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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260910T180000
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UID:10007526-1789063200-1789070400@thectbeacon.com
SUMMARY:The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and the American Revolution
DESCRIPTION:The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and the American Revolution brings the remarkable story of a Boston FM station that became part radio experiment\, part rock & roll clubhouse\, and part countercultural information network to United Theatre in Westerly for a one-night screening Thursday\, September 10\, at 6 p.m. \nLong before podcasts\, social media or the internet gave practically anyone a platform\, WBCN challenged the idea of what a radio station was supposed to be. Its DJs chose their own records. Its news department covered movements and stories mainstream broadcasters often ignored. Its microphones captured everyone from activists and political figures to young musicians on the verge of becoming famous. \nDirector Bill Lichtenstein knows that world from the inside. He joined WBCN as a 14-year-old volunteer in 1970 and eventually worked at the station for years. His two-hour documentary uses a vast archive of recordings\, photographs\, and film to reconstruct the period when WBCN found itself at the intersection of music\, Vietnam\, Watergate\, civil rights\, women’s liberation\, LGBTQ rights\, and a generation questioning nearly every institution around it. \nBefore WBCN\, There Was the Boston Tea Party\nThe story really begins with a music venue. \nIn 1967\, Ray Riepen opened the Boston Tea Party\, which quickly became one of the centers of Boston’s emerging underground music scene. For only a few dollars\, audiences could encounter bands that would soon become enormously important\, including The Who\, the Velvet Underground and Led Zeppelin during its first American tour. \nRiepen saw something happening around him that wasn’t being reflected on Boston radio. \nOn March 15\, 1968\, WBCN changed formats from classical music to free-form progressive rock. Instead of programmers in an office determining precisely which records would be played and when\, the people behind the microphones were given extraordinary freedom. \nAlbum tracks could replace three-minute singles. A DJ could follow Aretha Franklin with Cream or Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. Announcers didn’t have to pretend they had no opinions about Vietnam\, drugs\, politics or the cultural upheaval happening outside the studio. \nMusic\, news and politics began bleeding into one another. \nThe station became a place where listeners weren’t simply consuming programming. They were joining a community. \nThe Radio Station Became Part of the Revolution\nWBCN didn’t merely report on Boston’s counterculture from a comfortable distance. \nIt was inside it. \nThe documentary places the station against the larger upheaval of the late 1960s and early ’70s: the Vietnam War and draft\, anti-war demonstrations\, clashes between police and protesters\, civil rights activism\, the emerging women’s and LGBTQ liberation movements and eventually the political crisis surrounding Richard Nixon and Watergate. \nWBCN gave airtime to people and movements that received little or hostile treatment elsewhere in mainstream media. \nIt also developed an unconventional news operation. \nDanny Schechter became the station’s “News Dissector\,” while other members of WBCN’s staff blurred the traditional boundaries separating broadcasters from their audience. A Listener Line allowed people to call the station with questions and information around the clock. \nFor young listeners accustomed to the polished authority of network television and AM radio\, WBCN sounded radically different. \nBruce Springsteen Called His Mother\nThe politics are only half the story. \nWBCN existed during an extraordinary period in rock history\, and Lichtenstein’s archive captures artists before some of them became icons. \nThe film includes Bruce Springsteen’s first radio interview and live in-studio performance in 1973. During that early appearance\, the future superstar was still unknown enough to use his moment on Boston radio to say hello to his mother. \nThere’s also Patti Smith’s first radio concert in 1975\, along with rare archival appearances involving David Bowie\, Lou Reed\, Jerry Garcia and others. Jane Fonda and activist Abbie Hoffman appear in the archive as well. \nThat’s one of the documentary’s strengths as a time capsule. \nThe audience knows what happened afterward. \nSpringsteen became Springsteen. Bowie became Bowie. Patti Smith became one of punk’s defining figures. But the recordings preserve moments when careers and movements were still unfolding and nobody in the room knew exactly where they were headed. \nThe DJs Didn’t Have a Playlist\nPerhaps the hardest thing to explain to someone who grew up with tightly programmed commercial radio is just how unusual WBCN’s approach was. \nThere was no predetermined playlist dictating every record. \nThe announcers were personalities because they were actually allowed to have personalities. They could select music\, talk about it\, discuss politics and respond to what was happening around Boston. \nCharles Laquidara became one of WBCN’s defining voices. Other station figures included J.J. Jackson\, Tommy Hadges\, Sam Kopper\, Marsha Steinberg and Schechter. \nThe freedom produced radio that could be unpredictable\, messy\, deeply personal and occasionally confrontational. \nIt also created the possibility of discovery. \nA listener didn’t already have to know which song they wanted to hear. The person on the other side of the radio could surprise them. \nLichtenstein’s companion history of WBCN describes the period from 1968 through Watergate as one in which the station became a hub connecting rock music\, psychedelia and anti-war politics in Boston. \nBill Lichtenstein Was 14 When He Joined the Station\nThis isn’t a filmmaker reconstructing a culture he encountered decades later. \nBill Lichtenstein was part of it. \nHe began at WBCN in 1970 as a 14-year-old volunteer working the Listener Line. He eventually became an announcer and remained at the station into the 1970s before building a career as a journalist and documentary producer. \nHis work has earned a Peabody Award and dozens of journalism honors\, and his writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times\, The Nation\, The Village Voice and The Boston Globe. \nLichtenstein eventually spent years assembling WBCN’s history from the people and material that survived it. \nThe documentary draws on rare archival audio and visual material alongside interviews with the people who were there. The story was also expanded into Lichtenstein’s 304-page book WBCN and the American Revolution: How a Radio Station Defined Politics\, Counterculture\, and Rock and Roll\, published by MIT Press in 2021. \nThe Movie Has Returned With a New Title\nSome viewers may recognize this film under a shorter name. \nLichtenstein’s documentary originally circulated as WBCN and the American Revolution\, winning the DC Independent Film Festival and later airing nationally on PBS. \nIn 2026\, it returned to theaters under the expanded title The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and the American Revolution. \nThe new theatrical release runs approximately 119 minutes and reframes the film for another moment when questions about who controls information\, which voices get heard and what responsibilities media organizations have to the public have returned to the center of American life. \nThat makes this more than a documentary about old radio. \nIt’s an examination of an idea about media that now seems almost radical again: that the public airwaves were a public resource\, and that a broadcaster could treat its listeners as participants rather than an audience to be packaged and sold. \nWhen Radio Could Create a Community\nWBCN itself didn’t remain the station depicted in the documentary forever. \nFree-form FM grew into big business. Progressive rock radio became commercial rock radio. Corporate ownership expanded\, playlists tightened and the industry that had once allowed a collection of young broadcasters to experiment eventually became much more structured. \nBut for a period beginning in 1968\, WBCN demonstrated something unusual. \nA radio station could introduce someone to a band\, tell them what was happening at an anti-war demonstration\, put an activist on the air\, take a phone call from a listener and create the feeling that everyone tuned to the same frequency belonged to something happening in real time. \nThat’s what makes a two-hour documentary about a defunct Boston radio station potentially interesting even to someone who never heard WBCN. \nThe technology is obsolete. \nThe argument about what media is for isn’t. \nDetails\nEvent: The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and the American Revolution\nDate: Thursday\, September 10\, 2026\nTime: 6 p.m.\nRuntime: Approximately 120 minutes\nDirector: Bill Lichtenstein\nGenre: Documentary / Music / Media History\nVenue: UNITED Main Cinema\nAddress: 5 Canal Street\, Westerly\, RI 02891\nFormat: Special one-night-only screening\nAccessibility: The UNITED’s cinemas are wheelchair accessible; audio amplification\, descriptive audio and closed-captioning devices are available for supported screenings\nTicket Policy: Movie and event tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable\nBox Office: 401-388-8208 \nMore information is available at the Event Website link below. \nTo purchase tickets\, click the Event Ticketing link below. \n  \n  \nFeatured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people\, location\, or activities shown.
URL:https://thectbeacon.com/event/the-airwaves-belonged-to-the-people-wbcn-and-the-american-revolution/
LOCATION:United Theatre\, 5 Canal Street\, Westerly\, RI\, 02891\, United States
CATEGORIES:United Theater
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