Shine A Light



Films, Photos, Music, Fashion, Aesthetic, Narrative, Style, Image, Dialogue....

Monday 29 March 2010

London Pirate Radio - Palladium

Palladium started making shoes in the 40s after successfully making really tough tires since the the 20s....their shoes look good and are great to wear if your going exploring.

Palladium have made a series of short films about exploring, including this new one about London Pirate Radio and the history of Pirate Radio in the UK.


The film takes you into the heart of the modern London pirate radio scene where the likes of Wiley, Dizzee Rascal and Kano developed their skills and from this platform took over the mainstream of contemporary popular music. The film also goes back to the roots of Pirate Radio...3 Miles out of the Thames to a group of WW2 anti aircraft towers still sitting in the sea that were taken over in the 50s and 60s by the original Pirate Radio DJs who illegally broadcast Rock&Roll during a time of government controlled radio.

With some great shots from the roofs of modern London, to rusty creaking old towers in the middle of the sea, the film visually portrays the extreme lengths people will go to to share and express their music.


Although there are differences between the grime scene of today and the rock&roll music of the 60s and indeed the different backgrounds of those who were broadcasting out at sea and the inner city lives of those broadcasting today may seem strikingly different, the overall ideas, reasons and themes are the same and the music keeps coming....always informing 'legit' radio of what they will be playing in 5 years time!

Have a watch




You can see more films of exploring and check out some pretty cool foot ware at the Palladium website


I recommend the one on the folk who live in abandoned missile silos in the US....the one about he town with a massive crack running through it is pretty cool too....

1 comment:

  1. a good little fllm, the Maunsell forts in the Thames have sine I was a boy always fascinated me, they do, when you see them, have a really eerie presence. On the film you see the boat going out to them pass a wreck, that is an American ship the Richard H Montgomery, sunk in 1944 by enemy action and stuffed full of explosives, so dangerous that the decision was made not to salvage the cargo, so for 66 years this slowly leaking , destabilising time bomb lies just off of Sheerness, waiting to either pollute the estuary of the Thames and Medway rivers or , if it ignites take the town of Sheerness with it. The problem is the town still looks as if the war ended yesterday and that a bomb has just gone off, but the wreck would obliterate it, interesting place to live.
    Happy memories of listening to pirate radio in the late 60's, and the film is quite right about the restricted playlists, before Radio 1 there was only one decent programme, and amazingly, that prorgramme remains on Radio 2 with the same presenter and quite probably the same playlist, nostalgia providing the audience with what was once ground breaking, like the Stones or Beatles.
    The views of London are interesting Balfron house stands just north of Canary Wharf and is due for demolition, its by an architect called Erno Goldfinger, its twin is Trellick tower off of Portobello Road , and he gave his name to the James Bond nemesis Goldfinger as Ian Fleming dlsiked him. He was one of the great european emigre architects that fled from Hitler, also did the decent bit of Elephant and Castle and a sublime office block in Albemarle Street W1.

    C. Graham King 2010

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