Here’s to the heroes of the waves, the eternally young of spirit, the rebels with a cause to say ‘F**k you!’ to the Man, and to live free for music. Where are they now? Go back to the 1960’s, to a place and time so far removed now from our lives on the verge of 2010 that it may as well be another world, existing only on movie screens and hidden dreams. Can you imagine a time when rock and roll was subversive, that even hearing it would make youths tear off their clothes, have sex with everyone while smoking Mary-Jane…all to the sweet quadraphonic sound of The Who, Hendrix, and the Stones. So the pirates took action, and the fate of free music for the world, into their own hands, and their voices rang out as a clear beacon in the long dark night of the soul. They broadcast symphonies of sound into the waves of silence, and opened the way for all of the freedom of music and choice of hundreds of radio stations we have today. Radio Luxembourg, Radio Scotland’s pirate ship, Radio Jackie, Radio Caroline, Radio Atlanta, and Denmark’s Radio Mercur. The boat did indeed rock, but will it rock no more? The valiant legends of those days in the long summer of love spoke out to the people. They said ‘open your knees and feel the breeze baby’, they asked, ;who out there will rock with me?, they preached ‘do not fear anything or anybody in this world!’ Just live for the day and for the purest soundtrack to life we could’ve been given! The people listened. But who do we listen to now? In this time of total individualism, where how you live and what you listen to are your choice, how do we create and keep our identity? I’m of the opinion that we don’t. That’s what is fundamentally wrong with the world today. We’re searchers without a goal without any idea of what we’re looking for, we want to be treasure hunters but forgot the map. There was no map to begin with. So we head out there into the world looking for ourselves, sure that one day we will find ‘truth’. There was a time when you could find it. The struggle against the status quo in the 1960’s and 70’s gave youth a purpose. The music defined them. Long hair and flares identified their cause like a flag of peace and love in face of the Vietnam War, and the oppressively controlling governments in both the US and Britain. Where do we find ourselves? The Beatles went to India, and came back transformed into tantric yogis treading barefoot on the virgin earth. Go there today and you’ll find a lot of other people with the same goal, but in this new crowded tourist trail to inner peace you’ll have to get in line and pay your entry fee to nirvana. Nepal was the great undiscovered kingdom of soaring peaks and spiritual enlightenment, now a hundred thousand trekkers fill the holy mountains and crowd Katmandu. As in the 1969 iconic film Easy Rider Peter Fonda and Denis Hopper set out on the road, like Jack Kerouac, across the US to discover the meaning that’s out there. What they find however is that they missed it, the summer of love was over. What are you left with? What do we fight against today that identifies us, or are we all so individualistic now that we’re far beyond this kind of soul-searching that defined the previous generations?
‘We may be gone! You may shut us down, but those songs will still be written, those songs will still be sung and it will be the wonder of the world’, Philip Seymour Hoffman says as their pirate radio ship sinks in the fantastic 2009 film The Boat that Rocked. (Go and watch this movie it will change your life!) Music is the wonder of the world, that’s the way it was and that’s how its going to stay. Given, the soundtrack to the 60’s was a different tempo, it struck a new chord in the hearts and minds of the world, and it had a different meaning: a celebration of the freedom they didn’t quite have yet, but were fighting for. It’s the self-same freedom of speech and music, of thought and lifestyle that we have today but don’t appreciate. We search for new enemies in the world, big countries seek terrorists and chase shadows to war across the globe, they fear economic Armageddon and epidemic flu’s, all to occupy our every waking thought, so we don’t quite realize how good we have it. Humans need something to fight against, we require combat, a threat to our survival, a restriction on our desired way of life so we can raise our voices in unison against our oppressors. It seems we don’t know what to do in peace-time, but we’re damn lucky our world has it for now, other places on the planet aren’t so lucky. We want that rebellious time of the 60’s, of love over war, where music conquers and gives hope to all, but I guess we are rebels without a cause. The world has grown for me, not become smaller as so many people say without thinking of the implications. In the past, radio gave the news from the world, but it was a smaller one. Today we can’t pretend our country is the only one, the world is a big, imperfect, and far from unified place. So do we take up the cause of others who can’t defend themselves? What place has music in this new bigger and more confusing world?
I would call for a return of the pirates of the airwaves. Just because their battle with authorities won us all the stations we have today, many if not most are still controlled by the very Man the radio warrior disc jockeys of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s fought against. Ask yourself this, how many radio DJ’s have you heard say ‘F**K’ lately? Not many. Sure, its just a word, but in modern communication terms it’s the most powerful one we’ve got. That word is the bombshell. It deserves its due, and deserves to be used! That four-letter beloved word is a symbol of freedom to say whatever you like, about who you like, whenever you like! In a world where we are now going to war, supporting war, or just plain standing by and doing nothing, we need those heroes to speak out, through songs, literature, poetry, art, and all of it summed up in the words of our generation out of touch with itself and lost for new words to define ourselves, broadcast on the air for all to hear. Pirate radio will live on as long as there’s a will and as long as we don’t forget the rebels of the 60’s, the philosophers of rock and roll, the poets of song, the maestros of the waves on that open sea, the mean and women that would die for music. May we be so brave. May you throw yourself into this moment, the sunshine of your love, the true voice on the mic that whispers to the lost reaches of your heart, the music that takes you to a place undreamed of, and defines your soul in the search for the wonder of the world. Although the summer of 1967 saw pirate radio banned in the UK, that wasn’t even close to the end of the story. Dublin’s Phantom radio broadcast free metal and rock for years before finally hanging up their Jolly Roger headsets and turning legitimate. Pirate Cat in the US broadcasts freely as you read this, and the government cant stop them, as the law states that in times of war free radio is allowed. The US is now in an ‘unending war’. Digital radio pirates across the globe can now reach millions through the web and you can get their free music beamed straight on to your IPod. Free music and free speech can equal jail time even today. Pirates get caught, radio gets shut down, it goes with the territory, but there’ll always be more, that’s their legacy, to pass on the message, the inspiration, and courage to hoist the flag. Amen.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Article 19
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