1967 - Forty Years Ago! The Summer of Love!
This was the year when music started to make a real influence on my life! The six weeks holiday in Summer '67 became a milestone, every Sunday afternoon recording the latest Top Twenty with Allan Freeman on my Ekco reel to reel tape recorder with a microphone in front of the transistor radio! The Monkees 'Alternate Title', Scott McKenzie 'San Fransisco' I can remember and sing all the words now. This was a wonderful time, I was 13 years old and just discovering pop music...what a year! I started to buy 'Musical Express' and even attempted to read it, although some of it went completely over my head. I also bought my very first single ... 'I'm a Believer' by The Monkees.
Summer 1967 was the time when for the first time I encountered electronics. Earlier that year I built an 'Electric Shock Machine' made up following a visit to my Uncle Bill in Harwood one hot sunny afternoon to see if he could provide me with a transformer to make one up. In fact he built (on the spot) a very small transformer and buzzer to produce the best 'Electric Shock Machine' in the world! I took this device to school with me just before the holidays and had it 'confescated' by the Headmaster. He said I could collect it after school. I sheepishly knocked on his door at 4.00pm to ask for it back where he looked up at me from his work, handed it over and muttered "Not again boy, not again!" I don't think he had a clue what it was!
In Summer '67 my Uncle Bill (Bill Kay) made me a kit with nuts, bolts, transistors, resistors, capacitors and wires. It was a Monostable Multivibrator connected to a carbon earphone which produced a tone electronically. I was amazed with it! This launched me into the world of Analogue Electronics which would change my life completely for the next 20 years!
The mixture and influence of both music and electronics in the Summer of Love is unforgetable!
The image above is our 1960's week to celebrate the opening and closure of our school, my life now 40 years on!
Links: Monterey Festival
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