When WBCN changed the world By Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa with Megan Johnson | December 5, 2011

Before there was Facebook or Twitter, there was Boston rock giant WBCN an audio homepage for a generation.

“I think we literally helped change the world,” said former longtime morning man Charles Laquidara. “We didn’t know it at the time, we thought we were just getting high and playing music. But a day doesn’t go by where someone doesn’t say to me, ‘That thing you said’ or ‘That song you played , it changed my life.’ ”

Bruce Springsteen did his first radio interview ever on ’BCN. Grateful Dead main men Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, along with Allman Brothers bro Duane Allman, stopped into the studio at 2 one morning and jammed for an hour. When Nixon invaded Cambodia, ’BCN got local college kids to strike.

“WBCN had a tremendous national impact both musically and politically,” said Bill Lichtenstein, who at age 14 became the youngest DJ in station history. “We didn’t know it at the time, but I think we literally helped change the world.”

Lichtenstein, a filmmaker who has done TV and documentaries for PBS, set out to record the history of the station from 1968 to 1974 and the result is “The American Revolution,” a documentary he plans to debut in about a year.

“ ’BCN was almost like the Facebook of that time. It connected everyone back then,” he said. “It’s an interesting study in how the media can be used to affect social change.”

Lichtenstein has been interviewing former DJs and BCN staffers and plowing through mountains of donated images, audio recordings, and archival footage, including live in-studio performances, most of which has never been seen before for the flick.

“We’ve amassed a tremendous amount of material, even though there was no station archives from that period,” he said. “People weren’t thinking about saving stuff, it was just happening.”

As a result, the filmmaker has been “crowd sourcing,” and he’s gathered more than 50,000 pieces of memorabilia, donated by people across the country. There’s the famous 1974 Springsteen performance at the Harvard Square Theatre that prompted then Real Paper critic Jon Landau to proclaim, “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

And because the station broadcast from a backroom at the Boston Tea Party, the legendary concert hall, the film will showcase famous early performances by Led Zeppelin and Tea Party “house band” Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.

Lichtenstein needs about $104,000 (in honor of ’BCN’s dial position) to finish the flick and he’s asking listeners and fans to donate online via Kickstarter. There are lots of incentives for donors at every level, including an invite to the screening bash Dec. 3, 2012, which will go to anyone who ponies up $104 or more.

“Don Law has already donated The Paradise and pretty much anyone we ask we expect will play,” Laquidara said. “And no one gets in, no matter who they are, unless they donate $104.” Go to KickstartWBCN.com to pony up.

Bill Lichtenstein

Photo by Don Sanford

Framing ’BCN’s legend

By Mark Shanahan and Meredith Goldstein | GLOBE STAFF

OCTOBER 24, 2011

WBCN, as we knew it, is gone but not forgotten.

Filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein is making a feature-length documentary about the legendary Boston radio

station, and he gave friends a sneak peek of the unfinished film over the weekend. Lichtenstein, a former

TV news writer producer, screened some of “The American Revolution’’ at the Milton manse of Jay and

Kate Rooney. Guests included promoter Don Law, former ’BCN jocks Charles Laquidara and Oedipus,

Playbill’s Tim Montgomery, photographer Jon Strymish, Phoenix exec David Bieber, former ’BCN

program director Sam Kopper, and TV type Barry Nolan.

Don Law, promoter and former Tim Montgomery, Playbill and Tim Montgomery with WBCN’s WBCN’s Sam Kopper. WBCN former program director Boston Tea Party manager with former WBCN sales executive, Jim Parry and Charles Laquidara. Oedipus with Bill Lichtenstein, WBCN’s Charles Laquidara. With David Bieber, Boston Phoenix, “The American Revolution” and “The American Revolution” producer and former WBCN archival director. announcer. (Photos by Jay Rooney)

 

August 11, 2009

WBCN documentary looking for contributors WBCN 104.1 FM rock radio may be off the air this week, but its legacy lives on beyond the current retrospectives and flashback re-broadcasts (which have been incredible, by the way).

Former newscaster and on-air announcer Bill Lichtenstein, who first took to the ‘BCN airwaves as a high school teenager in the early ‘70s, is producing the independent documentary “The American Revolution,” detailing the station’s pivotal role in Boston history – from breaking new music to covering current events.

And Lichtenstein, who is creating the doc with his Peabody award-winning LCMedia Inc. (formerly Lichtenstein Creative Media) wants your help and input.

“The film …chronicles WBCN during the years 1968 to 1975, and examines the station’s role in covering and promoting the profound social, political, and cultural changes of that era,” Lichtenstein told Hotline. “We are collecting personal recollections as well as memorabilia, audio tapes, photos, etc. for use in the film at the web siteWBCNthefilm.com.”

Check it out, and contribute accordingly.

Lichtenstein has also been filming the station’s final days for use in the film, and sent along this photo. “From the WBCN FM studios on the station’s final weekend, from the Class of late-‘60s/early-‘70s: “Rocket Bob” Slavin, Joe “Mississippi” Rogers, Bradley Jay, Sam Kopper, Tim Montgomery and “Little Bill” Lichtenstein, who were all on the air one last time on Sunday.”

Bill Lichtenstein Bill Lichtenstein's award-winning work as a print and broadcast journalist and documentary producer spans more than 35 years, and has been honored with more than 60 major journalism awards. Posted: August 11, 2009 01:14 PM

WBCN and "The American Revolution"

On July 14, CBS, current owners of the legendary FM rock station WBCN-FM in Boston, announced they would be closing the station effective August 13, to make room for the city's second "sports talk" radio outlet. The demise of the "Rock of Boston," as WBCN is known, including the retirement of its call letters, quickly became the talk of Boston. And it's not hard to understand why.

Since March 1968, WBCN has been a major artery for relevant music, culture and politics for generations of listeners in Boston. The press coverage surrounding the station's closing has focused on WBCN's impressive role in breaking four decades of bands, including the Who, Aerosmith, J. Geils, and U2, among others. However, it was arguably during WBCN's early days, from 1968 to 1975, as one of the nation's first "free-form progressive rock" radio stations, that WBCN had its greatest impact in Boston and nationally, as it both chronicled and helped promote the great social, cultural and political upheavals of that era.

I worked at WBCN starting in 1970, at the age of 14, first as an intern, and soon after covering news and hosting my own weekly show. With the recent announcement of the station's closing, I reflected on the station's early days, and its legacy, in an Op-Ed article in the Boston Globe. It began: "The year was 1968. Young Americans were dying in an unpopular war halfway around the world. Protesters were battling police on campuses and in the streets throughout the country. A national upheaval was underway involving the anti-war, civil rights, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements. These revolutions would forever transform the nation socially, culturally, and politically. But you would never know it from listening to the radio, where fast-talking DJs played ads for acne cream along with Top 40 pop ballads like Frank and Nancy Sinatra's "Something Stupid.'' And then came WBCN-FM.

The radio station, which billed itself as "The American Revolution,'' was the vision of a young, hip entrepreneur named Ray Riepen, who simultaneously created the "alternative'' newspaper The Boston Phoenix and the legendary rock club the Boston Tea Party. WBCN began broadcasting from the back room of the Boston Tea Party on March 15, 1968. From the moment it hit the air, the station helped define, as well as promote, popular culture and politics in Boston for the '60s/boomer generation in a way that nothing had before. And its impact quickly spilled over nationally. Since Tuesday's announcement that WBCN's owner, CBS, will take the station off the air in August, its role in launching music careers, including The Who, The J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, and U2, has been widely cited. But WBCN was more than a cultural innovator. It was a social and political force as well, particularly from 1968 to 1975, when, long before Facebook or MySpace, the station served as the social medium that connected a generation in Boston . . ."

The closing of WBCN-FM comes at a time when there is a growing disconnection between the general public, and community and national media, as well as a fading of the belief that one reporter, or one newspaper, or one community radio station, can make a difference. To help today's young people understand the power of media to create social change, a new documentary film, The American Revolution, is being produced. It will examine WBCN, from 1968 through 1975, and the social, cultural and political impact the station had. My company is producing the film, and as part of its creation, we are collecting personal recollections from that era, as well as archival material, including audio, photographs, and memorabilia, both from WBCN as well as that era generally. You can see more about the documentary, and how to share your recollections and material, at the film's web site at WBCNthefilm.com It is ironic that for the final four days of WBCN, CBS relaxed its programming rules, so that, for the first time in decades, announcers could play or discuss whatever they wanted on-air. I was driving around Cambridge yesterday, listening to WBCN, which sounded as good as it ever had. There was the live version of Jimi Hendrix's "Band of Gypsies" (with the five-minute guitar solo); unreleased live U2 performances; the Ramones; tapes of unsigned local bands; a discussion about Timothy Leary's lasting impact on popular culture; and even some dead air. It may be going away, but for one last weekend, WBCN was back. And it was good.

Follow Bill Lichtenstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Bill_LCMedia  

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19 • D E C11/ J A N12 • I M AG I N E W W W I M AG I N E N E W S .C O M

He Says He’ll Film A RevolutionBill Lichtenstein Brings the Story and Glory of WBCN to Film

F E AT U R EBy Hartley Pleshaw

“What a Field Day for the Heat/A Thousand People in the Street/Singing Songs, And Carrying Signs..”

You Say You Want a Revolution/Well, You Know, We All Want To Change the World….”

Not so long ago, these song lyrics seemed to evoke a long-dead past, an invocation of what had been commonly referred to as “Baby Boomer Nostalgia.” A past as irrelevant today as tie-dyed shirts, bell-bottoms and acid tripping.

No more.

Bill Lichtenstein thinks it’s a very appropriate time for People to see a real movie about an-other time when, empowered by alternative media, people took to the streets. In fact, the fi lm will be about that media itself, and how it became central to so many lives. An while it was the culmination of so many things from so many different places – everything from the Beatles to the Vietnam War – Boston is where that media had the greatest impact in the form of a radio station.

WBCN-FM began as a musical phenomenon. In response to the stifl ing format restrictions and vulgar commercialism of AM Top 40 radio, WBCN (which began its rock format on March 15th, 1968) began to offer an al-ternative to the acne medicine commercials, “boss jocks” and bubble-gum music that, by the late-1960’s had come to dominate AM rock radio. It began to play record album “cuts” and “sides,” not just the single records designated by the record companies for “hit” status. It began to play songs longer than three minutes in length, the standard limit recognized by AM radio programmers. And, most signifi cantly, it played music created by people who were rarely, if ever, welcome on Top 40 playlists: Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Buffalo Springfi eld, the Mothers of Invention and the Velvet Underground, among others.

But, there was much more to WBCN than the music. The station became a virtual clearinghouse for the Boston counterculture of the late-1960’s and early 1970’s. In its early days, the station’s announcers would identify it as “WBCN, The American Revolution.” Along with the alternative music came alter-native programming in general, programming designed to serve Boston’s huge, college-based youth culture. In doing so, the station’s announcers, program hosts and newscasters would create a style never before heard on American radio. The on-air staff sought, and achieved, an intimacy with its listeners.

This staff included J.J. Jackson (who went on to become one of MTV’s fi rst “VJ’s”), Norm Weiner (a.k.a., “Saxophone Joe”), Tom Hadges (a.k.a., “Captain Novocaine,” due to his study of dentistry), “Zircon” John Brody, Maxanne Sartori, Andy Beaubien, Joe Rogers (a.k.a., “Mississippi Harold Wilson”), Debbie Ullman, Al Perry, Jim Parry, Dinah Vaprin, Eric Jackson and Little Walter; “News Dissector” Danny Schechter and commentator Andrew Kop-

kind, and other creative and talented voices, most notably Michael Fremer, the voice of the record store “New England Music City and Cheap Thrills,” whose hilarious parodies of rock stars, politicians and local personali-ties pre-dated the style of Saturday Night Live by many years. And, of course, there was the man who seemed to embody the spirit of the station more than any other (and who stayed on it longer than anyone else), Charles Laquidara (a.k.a., “One Take Chuckie,” “Laugh-ing Goose the Weatherman” or “Duane Ingalls Glasscock,” depending on the era).

These personalities would let listeners know if “bad acid” was being sold in Brighton, where to fi nd lost cats and dogs, when there was “trouble” in Harvard Square (as there often was in those days) and how to fi nd work in local rock bands. One original WBCN personality, Peter Wolf (see IMAGINE cover April 2000), found work in a group called the J. Giles Band. Although a commercial station, commercials that were in questionable taste, or too out of character with the station, were not aired. (At times the on-air personalities would actually apologize for even having to air commercials.)

The WBCN personalities were given an enormous amount of personal freedom to express themselves, and convey their musical, political and cultural tastes. The result was an offering as eclectic as anything ever heard on American radio. For example, WBCN’s listen-ers were among the fi rst Americans to hear, or even know about, Monty Python’s Flying Circus; Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” was another WBCN favorite.

It may not have been televised, but WBCN put it on radio. Perhaps more to the point, WBCN, and all it accomplished and repre-sented, was “The Revolution.” And it would remain so until the mid-1970’s, when chang-ing times and tastes, and economic pressures (from, among other things, new, competing FM rock stations) brought the Golden Age of WBCN to a close. (The station stopped broadcasting in 2009, but it remains on the Internet, thanks to another WBCN original personality, Sam Kopper.)

Bill Lichtenstein saw it all fi rsthand. He was a high school student in Newton, MA when he started working as a volunteer on the sta-tion’s Listener Line (another unique part of WBCN’s relationship with its audience was that you could actually call the place on the phone, and get answers about…well, virtually anything you might be interested in) the day after Thanksgiving, 1970, and stayed there (full-time, at least) until 1974, when he went off to college—where, among other things, he became Program Director for WBRU-FM in Providence, RI, the Brown University radio station. Bill is now President of Lichtenstein Creative Media, Inc., located in Cambridge.

It is those years (along with the station’s fi rst two, from 1968 to 1970) that most people familiar with the station and its his-tory consider to be the most legendary at

WBCN. And that is the era chronicled by Bill Lichtenstein in his documentary fi lm THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Why did he decide to make such a fi lm? “There was a sense back then, at both the station and among the listeners, that (things like) LIFE magazines, headlines, buttons, tapes of broadcasts, were just, somehow, important. And I don’t think that kids who grew up in the ‘90’s had the same boxes full of, say, tapes of the Knack. There was just something important about (that time).

“I kept a lot of stuff on (audio) tape, with the idea that, maybe, something could be done with it someday. Also, going back to 1981, I was working with somebody on a docu-mentary on (1960’s folk singer) Phil Ochs. The point of that fi lm was how culture and music and politics sort of merged, and had an impact, through the story of Phil Ochs.

“When that project fl amed out, in the mid-2000s, I started thinking of other ways of telling that story. At the same time, (my family and I) moved back to Boston. Just out of curiosity, when Google was really starting to take off, I would Google WBCN. What I be-gan to fi nd were things—moments—I didn’t know had been recorded, or in the case of photographs, memorialized.

“In the fi rst one I found, Danny Schechter and I were with Dan Ellsberg (the man who leaked the “Pentagon Papers,” the secret history of the Vietnam War, to the press) the day he turned himself in. I was just off-cam-era, but (it was) Danny, Dan Ellsberg and a bunch of reporters. Things like that. It hit me that there’s a lot of stuff out there, and there may be a way to fi nd this stuff.

“So, I started collecting stuff, and by 2005-2006, it seemed possible that we could do a documentary, although it wasn’t quite clear how. The next three or four years were just putting the word out, and trying to get as much material as we could.

“It’s been extraordinary. People have come up with an enormous amount of stuff that they’ve recorded off the air, photographs, all of this material.

“Visually, most of it is photographs. There wasn’t a lot of fi lm. And it’s very precious, the few (fi lm and video) things we have. We had to fi gure out a way to work with all these photos as the source, a lot of them black and white.”

Over a hundred years had passed from the time of the Civil War to the age of WBCN, but in telling the story of the latter, Bill Lich-tenstein faced the same basic challenge that Ken Burns faced in telling the story of the former: how to make a visually interesting fi lm about of phenomenon that, outside of still photographs, apparently left virtually no obvious visuals as historical reference points.

continued on page 21

top to bottomPhoto of WBCN staff circa 1971. Bill Lichtenstein is standing in the back, on the left side, between two women. Charles Laquidara is on the desk at far right with beard and next to him with the hat is Danny Schechter. Maxanne Sartori is seated at the bottom center. Photo credit is Peter Simon.

Production shot of Charles Laquidara being interviewed for THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Photo credit Jay Rooney.

“The American Revolution” Logo.

David Bieber, THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION archivist and Bill Lichtenstein. Photo by Jon Strymish.

Former WBCN announcer Charles Laquidara at his post. Photo by Michael Dobo.

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21 • D E C11/ J A N12 • I M AG I N E W W W I M AG I N E N E W S .C O M

2nd Annual Boston SuperMeet ReportI N D U S T RY R E P O RT S

Capping ten years of SuperMeets, the annual Boston event was held October 27th at the Stuart Street Playhouse, attached to the Radisson Hotel. As in its fi rst year, the event was sold out. It has become the annual town hall for production, editing, and post profes-sionals and students in the New England region and this year didn’t disappoint.

Boston is home to key players in our industry such as Avid, Autodesk, BorisFX, EditShare, GenArts, Lightworks (now a part of EditShare), Noise Industries, Media 100 (a part of BorisFX since 2005) and others. Titans such as Adobe have established new offi ces on Route 128, because the area is known for sharp software engineers out of MIT, Harvard and other schools.

The Boston SuperMeet is the creative networking gala for Boston area and New England fi lmmakers to come together to rub elbows, trade war stories, share experi-ence with new tools and processes. “We don’t care what tools you use to share your stories,’ remarks Dan Berube, chairman of the Boston Final Cut Pro User Group and co-producer of SuperMeets worldwide. “Our focus is to inspire and empower digital content creators to action.”

Platinum sponsors this year were AJA, Au-todesk, Avid, Blackmagic Design, and Canon. In the expo hall these and several other ven-dors displayed newest gear and solutions for production, editing and delivery. The venue was well thought out—you could stay in the exhibit hall and watch proceedings on stage via live video feed to a jumbo screen, while enjoying tasty fi nger food and drinks from the cash bar.

Live demos on stage

On the stage throughout the evening, demos were conducted by working profession-als. Veteran editor Andrew Weisblum, ACE, discussed his Media Composer workfl ow on BLACK SWAN.

By Loren S. Miller

Jem Schofi eld of TheC47.com took us on a tour of Canon’s new EOS-1D X DSLR, his DSLR workfl ow, and his ideas on the present and future state of Canon fi lmmaking. Au-todesk featured fellow FCPUG leader Marc-Andre Ferguson of the Montreal FCPUG on the latest mobile Smoke for Mac workfl ow using a Thunderbolt enabled MacBook Pro and the new Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID, with a focus on Smoke’s editorial fea-tures, even suitable for those who don’t build complex effects for Hollywood blockbusters and big budget ad campaigns. Colorist Alexis Van Hurkman screened some of his latest work fi nished with DaVinci Resolve 8 for Mac and talked about Resolve’s new support for FCPX and more. The product is now part of the Blackmagic Design roster of video solutions.

Waltur Murch appears

This was the fi rst public appearance of editor and sound designer Walter Murch since the release of the controversial Final Cut Pro X. The audience listened quietly as he shared his thoughts about the editing mindset, and how he uses Final Cut Pro 7 for both picture and extremely intricate track work on his fea-tures for Francis Ford Coppola and others.

top to bottomLeft to right: Blackmagic Design premieres its UltraStudio 3D package which includes SD/HD/HDMI in and out plus a 3D workfl ow with a Thunderbolt pipe. David DeArville from Boris FX delights attendee with new fi lter packages.Stephen Bash of GenArts presents the stunning new Saphhire Edge video fi lter package. Robert Haigh of Access TV demos affordable camera/teleprompter solutions.

Left: SuperMeet 2011 Expo hall, a major networking venue. HB Communications commands the Autodesk systems while in background, direct feed from the SuperMeet demo stage allows attendees to be intwo places at once.Right: Future Media Concepts trainer Jeff Greenberg out-lines course offerings to professional Wesley Richardson.

SuperMeet Boston is history, but it won’t be forgotten anytime soon. All photos by Loren S. Miller.

In the audience was Steve Bayes, who heads up the FCP development team at Apple, fi rst wooed away from Avid Technology by the en-ergy of the Boston Final Cut Pro User group.

Walter took us through his exposure to FCPX, and described how he reacted: he worked up a two page bullet list of issues for the FCP marketing and development team to consider. In short, he found many of the new features intriguing but, like many established editors, cannot effectively fi nd his way into the radically redesigned program.

World Famous Raffl e

The Raffl e is almost a separate show with audience participation. No SuperMeet is complete without the World Famous Raffl e Conducted by SuperMeet co-producers Dan Berube and the ever scintillating Michael Horton, over $50,000 of fi lmmaker-related prizes were piled on stage. Prizes we drooled over included a fully licensed copy of Au-todesk SMOKE for Mac (value $14,995), AJA Io Express ($995), Adobe CS5 Production Premium ($1699), Avid Media Composer ($2295), Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 3d with Thunderbolt ($995), Fast Forward Video Sidekick HD ProRes Recorder ($2495), DaVinci Resolve 8 for Mac ($995), Avid artist Color Series Panel ($1699), Zacuto EVF Snap ($650), and a whole lot more. These went to dozens of lucky winners clutching their tickets in the audience, who were as always encouraged to respond vigorously as Walter Murch read off their winning number.

The next SuperMeet will be held in San Francisco in January 2012. Check either www.bosfcpug.org or www.lafcpug.org for developments.

Loren Miller regularly reports for Imagine News and bylines its Tech Edge column. He developed

KeyGuides® for Apple, Avid, and Adobe users. His latest versions are a part of the big raffl e for this

event. Reach him at techpress@mindspring.com.

How is Bill dealing with this fact? “There is fi lm. We found a letter that somebody at the Boston Tea Party (a popular musical theater that featured top performers of the day, and which WBCN frequently broadcast live concerts from) wrote to Channel 4 back in 1967, saying ‘Thank you for doing that great story last night about the Tea Party.’ So, we’re off in search of that story.

“There was a reasonable amount of fi lm. We found a photo of a Cambridge Common concert, and there’s a guy with a 16mm camera. So, we are fi nding a lot of stuff, really interesting stuff, that was shot in that era. So, that’s the fi rst thing.

“Because there were so many great photo-graphs, and so many great photographers who created these extraordinary images, we’re really trying to create (the fi lm’s) own aesthetic. I think the trailer (for the fi lm) captures that. In fact, a friend of mine, who was a director/producer at 20/20, saw the trailer and said, ‘That’s a really interesting editing style! I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything cut quite like that. What is that?’ Then, it hit me: it’s a ‘BCN editing style! Some-thing can be very serious and expositive, and

then suddenly something zappy hits you over the head, and then something funny, and then something rock-and-roll moving. And all that stuff put together in a very fast-paced way is a very particular kind of style, endemic to ‘BCN. So, that’s what we’re sort of trying to develop.

“I don’t know Ken (Burns) very well, but I do know Ric Burns (Ken’s brother, who is also an acclaimed documentary fi lmmaker) very well, and I have tremendous respect for their work, but I’ve said from the beginning, whatever their style is—that Dissolve/Dissolve style—we want this to be just the opposite, somehow.

“I think that’s why in the trailer we started off with that card that says, ‘This fi lm should be played loud.’ We wanted to serve notice that this should be a kick-ass, rock and roll fi lm, and not like a History Channel survey of the late ‘60’s.”

So, like the radio station which inspired it, THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION is trying to do something different. “We’re doing it backward. Most documentaries like this interview people, they talk about something, and then you go fi nd pictures of it. Here, this is more like archeol-ogy. Like, we would fi nd one piece of Bruce

Springsteen’s concert with Bonnie Raitt, when Jon Landau wrote (his famous review), and then we’d go, ‘Okay, is there a tape of it? Are there photos?’ So, we’d piece it together. And when we’d get enough pieces to build, like, the dinosaur structure, then, we’d have people talk about it.

“What’s really driven a lot of this is the fact that there are things that have pieces, (that are) able to tell a particular story. Then, we’ll do the interviews last.”

Alas, even as THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION employs new techniques to tell the story of a revolutionary time in American media, to come into existence, it must do so the old-fashioned way. Bill Lichtenstein hopes that those who want this story told will pitch in, as some already have, in the community spirit of the old WBCN.

“(Support has come from) a mixture of people who I think were fortunate to have intersected with the station, and have had some success in their lives.”

“I would like to say that this incredible story of WBCN Nation, which includes the station, and all of us who in some way intersected with it,

is a remarkable untold story, of not just Boston history, but of American history. I think that this station had a profound impact on music, on culture, on politics and social change.

“It really is a remarkable story of how an fm radio station, politics and rock and roll really changed everything. Everything during that four or fi ve year period shifted in some way. For the better.”

Like may projects in New England, THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION has mounted a Kickstarter effort. Two of the donor rewards are dinner for four with Peter Wolf at Davio’s and co-hosting a radio show with Charles Laquidara. Visit www.KickstartWBCN.com for more information

For more information about the making of THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, go to www.theamericanrevolution.fm/. Bill Lichtenstein’s email address is Bill@LCMedia.com. His company’s website is www.LCMedia.com.

Hartley Pleshaw has been active in Boston-area television, radio, journalism, theater, fi lm and video for the past three decades.

He has been writing for Imagine since 2006. His email address is: hartleypleshaw@gmail.com

continued from page 19

The American Revolution:

A conversation with filmmaker, Bill Lichtenstein

By Erin Finicane on March 05, 2012

Bill Lichtenstein interviewing WBCN'sCharles Laquidara for film. Photo taken by Jay Rooney

“WBCN brought humanity to the airwaves; a new rhythm to life; a cast of characters we loved and identified with (Charles, Sam, Tommy, Jim, Bill, JJ, Mississippi, Al...); music which evolved as the world changed; real news reflecting real happenings, without the taint of corporate America (thanks to Danny Schechter); and a sense of community that brought several generations together. We lived and loved well, and through it all was WBCN. I think we all need to reconnect with those values and realize how important WBCN was to us, and to the community.” – Dan Beach (Kickstarter supporter and WBCN listener)

Here at the Center we are very familiar with the power that different forms of media can have to impact change. We strive to showcase new and innovative uses of digital technology and social media that inspire action. But as we continue to forge ahead in this quest, we must remind ourselves to pause every now and then to reflect on the sequence of events that lead us here. Much can be learned from our predecessors and perhaps now is a good time to revisit an age before Facebook and Twitter, where the World Wide Web was still a distant dream, and where even television was just starting to grow into its current form. But even without all of the fancy gadgetry that we take for granted today, the late 60s/early 70s was an age where media proved as powerful an

Bill Lichtenstein,

1973, age 16 on air

at WBCN. Photo by

Don Sanford

agent of change as we have ever seen it. In Boston, MA, between 1968 and 1974, a single radio

station played a momentous role in mobilizing the public and inspiring the dramatic social,

political and cultural shifts taking place across the nation. I had the great fortune to chat with

longtime friend and supporter of the Center, filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein, founder and president

of Lichtenstein Creative Media. A pioneer in designing for impact, Lichtenstein is knee deep in

his latest documentary, The American Revolution, which explores the formative years of the

freeform Boston radio station WBCN. Sitting on top the tallest building in Boston, WBCN

became a hub for pop culture as well as a facilitator of social and political interaction, promoting

dialogue around some of the most pressing issues of the time. Rock stars, radicals, movers and

shakers, movements and counter-movements embraced WBCN as an outlet for refreshing and

honest social discourse. For many, this freeform radio station, with its revolutionary mix of rock

music, politics and news, will forever remain a defining texture in the social fabric of the city.

But whereas the subject matter of The American Revolution simply comments on the power of

media to impact change, the film’s production strategy actually lives it. And it is this strategy

that we at the Center find particularly note-worthy. Lichtenstein and his colleagues have

designed a production approach that leverages the public’s participation in the media-making

process and serves as a wonderful demonstration of how fair use and crowdsourcing can

successfully enhance a documentary production. When initially asked to elaborate on his

approach to the film, Lichtenstein references this unique production strategy:

“It was our intention (even before anybody used the word crowdsourced) back in 2005 when we

first started thinking about doing the film, to do it in a way—and it seemed to call out to be done

in a way—that turns out to be really consistent with all of the things that you at the Center are

interested in. From fair use to crowdsourcing, to this kind of transformation of material…”

The “transformation of material” that Lichtenstein refers to is their solution to a production

challenge that emerged when, upon the station’s closing in 2009, they discovered an absence of

any archival material:

“There were no archives. There were no records. Basically nothing. So what this gets to is a

central point and that is that the history of that period—a very important period where so much

changed for everything, from feminism to the anti war movement to music, art, culture and

politics—the story of that period as it evolved in Boston had really never been told. And if we

didn’t tell it – we being the people who were in the middle of it – if we didn’t tell that story, it

was not going to get told…or it would be told by Viacom in a half hour TV special or

something…it wasn’t going to get told in a way that really captured what went on. And so from

the very beginning we reached out to people who lived it, who were there, who were a part of it,

and we started asking if they had any material that they could share….”

So Lichtenstein and his colleagues began crowdsourcing archival material from WBCN listeners

and supporters:

“In 2006, when people were still literally saying, “you mean, you can like post photographs on

the internet? How do you do that?.” This was before Facebook, and we had this vision that we

could create a kind of interactive community for people who lived through the period, who had

material, and we would share it! And we would use that material and these stories to help evolve

the film both archival research-wise and editorially.”

According to Lichtenstein, the response they received was immediately supportive as nostalgic WBCN listeners rallied around the making of this film, offering up their stories, photographs, recordings and footage to contribute to what Lichtenstein describes as the first “open source” documentary. Lichtenstein even

comments that he feels more like acurator now-a-days and less like a filmmaker, as he compiles this crowdsourced material into a virtual archive that will not just be used in the documentary, but will also be made available to the public and to scholars interested in learning about that time period and contributing their own storiesto that learning process. And taking a cue from the Center for Social Media’s Best Practices in Fair Use, Lichtenstein is not shying away from using copyrighted material that is critical to the messaging of the film nor is he hesitating to share his own material to the public before the film’s actual release. In his own words, he has

“embraced” this new wave of collaborative, participant filmmaking:

“A lot of filmmakers are just standing around this pool of new ways of doing things and they’re

kind of dipping their toe in to kind of see if it’s okay…But what we’ve done is we’ve embraced all

of it. And I think by just jumping in, head first, and swimming around in it, what we’ve found out

is that it’s a much better way of making films. But you have to be willing to just immerse yourself

in it…. So what you find for example is that for every precious thing we have for the film that we put up online and wonder if somebody is going to steal or see before the release of the film, that we get twenty things. People go, “Oh! That recording of the Grateful Dead at MIT the day after

the Kent State Massacre where four students were shot…well I was there and I have

photographs!” Or “I have a better version of that song taped.”…And so my advice would be to

listen carefully to what your Center and others are saying about these things and really embrace them, because I think his film has benefited from becoming a true believer in all of it.

Using the combined power of the media, crowdsourcing and a basic understanding of fair use, The American Revolution isitself proving to be a revolution in documentary filmmaking and a model that the Center for Social Media is proud to support.

As our conversation comes to a close, I ask Lichtenstein what he hopes will be the take away from the WBCN story and how it might be applied to the more contemporary context of designing media for impact. In his response, he recognizes the

enormous potential that social media and new media technology has for impacting change, but he also reminds us that the media is but a tool, and it is in fact the people who are the real agents of change…They must believe it’s possible:

“I think it’s rarer and rarer that people listen to a discussion or are part of a discussion that

helps them formulate a view of what’s going on. I think more and more people feel helpless...and I think if there’s anything that we’re hoping the film will do, regardless of their political

viewpoint, we’re hoping that it makes people feel like they can create changes in their life and

for society—cultural, political and social changes—by using media and by speaking up. And

Photo of girl at demonstration. Photo taken by Eric Engstrom

particularly, if they’re an artist or a musician, I think everyone has a real imperative to get

involved and try to make some sort of change.”

So despite the limited technology of the time period, WBCN became an enabler for dialogue,

collaboration and action. And as we continue our efforts in designing media for impact,

Lichtenstein reminds us that before media can serve as an effective tool, the public needs to

know how to use it to its full potential. And indeed, the outreach toolkit for The American

Revolution is designed for precisely this purpose: through a facilitation guide, it will deconstruct

what media can do for social change and educate communities and activists on how to use media

strategically during the organizing process:

“We want to create a facilitation guide so that schools and community groups can show the film

and then have a discussion about the use of media to create social change, which I think is really

important. Because I don’t think people feel empowered or they understand how they go about

making yourself heard and targeting a particular thing that you don’t like and trying to get

change. For a lot of people it’s clicking. I’m going to click on this petition or I’m going to click

“LIKE” on the website that stands up for the things I believe in. But real social change

historically has taken much more commitment and dedication and I think this is a way of seeing

how that can happen.”

Media can empower people to take action, and The American Revolution demonstrates this in

both its subject matter and production strategy. Inspiring us all to become creative citizens who

play an active role in shaping our own history and our own future, Lichtenstein and his

colleagues continue to enlist the help of the public in this participatory and collaborative

filmmaking experience. We look forward to seeing their progress.

Making radio waves

By Mark Shanahan

Charles Laquidara (left), about WBCN’s heyday. Bill Lichtenstein (right) is trying to raise money to make a movie about the station.

WHO: Charles Laquidara and Bill Lichtenstein WHAT: It’s hard to imagine, but there was actually a time when radio was interesting, unpredictable, even inspiring. And there may be no better example than the early days of Boston’s WBCN-FM (104.1) - from, say, 1968 to 1974 - when the DJs not only played what they wanted but also had the freedom to opine about the important political and social happenings of the time. As the Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed sang in 1970, “Despite all the computations, you could just dance to a rock ’n’ roll station, and it was all right.’’ Well, filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein, who worked at the station back in the day, is making a documentary about WBCN called “The American Revolution,’’ and he’s trying to raise $104,000 for the project on www.kickstartwbcn.com. (The fund-raising campaign, which concludes Dec. 19, has some VIP backers, including Patriots president Jonathan Kraft.) The other day, we talked about the project with Lichtenstein and ’BCN’s former madcap morning host Charles Laquidara, who says the station had a hand in changing the world - for the better.

People would [criticize] us because we’d badmouth our president and tell people not to go off to war because it was a scam. But it was very entertaining.’

Q. OK, Charles, what’s this all about? Laquidara: Well, I heard Bill was making a movie and I wanted to get involved. ’BCN was a special place. When I came to Boston in 1968, the station was already making waves. It wasn’t doing the “Woo Woo’’ Ginsburg, Top 40 kind of stuff. It was unique.

Q. But did it really change the world? Laquidara: We were part of the change in a very strong way. Of course, none of us knew what was going on. But we had freedom and we used it. Q. And people paid attention. Laquidara: Oh yes. You could be walking down Commonweath Ave. and hear ’BCN playing in everyone’s apartment or dormitory. The station was a major part of the zeitgeist of the ’60s. We didn’t know it was going be so influential. We were just kind of playing our music. People can say what they want about us being just a bunch of hippies, but we did help to change the whole game. Q. You were just a bunch of hippies, though, right? Laquidara: People would [criticize] us because we’d badmouth our president and tell people not to go off to war because it was a scam. But it was entertaining. We were an audio version of what “The Daily Show’’ does now. Q. Can you imagine such a station doing that today? Laquidara: [Laughs] It’s unimaginable. This was a time before the corporations were allowed to buy up all the media. Once that happened, it became all about the bottom line and the stock price. Corporations have one goal and only one goal: making money. Today, if you want good ratings then you have bad radio. Keep the DJ’s mouth shut, just play the hits. Q. That wasn’t WBCN. Laquidara: No. Whenever you have a revolution, the first wave is always the crazies, whether it was the yippies, or the gay-rights marchers in South Boston, or whatever. ’BCN was about the first wave. If we were around today, just imagine how we’d be covering that Occupy Wall Street thing. Q. You don’t think Clear Channel is doing an adequate job? Laquidara: [Laughs] Q. Bill, tell me about pulling this together. Lichtenstein: We’ve amassed an enormous amount of stuff - photos, audio, music - and now we’re putting it together. This movie tells the story of a time of profound social change, and it’s going to show people what was happening.