The acquisition by Rinse was a real shock. I'd spent years listening to a proper pirate station over the internet (I was too far from the actual transmitters in London) and being part of a chatroom…and it was all taken away without warning. From memory, it really upset me. This station and its ethos was such a part of my life for so long, and it just…went away.
As I understand it, Rinse cherry-picked the Kool London DJs they wanted to continue, and a notable number of the remaining talent went on to form / join Underground Bass[1], get a stream online[2], and get on with things. A lot of the behind-the-scenes folks also went to UB, and the DIY spirit lives on.
I recognise around 10 of the current Rinse Kool roster from the Kool London era, and around 20 of the current Underground Bass roster are from the Kool London era.
I came from Northern England, and could get 5 or maybe 7 pirate stations on a good day from my room - only 1 or 2 of which would be my sort of music. In 1999 I moved to London, and bought a really really good (1970s) radio receiver, and couldn't believe the number (and quality) of pirate stations - every bit of the spectrum seemed to be covered. I had a mini-disk player, and used to record some of my favourite shows - but years later sold the player and labelled all the disks as 'blank'.
It felt such an exciting time to hear about new tracks, artists and club nights all across London - but then again I was 20 and had the time and money to go out.
This is a timely intersection for a search I've been doing for archives of the Quiet Storm shows of the 90s from Power 99 FM in Philly. At the start of my search I didn't realize how ephemeral radio was treated. Growing up I listened to tapes of Abbott and Costello, The Shadow, and dozens of other shows. I just assumed there were recordings of everything. I found hundreds of KCMU and WFMU shows I recorded from live streams, when I wasn't living near enough to get the terrestrial signal. And the odd LPFM / pirate broadcasts. It might be time to build an archival WARK.fm
A friend in LA sent me KTWV tapes in the 80's and I'm still playing some of the music I could that way. Thank you for giving me inspiration to go find more new music.
And you reminded me of a short-lived station out of either Philly or maybe smaller market like Pottstown that played new wave. I was loading my tape deck every night. I just dug out my old disks, cassettes, I wonder if they are in there.
There was also The Sunday Night Six-Pack on either WMMR or WYSP that played 6 albums straight through uncut. I used my VCR to record the whole show every week. Still have a few of them left - Joe Walsh night!
I still hear those jingles in my head (as well as local news about LA that had absolutely no bearing on my life at the time, but it stuck with me anyway).
Already I've found some recordings of them online thanks your message and I'm listening to it now, already found a couple of nice artists.
No kidding. Seattle has almost nothing left, except an AM station and a few shows on mixed format stations. Chicago's top shelf if you're hunting for online. They have lots of choices, just depending on your particular need / mood.
Power 99 was 98.9 WUSL (I looked it up to be sure). All I could recall for sure was "Power 99...FM". Heh.
Thank you for sharing this. Touches the heart in two different aspects. Recording radio shows on tapes and listening them with players and shitty earphones before CDs/mp3 players were a thing. Still thankful to my young self for the amount of weird and awesome music.. And then obviously junglist massive. Big up!
It's a funny quirk of history and circumstance that I'll always associate the station bumper or a DJ's intro with certain songs that I taped off the radio on the 80s and 90s. Similarly, I've heard from friends that they have associated skips, scratches, pops and static with certain songs based on their medium of choice back in the day.
Off topic but how were pirate radios able to operate while people with sets would have vans going around and fining people for not having a TV license?
In the US sometimes you’d have pirate radio off the coast so as to avoid “jurisdiction” though I’m not sure how effective that was.
A lot of the infrastructure of pirates in the UK is intimately linked to the urban environment of high-rise residential tower blocks, which housed the studios (often in abandoned flats), with the height of the building providing excellent coverage for transmitter aerials which would be mounted on the roof.
The pirates got very advanced over the years, and one of the most important tactics was to separate the studio and the transmitter, using separate tower blocks for each connected via microwave linkup. It got to the point where they would have multiple transmitters available so that if the DTI (UK government body responsible for finding and prosectuing illegal radio transmissions) found the transmitter currently in use, they could then switch quickly to a different one and carry on broadcasting. There would be people monitoring the frequency to check that it hadn't been taken down, and once mobile phones were more common it made it quite easy to quickly abandon a transmitter or studio if necessary. The tactics of the DTI are actually quite fascinating in themselves, involving triangulation and all sorts of interesting gizmos.
If you're interested in learning more, the YouTube channel Ringway Manchester[1] has been documenting the techniques used over the years, and is an excellent channel for info on radio in general, especially with regards to the UK, including some brilliant interviews with the people involved in running the pirates, with stories of the crazy things they got up to in those days. There are also a couple of excellent documentaries from the 90s on the topic, one of which, specifically about Kool FM, is featured on this channel about Jungle & Drum n Bass Documentaries[2] (First Sight Pirate Radio).
I’m not sure if you’re joking or not but TV license detection vans are a joke, a scare tactic, a meme, they don’t exist. TV license “inspectors” just showed up at houses and asked if they were watching broadcast TV.
Pirate radio would broadcast from the top of buildings and did often get caught.
The acquisition by Rinse was a real shock. I'd spent years listening to a proper pirate station over the internet (I was too far from the actual transmitters in London) and being part of a chatroom…and it was all taken away without warning. From memory, it really upset me. This station and its ethos was such a part of my life for so long, and it just…went away.
As I understand it, Rinse cherry-picked the Kool London DJs they wanted to continue, and a notable number of the remaining talent went on to form / join Underground Bass[1], get a stream online[2], and get on with things. A lot of the behind-the-scenes folks also went to UB, and the DIY spirit lives on.
I recognise around 10 of the current Rinse Kool roster from the Kool London era, and around 20 of the current Underground Bass roster are from the Kool London era.
[1] https://www.undergroundbass.uk
[2] https://listen.undergroundbass.com:8804/stream
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