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| Original Virgin Record Store in 1973 |
For example this was the beginning of the Virgin empire of Richard Branson who started a record store and record label with Nik Powell in Oxford Street in 1973.
The success of not only the store, which specialised in hard-to-get albums and krautrock releases, but of its own record label that launched Michael Oldfield and Tubular Bells is now history.
This was also the time of Supertramp, Crime of the Century released in 1974 and Crisis? What Crisis? released in 1975.
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| Concert poster |
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| One of our concert tickets |
One of the most memorable events was when we attended the Crystal Palace Garden Party VIII on June 7 1975.
Crystal Palace was only a 22 minute bus ride from where we lived - very convenient.
The bands included Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Steeleye Span, Billy Cobham, John Cale , Jack Bruce Band with Carla Bley and Mick Taylor.
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| A wide view of the concert |
The day was incredibly hot, so hot that a good number of people jumped into the lake to cool off - with and without clothes.
We'd never seen such huge beer cans in out lives, so Danielle had to pose with one.
We also attended a reggae concert in a park near Brixton, but this time we were among the absolute minority of pale European faces in a sea of dark Caribbean faces. The music was fantastic, but we felt a little uncomfortable.
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| Brixton Ritzy Theatre |
A particularly memorable evening was watching The Harder They Come in the local Brixton Ritzy cinema.The predominantly Jamaican audience cheered or booed loudly at various points in the movie depending on the action.
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| Time Out issue 257, January-February 1975 |
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| Time Out issue 267, April 1975 |
This was the only way to find out what was happening in London, and it had a fairly radical attitude for the time.
As well as focussing on the music scene, it took a non-conformist stance on issues such as gay rights, racial equality, and police harassment.
Modern pop music was not either not broadcast by radio stations, or the signals were too weak. Into the gap leaped the pirate radio stations. "Pirate radio" in the UK first became widespread in the early 1960s when pop music stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio London started to broadcast on medium wave to the UK from offshore ships or disused sea forts.
The stations were set up by entrepreneurs and music enthusiasts to meet the growing demand for pop and rock music, which was not catered for by the legal BBC Radio services.
