40 WATTS FROM NOWHERE (A-minus) - What a joy to behold. Before the internet took over and made every third person a DJ or a podcaster, it was a challenge to hunt down good music. This documentary -- about a low-wattage pirate radio station in Los Angeles -- celebrates the underground music scene of the mid-'90s and the creation of a community of amateur DJs who spun an exotic mix of records out of a modest apartment in Silver Lake.
Both the radio station (KBLT, like the sandwich) and this movie were the brainchild of Sue Carpenter (whose nom de air was Paige Jarrett, borrowed from a former high school classmate). Carpenter originally started a station called KPBJ (like the sandwich) in San Francisco, which she operated solo for about a year before heading down to the heart of hipsterville in L.A. to pump out a low-watt signal that didn't reach much beyond her neighborhood.
Carpenter -- a motorcycle-riding girl-next-door type back in the day who looks like a soccer mom now -- is a charismatic subject and storyteller. The documentary is stuffed with personalities, as dozens of volunteers manned the mic among a rotation that included a few local band celebrities, like Mike Watt of the Minutemen and Firehose, Don Bolles of the Germs, and Brandon Jay of Lutefisk. Known on air as Quazar, Jay was the Kevin Bacon of Silver lake who helped recruit much of the on-air talent through his music-scene network. Bolles is an eccentric personality, both then and now, who provides comic relief and some of the most obscure songs this side of Dr. Demento. (His on-air handle was DJ Kitten Sparkles.)
That footage fell into Carpenter's lap by accident while she was contemplating making the film. (She related the KBLT story in her memoirs more than 20 years ago. She has long been a writer and public-radio personality.) The video archives provide a goldmine of lo-fi high-jinks, capturing faces and antics in the claustrophobic studio that Carpenter created in the hallway between the bedroom and bathroom of her apartment. So many personalities pop on the screen, many of them in recent interviews looking back on all the fun they had 30 years ago. (KCRW in L.A. did a nice piece with Carpenter in 2023, linked here.)
Carpenter, who was toiling as a legal secretary for a lawyer when she first got the idea, was inspired by Stephen Dunifer, the rebel who founded Free Radio Berkeley in 1993 and who scored a key early legal win against the FCC. (She also name-checks Radio Caroline, the 1960s pirate radio station that lurked off the coast of England for years.) Eventually, the Clinton administration's FCC would crack down on underground pirated signals, and Carpenter devotes much of the final third of the 90-minute film to the cat-and-mouse game between her and the feds. She was abetted by wily engineer Chris Wagganer, who figured out how to mount a relay antenna on a high rise at Sunset and Vine, vastly expanding the reach of KBLT (and raising its profile, sealing its doom). Wagganer tells a touching story about discovering the station while driving at night and hearing Elliott Smith's "Needle in the Hay," an eerie emotional moment that resonates for him to this day. (Another talking head, reminiscing about her experience, tells Carpenter on camera, "I just got chills.")
This might sound a bit like the feature film from that era, "Pump Up the Volume" (which had a great soundtrack), and there are parallels, though this tale is certainly not as dramatic. (Carpenter acknowledges the similarities but clarifies that she did not aspire to such anarchic glory: "I wanted to sleep with Christian Slater; I did not want to be Christian Slater.") And Carpenter is a confident storyteller, walking us through her origin story, deftly juggling clips with current-day interviews, and creating the suspense for the vast majority of us who had never heard of KBLT from back in the day. (The main reason the film does not get a perfect A grade is because of Carpenter's conflict of interest as director and subject, though I don't suspect her of airbrushing history.)
"40 Watts" reminded me a lot of the 2023 documentary "Elephant 6 Recording Co.," about the DIY scene in Athens, Ga., in the 1990s. The Elephant 6 collective and the movie about it bubbled with creative energy and analog fun. So we have here an almost random vortex of like-minded outsider types who bonded over a common goal. I'm trying not to be nostalgic here -- the '90s, especially the first half, is a hard decade to top when it comes to great music over a wide range of genres -- and this story could have played out in any decade, and it would be inspiring.
As you'd expect, the film is bursting with music samples; I counted 72 song titles during the credits. It ranges from alt-rock classics like the Breeders ("Cannonball"), Mudhoney, Spiritualized, Spoon, Bikini Kill and Jesus Lizard, to more obscure underground bands like Old Time Relijun, Bratmobile, and the Dils, to novelty songs like "Chocolate Cowboy." It was the era of Yo La Tengo covering Daniel Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycles," a version of which ended up in a Target commercial, of all places.
It was a heady time, and Carpenter some how corrals all of her material and conveys the giddiness and idiocy that she unleashed in her heyday. She employs clever interstitial graphics, using some of the logos and art pieces from that time. One talking head makes reference to "a weird moment that stuck with me forever," and it's natural to nod along knowingly. You didn't have to be in Silver Lake back then, but maybe you were somewhere else, creating your own scene. If you track down this film, you might have a 90-minute flashback that will stick with you forever.
BONUS TRACKS
Many of the songs are difficult or impossible to find on YouTube. In some case, the credits list only a song title, without attribution to a songwriter or performer. We'll share just a few, starting with 1992's "Bloody Knuckles from Popdefect:
The film kicks into gear to the strains of Bikini Kill's post-Reagan screed "Reject All American":
Here is a band called Steel Pole Bathtub with their 1993 song "Train to Miami":
Here's the quirky "Chocolate Cowboy" song:
Elliott Smith's haunting "Needle in the Hay":
