Pump Up the Volume: The Rise and Fall of Pirate Radio in NYC

As a young'un, one of my favorite movies was Pump Up the Volume. It's about a miserably lonely teenager who starts a pirate radio station out of his bedroom/parent's garage that becomes a sensation in the desolate, boring Arizona town he's just moved to with his family. 

Operating under the name "Happy Harry", he speaks directly to the emotional pain and tumult of his fellow teenagers. Unlike his regular shy, reserved self (named Mark), "Harry" is funny, outrageous, profane; he plays wild music, calls kids who write confessional letters, and even prank calls the high school's guidance counselor. His craziness quickly becomes a target by the town elders and eventually the FCC -- and it all ends dramatically. 

As a teenager this movie "spoke" to me. It was and remains the most realistic, most accurate look at what it was like to be an early 1990's teenager. And the idea of creating your own pirate radio station seemed amazing to me at the time.

Of course, these days, we'll all pirate radio broadcasters thanks to the Internet. We can create YouTube channels, Facebook Live, or podcasts -- and, of course, blogs! Pump Up the Volume reminds you of a time where the idea of young, regular person reaching hundreds, thousands of other people to broadcast their lives was a truly novel, totally strange concept.

But pirate radio was a real thing! In Brooklyn, back in the 1990s, there was an amazing pirate radio station called WBAD, a hip-hop station that quickly become a local phenomenon (I remember a guy in one of my SAT prep classes talking about it). Eventually, of course, the media and the FCC got wind of it and pursued it to its grave.

Listen to this amazing Studio 306 segment about WBAD, a piece of NYC history, and remind yourself of another time when the idea of regular people broadcasting to the masses was a truly revolutionary idea