The assembly hall dance floor.

Yes, you are right, a truly awful picture.

But it is the only one I have actually showing any of the kids at Linton, you can just make out some girls, if you squint at top right!

This was taken at the Pop Group Concert, in the assembly hall, by accident I guess, looking the opposite direction to the stage, where all the live action was taking place, and shows the cleared area for dance.

Fact is, it did not go down too well, well you can imagine, fake cardboard guitars and what, I don’t think anyone actually got up to dance, thinking about it now, probably the only reason we got the ok to do this, was that, they, the teachers, would take the opportunity to have a relaxed evening!
Kids eh?

Radio Linton

A further development along this theme was Radio Linton.

This is where, again, the idea of playing pop music, similar to DJ style, to all the other kids, allowing them the opportunity to do some rock and roll stuff!

But then we got access to a reel to reel Telefunken Tape Recorder.

So Keith Mead and I compiled a tape of requested pop music which would be played back over the school sound system, pretending to be a pirate radio station with Kieth and I acting out the roles of radio d J''s.
Boy, did we have some daft ideas!

We invited requests, dedications, to be posted in a box deposited in a prominent place, this quickly filled up.

Of course we hadn''t really considered what we would do if the requests and dedications did not match the rather limited collection of 45''s that we had begged, borrowed, or otherwise obtained, from a variety of sources. We had got some real collectors stuff, although we did not know it at the time, Beatles Ep''s in German, unreleased Elvis stuff, and Cliff songs long since banished to room 101!

Anyway, we laid claim to the stationary room, in the classroom block, the new conversion of the old Dorm 2. We had the key, set it up as a studio, and made hay.

The question of not having a record to match the request was solved by recording off a radio! Performing a simple edit, and doing voiceovers, chit chat, mentioning school topics, or as it lead on, telling jokes out of a joke book. Problem was of course, the signal used to fade in and out sometimes, particularly Radio Luxumbourg. We had to sort this problem. This is well before Radio 1, and of course, the commercial radio stations were non existant. Luxembourg was it, with a little pop stuff on the BBC Light Program, but only on a Saturday morning, this became Radio 2 in later years.
I think we had fun.

We did, we had LOADS of fun doing this. I still have the reel to reel tape, its 45 years old, and still plays!

My Reel To Reel tape recorder that I bought in the early 1970''s refused to work, so I have had it repaired, which in itself took 3 months to achieve, so I have now finally got around to digitising the Radio Linton Tape! Interestingly, I discoverd some of the Linton kids singing on an unused section of the tape, not good quality, but I have played with it using Audacity, and used it on the new Linton DVD.

Of course, this interest continued with me, don’t tell anybody, but I have a collection, a massive collection, of taped from "direct connection to radio", cassette, and reel to reel tapes, now mostly transferred to Cd''s.
It’s no loss to the performers, as I had no money to buy their records anyway!