My friend Bill Lichtenstein is working on what’s certain to be a wonderful nonprofit documentary film about WBCN–a groundbreaking Boston radio station deeply involved in the political and cultural changes of the 1960s. He’s seeking funding through Kickstarter: an innovative fundraising mechanism that will be of interest to entrepreneurs of all stripes–in order to help change the future.
The film, entitled “The American Revolution: How a Radio Station, Politics and Rock and Roll Changed Everything” documents Boston radio station WBCN from 1968 (when Bill, as a 14-year-old high school became the station’s youngest DJ) through 1974.
As reported in the Boston Herald (Dec. 5, 2011), during those years, Bruce Springsteen did his first radio interview ever on WBCN; Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, of the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers’ Duane Allman stopped into the studio at 2 AM and jammed for an area. When Nixon invaded Cambodia, “BCN got local college kids to strike.
WBCN “had tremendous national impact both musically and politically,” Lichtenstein told the Herald. “We changed the world one time,” Lichtenstein says. And, with this film, “we can do it again.”
Lichenstein, who has produced TV news and documentaries for ABC and PBS, has gathered more than 50,000 documents, photos, and tapes–which include performances by Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.
He has also garnered some $50,000 in contributions–but needs to double that amount by Dec. 19 to complete the film.
He’s seeking $104 thousand in donations via Kickstarter–a nonprofit that allows contributors tax deductions–but gives fundraisers just a month to get the entire bundle.That is, Kickstarter takes an all or nothing approach: Lichtenstein must bring in all $104K by Dec. 19–or he gets nothing.
After three weeks of fundraising, he’s now almost at the halfway point, with just a week to go.
More info and the film trailer are available at www.KickstartWBCN.com. Lichtenstein and Kickstarter will be featured on Boston’s WCVB-TV “Chronicle” on Dec. 13, 2011.
——Anita Harris
Anita M. Harris is president of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations firm located in tyhe Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. Anita is a former national journalist who got HER start in the alternative press–as a founder of the Harrisburg Independent Press and writer for the The Real Paper and Phoenix in Boston, MA.
Here are photos I took at last night’s gala benefit for Bill Lichtenstein’s forthcoming film, “The American Revolution–a documentary on WBCN radio which Lichtenstein credits as instrumental (pun intended) in the political and cultural upheavals of the late 1960s.
