Johnny Depp may have made being a pirate fashionable and glamorous with his “Pirates of the Caribbean” film franchise, but I was out there as a pirate sailing the seven seas decades before!! My trusty pirate ship was my Decca Radio Cassette Recorder and the unchartered waters and seas that I traversed were 1970s radio!!

From the moment my first pirate ship came out of dry dock at the Comet Electrical Warehouse for my 12th birthday in October 1974, I was launched on to the slippery slope into music piracy!! That Decca Radio Cassette Recorder and I had so many musical journeys and adventures, before she was scrapped at some point in the 1990s……but before that day, she was the vehicle that technically made me a criminal for illegally recording music off the radio. Although the law was somewhat ambiguous, and unenforceable, it was nevertheless still deemed a criminal act to record music from the radio, as it undermined the music performers rights ( ie song copyright laws that are policed by the Performers Rights Society / PRS for Music )!! My two scenes of crime were Radio One and Radio Luxembourg, although such was the poor reception with the latter, recording wasn’t really an option. Therefore the main crime scene in the mid to late 1970s was Radio One on a Sunday at 6pm , when Tom Browne presented the Top 20 chart rundown, heralded by the “rocket launch” jingle. As a teenager, weekly pocket money wouldn’t stretch much beyond a comic, crisps and a sherbet fountain or gob stopper……therefore buying all your favourite vinyl singles wasn’t an option. Sitting down for an hour and recording your favourite songs on a Sunday evening in the company of Tom Browne and the Top 20 chart rundown was the next best thing!!

Of course the vehicle that made it all possible in conjunction with the radio cassette recorder was the humble cassette tape, which was the original mp3 download vehicle!! The cassette tape didn’t have the tactile beauty and personality of the seven inch vinyl single, but you could record up to 30 of your favourite songs on the C90 format cassette ( duration 90 minutes / 45 mins per side ). The C90 was the best option, as with the C120 there was a tendency for the tape to get tangled up, before ultimately snapping in the cassette tape machine!! Many a time I would be sitting cross legged on my bedroom floor surrounded by masses of twisted and tangled “brown spaghetti”, desperately trying to unravel it in order to save my favourite songs. If the tape snapped, splicing and repairing it with nail scissors and sellotape was a fiddly, frustrating job!!

My days of a being a radio pirate ended at some point in the late 1980s……..well almost…….sometimes I can still be found donning my pirate’s hat and cutlass on a Saturday afternoon for Tony Blackburn’s retro Top 20 Rundown on Radio 2’s “Pick of the Pops” or on a Sunday evening for David “Kid” Jensen’s “Double Top 20 Show” on Smooth Radio!!

If your “pocket money” allows it, you can preserve those favourite songs you once had on cassette tape, by buying them in their original vinyl record or CD format, framed and mounted. ORDER NOW by clicking on…….. http://www.myfirstrecord.co.uk/

Alternatively this would make a unique present or original gift for a special celebration  ie a 40th, 50th or 60th Birthday, a Silver, Ruby or Golden Wedding Anniversary, Father’s or Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day!! THE PERFECT PERSONALISED PRESENT!!