Pirate Radio: The Art and Science of London's Illegal DIY Music Scene
Posted by Motherboard on Monday, Mar 29, 2010
Before internet radio — heck, before the whole darn internet — perhaps the only weapon an ordinary person had against the dull rage of mainstream mass media lay in abandoned buildings, broken rooftop locks, and homemade antennae. These are the tools of pirate radio, the vibrant culture covered in this documentary by our pals at VBS for Palladium Boots and helmed by pirate legend Matt Mason.
Back in the 60s, when “pirate” was more closely aligned with scimitars and eyepatches than BitTorrent and DVDs, the granddaddies of London’s underground radio scene took the pirate connotations somewhat literally: they blasted rock music from abandoned postwar military sea forts (and fought off attacks – and welcomed groupies – in the process).
Inland, the raw sounds of fading industrial cities around the UK found ears by way of ramshackle operations situated behind soundproof walls and hidden doors. The saga continues today, as these tech pirates deploy infrared transmitters to relay their signals to hidden aerials while deftly parrying the police.
Ofcom, the government agency in charge of the airwaves, continues to charge that pirate radio endangers lives.. But pirate radio frequencies simply can’t interfere with professional radio stations; they’re only augmenting the spectrum with music and talk that listeners can’t find anywhere else. The grime DJs shoot back that they’ve never hurt anyone: “You’re just putting up an aerial and playing some music, at the end of the day.”
Of course, the old ramshackle, fly-by-night culture documented here is rapidly giving way to the internet, which is taking homegrown radio stations to new bandwidths and new listeners, and lifting the underground into the light. Will London’s pirate radio stations all end up online? Or will nostalgia and wits keep new generations hooked on illegal antennas? And might pirate DJs manage to hack their way into the spectrum of digital radio?
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