RIP Tommy Vance

[Nick Medford]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2005 14:55:49 EST, GutterCat at AOL.COM wrote:

>In a message dated 07/03/05 18:06:46 GMT Standard Time,
>hawkfan at RATSAUCE.CO.UK writes:
>
>>
>> There must be loads of us ex spotty youths who remember the Friday Rock
>> Show.
>
>Oh yes indeed!

Another one here. And I never even really liked Metal. But TV's show was the
only place you would *ever* hear the music I did like in my teens- Hawkwind,
Zep*, Sabbath, even Jimi Hendrix on occasion, and, to his immense credit, he
was the only DJ who dared play any prog-rock in the 80s, when the music
press at large had decreed that any music pre-1976 was worthy only of
derision (and that it certainly wasn't necessary to actually listen to it
before coming to that judgement). I remember hearing a show where he played
the all-time top 10 tracks as voted by the listeners- and it took the full
two hours to play the 10 songs,as most of them were epics like "Awaken" and
"Supper's Ready". Who else had the bottle- or the simple
don't-give-a-monkeys philosophy- to play Yes or early Genesis on national
radio then?

A sad day. He definitely played a part in my coming to know and love the
music of HW.

Nick

*Listers in the US would be amazed at the rarity with which Led Zeppelin are
played on British radio. In the States, as far as I can tell, it's federal
law that at least one radio station in any tri-state area must be playing
Zep at any given time.