Pirate Radio Revisited

The movie Pirate Radio recalls the good-old-days when popular music subverted stuffy, bureaucratic "culture." The implicit question the movie poses is whether such a scenario exists today, and if so, exists with the same bite as its predecessor of a half-century ago.

Unlike Pirate Radio's rock n' roll tunes, contemporary music hardly represents a destabilizing threat to society. Most of today's popular musical entertainers abhor anything that would threaten their ability to acquire money. Any notion of naivete or innocence, either perceived or real, would simply be a sign of weakness, a black mark in a world where the achievement of ambition is the greatest possible good.

This bleak thought makes me blue. However, I do cheer up when I think about Internet radio. There are Pirate Radio aspects to it. Sometimes, I listen to Ibiza Sonica, a station that plays mostly club music that one would hear on the eponymous Spanish island. When I hear that music, I feel optimistic that the forces of darkness can be outfoxed.