|
Welcome
Aboard!
Greetings and
salutations...you've surfed in to the
world-famous Radio Free New York web site and southern style B-B-Q -
home of the WHOT and Brooklyn Pirate Radio Archive (and the best
damn hot wings around)!
What is
Radio Free
New York?
I've been wanting a
place to hang my hat and share thoughts, memories and nonsense with
folks for quite some time now, but I never could come up with a way
to present it in a way I was happy with.
I guess things finally started to come
together a few years ago when I
started going through the vast amount of tapes that made up the
archives of (in)famous Brooklyn pirate station WHOT-AM and FM (where
I spent many a weekend doing questionably legal things). Initially,
my hope was to get copies of the shows for myself, but I quickly
realized that what I had before me was a huge piece of Pirate Radio
history.
Many of the earlier tapes (pre-1984) were in poor
condition and needed a lot of TLC to get good digital transfers out
of them. Since the tapes have been moved and shared and moved again
over the years between Hank, Jim and myself, the easiest method for
doing this was to just do the tapes as we found them, rather than
try and get them all in one place first.
Amazingly, the project is chugging
along nicely. There's something bizarre about re-living your life
from 20-plus years ago via magnetic recording tape. It's a living time
capsule, not just of what was going on in MY world, but the world in
general. Basically, the more things change, the more they seem to
stay the same.
One thing is
for sure: underground radio was about something a lot more innocent
back in those days...it was about filling a void and entertaining people.
Not only that, but also...
In addition to sharing the progress of
the Archive Project with everyone, I'll also be sharing my personal
memories and artifacts from WHOT and the many things before and
since...warts and all.
If you want a goofy
Hollywood version of what goes on in the world of Pirate Radio, go
rent "Pump Up The Volume". If you want the real thing, why not pull up a chair and browse the
menu on the left. The fun has just begun!
Your humble host,
Pete "Music" Sayek!
(Radio
Free
New York Tour Guide)
 | 
