WBCN, the Boston rock ’n’ roll radio station of yore that helped popularize the underground music of the ’60s and ’70s and stirred the pot of political dissent during Vietnam, felt like it was back in business if only for one more night at the Somerville Theatre.
Filmmaker (and former WBCN announcer) Bill Lichtenstein screened his documentary “The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and The American Revolution” on May 10, and he brought with him a cast of characters from the station and film crew to help stimulate a night of nostalgia and discussion.
Among the panelists were former WBCN announcers Maxanne, the “afternoon drive” host credited frequently with breaking the career of Aerosmith, and Joe Rogers (aka “Mississippi Harold Wilson”) who was recruited to the station as a Tufts student in 1968.
The documentary makes the case for the radio station as a political force, employing music as the method to militate for social change. Although WBCN, founded in 1968, soldiered on until 2009, Lichtenstein chooses to focus the storytelling on the station’s earliest days, during Nixon’s tumultuous presidency.
Within this fertile if fiery period of art, culture and politics, the film describes a station riding a wave of progressive political action that lifted the local and national tide of antiwar, women’s rights, Civil Rights and gay rights movements.
The audience ran the gamut from longtime WBCN listeners, who shared stories during the discussion period about growing up with the station, to a younger generation that never wandered beyond the gilded cages of streaming platforms such as Spotify and Tidal. Among the younger guests there was a curiosity about the art form of radio and what it meant to regular listeners in the age before the Internet and digital media.
Outside of pure nostalgia and wonderful anecdotes (the panel dug deeper into a famous obscenity-filled tirade delivered by Patti Smith live and without censorship over the WBCN airwaves in 1976), the discussion returned repeatedly to politics in the present day. One thing is for sure: Nobody in the room was a fan of Donald Trump – or if they were, they weren’t speaking up.
The timing of the film’s release, at the lowest ebb of Trump’s approval rating, implicitly encourages the connection between unpopular wartime presidents then and now. Whether the audience was moved by the film sufficiently to envision a path through and beyond our contemporary political ills is not clear. There was plenty of griping, in any event, as well as a basketful of memorable stories and the pleasure of seeing some of the old WBCN gang back together.
The film continues its limited run through the end of June:
Cotuit Center for the Arts in Barnstable on May 27
Cape Ann Community Cinema in Rockport on May 28
The Cabot in Beverly on June 12
Jane Pickens Theatre in Newport, Rhode Island, on dates to be announced
Filmusic Festival on Vineyard Haven on June 28
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