The 1990s were a very different time — especially in Silver Lake, California — once a fertile neighborhood of artists and musicians and now a pricey hot spot. Three decades ago, the indie music scene was flourishing with homegrown acts like Beck and Rilo Kiley, based around clubs like Spaceland and the Garage. And for more than two heady years, music lovers within a mile or two of the Sunset Junction area could groove to the wildly eclectic sounds of KBLT, a pirate radio station that operated from 1995 to 1998.
The mystique of the scrappy station is told in the new documentary “40 Watts From Nowhere,” a fond look back at the Silver Lake music scene and the bands and personalities that came through KBLT. The doc premiered at Slamdance in February and, thanks to Jack Black stepping in as executive producer, it got the attention of Amazon Prime, where begins streaming Tuesday. KBLT was the brainchild of Sue Carpenter, a journalist and music lover who learned about a “legal bubble” that enabled people to start low-power radio stations without prohibitively expensive FCC licenses.
Carpenter learned how to put such a station together from Berkeley, California pirate radio guru Stephen Dunifer, got help building a transmitter, and started her first radio project, KPBJ, in her San Francisco apartment. After moving to L.A., Carpenter (using a pseudonym) selected another food-themed acronym and started making connections to line up DJs. Opening with shots of Silver Lake’s iconic Walking Man and Happy Foot Sad Foot sign, the documentary is packed with vintage footage of the station and its DJs, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to DJs Mike Watt of the Minutemen, Don Bolles of the Germs and Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks.
Also featured are scenes of mid-90s Silver Lake and contemporary interviews with Tom Morello and others who got started around the time. Let’s start over.” Where did all this nostalgic footage come from? Years after the station shut down, Carpenter was amazed to find out that one of the station’s DJs had boxes of videos of the station in a box in his garage.
After Carpenter wrote a book about KBLT, “Sully just sort of sort of piped up,” says Carpenter. He said, “You know, I have all these videos. They’re just in a box in my garage.
I’m about to throw them out. Carpenter had no special background in radio or music before deciding to start the station. Carpenter attributes her open-door policy to being a “curious person” with “no boundaries,” though it did result in cleaning up a lot of beer bottles.
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