Halloween Pirates!

 Radio Al Fansome says "Boo!"

It's only September, but it's never too early to start thinking about Halloween on the shortwave pirate radio bands! This is the best time of the year to be listening. All kinds of strange, creepy, and entertaining programming happens around Halloween. It's probably the biggest holiday of the year for shortwave pirates.

Here is a list of some of my favorite shortwave pirate stations that should be active this year. Happy DXing!

Radio Al Fansome -- Al Fansone reads the celebrity obituaries from the past year using a backing track of spooky music from old Disneyland Records. Always entertaining! This station's gotten even better since Al himself entered the great beyond. (QSLs for reports to the Intercourse, PA maildrop)

The Crystal Submarine -- John Zombie Poet, Zombie Radical, and their zombie crew play songs by the Doors in reverse, extol the virtues of Karl "Groucho" Marx, Vlad "The Impaler" Lenin, and Joe "The Butcher" Stalin. Creepy classic rock music by noted bands of the seventies. This is the first pirate to broadcast from a sunken ship! Their motto is: "If you live in a crystal ship, you shouldn't throw rocks!" (sends E-QSLs only in exchange for your name, IP address, real address, and credit card number. However, if you're nice to them on www.tcsshortwave.com, you might get a blow job from the site's operator.)

Dead Bunny -- Bootleggers from the ham radio bands send nasty SSTV images on top of other stations all weekend long between 6900 and 6980 KHz in an attempt to troll Commander Bunny. Last year we were highly entertained with rabbit butchering tips, Thumper from Disney with an arrow through his head, and a truly creepy image of a bunny in a blender. (They are not known to QSL.)

KABR "Artie Bigley Radio" -- North America's favorite shortwave pirate troublemaker dishes out the dirt on all the pirates he's stalked over the past few years in this exciting and eye-opening talk show. The fact that Artie is batshit insane goes well with the halloween theme, as does the fact that he only broadcasts on October 31 in lower side band! (Columbus)

Voice of the Trolls -- Sped-up and speech-altered dialogue between trolls commenting on the posts on Guy Faux's blog are a feature of this station. (Beware, some have reported that they QSL by sending a bag of shit to you.)

WFRN -- The rotting corpse of pirate radio fan sites usually appears around 6925 KHz with a warbly, variable signal. They feature novelty Halloween music from the likes of John Arthur and the Bog Bodies. Also featured are call-outs to listeners who long ago abandoned the scene, tips for turning your Windows 95 machine into a pirate radio listening outpost, and the creative use of sock puppets. Hosted by Bob Smith, Thumper, Beans, lovemyradios, and Mosby. (Belfast)

Voice of the Unbelievable Catastrophe -- This one is really fun! The Maharishi eats a bag of shrooms, steals a nuke and drops it on the Middle East as punishment for sentencing pot smokers to death in Saudi Arabia. As if this weren't enough, the Maharishi flies back to North America on a magic carpet and drops a truckload of camel dung on Pigmeat Martin! Reefer music and fake public service announcements featuring in-jokes about shortwave pirates and SWL Winterfest personalities make this one a must-hear! (Mount Kisco)

Slopbucket Celebrity Deathmatch Radio -- Got a tip-off that this year Fred "Booze and demerol" Roll WW4D and Karol "Radio Canada" Madera VE7KFM are scheduled to beat the living shit out of each other live on 43 meters! Be on the listen for surprise appearances from other sideband boogeymen. The referee for this year's deathmatch will be none other than FCC vixen Laura Smith. (QSLs have been received from Industrie Canada)

WBST Busted Radio -- Formerly known as "The Beast," this interesting station is notable for playing death metal using a powerful mobile rig in a van while parked in the driveway of recently busted pirates! This year broadcasting from Lansing, Michigan. (Washington, DC)

What are your favorites? Join us in the comments for more fun!

How John Poet & His Gang of Anonymous Cowards Ruined Pirate Radio: Getting Himself Busted By the FCC, Abandoning Radio For the Internet, Getting All Spun Up By Beans, & Going Crazy

"I'm more into "hard evidence" these days." -- John Poet

We all miss the Crystal Ship and their thought provoking blend of rock music from the sixties. It is a shame that they broadcasted regularly from the owner's home using a high powered shortwave transmitter in a suburban area near several licensed radio stations, or else they would probably still be on the air. They probably should have never sent out mass e-mails before their pirate radio broadcasts that listed the time and frequency they were going to be on. You never know who or what might be on the other end of that email.

"guess what man just because you win a gold medal in the special Olympics doesn't mean your no longer retarded." -- Kracker

Instead of telling the FCC to go fuck themselves, John Poet, the operator of The Crystal Ship shortwave pirate station, decided to do a big "expose the rabbit" spew on a blog on the internet after his "bust." There was one broadcast of the Crystal Ship via a relay station that was heard by a couple of people a few months ago, and then John Poet has abandoned pirate radio in favor of sitting at a computer screen, writing screeds about people he feels are responsible for his fall, and practicing the art of clever web page authoring by attempting to use every possible typeface style and color in his posts to give them a better sense of the urgency they desire!

John Poet is a Spammer!

John Poet drove himself over the edge with all this internet crap. He was spun up by his apparent inability to recognize that he himself might have been responsible for the downfall of his pirate radio station. Or, maybe he didn't give a shit about radio at all and instead prefers to join the masses of unwashed anonymous cowards on the internet.

Maybe it also had something to do with the sock puppets.

"I am in Harpers Ferry W.VA. Not North Carolina or Virginia. As I said, check my IP address, even a simpleton can work this equation out." -- Winston tries to impersonate Alex Vranes of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Winston Beans Mosby Bob Smith Bill O Rights Kracker Murphy Graves Bunny Bigley is a sock puppet. He may not even have anything to do with pirate radio. He may actually just be an internet troll. He may be a she. He/she/it likes to mess around with dedicated pirate radio fans who used to enjoy this hobby that has now been abandoned by everyone except for the bowling league.

"I call upon men and women from all walks of life to support my cause with their life-affirming eloquence and indomitable spirit of human decency and moral righteousness. Only then will the whole world realize that society must soon decide either to encourage open, civic engagement or else to let Commander Bunny, Kracker, Beans, Thumper, Mosby, Bouncer (& sundry other sock-puppets not yet fully identified) abandon us on a desert island." -- Poet becomes unglued

Asshattery

Wow, this is some nice screed. John Poet places himself up on a pedestal and shouts from his internet bull horn, "Support my cause!" I shed a tear because of this post. I would have liked to hear about it on the radio, because I used to like pirate radio, but it's now all overrun by Beans/Winston/Bob/Kracker/Graves/Mosby/Smith/Bill/Murphy/Bunny/Bigley.

But I'm getting ahead of my self. Like I said, John Poet should have told the FCC to go fuck themselves. He should have taken the Crystal Ship underground and mobile and continued to broadcast. Maybe under a different name. On different frequencies. At all times of the day and night. With no stupid blog or email notifications or fancy QSLs or any of that shit. Maybe he also could have changed the format of his radio station so there wouldn't be so much of that classic rock like what the cheap channel cumulus shit that's on fm.

The FCC would probably not have given a shit about The Crystal Ship unless they hadn't been broadcasting down the road from a licensed FM station 

"Circumstances suggest that, along with the complaint, went real name and address information on the station operator known as John Poet.  (It is admittedly possible that he turned this information over to "Kracker" of Radio Jamba International, or one of his other henchmen, to do the actual dirty work of snitching to the F.C.C.-- so that he could maintain the more pleasant fiction to himself that "I didn't do it-- someone else did."  Kracker in particular has seemed anxious to signal his involvement by circulating a photoshop of a sinking Crystal Ship entitled "SinkingDaShip" along with other comments.  However, since 'Commander Bunny' was the only one who could possibly have supplied the pertinent information, we hold him ultimately responsible for being an FCC informant). " - John Poet slanders other pirate radio operators

But this was not to be. John Poet stomped up on a big pedestal and cried out to all the anonymous irc world, "Bunny/Kracker did it! Mosby is a sock puppet! They busted me! I was not responsible for my own fall!" He seemed to forget about radio completely and focus entirely on long, exhaustive screeds about exposing bad things happening on the internet!

I was completely shocked by this, as I didn't think anything bad ever happened on the internet!

"The Detroit Office received information that an unlicensed broadcast radio station on 6815 kHz was allegedly operating in Lansing, Michigan." - The FCC

Face it, Mr. Poet. You did this to yourself. Pirate radio at one time gave a shit about you. Now you're just some useless windbag on the internet. Look at what pirate radio has become now. A dumping ground for Beans/Mosby/Krackhead/Murphy/Graves/Mosby and all the others.

"YOU STARTED THIS, YOU TWO FACED LIAR, NOW LIVE WITH AND STOP CRYING LIKE A LITTLE GIRL! " -- Kracker