The True Oasis (Hertscore Continuum)

Unfortunately they are the Shed Seven of ambient jungle, but below is something of a classic

Oaysis - from St Albans!

Part of the Hertscore Continuum!

Outposts in Stevenage, Hertford itself, Hitchin ... 

Labels like Moving Shadow, Candidate and PM Records....  

Photek, Source Direct... 

Omni Trio obviously

2 Bad Mice / Kaotic Chemistry....

Gappa G and Hypa Hypa, from Luton

Who played on a pirate called Perception FM, out of Luton / Hitchin area

As did DJ Concrete 

And to my surprise there were other pirate radio stations in Hertfordshire

Via RollDaBeats forum, ancient post

Mad FM

freq: 90.6

area: Hertfordshire

broadcast out of Hertford town centre

known years running: 1990/1-1993

basic style genre: Oldskool

known dj's: 2 Stoned crew (2 bad mice in disguise), dj lucky, dj active, dj duffy

 

Frequency FM

freq: 101.4fm

area: Hertfordshire

known years running: 1991-1993

basic style genre: Oldskool

known dj's: DJ Legacy (myself), DJ Twist, DJ Nitemare, DJ Donny P, DJ Shiva

Got bust when the aerial got blown down in high winds.

(and this one, shrouded a bit in non-knowledge)

Unknown FM

freq: 108.0 fm

area: Hertfordshire (not 100% though)

known years running : no idea

basic style genre: no idea

known dj's: no idea

And what do you know, just this morning Droid alerts me to this release by Justice and Metro, a mini-LP  titled PRESSURE 101.5 FM-Luton Pirate Memories. 

It's actually from a few years ago and is woven out of old pirate adverts and jingles - info about long-lost record shops and club nights in the Luton and Dunstable area.

"J and M takes us on a journey back to the 90's and compile Pirate radio adverts from their local station Pressure FM. The flip is a track inspired by the sounds being broadcast around the rave era."

Hark at the well spoken voices in the adverts...  big up the bourgeoisie! big shout going out to the  middle class massive!

"Right of admission is reserved - and this is a drug-free zone" - yeah pull the other one, luv!

1. Pressure EZ 03:41

2. 101.5 Skit 01:04

3. Last track from me..... 00:32

4. Soul Sense 00:26

5. Mad Dog Birthday Rave 00:49

6. Soundz Wicked 00:37

7. Gatsby's Hair Dressing 00:32

8. Pressure Zone 00:43

9. Ozone 2 01:15

10. 33 studio 00:38

https://modernurbanjazz.bandcamp.com/album/pressure-1015-fm-luton-pirate-memories

Got No Room for Ravers

Samples Small Faces's "Lazy Sunday"! 

The bit about his grumpy next-doors objecting to the noise of loud fun - "wouldn't it be nice to get on wiv' me neighbours? / but they make it very clear they've got no room for ravers"

Features the phrase "mustn't grumble" - the soul of Englishness (pre-ravers, at any rate) quintessenced

There is also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it  comb-and-paper quotation of a Stones song - "Satisfaction" it says at Wikipedia, although it sounds almost more like "Let's Spend the Night Together" to me

I should have put "Lazy Sunday" in my list of Greatest Number Twos 

The album as a whole I've never quite clicked with except for the opening title track with its amazing colorized bass and phased drums and keyboards.

And of course enjoy the Stanley Unwin element

Got this album 

"Lazy Sunday" is very much rooted in the same oh-so-English world as Carry On

A-wouldn't it be nice to get on with me neighbors?

But they make it very clear they've got no room for ravers

They stop me from groovin', they bang on me wall (what's going on in there?)

They doing me crust in, it's no good at all, ah

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I've got no mind to worry

I close my eyes and drift away

Here we all are sittin' in a rainbow

Gorblimey, hello, Mrs. Jones

How's old Bert's lumbago? ("He mustn't grumble")

I'll sing you a song with no words and no tune

(Tweedle-dee bite) to sing in the khazi while you suss out the moon, oh yeah

Lazy Sunday afternoon, ah

I've got no mind to worry, ah

Close my eyes and drift away, ah

A-roo-dee-doo-dee-doo

A-roo-dee-doo-dee-die-day

A-roo-dee-doo-dee-dum

A-roo-dee-doo-dee-doo-dee

There's no one to hear me

There's nothing to say

And no one can stop me from feeling this way, yeah

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I've got no mind to worry

Close my eyes and drift away

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I've got no mind to worry

Close my eyes and drift

Close my mind and drift away

Close my eyes and drift away

 You could probably essay an, er, essay that claimed for Ogden's Nut Gone Flake what Greil M claims for The Band, i.e. the ravers (Sixties version of) generation mending the breach with the parent generation....

Which (despite "She's Leaving Home") already started happening on Sgt. Pepper's, to some extent. "Penny Lane", certainly.

Or perhaps simply that for all the trips and the dabbles with Eastern spirituality and all the other Sixties neophiliac adventures breaking loose from tradition.... you still wake up in England, embedded in centuries of history... 

Tale "Itchycoo Park" 

Spiritually hungering Ronnie Lane got into Sufism by 1968, but he lifted the melody or part of it from a 16th Century hymn, "God Be In My Head"   while "the theme to the words" came from "a hotel in Bath or Bristol. There was a magazine in the room with a rambling account of some place in the country and it was about ‘dreaming spires’ and a ‘bridge of sighs’ – there was a write-up on this town – and I just thought they were nice lines.”

Steve Marriott meanwhile said lyrical inspirations come from stinging nettles and an actual park in Ilford:

"Ronnie Lane and I used to go to a park called Itchycoo Park... We used to bunk off school and groove there. We got high, but we didn’t smoke. We just got high from not going to school. Itchycoo Park is the nickname of Little Ilford Park in London. An “Itchycoo” is slang for a flower found in the park called a Stinging Nettle, which can burn the skin if touched.”

"Life is just a bowl of All Bran"

Talk about Englishness - Marriott as the Artful Dodger for the album-of-the-original-stage-musical Oliver! He was in the original stage production playing various boys roles.

Oliver! creator Lionel Bart appears in this delightful Georgia Brown (Nancy in the original stage version  - did she share scenes with Marriott?) conceived and presented investigation of the Jewish East End and the question of what makes you a Cockney

I was just thinking that Georgia looks the spitting image of Marc Bolan, another famous Jewish East London singer, and then at 19.28 she says "that's a gas" 

Another amazing time travel capsule, a BBC report on Cockney idiom from 1976