WLIR to be saluted at LI Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame event

The still-revered WLIR will be the focus of a panel at Stony Brook's Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame on Saturday featuring  four of the station's biggest personalities, including longtime program director Denis McNamara.

Calling this its "first radio-specific event" focusing on Long Island's rich radio history, the Hall of Fame — which goes by the acronym LIMEHOF — will have three other "Dare to be Different" DJs in attendance: Larry "the Duck'' Dunn, Max "the Mighty Maxximizer" Leinwand and Donna Donna, now with WBAB. Donna Donna and Dunn closed out the station's most influential era on Dec. 18, 1987. 

In a quick phone call Thursday, East Northport native McNamara said the event "comes after some really great recognition for LIR because of the success of the Tribeca [Film Festival]-championed movie 'Dare to Be Different,'" which bowed in 2017 and subsequently aired on Showtime. "Instead, we've found out just how much that station impacted people on Long Island and around the world."

WLIR (later known as WDRE) was arguably among the most influential rock stations in the country, introducing dozens of British bands (Depeche Mode, New Order, etc.) to U.S. audiences. That influence was so resonant that Long Island itself assumed a kind of mystique to those musicians whose careers were boosted by the mighty little station in Garden City.

"We were known nationally as the station that broke new music, and our job was to find the next hit or great alternative song that could play on the radio, or in clubs or that was maybe unsigned by record labels," said Dunn, now a bank executive who also hosts a long-running show on Sirius XM. 

McNamara — who went on to become a top executive at Universal Music Group and worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Van Morrison — said that he and the other DJs listened to a vast amount of music in pursuit of those goals. Much of what they heard was bad, "but in baseball terms, we probably hit .400."

As profound an influence as the station had on the British rock scene, McNamara says the movie itself was never seen in the U.K. That is about to change because it was recently picked up by an international distributor, he says.

Saturday's LIMEHOF panel — free with museum admission ($19.50; $15 for students) — begins at 3 p.m. The museum is located at 97 Main St. in Stony Brook.