BBC4 PRESENTS - The Last Pirates: Britain's Rebel DJs...
BBC4 strikes again with another unmissable urban music documentary, this time charting the story behind the rise of the second wave of pirate radio through the 1980's...
Telling story of how utilisation of the illegitimate airwaves played such a pivitol role in bringing a highly suppressed urban music scene to the fore in support of an unstoppable backlash against popular culture. With words and stories for Gilles Peterson, Jazzy B, Trevor Nelson, Norman Jay and many other ambassadors of the early alternative scene, this is a must see....
TLDR;
(words courtesy of BBC): In the 1980s a new generation of pirate radio stations exploded on to Britain's FM airwaves. Unlike their seafaring swinging 60s forerunners, these pirates broadcast from London's estates and tower blocks to create a platform for black music in an era when it was shut out by legal radio and ignored by the mainstream music industry.
In the ensuing game of cat and mouse which played out on the rooftops of inner-city London across a whole decade, these rebel DJs used legal loopholes and technical trickery to stay one step ahead of the DTI enforcers who were tasked with bringing them down. And as their popularity grew they spearheaded a cultural movement bringing Britain's first multicultural generation together under the banner of black music and club culture.
Presented by Rodney P, whose own career as a rapper would not have been possible without the lifeblood of pirate radio airplay, this film also presents an alternative history of Britain in the 1980s - a time of entrepreneurialism and social upheaval - with archive and music that celebrates a very different side of Thatcher's Britain.
Featuring interviews with DJs, station owners and DTI enforcers - as well as some of the engineers who were the secret weapon in the pirate arsenal - this is the untold story of how Britain's greatest generation of pirate radio broadcasters changed the soundtrack of modern Britain forever.
