What happened to the SOUL?

In today's current climate of manufactured bands and genetically modified music I find myself constantly disgruntled and wondering "Whatever happened to the SOUL? Whatever happened to the goose bumps, the prickles on the back of your neck and the urge to shout out loud "sing it sister/brotherI feel you", when that certain song would play. When you would close your eyes with arms extended outright into the air absorbing the sensations emitted by soulful vibrations.   Remember soul? I do. Nowadays it seems that music lacks a certain depth, substance and longevity... The essence that touches your energy and makes you want to soarfly without wings and transcend earthly strains.  Now that's what I call musicanything that moves you (not just in the physical sense).

If you look back upon on all the artists that are remembered today and still continuously listened to globally, they were all artists that did more than just please the ears; they pleased the senses. They spoke to your heart and whispered to your soul, moved your spirit in some way and even changed your life or way of thinking. Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Al Green, John Lennon, Rolling Stones, Queen, Bob Dylan; they were ALL evolutional revolutionaries of their time regardless of the difference in genre.  Pushing the boundaries and providing food for thought. I remember being in my early teens sat next to the record player with my mum playing Marvin Gayes album whats going on. I can recall listening to the words of the songs and being overwhelmed with a combination of empathy, anger, sadness and love...they made me aware of my emotions and I felt alive because of it.  I can listen to the same album 10 years later and it is still relevant today. Even now, inner city blues still makes me want to holler and Shape of my Heart still makes me want to shed a tear! The words have the same effect as they did the day I first heard them and that, to me, is great music and music with Soul.  Dont get me wrong, I know that there are artists like Jill Scott, Zero 7 and David Grayall artists that scratch beyond the surface and explore life, yet they still seem far and few between in contrast to the vast choice of refuse which currently flows through the veins of the industry.

Does it matter?

Great music is dormant in so many people nowadays, in the lives of the youth especially, and it is easy to buy into the bleak society of music that currently dominates the industry, never asking for anything more. Personally speaking, it is hollow and echos an emptiness that only serves to satisfy the superficial and I firmly believe that there is an ever growing army of soul starved people that want their spirit fed in terms of musical content now more than ever. In a world that grows ever colder and darker by the day, music which holds the light is indeed a necessity. But as days grow more sinister, sinister music also grows stronger because in the same way that there is a demand for light the demand for darkness is just as strong.  I was born in the 70s the golden era. It was all about flower power, building bridges and drawing closer to your fellow neighbours.  It was in the 70s that important steps and political changes had begun to really manifest and would lead nations to take on a collective responsibility to say NO to racial hatred, prejudice and injustice. People all over the world began to understand that they did have a voice that could be heard and used to change the path of history and the 70s was a time of transition and turmoil. There were changes in Womens liberation and the first female Episcopal priest was ordained in 1976, the first black admiral was recruited to the Navy in 1971 and apartheid and segregation laws were shifting and changing when Steve Biko died in Police Custody in 77, the surrender of Biafra in 1970 ended a 30 month succession of war that wiped out thousands of children in Nigeria, China launched their first satellite, Vietnam was in full swing with President Nixon at the reigns, India tested its first nuclear bomb in 74 and Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister!!!  It was an eventful decade with major advances also taking place in technology and software. The fist test tube baby was made in 1978, the floppy disk was invented in 1971, the VHS tape and recorder were introduced in 76, Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates in 75 and Sony Walkmans hit the streets in 1979the year of my birth!    While all of this was unfolding the soundtrack to our lives was that of ground-breaking artists like Led Zeplin, Syl Johnson, Diana Ross, Elvis, Al Green, The Temptations, Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Cliff, the Carpenters, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers to name but a few. Whether the music was inspired by events or whether the changes in events were inspired by music is an interesting enigma, but one thing I can say for sure is that the music back then did have the power to move mountains. It was during the 1970s that the Temptations went to meet the Arch Bishop of Canterbury in London to discuss race relations because even then seniors of the church realised the potential in spreading a message through music. John Lennon held a Peace festival in Toronto giving a percentage of the gross earnings to charity to promote world unity and this was attended by thousands. It was also in 1978 that Bob Marley and The Wailers performed at the One Love Peace concert in Kingston's National Arena in an attempt to link Jamaica's feuding political parties; Marley symbolically joined the hands of bitter rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seaga on stage and an almighty clap of thunder and flash of lightening could be heard and seen overheadcoincidence or divine intervention, whatever it was it was powerful stuff.  It seemed that performers back then had a sense of social responsibility to use their talents for the greater good. There was more of a concerted effort to bring about whatever change they could through the power of song and dance and it was because they wanted to; not because a PR Company told them it would be good for their image.  Artists today who have the clout to affect history and a way of thinking seem reluctant to step up to the plate; favouring influential gain opposed to the reparation of humanity. 50 Cents song and new film Get Rich or Die Trying, sums this ideology up in one. I recently asked my 5 year old niece who she liked to listen to and she answered The Pussy Cat Dolls Aunty. I tried to hide the cringe from my face.  What sort of role models do they provide? Women that cavort around half naked in front of the camera singing dont you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?  Needless to say, whenever my niece is at my house I try to inflict upon her a balanced diet of good aural food in an attempt to undo the damage the fickle music industry has already done.

Call me a spiritualist if you like but I believe people are put on this earth for a reason. They have a purpose to fulfil, whether they know this or not, for good or evil. If they didnt then we would not have an existence of polarization. You cant have one without the other i.e. ying and yang, sun and moon, good and evil, right and wrong, left and rightyou get the picture! Life is just a balance and right now it seems that the weight of good music on the scales of harmony has drastically shifted, but how do we bring it back?

Some people have faith in religious deities or faith in magic, some have faith in fate yet I have more faith in music and its spiritual power to change human nature for the better. We have an innate responsiveness to music that defies belief and it has even been noted in scientific studies that as human beings we remember 10% of what we are told, 40% of what we read but a staggering 90% of what we hear. Now what does that tell you? Sound has the ability to carry meaning that can heal our scars or scar our minds and it is one of the first senses that we, as human beings learnt to use whilst still in our mothers wombs.  Maybe it is this sound; the smooth comforting, muted low frequency of the amniotic sack, coupled with the steady pulse of a mothers life force that inspires in us the need to listen to music. Just as food nourishes a baby's growing body, the elements of music; melody, tone and harmony, nourish a baby's rapidly developing brain. Even before children are born, research shows that music has a beneficial effect on the network of neurons that will be the foundation of their later learning, language development and musical ability.  A plethora of studies over the last decade has revealed that children who listen to classical music have increased mathematical and verbal skills as well as greater emotional maturity than those children who miss out on such music. The benefits are thought to be even greater for children who learn to play an instrument.  Classical music is quite mathematical in its structure, which has an effect on the way the brain functions and interprets audio information. I would imagine that this same theory would apply to music with soul. In a logical world one would imagine that the essence of soulful music would encourage the area of the brain which deals with emotion and empathy to become more active as would be the case for spiritual music. For instance, I am not a religious person passé but I do know that when I listen to Kirk Frankllin or Sounds of Blackness I feel uplifted and I know that when I hear an African drumming group I feel within my very being a nostalgia that speaks to me.  What then could be said about the effects of Pop music or urban grime/eskibeat on the younger generation?!?!  Lets just say that the vital elements of respect, empathy and general positivity are missing from most young peoples domain of music and these are all important factors that make up a responsible, functional human being.

My mum once told me that whilst we (me and my twin brother) were maturing within her body she would put her stomach near to the speaker so we could hear the rumbling bass of roots dub reggaemaybe this is the reason why me and my brother both went on to become musicians specialising in the drums, steel drums and percussion. Could it be that subconsciously we tried to reproduce that feeling of being safe and protected in a cushion of sound? Whatever the celestial reason, there is no doubt that we have a profound need for music, just like the profound need to find closeness with another human being or entity. In the same way that priests stand up in holy structures all over the world and have the power to sway the masses, taking them to a spiritual level of euphoria is the same way that people gather together in night clubs and look adoringly to the DJ or performer for a higher level of consciousness. Wanting to be taken on a journeywanting to believe and to belong to something greater than themselves. Ive often stood on a crowded dance floor and looked around me at the hundreds and sometimes thousands of people all with their hands in the air, faces transformed into various expressions of joy and contentment, all as though they are awaiting the arrival of somethinga spaceship to spirit them away maybe?  There is something ancestral, and almost tribal about the ritual of it all.  I try to imagine what we might have been wearing or listening to had we been on the planet thousands of years beforehand. Were there such things as raves or parties in the Stone Age and if there were,  did they know the reason they had gathered in such a way or was there a cave man looking around thinking the same thing that I do now?   After all, we are all threads in the fabric of the universe, intertwined and interrelated.  If, as threads, we all stood alone, then the tapestry of the cosmos would become unravelled and what then? I think once we can realise that we are all connected by an invisible force, all compelled to reach out and touch someone or something, all wanting to experience that one single emotion.LOVE, then the veil of illusion shall be lifted from eyes and peace would eventually prevail.  Love is what we are all are looking for whether we believe it or not and is the driving force behind life itself. Its the search for this elusive and misunderstood ideology that brings people together and also tears people aparta strange paradox.  It takes people down different paths in life. Some paths lead to religion, some to food, some to self destruction, some to distrust, some to obsession and some to fear. There are many other places that the quest for love can take us but I am happy that my pursuit of love has taken me down a path of music. I continually look for it in the music that I listen to, and for those who are like me, you know when youve felt that spark of something in a chord, when a note in the diatonical scale resonates with your very beingyou smile and know you have found it.

So where was I?yes thats itthe power to sway the masses whether it is done by a Vicar, Victor Duplaix or Vivian Green.  The ability to control a mood or way of thinking through the manipulation of the senses, promoting a positive or a negative outcome depending on the listener and their mental susceptibility. If only more artists and performers would realise that they do have the key to a brighter day and harness that potential within themselves.

As a DJ, musician and songwriter I try to make a conscious effort to bring out the best in people, to relate to that I go through what you go through and that when it rains it does not rain on one mans head alone.  I hope that more DJs, writers, performers, producers and anyone in a position to have someone listen will spread the word.the word is LOVE!!!

Soul = Sense of Universal Love

Lets keep it alive

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfil the book

Bob Nesta Marley

Celestial Blessings

Sole Intent

LOCKED ON:

Why we do what we do

By

Rosko

My access to music when I was growing up was through pirate radio, you know, radio under the pillow, listening to one more and then 'just one more'.

Robert Palmer

In a few short years, analogue radio as we know it will vanish into the ether, becoming white noise and making way for the brave new world of digital broadcasting. The pops, crackles, whistles and hiss that have lived with me for so long will disappear forever. Most of all, it is the Frequency Modulated band, the soundtrack to my generation, that will be most sorely missed when it eventually disappears, never to be heard again. Looking back on things, its been one hell of a journey.

But first (as they say in radio) a little perspective on the whole thing. The BBC's first FM radio station opened on 2^nd May 1955 at Wrotham in Kent, broadcasting their three networks to London and the South East of England. After this, development of the FM radio network came quick and fast as most transmitters shared common masts with BBC television. Seven more transmitters opened in 1956 and by 1961 there were 27 VHF-FM transmitters on air covering most regions. Stereo broadcasting, which is what really marks the FM band apart, although first tested in January 1958 was rolled out more slowly with many stations not converting until the 1980s, around the same time I started to get caught up in it all.

In the 1980s, FM radio expansion continued at pace with both the BBC and commercial sector opening new stations. Nine BBC and 26 commercial stations started between 1980 and 1984 with near universal coverage achieved by the end of the decade. FM was by now standard on portable radios and a common option for cars. However, there were two major problems that plagued FM radio in the UK from the start, poor reception and lack of spectrum. Despite continued improvements over the years, these problems still affect the band. In London today, every inch of the dial is occupied with broadcasting stations. Pirate stations have been squeezed onto impossibly tight frequencies just to be able to exist, often causing interference with commercial stations and each other. This is one of the principal reasons currently cited by the authorities against pirate stations but is born from the inadequacies of the FM spectrum itself. Competition for pirate frequencies is consequently huge and they are guarded jealously and sometimes violently.

Until the early 1980s, the FM broadcast band in the UK extended only from 88.1 to 97.6 MHz, providing room for just three national networks and some local radio. Consequently, Radio 1 was only broadcast on FM for 23 hours a week, and there was insufficient space for both BBC and independent local radio to broadcast on FM in all towns and cities. To resolve these problems, the FM band was expanded from 87.6 to 107.9 MHz. This spectrum was phased into use in 1983 with new commercial stations coming on stream and the BBC expanding some of its city stations into county stations. The top end of the FM band was finally released for broadcasting in 1995. This was originally intended to be used to provide extra transmitters for the national networks, but was allocated to local and regional commercial radio instead. The lower part of the FM band, 87.6-88.0, was released for broadcasting in 1987, but not used until the 1990s when it was allocated to temporary low power stations. All these fascinating developments meant that by the late 1980s FM had become the dominant medium for radio listening in the UK and as always, the new breed of onshore pirate stations were quick to take advantage.

All this was happening in the heart of the Thatcherite mid 80s, when I was barely out of shorts and certainly too young to appreciate why the government was suddenly so keen to expand commercial radio (cash and nice cosy positions on the boards of large media organisations as it turned out). At the time, commercial radio was still a relatively unfamiliar phenomenon. In 1989, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) licensed 20 new stations, known as 'Incrementals' in areas already served by independent local radio. Originally intended as community radio, these quickly evolved into commercial stations. This all culminated in September 1988 with The Great FM Switch On.  In the 1970s and early 1980s, Radio 1 had been allowed to take over Radio 2's FM transmitters for a few hours per week, most notably for the Top 40 Singles Chart on Sunday afternoons. It was not until September 1988 when the 9799 MHz frequencies became available that Radio 1 acquired its own national FM network. There were suitably wild celebrations all around as Bros travelled the length and breadth of the UK in a helicopter switching on the new stereo transmitters. 65% of the population were now able to receive Radio 1 FM.

Despite these wild celebrations, as so often has been the case with Radio 1, the move to national FM broadcasting was prompted at least in part by the huge popularity of the pirate radio stations that were thriving during the 80s. The new commercial environment brought to radio, combined with the superior sound quality of FM stereo meant that as with the old offshore pirates based on ships in the North Sea, success was almost guaranteed to the new generation who were simply playing the music the kids wanted to hear, a defining characteristic of pirate radio. Broadcasting mainly from tower blocks, these onshore pirates were the pioneers of the pirate scene that exists to this day. These stations played mainly reggae and soul music and at their height numbered more than 50 with Invicta, Horizon, LWR and Solar becoming some of the better-known names. Of all these stations it was one in particular that became a household name, Kiss FM. The station, which claimed a massive half a million listeners with it's mix of soul, house and hip hop, eventually closed down its pirate operations in 1988 after years of illicit broadcasting with the goal of obtaining an official licence. In September 1990 it succeeded on its second attempt, becoming the only pirate station to ever successfully transfer to the mainstream.

Pirate FM radio in the UK has played a massive part both in my life and in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people over the last quarter of a century. It has kept the British music scene vibrant and provided inspiration and opportunity for many of todays artists, yet is still tarred with the brush of ill repute, blamed for causing interference with the emergency services, castigated for providing a medium for drug dealers. Stations are hounded by the authorities, criminal charges, huge fines and jail sentences handed out to those that operate them, but even in these twilight years of the FM band, pirate stations continue to be more popular, prevalent and relevant than ever. I count myself fortunate to have been involved with some of these stations for the best part of my adult life, even including an experience that almost cost me my own life. The myth and mystique of the radio pirate is part of their continuing allure. When the FM band finally goes dead and the last pirate station crackles off air, I know I wont be the only one shedding a quiet tear, I hope you will be too.

COMMERCIAL EXPERIMENTS

These pirate kids are early adopters and they're trendsettersif a brand can tap into that, it could be worth millions.

Rooney Carruthers, partner at advertising agency VCCP

The new generation of onshore, land-based pirate stations began to establish a real foothold in London during the 1980s, one they would never really lose. Carrying on where their forbears on the offshore radio ships left off, they continued to fill a huge musical void that the BBC and fledgling commercial stations did not support. One of the true originals was Radio Invicta. Broadcasting every Sunday from 12 - 3pm, Invicta was notable not only as the first pirate with a format based predominantly on soul music ('Soul Over London'), but also for their use of FM, rather than the crackly AM stations that had gone before. As the 80s progressed, this new generation of land-based pirates also abandoned their idiosyncratic transmissions and moved towards 24-hour broadcasting. Soul remained a staple and stations like JFM rose to prominence when, after years of irregular Sunday afternoon broadcasting, they decided to go 'full time'. A boom in pirate radio activity followed, especially in London. Stations like LWR, Solar, Horizon, Skyline, Lightning and many others all broadcast on and off from various locations and suffered the inevitable raids at the hands of the radio authorities. But the biggest of them all and the undisputed pirate radio phenomenon of the 80s was Kiss FM.

In it's early days, Kiss FM was British black music radio personified as one of its founders Jazzie B - who won a Grammy in 1989 with the band, Soul II Soul stated at the stations inception:

"We switch on and we hear the nucleus of what black Britain has to offer. And it will remain that way until we are properly included. It will end when the BBC has black people in positions of power and when record companies and mainstream organisations have enough black people in place. Until then, there will always be pirate radio."

Broadcasting on 84.0 FM, Kiss became the most talked about pirate station in UK history, pulling in a massive half a million listeners whilst still illegal. The station started broadcasting in late 1985, run by charismatic London club DJs George Eracleous and Gordon McNamee (the latter became it's managing director) from London's N19 postcode. As a pirate from 85-88 it attracted acclaim for its upfront music and mixing and became notorious for the close attention it received from the authorities. In 1988, at almost the same time Radio 1 went national, it closed down in the hope of becoming legal and on it's second attempt in September 1990 finally rolled up the skull and crossbones for good having won a licence to broadcast to London legally.  Many involved with the station at the time believed that by becoming a commercial entity Kiss would be forced to surrender much of the freedom it had enjoyed as a pirate. It was therefore with a certain inevitability that the station became increasingly influenced by it's backers EMAP and by the mid 1990s had abandoned it's traditional emphasis on the best black and dance music in favour of a more mainstream sound. It's original DJ line-up seemed no longer to fit the stations image and little by little it's finest talent (Steve Jackson, Norman Jay, Mannasseh, Bob Jones, Trevor Nelson, Danny Rampling, Judge Jules) ebbed away, either moving on or being fired. By the end of the 1990s many of those who remembered the original station before it attained legal status could barely recognise their station. But whatever your view of the Kiss FM story, there can be no doubt that as a pirate they set the standard for all others to follow and remain the only unlicensed station to successfully cross into the mainstream. As a teenager, locking on to shows from the likes of Fabio and Grooverider, the station certainly started something in me that survives to this day and like many others I prefer to remember them coming through loud and clear on 84.0. To use an old cliché, in 1990 Kiss FM won a battle but lost the war.

The way I saw it at the time, people were too quick to castigate Kiss for selling out. They were pretty much damned if they did and damned if they didnt go legal, a dilemma that faces all pirate stations. The natural life cycle of a pirate is that a station will start out sounding fresh and exciting, offer something new or perhaps do something better than its rivals. This will attract popularity as word of mouth spreads and more and more listeners start to lock on. This creates more revenue as advertisers cash in on the popularity and the station starts riding high on a wave of popularity. This popularity brings with it the attentions of the authorities, keen to remind stations that they are still illegal. Even the most strongly resourced stations find it hard to weather constant raids on their studios and transmitters. There eventually comes a point, sooner or later, in the life of every pirate station where thoughts turn to the greener grass on the licensed side of the broadcasting fence. Why then does Kiss stand alone in having vaulted this legal fence?

A lot of people find it hard to understand the ongoing prevalence and popularity of FM pirates when modern radio is seemingly more diverse than ever. Yet Of COM figures for 2004-5 show a huge growth in the number of pirate stations being raided, hardly a sign that pirates are packing up and going home, driven off by commercial stations. If you scan your FM dial today, you will find more stations than ever before but there is still a ludicrously restricted range of legal output. We are offered a great number of stations but this does not translate into diversity. If you actually listen to a lot of commercial stations they have a strange homogeneity. Is this a product of Of COMs draconian broadcasting rules? Perhaps. Is it because many stations are owned by a single, larger parent media organisation? Without a doubt and whilst there are no simplistic reasons, many pirate stations have looked at the experiences of Kiss, watching their successes and failures closely, and have decided that their side of the fence, whilst not perfect, is certainly preferable to the commercial world. The grass, for the time being, is most certainly greener outside the local tower block.

Kiss FM deserve a huge amount of credit for having the courage of their convictions and fighting the system tooth and nail to force the authorities to grant them a license. Many people I speak to see the direction Kiss has taken as an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of venturing into the commercial world and a strong warning to other stations of the inherent dangers of going legal. In the words of Carl Brown, a loyal Kiss listener from day one:

Kiss FM is one of those great should-have-beens. A station that promised so much has missed an opportunity to change the concept of how radio could have operated without the need for pirates. There was optimism that Kiss could change the attitudes of the moneymen towards underground dance music. One of the most exciting concepts that you had about Kiss FM was that, given the chance, they could have changed the way radio broadcasting was being delivered in this country, and maybe the world. A radio station which could show that musical freedom was marketable, giving us, the listener, the best commercial radio station in the world.

It is ironic that lesson drawn from Kiss FM, the first and only pirate station to gain a full legal license is stay pirate or sell your soul.  As anyone living in London will know, the airwaves are packed with dozens of pirates firing off all over the capital, a weekend collective of law defying broadcasting. Despite being the oldest 20th Century real-time mass communication medium, radio broadcasting still has immense power, a fact that radio authorities are well aware of. Kiss FMs legal license was in every way a test of whether a pirate station could be moulded by the mainstream. Far from it being their choice to go commercial they would not be broadcasting today if they had not done so, such are the commercial and political pressures exerted upon legal stations. Todays pirates tell an important story about government policy towards radio. The continued success of pirate radio is due to the ability to show that DIY production values work. People respond to localised, eclectic, independent broadcasting which is why the pirates thrive. Musically, the stations are responsible for breaking many new genres and for supporting the constant organic development of underground music, free from corporate pressure.

The story of the ironically named Interference FM is indicative of the UK Governments attitude to radio broadcasting and goes some way to explaining why no other stations have followed in Kiss FMs footsteps. In June 1999 the station was launched as an accompaniment to the 'Carnival against Capitalism'. On June 18th it broadcast over a large area of London from various locations preceding the carnival day. The station promoted the carnival with adverts and jingles accompanied by an eclectic mix of music and spoken word pieces on issues such as the state of radio licensing and third world debt alongside pieces such as Gerard Stanley's famous libertarian speech about capitalism. The station was a truly refreshing and revolutionary mix; counter-culture was available with a quick tune of the FM dial. The Radio Authority, a department of the Dti responsible at the time for monitoring the FM band, responded immediately by finding and seizing the stations transmitters. Many within the pirate community were surprised at the speed with which the Radio Authority acted against Interference FM when other music-based pirates had been broadcasting with impunity for many months. It seemed that the stations political content was the key factor. The lesson from Interference FM is that the Government is extremely reluctant to allow stations from an illegal background onto such a powerful mass broadcast medium as radio. Legislation is structured to make it as difficult as humanly (and financially) possible for stations to cross this divide. Kiss managed it, but over a decade ago and with the help of financial backers who eventually called in their pound of flesh and changed the nature of the station to suit their commercial needs. Small wonder that few pirates have been able or willing to consider going down the same road. The huge number of pirates operating today is a direct consequence of the onerous broadcast legislation in the UK. Although a major change in legislation is unlikely any time soon, there is clearly a case for making rules relating to small community orientated or niche music stations far more flexible. The will is there, and after years of perseverance the time has surely now arrived to fundamentally change broadcast legislation in the UK. Our vibrant pirate scene should be allowed to drive world leading excellence in radio, not be a dirty secret hidden away at the top of crumbling inner city tower blocks.

Interference FM briefly re-emerged later in 1999 at the Free Spirit Festival in Luton organised by the Exodus Collective. Along with thirty sound systems that filled up a triangle of land over a Bank Holiday weekend, the station broadcast over Luton from a telegraph pole at the top of the festival beaming out the good news that the festival was a 'dance with a stance.'

Unlike many European countries, which have a far more flexible approach to licensing small radio stations (for example the Netherlands allows community stations lacking resources to broadcast at weekends only without the need for costly infrastructure) the avenues available for legal radio in the UK short of a full license are laughable. They pretty much start and finish with the aptly named Restricted Service Licence (RSL). These are generally for a 28-day period and are applied for by a wide range of users from university radio to charitable or religious organisations wishing to support specific events. They act as a short-term token peace gesture to those who will probably never get their hands on a full radio license and do little to address the problem of diversity in UK radio.

When the RSL was first introduced, some pirate stations explored it as a possible bridge towards a full license. They quickly abandoned the idea as it became clear that the RSL was in fact an expensive waste of time. Broadcasting restrictions meant output was overly formalised. Musical output was also restricted and the RSL limited transmission power to 30W, a pitiful broadcast range for pirates accustomed to chucking out 200W. No station could have more than two 28 day RSLs in the space of year, making it impossible to maintain any sort of listener base.

One of the most striking RSLs in recent years was Resonance FM. This broadcast from the Royal Festival Hall in central London, organised by the London Musicians Collective. During the weekdays it acted as an international gallery of radio art hosted by international artists programming a greatest hits of radio from its long and rich history. During the night and at weekends a team of musicians and artists took over and defined a radically new sounding type of radio based around the pirate cornerstones of DIY values and anarchic fluidity. The results were often a mind-bending river of sound on a scale never before heard in the UK. Scheduling included real world music, poetry, field recordings, dinner parties in the studio, extended non-stop dj sets and other shows that defy description but inhabited twilight worlds of music, sound and speech. As with all RSLs, Resonance vanished after its allotted 28 day period, but serves as a striking reminder of the true potential of radio that is currently being stifled by red tape and legislation.

One possible ray of light in the gloom is that Of COM is expecting about 50 community licences to be made available throughout the country over the next year, which may yet provide some badly needed diversity. Applications for uncontested places, such as rural areas, will be given priority over those in congested areas. However, Of COM has restricted licenses to stations that are not-for-profit, allowing only a maximum of 50 per cent of funding from advertising. This restriction will make it extremely difficult for stations to function effectively. Although the government has allocated a funding pot of £500,000 for community radio broadcasting in 2005-6, this will be administered by Of COM and will support few stations and it is unlikely that Of COM will look favourably on applications from pirate stations they have been chasing round the rooftops. Despite this, several pirate stations have approached Of COM about the new community radio licence. The best known of these is Station FM, warmly referred to as the grand-daddy of all pirates. In the words of DJ Keithley, the stations founder,  "Pirate is a bad word. It's a community radio station; we are about serving the community. So will this herald a new era of respectable ex-pirate community stations? It seems doubtful - with only 50 licenses nationally and funding difficulties, the new community licenses will suit pirates no better than the old RSLs. The chances of seeing legal, underground orientated stations on the FM dial with eclectic programming and a gleefully disrespectful attitude to commercial whims are therefore very slim. Where Kiss led the way, others held back suspicious that the station would not be allowed to keep to the standards and ideals they had established as a pirate. The cynics eventually won the day and pirate radios brief flirtation with the commercial world was over.

Although radio authorities and radio legislation have always been inherently biased towards the mainstream, as we strike out into the new millennium we are left with a bland, torpid output that seems strangely out of step with changing times. FM will not be with us for much longer and it seems fitting that in its dying days every last inch of its capacity is being used to push the boundaries of modern sound. As always it is the pirates, free from the strictures of advertising targets and listener focus groups that will send FM to its grave dancing wildly like the last person at a free party.