some piratenmuziek on IRP Radio Groningen 95.10 Mhz via the Geheimezender.com stream (it would be way too far to tune in on normal radio).
it is difficult to describe piratenmuziek but it is this surreal mixture of traditional Germanic folk music (oompah music), country and western, disco/synthpop and Schlager which can be sung in any combination of Dutch, Gronings, German or English (sometimes other European languages) the DJ’s are careful not to talk over vocal tracks so they play an instrumental (often the same track which becomes each station or regions theme music) every so often and read out all the “reacties/verzoeken” (shouts/requiests) over this and the mobile number.
the DJ usually has an echo effect on their microphone like old 1980s CB radios (as this scene is interlinked) and a heavy rural accent; youngest DJs are about my age and most of the station managers old enough to be mine or iliesses’s Dad (TBH there are a lot of tracks my Dad either had in his record collection (he loved country and western and Schlager in spite of being Malaysian Chinese!) but they are all really smart with electronics and dodging the baldy men who try and close them down.
Usually the transmitter is in a Telekom-mast (T-mobile equipment boxes have lots of spare room inside) and the studio in a family house nearby; as loads of folk there are into amateur radio, scanners etc there are loads of masts in the countryside near houses and the baldy men cannot just search every house because they need EU compliant warrants; the pirates work together so they keep the same frequency (otherwise Hilversum will put a stupid 10W repeater on it which means agentschap have to bust the pirates harder than an empty space) but keep changing the locations round.
Last year I got one of the dudes in Groningen to read out a birthday message to my mum (he was also in his 70s); he apologised that he couldn’t find the track my mum wanted to hear as he was still using vinyl rather than a controller and digital playout systems (to be fair there is only so much vinyl a 73 year old chap can haul about)
