I had forgotten that "Layla" had charted twice. First, the short version in 1971,
then the full version in 1972.

Looks like it did well in Cleveland, though, the first time on the charts...at #1
!!

In Search of the Wolf

'Border Blaster: In Search of the Wolf' is two 30-minute programmes on BBC Radio 4,
starting Saturday March 22 and concluding the following week, Saturday March 29. It
covers the story of the Mexican 'Border Blaster' stations such as XERB and XERF
that sent high-power transmissions to the US and provided a launch-pad for the
career of Wolfman Jack.

The full story is now on our site

www.radiolondon.co.uk

 - click link button on our  Home Page to reach 'Happenings'. Our story contains a
link to BBC Radio 4, where the programme should be available via the 'Listen Again'
player for one week. Because Part 2 is on air Saturday 30th, Part 1 will probably be
removed on Friday 29th. However, the BBC sometimes leaves programmes on 'Listen
Again'  for longer than a week.

best wishes,

Mary

Hi Gary,

I'm glad you like the site.

The only real explanation I've ever heard for Anorak is as follows:

Boats of day-trippers used to be taken out to visit the offshore stations -although
the captains did not allow them on board. (I believe a few exceptions were made for
attractive young ladies - if the captain was otherwise occupied - but that's
another story!) Only invited guests were permitted to board and were frequently
artists plugging their current singles.

Very often the radio enthusiasts came dressed in hooded coats called anoraks. One
day on Radio Caroline, DJ Andy Archer spotted the tripper boat arriving and said,
"A boatload of Anoraks has just arrived". In fact, the word he used to describe the
visitors to his fellow jocks was allegedly something vastly more derogatory, but
'Anoraks' was the word he used on the air.

Whether or not that's the true explanation, I don't know. The term has come to
describe anyone with an obsessive interest in a particular hobby - usually
something considered fairly nerdy, such as train-spotting or stamp-collecting.

Some radio enthusiasts object to the term, seeing as it can apply to some decidedly
strange people, but Chris and I are quite happy calling ourselves Professional
Anoraks. As you can imagine, there are very few female Anoraks. Luckily, it was a
mutual love of radio that brought Chris and me together. We met 39 years ago, while
working for a hospital radio station.

Best wishes,

Mary

 Mary,

   Great to see your message got through!  Welcome to the ARSA site - there's
plenty here for you to explore and I hope you enjoy doing so.  Thanks for the info
about your Radio London site. I've made a few visits there and am  very impressed
with all the info available. And I've only scratched the surface I'm sure.

  Where does the term Anoraks come from?

Having (I hope)successfully identified the problem why I couldn't post my message,
I'm now going to attempt to send it again in one piece, because it doesn't make a
lot of sense split into two. If it works this time, please delete the other stuff
below this.

Thanks,

Mary

I was intrigued to find your fantastic survey site. My husband Chris and I run the
Radio London website, dedicated mainly to the Sixties offshore station of the same
name, aka Big L. The station was aboard the m v Galaxy off the Essex coast, but was
Texan-owned and based on KLIF. It brought Top 40 format and jingles to a British
audience for the first time.

We'll have been running the site for nine years in March and one of our proudest
achievements is a complete set of Big L Fab Forties. The station was broadcasting
from December 1964 to August 1967, but the first surveys we have start in
mid-January 65. Prior to that, we do not know if any proper charts were compiled.
Radio London had very few new records aboard the ship for the first couple of
months and played a fair amount of tracks that had come across from the US on the
ship.

Our friends on the net-based station Oldies Project air a Big L Fab Forty from the
exact week 43 years ago every Sunday morning.

www.oldiesproject.com

This is the second time the Oldies Project have aired the Fabs, starting again
right from the beginning in 1965. It proved so popular the first time around that
they had to add an extra server, because the existing one was full to capacity.
Then they had to start repeating the chart on Wednesday evenings for overseas
listeners. After the first run finished last August, demand was so great that
Oldies Project agreed to do a second run. They only do it for a hobby and the
amount of time they put into it is amazing.

I constantly add new information to the Fab Forties and I found the ARSA site when
searching for the Zephyrs, whose single 'She's Lost You' is this week (in 1965) the
Radio London Club's Disc of the Week. I was quite amazed to find this obscure single
had appeared in the WMCA Good Guys survey!

See Fab Forty 210265

Over the years, Chris and I have included quite a bit of material on the website
about other offshore stations. We have made a huge number of contacts and friends
in many countries and have organised several offshore reunions.

Last year, a Belgian guy called Jempi asked us if we would host his collection of
Radio Caroline charts, as he was having to give up working on them. Caroline is
probably the best-known of our offshore stations,  and had two ships, North and
South. Jempi's charts are for the South ship. They are very different from the
Radio London charts!

There are links to the Fab Forties and the Caroline charts from our Home Page.

Chris doesn't have much time to spend on the website, so it's mainly me doing the
work and I try to update weekly. There's never any shortage of material and I'm
afraid I haven't yet had time to do any work on the Caroline charts.

I was interested to see that US radio freaks are called Airheads. Here, we are
known as Anoraks!

Best wishes,

Mary Payne, Radio London
www. radiolondon.co.uk

Right, I finally managed to post my message in two parts! I think the problem was
that I put in the urls for the charts, which are rather long. When I took those
out, the message was accepted. Anyway, the charts are easy to access from our Home
Page.

Best wishes,

Mary

www.radiolondon.co.uk 

I constantly add new information to the Fab Forties and I found the ARSA site when
searching for the Zephyrs, whose single 'She's Lost You' is this week (in 1965) the
Radio London Club's Disc of the Week. I was quite amazed to find this obscure single
had appeared in the WMCA Good Guys survey!

See Fab Forty 210265

Over the years, Chris and I have included quite a bit of material on the website
about other offshore stations. We have made a huge number of contacts and friends
in many countries and have organised several offshore reunions.

Last year, a Belgian guy called Jempi asked us if we would host his collection of
Radio Caroline charts, as he was having to give up working on them. Caroline is
probably the best-known of our offshore stations,  and had two ships, North and
South. Jempi's charts are for the South ship. They are very different from the
Radio London charts!

There are links to the Fab Forties and the Caroline charts from our Home Page.

Chris doesn't have much time to spend on the website, so it's mainly me doing the
work and I try to update weekly. There's never any shortage of material and I'm
afraid I haven't yet had time to do any work on the Caroline charts.

I was interested to see that US radio freaks are called Airheads. Here, we are
known as Anoraks!

Best wishes,

Mary Payne, Radio London
www. Radiolondon.co.uk

Message part 1

I was intrigued to find your fantastic survey site. My husband Chris and I run the
Radio London website, dedicated mainly to the Sixties offshore station of the same
name, aka Big L. The station was aboard the m v Galaxy off the Essex coast, but was
Texan-owned and based on KLIF. It brought Top 40 format and jingles to a British
audience for the first time.

We'll have been running the site for nine years in March and one of our proudest
achievements is a complete set of Big L Fab Forties. The station was broadcasting
from December 1964 to August 1967, but the first surveys we have start in
mid-January 65. Prior to that, we do not know if any proper charts were compiled.
Radio London had very few new records aboard the ship for the first couple of
months and played a fair amount of tracks that had come across from the US on the
ship.

Our friends on the net-based station Oldies Project air a Big L Fab Forty from the
exact week 43 years ago every Sunday morning.

www.oldiesproject.com

This is the second time the Oldies Project have aired the Fabs, starting again
right from the beginning in 1965. It proved so popular the first time around that
they had to add an extra server, because the existing one was full to capacity.
Then they had to start repeating the chart on Wednesday evenings for overseas
listeners. After the first run finished last August, demand was so great that
Oldies Project agreed to do a second run. They only do it for a hobby and the
amount of time they put into it is amazing.

 Mary,

   I don't know what, if any, limit Tim placed on this chat section.  Tim??

   The longest message I see below is one from Burbank which is about 450
words/2500 characters.  Try splitting your message into two parts and sending
again.  Hope it works.  Thanks.

Hi Gary,

I wrote approx 500 words about Radio London and its charts. It runs to about 2600
characters. Is this beyond a set limit?

I sent it twice and nothing happened, whereas my short messages were accepted. 

Mary 

  Roy,

   Contact me in email and we'll discuss the details further.  

   Gary Pfeifer
   draco861@yahoo.com

Hi Gary! What a wonderful site, it just goes on and on and on. OK, I will send you
photocopies - I started today with 22 weeks for KYA 1959. Tell me how to procede.

I don't understand your "(without scanned images)" comment. I don't mind scanning
some surveys, but since I have hundreds, it's quite a job. It's super to see the
original surveys in color on your site, so I definitely want my surveys to be part
of that process too. 

Also, do you have preference for years or stations to be contributed?

cheers!  roy

  Mary,

   What are you trying to send?  Your three messages asking for help came through
fine.

   Gary

  Roy,

   Of course we would be interested in fine survey collection!  Thank you kindly
for your offer to share!  You can send photocopies if you'd like and eventually
we'd get them all up on the site (without scanned images) or you're welcome to type
them in yourself.  Contact Tim Warden, if you're interested in the later, to get
yourself set up to do so.
  
   Gary

Webmaster, please tell me where I'm going wrong!

Nope. It's not working. Maybe the message is too long?

I've tried twice to post a message and I don't know if it's worked or not.

Mary Payne
Radio London
www. Radiolondon.co.uk

I have all the original Top 40 charts for radio stations KEWB (910), KYA  (1260),
and KOBY (1550) for the years 1957 thru 1965. These are San Francisco Bay Area
radio stations.

They are all in mint condition.

For example, I'm now looking at KYA's Sept 12,1965 chart: "Eve of Destruction" is
#1; DJ's are Emperor Gene Nelson, Tony Bigg (changed his name to Tony Pig and is
now announcer for Live with Regis and Kelly), Jim Washburne, Johnny Holliday, Bobby
Mitchell, Tommy Saunders and Russ Syracuse.

KEWB May 5, 1962 had "Stranger on the Shore" #1; DJs are Don MacKinnon,Art Nelson,
Ken Knox, Don Bowman, Buck Herrin, Casey Kasem!!, and Michael Jackson.

It's quite a collection and I think they would be wonderful to somehow add to your
"surveys" page. 

Major caveat: I don't want to do the scanning.

Let me know if any interest.

roy

  That's a very intriguing question, Rob, one that needs further research but I'm
not quite sure how to go about it. From memory, I don't recall preparing any
surveys with a jump to No. 1 bigger than that from No, 48, but I certainly may have
forgotten.  

  Although we don't have the particular survey here, another large jump I know of
is also on the WABC charts when the Four Seasons' "Rag Doll" jumped from the Pick
Hit to No. 1 the following week.
     

Wow....a 48-to-1 jump for the Fab Four. Is that the biggest single-week jump to #1
on any of the surveys in the archive? Since the majority didn't list more than 40
tunes, I'm guessing maybe so....but then I haven't done any thorough research. If
anyone knows of one, I'm curious...