i'm in the East Bay, like 15 minutes out from Oakland. i'm listening to the one good jazz station (shout out to 91.1 KCSM) and i'm getting a bit bored of the current tune. they can't all be winners. anyway i set my iPod radio to scan through to find something else. it lands on a station playing this. i'm like "yeah it's after midnight and im wide awake, lets dance" so i stay put on 92.7.
after DJ Jean got us completely and thoroughly ready for the launch, a station identification plays. it's got all the flashy over-the-top sound design you'd expect and a voice with a slightly british accent goes–92.7 P-p-p-p-pirate radio. The 24/7 soiree never stops!
this tune starts up, but at this point i'm more focused on trying to make sure i had heard that correctly.
did it just self identify as a pirate radio station?
surely that's... they wouldn't just SAY that out loud right? there's no way i just stumbled onto an illegal broadcast, this is some weird branding for someone trying to compete with clearchannel/iheartradio or SOMETHING.
so i go online to find out what the hell 92.7 FM is. it's... unclear. skimming wikipedia shows there was some court stuff over the ownership and that it seems somewhat ongoing. as far as i can tell, the FCC filing for whatever it used to be is inactive and there are no current active licenses. another station ident plays–We rave The Bay... 365, 7 days a week, 24/7. It's the all new Pirate 92.7!, new song. notice how they keep avoiding giving out a callsign. that's not a valid station ident!! that clinches it for me. this is an illegal FM broadcast.
HELL YEAH
HOW COOL IS THAT
i grab my handy dandy focusrite scarlett and plug it into my ipod. i record about 30 minutes of the broadcast because i want to preserve some of these station idents. i got a fantastically weird one that goes like–And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music [40 dubstep sounds] Pirate 92.7!
i wanted to record more but my iPod dies and then i get very sleepy and go to bed (at this point it's like 1:30am). i wake up around 10. unplug the iPod from the charger, plug in the radio dongle, plug in my headphones, tune to the station. dead fucking silence. i was told the 24/7 soiree never stops and yet here i am listening to not-even-static. hopefully this just means they only broadcast late at night because i want more pirate radio. yeah, sure, at one point they played a Chainsmokers song and i wanted to vomit.
but it was illegal. and it was beautiful
