London pirate radio - news and discussion

[stethoscope]

According to the list, 92.9fm is Pure Love Live but I am now getting Dice fm on that signal.
However, the mobile number for both stations is the same so I guess they have just changed their name?

Yep, changed as of a week or so ago. Don't know the details though.

 

[ska invita]

Never seen this before...I think! They are all quite similiar these little documentaries

class BBC voiceover
Tune ID 1.40 please...Guy Called Gerald??

 

[ddraig]

love Kool
Anita in Charlton still getting shouts too!

 

[ddraig]

no tune playing at 1:40

 

[ska invita]

no tune playing at 1:40

yeah, its quiet (ive got headphones on)

interesting thing about the voiceover is how far mainstream culture has moved on since 1996 dontyathink

love Kool
Anita in Charlton still getting shouts too!

Went to jungle fever last bank holiday and who was there, none other than Kelly from Harlow! Trying to remember how long shes been calling in to Kool..many a year for sure. She seemed very sane and normal (you cant help but wonder about people who call in that much!) - i was quite starstruck!!

 

[ddraig]

yep agreed, shame

i used to call in now and again
and still get shouts on air from bigging them up in the chatroom
loved it then and still love it today

 

[ska invita]

yep agreed, shame

i meant in a good way - the bbc was still so stiff in 96...

 

[ska invita]

BTW ive got about 12 pirate tape rips waiting to upload...92-94 hardcore junglism...just waiting on a last tape from a friend

was about to up them - just accidentally fucking deleted them off the pen drive - have to fucking rerip them not happy

 

[ska invita]

When radio text signals get weak...

~

 

[ddraig]

classic! should email it to em
anon like

 

[ska invita]

Another batch of tapes uploaded - hope you enjoy them - some real favourites in here:
http://mikusmusik.blogspot.co.uk/

Loving the official Defection logo

.

 

[ska invita]

hardscore hs gone down under terrible circumstances

Sad to say an ‘oldskool artist’ complained to the host that some of their tracks were played in the mixes & had them removed which resulted in all mixes being removed.

Hardscore.com RIP

Thanks to all the regular visitors & everyone that has contributed over the years, Mixes, Tracklistings, Ids. Tracklistings will remain, but there’s no immediate plans to get everything back online, but who knows one day may get things rolling again.

http://www.hardscore.com/?p=2534#comments

 

[claphamboy]

Loving the official Defection logo

​

Now that is taking the piss.

I my pirate days we often played the GPO officials a record after a raid, for a laugh, for example a FM site on a hilltop was raided once, and some comment went out on air along the lines of 'to Mr John Ridd from the GPO who we spotted on a certain hilltop last week, but who failed to spot us, here's The Beatles and Fool on the Hill....'

Then there was Radio Concord that during a raid popped the microphone through the letterbox and asked the GPO to comment live on air.

I guess one of the biggest piss-takes came from the offshore station Laser558 in the 80s, when the DTI moored up near-by in a hired 'surveyor ship' to spy on them from and who was supplying the ship, they released this record, based on 'I spy for the FBI', by the 'Moronic Surveyors' as part of what they referred to as 'Eurosiege'...



Or maybe Radio North Sea International in the 70s when they were being jammed by the then Labour government and John Stonehouse was Postmaster General, and they aired 'Who do you think you're kidding Mr Wilson'...

 

[ska invita]

great post CB. What was your own pirating activity?

 

[claphamboy]

great post CB. What was your own pirating activity?

Oh Christ, where do I start?

From age 15, in the late 70s, I published a monthly pirate radio newsletter, which grow to a mailing list of over 1,000 anoraks, produced on an old hand-operated duplicator - that I also used to produce an special emergency edition of the official Radio Caroline Newsletter (5,000 copies), after their usual printer was scared off following a visit from the Home Office & police with a threat of prosecution under the Marine Offences (Broadcasting) Act for promoting Caroline.

That was published from P.O Box 319 (Caroline's wavelength at the time), which doubled-up as a mailing address for various landbased pirates, mainly SW ones, but some on MW & FM too. That caused a visit from John Ridd (GPO), mentioned in my previous post, wanting disclosure of the names & addresses of the people behind these various stations, he was sent away by my father who had a right old go at him - he never returned.

The PO Box was also used for 'Caroline Sales' selling T-shirts, sweat-shirts, car-stickers, badges etc., mostly with the warning on them that read, "It's illegal to listen to Radio Caroline on 319", in some attempt to avoid charges about promoting the station. For some reason I was never visited about that, despite occasional on-air plugs from Caroline, before they started selling their own stuff from the Caroline Newsletter PO Box.

I became a roving reporter visiting shedloads of pirate stations and their sites, including the famous Radio Jackie, and ended-up actually helping loads over a number of years. Had to run like fuck from the GPO & police after raids on a few occasions, only got caught the once, John Ridd was in charge of that raid. I pleaded not guilty on the basis I was only there as a reporter and got off, much to the annoyance of Ridd, who realised I had now basically got a 'licence' to be at any transmitter site without fear of prosecution.

Ridd went on the smash my camera after I tried to photograph him outside the court. I made an official complaint to the police, but they weren't very interested, I wanted to press the issue, but got talked out of it by my dad on the basis I was pushing my luck.

On another occasion Ridd had the police pull-over a mate's car, that I was in, after a raid, but they found nothing in the car. However, Ridd only left his GPO 2-way radio in the boot of the car when we drove off, my mate had a bit of fun with that the next day, before a visit from Ridd wanting it back under promise he wouldn't raid the station for the next couple of months, a promise he actually kept too, much to the amazement of everyone!

What fun & games we had with that cunt!

Of course, the other infamous GPO bloke was one Eric Gotts, who I never actually met because I was faster than him at running, Radio Jackie used to sell some rather good 'I hate Eric' badges, which clearly pissed him off.

In '82, I disappeared off to Ireland to work full-time for one of the 'super-pirates' as the biggest and most professional set-ups were called at the time, a massive loophole had been found in the Irish Wireless Telegraphy Act that allowed 24/7 operations, long before a similar loophole was discovered in the UK Act.

It was crazy, we imported a professional 1Kw MW/AM transmitter from the USA, from the supplier that went on to supply the transmitters for the new Caroline ship that turned-up in 1983. We had a network of 6 FM transmitters, plus another AM transmitter converted from some old army SW rig, a business account and overdraft with the Bank of Ireland and major advertisers such as 7-up, Guinness, Mr Kipling, etc., etc.. We even had a NUJ member in charge of the news service, although stories were basically pirated from RTE & the BBC!

The Gardai, Irish police, regularly phoned in for requests or for messages to be put out, like when cars were stolen, and would drop in to the studio at night for a coffee, often causing panic as they drove into the car-park and the spliff had to be put out and windows opened quickly.

And, all this when we were basically illegal, happy days.

We also became a holiday break location for several Caroline DJs, when they were on shore leave, who then did guest shows for us. Many of the guys I worked with also ended-up on the new Caroline ship, some still do shows on Caroline to this day.

 

[Dan U]

Great stuff clapham boy

 

[claphamboy]

Just found a few of old photos from Ireland...

The original home-made AM transmitter..



before we got the 'big-bugger' from the states....



here's me with one of the big and fucking expensive valves for the 'big bugger'...



The original studio, in a mobile home....



before we moved up-market and indoors....

 

[ska invita]

Great stuff clapham boy

2nd that.
If you have any old newsletters you could scan and share you've got a captive audience here

wanted to see the tshirts you mention so looked on the net, some fun things to see:

you can still buy reproductions here:
http://www.cafepress.co.uk/ radio-caroline t-shirts

Some sort of radio caroline still broadcasting today!
http://radiocaroline.co.uk/#home.html

 

[claphamboy]

2nd that.
If you have any old newsletters you could scan and share you've got a captive audience here

Sadly I don't, although that special Caroline Newsletter I produced was scanned & put up somewhere on the web some years ago, I'll have to see if I can find it.

wanted to see the tshirts you mention so looked on the net, some fun things to see:

Fuck me, that's one of the T-shirts I used to sell.

When it comes to Caroline, here's footage of when the old lady went down, on my fucking birthday in 1980 too.



And here's when they returned in 1983, including my old mate from Ireland Robin Ross (the guy with the big fucking glasses) being interviewed in the studio...



My one regret, is I ever got out to the ship myself, but that's another story, although I did finally spend a night on-board that ship when moored in Tilbury docks, where she remains today whilst they try to find a mooring open to the public where they can use it as a pirate radio museum & to broadcast from it for the satellite & online service they have been reduced to.

Some sort of radio caroline still broadcasting today!
http://radiocaroline.co.uk/#home.html

That's the original still going today, with many of the offshore jocks still involved, several of which I count as mates, including Jonny Lewis, Steve Silby & Clive Derek.

 

[claphamboy]

Oddly enough I am currently tripping my nuts off thanks to some of these new bloody legal highs I've discovered recently typing is a fucking nightmare

Anyway I am sat in this little conservatory thing with Radio Caroline on via the sky box & hi-fi playing some well chilled out trippy album music with the sun trying to break through, it's lovely and warm and colourful and stuff, only thing missing is the OH because she got called into work.

and I am typing, i think , a reply that is sort of in reply to both a private conversation I am having with 'harpo' about his tagline and a thread about pirate radio, now, if I get this right (lol) I should be able to link 'harpo' into the pirate radio thread, which would be fucking amazing in view of the state I am in!

Right, let's try it - hi, harpo - check out this thread, from this post, it maybe of interest or not.

*copy & paste PC reply to thread or something*

Will 'harpo' turn-up on the thread, will he (or she ) link into the matrix or disappear in a puff of smoke, have I done the right thing or have I caused some sort of odd loop-back and broken the internet thing?

Does any of that make fucking sense?

Fuck, I am fucked.

 

[harpo]

Ha! Here it is.

I'll have a good read later.

 

[free spirit]

lol.

 

[claphamboy]

Ha! Here it is.

I'll have a good read later.

Fuck me, it worked!

 

[claphamboy]

2nd that.
If you have any old newsletters you could scan and share you've got a captive audience here

Sadly I don't, although that special Caroline Newsletter I produced was scanned & put up somewhere on the web some years ago, I'll have to see if I can find it.

Found it!

Caroline Newsletter Emergency Issue Number 8 (PDF) - the editorial office for the newsletter was in Spain, and the opening article starts by referring to the fact that on 6/12/78 the Spanish were voting on their new constitution, which would finally give the country a free press, whilst on the same day in the UK the clocks were being turned-back by Scotland Yard, by suppressing the publication of the Caroline Newsletter issue 7, by threatening the printers with prosecution under the MOA (that's the Marine, etc. (Broadcasting) Offences Act, 1967) for promoting Radio Caroline.

On page 2 it says, “With this issue, Newsletter is deliberately breaking the law by with-holding the name and address of its printer. This is to prevent Scotland Yard from cutting off Newsletter a second time from communicating with its readers.” The 'printer' was, of course, me at the tender age of just 16.

I haven't re-read the whole thing yet myself, but I spotted a *STOP PRESS* on page 5 that I had forgotten about, it details the story of some poor medical student who had his home searched under a warrant by the police who, on discovery of a model he had made of the Radio Caroline ship, arrested & charged him for advertising an illegal radio station.

Jesus, you couldn't make it up, could you? Just shows how bonkers things got within authority in attempting to close, at the time, the last remaining offshore radio station, that was basically financially fucked, and just about hanging in there mainly thanks to a bunch of 'alternative sorts' working hard for fuck-all to keep the spirit of free radio alive.

Just under that piece, is another about the ship, the MV Mi-Amigo, that was sinking at the time of writing (early 1979), but they did manage to save it yet again, until it finally went down in March 1980.

It's shit reproduction, I discovered that the wax-based paper stencils used on the duplicator's drum to allow ink to flow & print the pages were never designed for print-runs of 5,000 and they started to break-up making a bit of a mess of the final 'printed' product.

The whole project was a total nightmare, with constant calls from Spain sorting out arrangements, 19 pages x 5,000 copies = 95,000 turns of the handle on the duplicator to produce it - God, my arms ached for days!

You should have seen the state of my parent's dining room at the time - piles of pages spread out around the table and on the sideboard, whilst my brother & me walked round-and-round in circles collating pages, stapling them together, before boxing them up and doing two runs in his ancient old Austin 1100 car to deliver them down to Crawley for mailing out - and I only made a profit of about £20 to cover all my time & effort!

I should never have fucking taken it on TBH, at just 16, but I was the only person they know & trusted to get the thing out - lol.

ETA: On reflection, if they went after that bloke for making models of the ship, just imagine the fun they would have had with me for 'printing' that newsletter.

ETA 2: Piece on page 9, again I had forgotten about, refers to a bloke sent to prison for displaying a Radio Caroline car-sticker! x 100

 

[Onket]

Interesting stuff, cheers.

 

[claphamboy]

If anyone is interested in the early years of pirate radio in London, I've just found a link to the "On the Run" documentary which I used to have on cassette many years ago, it's an hour & half long, and starts in 1968 covering the first pirate, Radio Free London, and continues the history up to 1973, featuring several of the early stations including the two biggest during that era - Radio Jackie & Radio Kaleidoscope.

It's a bit weird listening to it again after about 25 years, particularly as several people I met and/or interviewed and/or shared some time with on various transmitter sites in the late 70s & early 80s are featured or at least name-checked.

The first half hour is a bit boring as the early stations were very amateur and usually only transmitted for half-an-hour at a time, as they were house/flat based and the GPO was very active with raids.

Things started to get more professional when Radio Jackie moved to using fields as transmitter sites, doing at first 6 hours every Sunday, they were also the first to start transmitting on VHF/FM.

Fast forward to about 43mins 30sec for the more interesting stuff, there's plenty of contributions from Jackie's Mike Knight, using his real name of Nick Catford in the interview on BBC Radio London for some reason.

Now Mike/Nick was a hero on the pirate radio scene at the time, and not for the fact that he built my first ever transmitter, but because he ended-up in court so often and didn't appear to give a flying fuck. As a result he was the first, and I think only, landbased pirate operator to serve a prison sentence, after which he had to operate more behind the scenes and avoid being on any live transmission sites.

The talk of operating from fields brings back happy memories of carting stuff, including car batteries for power, across muddy fields on early Sunday mornings in order to get on-air. I lost count of the number of jeans & T-shirts I lost to spills of bloody battery acid, my mother could never understand how my cloths developed so many holes.

It was an odd, relatively short period in British broadcasting history - between the closing of most of the off-shore stations on August 14, 1967, and the opening of Britain's first commercial radio stations, LBC, on October 8, 1973, and Capital Radio a week later.

During that period, the "fight for free radio" was at its height. Land-based pirate radio flourished, and especially so in London. From Radio Free London and Radio Freedom on 255metres, to the Radio Free Helen network on 197 metres; from Radio Jackie to the London Transmitter of Independent Radio; numerous music stations attempted to make short weekend broadcasts before being apprehended by the authorities in the form of the Post Office, then in charge of dealing with such things as offenders against the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949. Sometimes stations were raided in under half an hour, resulting in all kinds of tricks on the part of the broadcasters to avoid capture.

The story is told in this London Underground/Pyramedia Productions radio documentary, originally made available by Script magazine in 1973. Including a mass of off-air actuality and interviews with staff of stations such as Radio Free London, Radio Jackie and Radio Kaleidoscope, On The Run tells the story of London's clandestine radio stations as they approached a turning point - facing the start of legal commercial radio.
Land-based pirates of course continued right up to the present day, but the 1971-73 period was certainly a classic era for underground broadcasting in the UK.
The programme runs for just under one and a half hours and is available to play at the top of this page, or to download.

http://www.transdiffusion.org/radio/features/on_the_run_the

 

[claphamboy]

There's also some interesting stuff on the history page of the Radio Jackie site - HERE.

Radio Jackie, as a pirate, operated from March 1969 to Feb 1985, having started 24/7 broadcasts in 1983, until finally returning in in 2003 as a legal station, following the take-over of the bankrupt Thames Radio.

In 1983 Radio Jackie launched a full 24 hours a day service. During this period Dave Pearce (now BBC Radio 1) and Paul McKenna (TV perfomer and hypnotist) first cut their teeth in the media. A Radio Jackie shop was opened, the studios were in Worcester Park with the transmitter in North Cheam. Radio Jackie was VAT registered and listed in the phone book. Full time staff were employed to work from Radio Jackie's office and shop - initially in Morden and later in Central Road, Worcester Park. Kingston and Sutton Councils passed motions supporting Radio Jackie's bid to be licensed to serve South West London. In 1984 a petition, calling for the station to be given a licence, was signed by over 55,000 people and supported by many local councillors and the MP for Mitcham and Morden. Independent surveys at the time showed that Radio Jackie was one of the most popular radio stations in South West London. As the station's campaign for a radio licence grew so the regional and national media took notice. BBC TV, Channel 4 and ITV all covered the campaign for the station to be awarded a licence to serve South West London.

There's some great photos on that page, including ....

A transmitter site.

Novel methods were used to cart heavy equipment around!

The book advertised on that page, about their history, makes for very interesting reading BTW.

 

[claphamboy]

Ha! Here it is.

I'll have a good read later.

There's some tribute planned for Rich Dane & Radio Jackie North coming up in November put together by MAR (Merseyside Alternative Radio) that will be broadcast on-air and online, you may want to keep an eye on THIS SITE.

 

[harpo]

There's some tribute planned for Rich Dane & Radio Jackie North coming up in November put together by MAR (Merseyside Alternative Radio) that will be broadcast on-air and online, you may want to keep an eye on THIS SITE.

 

[ska invita]

There's some tribute planned for Rich Dane & Radio Jackie North coming up in November put together by MAR (Merseyside Alternative Radio) that will be broadcast on-air and online, you may want to keep an eye on THIS SITE.

CB, you should really check out www.radionecks.com < could well be of interest to you - sure theyd be interested to hear you stories too