London pirate radio - news and discussion

[cupid_stunt]

CodeSouth continues down on the south coast around Brighton & beyond, been on for years now.

Meanwhile Radio Caroline is not only now licenced on the former BBC World Service frequency of 648 AM for Suffolk & north Essex, but ironically is also using their former transmission site & mast at Oxfordness!

About 70 MPs supported Caroline getting an AM licence, 'community' stations normally only get flea power, OFCOM invented a new 'community of interest' licence (i.e., in this case, people into the adult album format) and granted them 1Kw - covering most of the south-east & into London!

They are also on various of these trial DAB mini-multiplexes, and just added the central London one to their list.

Radio Caroline is actually the oldest UK radio station, starting offshore in 1964, before Radios 1-4 launched in 1967!

 

[blossie33]

Kool Fm have been off FM for what feels like nearly a year....it least 9 months I reckon
House FM which was always one of the best signals regularly off FM last few months.
I cant even get Rinse on the FM recently (anyone else?)
Seems weird.
Im wondering if Kool are planning an application for a legal license? (Pure speculation)

I can't get either of those now either.

I'm listening to Point Blank a lot now which is generally dance music (they're also on the internet) it's really nice and clear.

 

[skyscraper101]

Flex FM finally going legal today in just under an hour they launch 12pm Midday 1/7/2018.

101.4FM - Best BELIEVE

(Also available on TuneIn etc)

Anyone else gonna be locked in?

 

[Callie]

Flex FM finally going legal today in just under an hour they launch 12pm Midday 1/7/2018.

101.4FM - Best BELIEVE

(Also available on TuneIn etc)

Anyone else tuned in?

I'll give em a listen but heading out of London so won't be for long, they'll be my commute station if they're any copies in this incarnation.

Can't seem to get rinse on my car radio anymore?

 

[skyscraper101]

UPDATE: Flex FM are now lanching at 1pm. In around 20 mins.

Keep it locked in.

 

[skyscraper101]

Listened to Flex FM for a few hours yesterday, and again this morning. Didn't notice a huge difference except it sounds bit more slick and legit. I'm hoping it won't turn into just another generic bland commercial dance station a la Kiss.

Anyone else listened in yet?

 

[cupid_stunt]

Keep it locked in.

We used to have a promo on one of the Irish pirates I worked for, in the 80s, that said, 'Hits954, lock it in, and rip your knob off'.

I think we nicked it off Laser558.

 

[Callie]

Listened to Flex FM for a few hours yesterday, and again this morning. Didn't notice a huge difference except it sounds bit more slick and legit. I'm hoping it won't turn into just another generic bland commercial dance station a la Kiss.

Anyone else listened in yet?

I've had a listen, a bit yesterday (they were on air before 13:00? ), yesterday evening at around 22:00 and this morning. Was hoping to catch a show other than yer variations on commericial/chart house type stuff (you'll have to excuse my mislabelling iof genres, so out of touch ) but nada. I am aware their pirate schedule was mostly in this vein though.

Gonna have to check their schedule, I guess fri/sat evenings are where I will find what I seek!

 

[Callie]

In other vaguely pirate related news: I saw a poster for Huckleberry Finn who is playing a gig in Coulsdon (deepest darkest outskirts of Croydon). He used to play on Girls FM 25 years ago. tempted even though it'll probably be yer commercial house that Ive just expressed a desire to duck on Flex

 

[skyscraper101]

I've had a listen, a bit yesterday (they were on air before 13:00? ), yesterday evening at around 22:00 and this morning.

They were doing test transmissions up until 13:00. Supposed to launch at 12:00 BST but pushed back by 1 hr.

 

[ska invita]

yes caught a few minutes of Flex yesterday....must be much stronger signal as i never used to pick them up on FM this way and this was Bromley look forward to more

 

[skyscraper101]

I enjoyed some of the studio chat in the afternoon about the old illegal days where they were finally able to reveal some of the shenanigans publicly for the first time ever

ETA. They seem to be playing some good dark garage right now

 

[Callie]

They were doing test transmissions up until 13:00. Supposed to launch at 12:00 BST but pushed back by 1 hr.

ahh yes that makes sense,
there was some announcement things saying it was a test

I enjoyed some of the studio chat in the afternoon about the old illegal days where they were finally able to reveal some of the shenanigans publicly for the first time ever

ETA. They seem to be playing some good dark garage right now

cant listen at work

 

[ska invita]

Catching Oliver Suddens show today, Thursday 12 - 2, lovely crate digging selection. Oliver is or was a UK hip hop MC so I expect there'll be some of that in the mix too... Anyhow classy show. Flex signal strong too

 

[kenny g]

We used to have a promo on one of the Irish pirates I worked for, in the 80s, that said, 'Hits954, lock it in, and rip your knob off'.

I think we nicked it off Laser558.

It was a generic jingle from the US stations -

 

[cupid_stunt]

It was a generic jingle from the US stations -

Which would make sense as Laser558 was programmed by & largely staffed by American DJs.

We did run a competition, can't remember the prize, but people had to drop their knobs into the radio station for the chance to win, we had all sorts of knobs from electrical stuff, a few door knobs, etc., dropped-off. The the winners was a bakery delivering a knob baked out of pasty, in the shape of a cock & two balls.

 

[kenny g]

Which would make sense as Laser558 was programmed by & largely staffed by American DJs.

We did run a competition, can't remember the prize, but people had to drop their knobs into the radio station for the chance to win, we had all sorts of knobs from electrical stuff, a few door knobs, etc., dropped-off. The the winners was a bakery delivering a knob baked out of pasty, in the shape of a cock & two balls.

http://www.onsight.ie/liambyrne/limerick_radio_site/the_pirate_era/hits954/the hottest hits.mp3 is very similar to one of the Laser558 jingles. Can remember writing on my school book at the time, "When the others keep on talking I keep on working."

 

[cupid_stunt]

http://www.onsight.ie/liambyrne/limerick_radio_site/the_pirate_era/hits954/the hottest hits.mp3 is very similar to one of the Laser558 jingles. Can remember writing on my school book at the time, "When the others keep on talking I keep on working."

That is a Laser one, it has their famous 'laser zapping' sound effect, that's one we used in Ireland on Hits954 (which is in that url), we had studio quality copies of all their jingles, generously supplied by one of their British engineers.

 

[cupid_stunt]

kenny g - thanks for linking to that, on this page there's a nice piece about Hits954: Liam Byrne's corner of the web

At precisely 2pm, the following jingle "Over the past few weeks, you've been listening to 'Coming soon on 101FM, the hits and nothing but the hits - stay tuned' - well, we've arrived!", and the station kicked off with Starship's "Nothing's gonna stop us now".

It subsequently emerged that the station ID was HITS 954, and that it was also broadcasting on 954AM - the 954 signal was pretty weak*, but the signal quality on FM was the best we'd heard.

Hits 954 had arrived in Limerick with an impressive presence on the airwaves

* We had problems with the AM transmitter at launch, we finally got it on full power about 3 or 4 weeks later.

This brings back happy memories, we had a right old laugh 'gate-crashing' the RTE Radio 2 outside event...

The staff went to an RTE "Beat on the Street" and gave out this flyer - which kicked off a hell of a hullabaloo!

And, referenced in my earlier posts:

Hits were first with a few other items, too, not least their emphatic "Lock it in and rip the knob off" promo!

Another Laser jingle, this one was edited to take out 558 & replace with 954:

http://www.onsight.ie/liambyrne/limerick_radio_site/the_pirate_era/hits954/9-9-954.mp3

Blimey, there's a couple of very short clips of the DJs:

http://www.onsight.ie/liambyrne/limerick_radio_site/the_pirate_era/hits954/Mark Warner.mp3 How tight he was, never crashing the vocals.

http://www.onsight.ie/liambyrne/limerick_radio_site/the_pirate_era/hits954/Keith Lewis.mp3 More laid back evening & overnight style.

http://www.onsight.ie/liambyrne/limerick_radio_site/the_pirate_era/hits954/Dave Shearer.mp3 Bonkers breakfast show.

- If I say so myself, they were a bunch of bloody professional DJs, all very good at changing their style depending on the time of the day.

ETA: Because we were 'hot hits', less waffle, more music, we had a sign above the mic that read - 'Fuck all to say? Say fuck all!'

We had professional broadcast standard studio equipment, all ex-BBC stuff from Northern Ireland, no idea if it came to us legally or if some BBC staffer nicked it & fogged it to us, we didn't ask , but it was bloody good stuff.

 

[kenny g]

Amazing how professional the Irish pirates became considering the size of the size of the population covered. That website mentioned lots of folks from the Voice of Peace worked on Hits.. was there a lot of crossover?

 

[cupid_stunt]

Amazing how professional the Irish pirates became considering the size of the size of the population covered. That website mentioned lots of folks from the Voice of Peace worked on Hits.. was there a lot of crossover?

For anyone that doesn't know, Voice of Peace was an offshore radio station that served the Middle East for 20 years, anchored off the Israeli coast, and it was a great training ground for DJs.

The original pirate I worked for was ABC Radio Tramore/Waterford, and the launch of that was actually plotted on board the Peace ship, when news reached them about the loophole in Irish law, that had basically created a situation where pirates could operate 24/7 without risk of action against them.

So, yes, there was a big cross-over between ABC, Hits954, the Voice of Peace, and indeed Radio Caroline, when they returned from their new ship in 1983. One of the ABC DJs, Robin Ross - the guy with the big glasses in the video below, actually left to join the new Caroline ship in Spain, before the journey to its anchorage in the Thames Estuary, so was one of the first voices heard when it relaunched.

Most had started off on UK land-based pirates, before heading to the offshore stations and Ireland.

 

[ska invita]

Looks like Flex on a Tuesday is dnb/jungle night...three shows on b2b...tonight had Bryan G and now Kane interviewing Ragga Twins and Navigator talking right back to Unity sound days....

 

[cupid_stunt]

Nice piece in the New York Times:

London’s Radio Pirates Changed Music. Then Came the Internet.

 

[skyscraper101]

Some right annnoying twats on Flex FM this morning. I said I was fearful of the future now they’ve gone legit... and I’m listening to two DJs playing movie themes and getting listeners to phone in to guess what they are.

 

[skyscraper101]

Anyone familiar with The Dominion Order? They seem to be based out of Essex, and play a lot of oldschool rave, hardcore and jungle. They stream across social media including Facebook, and TuneIn. I've been liking their output recently...

Listen to The Dominion Order on TuneIn

http://thedominionorder.co.uk/

 

[moody]

early 90s london pirate radio montage complete with original adds.

Death is not the End: Pirate Radio cut-ups from 1990 & '91 17th November 2018

 

[Ground Elder]

That makes me feel old

 

[cupid_stunt]

Someone sent me a link to this site recently - Home - The Pirate Archive - there's loads of stuff on there about pirates across the country, use the drop-down menu under the 'STATIONS' tab in the header to select an area.

I've not had time to dig around it yet, just landed on the DBC, Dread Broadcasting Corporation, page - DBC - London - The Pirate Archive - it has loads of audio plus video, press cuttings, etc.

 

[skyscraper101]

Anyone remember MC Killer from the original Tower Block Dreams doc which People Just Do Nothing was based on. Just stumbled on a video of a clip of him on Newsnight some 13 years later in 2016 doing a vox pop on Newsnight about Brexit (pre-referrendum).

 

[ffsear]

Anyone remember MC Killer from the original Tower Block Dreams doc which People Just Do Nothing was based on. Just stumbled on a video of a clip of him on Newsnight some 13 years later in 2016 doing a vox pop on Newsnight about Brexit (pre-referrendum).

LOL, great spot... He was an utter bell end!