Brand new viewing in the form of a brilliantly shot and researched short documentary about London’s pirate radio, put together by Matt Mason, author of A Pirate’s Dilemma, in collaboration with Palladium. An impressive array of underground legends who’re still waving the banner got involved in this at their own personal risk of being shut down and convicted.
A definite highlight that emphasises the culture is original pirate legend Tony Pine talking about the days of running the show from three miles off the coast. Lots of climbing on roofs, setting up bootleg electronics in parking garages, loud music, and running away from radio cops.
‘What you know about pirate radio? This dope short documentary gets up to date with everything you kind of knew and somethings you had no idea about’.
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Great item…..
The Dutch pirate station I broadcasted on, Radio Tonka, was taken of the air by the police in may 2004. We were fortunate to make a come-back as a station in 2005, ironically as part of a local radiostation, funded by the government.
We used to broadcast from squatted buildings, the police could not come in at once, but needed approval of the mayor and the justice department (and support by a riot squad).
That kept us from being taken of the air for a long time, while hundreds of Dutch pirate stations were taken off the air in the first 5 years of this century. The reason was the government had sold the frequencies to commercial stations, and those frequencies had to be free of any disturbance.
Today the’re only very few stations left who broadcast on the FM, but there’s a lot of activity on the internet as well
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