"Dare to Be Different" doc about WLIR New Wave radio station

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Whatever the term “new wave” means to you, and however you define its music, the documentary, New Wave: Dare to Be Different, will inspire you to reprise both the music and the memories. The film tells the tale of the legendary Long Island radio station, WLIR, 92.7 FM—the little station that could and did bring new wave music to listeners who couldn’t get enough of it—and still can’t.

In radio lingo, it was the most listened-to 3000-watt Class A radio station in the United States. Still, the signal wasn’t always clear. College students used to choose their dorm rooms accordingly to get the best reception.

This movie features interviews with 31 artists and numerous music industry executives, culled from hundreds of hours of footage. Those interviews include Tom Bailey of The Thompson Twins, Eric Bloom from Blue Oyster Cult, Billy Idol, Howard Jones, Joan Jett, Debbie Harry of Blondie, Curt Smith from Tears for Fears and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran. The station also introduced American listeners to U-2, as Bono has often acknowledged, The Police, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, The Clash, The Ramones and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Without WLIR, my life and my career would have gone a very different direction,” says British singer Howard Jones, who appears in the film. “They were among the first people to champion me, picked up on my very first single, ‘New Song,’ and wanted to speak to me. Later, I was invited to the studio, and it was such a brilliant atmosphere. WLIR helped light a fire that spread over the world.”

From first-time filmmaker and Long Island native, Ellen Goldfarb, the film was a major labor of love that she worked on for seven years. To do it, she also went to school for screenwriting and to learn about producing and directing—all the while crowd-funding to attract investors.

I just think it is so important for the world to know what an impact that this little station had on the music industry, radio and the artists themselves,” she says. “The people there were all so influential and ahead of their time. The station deserved to be honored and recognized as a true pioneer.”

Goldfarb was surprised, she says, that no one had done a documentary on the station already. “Denis McNamara and his team at WLIR did amazing, groundbreaking and creative things with music and with radio and earned their place in musical history.

WLIR historically played different genres of music. In the 1970s, it was a progressive rock station that started to mix in alternative bands such as the Talking Heads, Blondie and The Ramones. It didn’t have a full platform until its management decided to go with the new music format in 1982. It was the first station to play this genre of music 24/7.

“This gave the DJs the ability and freedom to rapidly find and play new music and break songs and artists,” Goldfarb says. “The station influenced MTV and many record labels, along with Seymour Stein, who co-founded Sire Records.”

“Denis would go to England and find previously unknown artists—to the U.S., anyway—and bring that music back,” she says. “I was one of those fans, very passionate, and the station changed my life.”

In fact, the station often “broke” new music many months before more mainstream radio played it, much to the chagrin of record company marketing departments whose plans were upended by WLIR.

The film premiered in April 2017 at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival and has played a host of other festivals, winning several awards. You can see New Wave: Dare to Be Different on Showtime in the U.S. and Canada, and you can pre-order the DVD on Amazon, to get special bonus features and never-before-seen interviews. It’s available for shipping the first week of December. And you may be able to catch a screening near you which you’ll find here.

The genius behind WLIR, McNamara is a programming legend who’s worked with many of the most famous names in radio. He was an executive at Universal Music and actually worked at WLIR for 16 years, through 1991. He programmed the new station and the WDRE name change. He’s a music, radio and media consultant now—undeniably one of the most experienced anywhere—and he still hosts a local radio show.

Goldfarb says the film is a tribute to McNamara, who “felt like a failure when WLIR went off the air. He didn’t want to talk about it and it was too much for him to handle. Later, he didn’t realize how many lives he had touched.”

“WLIR was low-income radio,” he says. “We didn’t have the best signal and we were in the biggest radio market in the country. There was deviousness that surrounded that whole process [around the license]. For us to keep going was really us living an oxymoron—that the hottest thing around could go out of business at any second.”

He remembers becoming enthralled with new, original music from England, Scotland and Ireland, and less so with the music that had been championed from the previous decade. “Many bands evolved along with us,” he says. “This era, which also had its own bit of innocence, will never happen again.”

McNamara recounts those times when he bought import records, and waited at the airport to pick them up. “Once a record was released and you purchased it anywhere in the world, you were free to play it—the station paid all its license fees to ASCAP and BMI. Had I been told it was illegal, I wouldn’t have dared to it.”

Being a creative sometimes comes with a price, says McNamara. “I’ve had analysis for anxiety and depression, but I’ve been blessed in life. When all else fails, I turn to music, which is a medicine in its own right but nothing has helped me as much as my family and loved ones.”

He also says he talked to the team—of former talent and production staff—after they saw the movie. “They said, ‘You didn’t make it look as awful as it really was sometimes. It wasn’t funny that checks were bouncing, or the van didn’t have brakes.'”