WINDERS DAAHNNN???

Once upon a time, cars didn’t come with very good radios. But the hole in the dashboard was a fixed size. Called a European standard, or DIN. This referred to many things, but for car radios, it meant our own piece of automotive real estate. What electronics could go in there and how well they worked was an endless source of fascination. From AM to FM to Compact cassette, Then the astonishing dawn of compact disc, Followed by the brief Bengal matches that were MiniDisc and even DAT. Kenwood Electronics alone sold a Digital Audio Tape player. They insisted every single one of their dealers had one to show and one to go. And that was all they ever sold of them as far as I know. I am pretty certain in that every single one ended up with somebody with a job in the music business.

Except of course for the one that Ian “Iceman” Pinder owned.

After that, the big fight was all about the iPod. Plug it in, plug it up, Do it better, do it faster! And which bloody model of iPod could you boss? There were at least two models of car radio, one by Fusion and one by Alpine that could literally engulf an iPod in its intestines.

And there were many brands in many shops. Nowadays of course, There is a cluster of uber-brands, starting with absurd alternators, via crazy fat cables, to batteries with too many Volts for normal use, amplifiers that could electrocute an elephant, and subwoofers potent enough to converse with sperm wales. A whopping 160 Decibels is is where ‘loud’ properly begins with the big boys these days. Back then, Being part of the team to crack the very first British 150 dB with our installation was a big deal. I’m still proud of that.. 153.3dB legal-on-the-screen. It took 24 Earthquake Cast Pro Dual Spider fifteens to do it.

But going back to my automotive dawn, I had a rascally chum, who had been stopped by the police and given a ‘producer’. This meant that you have to show your documents to prove that your car is insured, at a police station. So long ago that it was in the era of pieces of paper. These days any policeman in any location can check you on the computer database in seconds flat. For a long time that took many minutes on police radio, with an office based computer operator doing the data look up.

My friend had an even managed to obtain some dodgy documents. (Crikey, I kept some dodgy company back then….) And I gave him a lift to Hayes police station, near Heathrow airport to show them. At the time, the police station was being refurbished and the business of police counter work was being done from a portacabin. By modern standards my car audio system was not crazy, but for then it was one of the loudest in London.

I had a fully removable board covered in amplifiers, assembled with pro audio connections, both sound and power. To this day I have never seen anybody do a removable system like it. I had 1/0ga black and red rubber armoured, two-pound weight milled copper power connections intended for three phase use at a gig. That was my power and earth. It was 670 Watts RMS from Denon across 14 channels. It was mostly 6x9s and one central big subwoofer. With the windows down, Again by the standards of the day, It could turn heads at 300 yards with astonishment for its clarity and distance.

I pulled up alongside the fence of the police station, With the portacabin just to the other side stood upon its little stilted legs. And as my friend presented his documents, I pummelled the living crap out of my system. It was Yello. “The Race” I think. Still one of my favourite tracks of all time. Bob, let’s call him ‘Bob’ as it was his name… Acted as if everything was a matter of fact and every day and was very chatty and friendly to the policeman. He said, (About the more than obviously loud music) “Cor, that’s A bit much. I can feel the floor tickling under my feet! Bloody hell!” And the policeman replies, “Yes and do you know there is nothing we can do about it…” They exchange a couple more pleasantries over the documents as they are cursorily checked.

As I see my chum appear from around the corner I turn the volume down to nothing. It worked a charm.

There has been a law about aggressive and unpleasant use of a car to threaten, cause alarm or distress for some time now. It was designed to curb the worst excesses of turbo nutter bastard and his chums. This did of course happen to include the use of a loud and offensive car stereo broadcasting offensive USA rap.

But now even if it is Dolly Parton’s nine to five through a bass enhancer, If you are doing it in Bradford, you’re in big trouble.

This is from the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-47484507  But basically, in Bradford, “Drivers who play loud music or rev their engines will be fined £100 under new laws. Bradford Council has introduced a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) to tackle anti-social driving.” and “some thought the proposals were an infringement of civil liberties and could unfairly target car enthusiasts.”

The PSPO with a £100 fine will come into force on 1 June.

Joy killing *@$%^&%$£@!

The PSPO with a £100 fine will come into force on 1 June.

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