By Bill Lichtenstein
July 18, 2009
THE YEAR was 1968. Young Americans were dying in an unpopular war
halfway around the world. Protesters were battling police on campuses
and in the streets throughout the country. A national upheaval was
underway involving the anti-war, civil rights, feminist, and gay and
lesbian movements. These revolutions would forever transform the
nation socially, culturally, and politically. But you would never
know it from listening to the radio, where fast-talking DJs played
ads for acne cream along with Top 40 pop ballads like Frank and Nancy
Sinatra's "Something Stupid.''
And then came WBCN-FM.
The radio station, which billed itself as "The American Revolution,''
was the vision of a young, hip entrepreneur named Ray Riepen, who
simultaneously created the "alternative'' newspaper The Boston
Phoenix and the legendary rock club the Boston Tea Party. WBCN began
broadcasting from the back room of the Boston Tea Party on March 15,
1968. From the moment it hit the air, the station helped define, as
well as promote, popular culture and politics in Boston for the
'60s/boomer generation in a way that nothing had before. And its
impact quickly spilled over nationally.
Since Tuesday's announcement that WBCN's owner, CBS, will take the
station off the air in August, its role in launching music careers,
including The Who, The J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, and U2, has been
widely cited. But WBCN was more than a cultural innovator. It was a
social and political force as well, particularly from 1968 to 1975,
when, long before Facebook or MySpace, the station served as the
social medium that connected a generation in Boston.
Given Boston's role as a cultural and political crossroad in the
1960s, virtually every major political, social, and musical figure
from that era crossed paths with the city, and with WBCN. Activist
Abbie Hoffman was a station regular; John Lennon talked politics with
the station's "News Dissector,'' Danny Schechter; Jane Fonda
announced her "Indochina Peace Campaign'' on the WBCN airwaves; and
Duane Allman and Jerry Garcia jammed on acoustic guitars on-air until
late into the night. A 23-year-old Bruce Springsteen gave his first
radio interview on 'BCN, highlighted by a nervous on-air "Hi Mom.''
At the same time, the station went live to cover major antiwar
demonstrations on the Boston Common, as well as more radical actions,
including a live report during a break-in by protesters at a Harvard
research office where confidential documents revealing unreported CIA
domestic activities were "liberated.'' When street demonstrations got
out of hand, along Boylston Street or in Harvard Square, as often
happened, and store windows (especially those of banks) were broken
and tear gas was fired, you could turn to 'BCN to find out what was
going on, the way people turn today to Google or Twitter.
I was fortunate to have been a part of it, first in 1970, at age 14,
as a volunteer answering the station's "Listener Line,'' and later
when I got my first assignment from Schechter, who handed me a
cassette recorder and sent me to Boston Police Headquarters to cover
a protest of the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton by the Chicago
police. A year later, program director Norm Winer gave me my own
Saturday night show.
The airwaves were also peppered with a cast of characters ranging
from "Captain Squid,'' a mysterious caller whose identity was not
known even to those at the station; Stuart Soroka, Boston's "hippy
dippy weatherman''; and Darrell Martinie, "the Cosmic Muffin,'' the
first astrologer most of us had encountered.
The station's "free-form'' format is unheard of today, even at
college stations. Announcers were free to play whatever they wanted,
from rock (Beatles and Led Zeppelin) to jazz (Sun Ra and Gary Burton)
to comedy (Lenny Bruce and the Firesign Theatre).
By 1975, this era of WBCN was winding down. Richard Nixon had
resigned the year before, Saigon had fallen, and the movie "Saturday
Night Fever'' had ushered in disco. The station's desire for a more
homogenous sound led to the use of "playlists.'' But the iconoclastic
spirit of the station's first seven years lived on for decades. Even
today, with the closing of the station, WBCN's legacy of media that
matters is not lost.
Perhaps Charles Laquidara summed it up best when we talked about the
impact of the station for research on a documentary film I am
producing about the early days of WBCN. "We thought we were just
doing radio,'' he said. "But a day hasn't gone by where someone
hasn't said to me, 'That thing you played. . .' or 'That thing you
said, it changed my life.''
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2 comments:
There is a new documentary film in production on WBCN-FM, being produced by the author of this article, Bill Lichtenstein. It's called "The American Revolution," and you can see more at www.LCMedia.com/amrev.htm It's a non-profit production, so all contributions are tax-deductible. Read more about and support the film.
There is a new documentary film in production on WBCN-FM, being produced by the author of this article, Bill Lichtenstein. It's called "The American Revolution," and you can see more at http://www.LCMedia.com/amrev.htm It's a non-profit production, so all contributions are tax-deductible. Read more about and support the film.
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