DJ Stirling 0:04
Because obviously, the war, a lot of Walthamstow, Hackney, those areas were bombed. Consequently, large areas of two ups, two down housing completely destroyed. And what came out of that was born, obviously, in 60s or late 50s, was tower blocks. A tower block, because of its very nature, the height of it, particularly around Leyton, Waltham Forest, is ideal for pirate radio station because you want to be on the highest point.

Lennie de Ice 0:37
[From original Rave FM broadcast: Yeah, Walton J, could you phone up the station ASAP, regarding your jingle, mate. This is Lenny De Ice and Randall on the ones and twos].

DJ Clockwork 0:50
In Hackney, there was so many pirates. All the tower blocks had pirates on them, it was- we had to move out a little bit, you knos, it was just everyone was treading on each other's toes. And obviously Waltham Forest had some amazing tower blocks that were kind of a bit untapped. There was a few stations over there, few reggae stations and things like that over Boundary Road and places like that, but it wasn't like it wasn't like it was in Hackney.

Roy Balfourth 1:12
[From original Friends FM broadcast: Mad B you've got a sexy something, the rest of it's come out scrambled. Big shout to you, wherever you are]. I came out of prison, I got a job straight away. Within two days of being out of prison, I was working. I was working on a building site, doing labouring work. So I done that. And all this time, I've got this idea my head about building a radio station. I stepped out the gate and I knew that, I knew that was what I wanted to do. And then all of a sudden, it was crazy. I'd met this guy, and he said, 'Oh yeah, I know someone who can get transmitters'. Got the station, kind of got the transmitter and Friends FM were born. People say to me today, you know, you was a phenomenal station. I didn't know this back then. I just wanted to play music.

DJ Danielle 1:52
[From original Friends FM broadccast: Going out to Bam, Bam, this one's yours. You're in tune to Friends FM, 100.7. DJ, Danielle, through till midday. Stay tuned.

DJ Steve B 1 2:06
Friends used to go out really far, really far. I mean, we'd get texts from Gravesend and places like that regularly, because I think Roy had worked with maybe LWR, like helping them out, sort of thing behind the scenes. And the guy that used to build his transmitters was really switched on, and Roy knew how to set up a station properly.

Mike Stone 2:35
Our first setup was in Wood Street. We was transmitting from Whitebeam Tower in Higham Him and from the tower block in Wood Street.

Unknown DJ 2:46
[From original Dance FM broadcast: That's the way we kick it off, right here on Dance 93, getting rough. Jesus Loves Acid, The Ecstasy Club. Back in time for the real ravers out there. Remember the big warehouses when I used to rock, and the baseline was pumping this one's, yours, check it out.

Linden C 3:06
I don't know it [Dance FM] had a really nice vibe, actually, because I just remember you'd have, like, the turntables against the window, and it just faced the whole London. It would just start to get dark. In them days it was like, you'd give out a phone number. People would like a page in the studio or call in the studio. So I remember there used to be, like, a massive response to people that were actually listening.

DJ Vicky Edwards 3:44
The whole sort of cat and mouse thing not being caught. There was sort of several studios at various tower blocks around Stratford and Leytonstone. If you got caught, they'd confiscate your records, so you would only carry as much vinyl as you could play in that set. You'd carry them in courier bags, because it was before emails and stuff, and so you still had loads of couriers on the street and bicycles riding around with these great big bags which could fit 12 inches in.

DJ Louise 4:15
It very seedy, I mean you really literally in someone's bedroom, when you feel really alone, you don't even realize that people are listening.

DJ Clockwork 4:39
I used to do Sunday nights at that time. And I can remember looking out of the window and seeing, kind of the whole of such a high tower block, seeing the whole of London, and being on the radio and being having a bit of a moment up there in Cathall Estate. And that was a really, really good studio. We were there for a long time.

DJ Dlux 4:57
New music that we liked would always be from the underground radio stations, or for want for a better word, the pirates.

Jessie Grace Mellor 5:12
It's a massive part of our cultural heritage. You'd listen to your pirate radio DJs that you loved during the week on pirate radio, who almost like gods to you, and then you'd see them play out on a Saturday night.

Chris Pilling (Early Riser / Wilder Sound] 5:32
We hired equipment to The Dungeons a lot. There's a pub called the Greyhound. It's kind of half on a bridge, and the bridge is made up of railway arches underneath. They were really kind of derelict, and I don't think they'd been used for years. They were as damp as damp could be. Floors were wet. They were truly an awful looking environment, but they blended themselves perfectly for acid house and the rave scene, because the brick wall and the curved nature of everything the sound was good.

Linden C 6:27
Rob Acteson started coming to parties that me and Tim were doing. He kind of mentioned he had this place in Lea Bridge Road. So we went down to look it out. And that was The Dungeon. I remembered it was just like a mess down there, and then we'd gone down there, we cleaned out, we organised a party about within weeks, and it was really successful. And we used to have Carl Cox do our sound system, believe it or not, which is really funny to all of us to this day. Carl Cox needs to come in, lug the speakers all by himself. Ask us, 'Is there any room to DJ', and we'd be like, 'No, we've got our DJs,Carl'. Not being horrible though, but just being, 'No, no, we got our DJs. We're sorted, Carl'. It's like, God.

DJ Louise 7:03
They decided to do it outside in the car park [of The Dungeons]. It was big old car park. I stopped the music dead and just started the record from the intro, the whole crowd, like 2000 people, just stayed still, and suddenly, as the beat came in, the whole crowd erupted like a wave, jumped into the air. It was just amazing when I came off and poor Linden had to go on after me [laughs].

Nicky Dungeons 7:53
I never seen so much big speakers before. I've never seen stobe lights they used to put and seem them bouncing around. I've never seen backdrops. I've never seen UV lights at all. It was a whole completely different world. I knew that there was something different about this. And we had Linden C, Mr. C, so many to mention. I don't miss the map, but Evil Eddie Richards, Carl Cox played there just so many.

DJ Rap 8:16
The Dungeons was great. Dungeons is like a little underground world. You know, I saw some of the best actors Shut Up and Dance and people doing the fo- It was just, I can't explain it. It was just so amazing to go there. But you go to Dungeons, you know, and you'd be there for- I felt like days. It felt like days, like you just, we never went home. I don't know if that place ever closed.

DJ Vicky Edwards 8:52
I was booked to play there after I'd finished at Bad, the gay club at Heaven. I probably had as many people as you can fit in the cab. I'd said, you know, I'm playing at this place. I think there was a real mood at the time that you because of the licensing laws, people just didn't want the party to stop, you know, they just wanted to keep on dancing. And so they were prepared to go pretty much anywhere if they were guaranteed a dance floor and some good tunes at the end of it. It was like discovering the secret place that no one else knew about, and the music was incredible. And, you know, the lighting was always really good, and it could feel so different from arch to arch.

Merry Collins 9:41
When I got to Dungeons, there was all ages, all colours, all sizes, all shapes. There wasn't a particular style. Everyone was really unique. There was no pressure to dress or look a certain way. And I think that kind of helped with a vibe that you were just there to have a good time.

DJ Adrian H 10:04
It was like a good kind of springboard for me. I got to DJ alongside DJs like Ellis Dee, Chalky white. And in fact, I played the last set in The Dungeons. Ellis Dee had to go somewhere else. And basically what used to happen every week, because that it would just go on to, like, the early hours of the morning, and the crowd would get smaller and smaller, and all that would be left would be the hardcore. So instead of people dotted all around The Dungeons because they were like tunnels, Ellis Dee's MC would say, like, everyone come to the bar area. So the party would congregate around the bar area. So then that geezer was like, 'Can Adrian H come, can Adrian H come'. And then, yeah, I played, like the last set there before it closed.

Ronnie Herel 11:10
I was working in a record store or having a record store in Leytonstone, but yeah, In the Mix records started in '88, '89 we opened that. Fast emerging was Summer of Love, which was pure acid house. I loved the vibe, and I loved the scene, and I loved the raves and everything that was going on. So musically, what we were selling reflected that. They were fantastic days. And we was only there for a couple of years. We sold that to Linden C, who's another great DJ, and he went on called it Dance Factory, and, yeah, we kind of moved on.

Linden C 11:42
I used to go buy records in that shop in Leytonstone. It was called In the Mix before it closed down and stayed there too long. I got more into the idea of, like, you know, maybe I'll turn it into that real good house music shop, buy a load of stock from Trevor Nelson's place and open it up. And I remember going to Trevor, buying about 1000 pounds worth of records of him, which was loads, and then opening the shop, promoting it on pirate radio, selling a lot of that stock, and then with the money that we earnt, going back to Trevor and buying, like loads more. And then it snowed for two weeks solid. I remember that whole period of time just setting us back and just back you.

DJ Rap 12:44
I'd go down to Record Village, and Jeff B was there, and I was just saying to him, like, you know, 'I really want to learn how to do this. It's like impossible to mix into a cassette'. And Jeff was like, 'Well, I've got some equipment, you know, I'll help you learn'. And he basically said, 'I'll teach you how to do it'. And he taught me how to mix, to start off and all the fundamentals anyway.

Kier Hawkins 13:10
Working at Record Village was so much fun. Every day was different. Every day there was a new track, especially '91 that was a time when the music was really changing. So, I mean, in our shop, we would sell house music, hardcore, hip hop, soul, techno, all sorts of sort of music that would be dance or Black music influence. You know, one minute you could be playing a Shut Up and Dance record, the next minute you could be playing Public Enemy. So you had such diversity. I felt like in that era, people were very open minded. People would seem to buy many different styles.

DJ Rap 13:53
How record stores work back in the day, you go in not knowing what you want, and they sell you stuff. Be like, Oh, you've got to have this. This is the latest track. Or you've got to have that, or you've got to do this, and they would play you stuff, and you'd be like, 'Oh, that's really good.'

Kier Hawkins 14:13
I mean, one of our most sort of famous customers was DJ Hype, people from Ibiza Records. You had guys from Living Dream, Labello Blancos. A lot of these labels were based locally.

Kier Hawkins 14:30
One of the most influential tracks of that era was a track called We Are IE, which was produced by a guy called Lennie De Ice, who was local. I mean, this track blew up to be one of the biggest tracks, I would say '91, '92. It still gets played today. I mean, it was a never ending flow of people were just pressing and distributing, selling them then do their next track, maybe a month later, for instance, you.

DJ Dlux 15:03
We got a shop in Leytonstone high road. It was called Togetherness Records. We totally rebuilt it, redesigned it, and we built our own record shop, got in contact with all of the distributors that were distributing the music that we were making. So we had jungle, drum and bass, all the music that we were playing, all the DJs would come through and get music. I think we got that in '94 and it kind of really started gathering steam by '95.

DJ Dlux 15:38
Saturday afternoon, all the other shops weren't too keen on us, because we had a very loud sound system, and we liked to play our music loud, so it would be typical windows rattling loud music. Were we really bothered if we sold a tune? Not really because we were just having fun. It was an outlet.