40 WATTS FROM NOWHERE Review: Pirate Radio Doc Highlights Long Lost Punk Era

Punk doesn’t just mean rebellion or — in James Gunn’s avowedly unironic definition — kindness.

 

At its core, punk also means opposition to the Powers-That-Be, to corporate capitalism and its defenders, to a people-first, profits-last attitude, a way of life or an ethos that rejects reactionary complacency and embraces activism, both personal and collective.

 

Punk as a potent, dynamic ideal aptly describes the subject of writer-director Sue Carpenter’s behind-the-scenes documentary, 40 Watts From Nowhere. Produced by Jack Black, 40 Watts From Nowhere follows the brief, brilliant life, not unexpected, precipitous fall, and sudden demise of Carpenter’s pirate radio station, KBLT, during a tumultuous cultural era, specifically the Los Angeles-based, post-punk music scene. 

 

Carpenter isn’t just the co-writer (with Amanda Laws) or director (solo). She’s also the central subject and star of 40 Watts From Nowhere. Thanks to an ever-present videographer, Carpenter owned box-loads of videotapes documenting KBLT, first in San Francisco in the mid-1990s and later, in Los Angeles, after a move. Through contacts and a dogged determination, Carpenter taught herself everything she needed to know about getting a pirate radio station on-air. 

 

Eager to get into the radio business, but burdened by a lack of funds or access to a wealthy family member or trust fund, Carpenter started her pirate station out of her hillside apartment in San Francisco on the corner of Castro and 16th streets. There, she made and met friends who helped her turn an indubitably illegal dream into reality. Under federal law, every radio station requires a license. Said radio license can only be granted by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and, despite its supposed public function, costs in the millions of dollars to obtain and retain.

 

Finding herself constrained by San Francisco and eager to relocate to friendlier, more affordable climes, Carpenter packed up her belongings, drove to Los Angeles, and found a home that became, like her previous apartment in San Francisco, both the location of her pirate radio station and a central hub for wannabe DJs, music lovers of every kind, and local and about-to-be famous musicians, eventually including Jesus and the Mary Chain and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

 

Despite its rebellious outsider attitude, 40 Watts to Nowhere follows a conventional structure, interweaving archival interviews and footage, contemporary interviews, including the ubiquitous Carpenter herself, and colorful intertitles that double as chapter stops, each one an informative, often illuminating look into a long-gone, pre-Internet, pre-social media moment in time where a simple love of music in all its forms and variations could bring a disparate group of individuals together, united by their desire to share their own specific, singular, often eccentric point-of-view with their listeners, however few or many they might be. 

 

A whirlwind of energy, ambition, and obsession, Carpenter smartly mixes (and remixes) interviews old and new, including former pirate DJs (e.g., Mike Watts of the Minutemen, Don Bolles of the Germs), and among others, Stephen Dunifer, the pioneering San Francisco, Bay Area-based pirate radio owner and DJ who, along with Pump Up the Volume and an occasionally shirtless Christian Slater, inspired Carpenter to try her hand at starting, owning, and running a pirate radio station of her own. And for the better part of three years in Los Angeles, she did exactly that, introducing listeners to music absent from the commercially-run FM stations of the day. 

 

Then, of course, the FCC caught up with Carpenter and her station, ending her dream and the dreams of her DJs, staff, and the community of listeners who tuned in regularly to discover new, non-commercial music. 

 

40 Watts From Nowhere opens on Friday, July 17th, in New York City via DCTV, followed by a rolling digital and physical release in other North American cities through the fall.