Sounds Of The Seventies

Sounds Of The Seventies (not to be confused with the Radio 2 nostalgia series hosted first by Steve Harley, and then by Johnnie Walker) was a series of programmes launched on Radio 1 in April 1970, playing what were described as 'adventurous contemporary sounds'. It was presented by a variety of D.J.'s including David Symonds, Bob Harris, Mike Harding (the sound engineer and rock enthusiast, not the folk singer of the same name who became presenter of Folk on 2), Andy Ferris, Stuart Henry, Pete Drummond, Alan Black, Anne Nightingale, John Peel and even actor Vincent Price in 1973. The show originally ran for one hour, between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m from Monday-Thursday on Radio 1's 247m AM frequency, with John Peel's Saturday afternoon show continuing until 1971. In October of that year Sounds Of The Seventies was moved to a 10 p.m - midnight slot, the two-hour show being broadcast on the Radio 2 VHF frequency. It continued until December 1974, when financial cutbacks at the BBC forced it to be axed; of the remaining presenters, only Peel was given a new contract.

Links to Peel
In his Selling the Sixties: The Pirates and Pop Music (London, 19..?, pp. 273-74), Robert Chapman observes that, in the Sounds Of The Seventies programmes,

The new orthodoxy of progressive rock was echoed in the breathy tones and quasi-reverence adopted by several of the show's hosts, which both paralleled a similarly mellow approach to presentation that was developing in American FM radio (...) and unintentionally parodied John Peel's natural broadcasting style