pop records and a market of  baby-boomers emerging as teens. They are fringe players, but the vast amount of publications and audio-video material created about that era would have you believe that it all took place in some form of surrealistic self-isolation from the real world decades before the Chinese pulled their pandemic stunt.

In fact, those teenage baby-boomers of the Sixties, formed a small cultural part of a bigger picture that was the offshore radio  world of yesterday.

After finding more questions than answers in relation to solving the immediate mystery behind that single paragraph on page 276 of 'Radio Man', and then digging into the past of a former lightship that was earmarked in the press to become an offshore radio station; it became necessary to look for a universal time line into which everything fits, and more importantly, to look for a catalyst: a pebble or a stone that might have been thrown into a pond that began the ripples that simultaneously began to emerge in all directions. But what if more than one stone or pebble was thrown into that pond of time, and what if they were thrown in at the same moment in time?

Other writers have followed surface trends such as anecdotal cameo reminiscences by former disc jockeys, or even various hangers-on whose embellished tales of what they claim to have overheard, or witnessed, forms a new narrative; albeit a narrative without demonstrable authenticity. That is not what is being constructed on this site now that I have the time (thanks to Wuhan) and the resources (thanks to 'The Trio'), and a place to spread out and analyze all of this (thanks to my uncle.)

So let me establish a major first point: It is not a single stone that is being cast into a still pond; because the pond is not still. Other people are simultaneously casting their stones into that same body of water. Therefore I have to define what metaphorical body of water these stones are being cast into. In this instance it seems to be the vast Atlantic Ocean which is by no means still, and which ultimately connects the continent of North America to the archipelago that forms the British Isles.

Reading the story of Ralph Peer (in 'Creating Country Music'), it became rapidly apparent that his life connected with more the world of 'primitive' musicians, because he also connected to the embryonic record industry; the stirrings of broadcasting, and the re-writing of copyright law to apply to printed sheet music and its performance on record. Not only that, Peer's influence has been reflected on worldwide. But Ralph Peer was not alone in having this kind of influence; in broadcasting there have been men such as David Sarnoff and John Reith who caused the medium to be shaped according to their views. However, all of them interrelated with the world of money and the political powers that controlled the controllers.

So money does seem to be a worthwhile theme to follow, as per that exhortation in 'All the President's Men', and since by happenstance, or serendipity, right at this moment I happen to be looking at political-money documents retrieved from the British National Archives at Kew, that is where I will begin. These documents also connect up with the story of GBOK, so if, like the person who calls himself 'Scottg' you are wondering when I will tell you about Farraday Electronics, the answer is, I will get to it, when I get to it. But unlike people such as 'Scottg', my approach will remain that of a person presenting a case before a court of law, and before moving to point number two, it is necessary to establish point number one.

If you haven't heard the routine by Steve Martin many years ago when he dealt with this issue of establishing the first item of evidence before moving on to the second point by simply mentioning the first point in passing, then you should listen to this:
 https://youtu.be/zXmQW_aqBks?list=RDzXmQW_aqBks