Submitted via IRC for ErnestTBass
Radio Piracy on the High Seas: Commercial Demand for Taboo Music
The true story of pirate radio is a complicated fight over the airwaves. Maybe you have a picture in your mind of some kid in his mom’s basement playing records, but the pirate stations we are thinking about — Radio Caroline and Radio Northsea International — were major business operations. They were perfectly ordinary radio stations except they operated from ships at sea to avoid falling under the jurisdiction of a particular government.
Back then many governments were not particularly fond of rock music. People wanted it though, and because people did, advertisers wanted to capitalize on it. When people want to spend money but can’t, entrepreneurs will find a way to deliver what is desired. That’s exactly what happened.
Of course, if that’s all there was to it, this wouldn’t be interesting. But the story is one of intrigue with armed boardings, distress calls interrupting music programs, and fire bombings. Most radio stations don’t have to deal with those events. Surprisingly, at least one of these iconic stations is still around — in a manner of speaking, anyway.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 28 2019, @01:36PM
Brings back memories of the 70s. A modified CB radio with ~60 channels (PLL chip hack), modified (120% modulation) Turner Super Sidekick, a tuned Penetrator 5/8th wave antenna on top of a hill, and a 100W tube amp on SSB could reach from SoCal to Australia.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday April 28 2019, @01:53PM (6 children)
Society has an interest in keeping competition civil. But so often, the establishment abuses their power and authority to suppress competition, and stop change. It's often done under the rubric of maintaining morality.
Nevada has legal prostitution, Native American tribes use their limited sovereignty to run gambling businesses, clubs can be zones that are free of Blue Laws against alcoholic drinks, Hollywood set up in California to get as far away as possible from the restrictions of Broadway in New York, and so on.
Pirate radio is an interesting footnote in this old story. As far as I can tell, over the centuries the overall trend has been towards more liberalization of those activities that are in fact mostly harmless. But there's still a need for places and means outside jurisdictions that still unfortunately tend to be overly restrictive.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 28 2019, @02:54PM
That's why we need to go to the moon, right?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday April 28 2019, @05:27PM (4 children)
IIUC, Hollywood set up in California explicitly to escape copyright restrictions.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Sunday April 28 2019, @05:44PM
Patents not Copyright.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 28 2019, @07:00PM (2 children)
Close, but not quite. People moved to the United States in order to violate the hell out of copyrights back home. (OK, not explicitly for that, but once they got to the new world they realized there was nobody there to stop them, so copyright violation was rampant.) It's only in (relatively) recent times that the American pirates, who got rich violating copyrights, have gotten all pissy and demanded that others stop imitating them.
Once Edison set up shop in the eastern US, copying other people's ideas and patenting them ("What do call a stolen Tesla? An Edison!" ba-dum-tish), that's when the movie industry moved to California so they could violate the hell out of patents related to the new industry. And then they got all pissy about patent and copyright violations, too.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Magic Oddball on Monday April 29 2019, @01:53AM (1 child)
Hey, my ancestors moved to the United States because they were stubborn, argumentative asshats who couldn't manage to get along with anyone else in Ireland, you insensitive clod!
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 29 2019, @03:33AM
Both of my parents are from the EU, despite the fact they don’t treat us well on trade. Both of my parents were born in EU sectors, OK? My mother was Scotland. My father was Germany.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 28 2019, @04:40PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_That_Rocked [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday April 28 2019, @11:43PM
There is also this one [wikipedia.org] from my home town, based on the British model of sailing a ship out past the old 3-mile limit.
Unfortunately I am not old enough to remember that station as anything other than a bland, corporate rock music station, but the stories are that it was pretty wild in the sixties.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Monday April 29 2019, @09:01AM (2 children)
In reality, it was mostly Motown we wanted and got from pirates, not rock.
Or, at least various kinds of black music. Listen to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
first albums, then go on Youtube and seek out the originals they covered.
When I was studying Electrical Engineering in the UK in the mid 1060's, we were asked to discuss what society wanted from Electrical Engineering students when they left college. The answer was "A machine that lets them watch the Ike and Tina Turner show" in their own homes. Note: Not "Country Joe and the Fish" or "the Greatful Dead".
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday April 29 2019, @03:25PM
This does not speak for everyone, as confirmed by market demands over time.
Rock and roll gained enormous popularity, and furthermore, has maintained that condition. Soul — or even just Ike and Tina Turner — has not done so to comparable levels. Rap and modern pop, both highly repetitive and angst-lyric driven forms, have supplanted what you call "black music" derived from soul and blues, and bear little resemblance to either.
Rock (and rock-n-roll), however, continues to be built around its blues roots and one can easily uncover this in virtually every nominally three-chord construct of a song, every blues-scale "rock" lick, and every blues-form turnaround between verses. The laments tend to be in traditional blues form as well, accounting for a very large number of rock ballads.
Country Joe and The Fish is a pretty clueless example of rock and roll in general, too. They were notable outliers from day one and never dug themselves out of that (nor is it obvious that were they inclined to.) By way of contrast, The Grateful Dead generated, and retain, a very large fanbase, but one limited to a fairly specific age range.
--
My friend said he didn't understand cloning.
I said "That makes two of us."
(Score: 2) by Sourcery42 on Monday April 29 2019, @04:17PM
Whoa! What manner of Sparky curriculum was available during the Norman Conquest? ;)