Gathering round the wireless, like the olden days

Picture: BBC

Some years ago, someone coined the expression “appointment television” to describe the communal act of everyone everywhere settling in front of the gogglebox at the same time to watch the same show. Whether it was the Christmas EastEnders shocker, the big Dallas reveal or some similar ‘water cooler moment’ of eyeball-corralling inducement, it was, in itself, the evolution of a similar phenomenon that occurred during the golden days of radio.

My parents’ generation would huddle around the Marconi at the appointed hour to listen to The Goon Show, Educating Archie or Hancock’s Half Hour, while my own age group would religiously tune in to Radio 1 on a Tuesday lunchtime for the readout of the new Top 40. It is all, perhaps, a lost art in this age of on-demand digital immediacy, where entire box sets can be binged in one go, and radio has fragmented across a mass of online stations.

All of which made yesterday’s experience both nostalgic and exhilarating in a manner I’ve not experienced since my teens, and a DJ’s first play of a new record by someone like The Police or The Jam: my stepdaughter Ella’s Solent University band, Inbound, released their debut single on Friday, and it was lined up for a first play on three radio stations - Southampton’s community outlet Voice FM, the legendary Gary Crowley’s BBC Radio London show, and the local BBC Introducing show for the Solent area. This led to the faintly hilarious sight of my wife and I, sat in a suburban car park on a Saturday lunchtime, hoping that the 5G connection wouldn’t drop as we waited with apprehension for the very excellent indie banger Something To Lose to break the airwaves for the first time. Quite understandably, there was a moistening of the eye - for my other half, you understand.

Here’s where the weirdness applied: it’s one thing to be excited with expectation at the promise of a new release from a favourite band (years ago, I was in the studio control room of Channel 4’s The Tube when U2’s With Or Without You was played on TV for the first time - with literally everyone agreeing afterwards that it had been a genuine hairs-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck moment); it’s another thing when, despite having heard a sneak preview (it’s helpful when your wife is the mother of the band’s bass player and lyricist), you’ve yet to hear a record from a brand new act blast out from stereo speakers in all of it’s high fidelity glory. I’ve not told my wife this, but even I had a lump in the back my throat, though I had to keep my mouth shut as I recorded the moment on my phone - a slightly shaky handheld shot of a car’s entertainment screen.

As if the lunchtime experience wasn’t emotional enough, the evening consumption was overwhelming. Not to the extent of more tears, just the breakout of utterly goofy grins on our faces, as Crowley - whose status as an eminent London tastemaker, was established back in the early 1980s as Radio 1’s then-youngest ever presenter - introduced Something To Lose just after 7.30pm. “We’ve got new music now from a young five-piece, literally on the first rung of the ladder,” he began. “They’re called Inbound and they sent me a terrific tune this week.” Cue more beaming. 

Just under three minutes later it was done. “Wow!”, came Crowley’s follow-up as the single’s outro reverberated. “How good is that?!” before adding “Got a feeling we’re going to be playing that one again…”.

You’d forgive us for replacing the goofy grins with open mouths, silent gasps and, yes, more moisture around the eyes. I’m new to this parenting lark. Not having children of my own, acquiring a pair of step-daughters - Ella is 21, her younger sister Meg is 17 - has opened an entirely new chapter of experiences over the last five years, as they’ve grown from teens to young adults. In fact, yesterday was quite the day for it, with us driving Meg to the first day of her first ever proper part-time job, before going off in search of that car park to listen to Ella making her broadcast debut. 

Of course, given my own professional origins and lifelong love of music, it’s been a source of immense pride that Ella has found an interest in it herself. Time and fortune will tell whether it becomes her future (and our retirement pension…). Realism will kick in: my joint-oldest friend is a professional musician of some note and an extremely high industry reputation, but even he is someone most people in the mainstream will have never heard of, despite being capable of selling out the Royal Albert Hall for three consecutive nights.

I’ve been around the business long enough in my own career to know that fame, fortune, adulation, financial success - whatever new artists are ultimately seeking - can be a long haul or simply unattainable. But that, thankfully, is not what’s on the table right now. Ella and her band have to first graduate the university that brought them together, and then do boring things like securing first jobs or future studies. But let’s not dampen the moment: for two minutes and fifty seconds, we all had a communal moment that could never be repeated, and for many will never happen at all.

Gary Crowley’s first play of Inbound’s Something To Lose can be heard online for the next 29 days at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0c3yvlr. For news and information about Inbound and where to stream the single, visit https://linktr.ee/Inbound.official.