I had my first run-in with the Federal Communications Commission the summer after my freshman year of high school. My second summer-school class that year was Introduction to Radio Broadcasting. Each student had a chance to host an hour-long program three times over the course of two weeks. During my second show, I played “Liza and Louise,” a track off of NOFX’s “White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean,” a quintessential moment in ’90s punk for sure, but my teacher didn’t quite see eye to eye with me.

I had edited the track by dubbing it onto a magnetic tape cartridge, an ancient technology that looked like a big eight-track tape, via a huge piece of machinery that let you drop out the volume and add a goofy sound effect. I chose farm-animal noises (the sound effects were quite limited) and added little flourishes like popping firecrackers and artillery fire at the end of the song (somewhat comparable to what early reggae remix artists like my man King Tubby were doing in 1960s Jamaica, but that’s probably a stretch).

I decided to prove a point, because this was going to be my big moment of rebellion. This was me being Sid Vicious without the drugs, self-inflicted wounds and dead girlfriend, but it was still a rebellion of sorts. Anyway, I “forgot” to edit out the word “fist” (used by Fat Mike as a verb, because this song is a beautiful story of two women in love and enjoying their new-found sexual freedom, a truly liberating punk moment), and my teacher flipped. Of course she hadn’t caught the lyrics, which had sounded a thousand times louder with an entire class listening in, but she claimed that I had forgotten to declare the station’s call numbers within five minutes of the hour. This is obviously the FCC’s worst nightmare. I was told that men with handcuffs would arrive shortly and I should prepare for an elongated court appearance. I asked why the FCC would be listening to a high-school broadcast that only lasted three hours a day and could only be heard on specially tuned radios within a few miles’ radius. Her response was more paranoid than rational, and ever since I have mistrusted any government body that would find any music unsuitable to be aired.

Since then I’ve managed to snag another radio show (The Naked Show with Chris and Ali, every Tuesday at 1 p.m. on 91.7 FM WSUM, if you think it would be funny to hear me mispronounce things and push buttons incorrectly) and have not yet been personally visited by Michael Powell, who seems to be content with the smallest percentage of owners possible owning the most broadcast outlets possible. A smart plan if you’re building a fascist state, but not if you want to hear the newest Microphones live album. And sure, there are eight hours of non-Safe Harbour hours a day when you can play unedited songs, but it is still very illegal to refer explicitly to bodily functions and sex unless you’re speaking clinically in a talk show format. And you can blab to me about XFM radio and its massive selection of tunes, but I have yet to hear anything revolutionary.

The British are way ahead of us on this. Pirate radio has been a staple of their musical existence since the ’30s, and in the ’60s, Radio Caroline was blasting the kids with hot tunes from a ship off the coast (the United States only had hippies playing two-hour sets of bluegrass). Acid house in the ’80s and then the ’90s rave scene flowered simply because of pirate stations (although they had many fewer stations than we did in the States). DJs announced, in easily enough to decipher codes, where and when the next raves were. And then the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 made it illegal for a crowd to spontaneously gather in public for any reason, especially if music is involved. Dance music aficionados Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, in their book “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life,” describe the Criminal Justice Act as “one of the most repressive measures passed by a modern democratic government.” They are not far from the truth. The side effect, of course, was that the rave scene crossed over to the mainstream, becoming a usual part of every teenager’s life.

This won’t happen in the United States. We do have a few very repressive laws, but we don’t have any unifying scene tying an entire generation together. Hip-hop rules television, punk rock punked out, and skate videos seem to be the main influence for MTV producers. Something will come along, and when it does, you should embrace it and then go pirate and make other people embrace it.

Until then, the Internet does offer a decent amount of unrestricted freedom in the form of blogs and free downloads. One particularly enlightened band, Black Smoke, has released its latest output, “Post Terrorist Modernism DIY MP3 EP” only as a free download. You not only get the songs but the sleeve, liner notes and instructions on how to put your album together. The album is decent industrial, sample-laden dance, but it’s worth it for the experience (go to www.blacksmoke.org). This will happen more in the future.

If you like this idea of free music, and you should, you can also find a wide variety of mash-up artists and collage music. Mash-up artists like Freelance Hellraiser (who contributed a Strokes vs. Christina Aguilera track, “A Stroke of Genie-us” into the world of illegal music and got signed on for high-paid remix work with the Dirrty Girl herself [check out his rockin’ Thug Pop Mix of “Fighter”]) have been receiving mad attention for their innovative white labels, and most have websites with downloadable music libraries. Collage artists are less poppy, relying more on their heritage as art form or social parody. John Oswald, the granddaddy of collage music, was the victim of the earliest suits against illegal sampling when he reassembled Michael Jackson’s “Bad.” Of course the artists never seem to care, but their labels sure as hell do.

For an interesting peek into this world, go to www.droplift.org and learn how to droplift, which involves making a CD similar to Black Smoke’s, but filled with audio collages and dropping it into chain record stores. When people try to buy it, the album won’t register and they’ll get the music for free. Although it seems somewhat improbable to catch on in large scale, it is a step in the right direction. So go do your part, kids.