And their two ships, Caroline North and Caroline South, keep on playing. Sally: The DJs of Radio Caroline are defiant. Sally: But… some pirates are willing to risk it. A few seconds later, and their broadcasts could have gotten them thrown in prison. Sally: All these DJs have closed up shop in the nick of time. Sally: Radio Scotland shuts down at the last minute, too: But their final broadcast is poignant nonetheless. Plus, 270 has some technical difficulties after jellyfish get sucked in with the water that's supposed to cool the generators.
A helicopter pilot agrees to drop a package of tapes on board the ship so the DJs who are on board can play them, but he misses, and the tapes plunge into the water. In their final hours, they have a rough go of it-the bad weather prevents most of the DJs from making it out to the boat, so they have to record their farewell messages from the shore. Sally: The next to drop is Radio 270, so-named for the frequency that it airs on. And today, the last possible day, the first to stop broadcasting is Radio London. Sally: Several boats have already given up. Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, these pirate radio DJs will become criminals. And now, the government has put its foot down. Sally: This was always just barely legal. Because the BBC won’t play much pop, and this is the sixties. For the past few years, a handful of boats have made it their mission to broadcast popular music from international waters. Less sword fighting and treasure hunting, more spinning records and dancing late into the night. Sally: These are pirates of a particular kind. And a small group of pirate ships that have been fighting to stay afloat… and are about to lose. Foam blowing in streaks across the water. Sally: Gale force winds off the coast of England. At least, it was, until the great pirate radio rebellion. The radio was a very clean and sanitized place, and it was tightly controlled by the BBC. If you turned on a radio in England back then, chances are, you wouldn't hear any rock ‘n’ roll, and you definitely wouldn’t hear any DJs saying shocking things. And that was especially true over in England. On the hip hop station, I’d hear local Memphis rappers who were just starting to get big.Īnd in the mornings, I’d hear Shock Jock DJs who would say stuff that you could never get away with on television.īut years before I even existed, in the late 60s, the radio was a totally different place. It was how I got into the grunge scene that was exploding in Seattle. On these long drives, the radio felt like my connection to the outside world.
And once I was old enough to drive, I would turn on the radio on my 45 minute commute to and from school. I remember sitting in my bedroom, listening to the radio on a little boombox. Once I tuned in, I was just along for the ride. By today’s standards, it might sound really constrictive, but there was actually something kinda nice about it. There was no skip button, and only a handful of stations. Sure, there were CDs and cassette tapes, but they were expensive, and there was no way a poor kid like me could afford much of a music collection.īack then, it felt like the radio had so much power. This was back in the 90s, way before anything like Spotify, iTunes, or even Napster. When I was a kid, the main way that I listened to music was on the radio. You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. Subscribe to History This Week wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Songs That Shook the Planet at /songs
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Get 83% off Surfshark VPN plus an extra 3 months free at als/20k, or use promo code 20K. Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp at /20k. If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at. The Wild Horseman (Version 2) by Traditionalįollow the show on Twitter, Facebook, & Reddit.īecome a monthly contributor at 20k.org/donate. This story comes from the History This Week podcast. Soon enough, these young DJs became national superstars… until the British government decided it was time to sink these pirates once and for all. So a group of rebellious radio DJs decided to give the people what they wanted, and started broadcasting popular music from boats stationed in international waters. In the 1960s, the BBC had a vise grip on British radio, and rarely played the pop and rock music that was all the rage.
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