September 8, 2025 • 46 mins
Margaret talks with Bursts about the surprising history of pirate radio and the three way fight for control of the airwaves.
Sources:
https://files.libcom.org/files/radio-is-my-bomb-part-1.pdf
https://files.libcom.org/files/radio-is-my-bomb-part-2.pdf
https://files.libcom.org/files/Radio%20Alice.pdf
https://autonomies.org/2023/02/italy-autonomia-5/
https://autonomies.org/2023/02/italy-autonomia-5/
https://www.thejournal.ie/ronan-orahilly-radio-caroline-death-5079760-Apr2020/
https://web.archive.org/web/20100524063428/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7053070.ece
https://web.archive.org/web/20071018203739/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/27/bvradio127.xml&page=1
https://web.archive.org/web/20110719070410/http://www.offshoreradio.de/fleet/shivering.htm
https://www.bobleroi.co.uk/ScrapBook/SutchCityPics1/SutchCityPics1.html
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
your weekly reminder that whenever bad things happen, people try
to do good things and or just illegal things, depending
on what's legal at the time. I am your host,
Margaret Kiljoy, and I have a guest today. You will
be shocked to know this. I have a guest today
and his name is Bursts.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
How are you. I'm doing pretty good? Yeah, how about you, Margaret?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I'm good. I wrote twice as much this week as
I already do in a normal week. Everything's fine. I
can turn on the Voice of Radio whenever I want.
But you, I often have guests who are podcast hosts,
and this week is no different because you are the
host of the Final Straw Radio, which is a podcast
and yet you would guess by the name is also
(00:50):
a radio show. Is that an accurate statement.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, that's an absolutely accurate statement.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Final Straw Radio is a podcast and radio
show based out of Asheville, North Carolina. How would you
pitch that show?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yeah? So it's an anarchist interview show, long form interviews
sort of like NPR, but spicier, and we try to
get on people that are involved in current struggles around
fighting against misogyny or against racism or fascism, people that
do mutual aid work, incarcerated folks that are organizing behind bars.
And we try to also get international perspectives so that
(01:24):
accept all the world where we can.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I remember at one point explaining to you that I
really liked it because it was anarchist talk radio. And
I don't remember how you responded to me, saying.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
That I probably giggled inside a little bit, but on
the outside had the same stony face that you're seeing
right now.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Excellent, So I've wanted to have you on the show
for a while. Wait, I almost forgot to introduce everyone else.
I'm so sorry, Sophie. We have a producer named Sophie. Hi, Sophie,
how dare you?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
It's almost like you almost forget every single episode we've done.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That's true, which is funny because Sophie always reminds me
to write it into the script and I never do. Nope,
and I always almost forget.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
It's a charming and surprising bit when you remember, though.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
That's true. Maybe all of this was written out ahead
of time. Maybe everyone including VERSU, is looking at a script.
Who knows? I mean I'm looking at script, but this
part wasn't in it. Our audio engineer is Eva hi
Eva Hiva hi Eva hi Sophie hi Our theme music
(02:25):
was written for us by unwoman Burst. I wanted to
have you on the show for a while. Well, because
you're on the radio. I thought that I wanted to
talk about the FM radio spectrum. Actually I'm a little
bit going to talk about the AM spectrum as well.
I'm just gonna talk about radio because I want to
talk about pirate radio. Hell yeah, you ever heard of
(02:46):
pirate radio?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I have heard of pirate radio, and not that really
crappy early two thousands movie. I love pirate radio.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Wait, what's the early two thousands movie?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
It's about the ship that was sailing in international waters
that that was broadcasting in like the late seventies. It
was mostly like a rock format.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Did it start in nineteen sixty four? And is that
the main subject of what we're talking on? It might
had I might have gotten the decade run. Don't see
the movie. Just listen to this interview. Cool segment. Yeah,
but you about to talk about actual pirate radio, because
that is only commercial. Pirate radio is only a small
portion of the pirate radio world.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, I mean I've never participated in pirate radio consciously.
Unconsciously I did for about two years. College radio station
had been running case On at Snowa State University, had
been running for I think like ten years. It was
an integrated part of the communications department at the university
just outside the Bay area. And then in like two
(03:47):
thousand and two, my friend Zach, who had a Monday
noon show, decided to play fuck the FCC by the
Dead Kennedy's or maybe just jellyby Afra, and that got
us a physic from the FCC because who knew that
we didn't like, well, a, you're not supposed to do that,
but be apparently the station had been running as a
pirate station, unregistered for such a long time that community
(04:10):
standards that like everyone can kind of assumed that it
was supposed to be there until they poked the eye
of the bear and then got shut down.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
This is one of those moments where I'm like, I
try not to be mad at the person who does
the really radical thing that brings down the wrath of
the state, but in this case, it's like, but did
you have.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
To yeah, saying raft I think of it more of
the guy who decides to like take a pin and
poke the side of the inflatable raft that we're all
sitting in, see what happens. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, Well that's exciting that you are a bona fide
accidental pirate bona fide, because we're gonna talk about pirate radio.
And I had this whole thing where I started writing
the entire context of radio. You will be shocked to
know that I started doing this, But then I did
so much of that work that I decided to spin
that off because next week, with a different guest, I'm
(05:02):
so sorry, we're going to talk about the surprisingly radical
origins of public radio. Do you know that I'm doing
two weeks. One is pirate radio and one is public radio,
and public radio has more radical origins.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of that. Can you give
us a little like clue into it?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Just well, we're gonna be talking about the origins of
pirate radio today, and pirate radio a lot of its origins,
at least in Europe, is commercial radio, and it's basically
capitalists looking to break state monopolies, as compared to public radio,
which was trying to break de facto capitalist monopolies in
(05:44):
the United States. I don't know, we'll get to more
of that, but context origins of radio in the nineteenth century,
people were like, hey, if you put electricity into a wire,
it becomes magnetic, and and other people were like, hey,
you can pick up magnetic waves. This is already over
my own head. And someone was like, whoa, that shit
(06:06):
moves at the speed of light. How cool is that.
By nineteen oh one, you've got radio, telegraphy, telegraphy, telegraphy, telegraphy, telegraphy.
I don't know all kinds of things. But it didn't
matter how it was pronounced, because in the origin it
was all Morse code. Anyway, soon after that it would
have mattered because voice and music and shit started moving
(06:27):
over the airwaves. And it is interesting to see how
like we think of technology as moving really really fast today,
but it has been interesting to read about how fast
when new technologies come around, they kind of always move.
Like within a year of someone being like, oh, I
can do this thing, people are like, great, I've already
(06:47):
registered a corporation and I'm trying to commercialize it, you know.
And the main thing that I'm going to end up
talking about this week and a bit next week is
that there's kind of a three way fight happening over
who controls the airwaves. There's commercial interests, there's the state,
and then there's the public, and they all have different
(07:10):
methods by which they would like to do this thing.
In the US, radio has largely been a commercial enterprise
licensed by the FCC, which is funny because we're allowed
to say fuck the FCC, but only just out of
it being a podcast. There's no other particular reason we
can that a g No, Yeah, they have nothing to
do with us. We're not on the radio. It's largely
(07:32):
been licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, and it has
been this way since the start in the States, more
or less so. Coming from this US context, it was
kind of hard for me to understand how radio is
working elsewhere in the world, and particularly in Europe. I
had sort of imagined like that radio is only a
state monopoly over in the oldie USSR, but actually, although
(07:57):
it was absolutely a state monopoly in the Eastern Bloc
countries much of Western Europe up until the sixties and seventies,
it was a state monopoly on radio. Much of this
week we're going to be talking about the UK and
the UK famously. I don't know if you knew this first.
It's a monarchy.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
I had heard that.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's in the name of the country.
What would they do if they stopped being a monarchy?
And would they just have to change their name.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
The United Republic the United but like republic with a K?
Yeah probably yeah, yeah, backwards.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Are I don't know how that'll work, but I have
faith in them. In nineteen twenty seven, the Royal government
gave a Royal Charter to the BBC, which was at
the time the British Broadcasting Company but then became the
British Broadcasting Corporation because it had been formed a couple
years earlier at the birth of radio, and then it
(08:51):
became a public service corporation when it got the Royal Charter.
Because England is a very serious country, the BBC was
run by a fucking a guy named Sir John Reith,
and the BBC was really into being serious, none of
this nonsense with popular fun games like rugby, only super
(09:13):
serious things like reporting on boat racing and playing classical
music or whatever, because they wanted everyone to be cultured.
This did not make them particularly popular, but the BBC.
That's all there was for radio, And then the sixties
rolled around and there was only this like super serious,
no smiling music being played. About an hour a week
(09:33):
was dedicated to pop music, and people started just dropping
radio entirely at this point because TV had shown on
the scene and BBC radio was frankly boring. I can
say for certain, I went back and looked as well
as I could. The BBC did not play a single
chapel Ron song at any point during the nineteen sixties.
(09:57):
And Sophie is looking at me like I made a
pop culture.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Reference I know of, Like, you know who that person is?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I do? That is the one pop star I know
who is because she's basically modern Kate Bush.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I heard of her a little bit because all my
friends were playing Pink Pony Club at me, which is
actually a good song. And then she appeared in Knight
Armor and I was like, all right, now I have
to pay attention to who this is because eight million
people sent me that.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
So she's like Tori Amos for the new generation.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah yeah, okay cool, and the BBC, not hip with that,
did not even play Pink Pony Club in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
How dare they?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah? And so the British people were in need of rescue,
and who would come sailing in to save the people
of Britain bursts but pirates and what kind of pirates? Well,
an irishman, an irishman from Dublin is going to come
save the British people from their boring lives.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
It seems like a fitting retribution for centuries of colonization.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, and this particular irishman who sailed in to save them,
who's actually not very cool, but his grandfather is cool
enough that his grandfather was on this show before. His
grandfather is an Irish martyr, so we'll talk about him
in a second. Who comes to save English people? But
(11:24):
Radio Caroline, and it's held up as the first big
important pirate radio station. It's the birth of European pop radio,
or at least the UK pop radio. And people rarely
talk about how shady and criminal the whole thing was.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Radio Caroline's like a really cool name.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, I know we're gonna talk about the origin of
that in ste.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I was hoping you were telling me that it was
a person named Radio Caroline, because Radio Caroline, that's such
a cool name. For human I know, but they suck.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
They're shady, they're complicated like most people you know, and
like crime stuff is just like not boring and you'd
kind of rather watch a mafia movie than a like
cop movie.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, they're like not boring in a crime way, you know. Okay,
and their name, Oh, I'll get to it. It's gonna
be good. It's also not what you think. I read
so many different histories of this. Did the documentary on
them cover the fact that they were like shady and
killed somebody?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
It wasn't a documentary. It probably would have been better
if it was a documentary. The one that I'm thinking,
I think it's called Pirate Radio, was a drama edy
or something like that about it. No, it was more
kind of shady with all the like rampant misogyny and
just bad dad jokes.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
So maybe it might have been a documentary at that point.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Then again, we'll get to their name in a minute.
The history of Pirate Radio in England starts with an
irishman named Ronan O. Ra Heley. And if that last
name sounds familiar to listeners, then you have a better
memory than I do because I can't remember names. But
oh rah Healey is a name that's been on the
(13:01):
show before. His grandfather appeared in our episode about the
Easter Rising of nineteen sixteen, which is seen as the
uprising that spurred on the Irish Revolution a couple of
years later, and Ronan O'raheey's grandfather's name was the o'rah
heey Cisa.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Oh my god, he has like a quintessential Catholic guy name.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It's like Michael Michael Collins.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
No, no, no, no, no. I think I remember it because
it's the same as migrant. But Michael Joseph.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
It's it's Michael. It's what Michael o'verheelly is.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
But what is his middle name? Joseph? Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I don't remember his middle name looking it.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Up, Okay, so that Joseph or Patrick preppably, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
It is Michael Joseph.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I'm going to quote for my own script about the
Easter Rising about the O'rahelly because I think it is
a neat way to frame this whole story. Also, just
because I really like the o'raheey.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Oh, is that what he was known as is like the.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So being the o'raheelly was actually a de anglicization because
the head of a clan was the and so by
becoming more Irish, he dropped Michael Michael Joseph and became
the And that is like fucking punk, Like we're almost
anti punk because it's to become the patriarch. But whatever,
(14:20):
I don't care. It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I'm gonna revisionist history my grandfather's name and pretend that
he was named everyth.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
This guy the Lickterman.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
No, no, no, is my mom's dad, the Dorian.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
The Dorian.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
That's good. I don't hate that. I could be the
kill Joy. That's fine.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Oh you are the Killjoy though, that's true.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
She is hell Yeah, when you pick your own name
and it sticks.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to quote about the rahel
quote and I'm quoting myself here because I'm the kill
Joy and I can see that one of the founders
of the Irish Volunteers was this guy who was named
the o'raheelly, Like, what kind of badass do you have
to be for your nickname to be the instead of Michael.
This was part of his de anglicization. The head of
(15:06):
a clan was named the He was the director of
arms for the volunteers. He had overseen a lot of
the military training, but he had been totally against the rising.
He had been part of the tell people not to
rise plan. There had been this whole thing with the
Easter Rising, where like half of them were like, we
shouldn't do that. That's a bad idea, We're all just
gonna die, which was true, but also it kind of
(15:29):
worked anyway. But when he found out the rising was
going to happen anyway, he said, quote, and this is
a good quote. It is madness, but it is glorious madness.
And he joined in. He or his friends set his
own car on fire in the street as a barricade
at one point, and on Friday he led a charge
through the street and was gunned down. Then he survived
(15:52):
almost a day, lying bleeding to death in a doorway.
While he was bleeding to death, he wrote a letter
to his wife, quote written after I was shot, Darling Nancy.
I was shot leading a rush up Moore Street and
took refuge in a doorway. While I was there, I
heard the men pointing out where I was and made
a bolt for the lane way. I am in now
(16:14):
I got one more bullet. I think tons and tons
of love, Dearie, to you and the boys, and to
Nell and Anna. It was a good fight anyhow, Please
deliver this to Nanny o'raheely forty Herbert Park, Dublin. Goodbye, Darling.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Jeez, that's sad, I know, but pretty beautiful I know.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
And the like constrained way he writes this letter is
so fitting somehow, you know, the culture at the time.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Just cut that cut that.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
I can send you over this thing I just read
and you could read it in an Irish accent.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Oh, I will never be allowed on that island again.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
They already hate us Irish Americans want to talk about
how Irish we are.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
For sure, and for good reason. But yeah, you're right
measured to be able to say, like this is my
last breath as I'm writing it out. That's pretty goossy.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, totally. And so that is Ronan's grandfather, the Orahali.
Ronan himself honestly isn't all that cool, if I'm being honest.
He is one of the original rock and roll capitalists.
But he still does something interesting, so fuck it. And
do you know what else? Incorporates advertising with audio content?
Speaker 3 (17:31):
The American Potato Council.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
That's true. Also, US we incorporate advertising into our audio
content for example, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
That was innovative.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Thank you. Yeah, I'm always trying to find new ways
to do it. You know, this is what I'm going
to be remembered for.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
First, what's your favorite way to eat a potato? Oh?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Gosh, the hash brown it's a good call.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Call.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, I mean more surface area means more fried delight basically.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, that's not usually the answer people give. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, I liked it.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
What do you get punch fries? But yeah, what's that
way where you like cut the potato over? That was me,
thank you? Yeah, what is that?
Speaker 1 (18:17):
A hasslebacked potato? So you take the potato and on
the top of it, you make a bunch of little slices,
but not all the way through, and then you can,
you know, put oil or butter or herbs or you know,
some people really go for it and google eyes, google eyes, cheese, bacon,
if you eat those things, and then you bake it
(18:38):
like a baked potato.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Okay, yeah that makes sense. Microwaving also a good way.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's really good.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah, I love a baked potato.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I've decided it's a thing they do in Portland. But
this isn't true. It's just that's where I ate it.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
The hassleback.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, oh, were you with me? Did we eat hasslebad
potatoes together? That really weird place? Oh? What was that
potato dish that we had it? That really weird fancy
people place.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Oh, I barely remember the food there. I remember going
to a really weird this steakhouse with you.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It was really weird, but they had like almost like
a I'm going to figure out what the potato thing
so we can talk about. Everyone's gonna be waited with
by the next ad brick, I will be able to
talk about this potato everyone.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Okay, all right, that's why everyone has to make it through.
People kind of listen to this stuff, the jibber jabber
between the ads. People mostly load up and listen to
the ads.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
I know, load up like a potato. Also, is it
weird going from parish revolutionary into potato as seemed that
was unbean.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well, we're already in trouble for your half second of accents, so.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, we'll call it a brogue just to piss people off.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
More go whatever, I shook hands with my great uncle
who fought in the Rising. That's my argument about any
of that. He was one hundred years old. He outlived
the Queen. Well, he died before the Queen, but he
lived longer than she did, and that's what matters anyway.
Rock and roll capitalist. He grows up to become one
(20:02):
of the most influential people in radio broadcasting. Radio Caroline
is reaching thirty million people at its peak in the
late sixties. If you read the sources that are written
a little bit more by the people who really like
Radio Caroline. Other people say like six to ten million people.
That is still a lot of people. I don't even
know that many people. Personally. This man fundamentally changes UK
(20:24):
culture despite not being from the UK, and that's kind
of cool. He was born in Dublin, the city where
his grandfather, the had died. He was born to a
rich Irish businessman who ran a ferry service. Ronan was
a bit of a wild child. He got kicked out
of school a lot. When he was seventeen. In the
late fifties, he moved to London to become an actor
and do shit in the music scene, and he and
(20:46):
his friends were basically promoting various rock bands around London.
He was managing a guy named Georgie Fame and BBC
had no interest in playing this guy, and Sirnin was like,
fuck it, rich family, I know rich people. I'm buying
a boat and setting up a radio station. He bought
the Danish passenger ferry, the Federicia, and started setting up
(21:10):
a radio station. Some other people were looking to do
the same thing at the same time, but Radio Caroline
got in early, or maybe first, working with a bunch
of rich backers to finance the Ireland based company. Most
of the history written about this particular venture is all
about the like wheeling and dealing to get the financing
(21:30):
to get this boat, and which rich people they talked
to and whose dad gave them money and I don't care.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
It is kind of interesting though, Like when I think
about pirate radio, I think about independent ventures where people
get together, collaborate, get stuff, you know, going that way,
and so making it actually like a registered business kind
of seems like a good way to get yourself economically sunk.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
It's so fascinating because it's a completely different model than
what we think of as pirate radio. Yeah, we think
of like people getting together and building a transmitter and
like just kind of hoping for the best and you know,
maybe doing it so long that people think that they're
just the local college radio station. But no, this is
like capitalists looking to break a governmental monopoly. And it's
(22:21):
still good that they broke this monopoly, and people were
pretty happy about getting rock music. You know, it's just interesting.
It's just yeah, it's so completely not what I think of,
and it's when we get to the Italian part, it
is going to come up in a more interesting way politically.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And I guess also just to throw it in and
I can stop if you want me to. But my
understanding what the BBC is that they fund it through subscriptions,
like they would collect everyone who has a radio, and
then eventually everyone who has a TV has to pay
a licensing fee to the government because it's only going
to be their content that's played on it. And so suddenly, oh, yeah,
I guess they have to bust in with a bunch
of advertising to be able to fund this venture. But
(22:58):
you're also kind of using government infrastructure, as in the
radios that are in people's houses that are licensed to
play radio. Yeah, they're kind of pirrating it or squatting it.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
That's true, and so they get together to get to
do this thing. Retrofitting the ship took a while. It
had to be done in secrecy because not only are
they planning to fuck over the government, they're planning to
fuck over like the other investors that they're working with
who are working on similar projects, because they're all like, oh,
we'll take this part of the country and you take
that part of the country, and they're like just kidding,
(23:32):
you know, they're rushing to do this in secrecy. They
told the locals at the port that the one hundred
and sixty five foot tall mast, which is the radio antenna,
was for helping them find deep sea sponges, and the
articles written with the like kind of a like those
dumb yokeles fell for it. But I don't know. Maybe
the dumb yocles fell for it, or maybe they just
were like, actually, we don't.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Care that much, or maybe they really like sponges.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, that's completely possible. How the radio station got its name,
most sources, including Wikipedia, will be like it was because
one of the people saw a thing and it was
like a president's granddaughter named Caroline and was like, that's
cool name. I'm gonna name my radio station. That The
(24:16):
most likely actual source of the name is basically it's
like a way of being like dumb sluts radio, because
Queen Magazine is one of the investors, and Queen Magazine
described their target audience as quote a twenty something non
intellectual who has left school at sixteen and who was
(24:37):
a good time girl named Caroline.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Boy, what a deep cut for a stupid name. I know,
I mean the name is not bad, it's a good name,
but yeah, yeah, that's terrible.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, I know, there's like a little bit of a like,
I mean, if this was made by women, that would
rule you know. Yeah, No, it's just a like we
want to sell the like teen girls we think are
not intelligent in any way.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Maybe what I watched was in fact a documentary.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Then yeah, they were trying to be true to the
original spirit by filling it full of misogyny. They launched
on March twenty third, nineteen sixty four. Oh good, I
did get the year right when I said this at
the beginning, and they claimed to be head into Spain
and then they were like, just kidding, We're going around
to London, and this was betraying the other radio people.
(25:28):
Radio Atlanta was the other big one that they're going
to later merge with, and Radio Caroline wanted London and
didn't tell anyone they wanted London. They parked just outside
of International waters and they started broadcasting. It's also kind
of worth knowing this is AM broadcasting, and AM radio
(25:48):
goes further than FM radio, which I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
AM like bounces off the I honest, there, I think,
and it's usually like long lateral antennas, and then FM
is line of sight, right, but it can kind of
bend over hills.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
And yeah, yeah, totally, Sophie. Did you know where clear
channel gets its name from?
Speaker 1 (26:08):
No, I pretend they don't exist.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, that's true. There was this company that used to
be called clear Channel. This isn't in the script. I
just found this and was like, oh, it's kind of neat.
A clear channel is like a word for AM radio,
where you're given like a huge broadcasting range with no interference.
It is a clear channel that you've been given. It
literally named themselves of this is a monopoly radio. That
(26:31):
is what they named themselves. Oh well, I love radio anyway.
They start broadcasting and not clear channel but radio Caroline,
and they had no idea whether they were going to
get away with this. They were like, are we about
to be raided and arrested? And the answer was like,
well that actually almost that came really close to happening,
(26:54):
and frankly, the Crown kind of sat around being like,
maybe we should raid and arrest these people. This is
clearly what we don't want them to do. And we
are the United Kingdom, we're kind of known for boats.
But people were really into the radio station. This is
the main secret to surviving as a pirate radio station
is you have to get people to like you quickly,
(27:16):
and so it was hard for the state to go
after them, and they decided not to jam the transmission either.
You can just kind of play white noise or other
things on the same frequency and like mess with someone
else's radio transmission. The Royal Navy did show up pretty
much right away and requested to board, and the Caroline
was like, no, we don't want you to, and the
(27:39):
Royal Navy was like, but we want to, and the
Caroline was like, not only do we not want you to?
The DJ is currently talking about what's happening on air
to everyone in London, and the Royal Navy was like,
all right, we'll see you later and they left it.
But yeah, people were into it. People were like music
all day. It also kind of turned off at night,
(28:00):
but so did all radio at the time. It was
like wild. They started off I think six to six,
and then then later they went to like ten, and
later they went to like midnight, really pushing the envelope here.
You know, it's so weird to imagine old time stuff.
Sometimes I'm like, but people are hanging out at three
in the morning. I cannot be convinced that old like
people back in the day were like time to go
to bed when they're like a teenager in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, And I would imagine that's exactly the time when
you would want to be able to listen to like
whatever rock albums just were released that you can't get
a hold of otherwise, or that your parents wouldn't want
you to listen to. Middle of the night's the perfect
time for.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
It, Yeah, that's what I would think, And so they
start pushing later and later in the night. I almost
feel like it had to be like an invention. They
were like we could just play all night. We're in
international waters. We're already breaking the law or circumventing the law.
And so by May first people started buying ads on
the station. By June they had two ships to cover
(28:59):
more areas because they bought out their competitors. The Radio
Atlanta and Radio Caroline had found its audience. Within weeks,
more stations started flooding the air and forty five percent
of England was listening to pirate radio. And do you
know what they heard on that pirate radio bursts?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
No, what do they hear?
Speaker 2 (29:19):
They heard advertisements. I think that's why they would have
said it. I think you're right, Yeah, much like we are.
But we're in America. We have advertisements. It's somehow better
if it's an ad for biscuits. It's not what you think.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Okay. So the potato we had at that very strange
rushed on was a potato tart. It was like a
loaded potato tart.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I blacked this out of my memory.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
It's like a little dinner pastry type thing.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
If it's like a potato and a savory pie crust
and you could get like toppings in it.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, okay, I remember this now. I don't remember how
the potato was at all.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Potato was good.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Fancy restaurants are confusing. So we're back and continuing to
talk about potato radio. I can't figure how that would work.
Do you think that they power it by like, can't
you get like light a light bulb with a potato
or something?
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Oh, I thought you were gonna do a whatever that
thing is called mixing.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
The words potato.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah, potato would probably be the way to go.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Okay, And so Radio Caroline brings rock music to the
masses and fundamentally changes UK culture and therefore world culture
because you.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Know, the Brits invaded the US.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah after that, Yeah, exactly, be really fun to just
do kind of fictional cool people did cool stuff where
I'm just like, tell the story about the British invasion,
but just make it a little bit more literal. So
most of the stories about Radio Caroline are feel good
stories about the plucky upstarts who did good entrepreneurial stuff
(31:01):
and change British culture forever. And it is true that
they were entrepreneurs who changed British culture forever. But the
crime man's stuff is going on and people don't like
it because it messes with their idea of like the
good rebel. But I think it's really interesting. It is
(31:22):
not boring, and it does not line up to my
set of ethics. But it's the past. It doesn't need to.
That's the thing I got to remember more often.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Things can be fun without being right.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, I have no influence on the past. That too.
As soon as Radio Caroline started broadcasting, other people were like,
fuck yeah, that rules, and they started doing the same thing.
Many folks had been, in fact working on that idea
already themselves, like all the people that they fucked over.
Among the competitors to Radio Caroline was Radio City, which
(31:55):
was run by this wife and husband team for a while.
Calvert and her husband, REDG. Calvert, and these two had
a similar background as Radio Caroline, and that they were
rock and roll music promoters. The pair of them had
spent the fifties going around to dance halls being like, yeah,
that big band shit, I understand why you like it,
(32:16):
but hear me out rock and roll, And so they
went all over their little island and were like, what
if rock and roll? They ended up running twenty eight
of these dance halls together, and they put on shows
for bands even I have heard of, like the Beatles
and the Rolling Stones and the Kinks. So of course
(32:37):
they got in on the radio craze and they had
a friend. Have you ever heard this guy? I hadn't,
But you ever heard this guy screaming Lord Such?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
No, but that's an amazing name.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I know. He had a radio station at the time
called Radio Such. Screaming Lord Such is probably a character
for his own show sometime if I do like weird
people of early rock or something. I haven't deep dived
this guy yet. According to Wikipedia, he holds the record
for contesting the most parliamentary elections because in addition to
(33:10):
being a shock rocker and a DJ, he is one
of those WingNuts who ran for election every single time.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
He wasn't actually in the House of Lords.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Though, No, he has no connection to the peerage. He
just changed his name to Lord Such, which is such
a good move. It's a boss move yet, especially in
fucking Britain. Like. He was the leader of a political party,
an official political party that still exists today. You've probably
heard of it, the Official Monster Raving Looney Party.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I remember a Monty Python sketch with that one.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yet, wait, I don't know if you're telling the truth
or not, but they're probably.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah. I know there's on one of the albums of
their recordings there's an election special, and I think that
that's actually the name of one of the things that
the run up that I thought was just made up
until now.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
I don't know where the chicken in the egg is there. Yeah,
I could see either way. The Official Monster Raving Looney
Party is a real political party that still exists and
exists to satirize British politics. And basically this is the
Vermin Supreme of England, only he's dead. He doesn't wear
a boot on his head, and he never promised anyone ponies.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I have a Verbon Supreme tie on my desk that
he gave me at the DNC last year.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
That rules, I know.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
The time that I'm me at Vermin Supreme was at
the DNC also, and twenty years earlier.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
That's his super Bowl, Yeah it is. I also ate
with him at a very fancy restaurant that was like
lovely but also like too fancy.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Does he take his hat off to eat? Is he cultured?
Speaker 1 (34:43):
I'm not releasing that information to the public.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
That's fair maybe the hat is part of his head.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
I think the only time that I've seen him in
person was at Rosetta's in Ashville.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Nice, very nice person. See that's the food I would
eat anytime for fancy meal. Unofficial sponsor the place I
used to work. So Lord Such and if you ever
need to google, this man such is spelled Sutch. Lord Such.
(35:15):
All this radio stuff is happening, And so he gets
himself over to an abandoned World War II military fort
that is in international waters just off the coast of
England called Shivering Sands Army Fort, and it is one
of the most like water world ass looking places you'll
ever see a photo of. He set up a radio
(35:36):
station called Radio Such. It was powered by car batteries.
The transmitter had been ripped out of an old submarine.
The antenna was a flagpole with a jolly roger on it.
I think I would have been friends with this man
or terrified of him, or both or both. Radio Such
mostly reached fishermen on their boats. It was kind of
(35:59):
a just a pupliss city stunt. He got bored quick
enough and handed the whole thing over to his friend,
who was also his unpaid manager, Reg Calvert and his
wife Dorothy Calvert. These are the folks I was talking
about earlier who owned dance halls and such. The city radio, Yeah,
Radio City, Radio City, and the pair of them professionalized
(36:21):
the operation. They set up real transmitters, They connected all
of the different little platforms together and connected things. I
read a lot of manuals about pirate radio for this
episode and looked at diagrams and things, and I even
know how to solder, and I have no idea what
I was looking at. But they did a lot of
stuff to make radio go further. And the whole thing
was powered this time by generators that you could hear
(36:44):
on air over the mic because they're really loud. And
they turned Radio City into maybe the only profitable pirate
radio station in the water. My guess is this is
because their operating expenses were way lower because they were
not on a boat.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, but still nobody claimed that territory that they were on.
That's kind of crazy to think about.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Well, wait, was this in the documentary? What did you
know those I know being profitable? How to downside? Because
these early radio pirates pirates, it's in the fucking name,
like literally fucking high seas violence. Some worse still than
some of them being pirates, some of them were libertarians
in the American capitalist sense of that word. So Radio
(37:26):
Caroline this point is being run by a guy named
Smedley and he has a first name, but it doesn't matter,
because when your last name is Smedley and you're a
libertarian pirate, you're just Smedley in my book. And Radio
Caroline was not profitable despite being the biggest name in
the business, with the biggest reach. It's on two huge ships,
and so Smedley was like, hey, Radio City, let's go
(37:48):
into business together. And if you're thinking this is a
play to try and steal that area, you're absolutely right.
And he's like, it's a good idea. You can trust me.
My name is Smedley, and I apologized to anyone for
whom that is their legal name, but I don't know.
And so the Calverts chose to trust him. And Radio
Caroline had big, old transmitters shipped over from America from Texas.
(38:12):
Everything's bigger in Texas. And when they get there, Radio
Caroline's like, now you've got to pay us for all
these transmitters and all the shipping costs, and Radio City
was like, never mind, we don't actually want him that much,
and we actually just teamed up with his other pirate
radio station instead. So Radio Caroline sent over a fucking
boarding party and took it by force and they shut
(38:35):
down the transmitter at Radio City. This thing that comes
up behind the bastards all the time, where you know
it's going to go bad when people get out under
the water. That's how I feel with this whole thing,
because it started off I was like, oh it rules,
you get around the rules by going out in the water.
And then you're like, oh, there's gonna be this kind
of shit. And so Rench Calvert goes over to Smedley's house,
and I do not know what was in his mind,
(38:57):
because he never leaves that house again. He shows up
the next day and it's like either like all right,
but let's talk this over, or he shows up armed
and is like call off your goons. All I know
is that Smedley shot and kills reg Calvert and gets
away with it in self defense.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Who would prosecute, Like, wasn't this this isn't international water.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So he goes over to his house on land, Oh
on land, Yeah, and they all have like offices on
land as well. You know, I don't know if Radio
City did.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
But see, that's what their downfall is. They should just
keep everything on the water.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, and if they have their own passports, hear me out,
cool zone platform, Cool zone platform, Sophie, what do you
think it's a former oil rig? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Right, or a series of them that have been chained together.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah. What do you think?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
This is kind of like something out of Robert Evans's novel?
I guess, so maybe it should.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Well, we'll just let Robert be part of it. It'll
be fine, nothing will go wrong, and we'll make passports.
So Dorothy carries on Radio City without her husband for
as long as as she can. But in nineteen sixty seven,
which is I think the same year as the shooting,
they can't remember, in response in part to this killing,
(40:11):
the government passes the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act. Only they
misspelled defenses they used to see instead of an ass
And this was passed in order to stop pirate radio stations.
This you can't actually outlaw the station, but you can
outlaw supplying any of these stations, and you can outlaw
advertising with offshore radio. Dorothy tried to fight this in
(40:34):
court and she lost. The same year the BBC launched
Radio one. I think this is when they launched their
numbered radios, because why would it be number one if
they had just launched it then? And they start playing
pop and rock music because that's what people wanted, and
because the BBC got in on the act. This strips
away a lot of the support and listenership from the
(40:55):
pirate stations. Most stations shut down pretty much right away.
Radio Caroline, however, they're built different. They re registered as
a Dutch company and kept going being resupplied from the
Netherlands for about another year. But did I mention that
they were libertarians? They did not pay the various fees
(41:17):
and things to the various people who they owed money to,
and so the Dutch government shut them down. So ends
the first saga of pirate radio in the UK. The
people who brought rock and roll to the e oldie England.
Y is these weird pirates? And I really like such?
And also the Calverts seem probably fine. Did the station
(41:40):
change its method or anything like? Did they go all
shock jockey when the BBC one stepped in and they
suddenly had competition?
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I don't know that would be I could really easily
imagine them like they might have been like so British
that even when they started by doing it as a crime,
they probably still had to be like into this next
song that we will introduce is I don't know the
name of any rock songs from that era, great Balls
of Fire, but I don't know. Well, Screaming Lord Hutch
(42:09):
did get his name from Screaming Jay Hawkins. That was
a like, hell, yeah, that seems cool. I want to
do that. I bet Radio such had some of his ass. Yeah.
Probably when we come back on Wednesday, we're going to
talk about a second wave of pirate radio with a
distinctly more radical bent that cropped up shortly thereafter. How
you feeling on the first wave with wave being a
(42:32):
three parts the ocean. I like the symbolism, yeah, and
the airwaves.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
No, Yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm excited to learn a
little more. The name Radio Alice pops into my head
with what you sort of like led with, But I
don't know the details of that.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
But details of radio Alis a little bit cool on Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Exciting.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, it's really interesting that the two most influential pirate
radio stations in Europe that I've tracked down personally. One's
Carolide and one's Alice, and they could not be more opposite,
to the point where I think the Radio Alice people
probably would have like fist fought Radio Carolide, you know,
or boarded them maybe, yeah, or totaled them totally. Well, guy,
(43:15):
I think you want to plug here at the end.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Sure, happy to be here for the chat. Like you
said at the beginning. I do a radio show called
The Final Straw. That's also a podcast. It's been going
for fifteen years. You can find it at TFSR dot
media if you want to check out some of the
past episodes, and yeah, we're on a bunch of the
social media. Cool just look up Final Straw.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
What's what's a recent episode? Y'all? Did that you like?
Speaker 3 (43:40):
I'm not sure when this will air, but the last
week before this recording, I spoke with Thomas Rothaus, who
wrote a book called Another War as Possible about militant
anarchist participation in the anti globalization era. And so it's
kind of we joke about it, or we didn't make
this up, but it's been joked to be the sequel
(44:01):
to evasion, but with good politics. But it's lots of
like Ruckus like not the interview, but the book itself
has lots of really cool stories of getting away with
stuff during riots in the early two thousands in Europe.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
It sounds like something that our listeners would like.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
It's fun. And I talked to someone from Remora House,
a mutual aid project that does a lot of outreach
to houseless folks in DC, this week about what the
military and federal occupation in DC has been like for
the folks that they work with, as well as for
immigrant like folks who are being harassed by ice.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Fuck y'all, what do I have to plug? I don't know.
I have a substack. I write about things. I actually
wrote about radio this week, mostly so that I could
talk about poetry. But I swear that's the worst pitch
I've ever done for my own newsletter. It's actually entertaining.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Oh, I was just gonna ask what the connection that
you made between radio and poetry was.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
I'll talk about a bit more week. But the anarchist poet,
the godfather of the beats, who didn't like the beats
very much, Kennis Rexroth was a big part of starting
pacifica Radio, which is I think the start of public
radio and listeners supported radio.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
If anyone in the audience is around KPFA, we air
on Wednesdays from eleven to twelve every week.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Oh shit, in the Bay as well. Okay, wait, where
can people hear your show on the radio?
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Columbus, Ohio, Knoxville, Tennessee, Asheville, North Carolina, the Wider Bay area,
the North Bay, Eugene, Oregon. Sometimes around Garberville. We're on
a dozen stations, but if you visit the website, we've
got like a list of the community radio stations that airs.
They're mostly like little LPFM stations that are that have
like a leftispent. That's cool, Sorry to cut off Sophie's edition.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Oh yeah, Robert Evans prop and myself for doing a
fundraising live show in Portland, Oregon. All of our performer
proceeds we'll go towards to Portland bail fund. That is
going to be on September twenty fifth at the Alberta
Rose Theater. You can buy tickets now.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Hell yeah, that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
All right. Well, I'll talk to you a Wednesday when
we talk about more radio, and this time it'll be
by people who will be mad that there's ads when
we talk about it, instead of proud of us.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Bye Bye, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check
us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
your weekly reminder that whenever bad things happen, people try
to do good things and or just illegal things, depending
on what's legal at the time. I am your host,
Margaret Kiljoy, and I have a guest today. You will
be shocked to know this. I have a guest today
and his name is Bursts.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
How are you. I'm doing pretty good? Yeah, how about you, Margaret?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I'm good. I wrote twice as much this week as
I already do in a normal week. Everything's fine. I
can turn on the Voice of Radio whenever I want.
But you, I often have guests who are podcast hosts,
and this week is no different because you are the
host of the Final Straw Radio, which is a podcast
and yet you would guess by the name is also
(00:50):
a radio show. Is that an accurate statement.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, that's an absolutely accurate statement.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Final Straw Radio is a podcast and radio
show based out of Asheville, North Carolina. How would you
pitch that show?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yeah? So it's an anarchist interview show, long form interviews
sort of like NPR, but spicier, and we try to
get on people that are involved in current struggles around
fighting against misogyny or against racism or fascism, people that
do mutual aid work, incarcerated folks that are organizing behind bars.
And we try to also get international perspectives so that
(01:24):
accept all the world where we can.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I remember at one point explaining to you that I
really liked it because it was anarchist talk radio. And
I don't remember how you responded to me, saying.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
That I probably giggled inside a little bit, but on
the outside had the same stony face that you're seeing
right now.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Excellent, So I've wanted to have you on the show
for a while. Wait, I almost forgot to introduce everyone else.
I'm so sorry, Sophie. We have a producer named Sophie. Hi, Sophie,
how dare you?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
It's almost like you almost forget every single episode we've done.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That's true, which is funny because Sophie always reminds me
to write it into the script and I never do. Nope,
and I always almost forget.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
It's a charming and surprising bit when you remember, though.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
That's true. Maybe all of this was written out ahead
of time. Maybe everyone including VERSU, is looking at a script.
Who knows? I mean I'm looking at script, but this
part wasn't in it. Our audio engineer is Eva hi
Eva Hiva hi Eva hi Sophie hi Our theme music
(02:25):
was written for us by unwoman Burst. I wanted to
have you on the show for a while. Well, because
you're on the radio. I thought that I wanted to
talk about the FM radio spectrum. Actually I'm a little
bit going to talk about the AM spectrum as well.
I'm just gonna talk about radio because I want to
talk about pirate radio. Hell yeah, you ever heard of
(02:46):
pirate radio?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I have heard of pirate radio, and not that really
crappy early two thousands movie. I love pirate radio.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Wait, what's the early two thousands movie?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
It's about the ship that was sailing in international waters
that that was broadcasting in like the late seventies. It
was mostly like a rock format.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Did it start in nineteen sixty four? And is that
the main subject of what we're talking on? It might
had I might have gotten the decade run. Don't see
the movie. Just listen to this interview. Cool segment. Yeah,
but you about to talk about actual pirate radio, because
that is only commercial. Pirate radio is only a small
portion of the pirate radio world.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, I mean I've never participated in pirate radio consciously.
Unconsciously I did for about two years. College radio station
had been running case On at Snowa State University, had
been running for I think like ten years. It was
an integrated part of the communications department at the university
just outside the Bay area. And then in like two
(03:47):
thousand and two, my friend Zach, who had a Monday
noon show, decided to play fuck the FCC by the
Dead Kennedy's or maybe just jellyby Afra, and that got
us a physic from the FCC because who knew that
we didn't like, well, a, you're not supposed to do that,
but be apparently the station had been running as a
pirate station, unregistered for such a long time that community
(04:10):
standards that like everyone can kind of assumed that it
was supposed to be there until they poked the eye
of the bear and then got shut down.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
This is one of those moments where I'm like, I
try not to be mad at the person who does
the really radical thing that brings down the wrath of
the state, but in this case, it's like, but did
you have.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
To yeah, saying raft I think of it more of
the guy who decides to like take a pin and
poke the side of the inflatable raft that we're all
sitting in, see what happens. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, Well that's exciting that you are a bona fide
accidental pirate bona fide, because we're gonna talk about pirate radio.
And I had this whole thing where I started writing
the entire context of radio. You will be shocked to
know that I started doing this, But then I did
so much of that work that I decided to spin
that off because next week, with a different guest, I'm
(05:02):
so sorry, we're going to talk about the surprisingly radical
origins of public radio. Do you know that I'm doing
two weeks. One is pirate radio and one is public radio,
and public radio has more radical origins.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of that. Can you give
us a little like clue into it?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Just well, we're gonna be talking about the origins of
pirate radio today, and pirate radio a lot of its origins,
at least in Europe, is commercial radio, and it's basically
capitalists looking to break state monopolies, as compared to public radio,
which was trying to break de facto capitalist monopolies in
(05:44):
the United States. I don't know, we'll get to more
of that, but context origins of radio in the nineteenth century,
people were like, hey, if you put electricity into a wire,
it becomes magnetic, and and other people were like, hey,
you can pick up magnetic waves. This is already over
my own head. And someone was like, whoa, that shit
(06:06):
moves at the speed of light. How cool is that.
By nineteen oh one, you've got radio, telegraphy, telegraphy, telegraphy, telegraphy, telegraphy.
I don't know all kinds of things. But it didn't
matter how it was pronounced, because in the origin it
was all Morse code. Anyway, soon after that it would
have mattered because voice and music and shit started moving
(06:27):
over the airwaves. And it is interesting to see how
like we think of technology as moving really really fast today,
but it has been interesting to read about how fast
when new technologies come around, they kind of always move.
Like within a year of someone being like, oh, I
can do this thing, people are like, great, I've already
(06:47):
registered a corporation and I'm trying to commercialize it, you know.
And the main thing that I'm going to end up
talking about this week and a bit next week is
that there's kind of a three way fight happening over
who controls the airwaves. There's commercial interests, there's the state,
and then there's the public, and they all have different
(07:10):
methods by which they would like to do this thing.
In the US, radio has largely been a commercial enterprise
licensed by the FCC, which is funny because we're allowed
to say fuck the FCC, but only just out of
it being a podcast. There's no other particular reason we
can that a g No, Yeah, they have nothing to
do with us. We're not on the radio. It's largely
(07:32):
been licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, and it has
been this way since the start in the States, more
or less so. Coming from this US context, it was
kind of hard for me to understand how radio is
working elsewhere in the world, and particularly in Europe. I
had sort of imagined like that radio is only a
state monopoly over in the oldie USSR, but actually, although
(07:57):
it was absolutely a state monopoly in the Eastern Bloc
countries much of Western Europe up until the sixties and seventies,
it was a state monopoly on radio. Much of this
week we're going to be talking about the UK and
the UK famously. I don't know if you knew this first.
It's a monarchy.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
I had heard that.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's in the name of the country.
What would they do if they stopped being a monarchy?
And would they just have to change their name.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
The United Republic the United but like republic with a K?
Yeah probably yeah, yeah, backwards.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Are I don't know how that'll work, but I have
faith in them. In nineteen twenty seven, the Royal government
gave a Royal Charter to the BBC, which was at
the time the British Broadcasting Company but then became the
British Broadcasting Corporation because it had been formed a couple
years earlier at the birth of radio, and then it
(08:51):
became a public service corporation when it got the Royal Charter.
Because England is a very serious country, the BBC was
run by a fucking a guy named Sir John Reith,
and the BBC was really into being serious, none of
this nonsense with popular fun games like rugby, only super
(09:13):
serious things like reporting on boat racing and playing classical
music or whatever, because they wanted everyone to be cultured.
This did not make them particularly popular, but the BBC.
That's all there was for radio, And then the sixties
rolled around and there was only this like super serious,
no smiling music being played. About an hour a week
(09:33):
was dedicated to pop music, and people started just dropping
radio entirely at this point because TV had shown on
the scene and BBC radio was frankly boring. I can
say for certain, I went back and looked as well
as I could. The BBC did not play a single
chapel Ron song at any point during the nineteen sixties.
(09:57):
And Sophie is looking at me like I made a
pop culture.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Reference I know of, Like, you know who that person is?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I do? That is the one pop star I know
who is because she's basically modern Kate Bush.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I heard of her a little bit because all my
friends were playing Pink Pony Club at me, which is
actually a good song. And then she appeared in Knight
Armor and I was like, all right, now I have
to pay attention to who this is because eight million
people sent me that.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
So she's like Tori Amos for the new generation.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah yeah, okay cool, and the BBC, not hip with that,
did not even play Pink Pony Club in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
How dare they?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah? And so the British people were in need of rescue,
and who would come sailing in to save the people
of Britain bursts but pirates and what kind of pirates? Well,
an irishman, an irishman from Dublin is going to come
save the British people from their boring lives.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
It seems like a fitting retribution for centuries of colonization.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, and this particular irishman who sailed in to save them,
who's actually not very cool, but his grandfather is cool
enough that his grandfather was on this show before. His
grandfather is an Irish martyr, so we'll talk about him
in a second. Who comes to save English people? But
(11:24):
Radio Caroline, and it's held up as the first big
important pirate radio station. It's the birth of European pop radio,
or at least the UK pop radio. And people rarely
talk about how shady and criminal the whole thing was.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Radio Caroline's like a really cool name.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, I know we're gonna talk about the origin of
that in ste.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I was hoping you were telling me that it was
a person named Radio Caroline, because Radio Caroline, that's such
a cool name. For human I know, but they suck.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
They're shady, they're complicated like most people you know, and
like crime stuff is just like not boring and you'd
kind of rather watch a mafia movie than a like
cop movie.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, they're like not boring in a crime way, you know. Okay,
and their name, Oh, I'll get to it. It's gonna
be good. It's also not what you think. I read
so many different histories of this. Did the documentary on
them cover the fact that they were like shady and
killed somebody?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
It wasn't a documentary. It probably would have been better
if it was a documentary. The one that I'm thinking,
I think it's called Pirate Radio, was a drama edy
or something like that about it. No, it was more
kind of shady with all the like rampant misogyny and
just bad dad jokes.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
So maybe it might have been a documentary at that point.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Then again, we'll get to their name in a minute.
The history of Pirate Radio in England starts with an
irishman named Ronan O. Ra Heley. And if that last
name sounds familiar to listeners, then you have a better
memory than I do because I can't remember names. But
oh rah Healey is a name that's been on the
(13:01):
show before. His grandfather appeared in our episode about the
Easter Rising of nineteen sixteen, which is seen as the
uprising that spurred on the Irish Revolution a couple of
years later, and Ronan O'raheey's grandfather's name was the o'rah
heey Cisa.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Oh my god, he has like a quintessential Catholic guy name.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It's like Michael Michael Collins.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
No, no, no, no, no. I think I remember it because
it's the same as migrant. But Michael Joseph.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
It's it's Michael. It's what Michael o'verheelly is.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
But what is his middle name? Joseph? Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I don't remember his middle name looking it.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Up, Okay, so that Joseph or Patrick preppably, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
It is Michael Joseph.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I'm going to quote for my own script about the
Easter Rising about the O'rahelly because I think it is
a neat way to frame this whole story. Also, just
because I really like the o'raheey.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Oh, is that what he was known as is like the.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So being the o'raheelly was actually a de anglicization because
the head of a clan was the and so by
becoming more Irish, he dropped Michael Michael Joseph and became
the And that is like fucking punk, Like we're almost
anti punk because it's to become the patriarch. But whatever,
(14:20):
I don't care. It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I'm gonna revisionist history my grandfather's name and pretend that
he was named everyth.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
This guy the Lickterman.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
No, no, no, is my mom's dad, the Dorian.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
The Dorian.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
That's good. I don't hate that. I could be the
kill Joy. That's fine.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Oh you are the Killjoy though, that's true.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
She is hell Yeah, when you pick your own name
and it sticks.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to quote about the rahel
quote and I'm quoting myself here because I'm the kill
Joy and I can see that one of the founders
of the Irish Volunteers was this guy who was named
the o'raheelly, Like, what kind of badass do you have
to be for your nickname to be the instead of Michael.
This was part of his de anglicization. The head of
(15:06):
a clan was named the He was the director of
arms for the volunteers. He had overseen a lot of
the military training, but he had been totally against the rising.
He had been part of the tell people not to
rise plan. There had been this whole thing with the
Easter Rising, where like half of them were like, we
shouldn't do that. That's a bad idea, We're all just
gonna die, which was true, but also it kind of
(15:29):
worked anyway. But when he found out the rising was
going to happen anyway, he said, quote, and this is
a good quote. It is madness, but it is glorious madness.
And he joined in. He or his friends set his
own car on fire in the street as a barricade
at one point, and on Friday he led a charge
through the street and was gunned down. Then he survived
(15:52):
almost a day, lying bleeding to death in a doorway.
While he was bleeding to death, he wrote a letter
to his wife, quote written after I was shot, Darling Nancy.
I was shot leading a rush up Moore Street and
took refuge in a doorway. While I was there, I
heard the men pointing out where I was and made
a bolt for the lane way. I am in now
(16:14):
I got one more bullet. I think tons and tons
of love, Dearie, to you and the boys, and to
Nell and Anna. It was a good fight anyhow, Please
deliver this to Nanny o'raheely forty Herbert Park, Dublin. Goodbye, Darling.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Jeez, that's sad, I know, but pretty beautiful I know.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
And the like constrained way he writes this letter is
so fitting somehow, you know, the culture at the time.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Just cut that cut that.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
I can send you over this thing I just read
and you could read it in an Irish accent.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Oh, I will never be allowed on that island again.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
They already hate us Irish Americans want to talk about
how Irish we are.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
For sure, and for good reason. But yeah, you're right
measured to be able to say, like this is my
last breath as I'm writing it out. That's pretty goossy.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, totally. And so that is Ronan's grandfather, the Orahali.
Ronan himself honestly isn't all that cool, if I'm being honest.
He is one of the original rock and roll capitalists.
But he still does something interesting, so fuck it. And
do you know what else? Incorporates advertising with audio content?
Speaker 3 (17:31):
The American Potato Council.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
That's true. Also, US we incorporate advertising into our audio
content for example, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
That was innovative.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Thank you. Yeah, I'm always trying to find new ways
to do it. You know, this is what I'm going
to be remembered for.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
First, what's your favorite way to eat a potato? Oh?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Gosh, the hash brown it's a good call.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Call.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, I mean more surface area means more fried delight basically.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, that's not usually the answer people give. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, I liked it.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
What do you get punch fries? But yeah, what's that
way where you like cut the potato over? That was me,
thank you? Yeah, what is that?
Speaker 1 (18:17):
A hasslebacked potato? So you take the potato and on
the top of it, you make a bunch of little slices,
but not all the way through, and then you can,
you know, put oil or butter or herbs or you know,
some people really go for it and google eyes, google eyes, cheese, bacon,
if you eat those things, and then you bake it
(18:38):
like a baked potato.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Okay, yeah that makes sense. Microwaving also a good way.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's really good.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah, I love a baked potato.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I've decided it's a thing they do in Portland. But
this isn't true. It's just that's where I ate it.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
The hassleback.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, oh, were you with me? Did we eat hasslebad
potatoes together? That really weird place? Oh? What was that
potato dish that we had it? That really weird fancy
people place.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Oh, I barely remember the food there. I remember going
to a really weird this steakhouse with you.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It was really weird, but they had like almost like
a I'm going to figure out what the potato thing
so we can talk about. Everyone's gonna be waited with
by the next ad brick, I will be able to
talk about this potato everyone.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Okay, all right, that's why everyone has to make it through.
People kind of listen to this stuff, the jibber jabber
between the ads. People mostly load up and listen to
the ads.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
I know, load up like a potato. Also, is it
weird going from parish revolutionary into potato as seemed that
was unbean.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well, we're already in trouble for your half second of accents, so.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, we'll call it a brogue just to piss people off.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
More go whatever, I shook hands with my great uncle
who fought in the Rising. That's my argument about any
of that. He was one hundred years old. He outlived
the Queen. Well, he died before the Queen, but he
lived longer than she did, and that's what matters anyway.
Rock and roll capitalist. He grows up to become one
(20:02):
of the most influential people in radio broadcasting. Radio Caroline
is reaching thirty million people at its peak in the
late sixties. If you read the sources that are written
a little bit more by the people who really like
Radio Caroline. Other people say like six to ten million people.
That is still a lot of people. I don't even
know that many people. Personally. This man fundamentally changes UK
(20:24):
culture despite not being from the UK, and that's kind
of cool. He was born in Dublin, the city where
his grandfather, the had died. He was born to a
rich Irish businessman who ran a ferry service. Ronan was
a bit of a wild child. He got kicked out
of school a lot. When he was seventeen. In the
late fifties, he moved to London to become an actor
and do shit in the music scene, and he and
(20:46):
his friends were basically promoting various rock bands around London.
He was managing a guy named Georgie Fame and BBC
had no interest in playing this guy, and Sirnin was like,
fuck it, rich family, I know rich people. I'm buying
a boat and setting up a radio station. He bought
the Danish passenger ferry, the Federicia, and started setting up
(21:10):
a radio station. Some other people were looking to do
the same thing at the same time, but Radio Caroline
got in early, or maybe first, working with a bunch
of rich backers to finance the Ireland based company. Most
of the history written about this particular venture is all
about the like wheeling and dealing to get the financing
(21:30):
to get this boat, and which rich people they talked
to and whose dad gave them money and I don't care.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
It is kind of interesting though, Like when I think
about pirate radio, I think about independent ventures where people
get together, collaborate, get stuff, you know, going that way,
and so making it actually like a registered business kind
of seems like a good way to get yourself economically sunk.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
It's so fascinating because it's a completely different model than
what we think of as pirate radio. Yeah, we think
of like people getting together and building a transmitter and
like just kind of hoping for the best and you know,
maybe doing it so long that people think that they're
just the local college radio station. But no, this is
like capitalists looking to break a governmental monopoly. And it's
(22:21):
still good that they broke this monopoly, and people were
pretty happy about getting rock music. You know, it's just interesting.
It's just yeah, it's so completely not what I think of,
and it's when we get to the Italian part, it
is going to come up in a more interesting way politically.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And I guess also just to throw it in and
I can stop if you want me to. But my
understanding what the BBC is that they fund it through subscriptions,
like they would collect everyone who has a radio, and
then eventually everyone who has a TV has to pay
a licensing fee to the government because it's only going
to be their content that's played on it. And so suddenly, oh, yeah,
I guess they have to bust in with a bunch
of advertising to be able to fund this venture. But
(22:58):
you're also kind of using government infrastructure, as in the
radios that are in people's houses that are licensed to
play radio. Yeah, they're kind of pirrating it or squatting it.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
That's true, and so they get together to get to
do this thing. Retrofitting the ship took a while. It
had to be done in secrecy because not only are
they planning to fuck over the government, they're planning to
fuck over like the other investors that they're working with
who are working on similar projects, because they're all like, oh,
we'll take this part of the country and you take
that part of the country, and they're like just kidding,
(23:32):
you know, they're rushing to do this in secrecy. They
told the locals at the port that the one hundred
and sixty five foot tall mast, which is the radio antenna,
was for helping them find deep sea sponges, and the
articles written with the like kind of a like those
dumb yokeles fell for it. But I don't know. Maybe
the dumb yocles fell for it, or maybe they just
were like, actually, we don't.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Care that much, or maybe they really like sponges.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, that's completely possible. How the radio station got its name,
most sources, including Wikipedia, will be like it was because
one of the people saw a thing and it was
like a president's granddaughter named Caroline and was like, that's
cool name. I'm gonna name my radio station. That The
(24:16):
most likely actual source of the name is basically it's
like a way of being like dumb sluts radio, because
Queen Magazine is one of the investors, and Queen Magazine
described their target audience as quote a twenty something non
intellectual who has left school at sixteen and who was
(24:37):
a good time girl named Caroline.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Boy, what a deep cut for a stupid name. I know,
I mean the name is not bad, it's a good name,
but yeah, yeah, that's terrible.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, I know, there's like a little bit of a like,
I mean, if this was made by women, that would
rule you know. Yeah, No, it's just a like we
want to sell the like teen girls we think are
not intelligent in any way.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Maybe what I watched was in fact a documentary.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Then yeah, they were trying to be true to the
original spirit by filling it full of misogyny. They launched
on March twenty third, nineteen sixty four. Oh good, I
did get the year right when I said this at
the beginning, and they claimed to be head into Spain
and then they were like, just kidding, We're going around
to London, and this was betraying the other radio people.
(25:28):
Radio Atlanta was the other big one that they're going
to later merge with, and Radio Caroline wanted London and
didn't tell anyone they wanted London. They parked just outside
of International waters and they started broadcasting. It's also kind
of worth knowing this is AM broadcasting, and AM radio
(25:48):
goes further than FM radio, which I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
AM like bounces off the I honest, there, I think,
and it's usually like long lateral antennas, and then FM
is line of sight, right, but it can kind of
bend over hills.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
And yeah, yeah, totally, Sophie. Did you know where clear
channel gets its name from?
Speaker 1 (26:08):
No, I pretend they don't exist.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, that's true. There was this company that used to
be called clear Channel. This isn't in the script. I
just found this and was like, oh, it's kind of neat.
A clear channel is like a word for AM radio,
where you're given like a huge broadcasting range with no interference.
It is a clear channel that you've been given. It
literally named themselves of this is a monopoly radio. That
(26:31):
is what they named themselves. Oh well, I love radio anyway.
They start broadcasting and not clear channel but radio Caroline,
and they had no idea whether they were going to
get away with this. They were like, are we about
to be raided and arrested? And the answer was like,
well that actually almost that came really close to happening,
(26:54):
and frankly, the Crown kind of sat around being like,
maybe we should raid and arrest these people. This is
clearly what we don't want them to do. And we
are the United Kingdom, we're kind of known for boats.
But people were really into the radio station. This is
the main secret to surviving as a pirate radio station
is you have to get people to like you quickly,
(27:16):
and so it was hard for the state to go
after them, and they decided not to jam the transmission either.
You can just kind of play white noise or other
things on the same frequency and like mess with someone
else's radio transmission. The Royal Navy did show up pretty
much right away and requested to board, and the Caroline
was like, no, we don't want you to, and the
(27:39):
Royal Navy was like, but we want to, and the
Caroline was like, not only do we not want you to?
The DJ is currently talking about what's happening on air
to everyone in London, and the Royal Navy was like,
all right, we'll see you later and they left it.
But yeah, people were into it. People were like music
all day. It also kind of turned off at night,
(28:00):
but so did all radio at the time. It was
like wild. They started off I think six to six,
and then then later they went to like ten, and
later they went to like midnight, really pushing the envelope here.
You know, it's so weird to imagine old time stuff.
Sometimes I'm like, but people are hanging out at three
in the morning. I cannot be convinced that old like
people back in the day were like time to go
to bed when they're like a teenager in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yeah, And I would imagine that's exactly the time when
you would want to be able to listen to like
whatever rock albums just were released that you can't get
a hold of otherwise, or that your parents wouldn't want
you to listen to. Middle of the night's the perfect
time for.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
It, Yeah, that's what I would think, And so they
start pushing later and later in the night. I almost
feel like it had to be like an invention. They
were like we could just play all night. We're in
international waters. We're already breaking the law or circumventing the law.
And so by May first people started buying ads on
the station. By June they had two ships to cover
(28:59):
more areas because they bought out their competitors. The Radio
Atlanta and Radio Caroline had found its audience. Within weeks,
more stations started flooding the air and forty five percent
of England was listening to pirate radio. And do you
know what they heard on that pirate radio bursts?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
No, what do they hear?
Speaker 2 (29:19):
They heard advertisements. I think that's why they would have
said it. I think you're right, Yeah, much like we are.
But we're in America. We have advertisements. It's somehow better
if it's an ad for biscuits. It's not what you think.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Okay. So the potato we had at that very strange
rushed on was a potato tart. It was like a
loaded potato tart.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I blacked this out of my memory.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
It's like a little dinner pastry type thing.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
If it's like a potato and a savory pie crust
and you could get like toppings in it.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, okay, I remember this now. I don't remember how
the potato was at all.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Potato was good.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Fancy restaurants are confusing. So we're back and continuing to
talk about potato radio. I can't figure how that would work.
Do you think that they power it by like, can't
you get like light a light bulb with a potato
or something?
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Oh, I thought you were gonna do a whatever that
thing is called mixing.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
The words potato.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah, potato would probably be the way to go.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Okay, And so Radio Caroline brings rock music to the
masses and fundamentally changes UK culture and therefore world culture
because you.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Know, the Brits invaded the US.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah after that, Yeah, exactly, be really fun to just
do kind of fictional cool people did cool stuff where
I'm just like, tell the story about the British invasion,
but just make it a little bit more literal. So
most of the stories about Radio Caroline are feel good
stories about the plucky upstarts who did good entrepreneurial stuff
(31:01):
and change British culture forever. And it is true that
they were entrepreneurs who changed British culture forever. But the
crime man's stuff is going on and people don't like
it because it messes with their idea of like the
good rebel. But I think it's really interesting. It is
(31:22):
not boring, and it does not line up to my
set of ethics. But it's the past. It doesn't need to.
That's the thing I got to remember more often.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Things can be fun without being right.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, I have no influence on the past. That too.
As soon as Radio Caroline started broadcasting, other people were like,
fuck yeah, that rules, and they started doing the same thing.
Many folks had been, in fact working on that idea
already themselves, like all the people that they fucked over.
Among the competitors to Radio Caroline was Radio City, which
(31:55):
was run by this wife and husband team for a while.
Calvert and her husband, REDG. Calvert, and these two had
a similar background as Radio Caroline, and that they were
rock and roll music promoters. The pair of them had
spent the fifties going around to dance halls being like, yeah,
that big band shit, I understand why you like it,
(32:16):
but hear me out rock and roll, And so they
went all over their little island and were like, what
if rock and roll? They ended up running twenty eight
of these dance halls together, and they put on shows
for bands even I have heard of, like the Beatles
and the Rolling Stones and the Kinks. So of course
(32:37):
they got in on the radio craze and they had
a friend. Have you ever heard this guy? I hadn't,
But you ever heard this guy screaming Lord Such?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
No, but that's an amazing name.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I know. He had a radio station at the time
called Radio Such. Screaming Lord Such is probably a character
for his own show sometime if I do like weird
people of early rock or something. I haven't deep dived
this guy yet. According to Wikipedia, he holds the record
for contesting the most parliamentary elections because in addition to
(33:10):
being a shock rocker and a DJ, he is one
of those WingNuts who ran for election every single time.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
He wasn't actually in the House of Lords.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Though, No, he has no connection to the peerage. He
just changed his name to Lord Such, which is such
a good move. It's a boss move yet, especially in
fucking Britain. Like. He was the leader of a political party,
an official political party that still exists today. You've probably
heard of it, the Official Monster Raving Looney Party.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I remember a Monty Python sketch with that one.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yet, wait, I don't know if you're telling the truth
or not, but they're probably.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah. I know there's on one of the albums of
their recordings there's an election special, and I think that
that's actually the name of one of the things that
the run up that I thought was just made up
until now.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
I don't know where the chicken in the egg is there. Yeah,
I could see either way. The Official Monster Raving Looney
Party is a real political party that still exists and
exists to satirize British politics. And basically this is the
Vermin Supreme of England, only he's dead. He doesn't wear
a boot on his head, and he never promised anyone ponies.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I have a Verbon Supreme tie on my desk that
he gave me at the DNC last year.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
That rules, I know.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
The time that I'm me at Vermin Supreme was at
the DNC also, and twenty years earlier.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
That's his super Bowl, Yeah it is. I also ate
with him at a very fancy restaurant that was like
lovely but also like too fancy.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Does he take his hat off to eat? Is he cultured?
Speaker 1 (34:43):
I'm not releasing that information to the public.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
That's fair maybe the hat is part of his head.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
I think the only time that I've seen him in
person was at Rosetta's in Ashville.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Nice, very nice person. See that's the food I would
eat anytime for fancy meal. Unofficial sponsor the place I
used to work. So Lord Such and if you ever
need to google, this man such is spelled Sutch. Lord Such.
(35:15):
All this radio stuff is happening, And so he gets
himself over to an abandoned World War II military fort
that is in international waters just off the coast of
England called Shivering Sands Army Fort, and it is one
of the most like water world ass looking places you'll
ever see a photo of. He set up a radio
(35:36):
station called Radio Such. It was powered by car batteries.
The transmitter had been ripped out of an old submarine.
The antenna was a flagpole with a jolly roger on it.
I think I would have been friends with this man
or terrified of him, or both or both. Radio Such
mostly reached fishermen on their boats. It was kind of
(35:59):
a just a pupliss city stunt. He got bored quick
enough and handed the whole thing over to his friend,
who was also his unpaid manager, Reg Calvert and his
wife Dorothy Calvert. These are the folks I was talking
about earlier who owned dance halls and such. The city radio, Yeah,
Radio City, Radio City, and the pair of them professionalized
(36:21):
the operation. They set up real transmitters, They connected all
of the different little platforms together and connected things. I
read a lot of manuals about pirate radio for this
episode and looked at diagrams and things, and I even
know how to solder, and I have no idea what
I was looking at. But they did a lot of
stuff to make radio go further. And the whole thing
was powered this time by generators that you could hear
(36:44):
on air over the mic because they're really loud. And
they turned Radio City into maybe the only profitable pirate
radio station in the water. My guess is this is
because their operating expenses were way lower because they were
not on a boat.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, but still nobody claimed that territory that they were on.
That's kind of crazy to think about.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Well, wait, was this in the documentary? What did you
know those I know being profitable? How to downside? Because
these early radio pirates pirates, it's in the fucking name,
like literally fucking high seas violence. Some worse still than
some of them being pirates, some of them were libertarians
in the American capitalist sense of that word. So Radio
(37:26):
Caroline this point is being run by a guy named
Smedley and he has a first name, but it doesn't matter,
because when your last name is Smedley and you're a
libertarian pirate, you're just Smedley in my book. And Radio
Caroline was not profitable despite being the biggest name in
the business, with the biggest reach. It's on two huge ships,
and so Smedley was like, hey, Radio City, let's go
(37:48):
into business together. And if you're thinking this is a
play to try and steal that area, you're absolutely right.
And he's like, it's a good idea. You can trust me.
My name is Smedley, and I apologized to anyone for
whom that is their legal name, but I don't know.
And so the Calverts chose to trust him. And Radio
Caroline had big, old transmitters shipped over from America from Texas.
(38:12):
Everything's bigger in Texas. And when they get there, Radio
Caroline's like, now you've got to pay us for all
these transmitters and all the shipping costs, and Radio City
was like, never mind, we don't actually want him that much,
and we actually just teamed up with his other pirate
radio station instead. So Radio Caroline sent over a fucking
boarding party and took it by force and they shut
(38:35):
down the transmitter at Radio City. This thing that comes
up behind the bastards all the time, where you know
it's going to go bad when people get out under
the water. That's how I feel with this whole thing,
because it started off I was like, oh it rules,
you get around the rules by going out in the water.
And then you're like, oh, there's gonna be this kind
of shit. And so Rench Calvert goes over to Smedley's house,
and I do not know what was in his mind,
(38:57):
because he never leaves that house again. He shows up
the next day and it's like either like all right,
but let's talk this over, or he shows up armed
and is like call off your goons. All I know
is that Smedley shot and kills reg Calvert and gets
away with it in self defense.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Who would prosecute, Like, wasn't this this isn't international water.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So he goes over to his house on land, Oh
on land, Yeah, and they all have like offices on
land as well. You know, I don't know if Radio
City did.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
But see, that's what their downfall is. They should just
keep everything on the water.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, and if they have their own passports, hear me out,
cool zone platform, Cool zone platform, Sophie, what do you
think it's a former oil rig? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Right, or a series of them that have been chained together.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah. What do you think?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
This is kind of like something out of Robert Evans's novel?
I guess, so maybe it should.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Well, we'll just let Robert be part of it. It'll
be fine, nothing will go wrong, and we'll make passports.
So Dorothy carries on Radio City without her husband for
as long as as she can. But in nineteen sixty seven,
which is I think the same year as the shooting,
they can't remember, in response in part to this killing,
(40:11):
the government passes the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act. Only they
misspelled defenses they used to see instead of an ass
And this was passed in order to stop pirate radio stations.
This you can't actually outlaw the station, but you can
outlaw supplying any of these stations, and you can outlaw
advertising with offshore radio. Dorothy tried to fight this in
(40:34):
court and she lost. The same year the BBC launched
Radio one. I think this is when they launched their
numbered radios, because why would it be number one if
they had just launched it then? And they start playing
pop and rock music because that's what people wanted, and
because the BBC got in on the act. This strips
away a lot of the support and listenership from the
(40:55):
pirate stations. Most stations shut down pretty much right away.
Radio Caroline, however, they're built different. They re registered as
a Dutch company and kept going being resupplied from the
Netherlands for about another year. But did I mention that
they were libertarians? They did not pay the various fees
(41:17):
and things to the various people who they owed money to,
and so the Dutch government shut them down. So ends
the first saga of pirate radio in the UK. The
people who brought rock and roll to the e oldie England.
Y is these weird pirates? And I really like such?
And also the Calverts seem probably fine. Did the station
(41:40):
change its method or anything like? Did they go all
shock jockey when the BBC one stepped in and they
suddenly had competition?
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I don't know that would be I could really easily
imagine them like they might have been like so British
that even when they started by doing it as a crime,
they probably still had to be like into this next
song that we will introduce is I don't know the
name of any rock songs from that era, great Balls
of Fire, but I don't know. Well, Screaming Lord Hutch
(42:09):
did get his name from Screaming Jay Hawkins. That was
a like, hell, yeah, that seems cool. I want to
do that. I bet Radio such had some of his ass. Yeah.
Probably when we come back on Wednesday, we're going to
talk about a second wave of pirate radio with a
distinctly more radical bent that cropped up shortly thereafter. How
you feeling on the first wave with wave being a
(42:32):
three parts the ocean. I like the symbolism, yeah, and
the airwaves.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
No, Yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm excited to learn a
little more. The name Radio Alice pops into my head
with what you sort of like led with, But I
don't know the details of that.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
But details of radio Alis a little bit cool on Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Exciting.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah, it's really interesting that the two most influential pirate
radio stations in Europe that I've tracked down personally. One's
Carolide and one's Alice, and they could not be more opposite,
to the point where I think the Radio Alice people
probably would have like fist fought Radio Carolide, you know,
or boarded them maybe, yeah, or totaled them totally. Well, guy,
(43:15):
I think you want to plug here at the end.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Sure, happy to be here for the chat. Like you
said at the beginning. I do a radio show called
The Final Straw. That's also a podcast. It's been going
for fifteen years. You can find it at TFSR dot
media if you want to check out some of the
past episodes, and yeah, we're on a bunch of the
social media. Cool just look up Final Straw.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
What's what's a recent episode? Y'all? Did that you like?
Speaker 3 (43:40):
I'm not sure when this will air, but the last
week before this recording, I spoke with Thomas Rothaus, who
wrote a book called Another War as Possible about militant
anarchist participation in the anti globalization era. And so it's
kind of we joke about it, or we didn't make
this up, but it's been joked to be the sequel
(44:01):
to evasion, but with good politics. But it's lots of
like Ruckus like not the interview, but the book itself
has lots of really cool stories of getting away with
stuff during riots in the early two thousands in Europe.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
It sounds like something that our listeners would like.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
It's fun. And I talked to someone from Remora House,
a mutual aid project that does a lot of outreach
to houseless folks in DC, this week about what the
military and federal occupation in DC has been like for
the folks that they work with, as well as for
immigrant like folks who are being harassed by ice.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Fuck y'all, what do I have to plug? I don't know.
I have a substack. I write about things. I actually
wrote about radio this week, mostly so that I could
talk about poetry. But I swear that's the worst pitch
I've ever done for my own newsletter. It's actually entertaining.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Oh, I was just gonna ask what the connection that
you made between radio and poetry was.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
I'll talk about a bit more week. But the anarchist poet,
the godfather of the beats, who didn't like the beats
very much, Kennis Rexroth was a big part of starting
pacifica Radio, which is I think the start of public
radio and listeners supported radio.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
If anyone in the audience is around KPFA, we air
on Wednesdays from eleven to twelve every week.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Oh shit, in the Bay as well. Okay, wait, where
can people hear your show on the radio?
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Columbus, Ohio, Knoxville, Tennessee, Asheville, North Carolina, the Wider Bay area,
the North Bay, Eugene, Oregon. Sometimes around Garberville. We're on
a dozen stations, but if you visit the website, we've
got like a list of the community radio stations that airs.
They're mostly like little LPFM stations that are that have
like a leftispent. That's cool, Sorry to cut off Sophie's edition.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Oh yeah, Robert Evans prop and myself for doing a
fundraising live show in Portland, Oregon. All of our performer
proceeds we'll go towards to Portland bail fund. That is
going to be on September twenty fifth at the Alberta
Rose Theater. You can buy tickets now.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Hell yeah, that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
All right. Well, I'll talk to you a Wednesday when
we talk about more radio, and this time it'll be
by people who will be mad that there's ads when
we talk about it, instead of proud of us.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Bye Bye, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check
us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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