1 00:00:00,166 --> 00:00:03,333 Viewers like you make this program possible. 2 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 3 00:00:03,375 --> 00:00:05,792 Support your local PBS Station. 4 00:00:06,417 --> 00:00:08,500 This is March 15, 1968. 5 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 6 00:00:08,625 --> 00:00:09,083 And now it's time 7 00:00:09,125 --> 00:00:12,375 for our revolutionary new experiment in radio. 8 00:00:18,166 --> 00:00:23,417 This is WBCN in Boston... Jerry Garcia Band, Duane Allman, 9 00:00:23,500 --> 00:00:24,750 they're all here. 10 00:00:40,500 --> 00:00:43,083 Railroad tracks on Mass. Avenue were blockaded 11 00:00:43,125 --> 00:00:45,375 for a while tonight in Cambridge 12 00:00:45,458 --> 00:00:47,875 in a militant anti-war protest. 13 00:00:53,208 --> 00:00:56,500 This is WBCN in Boston, the American Revolution. 14 00:01:18,542 --> 00:01:20,125 By the score, the hippies have been descending 15 00:01:20,166 --> 00:01:22,166 on the Boston Common. 16 00:01:22,250 --> 00:01:25,291 Their recreation area is this grassy plot 17 00:01:25,417 --> 00:01:28,375 on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 18 00:01:28,417 --> 00:01:31,542 The summer before was the Summer of Love 19 00:01:31,667 --> 00:01:35,875 in San Francisco-- we didn't have a Haight-Ashbury community. 20 00:01:35,917 --> 00:01:37,875 We did have the Boston Common. 21 00:01:38,166 --> 00:01:40,000 - Hi, hello. - Hi. 22 00:01:40,041 --> 00:01:43,166 - Why are you here? - Because I 23 00:01:43,291 --> 00:01:44,166 like love-ins. 24 00:01:44,291 --> 00:01:46,041 Is it possible to love everybody? 25 00:01:46,166 --> 00:01:48,750 - Yes. - How come? 26 00:01:48,792 --> 00:01:50,041 How come people haven't loved everybody for 2, 000 years? 27 00:01:50,125 --> 00:01:53,041 Because they've been mixed up. 28 00:01:54,417 --> 00:01:57,667 The very presence and activity of this community 29 00:01:57,750 --> 00:02:00,750 has caused crossfire and conflict from other groups 30 00:02:00,792 --> 00:02:02,041 inside the community of Boston. 31 00:02:02,166 --> 00:02:06,291 Namely, the police department, local businessmen, 32 00:02:06,417 --> 00:02:08,125 and members of the Boston City Council. 33 00:02:08,250 --> 00:02:09,750 If you've got a group of people 34 00:02:09,875 --> 00:02:11,500 who have no means of communicating 35 00:02:11,583 --> 00:02:14,333 with the establishment, as has been the case with the hippies, 36 00:02:14,375 --> 00:02:17,583 then communication becomes the primary problem. 37 00:02:27,875 --> 00:02:29,875 These people think that the, 38 00:02:29,959 --> 00:02:32,709 the normal community, the "straights," as they call it, 39 00:02:32,750 --> 00:02:34,333 just don't understand them, 40 00:02:34,375 --> 00:02:37,834 don't want to understand them, and completely reject them. 41 00:02:37,875 --> 00:02:40,125 And they just go from bad to worse. 42 00:02:46,250 --> 00:02:50,000 Conformity gives shape and size 43 00:02:50,083 --> 00:02:53,083 and character to society, doesn't it? 44 00:02:53,125 --> 00:02:56,500 Just think of these hippies down on Charles Street, 45 00:02:56,625 --> 00:02:59,709 every one of whom is trying to look different from the other. 46 00:02:59,750 --> 00:03:01,208 Aren't they a mess? 47 00:03:12,125 --> 00:03:13,333 I would hope that the, 48 00:03:13,375 --> 00:03:15,125 most of these people would take up a trade 49 00:03:15,250 --> 00:03:19,000 or a profession and get to work 50 00:03:19,125 --> 00:03:21,458 and help to build a better America. 51 00:03:23,500 --> 00:03:26,750 Hippies have caused a little bit of problem in our, 52 00:03:26,875 --> 00:03:28,750 in our business. 53 00:03:33,375 --> 00:03:34,125 They're using the Boston Common 54 00:03:34,250 --> 00:03:36,333 as a, as a lavatory. 55 00:03:36,375 --> 00:03:39,959 They're full of bugs and parasites. 56 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:43,333 You show them a bar of soap, they'll run for the hills. 57 00:03:43,375 --> 00:03:45,250 I mean, what is going to happen? 58 00:03:45,375 --> 00:03:49,333 This is not the same city of Boston that we grew up in. 59 00:03:49,375 --> 00:03:52,458 JOSEPH F. TIMILTY: Boston Common was set up 60 00:03:52,500 --> 00:03:55,709 originally for the benefit of all the people of Boston. 61 00:03:55,750 --> 00:03:58,458 Today, a colony of unwashed, 62 00:03:58,500 --> 00:04:02,750 unshaven people have managed to infest 63 00:04:02,875 --> 00:04:08,000 that area and desecrate that community by their love-ins, 64 00:04:08,125 --> 00:04:10,375 their sit-ins, their smoke-ins, 65 00:04:10,458 --> 00:04:14,750 and a few other ins that I wouldn't dare to describe today. 66 00:04:14,875 --> 00:04:18,542 We now have a different type of pollution: people pollution, 67 00:04:18,667 --> 00:04:20,250 hippie pollution, the flower people. 68 00:04:20,291 --> 00:04:24,667 All I am asking is for the police department 69 00:04:24,750 --> 00:04:27,041 to enforce the regulations. 70 00:04:33,417 --> 00:04:35,417 My name is Ray Riepen, 71 00:04:35,500 --> 00:04:41,291 and in 1966, I moved to Cambridge and 72 00:04:41,417 --> 00:04:43,625 was going to do some graduate work 73 00:04:43,667 --> 00:04:45,792 at the Harvard Law School. 74 00:04:45,917 --> 00:04:48,750 Shortly after that, I opened the first rock club 75 00:04:48,792 --> 00:04:51,792 on the East Coast, called the Boston Tea Party. 76 00:04:51,875 --> 00:04:55,667 A woman whose divorce I'd handled called me one day 77 00:04:55,750 --> 00:04:58,500 and asked me if I would do some free legal work 78 00:04:58,542 --> 00:05:02,667 for Andy Warhol and Film-Makers' Co-op in New York, 79 00:05:02,750 --> 00:05:05,500 which had been backed by the Ford Foundation. 80 00:05:05,542 --> 00:05:10,291 They had talked about opening a Boston branch. 81 00:05:10,375 --> 00:05:13,417 Shortly after I put my money up and signed the lease, 82 00:05:13,500 --> 00:05:14,291 she called me and told me that 83 00:05:14,375 --> 00:05:17,375 the Ford Foundation had changed their mind 84 00:05:17,417 --> 00:05:19,542 and that they, they were not going to open 85 00:05:19,625 --> 00:05:24,250 a Boston branch of the Film-Makers' Co-op. 86 00:05:24,291 --> 00:05:26,417 So, I quickly had to figure out what I was going to do, 87 00:05:26,500 --> 00:05:30,417 besides file for bankruptcy. 88 00:05:30,542 --> 00:05:36,291 It just occurred to me that with 240,000 students in Boston, 89 00:05:36,417 --> 00:05:38,250 that the best chance I had 90 00:05:38,291 --> 00:05:43,291 to pay the rent on this thing was to give, 91 00:05:43,375 --> 00:05:44,417 you know, play rock music there 92 00:05:44,542 --> 00:05:47,250 and have, you know, have a rock club. 93 00:05:51,041 --> 00:05:54,667 We're at the Boston Tea Party tonight! 94 00:05:55,542 --> 00:05:59,000 In Boston, Massachusetts. All right, right on. 95 00:05:59,041 --> 00:06:00,375 There is no place like this place, 96 00:06:00,417 --> 00:06:02,500 and runnin' around about this place, 97 00:06:02,542 --> 00:06:04,750 lookin' at things like this place... 98 00:06:15,417 --> 00:06:17,500 Well, we were 99 00:06:17,542 --> 00:06:19,417 all hippies, we all had long hair, and Ray didn't. 100 00:06:19,542 --> 00:06:22,375 Ray was a straight guy. 101 00:06:22,417 --> 00:06:23,417 You would not have picked out Ray 102 00:06:23,500 --> 00:06:26,375 to be the owner of the Tea Party. 103 00:06:26,417 --> 00:06:29,417 Ray was kind of an interesting character, I mean, here he is, 104 00:06:29,542 --> 00:06:32,750 so very much the Kansas City lawyer. 105 00:06:32,792 --> 00:06:35,291 He had a way of kind of sitting back from it all, 106 00:06:35,417 --> 00:06:38,417 and I think that he quickly realized 107 00:06:38,500 --> 00:06:41,166 that he was really on to something. 108 00:06:41,291 --> 00:06:43,417 Well, when you went in, it was, like, this old 109 00:06:43,500 --> 00:06:46,041 kind of temple-like building. 110 00:06:46,125 --> 00:06:50,917 Across the top of the stage, it said, "Praise Ye the Lord." 111 00:06:51,041 --> 00:06:55,875 In the '30s, the building had been used as a Calvary temple, 112 00:06:55,917 --> 00:06:59,166 so there was this little, you know, religious overtones. 113 00:06:59,291 --> 00:07:00,875 Up in the balcony would be 114 00:07:00,917 --> 00:07:01,291 the light show. 115 00:07:01,417 --> 00:07:05,166 A filmmaker named Ken Brown, 116 00:07:05,291 --> 00:07:07,917 who produced these great little films of stuff 117 00:07:08,041 --> 00:07:12,667 that he cut out and these little characters who'd move around. 118 00:07:15,542 --> 00:07:18,041 It had a good vibe to it, you know? 119 00:07:19,417 --> 00:07:22,291 It was just a great, funky place. 120 00:07:25,917 --> 00:07:27,291 We had the real thing. 121 00:07:36,875 --> 00:07:38,375 I was a Tea Party regular. 122 00:07:38,417 --> 00:07:42,041 I went there as often as I could, I mean... 123 00:07:42,125 --> 00:07:42,417 Let's think about this for a second, 124 00:07:42,500 --> 00:07:44,792 the fact that I could go see the Who 125 00:07:44,917 --> 00:07:46,417 for $3.50 is insane. 126 00:07:46,500 --> 00:07:49,750 There is a terrific poster from May 127 00:07:49,792 --> 00:07:50,542 of 1969 that just tells you 128 00:07:50,625 --> 00:07:54,750 what was going on at the Tea Party. 129 00:07:54,792 --> 00:07:57,542 Rahsaan Roland Kirk was opening for the Who 130 00:07:57,667 --> 00:08:01,250 and they were doing three nights at the Tea Party. 131 00:08:01,291 --> 00:08:03,291 The Allman Brothers played there 132 00:08:03,375 --> 00:08:05,291 for the, their first time up north. 133 00:08:05,417 --> 00:08:07,250 Duane Allman, of course, was there. 134 00:08:07,291 --> 00:08:09,500 It was amazing that you could see music 135 00:08:09,542 --> 00:08:13,417 of that level in such a small, intimate environment. 136 00:08:13,500 --> 00:08:16,875 There was a whole transition period 137 00:08:16,917 --> 00:08:21,000 that was starting to happen with these traditional blues players 138 00:08:21,041 --> 00:08:25,542 performing in front of a white audience for the first time. 139 00:08:25,625 --> 00:08:27,875 People just never really saw anything like that. 140 00:08:27,917 --> 00:08:29,542 Seeing people like Muddy Waters for the first time 141 00:08:29,667 --> 00:08:34,125 was just mind-boggling. 142 00:08:43,625 --> 00:08:45,375 Ray was good at finding talent, 143 00:08:45,458 --> 00:08:46,709 bands that these days, 144 00:08:46,750 --> 00:08:49,250 you'd say, "My God, Led Zeppelin, really?" 145 00:08:49,333 --> 00:08:50,583 Yes, yes, really. 146 00:08:55,583 --> 00:08:58,959 Led Zeppelin made their first U.S. tour 147 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:02,000 in January '69. 148 00:09:02,083 --> 00:09:03,375 They actually had only about 149 00:09:03,500 --> 00:09:05,125 an hour's worth of music in their set. 150 00:09:05,250 --> 00:09:07,583 The audience was just going crazy. 151 00:09:07,625 --> 00:09:10,375 Led Zeppelin started just improvising, 152 00:09:10,458 --> 00:09:13,625 and they went on to play for four hours. 153 00:09:13,709 --> 00:09:15,333 Their manager, a guy named Peter Grant, 154 00:09:15,375 --> 00:09:16,500 was quoted afterwards, saying, 155 00:09:16,583 --> 00:09:19,500 "Wow, I knew we'd made it when I saw 156 00:09:19,625 --> 00:09:22,500 the reaction of the people at the Tea Party." 157 00:09:29,125 --> 00:09:31,875 Thank you very much, this is a song called "Heroin." 158 00:09:32,625 --> 00:09:35,875 The last weekend of May of 1967, 159 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:39,125 the Velvet Underground played the Tea Party. 160 00:09:39,250 --> 00:09:43,625 It turns out that this was a really, really important gig, 161 00:09:43,750 --> 00:09:46,750 because up until that time, they'd been part 162 00:09:46,875 --> 00:09:49,750 of Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, 163 00:09:49,875 --> 00:09:52,250 and the multimedia and the whole thing. 164 00:09:52,375 --> 00:09:54,750 And this was the first gig that they ever had 165 00:09:54,834 --> 00:09:58,250 where it was just the four band members 166 00:09:58,375 --> 00:10:00,709 playing as a rock band. 167 00:10:03,500 --> 00:10:05,208 LOU REED You know, Boston was the whole thing, 168 00:10:05,250 --> 00:10:06,583 as far as we were concerned. 169 00:10:06,625 --> 00:10:09,875 It was just, it was the first time we played in public 170 00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:11,500 and didn't have all those things thrown at us. 171 00:10:11,625 --> 00:10:15,458 The, you know, the "leather freaks," the... 172 00:10:15,500 --> 00:10:17,083 You know, "druggies." 173 00:10:17,125 --> 00:10:19,375 It was the first time anybody just listened to the music, 174 00:10:19,458 --> 00:10:22,250 which blew our minds collectively. 175 00:10:31,083 --> 00:10:34,625 When Ray Riepen first developed the, the whole concept 176 00:10:34,750 --> 00:10:37,583 of the Tea Party, there wasn't any radio station at all 177 00:10:37,625 --> 00:10:41,458 that played any, any of this kind of music. 178 00:10:41,500 --> 00:10:43,834 The only place on radio that you could listen 179 00:10:43,875 --> 00:10:47,000 to rock and roll was on A.M. radio, 180 00:10:47,125 --> 00:10:51,458 and you got 40 songs played over and over again. 181 00:10:51,500 --> 00:10:53,333 That's why they called it Top 40. 182 00:11:02,834 --> 00:11:04,709 At the time, we didn't notice 183 00:11:04,750 --> 00:11:09,125 that it was, like, the same songs every 30 minutes or so, 184 00:11:09,250 --> 00:11:13,208 because it was kinetic, and it was active, and it was loud. 185 00:11:13,250 --> 00:11:16,250 - Plays hits number... 186 00:11:16,375 --> 00:11:16,583 Five, four, three, two... 187 00:11:16,625 --> 00:11:19,083 One, one, one, one. 188 00:11:21,709 --> 00:11:26,250 Your job was not so much to be responsive 189 00:11:26,333 --> 00:11:26,709 to the audience as it was 190 00:11:26,750 --> 00:11:29,625 to force this music down their throats. 191 00:11:29,709 --> 00:11:31,959 And then putting them on the air 192 00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:33,834 in this high-energy format 193 00:11:33,875 --> 00:11:37,083 with 18 minutes of national commercials, 194 00:11:37,125 --> 00:11:39,458 very highly produced commercials, every hour. 195 00:11:39,500 --> 00:11:42,500 Oh, there's a miserable old acne pimple! 196 00:11:42,583 --> 00:11:43,750 What to do? 197 00:11:43,875 --> 00:11:47,959 The DJs were all, usually outsized personalities, 198 00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:49,625 sometimes screaming, sometimes not, 199 00:11:49,750 --> 00:11:52,750 but always with some sort of schtick. 200 00:11:52,875 --> 00:11:53,750 We're gonna play this one for everyone saying 201 00:11:53,875 --> 00:11:56,250 "Whoo, whoo, Ginsburg!"... 202 00:11:56,333 --> 00:11:57,750 ...tonight at Adventure Car Hop. 203 00:12:01,250 --> 00:12:03,250 And they always talked like this. 204 00:12:03,375 --> 00:12:04,834 "Hey, Sunday, simply... 205 00:12:04,875 --> 00:12:08,458 Chris Karamesines and his nitro- burning dragster!", you know. 206 00:12:08,500 --> 00:12:10,583 In Italian, there's a great phrase, 207 00:12:10,625 --> 00:12:12,834 and the opera singers use it, "senza coglionis." 208 00:12:14,333 --> 00:12:16,875 It means without balls, literally. 209 00:12:16,959 --> 00:12:20,000 And, you know... And you know something is 210 00:12:20,083 --> 00:12:23,000 sort of, sort of white bread, it's a sort of... 211 00:12:23,083 --> 00:12:26,458 It lacks-- it lacks feeling, it lacks passion. 212 00:12:26,500 --> 00:12:29,959 And I think that a lot of that was what was being broadcast. 213 00:12:30,000 --> 00:12:31,750 Everybody had the same records, 214 00:12:31,834 --> 00:12:32,709 but you couldn't hear it on the radio. 215 00:12:32,750 --> 00:12:34,625 Jefferson Airplane, their debut album. 216 00:12:40,959 --> 00:12:44,333 Steve Miller Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service. 217 00:12:44,375 --> 00:12:46,500 You know, jazz rock was being born, 218 00:12:46,625 --> 00:12:48,959 and Cream's album came out, and Donovan. 219 00:12:54,375 --> 00:12:55,875 The music business 220 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:01,709 changed by 1968 to, 70% of the record sales were albums. 221 00:13:01,750 --> 00:13:04,083 And some record would come out, 222 00:13:04,125 --> 00:13:05,875 and you would just listen to it over and over again 223 00:13:05,959 --> 00:13:07,959 and you would just talk about it. 224 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:12,500 And the Beatles, in 1967, when they released "Sergeant Pepper," 225 00:13:12,583 --> 00:13:14,625 they have talked about knowing the fact 226 00:13:14,709 --> 00:13:16,458 that when they put that out, 227 00:13:16,500 --> 00:13:19,750 they were going to completely dominate the conversation 228 00:13:19,875 --> 00:13:23,834 and the airwaves about this record-- and they were right. 229 00:13:30,250 --> 00:13:31,959 Well, "Sergeant Pepper" started it. 230 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:36,000 That was an album that really changed the way we dressed, 231 00:13:36,083 --> 00:13:37,750 the way we looked, the way we thought, what drugs we took. 232 00:13:37,834 --> 00:13:40,834 You know, "A Day in the Life" comes across 233 00:13:40,875 --> 00:13:43,375 as one of the most important songs I've ever heard, 234 00:13:43,458 --> 00:13:45,000 and it still is, 235 00:13:45,125 --> 00:13:47,709 about how absurd a day can be, and how, when you get stoned, 236 00:13:47,750 --> 00:13:49,208 you see it from a different perspective. 237 00:13:49,250 --> 00:13:51,375 I mean, really, that's what that song's about. 238 00:13:51,500 --> 00:13:55,000 "Woke up, got out of bed, took a smoke and then went..." 239 00:14:05,875 --> 00:14:08,875 Well, I got the idea that in a town 240 00:14:08,959 --> 00:14:15,000 of 240,000 students, 84 colleges, 241 00:14:15,083 --> 00:14:17,875 it might be, you know, appropriate to play the music 242 00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:20,875 they were buying at the record stores. 243 00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:24,333 I went down to the N.A.F.M.B. convention, 244 00:14:24,375 --> 00:14:26,959 which was the week before 245 00:14:27,000 --> 00:14:28,750 the National Association of Broadcasters' 246 00:14:28,875 --> 00:14:30,500 principal convention, 247 00:14:30,625 --> 00:14:32,500 and I thought, "Well, I'll go down there and tell them 248 00:14:32,583 --> 00:14:34,875 what I'm thinking about doing and see what they say." 249 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:39,000 And so, you know, I told them that I thought, 250 00:14:39,083 --> 00:14:42,875 you know, I'll limit the commercials to eight an hour 251 00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:45,458 and have conversational tone 252 00:14:45,500 --> 00:14:49,083 and play album cuts. 253 00:14:49,125 --> 00:14:52,583 They all asked me, well, what my background was, 254 00:14:52,625 --> 00:14:53,834 and I told them, well, I was a lawyer, 255 00:14:53,875 --> 00:14:56,083 and I was doing graduate work 256 00:14:56,125 --> 00:14:58,458 at Harvard Law School, and they suggested 257 00:14:58,500 --> 00:15:02,000 that I concentrate on that and leave broadcasting to them, 258 00:15:02,125 --> 00:15:06,500 because I was the dumbest person they had ever met. 259 00:15:06,625 --> 00:15:10,208 That there was nothing about my concept of programming 260 00:15:10,250 --> 00:15:14,250 that was economically viable in America. 261 00:15:14,375 --> 00:15:18,208 He was what we needed, he was an entrepreneur 262 00:15:18,250 --> 00:15:22,959 who had kind of the affinity for the culture 263 00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:26,709 and, but at the same time, kind of 264 00:15:26,750 --> 00:15:30,500 the personality of the entrepreneur, 265 00:15:30,625 --> 00:15:35,250 which is kind of, "My way or the highway, I have this vision." 266 00:15:35,333 --> 00:15:40,583 So I began to pull Dun & Bradstreets on all the, 267 00:15:40,625 --> 00:15:44,083 you know, radio stations in Boston. 268 00:15:44,125 --> 00:15:48,875 And here was WBCN that had been in Chapter 11, 269 00:15:48,959 --> 00:15:53,583 and it was about to go down again and was late payment. 270 00:15:53,625 --> 00:15:55,083 And they were somebody that I knew that 271 00:15:55,125 --> 00:15:58,875 they had to be desperately looking for an alternative 272 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:00,083 to just going off the air. 273 00:16:00,125 --> 00:16:03,083 So he wound up connecting 274 00:16:03,125 --> 00:16:06,083 with a man named T. Mitchell Hastings. 275 00:16:06,125 --> 00:16:08,750 T. Mitchell Hastings was a, a genius, 276 00:16:08,875 --> 00:16:11,333 and he also created a small radio called 277 00:16:11,375 --> 00:16:13,750 the FM Hastings Jr., 278 00:16:13,834 --> 00:16:16,500 which was a small, pocket-sized radio. 279 00:16:16,583 --> 00:16:17,083 So T. Mitchell Hastings 280 00:16:17,125 --> 00:16:21,500 owned a radio station in Boston named WBCN. 281 00:16:21,583 --> 00:16:24,750 But then he began to acquire some other stations. 282 00:16:24,875 --> 00:16:26,000 In Hartford, WHCN. 283 00:16:26,083 --> 00:16:29,083 WNCN, which was in New York City. 284 00:16:29,125 --> 00:16:32,208 And these stations were all essentially bankrupt, 285 00:16:32,250 --> 00:16:34,709 because they were classical music stations 286 00:16:34,750 --> 00:16:36,125 that couldn't sell any advertising 287 00:16:36,208 --> 00:16:39,750 and, you know, begging on air for people to buy spots. 288 00:16:39,875 --> 00:16:40,750 DELLA CHIESA You're listening 289 00:16:40,875 --> 00:16:42,000 to Concert Network Radio. 290 00:16:42,083 --> 00:16:44,875 We have been in severe financial trouble, 291 00:16:44,959 --> 00:16:46,458 looking for funds here at WBCN. 292 00:16:46,500 --> 00:16:47,959 If you can help us, send your contribution 293 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,208 to 171 Newbury Street, Back Bay, Boston, 294 00:16:50,250 --> 00:16:52,000 and if we don't have adequate funds, 295 00:16:52,125 --> 00:16:53,250 we'll be forced to go off the air. 296 00:16:53,375 --> 00:16:54,000 We had problems, you know? 297 00:16:54,083 --> 00:16:57,458 We had people coming in from the Associated Press... 298 00:16:57,500 --> 00:16:58,125 In those days, we had the, 299 00:16:58,208 --> 00:17:00,709 we had the newswire right at the studio. 300 00:17:00,750 --> 00:17:03,083 Disconnecting it, taking it out. 301 00:17:03,125 --> 00:17:05,041 Because the bill hadn't been paid. 302 00:17:05,125 --> 00:17:07,542 And I went to him and I said, 303 00:17:07,625 --> 00:17:08,125 "Mr. Hastings," you know, "what am I gonna do?" 304 00:17:08,166 --> 00:17:10,417 I was program director at the time. 305 00:17:10,542 --> 00:17:13,417 He said, "Well, read from the newspaper." 306 00:17:13,542 --> 00:17:14,166 That was it. 307 00:17:14,250 --> 00:17:19,417 So, Ray was able to convince this technical genius, 308 00:17:19,500 --> 00:17:20,667 T. Mitchell Hastings, 309 00:17:20,750 --> 00:17:23,417 into just giving him the overnights. 310 00:17:23,500 --> 00:17:26,500 He knew exactly what was going on in San Francisco, 311 00:17:26,542 --> 00:17:29,166 and in Pasadena, California, and in New York, 312 00:17:29,250 --> 00:17:33,667 where other FM stations took advantage of the fact 313 00:17:33,750 --> 00:17:36,041 that nobody wanted to listen to FM, 314 00:17:36,125 --> 00:17:39,875 and started broadcasting rock in stereo. 315 00:17:39,917 --> 00:17:43,291 I was supposed to be class of '68 at Tufts. 316 00:17:43,417 --> 00:17:47,417 I was a philosophy major with no career prospects. 317 00:17:47,542 --> 00:17:49,125 When I got to Tufts, it just happened that 318 00:17:49,166 --> 00:17:50,166 the dorm that I was living in, 319 00:17:50,291 --> 00:17:54,917 the next room, this guy named Joe Rogers 320 00:17:55,041 --> 00:17:57,917 was playing this incredible Muddy Waters, 321 00:17:58,041 --> 00:17:59,667 he'd play Rahsaan Roland Kirk. 322 00:17:59,792 --> 00:18:03,166 Stuff that I'd never heard-- jaw-dropping, amazing music. 323 00:18:08,792 --> 00:18:10,875 So I was working at the, 324 00:18:10,917 --> 00:18:12,667 or doing a show at the Tufts station, 325 00:18:12,750 --> 00:18:18,166 and one evening, unannounced, Ray appeared there. 326 00:18:18,250 --> 00:18:19,041 I think that was easy enough for him to do, 327 00:18:19,125 --> 00:18:21,792 because I'm pretty sure we didn't lock the door. 328 00:18:21,875 --> 00:18:23,166 I listened to the college radio stations 329 00:18:23,291 --> 00:18:27,375 and drove around, and then I just drove over and walked in. 330 00:18:27,417 --> 00:18:28,041 They were on the air and I just walked in 331 00:18:28,166 --> 00:18:31,166 and introduced myself and I said, 332 00:18:31,250 --> 00:18:33,166 "I'm trying to get some time on a network 333 00:18:33,250 --> 00:18:35,250 "and I need some announcers. 334 00:18:35,291 --> 00:18:38,500 Would you guys be interested in going on real radio?" 335 00:18:38,542 --> 00:18:42,291 Meeting Ray was really an interesting experience. 336 00:18:42,375 --> 00:18:44,041 I heard he controls the club, the Boston Tea Party, 337 00:18:44,166 --> 00:18:47,000 very important guy, and he's gonna start 338 00:18:47,041 --> 00:18:48,417 a commercial radio station. 339 00:18:48,542 --> 00:18:50,667 I'm, like, "Okay, fine," you know, "I'm in school, 340 00:18:50,750 --> 00:18:52,917 I'm a full-time student, what can I do?" 341 00:18:53,041 --> 00:18:54,667 But I went over to his apartment, 342 00:18:54,750 --> 00:18:56,125 which was this amazing, 343 00:18:56,166 --> 00:18:59,041 modern, gorgeous place in Cambridge, but oddly enough, 344 00:18:59,166 --> 00:19:02,166 there wasn't one piece of furniture in the room, okay? 345 00:19:02,250 --> 00:19:04,125 He had a lot of books stacked around, 346 00:19:04,166 --> 00:19:06,041 but no furniture, and I'm, like, 347 00:19:06,166 --> 00:19:08,125 "If this guy is so freaking successful, 348 00:19:08,166 --> 00:19:10,250 why doesn't he have any furniture?" 349 00:19:10,291 --> 00:19:12,166 I told them what I had in mind, 350 00:19:12,250 --> 00:19:15,166 and they probably thought I was crazy, too, because, 351 00:19:15,250 --> 00:19:17,750 you know, it didn't exist yet. 352 00:19:17,792 --> 00:19:21,792 The deal was, if you worked on a college station, maybe, 353 00:19:21,917 --> 00:19:23,375 was to try and be professional, 354 00:19:23,417 --> 00:19:25,291 and of course, professional meant standard broadcasting, 355 00:19:25,375 --> 00:19:28,875 which I thought was ugly radio. 356 00:19:28,917 --> 00:19:31,667 And that was one of the genius parts 357 00:19:31,792 --> 00:19:36,875 of Ray Riepen's plan and his business model for WBCN, 358 00:19:36,917 --> 00:19:38,291 is that he did not hire 359 00:19:38,375 --> 00:19:41,667 professional radio announcers-- he hired kids. 360 00:19:41,792 --> 00:19:46,375 What he cared about was your passion for the music 361 00:19:46,417 --> 00:19:49,500 and what was called at the time the underground culture. 362 00:19:49,542 --> 00:19:51,792 I'm looking at... 363 00:19:51,917 --> 00:19:54,375 ...a momentary flashback 364 00:19:54,417 --> 00:19:56,792 caught in time, which is 365 00:19:56,917 --> 00:20:00,041 the BCN air staff. 366 00:20:00,125 --> 00:20:02,166 Jim Parry was one of the DJs. 367 00:20:02,250 --> 00:20:07,166 Joe Rogers was then Mississippi Harold Wilson. 368 00:20:07,250 --> 00:20:09,917 Sam Kopper, 369 00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:11,375 J.J. Jackson, 370 00:20:11,417 --> 00:20:15,291 who was the first African American DJ at BCN. 371 00:20:15,375 --> 00:20:18,875 Then there's Steven Clean, Steven Segal. 372 00:20:18,917 --> 00:20:21,542 Al Perry, who was also a DJ, 373 00:20:21,625 --> 00:20:25,417 but also was a guy who kind of took one for the team 374 00:20:25,500 --> 00:20:29,166 and became a sales guy, ultimately sales manager, 375 00:20:29,291 --> 00:20:31,667 and then general manager. 376 00:20:31,750 --> 00:20:33,375 You can see Al wearing a tie, 377 00:20:33,417 --> 00:20:37,000 so he was probably fresh from a sales call to some agency. 378 00:20:37,041 --> 00:20:39,000 This truly tells the tale. 379 00:20:39,041 --> 00:20:41,792 When we got there, we were just excited 380 00:20:41,917 --> 00:20:44,875 and in awe of the idea that we were being allowed 381 00:20:44,917 --> 00:20:48,291 to play any sort of music 382 00:20:48,417 --> 00:20:52,500 and could speak any way we wanted to on, on the radio. 383 00:20:52,542 --> 00:20:54,166 And then when it turned out that the radio station 384 00:20:54,291 --> 00:20:59,041 was going to debut on a Friday night, well, then, 385 00:20:59,125 --> 00:21:04,250 what they had to say was, "Well, I guess, Rogers, it's you." 386 00:21:04,291 --> 00:21:06,542 It wasn't because I was 387 00:21:06,625 --> 00:21:08,625 their ace designated lead-off hitter. 388 00:21:08,667 --> 00:21:10,417 It was, that's how the schedule was, 389 00:21:10,542 --> 00:21:12,417 and my instructions were simply, "Don't screw it up." 390 00:21:12,500 --> 00:21:16,250 We have been in severe financial trouble 391 00:21:16,291 --> 00:21:18,917 here at WBCN-- we're experimenting with new formats, 392 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:20,917 trying to kind of feel our way around. 393 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:22,667 I'm Ron Della Chiesa, I'll be here tomorrow evening 394 00:21:22,750 --> 00:21:25,375 with another mixed bag of programming for you. 395 00:21:25,417 --> 00:21:28,875 And now it's time for our revolutionary new experiment 396 00:21:28,917 --> 00:21:30,500 in radio, as we told you: 397 00:21:30,542 --> 00:21:34,792 our first live broadcast with Mississippi Harold Wilson. 398 00:21:34,917 --> 00:21:41,917 So on, this would be March 15 of 1968, yeah, 399 00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:47,500 I carried my records up the stairs to, up to the top floor 400 00:21:47,542 --> 00:21:50,667 of the Newbury Street building where the station was. 401 00:21:50,792 --> 00:21:55,375 Began by playing some Mothers of Invention, 402 00:21:55,417 --> 00:21:57,917 Frank Zappa, some sort of farting and belching noises. 403 00:22:07,750 --> 00:22:12,917 That first broadcast, March 15, 1968, 404 00:22:13,041 --> 00:22:14,792 I remember Joe Rogers, Mississippi, 405 00:22:14,875 --> 00:22:18,875 you know, dropped the needle and played amazing music, 406 00:22:18,917 --> 00:22:21,917 and it was a magical time. 407 00:22:45,417 --> 00:22:46,500 It was completely free form, 408 00:22:46,542 --> 00:22:49,792 it was, play whatever we want, bring in records from home. 409 00:22:49,875 --> 00:22:51,750 For the first time, there was an outlet for music 410 00:22:51,792 --> 00:22:53,291 like this on the radio. 411 00:22:53,375 --> 00:22:56,375 This was music of substance, these were artists of interest, 412 00:22:56,417 --> 00:22:58,166 these were artists who displayed their roots 413 00:22:58,291 --> 00:22:59,417 and their influences. 414 00:22:59,542 --> 00:23:05,875 The music was just always important to us, 415 00:23:05,917 --> 00:23:08,667 and it was clearly ours. 416 00:23:08,792 --> 00:23:11,667 Older people didn't like it, didn't understand it. 417 00:23:11,750 --> 00:23:13,375 You'd hear Jimi Hendrix. 418 00:23:13,417 --> 00:23:17,166 Not, not necessarily "Foxy Lady." 419 00:23:17,250 --> 00:23:18,542 You might hear "If 6 was 9." 420 00:23:18,667 --> 00:23:20,792 You'd hear a song six deep into the Hendrix album. 421 00:23:26,542 --> 00:23:31,125 I remember Joe Rogers had brought to the playlist, 422 00:23:31,166 --> 00:23:33,875 and I started playing one of the earliest known recordings 423 00:23:33,917 --> 00:23:37,250 of Aretha Franklin, when she was with a gospel choir, 424 00:23:37,291 --> 00:23:39,917 a stomping gospel song. 425 00:23:43,417 --> 00:23:45,667 Whatever rock was happening, fine. 426 00:23:45,792 --> 00:23:47,542 You want to play some folk, no problem. 427 00:23:47,625 --> 00:23:48,542 If you wanted to play some Beethoven 428 00:23:48,625 --> 00:23:53,125 or some Carl Orff-- no problem, mix it up. 429 00:23:53,166 --> 00:23:56,417 Throw in some Monty Python, throw in some spoken word. 430 00:23:56,542 --> 00:23:57,417 You never knew what you were going to hear 431 00:23:57,542 --> 00:24:00,041 on the radio station. 432 00:24:00,125 --> 00:24:04,625 Every station would get the records by the Firesign Theatre, 433 00:24:04,667 --> 00:24:05,500 and it would just take you for a trip. 434 00:24:05,542 --> 00:24:08,417 It was literally... 435 00:24:08,542 --> 00:24:10,542 ...acid-y, you know, it was like acid. 436 00:24:13,041 --> 00:24:13,542 Nick Danger, Third Eye. 437 00:24:13,667 --> 00:24:16,542 I want to order a pizza to go, and no anchovies. 438 00:24:16,667 --> 00:24:18,417 No anchovies? You've got the wrong man. 439 00:24:18,542 --> 00:24:21,125 I spell my name Danger. 440 00:24:21,166 --> 00:24:22,291 What? 441 00:24:22,417 --> 00:24:24,000 You'd hear some Muddy, 442 00:24:24,041 --> 00:24:25,667 you'd hear some Grateful Dead, you'd hear some Tom Rush-- 443 00:24:25,750 --> 00:24:26,417 you'd hear a little bit of everything. 444 00:24:26,542 --> 00:24:28,917 It was just, like, amazing. 445 00:24:34,667 --> 00:24:37,917 Quite simply, you were not going to hear 446 00:24:38,041 --> 00:24:40,500 this music anywhere except at WBCN. 447 00:24:40,542 --> 00:24:43,875 I remember the absolute shock 448 00:24:43,917 --> 00:24:49,417 of hearing long-form sets of 30, 40, 50 minutes, 449 00:24:49,542 --> 00:24:53,125 and suddenly we had found on the radio 450 00:24:53,166 --> 00:24:55,166 what was the soundtrack of our lives. 451 00:24:55,291 --> 00:24:57,417 It's so vivid to me what it was like... 452 00:24:57,542 --> 00:24:59,875 You just walk in and, 453 00:24:59,917 --> 00:25:02,417 to a radio station, and there'd be all these albums. 454 00:25:02,500 --> 00:25:04,417 You could tell by the color, almost, 455 00:25:04,500 --> 00:25:07,000 of that one edge what artist it was. 456 00:25:07,041 --> 00:25:08,792 We would pull these albums out, 457 00:25:08,917 --> 00:25:11,917 and, you know, you'd pull-- first, you'd pull four or five 458 00:25:12,041 --> 00:25:13,417 and say, "This is how I am going to start my show." 459 00:25:13,500 --> 00:25:16,417 And then you start getting inspired along the way, 460 00:25:16,500 --> 00:25:17,500 and you'd say, "Ah, this song would go with..." 461 00:25:17,542 --> 00:25:20,291 And you'd run up before the record ended 462 00:25:20,417 --> 00:25:23,041 and you find that album, you pull it out, 463 00:25:23,125 --> 00:25:24,917 you go to the other turntable that was empty, 464 00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:26,792 and you put the record on, slap it on there, 465 00:25:26,875 --> 00:25:28,417 and you'd queue it up. 466 00:25:28,500 --> 00:25:29,500 But if it was in the same key, you'd let it go, 467 00:25:29,542 --> 00:25:32,667 and that was the magic moment where the two songs 468 00:25:32,750 --> 00:25:35,542 would go together... 469 00:25:35,667 --> 00:25:37,291 And then the other song would come up, 470 00:25:37,375 --> 00:25:38,750 and people would go... 471 00:25:38,792 --> 00:25:40,917 "Oh, man, that was great." 472 00:25:41,041 --> 00:25:42,667 I remember distinctly driving 473 00:25:42,792 --> 00:25:45,667 from New York to Boston, and BCN you could just start getting, 474 00:25:45,750 --> 00:25:49,417 like, 40 minutes outside of town, 475 00:25:49,500 --> 00:25:52,125 and I remember hearing the static. 476 00:25:53,667 --> 00:25:58,000 Finally, it settled into a song that I knew by Bob Dylan. 477 00:26:03,625 --> 00:26:05,917 And all of a sudden, just hearing that coming 478 00:26:06,041 --> 00:26:10,542 through my speakers from a radio station in Boston, 479 00:26:10,625 --> 00:26:12,542 I knew that I just felt home. 480 00:26:19,542 --> 00:26:22,291 One DJ would go from 10:30 to 2:00, 481 00:26:22,417 --> 00:26:25,542 and then from 2:00 to 5:30, Peter Wolf would take over, 482 00:26:25,625 --> 00:26:28,041 you know, in the wee hours. 483 00:26:28,166 --> 00:26:30,500 Peter Wolf was a well-known musician in town, 484 00:26:30,542 --> 00:26:34,250 and he was a rock star in Boston-- 485 00:26:34,291 --> 00:26:37,750 later, obviously, a huge rock star. 486 00:26:37,792 --> 00:26:41,542 And he was doing 2:00 to 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., and you could just 487 00:26:41,667 --> 00:26:44,542 feel everything change when Peter walked in the room. 488 00:26:44,625 --> 00:26:48,792 Ah, yes, kooma labor gomma gabor. 489 00:26:48,917 --> 00:26:50,542 This is Woofer Goofer, Mamma Toofer, Habba Doofer, 490 00:26:50,667 --> 00:26:55,542 you're listening to WBCN FM, 104.1 in Boston. 491 00:26:55,625 --> 00:26:58,792 And you know what WBCN mean? 492 00:26:58,875 --> 00:26:59,750 You know what WBCN means? Wolf! 493 00:26:59,792 --> 00:27:01,667 You got it, baby, Wolf's boss... 494 00:27:01,750 --> 00:27:04,041 Let it happen, cap'n! 495 00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:08,000 I would be on the air when he would come in, 496 00:27:08,041 --> 00:27:11,417 and he would almost always come in with his friend Big Charles. 497 00:27:11,500 --> 00:27:13,542 I was kind of like his sidekick. 498 00:27:13,667 --> 00:27:16,792 I started calling him the "Woofer Goofer" 499 00:27:16,875 --> 00:27:18,792 and then I became the "Master Blaster," 500 00:27:18,875 --> 00:27:20,917 anything you can do I can do a little bit faster. 501 00:27:21,041 --> 00:27:23,041 WBCN in Boston, Woofer Goofer, Mamma Toofer, 502 00:27:23,125 --> 00:27:25,375 104.1, having a little fun. 503 00:27:25,417 --> 00:27:26,542 You got it, baby! 504 00:27:28,417 --> 00:27:31,792 It was a total violation of everything we stood for, 505 00:27:31,917 --> 00:27:35,125 but he was such a great guy and such a great personality. 506 00:27:35,166 --> 00:27:36,375 Here was a radio station 507 00:27:36,417 --> 00:27:38,041 that was an underground rock station, 508 00:27:38,166 --> 00:27:41,917 and Wolf was doing the overnight show, and it was just amazing. 509 00:27:44,792 --> 00:27:46,542 Yeah, we're doing it, WBCN in Boston, give us a call. 510 00:27:46,667 --> 00:27:50,291 You know what I'm talking about. 511 00:27:50,375 --> 00:27:51,625 When the station began, 512 00:27:51,667 --> 00:27:53,750 the broadcasts were from the fifth floor 513 00:27:53,792 --> 00:27:57,625 of 171 Newbury Street, that's where WBCN 514 00:27:57,667 --> 00:28:00,750 as a classical station existed. 515 00:28:00,792 --> 00:28:04,125 Because T. Mitchell was very leery 516 00:28:04,166 --> 00:28:08,542 of having long-haired hippies going into his studio, 517 00:28:08,667 --> 00:28:11,250 which was kind of a, you know, upscale shopping area, 518 00:28:11,291 --> 00:28:13,041 and a lot of ad agencies there, 519 00:28:13,166 --> 00:28:14,792 he just didn't want to be associated with these people, 520 00:28:14,875 --> 00:28:17,291 even though he was maybe thinking he'd be happy 521 00:28:17,375 --> 00:28:18,750 to take their money. 522 00:28:18,792 --> 00:28:20,542 I don't know whether they thought we'd steal 523 00:28:20,625 --> 00:28:22,417 the classical records or whether 524 00:28:22,500 --> 00:28:25,792 somebody would be smoking funny cigarettes up there, or what. 525 00:28:25,917 --> 00:28:30,750 But they didn't socially want the two groups to interact. 526 00:28:30,792 --> 00:28:31,792 We were hippies, we had long hair, 527 00:28:31,917 --> 00:28:34,667 we had, you know, rock and roll band shirts. 528 00:28:34,792 --> 00:28:37,917 And we did, you know, sort of the usual substances. 529 00:28:38,041 --> 00:28:39,917 The decision was made that it would be better 530 00:28:40,041 --> 00:28:44,792 to do the actual shows from, away from Newbury Street. 531 00:28:44,875 --> 00:28:47,792 Ray got two turntables and a microphone 532 00:28:47,875 --> 00:28:50,417 that could be installed over 533 00:28:50,500 --> 00:28:51,792 in the backroom of his dance hall, 534 00:28:51,875 --> 00:28:54,041 the Boston Tea Party. 535 00:28:54,125 --> 00:28:55,667 The studio was literally 536 00:28:55,792 --> 00:28:59,875 on a side room backstage at the Boston Tea Party, 537 00:28:59,917 --> 00:29:02,542 which was an amazing place to be sitting, 538 00:29:02,625 --> 00:29:04,875 because you'd see these bands going back and forth, and, like, 539 00:29:04,917 --> 00:29:07,417 "Oh, look, there's Jefferson Airplane," or "Oh, look, 540 00:29:07,542 --> 00:29:09,041 there's the Who," or whatever. 541 00:29:09,125 --> 00:29:12,041 And somebody brought up the point that it was going to be 542 00:29:12,125 --> 00:29:13,667 kind of noisy when we turned on the mic, and he was, like, 543 00:29:13,792 --> 00:29:15,917 "Who gives a shit? 544 00:29:16,041 --> 00:29:17,875 It's gonna sound fantastic, let it go." 545 00:29:20,125 --> 00:29:22,166 HADGES The instrumental from the album 546 00:29:22,250 --> 00:29:23,917 by the Quicksilver Messenger Service, a song called 547 00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:25,625 "Gold and Silver," and don't forget, they will be in 548 00:29:25,667 --> 00:29:26,667 at the Boston Tea Party, 549 00:29:26,792 --> 00:29:29,125 53 Berkeley Street, this weekend, 550 00:29:29,166 --> 00:29:31,542 so you want to go out and see them. 551 00:29:31,625 --> 00:29:33,291 Tom Hadges leading the American Revolution. 552 00:29:33,375 --> 00:29:37,041 The place, 104 on your FM dial in stereo, the new WBCN. 553 00:29:37,125 --> 00:29:41,000 The record library was a closet, it was about this wide, 554 00:29:41,041 --> 00:29:43,291 had a door and I think four shelves on it. 555 00:29:43,375 --> 00:29:45,875 And this was also the green room during shows, 556 00:29:45,917 --> 00:29:47,792 so Ten Years After, 557 00:29:47,875 --> 00:29:50,917 the British neo-blues band, were there one night, 558 00:29:51,041 --> 00:29:53,792 and Ray Riepen, in his expansive mood, said, 559 00:29:53,917 --> 00:29:56,792 "Hey, you want some records? Take some." 560 00:29:56,875 --> 00:29:59,917 So Alvin Lee, was the lead guitarist, said, "Okay," 561 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,542 and grabbed everything from B through D, 562 00:30:02,625 --> 00:30:04,000 and, you know, packed them in the thing 563 00:30:04,041 --> 00:30:06,792 and went away-- so we could not play the Beatles 564 00:30:06,917 --> 00:30:10,792 or the Doors for a month or so, till they got replaced. 565 00:30:10,917 --> 00:30:13,750 So this is, uh... kind of a loose operation. 566 00:30:13,792 --> 00:30:16,875 The response from people was so great, 567 00:30:16,917 --> 00:30:18,917 they loved the music and they loved the different approach, 568 00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:23,125 because we were sort of treating radio not as a performance, 569 00:30:23,166 --> 00:30:26,792 but as a relationship with our listeners. 570 00:30:26,917 --> 00:30:33,542 So what was on March 15 an overnight programming slot 571 00:30:33,667 --> 00:30:35,750 by May 1 was 24 hours. 572 00:30:35,792 --> 00:30:38,792 Different announcers had done shows, and in the process, 573 00:30:38,917 --> 00:30:42,667 mentioned to the listeners that it would be good, 574 00:30:42,750 --> 00:30:44,041 if they can hear us, 575 00:30:44,125 --> 00:30:46,375 maybe they could send in a postcard. 576 00:30:46,417 --> 00:30:48,291 BARNA This is Rich Barna with you 577 00:30:48,375 --> 00:30:51,375 on the American Revolution, and if'n you like what you hear, 578 00:30:51,417 --> 00:30:53,917 why not write us, as we like to know what it is that you like-- 579 00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,792 and also what it is that you don't like. 580 00:30:56,917 --> 00:30:58,792 And they did, and they sent in 581 00:30:58,875 --> 00:31:02,250 thousands and thousands of postcards. 582 00:31:02,291 --> 00:31:03,917 The mailman delivering the mail was bringing it in duffle bags 583 00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:07,500 of these postcards from listeners. 584 00:31:07,542 --> 00:31:09,917 "You have me as well as half the philosophy department 585 00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:12,917 here at Harvard as faithful listeners." 586 00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:15,750 "The revolution is becoming ever more popular 587 00:31:15,792 --> 00:31:17,500 at Newton High." 588 00:31:17,542 --> 00:31:21,250 "I work in a store where we play your music all day." 589 00:31:21,291 --> 00:31:22,792 "Man, everybody's listening." 590 00:31:26,792 --> 00:31:27,792 By time it went on the air, you know, 591 00:31:27,917 --> 00:31:30,542 in that spring, full time, 592 00:31:30,667 --> 00:31:32,000 you could walk down 593 00:31:32,041 --> 00:31:34,291 some of the streets in Boston, like Comm. Ave., 594 00:31:34,417 --> 00:31:36,417 and people would have their windows open 595 00:31:36,500 --> 00:31:36,917 and their radio speakers 596 00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:38,875 deliberately on the windowsill, 597 00:31:38,917 --> 00:31:41,667 playing this to the world. 598 00:31:41,750 --> 00:31:43,250 And everybody is on the same station. 599 00:31:53,291 --> 00:31:56,166 I have vivid memories of walking up 600 00:31:56,291 --> 00:31:59,750 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, every store, 601 00:31:59,792 --> 00:32:00,917 whether it was the record store 602 00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:02,792 or the Orson Welles Cinema, 603 00:32:02,917 --> 00:32:05,041 you heard it in every store. 604 00:32:05,166 --> 00:32:06,750 You could go from one end of Boston 605 00:32:06,792 --> 00:32:09,667 to one end of Cambridge and not have a radio, 606 00:32:09,792 --> 00:32:10,041 and you could hear BCN all the way. 607 00:32:10,125 --> 00:32:12,417 At the B.U. library, 608 00:32:12,500 --> 00:32:13,041 they had this really cool thing 609 00:32:13,125 --> 00:32:15,917 where you could just put headphones on and plug it in. 610 00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:18,250 You could look around the room and every, 611 00:32:18,291 --> 00:32:22,291 everybody in there, every one of them, was listening to WBCN. 612 00:32:22,375 --> 00:32:25,792 BCN was really becoming established 613 00:32:26,041 --> 00:32:28,041 I mean, there was nothing else 614 00:32:28,166 --> 00:32:31,875 on the radio that was even close to what was happening. 615 00:32:31,917 --> 00:32:33,750 You're listening to wonderful, 616 00:32:33,792 --> 00:32:37,417 bigger than a bread box radio, WBCN in Boston. 617 00:32:45,542 --> 00:32:48,667 We felt like we were going through a revolution. 618 00:32:48,750 --> 00:32:49,792 At that time, the station 619 00:32:49,875 --> 00:32:51,750 was mostly about the music, 620 00:32:51,792 --> 00:32:56,291 but remember, when the station leadership chose 621 00:32:56,417 --> 00:32:59,000 "The American Revolution" as the theme, 622 00:32:59,041 --> 00:33:02,542 I think that's a recognition that there was more to it 623 00:33:02,667 --> 00:33:05,166 than just a lifestyle revolution, 624 00:33:05,291 --> 00:33:07,041 that it was also about a political revolution. 625 00:33:07,166 --> 00:33:10,542 It's playing off, "Here's Boston, 626 00:33:10,667 --> 00:33:13,250 "Boston was the hot bed of the American Revolution, 627 00:33:13,291 --> 00:33:16,417 the original one-- this is a new one." 628 00:33:16,542 --> 00:33:20,667 My first memory of BCN was when, 629 00:33:20,792 --> 00:33:25,542 I don't know which disc jockey it was, but when they said, 630 00:33:25,625 --> 00:33:29,542 "This is the American Revolution," you know? 631 00:33:29,667 --> 00:33:33,291 And you felt that they meant it. 632 00:33:38,291 --> 00:33:41,125 Good evening, my fellow Americans. 633 00:33:41,166 --> 00:33:44,917 By early '68, there was a sense of expectation 634 00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:46,417 on a political agenda. 635 00:33:46,542 --> 00:33:49,542 Lyndon Johnson's presidency was being threatened. 636 00:33:49,667 --> 00:33:51,000 This man, who albeit 637 00:33:51,041 --> 00:33:53,500 had a good domestic record on equal rights, 638 00:33:53,542 --> 00:33:57,166 had a horrible foreign policy in that he was 639 00:33:57,250 --> 00:34:01,166 sending young men off to a war that we should not have been in. 640 00:34:05,041 --> 00:34:07,000 People were cutting their hair 641 00:34:07,041 --> 00:34:10,000 and shaving their beards and Going Clean for Gene. 642 00:34:10,083 --> 00:34:12,500 Gene McCarthy, he was our hero. 643 00:34:12,583 --> 00:34:13,000 I remember being at Fenway Park 644 00:34:13,083 --> 00:34:18,250 for a huge Gene McCarthy rally. 645 00:34:18,333 --> 00:34:20,000 Johnson went on national TV 646 00:34:20,083 --> 00:34:21,000 with a message that nobody was expecting. 647 00:34:21,083 --> 00:34:25,125 I shall not seek, 648 00:34:25,208 --> 00:34:29,250 and I will not accept, the nomination 649 00:34:29,333 --> 00:34:33,375 of my party for another term as your president. 650 00:34:33,458 --> 00:34:34,375 And that just 651 00:34:34,458 --> 00:34:35,875 threw open the gates. 652 00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:38,208 Everything just really changed, quickly. 653 00:34:38,250 --> 00:34:41,375 This is the "CBS Evening News," 654 00:34:41,500 --> 00:34:42,834 with Walter Cronkite. 655 00:34:42,875 --> 00:34:44,250 Good evening. 656 00:34:44,375 --> 00:34:47,125 Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence 657 00:34:47,250 --> 00:34:49,959 in the Civil Rights Movement, has been shot to death 658 00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:51,250 in Memphis, Tennessee. 659 00:34:51,375 --> 00:34:55,125 And then, you know, Robert Kennedy, 660 00:34:55,250 --> 00:34:58,458 two months later, in June of '68, he was killed. 661 00:34:58,500 --> 00:35:02,875 After my shift, I got in my car and was driving home 662 00:35:02,959 --> 00:35:04,250 and I tuned the radio, 663 00:35:04,375 --> 00:35:08,875 and what I heard was the Robert Kennedy rally after 664 00:35:08,959 --> 00:35:10,458 the California primary. 665 00:35:10,500 --> 00:35:12,250 ...the divisions, whether it's between 666 00:35:12,375 --> 00:35:14,625 Black and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, 667 00:35:14,709 --> 00:35:17,500 or between age groups or on the war in Vietnam, 668 00:35:17,625 --> 00:35:20,458 that we can start to work together, we are a great country 669 00:35:20,500 --> 00:35:21,875 and a compassionate country. 670 00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:23,625 I remember listening to the results 671 00:35:23,709 --> 00:35:25,750 of the, of the vote. 672 00:35:25,834 --> 00:35:27,375 So, uh... 673 00:35:27,458 --> 00:35:30,000 My thanks to all of you, and now it's on to Chicago 674 00:35:30,125 --> 00:35:33,125 and let's win there, thank you. 675 00:35:33,208 --> 00:35:36,208 And it was, like, we won, we won, we won! 676 00:35:40,333 --> 00:35:44,375 "Oh, my God, Robert Kennedy has been shot!" 677 00:35:49,375 --> 00:35:51,250 I remember coming in to do my morning show. 678 00:35:51,333 --> 00:35:54,625 I had this copy in front of me: 679 00:35:54,750 --> 00:35:57,375 "Robert Kennedy has been shot," and so I went on the air 680 00:35:57,458 --> 00:36:02,000 to say that, and it was just, you know, 681 00:36:02,125 --> 00:36:06,250 it's among those moments in life that you just... 682 00:36:06,333 --> 00:36:08,625 You feel like you're totally hit in the chest. 683 00:36:12,250 --> 00:36:14,625 The assassination of Kennedy 684 00:36:14,709 --> 00:36:19,000 was such an emotional, almost physical, blow, 685 00:36:19,125 --> 00:36:23,000 because it felt like there wasn't any hope 686 00:36:23,125 --> 00:36:25,959 in the legitimate political channels anymore. 687 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:30,333 And then the absolute, you know, confrontation 688 00:36:30,375 --> 00:36:36,333 of the Chicago Convention in August of '68. 689 00:36:46,625 --> 00:36:47,333 Well, I think if people stay in the park, 690 00:36:47,375 --> 00:36:49,750 they'll be okay, they'll be treated 691 00:36:49,875 --> 00:36:50,125 with respect by the police. 692 00:36:50,250 --> 00:36:55,208 Those people that, those Yippies that march 693 00:36:55,250 --> 00:36:57,333 on the Amphitheatre or go downtown 694 00:36:57,375 --> 00:37:00,625 and demand their rights... 695 00:37:00,750 --> 00:37:02,333 They'll be risking their lives. 696 00:37:02,375 --> 00:37:06,959 That's right, these cops here are tough, they'd... 697 00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:08,375 They'd kill you with a smile. 698 00:37:08,458 --> 00:37:10,375 He's being kicked and smashed 699 00:37:10,500 --> 00:37:12,250 by these police officers here, he's being hit by billy clubs. 700 00:37:12,333 --> 00:37:14,500 They're kicking him, they're jumping on him-- 701 00:37:14,625 --> 00:37:15,834 it's unbelievable! 702 00:37:15,875 --> 00:37:17,583 We were shouting at the cops yesterday 703 00:37:17,625 --> 00:37:18,250 that they should go to Prague 704 00:37:18,333 --> 00:37:20,500 and teach the Russians and stuff, 705 00:37:20,583 --> 00:37:22,375 and apparently they took that as a compliment. 706 00:37:22,500 --> 00:37:25,834 Instead of Bobby Kennedy, we got Hubert Humphrey. 707 00:37:25,875 --> 00:37:30,125 And certainly the... 708 00:37:30,208 --> 00:37:33,000 as institutional a politician as there was. 709 00:37:33,125 --> 00:37:35,875 I proudly accept the nomination 710 00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:39,500 of our party. 711 00:37:39,625 --> 00:37:41,500 I don't think any of us really thought 712 00:37:41,625 --> 00:37:43,875 that Hubert Humphrey was a great 713 00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:45,375 receptacle for our hopes and dreams. 714 00:37:45,458 --> 00:37:49,875 And then you add to that the third-party candidacy 715 00:37:49,959 --> 00:37:50,250 of George Wallace, who was playing 716 00:37:50,375 --> 00:37:53,250 the segregationist, racist card, 717 00:37:53,375 --> 00:37:57,375 and it was an autumn of chaos, huge marches, 718 00:37:57,500 --> 00:37:59,375 students demonstrating. 719 00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:04,125 Nixon was 720 00:38:04,208 --> 00:38:07,125 and felt like the personification 721 00:38:07,208 --> 00:38:13,750 of American evil, of everything that was wrong in the country. 722 00:38:18,333 --> 00:38:22,458 Nixon ran on a platform of peace. 723 00:38:22,500 --> 00:38:24,834 We didn't believe him for a minute. 724 00:38:24,875 --> 00:38:25,333 He was Tricky Dick Nixon. 725 00:38:25,375 --> 00:38:27,375 Nixon had been Eisenhower's vice president, 726 00:38:27,500 --> 00:38:31,208 and so to many oldest Boomers, we remember, 727 00:38:31,250 --> 00:38:35,375 you know, this strange, gargoyle looking guy. 728 00:38:35,458 --> 00:38:38,709 He was, like, out of central casting for the job. 729 00:38:38,750 --> 00:38:40,500 There wasn't anything you could look at and go, 730 00:38:40,583 --> 00:38:42,875 "Oh, no, maybe he's really a nice guy on the side." 731 00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:44,458 No, he's like this all the time. 732 00:38:44,500 --> 00:38:50,333 From then on, it was, we are at war with Nixon. 733 00:38:50,375 --> 00:38:54,709 We are at war with American political leadership. 734 00:39:03,458 --> 00:39:05,333 Shortly after the station started, 735 00:39:05,375 --> 00:39:07,875 Ray started getting phone calls from professional disc jockeys, 736 00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:11,500 who said, "Ray, you got to get rid of those kids. 737 00:39:11,625 --> 00:39:16,125 Bring me in, we can really make this thing fly." 738 00:39:16,250 --> 00:39:20,375 And somehow, Ray came to the conclusion, 739 00:39:20,500 --> 00:39:24,000 made the decision that he was going to stick with the kids. 740 00:39:24,083 --> 00:39:26,750 It was a crazy decision, but that was it. 741 00:39:26,834 --> 00:39:28,750 Everything followed from that decision. 742 00:39:28,834 --> 00:39:31,500 The sequence of offices for BCN was interesting. 743 00:39:31,583 --> 00:39:33,375 We were in the Tea Party there for a while. 744 00:39:33,500 --> 00:39:34,750 But then we moved to Stuart Street 745 00:39:34,834 --> 00:39:35,333 for the full-time offices. 746 00:39:35,375 --> 00:39:41,125 We were in a small studio over a luncheonette 747 00:39:41,250 --> 00:39:42,834 run by a guy named Flash. 748 00:39:42,875 --> 00:39:44,834 We were up on the third floor, 749 00:39:44,875 --> 00:39:45,375 so you could smell, you know, 750 00:39:45,500 --> 00:39:48,875 if the burgers got burned, it somehow came up. 751 00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,000 We had a relatively small space and a lot of people, 752 00:39:53,083 --> 00:39:57,125 because the station had become a 24-hour station. 753 00:39:57,250 --> 00:39:58,333 I remember when bands would come 754 00:39:58,375 --> 00:40:00,959 and they'd look around and there'd be, like, 755 00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:01,458 all kinds of crap on the walls 756 00:40:01,500 --> 00:40:05,000 and piles of junk on the floor and stuff. 757 00:40:05,125 --> 00:40:06,500 They'd get instantly comfortable. 758 00:40:06,583 --> 00:40:07,375 Maybe there wasn't a chair, maybe they had to sit 759 00:40:07,500 --> 00:40:10,250 on a table-- that's also possible-- 760 00:40:10,375 --> 00:40:12,208 but the studio functioned very well. 761 00:40:12,250 --> 00:40:14,375 All of the equipment itself was impeccably 762 00:40:14,500 --> 00:40:16,375 bought and maintained, 763 00:40:16,500 --> 00:40:19,625 but everything else about the place was a mess. 764 00:40:19,709 --> 00:40:22,375 So the story with my photographing WBCN 765 00:40:22,458 --> 00:40:24,875 is that I was such a fan at first, 766 00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:27,834 that I sort of got to know them 767 00:40:27,875 --> 00:40:29,500 and they began feeling comfortable with me 768 00:40:29,625 --> 00:40:31,000 as a photographer. 769 00:40:31,083 --> 00:40:32,875 And I would show up, photograph them 770 00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:34,250 here, there, and everywhere, 771 00:40:34,375 --> 00:40:35,625 and then at one point, 772 00:40:35,709 --> 00:40:37,875 we all gathered into their little record library, 773 00:40:37,959 --> 00:40:38,500 which was tiny. 774 00:40:38,583 --> 00:40:41,875 One of the DJs, John Brodey, decided it would be cool 775 00:40:41,959 --> 00:40:42,458 to take off his clothes. 776 00:40:42,500 --> 00:40:47,875 And that's the X-rated version of that picture. 777 00:40:47,959 --> 00:40:52,000 And... it was like one family, one big happy family. 778 00:40:52,083 --> 00:40:53,834 There seems to be a whole jock revolution 779 00:40:53,875 --> 00:40:55,375 happening in America. 780 00:40:55,458 --> 00:40:59,083 This is your old friends here at WBCN in Boston, 781 00:40:59,125 --> 00:41:01,125 104.1. 782 00:41:01,250 --> 00:41:02,583 This is WBCN in Boston. 783 00:41:02,625 --> 00:41:04,375 This is WBCN in Boston. 784 00:41:04,458 --> 00:41:05,875 I'm never sure if what I'm hearing 785 00:41:05,959 --> 00:41:07,583 through my earphones is not the same as what 786 00:41:07,625 --> 00:41:10,083 you're hearing through your radio, really. 787 00:41:10,125 --> 00:41:12,834 It goes through a lot of changes before it gets to you. 788 00:41:19,125 --> 00:41:20,625 It was all about freedom, 789 00:41:20,709 --> 00:41:25,000 being basically a commune of people working together to-- 790 00:41:25,083 --> 00:41:27,834 of all equals and irreverence. 791 00:41:27,875 --> 00:41:30,250 We were speaking truth to power. 792 00:41:30,375 --> 00:41:31,834 I mean, we were 22-year-olds, 793 00:41:31,875 --> 00:41:34,875 who, you know, thought we knew all the truth. 794 00:41:34,959 --> 00:41:39,500 Boston was in the grips of counterculture, 795 00:41:39,625 --> 00:41:43,125 students trying to find new ways of living, 796 00:41:43,208 --> 00:41:44,709 new ways of being. 797 00:41:44,750 --> 00:41:47,583 You know, the great discussions were, "How are we ever gonna 798 00:41:47,625 --> 00:41:50,000 "live our life in this kind of a society? 799 00:41:50,083 --> 00:41:51,375 "How do you have a moral life? 800 00:41:51,458 --> 00:41:52,583 How do you have a good life?" 801 00:41:52,625 --> 00:41:55,834 We hated the old men sending the young men 802 00:41:55,875 --> 00:41:58,458 off to war, but that kind of consciousness expansion 803 00:41:58,500 --> 00:41:59,458 was happening then 804 00:41:59,500 --> 00:42:01,875 politically, 805 00:42:01,959 --> 00:42:04,125 socially-- obviously on racial issues-- 806 00:42:04,250 --> 00:42:05,500 and musically. 807 00:42:05,583 --> 00:42:07,125 More and more artists 808 00:42:07,250 --> 00:42:11,750 were putting political messages in their songs, and I think that 809 00:42:11,834 --> 00:42:16,500 appealed to a lot of people, because they wanted something 810 00:42:16,625 --> 00:42:19,875 a little bit more than just, "Baby, I love you." 811 00:42:19,959 --> 00:42:22,333 And so, you know, "Baby, I love you, 812 00:42:22,375 --> 00:42:23,959 but we got something we gotta do." 813 00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:24,500 You had one song. 814 00:42:24,625 --> 00:42:28,250 "There is something happening here," you know? 815 00:42:28,333 --> 00:42:29,458 And it's all Buffalo Springfield 816 00:42:29,500 --> 00:42:32,333 and it drives from right at that moment. 817 00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:44,125 Rock music has always been about creating chaos 818 00:42:44,250 --> 00:42:45,583 and raising hell, you know? 819 00:42:45,625 --> 00:42:47,583 I mean, that's what it's supposed to do. 820 00:42:47,625 --> 00:42:50,125 If you're doing your job right, that's what you're doing. 821 00:42:50,250 --> 00:42:52,959 And it's people's natures, that are that age, to be belligerent. 822 00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:54,959 You know? I mean, it's a biological fact. 823 00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:58,625 It's hormonally driven, and we felt sold out. 824 00:42:58,709 --> 00:43:00,625 We felt bitterly betrayed by our country, 825 00:43:00,750 --> 00:43:04,709 and you fuse that attitude with the sort of inherent 826 00:43:04,750 --> 00:43:08,709 anarchy and chaos of rock and roll, 827 00:43:08,750 --> 00:43:11,375 and it was an extremely potent thing. 828 00:43:11,458 --> 00:43:17,000 And BCN became the mouthpiece for that. 829 00:43:17,125 --> 00:43:20,500 It became the delivery system for that music to the audience. 830 00:43:20,583 --> 00:43:23,250 You know? To all of us. 831 00:43:23,333 --> 00:43:24,750 Free expression was... 832 00:43:24,875 --> 00:43:26,500 I mean, we talked about that all the time. 833 00:43:26,583 --> 00:43:29,583 It was, like, how much can we get away with? 834 00:43:29,625 --> 00:43:32,709 These were the times when the Rolling Stones 835 00:43:32,750 --> 00:43:35,750 came to play "The Ed Sullivan Show," 836 00:43:35,875 --> 00:43:37,583 and they could not play their song 837 00:43:37,625 --> 00:43:39,000 "Let's Spend the Night Together," 838 00:43:39,083 --> 00:43:40,875 that was their new hit song, 839 00:43:40,959 --> 00:43:43,625 but were not allowed to say the word "night." 840 00:43:43,750 --> 00:43:44,750 And Mick Jagger had to say, 841 00:43:44,834 --> 00:43:47,625 "Let's spend some time together," because the concept 842 00:43:47,709 --> 00:43:53,375 of spending the night together was too risqué. 843 00:44:01,583 --> 00:44:03,959 At the same time, we watched 844 00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,125 "The Smothers Brothers," that they were struggling with 845 00:44:07,208 --> 00:44:09,458 what they were being allowed to do and what they couldn't do. 846 00:44:09,500 --> 00:44:10,583 What are you doing? 847 00:44:10,625 --> 00:44:13,000 I'm getting ready to go to college. 848 00:44:13,125 --> 00:44:15,500 At the time, that was the state of the art 849 00:44:15,625 --> 00:44:16,750 of the struggle for expression. 850 00:44:16,875 --> 00:44:19,875 Our government is asking us as citizens, good citizens, 851 00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:23,500 to refrain from traveling to foreign lands. 852 00:44:25,583 --> 00:44:27,625 Okay, all you guys in Vietnam, come on home. 853 00:44:27,750 --> 00:44:31,875 And clearly, at WBCN, 854 00:44:31,959 --> 00:44:38,125 we just-- we ignored most all of those rules, 855 00:44:38,208 --> 00:44:41,750 and that was something the audience could hear. 856 00:44:41,834 --> 00:44:45,000 We didn't really care what the rules were. 857 00:44:45,125 --> 00:44:48,959 We tried to-- well, we did, we made our own rules. 858 00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:53,125 We, we formed a radio consciousness 859 00:44:53,208 --> 00:44:55,750 that was further and further and further more political 860 00:44:55,834 --> 00:44:58,709 and more dangerous, and we worked hard to be dangerous. 861 00:44:58,750 --> 00:45:00,750 We were the first station that played 862 00:45:00,875 --> 00:45:04,333 John Lennon, "Working Class Hero," 863 00:45:04,375 --> 00:45:06,834 where John Lennon says, right in the middle of the song, 864 00:45:06,875 --> 00:45:10,083 he says, "You think you're so clever and classless and free, 865 00:45:10,125 --> 00:45:12,625 but you're all fucking peasants as far as I can see." 866 00:45:12,709 --> 00:45:14,875 We played that, no beeps, nothing. 867 00:45:14,959 --> 00:45:18,458 Using an obscenity like that, it was part of the song. 868 00:45:18,500 --> 00:45:21,125 You really didn't have a right to cut that out. 869 00:45:21,250 --> 00:45:24,250 And... there were times 870 00:45:24,375 --> 00:45:28,875 when songs like that needed to be played, just, period. 871 00:45:28,959 --> 00:45:31,375 One of the things we were supposed to do 872 00:45:31,500 --> 00:45:33,625 was to push the edge of the envelope, 873 00:45:33,709 --> 00:45:34,709 and it wasn't so much that you were concerned about 874 00:45:34,750 --> 00:45:37,875 offending someone, because obviously, the audience 875 00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:40,625 you were playing to were not going to be offended, 876 00:45:40,709 --> 00:45:44,208 but because of the FCC, and all you need to do is 877 00:45:44,250 --> 00:45:46,709 get a letter from somebody, and you've got this incredible fine 878 00:45:46,750 --> 00:45:48,333 you got to deal with and all of that. 879 00:45:48,375 --> 00:45:50,750 Each announcer had his or her own 880 00:45:50,875 --> 00:45:53,959 FCC license-- you could lose your job 881 00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:55,959 there or any place else by losing your license. 882 00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,959 Somebody would write a letter to the FCC, 883 00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:02,500 and next thing you know, I'd get a letter. 884 00:46:02,625 --> 00:46:03,625 And then I'd have to go down, they'd have a-- 885 00:46:03,750 --> 00:46:06,458 I don't know what they call them-- 886 00:46:06,500 --> 00:46:09,709 but they'd have a conference, and here would be some... 887 00:46:09,750 --> 00:46:12,333 you know, administrative person 888 00:46:12,375 --> 00:46:14,750 in the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, 889 00:46:14,834 --> 00:46:18,583 wanted to know what kind of a deal I was running up there. 890 00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:22,625 The Non-Violent Direct Action Group 891 00:46:22,750 --> 00:46:23,875 is planning a little winter campaign 892 00:46:23,959 --> 00:46:26,834 to focus attention on the war in Indochina. 893 00:46:26,875 --> 00:46:29,583 Their meetings are held on Wednesday nights at 7:30 p.m. 894 00:46:29,625 --> 00:46:31,750 at the Phillips Brooks House in Harvard Yard. 895 00:46:31,875 --> 00:46:35,375 We'll remind you about that again next Wednesday. 896 00:46:35,500 --> 00:46:38,625 This is WBCN and we're in Boston. 897 00:46:38,709 --> 00:46:41,375 The Vietnam War hung over everything. 898 00:46:41,458 --> 00:46:45,834 If you graduated from high school or college in that time, 899 00:46:45,875 --> 00:46:50,875 probably your first concern, as a male, then, was, 900 00:46:50,959 --> 00:46:53,083 "Am I going to be drafted?" 901 00:46:53,125 --> 00:46:55,333 263. 902 00:46:55,375 --> 00:46:56,625 That's my lottery number. 903 00:46:56,750 --> 00:46:59,083 If you had number one, you were going. 904 00:46:59,125 --> 00:47:04,125 And you got number one by the date that you were born, 905 00:47:04,208 --> 00:47:08,125 and my date, September 9, was number 263 out of 365, 906 00:47:08,250 --> 00:47:08,875 so I didn't get drafted, 907 00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:10,959 and I was really, really, really happy. 908 00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:13,125 Boston was seething, I mean, 909 00:47:13,208 --> 00:47:15,250 250,000 college students, 910 00:47:15,333 --> 00:47:17,834 most of whom by then had turned against the war. 911 00:47:17,875 --> 00:47:21,959 Don't forget, I mean, Boston was 912 00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:27,583 a battleground of ideas, it wasn't just a community. 913 00:47:27,625 --> 00:47:29,375 This was the place that Henry Kissinger, 914 00:47:29,458 --> 00:47:29,875 you know, taught at Harvard. 915 00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:34,625 And so, so were activists opposing the war there, 916 00:47:34,709 --> 00:47:35,750 and there was a back-and-forth. 917 00:47:35,834 --> 00:47:38,000 There were protests at M.I.T., 918 00:47:38,125 --> 00:47:38,875 there were protests all across the Boston area 919 00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:41,458 in all these universities. 920 00:47:41,500 --> 00:47:44,834 Because we saw the universities as part of the war machine, 921 00:47:44,875 --> 00:47:47,625 the war system, you know? 922 00:47:47,750 --> 00:47:48,959 That they were providing intellectual capital, 923 00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:52,000 that they were contractors for the Pentagon, 924 00:47:52,083 --> 00:47:56,250 providing studies and research and training. 925 00:47:56,333 --> 00:48:00,709 And, you know, we opposed that, we wanted to expose it. 926 00:48:00,750 --> 00:48:05,750 So we began to look at every way 927 00:48:05,834 --> 00:48:09,625 that we can impede and oppose the war. 928 00:48:09,750 --> 00:48:11,959 About 300 students today took over 929 00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:13,959 the main administration hall at Harvard. 930 00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:16,000 Acting in protest against 931 00:48:16,083 --> 00:48:19,000 the Reserve Officer Training Corps program, 932 00:48:19,083 --> 00:48:22,875 they evicted several deans and then locked themselves in. 933 00:48:22,959 --> 00:48:24,875 What would it take for the SDS 934 00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:27,750 to make peace with the university? 935 00:48:27,875 --> 00:48:28,875 Well, we've said all along that we have 936 00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:31,709 a series of demands that are non-negotiable demands, 937 00:48:31,750 --> 00:48:32,959 and it would be very, very easy. 938 00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:33,875 All the university has to do is meet them. 939 00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:36,709 The Harvard strike got a lot of attention, 940 00:48:36,750 --> 00:48:38,875 because Harvard gets a lot of attention. 941 00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:42,208 This was the elite, the crème de la crème of American students, 942 00:48:42,250 --> 00:48:45,583 and I was writing for the "Old Mole" in Cambridge. 943 00:48:45,625 --> 00:48:48,875 The "Old Mole" was our underground newspaper, 944 00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:51,500 and we had a small collective 945 00:48:51,583 --> 00:48:52,000 of people putting it out. 946 00:48:52,083 --> 00:48:54,000 And I came into the offices 947 00:48:54,125 --> 00:48:58,959 of the dean of Harvard College, which was occupied-- 948 00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:01,125 this is before the Occupy Movement-- 949 00:49:01,208 --> 00:49:02,875 occupied by all of these activists 950 00:49:02,959 --> 00:49:06,208 smoking dope in the dean's office. 951 00:49:06,250 --> 00:49:08,875 And I talked to some of the people from SDS, Harvard SDS. 952 00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:11,000 I said, "You got to stop this immediately, 953 00:49:11,125 --> 00:49:12,750 "because this will become the story, 954 00:49:12,875 --> 00:49:15,083 "that you're defacing the university. 955 00:49:15,125 --> 00:49:17,625 Get these people out of here right now." 956 00:49:17,750 --> 00:49:21,083 So they did, they got all the students out of there. 957 00:49:21,125 --> 00:49:23,625 I said, "Are the doors locked?" 958 00:49:23,709 --> 00:49:25,750 They said, "Yes." I said, "Good. 959 00:49:25,834 --> 00:49:27,458 Let's go into the filing cabinets." 960 00:49:27,500 --> 00:49:31,583 So we seal off the offices. 961 00:49:31,625 --> 00:49:33,500 And the offices are filled with files. 962 00:49:33,625 --> 00:49:35,000 And they're looking through. 963 00:49:35,083 --> 00:49:37,959 And what they're looking for is any files that say 964 00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:41,250 "C.I.A.," Central Intelligence Agency, 965 00:49:41,375 --> 00:49:45,000 any files that say "R.O.T.C.," Reserve Officer Training Corps, 966 00:49:45,083 --> 00:49:50,333 any files that say "Dow," or other major corporations. 967 00:49:50,375 --> 00:49:52,875 And we're finding them. 968 00:49:52,959 --> 00:49:54,250 And we began to find 969 00:49:54,375 --> 00:49:56,875 all kinds of secret documents about, 970 00:49:57,000 --> 00:49:59,458 from the Pentagon to Harvard, 971 00:49:59,500 --> 00:50:00,125 from the C.I.A. to Harvard. 972 00:50:00,208 --> 00:50:03,709 "Henry Kissinger will be in Saigon next week." 973 00:50:03,750 --> 00:50:05,500 He was then a professor at Harvard. 974 00:50:05,625 --> 00:50:07,750 And all this material was there. 975 00:50:07,875 --> 00:50:10,000 The university said, "We have no contracts 976 00:50:10,125 --> 00:50:12,083 with the Central Intelligence Agency." 977 00:50:12,125 --> 00:50:14,750 We're finding files that have contracts 978 00:50:14,834 --> 00:50:16,750 with the Central Intelligence Agency. 979 00:50:16,875 --> 00:50:18,375 So now we're pulling all these papers out, 980 00:50:18,500 --> 00:50:21,000 and the question is, what are we going to do with them? 981 00:50:21,083 --> 00:50:23,375 And so we say, "Well, you got to publish this somehow. 982 00:50:23,458 --> 00:50:25,000 How are we going to get this out of here?" 983 00:50:25,125 --> 00:50:28,500 Meanwhile, the State Police surrounded Harvard Yard. 984 00:50:28,625 --> 00:50:32,000 In the dean's office, we had these little bookbags, 985 00:50:32,125 --> 00:50:36,250 green bags, and so we filled one with these documents. 986 00:50:36,333 --> 00:50:38,959 The "Old Mole" was down the street. 987 00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:41,959 And I took one, a student, and we came to the door, 988 00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,375 the State Police on this side of the fence, 989 00:50:44,500 --> 00:50:46,834 the activists on this side of the fence. 990 00:50:46,875 --> 00:50:49,000 "How am I going to get out of here?" 991 00:50:49,125 --> 00:50:51,500 So I pick a fight with this kid, "Let me out of here! 992 00:50:51,583 --> 00:50:52,000 "I hate this revolution! 993 00:50:52,083 --> 00:50:54,709 "Look what you're doing to Harvard! 994 00:50:54,750 --> 00:50:57,083 You're destroying the whole place, I can't stand it!" 995 00:50:57,125 --> 00:51:01,000 At which point, a cop comes over and says, "Let this guy leave!" 996 00:51:01,083 --> 00:51:03,250 And the cop escorts me out, not knowing 997 00:51:03,333 --> 00:51:06,083 that in my bag are all these documents. 998 00:51:06,125 --> 00:51:09,500 And Danny was part of a team that then set to work 999 00:51:09,583 --> 00:51:13,083 to really analyze the content of the documents, 1000 00:51:13,125 --> 00:51:18,500 and to begin to map out a real analysis of what they showed, 1001 00:51:18,625 --> 00:51:20,583 and he was just terrific at it. 1002 00:51:20,625 --> 00:51:23,375 The next day, the "Old Mole" had a special edition 1003 00:51:23,500 --> 00:51:27,458 with, printing all of these documents from inside 1004 00:51:27,500 --> 00:51:31,333 the halls of Harvard, which showed how compromised 1005 00:51:31,375 --> 00:51:35,000 the administration was and how supportive it was of the C.I.A. 1006 00:51:35,125 --> 00:51:37,125 and various government contracts 1007 00:51:37,208 --> 00:51:40,250 in support of the war in Vietnam. 1008 00:51:40,333 --> 00:51:43,875 And that was an important moment in the Harvard strike. 1009 00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:45,208 The angry conflicts 1010 00:51:45,250 --> 00:51:48,333 on the college campuses continue. 1011 00:51:48,375 --> 00:51:51,125 President Pusey of Harvard held a press conference to say 1012 00:51:51,208 --> 00:51:53,333 he called in the police because 1013 00:51:53,375 --> 00:51:55,250 the students occupying the administration building 1014 00:51:55,333 --> 00:51:58,083 were breaking into the confidential files. 1015 00:51:58,125 --> 00:52:02,458 Today, about 3,000 students gathered to protest 1016 00:52:02,500 --> 00:52:04,583 the police coming on to the campus Thursday morning, 1017 00:52:04,625 --> 00:52:07,750 when they swung their clubs and arrested about 200. 1018 00:52:07,875 --> 00:52:09,083 The confrontation produced 1019 00:52:09,125 --> 00:52:12,333 some of the worst violence experienced at Harvard 1020 00:52:12,375 --> 00:52:14,250 in its entire history. 1021 00:52:14,375 --> 00:52:15,709 They effectively brought the war 1022 00:52:15,750 --> 00:52:17,208 right back into Harvard Yard 1023 00:52:17,250 --> 00:52:21,125 and galvanized 16,000 members 1024 00:52:21,208 --> 00:52:23,875 of the Harvard community to go on strike. 1025 00:52:30,583 --> 00:52:33,583 It's a warm, clear day here at the Boston Common. 1026 00:52:33,625 --> 00:52:38,083 We had also seen that Nixon and his administration 1027 00:52:38,125 --> 00:52:42,250 had no plan to end the war, and so at this point, 1028 00:52:42,333 --> 00:52:48,375 there was as close to a general strike as we could 1029 00:52:48,458 --> 00:52:51,500 possibly figure out, and it was called the Moratorium. 1030 00:52:51,625 --> 00:52:55,125 Stop what you're doing and take time out 1031 00:52:55,208 --> 00:52:57,875 to register your opposition to the war. 1032 00:52:57,959 --> 00:53:00,125 The Greater Boston Peace Action Coalition 1033 00:53:00,208 --> 00:53:04,250 needs volunteers to leaflet, help out in the office, 1034 00:53:04,375 --> 00:53:05,500 and sell buttons. 1035 00:53:05,625 --> 00:53:09,583 For more information, call 661-1090. 1036 00:53:09,625 --> 00:53:12,583 We were pretty tireless in making people aware of it. 1037 00:53:12,625 --> 00:53:15,750 It would have been very difficult to have been in Boston 1038 00:53:15,834 --> 00:53:17,333 at that time and been part of the community, 1039 00:53:17,375 --> 00:53:21,125 and not be aware of exactly why and when and where 1040 00:53:21,250 --> 00:53:23,375 that event was taking place. 1041 00:53:32,750 --> 00:53:36,250 In Boston, every single college 1042 00:53:36,375 --> 00:53:39,500 and university basically shut down. 1043 00:53:39,583 --> 00:53:41,125 You had the law schools marching to the Common, 1044 00:53:41,250 --> 00:53:45,000 you had high schools marching to the Common, 1045 00:53:45,083 --> 00:53:46,375 you had suburban housewives 1046 00:53:46,458 --> 00:53:49,125 leading delegations of suburban housewives. 1047 00:53:49,250 --> 00:53:54,250 In historic Boston Common, an immense crowd, 1048 00:53:54,333 --> 00:53:57,000 the largest Vietnam peace demonstration ever seen. 1049 00:53:57,125 --> 00:54:00,125 We were so hurt that our country would continue 1050 00:54:00,208 --> 00:54:03,250 to proceed and sacrifice lives for a conflict 1051 00:54:03,333 --> 00:54:07,250 that everybody knew really wasn't, 1052 00:54:07,333 --> 00:54:08,375 that it wasn't justified, it just wasn't right. 1053 00:54:08,458 --> 00:54:12,625 Our next speaker will be Abbie Hoffman. 1054 00:54:12,750 --> 00:54:15,875 I'll tell you what's wrong with this society! 1055 00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:19,208 Abbie Hoffman gave his usual great, 1056 00:54:19,250 --> 00:54:22,625 you know, speeches with his funny lines, 1057 00:54:22,709 --> 00:54:26,000 but one of the immortal lines was when he pointed 1058 00:54:26,125 --> 00:54:27,750 over to the Hancock building. 1059 00:54:27,875 --> 00:54:30,834 John Hancock building, hypodermic needle. 1060 00:54:30,875 --> 00:54:31,125 Look at it-- 1061 00:54:31,250 --> 00:54:33,959 John Hancock building! 1062 00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:35,250 Fucking John Hancock... 1063 00:54:35,333 --> 00:54:38,375 John Hancock was a revolutionary! 1064 00:54:38,458 --> 00:54:42,583 He was no goddamn life insurance salesman! 1065 00:54:42,625 --> 00:54:45,375 We all laughed, but, you know, he said, 1066 00:54:45,458 --> 00:54:48,375 you know, "It's time to up the ante here." 1067 00:54:48,458 --> 00:54:52,333 April 18, 1775. 1068 00:54:52,375 --> 00:54:55,333 Everybody who is here 1069 00:54:55,375 --> 00:54:58,250 who is now alive remembers that famous day and year. 1070 00:54:58,375 --> 00:55:03,750 Paul Revere, he rode out through M.I.T., out through Harvard Yard 1071 00:55:03,834 --> 00:55:06,333 and Arlington and Lexington and Concord, screaming and yelling, 1072 00:55:06,375 --> 00:55:10,125 "The pigs are coming, the pigs are coming, 1073 00:55:10,250 --> 00:55:12,375 the pigs are coming!" 1074 00:55:12,458 --> 00:55:14,959 He said, "Get your shit together! 1075 00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:16,375 We gotta have a revolution!" 1076 00:55:16,500 --> 00:55:22,083 BCN had paid a skywriter to put a peace sign 1077 00:55:22,125 --> 00:55:23,709 up in the sky, 1078 00:55:23,750 --> 00:55:28,125 and everybody cheered and it was announced that BCN had done it. 1079 00:55:28,208 --> 00:55:29,458 The applause is for a skywriter 1080 00:55:29,500 --> 00:55:33,500 who was just made a huge peace sign in the sky. 1081 00:55:33,625 --> 00:55:36,458 And, you know, here it was writ large in the sky 1082 00:55:36,500 --> 00:55:39,959 by the radio station I was working for. 1083 00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:41,625 That was a thrilling thing. 1084 00:55:41,750 --> 00:55:46,000 The peace symbol came from a fellow, 1085 00:55:46,083 --> 00:55:47,458 I believe his name was Wayne. 1086 00:55:47,500 --> 00:55:48,333 I seem to think that I might have 1087 00:55:48,375 --> 00:55:52,625 wrote a check for that myself. 1088 00:55:52,750 --> 00:55:55,834 'Cause we didn't have a lot of money, you know-- I don't... 1089 00:55:55,875 --> 00:55:57,750 There were times when I just wasn't going to go 1090 00:55:57,875 --> 00:55:59,500 into someone's office who was over me at the time, 1091 00:55:59,625 --> 00:56:00,875 and fight with them. 1092 00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:04,834 On my coffee table at home is a, someone put out a book 1093 00:56:04,875 --> 00:56:06,250 about peace, and if you flip through it, 1094 00:56:06,375 --> 00:56:09,000 that peace symbol is in it, so... 1095 00:56:10,500 --> 00:56:13,083 I mean, we're each powerless, you know? 1096 00:56:13,125 --> 00:56:15,750 I mean, none of us at that time-- being so young, too. 1097 00:56:15,875 --> 00:56:18,875 You know, it's hard to get your parents' attention 1098 00:56:18,959 --> 00:56:22,250 or your boss's attention or your teacher's attention, 1099 00:56:22,375 --> 00:56:24,208 you know, through most of your life at that point. 1100 00:56:24,250 --> 00:56:25,458 We had very limited experiences, 1101 00:56:25,500 --> 00:56:28,625 and the causes that we held precious 1102 00:56:28,709 --> 00:56:31,375 and the issues that we felt were the priorities 1103 00:56:31,458 --> 00:56:34,000 were things that we might never have 1104 00:56:34,125 --> 00:56:34,458 a chance to express adequately. 1105 00:56:34,500 --> 00:56:39,250 Through this collaborative experience, 1106 00:56:39,333 --> 00:56:41,250 we were able to get the world's attention 1107 00:56:41,375 --> 00:56:42,500 and make our feelings known. 1108 00:56:42,583 --> 00:56:46,375 It elevated our aspirations to doing more 1109 00:56:46,500 --> 00:56:49,500 and, you know, validated us, validated the battle. 1110 00:56:52,959 --> 00:56:55,333 Our audience, they had to be informed about 1111 00:56:55,375 --> 00:56:58,750 what was happening to their country, 1112 00:56:58,834 --> 00:57:00,000 what was happening locally. 1113 00:57:00,125 --> 00:57:02,625 BCN did a very good job, as the movement 1114 00:57:02,750 --> 00:57:07,250 got more political, of not being the, the leader. 1115 00:57:07,333 --> 00:57:08,875 In other words, people didn't go to the streets 1116 00:57:08,959 --> 00:57:12,083 because BCN told them to go to the streets. 1117 00:57:12,125 --> 00:57:15,333 It was the internet of its day, 1118 00:57:15,375 --> 00:57:16,500 when you could communicate with the station, 1119 00:57:16,625 --> 00:57:19,208 the station would communicate... 1120 00:57:19,250 --> 00:57:23,125 It was the community resource of how you knew what was going on. 1121 00:57:28,625 --> 00:57:30,750 That's the new single Wilson Pickett's got out, 1122 00:57:30,875 --> 00:57:32,500 "Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You." 1123 00:57:32,625 --> 00:57:34,375 Before that, Ben E. King, "When You Love Someone," 1124 00:57:34,458 --> 00:57:37,375 and then Forever More, "Eight O'Clock and All is Well." 1125 00:57:37,458 --> 00:57:39,125 We were getting so many phone calls 1126 00:57:39,208 --> 00:57:42,959 that it was impossible to actually answer the phone 1127 00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:44,709 when you're doing your show. 1128 00:57:44,750 --> 00:57:45,375 You know, I just want to share 1129 00:57:45,458 --> 00:57:47,750 something with you, okay? 1130 00:57:47,875 --> 00:57:48,458 All right, since I've been on the air at 10:00, 1131 00:57:48,500 --> 00:57:50,500 I've had a really hard time, 1132 00:57:50,583 --> 00:57:53,709 getting, you know, like, a show together 1133 00:57:53,750 --> 00:57:55,250 the way I'd like to. 1134 00:57:55,375 --> 00:57:58,125 I don't know, what I am leading up to, I guess, 1135 00:57:58,250 --> 00:57:58,500 is, we really, we really would like 1136 00:57:58,583 --> 00:58:01,500 some volunteer help down here. 1137 00:58:01,583 --> 00:58:03,625 You know, like, we're in no position to pay bread for it, 1138 00:58:03,709 --> 00:58:06,625 but we really need help answering phones, 1139 00:58:06,750 --> 00:58:08,500 and connecting people up with the right numbers and things. 1140 00:58:08,583 --> 00:58:11,875 The Listener Line was a telephone line 1141 00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:15,375 in which people who listened to the radio station 1142 00:58:15,458 --> 00:58:16,583 could call us and ask us anything. 1143 00:58:16,625 --> 00:58:19,875 All stations had request lines, 1144 00:58:20,000 --> 00:58:22,208 but, you know, deep down inside, you knew they weren't 1145 00:58:22,250 --> 00:58:24,083 really listening to what you said and-- 1146 00:58:24,125 --> 00:58:25,500 even if they answered the phone. 1147 00:58:25,583 --> 00:58:26,500 If you called BCN's Listener Line, 1148 00:58:26,625 --> 00:58:30,250 you would instantly realize, "Well, geez, these people 1149 00:58:30,333 --> 00:58:31,750 really do care about what I have to say." 1150 00:58:31,834 --> 00:58:34,750 I remember there being a complete reference library. 1151 00:58:34,875 --> 00:58:36,375 I mean, people would say, "Where can I get a good pizza?" 1152 00:58:36,500 --> 00:58:38,709 They'd want to know things that you'd, you know, 1153 00:58:38,750 --> 00:58:40,375 you'd go to Siri on your iPhone now and ask questions. 1154 00:58:40,500 --> 00:58:43,750 But you'd call the Listener Line instead. 1155 00:58:50,750 --> 00:58:54,750 The number is 536-8000. 1156 00:58:54,875 --> 00:58:55,500 One of the things I loved doing 1157 00:58:55,625 --> 00:58:57,750 was the Cat and Dog Report. 1158 00:58:57,834 --> 00:59:01,000 You'd say, "Hey, I lost my cat." 1159 00:59:01,083 --> 00:59:03,125 "What color was the cat? Okay, what color... 1160 00:59:03,208 --> 00:59:03,500 What color eyes did it have?" 1161 00:59:03,625 --> 00:59:06,125 So it was called the Cat and Dog Report. 1162 00:59:06,250 --> 00:59:07,458 And it was popular. 1163 00:59:07,500 --> 00:59:10,458 I don't even know how we, you know, 1164 00:59:10,500 --> 00:59:12,375 how we got there, but somebody brought in 1165 00:59:12,500 --> 00:59:13,625 a stray puppy once, and we said, 1166 00:59:13,709 --> 00:59:15,500 "Oh, let's get all the stray puppies 1167 00:59:15,583 --> 00:59:17,458 and, you know, let's find a new home for them," or something. 1168 00:59:17,500 --> 00:59:19,375 Okay, it's animal time. 1169 00:59:19,458 --> 00:59:21,959 Seems like everybody's had their litters, 1170 00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:23,458 and all these people have surplus cats. 1171 00:59:23,500 --> 00:59:27,875 I've got some coming up myself, so I know how it is. 1172 00:59:27,959 --> 00:59:29,500 Two fluffy black cats. 1173 00:59:29,625 --> 00:59:31,875 They're about seven weeks old now. 1174 00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:33,583 625-1885 if you'd like one. 1175 00:59:33,625 --> 00:59:38,250 People would want to call the Listener Line 1176 00:59:38,375 --> 00:59:39,500 when they had a problem, and it would be 1177 00:59:39,583 --> 00:59:41,750 the first call that they would make. 1178 00:59:41,875 --> 00:59:46,750 I can remember people who were suicidal, 1179 00:59:46,875 --> 00:59:51,333 that our... Listener Line people would stay on the phone 1180 00:59:51,375 --> 00:59:52,834 with them for hours. 1181 00:59:52,875 --> 00:59:55,000 And acid casualties. 1182 00:59:55,125 --> 00:59:57,834 It was a tremendous service for the community. 1183 00:59:57,875 --> 01:00:00,125 Kate Curran was the one... one that sort of organized 1184 01:00:00,208 --> 01:00:00,625 the entire group. 1185 01:00:00,709 --> 01:00:02,500 It was a completely volunteer service, 1186 01:00:02,583 --> 01:00:05,583 and it was a very important part of the station. 1187 01:00:07,709 --> 01:00:09,458 This is the Holy Modal Rounders 1188 01:00:09,500 --> 01:00:12,125 with a mantra for you. 1189 01:00:20,750 --> 01:00:23,875 The Golden Guru for WBCN Boston says 1190 01:00:23,959 --> 01:00:28,625 chant this mantra every day and make bad karma go away. 1191 01:00:28,709 --> 01:00:32,750 There was a great history of acts stopping by for interviews, 1192 01:00:32,834 --> 01:00:38,000 who also decided that they would bring a guitar along and play. 1193 01:00:38,125 --> 01:00:41,500 It, it really hadn't happened on the radio before. 1194 01:00:41,625 --> 01:00:46,750 Another time, uh... the Listener Line person came in and said, 1195 01:00:46,834 --> 01:00:50,583 "The musician's downstairs, he just played at the Arc, 1196 01:00:50,625 --> 01:00:52,875 "another musician, I guess they both played at different places, 1197 01:00:52,959 --> 01:00:54,208 uh, Jerry Garcia." 1198 01:00:54,250 --> 01:00:55,500 I said, "From the Grateful Dead?" 1199 01:00:55,583 --> 01:00:56,750 "Yeah." "Who's the other one?" 1200 01:00:56,834 --> 01:00:57,625 "Duane Allman from the Allman Brothers.” 1201 01:00:57,709 --> 01:01:00,875 "Yes, send them up, we'll play, yeah cool." 1202 01:01:01,000 --> 01:01:01,750 So they come up and we're... 1203 01:01:01,834 --> 01:01:04,250 ...you know. 1204 01:01:04,333 --> 01:01:05,834 "So what do you got now for us," 1205 01:01:05,875 --> 01:01:06,625 and we're doing this on air, we're smoking dope. 1206 01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:09,625 Oh, my earphones. 1207 01:01:09,750 --> 01:01:12,625 I'm sorry, man. 1208 01:01:12,750 --> 01:01:16,125 Even Jerry Garcia's cough is melodic. 1209 01:01:16,250 --> 01:01:18,458 Haha, yeah, sure. 1210 01:01:18,500 --> 01:01:20,709 Even his cough is heavy. 1211 01:01:20,750 --> 01:01:21,625 Even his cough is heavy. 1212 01:01:24,834 --> 01:01:28,583 These guys, there's Jerry Garcia and Duane Allman. 1213 01:01:43,750 --> 01:01:47,083 I mean, stuff like that couldn't happen today with musicians. 1214 01:01:47,125 --> 01:01:49,834 Unless they were paid big bucks, by, you know, a record company 1215 01:01:49,875 --> 01:01:51,750 or somebody to go and do that. 1216 01:01:51,875 --> 01:01:54,625 But here's these two guys coming up, they'd each played 1217 01:01:54,709 --> 01:01:55,625 their respective gigs, and they came up, 1218 01:01:55,709 --> 01:01:58,375 and they played for two hours. 1219 01:02:20,750 --> 01:02:24,000 The video theatre presents... 1220 01:02:24,750 --> 01:02:27,000 "Reefer Madness." 1221 01:02:27,083 --> 01:02:29,959 In order to exist we had to have commercials, 1222 01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:31,500 so everybody knew that. 1223 01:02:31,583 --> 01:02:33,750 Even the most jaded announcer knew that. 1224 01:02:33,834 --> 01:02:36,834 The advertisers tended to be small shops. 1225 01:02:36,875 --> 01:02:38,625 The ads were incredibly inventive and funny. 1226 01:02:43,709 --> 01:02:46,458 Michael Fremer was a stand-up comedian 1227 01:02:46,500 --> 01:02:48,875 in Boston and he did a lot of voices. 1228 01:02:50,959 --> 01:02:52,834 FREMER Hey, what's the matter now, Beaver? 1229 01:02:52,875 --> 01:02:54,750 Gee Wally, I don't know, 1230 01:02:54,875 --> 01:02:57,000 it's just that there's a big sale 1231 01:02:57,125 --> 01:02:57,709 at New England Music City, and Cheap Thrills, 1232 01:02:57,750 --> 01:03:00,083 and Eddie Haskell took all my money. 1233 01:03:00,125 --> 01:03:01,750 You didn't turn the advertisement off. 1234 01:03:01,834 --> 01:03:04,500 You either turned it up or listened to it. 1235 01:03:04,583 --> 01:03:06,458 What could be better for an advertiser than have someone 1236 01:03:06,500 --> 01:03:07,875 listen to your commercial? 1237 01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:10,625 The sales people didn't decide what went on the air, 1238 01:03:10,709 --> 01:03:11,709 the announcers decided what went on the air. 1239 01:03:11,750 --> 01:03:13,959 Didn't care about the ratings. 1240 01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:14,750 We didn't care about any of that stuff. 1241 01:03:14,834 --> 01:03:18,250 We were just concerned about doing great radio. 1242 01:03:18,333 --> 01:03:18,834 Partly, it was the sound. 1243 01:03:18,875 --> 01:03:21,250 We didn't want a hype sound on the air. 1244 01:03:21,333 --> 01:03:21,834 It just didn't fit. 1245 01:03:21,875 --> 01:03:23,875 But the other thing was the product. 1246 01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:27,834 The whole sense of this product is right 1247 01:03:27,875 --> 01:03:31,208 for this station, for WBCN. 1248 01:03:31,250 --> 01:03:32,834 This product is not. 1249 01:03:32,875 --> 01:03:34,625 And of course they were appalled. 1250 01:03:34,709 --> 01:03:36,208 They were doing us a favor. 1251 01:03:36,250 --> 01:03:41,750 Here we were, this independent rock and roll station, 1252 01:03:41,834 --> 01:03:44,875 and they were nice enough to call us and want to do us 1253 01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:47,500 a favor and give us an ad and then we'd tell them, 1254 01:03:47,625 --> 01:03:48,750 "I'm sorry, it's too ugly." 1255 01:03:48,834 --> 01:03:51,125 On the bulletin board at WBCN, 1256 01:03:51,250 --> 01:03:54,333 there's a handwritten sign, which says at the top, 1257 01:03:54,375 --> 01:03:56,875 "We don't want to advertise:" 1258 01:03:57,000 --> 01:03:59,625 there follows, "cosmetics, hair oils, deodorants, 1259 01:03:59,709 --> 01:04:02,750 "underwear, WBCN news department. 1260 01:04:02,834 --> 01:04:05,375 "Any product that purports to make a person better liked 1261 01:04:05,500 --> 01:04:06,875 or more pleasing than his real self." 1262 01:04:07,000 --> 01:04:10,583 For a sponsor to say, "Like the real you's 1263 01:04:10,625 --> 01:04:13,834 a drag, man, if you use our product, you can be better." 1264 01:04:13,875 --> 01:04:16,250 Well, you know, like, we just don't like to do that, 1265 01:04:16,375 --> 01:04:17,750 because it's just not real, 1266 01:04:17,834 --> 01:04:19,125 it's just not what's really happening. 1267 01:04:19,208 --> 01:04:20,458 One of the reasons they listen to us 1268 01:04:20,500 --> 01:04:22,000 is to get away from that crap. 1269 01:04:22,125 --> 01:04:25,333 I was on the front page of "Advertising Week" every week. 1270 01:04:25,375 --> 01:04:26,750 I was the highest grossing... 1271 01:04:26,875 --> 01:04:28,875 I was getting A.M. time, 1272 01:04:28,959 --> 01:04:33,375 I was getting $55 for a 30-second spot. 1273 01:04:33,458 --> 01:04:38,625 I had done that in 14 months, so we revolutionized... 1274 01:04:38,750 --> 01:04:43,250 And, of course, a year later, every station in the country 1275 01:04:43,333 --> 01:04:45,125 tried to sound like BCN. 1276 01:04:49,875 --> 01:04:53,875 Larry Glick for the WNEX Public Affairs Department. 1277 01:04:54,000 --> 01:04:55,750 Guam-based B-52 bombers hit 1278 01:04:55,875 --> 01:04:58,750 South Vietnam's notorious guerilla-infested zone. 1279 01:04:58,875 --> 01:05:01,625 In the very beginning we did not have news on, 1280 01:05:01,709 --> 01:05:04,875 because our attitude was, all these other radio stations 1281 01:05:05,000 --> 01:05:08,125 these days have five minutes of news at the top of the hour 1282 01:05:08,208 --> 01:05:09,959 and some of them have a half-hour news at 6:00, 1283 01:05:10,000 --> 01:05:12,834 and news is perfectly well covered. 1284 01:05:12,875 --> 01:05:15,709 We were getting heat on that from the, you know, 1285 01:05:15,750 --> 01:05:20,959 you had a certain obligation as far as the FCC was concerned 1286 01:05:21,000 --> 01:05:24,750 to provide news and public affairs. 1287 01:05:24,875 --> 01:05:26,834 So Charles is saying to me in this period, 1288 01:05:26,875 --> 01:05:29,875 "Come and do the news, come do the news. 1289 01:05:29,959 --> 01:05:31,875 "You know, just don't come on and call me, 1290 01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:33,709 "and say, 'Here's a demonstration,' 1291 01:05:33,750 --> 01:05:33,875 come do the news." 1292 01:05:33,959 --> 01:05:36,500 But I didn't want to do it. 1293 01:05:36,583 --> 01:05:38,500 That's not me, I'm an organizer, I'm not the news. 1294 01:05:38,625 --> 01:05:44,375 And by chance, a dear friend of mine, Bo Burlingham, 1295 01:05:44,458 --> 01:05:47,250 just one of the sweetest people in the world, 1296 01:05:47,375 --> 01:05:49,375 shows up on my doorstep, 1297 01:05:49,458 --> 01:05:53,083 and he has been, much to my great sadness, 1298 01:05:53,125 --> 01:05:55,333 caught up in Weathermen. 1299 01:05:55,375 --> 01:05:57,875 Well, I was as desperate as everybody else was 1300 01:05:57,959 --> 01:06:03,250 because it looked like the war was going on interminably. 1301 01:06:03,375 --> 01:06:07,250 Students for Democratic Society, when it started out, 1302 01:06:07,375 --> 01:06:08,834 it was very nonviolent. 1303 01:06:08,875 --> 01:06:09,875 The Weathermen actually seemed like 1304 01:06:09,959 --> 01:06:15,625 they were serious about doing something, and I decided, 1305 01:06:15,750 --> 01:06:17,083 I would go with them. 1306 01:06:17,125 --> 01:06:19,208 And now, much to my great delight, 1307 01:06:19,250 --> 01:06:24,750 he and his soon-to-be-wife Lisa show up on our doorstep and say, 1308 01:06:24,875 --> 01:06:25,959 "We're out. Out of Weathermen." 1309 01:06:26,000 --> 01:06:27,959 And... and they lived with us for a while, 1310 01:06:28,000 --> 01:06:30,000 and then got on their feet. 1311 01:06:30,083 --> 01:06:34,625 I was in a situation where I needed to get a job. 1312 01:06:34,709 --> 01:06:38,583 So, I was talking to Michael about that and he said, 1313 01:06:38,625 --> 01:06:43,959 "Well I heard that WBCN is looking for a news director." 1314 01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:49,125 So I go in, I introduced Bo to Charles and to Ray, 1315 01:06:49,208 --> 01:06:53,250 and they hire him and we put together some volunteers, 1316 01:06:53,375 --> 01:06:56,959 including Danny Schechter, who will support him. 1317 01:06:57,000 --> 01:07:00,750 We came up with a plan that we were going to get together 1318 01:07:00,875 --> 01:07:02,250 a team of people, who were going to gather 1319 01:07:02,333 --> 01:07:05,875 the news during the day, and then Charles was actually 1320 01:07:06,000 --> 01:07:09,875 going to read it, with, you know, rock and roll, 1321 01:07:09,959 --> 01:07:11,125 and all sorts of other things going on. 1322 01:07:11,250 --> 01:07:14,959 When the sun came up this morning, 1323 01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:17,125 the WBCN news team was there. 1324 01:07:17,208 --> 01:07:19,709 For them it was just the start of another day. 1325 01:07:22,834 --> 01:07:27,375 The first day we did okay, 1326 01:07:27,500 --> 01:07:28,125 and then Thursday rolled around, 1327 01:07:28,250 --> 01:07:31,458 we had this meeting over lunch, 1328 01:07:31,500 --> 01:07:32,875 and I remember they all left, 1329 01:07:32,959 --> 01:07:35,208 and then I heard the ticker machine, 1330 01:07:35,250 --> 01:07:36,959 which was where we got most of the news. 1331 01:07:37,000 --> 01:07:39,750 And it said, "Flash, flash, flash." 1332 01:07:39,834 --> 01:07:44,000 A federal grand jury in Detroit today charged the 13 top leaders 1333 01:07:44,083 --> 01:07:47,625 of the Weathermen with plotting to bomb public buildings 1334 01:07:47,750 --> 01:07:50,625 in Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Berkeley, California. 1335 01:07:50,750 --> 01:07:53,500 Attorney John Mitchell said, "The indictments grew out of 1336 01:07:53,625 --> 01:07:56,625 "an investigation begun after three other Weathermen 1337 01:07:56,750 --> 01:07:59,500 "blew themselves up in a fashionable townhouse 1338 01:07:59,583 --> 01:08:02,000 in New York's Greenwich Village in March." 1339 01:08:02,125 --> 01:08:03,125 David? 1340 01:08:03,250 --> 01:08:06,250 I looked at the list of names, 1341 01:08:06,375 --> 01:08:08,000 and it started off with a bunch of names of people 1342 01:08:08,083 --> 01:08:11,375 who I knew were underground. 1343 01:08:11,458 --> 01:08:14,750 And I got to the last name on the list and it said, 1344 01:08:14,834 --> 01:08:17,041 "Robert Burlingham." 1345 01:08:17,166 --> 01:08:21,500 And I was, you know, I was totally stunned, 1346 01:08:21,542 --> 01:08:24,625 and I'd really not been involved at all in the underground. 1347 01:08:24,667 --> 01:08:28,917 Bo comes in with this... the thing he'd ripped, and he says, 1348 01:08:29,041 --> 01:08:30,542 "Charles, we have a problem." 1349 01:08:30,667 --> 01:08:32,917 Long before they said, "Houston, we have a problem." 1350 01:08:33,000 --> 01:08:34,417 It was, "Charles we have a problem." 1351 01:08:34,542 --> 01:08:39,125 And I looked at it and it says, "Attorney General John Mitchell 1352 01:08:39,166 --> 01:08:41,125 has just announced that indictments are being issued 1353 01:08:41,166 --> 01:08:44,917 in Detroit for 13 Weathermen.” 1354 01:08:45,041 --> 01:08:47,750 And so I go, "So what's wrong with this?" 1355 01:08:47,792 --> 01:08:50,542 And he says, "Seventh name." 1356 01:08:50,625 --> 01:08:52,166 I look down, seventh name, 1357 01:08:52,291 --> 01:08:55,250 Bo Burlingham, my news director. 1358 01:08:55,291 --> 01:08:58,375 So he calls me up right away and says, "Oh my God, 1359 01:08:58,417 --> 01:09:00,542 I'm about to be arrested-- the FBI." 1360 01:09:00,667 --> 01:09:02,041 So I come and pick him up. 1361 01:09:02,166 --> 01:09:06,291 The first thing Michael and I did when I left BCN 1362 01:09:06,417 --> 01:09:09,291 was to go see Ray Riepen, who had hired me. 1363 01:09:09,417 --> 01:09:12,041 I said, "Well, you know, geez, I got this... 1364 01:09:12,166 --> 01:09:14,000 "this is a federally licensed business, it makes me nervous 1365 01:09:14,041 --> 01:09:16,917 "to have a guy that's indicted for dynamiting federal buildings 1366 01:09:17,041 --> 01:09:18,542 "on the payroll. 1367 01:09:18,667 --> 01:09:19,166 I gotta let you go." 1368 01:09:19,291 --> 01:09:22,291 And he said, I'm actually a part owner, 1369 01:09:22,417 --> 01:09:23,166 I have a newspaper 1370 01:09:23,291 --> 01:09:27,917 "called the 'Cambridge Phoenix,' and if you wanted to, 1371 01:09:28,000 --> 01:09:29,125 you could work there." 1372 01:09:29,166 --> 01:09:31,750 I thought that was very generous of him. 1373 01:09:31,792 --> 01:09:34,291 So that's what we did, and he wrote for the newspaper then 1374 01:09:34,375 --> 01:09:36,125 for a year or two, and then I think, 1375 01:09:36,166 --> 01:09:40,542 "Mother Jones" out on the West Coast. 1376 01:09:40,625 --> 01:09:43,000 Meanwhile we're getting the lawyers to work on it 1377 01:09:43,041 --> 01:09:44,417 and the FBI had no idea. 1378 01:09:44,500 --> 01:09:47,750 I mean, he's doing the news on WBCN, 1379 01:09:47,792 --> 01:09:50,291 and the FBI has no idea he's in Boston. 1380 01:09:50,375 --> 01:09:52,792 All charges were dropped, yeah, there were all sorts of 1381 01:09:52,917 --> 01:09:54,166 illegalities and irregularities. 1382 01:09:54,291 --> 01:09:57,291 And so we needed a new news director, 1383 01:09:57,375 --> 01:10:01,291 and... and that's when Danny Schechter came into the picture. 1384 01:10:01,417 --> 01:10:03,166 We'll have news coming up 1385 01:10:03,250 --> 01:10:05,625 in about five minutes-- Danny was out covering things... 1386 01:10:05,667 --> 01:10:09,917 I became the news director at BCN, you know, 1387 01:10:10,041 --> 01:10:12,166 filling in for Bo Burlingham. 1388 01:10:12,250 --> 01:10:14,125 And I bring... I write script, 1389 01:10:14,166 --> 01:10:17,417 and I bring it to the DJ to read. 1390 01:10:17,542 --> 01:10:19,041 It was a 2:00 newscast. 1391 01:10:19,125 --> 01:10:22,166 Jim Parry was the DJ, and he takes a look at 1392 01:10:22,250 --> 01:10:25,625 what I typed out and he says, "I can't read this. 1393 01:10:25,667 --> 01:10:27,166 "I can't even... I can't even understand what it's saying, 1394 01:10:27,250 --> 01:10:29,667 "this is a sloppy mess. 1395 01:10:29,792 --> 01:10:30,875 You read it." 1396 01:10:30,917 --> 01:10:32,625 He then introduces me. 1397 01:10:32,667 --> 01:10:35,667 "And now Danny Schechter 1398 01:10:35,750 --> 01:10:38,792 the news inspector, the news ingestor." 1399 01:10:38,875 --> 01:10:39,250 I started playing with these, 1400 01:10:39,291 --> 01:10:41,917 "Danny Schechter, the news inspector, 1401 01:10:42,000 --> 01:10:43,792 Danny Schechter the news selector," 1402 01:10:43,875 --> 01:10:46,792 and sort of the news dissector was one of those. 1403 01:10:46,875 --> 01:10:48,166 And, I loved that idea of the news dissector, 1404 01:10:48,250 --> 01:10:50,750 and it sort of stuck. 1405 01:10:50,792 --> 01:10:53,667 In the news right now, police in Boston 1406 01:10:53,750 --> 01:10:56,667 got orders this morning to halt an anti-war demonstration. 1407 01:10:56,792 --> 01:10:57,291 About 30 Vietnam veterans, 1408 01:10:57,417 --> 01:11:02,291 carrying toy M-16 rifles and in full fatigues, 1409 01:11:02,417 --> 01:11:04,417 stalked across City Hall plaza 1410 01:11:04,500 --> 01:11:07,166 in a mock search and destroy mission. 1411 01:11:07,250 --> 01:11:10,500 This was an era in which, you know, the Vietnam War 1412 01:11:10,542 --> 01:11:12,041 hung over everything. 1413 01:11:12,166 --> 01:11:16,542 While I was at BCN I tried to cover it in a different way 1414 01:11:16,625 --> 01:11:18,250 than it was being covered by other media outlets. 1415 01:11:18,291 --> 01:11:21,375 The AP copy would come over. 1416 01:11:21,417 --> 01:11:26,917 And it would make a reference to 40 of the enemy were killed. 1417 01:11:27,041 --> 01:11:29,041 And Danny would just scratch it out, 1418 01:11:29,166 --> 01:11:32,000 and he would eliminate the word "enemy." 1419 01:11:32,041 --> 01:11:34,542 And, of course, at the time, all you were hearing was, 1420 01:11:34,625 --> 01:11:35,250 you know, "the enemy this," "the enemy that." 1421 01:11:35,291 --> 01:11:38,041 We were killing people 1422 01:11:38,125 --> 01:11:41,750 who, who were presented as our enemies and they weren't. 1423 01:11:41,792 --> 01:11:46,166 As far as the war was concerned, there was critical commentary, 1424 01:11:46,250 --> 01:11:48,125 but if you look at the criticism 1425 01:11:48,166 --> 01:11:50,125 it's, "We're not fighting it the right way, 1426 01:11:50,166 --> 01:11:52,542 we're making mistakes, we should do better." 1427 01:11:52,625 --> 01:11:54,166 Danny was an exception. 1428 01:11:54,291 --> 01:11:59,166 That's why people who had a different picture of the world, 1429 01:11:59,291 --> 01:12:02,375 including many young people, tuned in to hear 1430 01:12:02,417 --> 01:12:05,041 Danny Schechter, your news dissector, 1431 01:12:05,166 --> 01:12:06,750 I think at 6:00. 1432 01:12:06,792 --> 01:12:09,542 And then you got a picture of what was actually happening 1433 01:12:09,625 --> 01:12:11,542 from a very different point of view. 1434 01:12:11,667 --> 01:12:17,291 The WBCN news team didn't have a model for how to do the news. 1435 01:12:17,375 --> 01:12:23,625 They were creating what it would mean for 1436 01:12:23,667 --> 01:12:28,291 a rebellious rock and roll, freeform 1437 01:12:28,375 --> 01:12:32,000 FM station to start incorporating news. 1438 01:12:34,417 --> 01:12:35,291 Who's the one 1439 01:12:35,417 --> 01:12:38,375 who has pledged an honorable end to the war in Vietnam? 1440 01:12:41,500 --> 01:12:43,041 Nixon's the one. 1441 01:12:43,166 --> 01:12:45,417 You want peace. I want peace. 1442 01:12:45,542 --> 01:12:47,417 MAN Oh, that's nothing to what 1443 01:12:47,500 --> 01:12:49,041 I could say if I chose. 1444 01:12:49,166 --> 01:12:51,250 They were combining music. 1445 01:12:51,291 --> 01:12:53,792 They were combining hard news. 1446 01:12:53,875 --> 01:12:57,792 They were combining parodies and comedies, 1447 01:12:57,917 --> 01:13:02,166 and did so brilliantly, in a way that paved the way 1448 01:13:02,291 --> 01:13:05,500 for "The Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert. 1449 01:13:05,542 --> 01:13:07,291 And there's a direct line through that. 1450 01:13:07,375 --> 01:13:09,000 I was living in a house with a group of 1451 01:13:09,041 --> 01:13:11,792 people, and one of my roommates was active on behalf 1452 01:13:11,917 --> 01:13:13,291 of the Indians at Wounded Knee. 1453 01:13:13,375 --> 01:13:14,667 The FBI came to the house one morning... 1454 01:13:14,750 --> 01:13:16,417 This was a story that came directly to me, 1455 01:13:16,542 --> 01:13:19,542 woke me up one morning, and I covered it, 1456 01:13:19,625 --> 01:13:21,917 and then we played the whole tape on BCN. 1457 01:13:22,041 --> 01:13:23,291 It was great radio. 1458 01:13:23,417 --> 01:13:25,542 I lived in a house with a number of other people 1459 01:13:25,625 --> 01:13:27,792 who were activists. 1460 01:13:27,917 --> 01:13:31,000 One of them, Bill Zimmerman, was a pilot, 1461 01:13:31,041 --> 01:13:34,000 and he had delivered food to the Indians in Wounded Knee. 1462 01:13:34,041 --> 01:13:37,750 The American Indian movement had seized this tiny village 1463 01:13:37,792 --> 01:13:40,625 on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, 1464 01:13:40,667 --> 01:13:42,417 as a protest against the conditions 1465 01:13:42,500 --> 01:13:45,792 of reservation life in America. 1466 01:13:45,917 --> 01:13:49,500 The hamlet of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, still remains 1467 01:13:49,542 --> 01:13:50,417 under control of militant Indians. 1468 01:13:50,542 --> 01:13:53,500 The government still refuses to talk to their leaders. 1469 01:13:53,542 --> 01:13:58,291 One could drop food into the village via parachute 1470 01:13:58,417 --> 01:14:03,041 and there would be very little the federal forces could do. 1471 01:14:03,166 --> 01:14:05,041 This was an attempt to help them. 1472 01:14:05,125 --> 01:14:06,542 An act of solidarity. 1473 01:14:06,625 --> 01:14:12,792 And we made the drop on April 17, 1973. 1474 01:14:12,875 --> 01:14:16,625 And so eventually the FBI found out about 1475 01:14:16,667 --> 01:14:19,875 who was behind these planes, and this whole action, 1476 01:14:19,917 --> 01:14:25,667 and came to my house, where Bill also had a room, to arrest him. 1477 01:14:25,750 --> 01:14:27,291 And what is your name, sir? 1478 01:14:27,417 --> 01:14:28,667 And who are you, sir? 1479 01:14:28,792 --> 01:14:30,417 My name is Bob Smith, I'm with the FBI. 1480 01:14:30,500 --> 01:14:32,000 - Bob Smith? - That's right. 1481 01:14:32,041 --> 01:14:34,500 They came in, all of them had their guns drawn, 1482 01:14:34,542 --> 01:14:36,542 and they were making a lot of noise, 1483 01:14:36,625 --> 01:14:39,417 so the other people who lived in the house woke up. 1484 01:14:39,542 --> 01:14:41,667 You got the tape recorder going? 1485 01:14:41,792 --> 01:14:42,417 Yes, sir, I certainly do. 1486 01:14:42,500 --> 01:14:44,500 All right, what's your name? 1487 01:14:44,542 --> 01:14:46,041 Dan Schechter. 1488 01:14:46,166 --> 01:14:48,917 WBCN in Boston, I'm covering this here. 1489 01:14:49,000 --> 01:14:54,291 Danny immediately produced a portable tape recorder, 1490 01:14:54,375 --> 01:14:57,000 and went up to one of the FBI agents, 1491 01:14:57,041 --> 01:14:58,792 and introduced himself as 1492 01:14:58,875 --> 01:15:00,667 Danny Schechter, the news dissector, 1493 01:15:00,792 --> 01:15:03,166 and said, "I'm here covering the bust.” 1494 01:15:05,500 --> 01:15:07,166 Are you a resident of this dwelling? 1495 01:15:07,291 --> 01:15:08,667 Yes, no, I'm covering this arrest. 1496 01:15:08,792 --> 01:15:10,000 What's happening here? 1497 01:15:10,041 --> 01:15:10,625 We have a warrant for other people. 1498 01:15:10,667 --> 01:15:13,166 Are you a resident of this dwelling? 1499 01:15:13,250 --> 01:15:14,792 Can you tell me who you have a warrant for? 1500 01:15:14,875 --> 01:15:16,625 We don't have to tell you anything. 1501 01:15:16,667 --> 01:15:18,250 You don't have to tell me anything? 1502 01:15:18,291 --> 01:15:19,750 And they weren't really expecting that. 1503 01:15:19,792 --> 01:15:21,417 That there would be somebody, a journalist, in the house 1504 01:15:21,500 --> 01:15:24,041 actually covering it. 1505 01:15:24,125 --> 01:15:28,041 And so they threatened me, you know, with arrest myself 1506 01:15:28,125 --> 01:15:32,291 about, you know, that I was, you know, interrupting justice. 1507 01:15:32,375 --> 01:15:34,041 Now, if you interfere with us, 1508 01:15:34,125 --> 01:15:34,625 you're interfering with justice. 1509 01:15:34,667 --> 01:15:37,291 We have told you we have a warrant for this man 1510 01:15:37,417 --> 01:15:38,542 and other men. 1511 01:15:38,625 --> 01:15:39,542 Now do not interfere with justice. 1512 01:15:39,625 --> 01:15:42,291 I'm telling you now. Amazing, right? 1513 01:15:42,375 --> 01:15:45,500 His sense of theatrics was amazing. 1514 01:15:45,542 --> 01:15:47,375 You know, in other words, the whole idea 1515 01:15:47,417 --> 01:15:48,917 of challenging these guys, 1516 01:15:49,041 --> 01:15:51,375 "I'm a reporter and I'm covering this story right now." 1517 01:15:51,417 --> 01:15:52,667 The fact that, "This is my house 1518 01:15:52,750 --> 01:15:54,166 and I am just coming out at 6:00 in the morning." 1519 01:15:54,291 --> 01:15:54,417 He probably was, you know, 1520 01:15:54,542 --> 01:15:56,542 wearing his bathrobe or something. 1521 01:15:56,667 --> 01:15:59,542 And Zimmerman was arrested. 1522 01:15:59,667 --> 01:16:01,542 He was, you know, indicted in Boston. 1523 01:16:01,625 --> 01:16:03,500 The charges were later dropped, 1524 01:16:03,542 --> 01:16:06,625 which is often the case, that the FBI would violate 1525 01:16:06,667 --> 01:16:10,542 its own rules and legal protocols. 1526 01:16:10,667 --> 01:16:12,875 I'm sure that they never get that sort of a reaction, 1527 01:16:12,917 --> 01:16:16,750 so that is so great, so typical of the guy. 1528 01:16:19,750 --> 01:16:22,041 To set the stage, 1529 01:16:22,125 --> 01:16:24,291 and it's unthinkable at this point in time, 1530 01:16:24,417 --> 01:16:25,542 women were really 1531 01:16:25,667 --> 01:16:27,667 a curiosity in terms of being on the air then. 1532 01:16:27,750 --> 01:16:30,542 I think even our own enlightened announcers, male announcers, 1533 01:16:30,667 --> 01:16:32,542 may not have been quite so enlightened. 1534 01:16:32,667 --> 01:16:37,375 Because, again, they're coming from an old world 1535 01:16:37,417 --> 01:16:40,291 and moving into this new one. 1536 01:16:40,417 --> 01:16:43,417 I loved BCN, and listened to it all. 1537 01:16:43,542 --> 01:16:46,250 I mean my, you know, my car radio was just, 1538 01:16:46,291 --> 01:16:48,041 that's where it was set, on BCN. 1539 01:16:48,166 --> 01:16:49,917 We used to do public service announcements, 1540 01:16:50,041 --> 01:16:51,625 we called them PSAs for... 1541 01:16:51,667 --> 01:16:52,625 it was called Project Place. 1542 01:16:52,667 --> 01:16:55,667 If you're scared, uptight about anything 1543 01:16:55,750 --> 01:16:59,542 and you're falling, drop into Project Place's drop-in center. 1544 01:16:59,625 --> 01:17:03,542 Project Place needed some help, 1545 01:17:03,625 --> 01:17:08,917 so I made a tape of a PSA, 1546 01:17:09,041 --> 01:17:10,625 "If you're a doctor, you want to call this number, 1547 01:17:10,667 --> 01:17:13,667 and if you're a chick and can type." 1548 01:17:13,792 --> 01:17:18,166 I hear Charles Laquidara, who was one of my faves, 1549 01:17:18,250 --> 01:17:20,041 I love Charles Laquidara too, 1550 01:17:20,125 --> 01:17:22,542 make this announcement saying 1551 01:17:22,667 --> 01:17:25,500 Project Place needs volunteers 1552 01:17:25,542 --> 01:17:29,542 and, "If you're a chick, and can type, call us." 1553 01:17:29,625 --> 01:17:30,542 And I thought, I cannot believe this. 1554 01:17:30,667 --> 01:17:35,667 Calling women "chicks," I think some people thought 1555 01:17:35,792 --> 01:17:39,041 was a hip thing to do, but I think women 1556 01:17:39,166 --> 01:17:40,792 were reading Betty Friedan, you know, at the time. 1557 01:17:40,875 --> 01:17:43,542 So I went to a Bread and Roses meeting, and said, 1558 01:17:43,667 --> 01:17:45,041 "We have to do something about this." 1559 01:17:45,166 --> 01:17:46,917 And one of the people in the group said, 1560 01:17:47,000 --> 01:17:47,542 "Let's get some chicks." 1561 01:17:47,667 --> 01:17:49,667 "Chicks?" - Like little baby chicks. 1562 01:17:49,792 --> 01:17:53,542 And then, in the middle of the next day, 1563 01:17:53,667 --> 01:17:55,667 our poor manager, his name was Len Cohen, 1564 01:17:55,792 --> 01:17:57,542 Len's sitting there, and all of a sudden, 1565 01:17:57,667 --> 01:17:59,291 they come walking in. 1566 01:17:59,417 --> 01:18:01,917 It was suddenly a lot of women getting off the elevator. 1567 01:18:02,041 --> 01:18:04,125 We walked into the office, they had no idea. 1568 01:18:04,166 --> 01:18:08,625 I mean they were like, "What is going on here?" 1569 01:18:08,667 --> 01:18:10,917 And we scattered the chicks and said, you know, 1570 01:18:11,041 --> 01:18:13,000 "These are chicks, we're not chicks." 1571 01:18:13,041 --> 01:18:16,166 They've got a cardboard box they dumped... they opened it up, 1572 01:18:16,291 --> 01:18:20,291 and dumped it on his desk, it's like 40 baby chicks. 1573 01:18:20,375 --> 01:18:21,875 "These are chicks. 1574 01:18:21,917 --> 01:18:23,542 We are women." 1575 01:18:23,625 --> 01:18:26,041 We got up from our desks in the sales room, 1576 01:18:26,125 --> 01:18:28,250 and we saw... I saw some baby chickens 1577 01:18:28,291 --> 01:18:29,917 come out of their hands, 1578 01:18:30,000 --> 01:18:32,000 and the chicks were walking around on Len Cohen's desk. 1579 01:18:32,041 --> 01:18:36,792 It was like within two weeks we had our first women show. 1580 01:18:36,875 --> 01:18:38,667 And that ad, needless to say, went right out the window. 1581 01:18:38,792 --> 01:18:42,792 What happened was it kind of showed that, you know, 1582 01:18:42,875 --> 01:18:46,542 we were open to criticism, and we took it, 1583 01:18:46,667 --> 01:18:48,417 and we did something about it. 1584 01:18:48,500 --> 01:18:51,750 The demands that we made that day included 1585 01:18:51,792 --> 01:18:53,917 that they give us an hour of airtime. 1586 01:18:54,041 --> 01:18:54,875 The following hour was pre-recorded 1587 01:18:54,917 --> 01:18:58,166 by Bread and Roses for Women's Liberation. 1588 01:18:58,250 --> 01:19:00,417 We talked about violence against women, 1589 01:19:00,500 --> 01:19:02,667 we talked about reproductive rights, 1590 01:19:02,792 --> 01:19:06,166 we talked about the major issues of the day, 1591 01:19:06,291 --> 01:19:06,792 and it was played on BCN. 1592 01:19:06,875 --> 01:19:15,250 WBCN took that situation and helped change itself 1593 01:19:15,291 --> 01:19:18,000 but also helped contribute to what was going on 1594 01:19:18,041 --> 01:19:19,417 at that particular time. 1595 01:19:19,542 --> 01:19:22,542 There were no women on the air at BCN, 1596 01:19:22,667 --> 01:19:26,166 so the decision to hire a woman 1597 01:19:26,250 --> 01:19:28,500 was a very important step for the station to take. 1598 01:19:28,542 --> 01:19:32,625 Both Maxanne and Debbie Ullman were hired in rapid succession. 1599 01:19:32,667 --> 01:19:35,166 Maxanne had established herself in Seattle. 1600 01:19:35,291 --> 01:19:37,625 And one of the great things about Maxanne, 1601 01:19:37,667 --> 01:19:38,917 her ears were impeccable. 1602 01:19:39,041 --> 01:19:41,667 Maxanne heard bands that none of us heard. 1603 01:19:41,750 --> 01:19:42,792 And I'm talking about Aerosmith, 1604 01:19:42,917 --> 01:19:45,667 some of us minimized their importance, 1605 01:19:45,750 --> 01:19:46,667 thinking that they were too derivative 1606 01:19:46,792 --> 01:19:48,375 of the Rolling Stones, 1607 01:19:48,417 --> 01:19:50,000 that was an obvious comparison in the beginning. 1608 01:19:50,041 --> 01:19:52,667 You know, Maxanne heard the quality of what they did, 1609 01:19:52,792 --> 01:19:54,917 the musicianship, song writing, and so on, 1610 01:19:55,041 --> 01:19:57,750 and very quickly she was proven right. 1611 01:19:57,792 --> 01:20:01,792 And she kept playing the same song over and over 1612 01:20:01,917 --> 01:20:03,792 by this Boston group, that local group-- 1613 01:20:03,875 --> 01:20:06,291 "Dream on, dream on, dream on." 1614 01:20:06,417 --> 01:20:07,750 "Max, find another song!" 1615 01:20:07,792 --> 01:20:10,041 "This group is going to be huge, Charles!" 1616 01:20:10,166 --> 01:20:11,917 "Yeah, but you don't have to keep playing it." 1617 01:20:12,000 --> 01:20:14,542 And then, of course, she broke Aerosmith, 1618 01:20:14,625 --> 01:20:16,000 broke them in the world. 1619 01:20:20,917 --> 01:20:23,542 Queen. Queen broke out of Boston. 1620 01:20:23,667 --> 01:20:24,750 Maxanne was one of the first people to hear the record, 1621 01:20:24,792 --> 01:20:28,417 the first album, an unlabeled slab of vinyl, 1622 01:20:28,542 --> 01:20:28,792 is what they played it for us on. 1623 01:20:28,917 --> 01:20:30,792 And it knocked her socks off, 1624 01:20:30,917 --> 01:20:33,125 or whatever it was she was wearing on her feet, 1625 01:20:33,166 --> 01:20:34,250 maybe her flip flops. 1626 01:20:34,291 --> 01:20:36,750 And she was invariably right. 1627 01:20:44,166 --> 01:20:47,667 Maxanne rocked harder than any of the rest of us, 1628 01:20:47,750 --> 01:20:50,041 it's not like girls are wimpy musicians. 1629 01:20:50,125 --> 01:20:50,917 Maxanne was out there 1630 01:20:51,000 --> 01:20:55,417 pounding it out, and she became one of the stars because of it. 1631 01:20:55,500 --> 01:20:57,792 It was a rock and roll station, 1632 01:20:57,875 --> 01:21:00,166 that was the part that made it so radical, 1633 01:21:00,250 --> 01:21:04,750 that they accepted that, the demand, and then 1634 01:21:04,792 --> 01:21:07,375 all of a sudden you had, you know, 1635 01:21:07,417 --> 01:21:09,166 these women disc jockeys. 1636 01:21:09,291 --> 01:21:14,542 Picking the music, and interacting with the musicians 1637 01:21:14,625 --> 01:21:16,542 in the way that disc jockeys do, 1638 01:21:16,625 --> 01:21:18,000 and it was like transformative. 1639 01:21:18,041 --> 01:21:23,000 I remember one night I'm listening to BCN, 1640 01:21:23,041 --> 01:21:27,667 I'm at home, and someone called me up, and said, 1641 01:21:27,792 --> 01:21:30,792 "You ought to turn on Jerry Williams." 1642 01:21:30,875 --> 01:21:34,792 He's a famous talk master at the time in Boston. 1643 01:21:34,875 --> 01:21:36,667 Hello America, welcome back, 1644 01:21:36,792 --> 01:21:39,542 fourth and final hour here on WBZ radio, the spirit of 103. 1645 01:21:39,667 --> 01:21:42,041 He was talking about WBCN, so I immediately tune in, 1646 01:21:42,125 --> 01:21:45,041 and I'm listening to these outrageous things 1647 01:21:45,166 --> 01:21:46,750 he's saying about WBCN. 1648 01:21:46,792 --> 01:21:48,291 The free of form I like. 1649 01:21:48,375 --> 01:21:48,917 Right. 1650 01:21:49,041 --> 01:21:51,792 But that business of freaks announcing... 1651 01:21:51,917 --> 01:21:54,291 I agree. 1652 01:21:54,375 --> 01:21:56,000 Like everybody sitting around smoking pot. 1653 01:21:56,041 --> 01:21:59,625 Then he goes on and on about women, 1654 01:21:59,667 --> 01:22:00,917 and how women want to sound like men, 1655 01:22:01,041 --> 01:22:03,917 and they really don't belong on the radio. 1656 01:22:04,041 --> 01:22:07,750 Radio is just a voice. 1657 01:22:07,792 --> 01:22:10,917 And sometimes women's voices, because of the high frequency 1658 01:22:11,000 --> 01:22:13,000 of those voices, sometimes turn some people off. 1659 01:22:13,041 --> 01:22:14,667 Jesus, sounds like another world, doesn't it? 1660 01:22:14,792 --> 01:22:15,917 God! 1661 01:22:16,041 --> 01:22:17,417 You know what turns me off about women on the air? 1662 01:22:17,500 --> 01:22:18,542 No. 1663 01:22:18,667 --> 01:22:19,792 They're trying to be men. 1664 01:22:21,041 --> 01:22:22,792 If they would try to be women, 1665 01:22:22,875 --> 01:22:27,291 be themselves, be female... 1666 01:22:27,417 --> 01:22:29,542 Some women try to fall into that trap of saying, 1667 01:22:29,625 --> 01:22:33,625 "Hi there, Sally Kraufloin, from Los Angeles, California, 1668 01:22:33,667 --> 01:22:35,125 bringing you the news." 1669 01:22:35,166 --> 01:22:37,417 You know, it's... they're on that male kick. 1670 01:22:37,500 --> 01:22:39,041 Be yourself, be like you are. 1671 01:22:39,166 --> 01:22:41,792 As one man said, the radio is a woman's companion 1672 01:22:41,917 --> 01:22:43,291 during the other day. Mm-hmm. 1673 01:22:43,417 --> 01:22:45,291 And I think I would certainly as a woman 1674 01:22:45,375 --> 01:22:45,875 rather listen to a man than listen to a woman 1675 01:22:45,917 --> 01:22:48,041 rattle on and on. 1676 01:22:48,125 --> 01:22:49,625 I could call up any of my friends and talk. 1677 01:22:49,667 --> 01:22:51,917 There's a place in broadcasting for women, 1678 01:22:52,041 --> 01:22:54,542 but not the ones I heard on BCN. 1679 01:22:54,625 --> 01:22:56,250 Wow, they are really straight on. 1680 01:22:58,166 --> 01:23:00,625 I can't even tell the guys from the girls over there, 1681 01:23:00,667 --> 01:23:01,041 for that matter. 1682 01:23:01,166 --> 01:23:03,750 When they're walking down the street 1683 01:23:03,792 --> 01:23:06,000 I can't tell them apart either. 1684 01:23:06,041 --> 01:23:09,417 You know, you look back on it and you think it's like 1685 01:23:09,542 --> 01:23:11,917 looking back on what women used to wear in the 1920s. 1686 01:23:12,041 --> 01:23:14,500 You go, "Oh my God, this can't be real. 1687 01:23:14,542 --> 01:23:15,917 "Did someone really say that? 1688 01:23:16,041 --> 01:23:17,417 Did someone really believe that?" 1689 01:23:17,542 --> 01:23:20,542 But all you can kind of do is look back on it 1690 01:23:20,625 --> 01:23:23,041 and think, as a result of that, 1691 01:23:23,125 --> 01:23:27,500 there was an impetus to change even more quickly. 1692 01:23:27,542 --> 01:23:33,166 You know BCN had a commitment to diversity in music and ideas 1693 01:23:33,250 --> 01:23:34,792 that mattered. 1694 01:23:34,875 --> 01:23:40,041 John Scagliotti and Andy Kopkind came to work at the station 1695 01:23:40,166 --> 01:23:42,500 doing commentaries, they did 1696 01:23:42,542 --> 01:23:46,291 "The Lavender Hour," which was a gay radio program. 1697 01:23:46,417 --> 01:23:49,041 BCN was one of the first places, I think, where 1698 01:23:49,125 --> 01:23:52,041 diversity took off in a much greater way. 1699 01:23:52,166 --> 01:23:54,417 I think the idea that we found ourselves 1700 01:23:54,542 --> 01:23:56,917 in the middle of an experiment 1701 01:23:57,041 --> 01:24:00,667 where gay people, Black people, women, 1702 01:24:00,792 --> 01:24:02,750 were all kind of working together. 1703 01:24:02,792 --> 01:24:07,417 Andy and I were gay, so that changed the dynamics of BCN. 1704 01:24:07,500 --> 01:24:09,166 There were two gay guys there. 1705 01:24:09,291 --> 01:24:12,542 Andy had started a career in "Time" magazine. 1706 01:24:12,625 --> 01:24:14,041 They got him out of London School of Economics. 1707 01:24:14,125 --> 01:24:17,041 You know, he was on his way, he was going to be 1708 01:24:17,166 --> 01:24:19,041 the next editor of "Time" magazine. 1709 01:24:19,166 --> 01:24:21,875 Then he got arrested for being gay in Griffith Park, 1710 01:24:21,917 --> 01:24:23,250 and that ended, and then he went to work for 1711 01:24:23,291 --> 01:24:26,792 the "New Republic" and he embraced his... 1712 01:24:26,917 --> 01:24:28,500 the Civil Rights and all these other things 1713 01:24:28,542 --> 01:24:30,166 that he grew up with and felt, 1714 01:24:30,250 --> 01:24:33,041 but now was able to work on them in a much... a real way, 1715 01:24:33,125 --> 01:24:37,417 but he was very talented and was a good writer. 1716 01:24:37,542 --> 01:24:41,417 We had covered a lot of gay stuff in our news, 1717 01:24:41,542 --> 01:24:43,041 and we did the first gay pride march in New York. 1718 01:24:43,125 --> 01:24:45,917 Bette Midler! 1719 01:24:48,792 --> 01:24:50,417 We always followed the cultural aspects 1720 01:24:50,500 --> 01:24:51,000 in our programming, 1721 01:24:51,041 --> 01:24:55,041 so of course Bette Midler would be on the, you know, 1722 01:24:55,166 --> 01:24:58,917 the first gay pride coverage on WBCN. 1723 01:25:09,125 --> 01:25:12,667 And then Sunday night was never a big time, 1724 01:25:12,750 --> 01:25:15,041 and so Norm, he didn't know what to do with Sunday night, 1725 01:25:15,166 --> 01:25:17,375 and nobody wanted to do it. 1726 01:25:17,417 --> 01:25:20,667 And so he came up with this cockamamie idea of "Potluck." 1727 01:25:20,792 --> 01:25:23,291 Which would be that anybody could sign up for "Potluck" 1728 01:25:23,417 --> 01:25:26,250 and be on the radio in our staff. 1729 01:25:26,291 --> 01:25:28,917 So it was our chance, Andy and my chance, 1730 01:25:29,000 --> 01:25:31,291 to actually be DJs, you know, because we were doing the news 1731 01:25:31,375 --> 01:25:32,792 and all of this, but we just wanted 1732 01:25:32,917 --> 01:25:34,291 to go and play some records. 1733 01:25:34,417 --> 01:25:37,375 You know, we love playing music, we had parties at our house. 1734 01:25:37,417 --> 01:25:40,667 We had the greatest gay parties in town on Newbury Street. 1735 01:25:48,250 --> 01:25:50,125 But we figured we couldn't just be DJs 1736 01:25:50,166 --> 01:25:53,250 so we decided to do the first "Lavender Hour." 1737 01:25:53,291 --> 01:25:56,542 The "Lavender Hour" was a very important addition 1738 01:25:56,625 --> 01:25:57,125 to what was going on. 1739 01:25:57,166 --> 01:26:04,542 The first time that people could actually come out. 1740 01:26:04,667 --> 01:26:07,166 No one was doing anything like that on the radio in those days. 1741 01:26:07,291 --> 01:26:09,625 That was really pioneering stuff. 1742 01:26:09,667 --> 01:26:12,792 If you've been to a gay bar or a gay dance 1743 01:26:12,917 --> 01:26:14,542 in the last six or seven years, 1744 01:26:14,667 --> 01:26:17,750 you've heard the jukebox play the Supremes' 1745 01:26:17,792 --> 01:26:19,166 "Stop in the Name of Love." 1746 01:26:19,291 --> 01:26:21,166 And tonight, for our "Potluck" show, 1747 01:26:21,291 --> 01:26:23,166 we'll find some other music 1748 01:26:23,291 --> 01:26:25,625 and poetry that expresses the range 1749 01:26:25,667 --> 01:26:27,917 of gay experience these days. 1750 01:26:28,041 --> 01:26:30,291 Or I'd go out and interview David Bowie, 1751 01:26:30,375 --> 01:26:34,041 and have a fight with David Bowie at a press conference 1752 01:26:34,166 --> 01:26:37,291 about why he was just going to be a bisexual, 1753 01:26:37,375 --> 01:26:38,250 why wasn't he coming out all the way? 1754 01:26:38,291 --> 01:26:41,542 And he would yell at me 1755 01:26:41,667 --> 01:26:43,166 and then we'd play "Changes." 1756 01:26:43,250 --> 01:26:44,291 What made you start writing gay songs? 1757 01:26:44,375 --> 01:26:48,166 Um... what made me start writing gay songs? 1758 01:26:48,250 --> 01:26:49,166 Well, let's put it this way, 1759 01:26:49,250 --> 01:26:52,041 it's not something that would be normally acceptable 1760 01:26:52,166 --> 01:26:53,166 on the top 40 market or any rock market 1761 01:26:53,291 --> 01:26:55,667 before you started writing. 1762 01:26:55,792 --> 01:26:57,166 Well, you see, it's acceptable to the people 1763 01:26:57,291 --> 01:26:58,917 that I've wrote to and play for. 1764 01:26:59,041 --> 01:27:00,917 That always has been. 1765 01:27:01,000 --> 01:27:02,291 Who doesn't like gay people? 1766 01:27:02,417 --> 01:27:05,667 There's no... there's no antagonism at all. 1767 01:27:05,792 --> 01:27:08,166 You seriously believe that gay people 1768 01:27:08,250 --> 01:27:10,166 are not subject to oppression in this world, are you crazy? 1769 01:27:10,250 --> 01:27:12,417 Who said that I didn't? 1770 01:27:12,500 --> 01:27:13,917 I said that I found no hostility towards anyone. 1771 01:27:14,041 --> 01:27:15,250 Well, that is . 1772 01:27:15,291 --> 01:27:16,917 Okay, well I'm not trying to be hostile. 1773 01:27:17,041 --> 01:27:18,792 You have done some openly gay stuff, 1774 01:27:18,917 --> 01:27:20,166 which I was very glad to hear for the first time, 1775 01:27:20,291 --> 01:27:22,667 coming from a singer. 1776 01:27:22,750 --> 01:27:24,291 You must have had some process of forethought 1777 01:27:24,375 --> 01:27:26,875 before you actually started writing material. 1778 01:27:26,917 --> 01:27:29,375 I was inspired. 1779 01:27:29,417 --> 01:27:31,542 Well, I just thought it was just me, this is my life, 1780 01:27:31,667 --> 01:27:35,291 I was in a little bubble, you know, this gay bubble, 1781 01:27:35,375 --> 01:27:37,542 where it wasn't a big deal and the people I worked with 1782 01:27:37,625 --> 01:27:38,291 didn't find it a big deal. 1783 01:27:38,375 --> 01:27:42,917 But, guess what, it's 50,000, or a million watts, 1784 01:27:43,041 --> 01:27:44,291 or I don't know, huge watts. 1785 01:27:44,375 --> 01:27:46,041 People are listening to you in New Hampshire, 1786 01:27:46,125 --> 01:27:47,417 they're listening way out in western Mass. 1787 01:27:47,542 --> 01:27:51,166 And all of a sudden there's this gay thing on the radio. 1788 01:27:51,250 --> 01:27:53,542 The first time on commercial radio 1789 01:27:53,625 --> 01:27:56,875 that a gay program had ever been on. 1790 01:27:56,917 --> 01:27:59,375 We didn't know that, now we do, but we didn't know it then. 1791 01:27:59,417 --> 01:28:02,750 Then we started getting letters, and it was really incredible 1792 01:28:02,792 --> 01:28:03,917 to get this letter from kids 1793 01:28:04,000 --> 01:28:05,917 who were like gay, 16, 1794 01:28:06,041 --> 01:28:07,917 and we would get like a letter 1795 01:28:08,000 --> 01:28:12,417 that would say, "Oh, I was thinking of committing suicide. 1796 01:28:12,542 --> 01:28:15,166 And it just saved me, it just saved me." 1797 01:28:15,291 --> 01:28:17,417 All of a sudden I realized, "My God, I'm having a great time 1798 01:28:17,500 --> 01:28:19,375 being a DJ doing 'The Lavender Hour,' 1799 01:28:19,417 --> 01:28:21,375 and all this other stuff," and meanwhile people 1800 01:28:21,417 --> 01:28:25,500 are actually seeing this 1801 01:28:25,542 --> 01:28:27,417 turning into such a massive moment for their lives, 1802 01:28:27,500 --> 01:28:30,667 was pretty incredible, very incredible. 1803 01:28:32,417 --> 01:28:35,166 Good evening my fellow Americans. 1804 01:28:35,291 --> 01:28:39,166 When Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, 1805 01:28:39,291 --> 01:28:42,417 WBCN was on and they said, 1806 01:28:42,542 --> 01:28:45,375 "Turn on the TV, the president's going to talk." 1807 01:28:45,417 --> 01:28:48,375 So we turned on the television 1808 01:28:48,417 --> 01:28:54,625 and there's Nixon pointing to Cambodia and Laos. 1809 01:28:54,667 --> 01:28:59,792 We take this action not for the purpose of expanding the war 1810 01:28:59,875 --> 01:29:01,291 into Cambodia, 1811 01:29:01,375 --> 01:29:04,667 but for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam. 1812 01:29:04,792 --> 01:29:07,417 It looked like he was winding down the war at the beginning, 1813 01:29:07,500 --> 01:29:09,792 but then he escalated. 1814 01:29:09,875 --> 01:29:14,166 And, you know, BCN said, "There's going to be 1815 01:29:14,250 --> 01:29:15,417 a demonstration, you know, tomorrow." 1816 01:29:15,542 --> 01:29:18,166 My recollection is from like 1817 01:29:18,291 --> 01:29:23,291 May 1st through May 4th 1818 01:29:23,417 --> 01:29:25,792 there were giant protests across the country. 1819 01:29:25,917 --> 01:29:30,417 That was the start of what eventually led to Kent State. 1820 01:29:30,500 --> 01:29:35,417 At Kent State itself they went to demonstrate 1821 01:29:35,542 --> 01:29:39,291 and the administration said that they couldn't. 1822 01:29:39,375 --> 01:29:43,125 So it was an "illegal demonstration" 1823 01:29:43,166 --> 01:29:44,291 and they called in the National Guard. 1824 01:29:44,417 --> 01:29:47,542 I'm David Brinkley, NBC News. 1825 01:29:47,667 --> 01:29:50,500 Kent State University in Ohio has had campus violence 1826 01:29:50,542 --> 01:29:54,750 for three nights causing the National Guard to be called in, 1827 01:29:54,792 --> 01:29:58,125 and today the guardsmen opened fire on the students, 1828 01:29:58,166 --> 01:29:59,291 killing four of them-- 1829 01:29:59,375 --> 01:30:01,542 two young men and two young women. 1830 01:30:13,542 --> 01:30:17,500 When students were shot by the National Guard 1831 01:30:17,542 --> 01:30:19,542 and they didn't have weapons, 1832 01:30:19,625 --> 01:30:23,417 and it was such a shock, it was such a crime. 1833 01:30:23,500 --> 01:30:26,250 I don't think anyone anticipated 1834 01:30:26,291 --> 01:30:29,291 that sort of response from the authorities 1835 01:30:29,375 --> 01:30:33,625 and the consequences were irreparable. 1836 01:30:33,667 --> 01:30:38,500 So college campuses everywhere reacted to this. 1837 01:30:38,542 --> 01:30:39,542 Boston University, Brown, 1838 01:30:39,625 --> 01:30:43,417 and Tufts have suspended classes for the rest of the school year. 1839 01:30:43,542 --> 01:30:45,041 A national coordinating center 1840 01:30:45,166 --> 01:30:46,542 at Brandeis University says there were 1841 01:30:46,667 --> 01:30:49,917 240 such strikes today. 1842 01:30:50,041 --> 01:30:53,291 There was a war going on, and it wasn't just a war in Vietnam, 1843 01:30:53,417 --> 01:30:54,417 there was a war at home. 1844 01:30:54,542 --> 01:30:57,041 There was a war covering up the war. 1845 01:30:57,166 --> 01:31:00,667 There was a culture in Boston that was partial to, 1846 01:31:00,750 --> 01:31:03,500 supportive of, actually informing people 1847 01:31:03,542 --> 01:31:06,500 about what was really going on and BCN was part of it. 1848 01:31:06,542 --> 01:31:09,000 It was at this period 1849 01:31:09,041 --> 01:31:13,667 that BCN was coming to be a voice that was quite unique 1850 01:31:13,792 --> 01:31:16,625 and courageous and that made a huge difference. 1851 01:31:16,667 --> 01:31:20,542 The FBI is reported preparing to shut down some of the 500 1852 01:31:20,625 --> 01:31:22,500 small agencies it maintains around the country 1853 01:31:22,542 --> 01:31:24,500 because of security reasons. 1854 01:31:24,542 --> 01:31:27,500 Last month more than a thousand documents were stolen 1855 01:31:27,542 --> 01:31:30,542 from the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. 1856 01:31:30,667 --> 01:31:35,625 This story here, it's another example of BCN 1857 01:31:35,667 --> 01:31:39,667 trying to inform the public about information 1858 01:31:39,792 --> 01:31:42,166 that major media and the government 1859 01:31:42,250 --> 01:31:43,917 didn't want people to know about. 1860 01:31:44,000 --> 01:31:44,625 Can you explain what happened-- 1861 01:31:44,667 --> 01:31:47,542 they went in, they stole files? 1862 01:31:47,625 --> 01:31:49,417 I mean there was an activist group that found 1863 01:31:49,542 --> 01:31:51,500 a FBI office 1864 01:31:51,542 --> 01:31:53,500 in Media, Pennsylvania, of all things. 1865 01:31:53,542 --> 01:31:56,875 That name is fascinating, you know. 1866 01:31:56,917 --> 01:31:58,542 And they were able to... 1867 01:31:58,667 --> 01:32:01,000 we would say then liberate these documents 1868 01:32:01,041 --> 01:32:02,500 and try to make them public. 1869 01:32:02,542 --> 01:32:04,792 And, you know, so BCN was certainly interested 1870 01:32:04,917 --> 01:32:07,417 in this information because it was about the ways in which 1871 01:32:07,542 --> 01:32:10,041 our government was spying on us. 1872 01:32:10,125 --> 01:32:12,542 And, of course, the government didn't want this known 1873 01:32:12,625 --> 01:32:13,667 and we did want it known. 1874 01:32:13,750 --> 01:32:15,417 They started reading them on the air, 1875 01:32:15,542 --> 01:32:18,041 all that spying, 1876 01:32:18,125 --> 01:32:24,875 all that kind of, you know, COINTELPRO stuff became public. 1877 01:32:24,917 --> 01:32:28,041 And that undermined any possibility that 1878 01:32:28,166 --> 01:32:32,041 that would ever be secret and they couldn't stop it. 1879 01:32:32,125 --> 01:32:35,667 Danny did a really good job at like "Just read it, read it, 1880 01:32:35,792 --> 01:32:36,500 read it on the air." 1881 01:32:36,542 --> 01:32:38,542 I mean what it says about BCN, 1882 01:32:38,625 --> 01:32:41,542 and particularly about, like, 1883 01:32:41,625 --> 01:32:43,625 Al Perry, who was the general manager at that time, 1884 01:32:43,667 --> 01:32:46,542 it's like he didn't try and shut that down. 1885 01:32:46,625 --> 01:32:48,500 I remember this, yeah, yeah. 1886 01:32:48,542 --> 01:32:53,041 Look... what's the issue here? 1887 01:32:53,125 --> 01:32:55,291 Danny didn't steal them. 1888 01:32:55,417 --> 01:32:58,166 They were made available to him, so, yeah. 1889 01:32:58,250 --> 01:33:02,625 What are you gonna... you're not gonna... you know... 1890 01:33:02,667 --> 01:33:06,875 If you don't do this, then it's... it's just... 1891 01:33:06,917 --> 01:33:09,542 they're in control, complete control, and you can't... 1892 01:33:09,667 --> 01:33:12,792 You know, there's... there's a time when you have to 1893 01:33:12,917 --> 01:33:14,417 take a stance. 1894 01:33:14,500 --> 01:33:16,291 And maybe that's what, in a lot of ways, 1895 01:33:16,417 --> 01:33:18,291 WBCN was about in that respect. 1896 01:33:18,417 --> 01:33:20,500 There was a time when it just... you had to say, 1897 01:33:20,542 --> 01:33:23,917 "This... we're stopping it right here," you know. 1898 01:33:26,792 --> 01:33:31,542 There can be no whitewash at the White House. 1899 01:33:33,625 --> 01:33:36,667 We all heard about it first on the 17th of June. 1900 01:33:36,792 --> 01:33:39,417 The news reports said, "Five men were arrested 1901 01:33:39,542 --> 01:33:41,750 "with bugging equipment at the Democratic National Committee 1902 01:33:41,792 --> 01:33:45,250 "headquarters in the sprawling, luxurious 1903 01:33:45,291 --> 01:33:48,750 Watergate apartment office complex in Washington, D.C." 1904 01:33:48,792 --> 01:33:54,291 It was the theme of the WBCN news for months on end. 1905 01:33:54,375 --> 01:33:59,625 And by making it so conspicuous, we got those points across. 1906 01:34:04,667 --> 01:34:05,625 The Watergate Five, 1907 01:34:05,667 --> 01:34:08,667 all using aliases taken from Hunt's mystery novels, 1908 01:34:08,792 --> 01:34:13,041 finished a lobster dinner on the night of June 17th, 1909 01:34:13,166 --> 01:34:14,417 and then... 1910 01:34:16,792 --> 01:34:18,792 broke into the Democratic Headquarters 1911 01:34:18,875 --> 01:34:21,667 to repair bugging devices that they had already planted 1912 01:34:21,792 --> 01:34:24,417 as well as to photocopy important documents. 1913 01:34:24,542 --> 01:34:29,417 It was like a soap opera that we weren't writing, 1914 01:34:29,500 --> 01:34:30,667 but that surpassed our expectations 1915 01:34:30,750 --> 01:34:32,875 with every new episode, 1916 01:34:32,917 --> 01:34:35,166 and it just kept getting better and better. 1917 01:34:35,291 --> 01:34:40,250 Yeah, Charles Colson was a C.I.A. agent? 1918 01:34:40,291 --> 01:34:43,000 Yes, this... this memo, 1919 01:34:43,041 --> 01:34:45,625 which is... it was a confidential memo, 1920 01:34:45,667 --> 01:34:48,125 but what hasn't appeared in the papers, as far as I know, 1921 01:34:48,166 --> 01:34:50,875 is the fact that which appears in this document 1922 01:34:50,917 --> 01:34:53,291 that Colson is C.I.A. 1923 01:34:53,375 --> 01:34:56,125 Hunt is asking him whether or not during the time in the '50s 1924 01:34:56,166 --> 01:35:01,166 when he was in Saigon, he was receiving information reports, 1925 01:35:01,250 --> 01:35:04,667 orders through military channels or through his C.I.A. channels, 1926 01:35:04,750 --> 01:35:07,750 his Colson's C.I.A. channels, and Colson says that, yes, 1927 01:35:07,792 --> 01:35:08,792 he was receiving them through C.I.A. channels. 1928 01:35:08,875 --> 01:35:13,291 The station offered news and perspectives and reporting 1929 01:35:13,417 --> 01:35:16,417 and investigate journalism, and we won all sorts of 1930 01:35:16,542 --> 01:35:19,500 top journalism awards for doing it, 1931 01:35:19,542 --> 01:35:20,750 and the culmination of it 1932 01:35:20,792 --> 01:35:27,000 was 1972 when Nixon, you know, was running 1933 01:35:27,041 --> 01:35:30,500 for re-election and he was being challenged by George McGovern, 1934 01:35:30,542 --> 01:35:33,417 a peace candidate. 1935 01:35:33,542 --> 01:35:35,291 Massachusetts came through for McGovern 1936 01:35:35,375 --> 01:35:36,917 and the only state to do so. 1937 01:35:37,041 --> 01:35:39,667 We want to give a special note of thanks 1938 01:35:39,792 --> 01:35:42,166 to the people of Massachusetts. 1939 01:35:45,000 --> 01:35:49,125 It isn't just an accident that the American experiment 1940 01:35:49,166 --> 01:35:53,041 began in Massachusetts and that we're carrying it on here 1941 01:35:53,125 --> 01:35:54,792 at the nation's capital. 1942 01:35:54,875 --> 01:35:58,000 We're going to keep doing that for a good many years to come. 1943 01:35:58,041 --> 01:36:00,792 Whether we can legitimately, as the BCNers 1944 01:36:00,875 --> 01:36:03,792 of that time, take credit 1945 01:36:03,875 --> 01:36:05,792 for enlightening enough Massachusetts people 1946 01:36:05,875 --> 01:36:10,250 to alter the result here in Massachusetts, I don't know. 1947 01:36:10,291 --> 01:36:14,792 But it's certainly symbolic of the consciousness raising 1948 01:36:14,875 --> 01:36:18,250 we were trying to do and the effect it could have. 1949 01:36:18,792 --> 01:36:21,667 Take it away. 1950 01:36:24,000 --> 01:36:26,250 As time went on, 1951 01:36:26,291 --> 01:36:28,792 we started broadcasting live on a regular basis 1952 01:36:28,917 --> 01:36:30,792 from a couple of different locations. 1953 01:36:30,875 --> 01:36:34,917 Jazz Workshop, run by Fred Taylor, 1954 01:36:35,041 --> 01:36:37,041 one of the great jazz clubs in the world. 1955 01:36:37,166 --> 01:36:40,417 Next door you walked down the stairs and to the left 1956 01:36:40,542 --> 01:36:41,667 was Paul's Mall, owned by the same guy, 1957 01:36:41,792 --> 01:36:43,917 booked by the same guy, Fred Taylor. 1958 01:36:44,000 --> 01:36:45,875 These were dingy, underground clubs, 1959 01:36:45,917 --> 01:36:51,041 very, very constrained in terms of space. 1960 01:36:51,166 --> 01:36:54,750 You know, if Randy Newman was performing at Paul's Mall, 1961 01:36:54,792 --> 01:36:57,375 the front row was, you know, six feet away from him 1962 01:36:57,417 --> 01:36:58,792 and that was it. 1963 01:36:58,917 --> 01:37:00,041 Randy Newman's comes back on stage, 1964 01:37:00,166 --> 01:37:01,542 timing it perfectly. 1965 01:37:12,792 --> 01:37:13,792 That's not funny. 1966 01:37:16,125 --> 01:37:17,875 I'll sing it again and don't laugh. 1967 01:37:21,166 --> 01:37:23,917 In 1973, we had this young guy from New Jersey come in, 1968 01:37:24,000 --> 01:37:25,792 never played live on the radio before, 1969 01:37:25,875 --> 01:37:27,917 had never played in Boston before. 1970 01:37:28,000 --> 01:37:31,792 If I recall, he even had a tuba player there, 1971 01:37:31,917 --> 01:37:33,625 and it was on Maxanne's show. 1972 01:37:33,667 --> 01:37:34,792 Hello, Bruce Springsteen. 1973 01:37:34,917 --> 01:37:35,917 We're on the air? 1974 01:37:36,041 --> 01:37:37,166 Yeah, we are on the air. 1975 01:37:37,291 --> 01:37:38,166 Hey! 1976 01:37:39,792 --> 01:37:41,917 All right, all right. 1977 01:37:42,000 --> 01:37:46,041 Is the tuba mic all right, right there? 1978 01:37:46,125 --> 01:37:47,750 Yeah? Okay, here we go. 1979 01:37:47,792 --> 01:37:48,917 Take it away, fellas. 1980 01:37:49,000 --> 01:37:51,667 One, and a two, and... 1981 01:37:55,291 --> 01:37:57,542 Those sorts of appearances, and the spontaneous 1982 01:37:57,667 --> 01:37:59,792 just showing up in the studio, 1983 01:37:59,917 --> 01:38:01,000 and they were really magical moments. 1984 01:38:01,041 --> 01:38:02,792 This is my very first time on the radio, 1985 01:38:02,875 --> 01:38:05,625 and I want to say hello to my mother, 1986 01:38:05,667 --> 01:38:07,125 who lives in California. 1987 01:38:07,166 --> 01:38:08,125 Hi, Mom. 1988 01:38:10,291 --> 01:38:12,250 All right, let's do, uh... 1989 01:38:30,041 --> 01:38:33,500 New Jersey, New York was not a problem, 1990 01:38:33,542 --> 01:38:35,542 but spreading out from there was really tough for them 1991 01:38:35,625 --> 01:38:36,917 at the time. 1992 01:38:37,000 --> 01:38:38,417 Don't you want to say a word or two 1993 01:38:38,500 --> 01:38:40,500 about Asbury Park, New Jersey? 1994 01:38:40,542 --> 01:38:42,667 I've been trying to get out of there for 20 years. 1995 01:38:42,792 --> 01:38:44,166 No... 1996 01:38:44,291 --> 01:38:47,375 I think that he really appreciated the fact that BCN 1997 01:38:47,417 --> 01:38:50,792 was willing to be so supportive. 1998 01:38:50,917 --> 01:38:53,667 I really do want to thank WBCN and Maxanne, 1999 01:38:53,750 --> 01:38:57,500 because when we first came here, when we first came to Boston, 2000 01:38:57,542 --> 01:39:00,917 we played to about ten or 20 people. 2001 01:39:01,000 --> 01:39:04,041 And now it must be damn 50 people in the place. 2002 01:39:06,250 --> 01:39:08,917 Well, the power of media is just overwhelming. 2003 01:39:10,750 --> 01:39:12,375 But I want to thank you very much and let you know 2004 01:39:12,417 --> 01:39:14,166 that we really appreciate it because we really do. 2005 01:39:14,250 --> 01:39:16,542 Bruce was playing in a lot of clubs around town. 2006 01:39:16,625 --> 01:39:18,041 He's playing at Charlie's Place, he's playing at Joe's Place, 2007 01:39:18,166 --> 01:39:21,291 and he seemed to just bop from club to club. 2008 01:39:21,375 --> 01:39:23,792 He played in... he didn't just play in one or two venues, 2009 01:39:23,917 --> 01:39:25,125 he played in all these crummy bars. 2010 01:39:25,166 --> 01:39:25,917 But then he was playing theaters, 2011 01:39:26,041 --> 01:39:28,250 Harvard Square Theater, that's like a theater, 2012 01:39:28,291 --> 01:39:29,041 that was a big deal. 2013 01:39:29,125 --> 01:39:31,667 Tonight we're lucky enough to have Bruce Springsteen 2014 01:39:31,750 --> 01:39:32,041 and Bonnie Raitt. 2015 01:39:36,166 --> 01:39:43,041 He took the stage, and within minutes, 2016 01:39:43,125 --> 01:39:46,542 people knew that there was something going on here 2017 01:39:46,667 --> 01:39:48,917 that was extremely extraordinary, 2018 01:39:49,041 --> 01:39:51,417 and extremely incredible. 2019 01:39:51,500 --> 01:39:54,125 Opening up his set with "New York City Serenade," 2020 01:39:54,166 --> 01:39:56,041 which starts with a classical piano introduction 2021 01:39:56,166 --> 01:39:58,291 by David Sancious. 2022 01:39:58,375 --> 01:39:58,917 That's unheard of! 2023 01:39:59,041 --> 01:40:01,917 A band hits the stage, you hit it with... hit it hard-- 2024 01:40:02,041 --> 01:40:02,917 the horns blare, the guitar blares. 2025 01:40:03,041 --> 01:40:05,917 He comes out there and he starts with this beautiful 2026 01:40:06,000 --> 01:40:09,041 melodic piano and people are going, "What is this?" 2027 01:40:17,917 --> 01:40:19,041 But this one... this one photo, 2028 01:40:19,166 --> 01:40:22,500 the way his back is arched, 2029 01:40:22,542 --> 01:40:23,917 the way his hands are extend out on the keyboards, 2030 01:40:24,041 --> 01:40:27,125 it's just... something's about to happen, 2031 01:40:27,166 --> 01:40:28,917 and that's the feeling you get from it. 2032 01:40:42,917 --> 01:40:47,166 It wasn't till later on, that I had... 2033 01:40:47,291 --> 01:40:48,917 that I had learned that that was the show 2034 01:40:49,041 --> 01:40:51,417 that Jon Landau was at. 2035 01:40:51,500 --> 01:40:53,917 And as he said, "I have seen the future of rock and roll, 2036 01:40:54,041 --> 01:40:56,792 and its name is Bruce Springsteen." 2037 01:41:04,041 --> 01:41:06,125 Hey, Boston, come out tonight! 2038 01:41:10,166 --> 01:41:13,250 That date is always called out. 2039 01:41:13,291 --> 01:41:15,417 Bruce Springsteen opens for Bonnie Raitt. 2040 01:41:15,500 --> 01:41:18,041 Jon Landau declares him the future of rock and roll. 2041 01:41:20,291 --> 01:41:24,041 Absolutely one of the highlights of WBCN live broadcasts 2042 01:41:24,166 --> 01:41:27,417 was from the Jazz Workshop of Patti Smith, 2043 01:41:27,500 --> 01:41:28,041 the Patti Smith Group. 2044 01:41:28,166 --> 01:41:30,625 Maxanne, what's going on down there? 2045 01:41:30,667 --> 01:41:32,917 They've been turning away people by droves. 2046 01:41:33,041 --> 01:41:35,041 There's lines down the street. 2047 01:41:35,166 --> 01:41:37,375 This is the best night, 2048 01:41:37,417 --> 01:41:39,417 it's the best part of the show: the tune up. 2049 01:41:39,542 --> 01:41:41,375 They'd just come out with their debut album 2050 01:41:41,417 --> 01:41:44,375 the year before, Patti Smith the writer, the cultural figure. 2051 01:41:44,417 --> 01:41:47,041 Not exactly a mass appeal artist but our cult loved her. 2052 01:41:57,166 --> 01:41:59,542 Because she was on a major record label at the time, 2053 01:41:59,667 --> 01:42:00,166 Arista Records, 2054 01:42:00,250 --> 01:42:04,542 the record executive, the promotional executive, 2055 01:42:04,667 --> 01:42:07,542 took her backstage before she began and said, 2056 01:42:07,667 --> 01:42:08,750 "Look, this is on the radio, 2057 01:42:08,792 --> 01:42:09,875 don't say any bad words." 2058 01:42:09,917 --> 01:42:11,917 But he was kind of heavy-handed 2059 01:42:12,041 --> 01:42:13,417 in the way that he conveyed this to her. 2060 01:42:13,500 --> 01:42:17,417 And so Patti came on stage and the band was rocking... 2061 01:42:23,291 --> 01:42:26,542 There was the Patti Smith broadcast and my assignment 2062 01:42:26,667 --> 01:42:29,542 was to be back at the studio 2063 01:42:29,667 --> 01:42:34,291 with my hand on the... well, basically the on-off switch, 2064 01:42:34,417 --> 01:42:36,166 basically which controls whether or not that... 2065 01:42:36,291 --> 01:42:38,500 whether or not that broadcast would proceed. 2066 01:42:38,542 --> 01:42:39,250 And I was sitting with my boss, 2067 01:42:39,291 --> 01:42:42,917 with the general manager of BCN at the time, Al Perry, 2068 01:42:43,041 --> 01:42:44,291 and we were enjoying the show, 2069 01:42:44,417 --> 01:42:47,041 and at a certain point she stopped, 2070 01:42:47,125 --> 01:42:51,041 and she did a little monologue about the importance of radio. 2071 01:42:51,125 --> 01:42:53,291 It was very heartfelt and very sincere. 2072 01:42:53,417 --> 01:42:54,041 You know what radio has in it? 2073 01:42:54,166 --> 01:42:57,750 R-A-Y-dash-D-I-O. 2074 01:42:57,792 --> 01:43:01,166 And "Dio" is God, so like radio is like ray of god. 2075 01:43:01,291 --> 01:43:05,291 That's its highest possibility. 2076 01:43:05,417 --> 01:43:07,041 The show moved on and at a certain point, 2077 01:43:07,166 --> 01:43:11,792 she just stopped dead in the midst of a song, 2078 01:43:11,875 --> 01:43:13,125 and admitted to the audience 2079 01:43:13,166 --> 01:43:18,166 that she felt very intimidated 2080 01:43:18,291 --> 01:43:20,917 by the limitations being placed on her 2081 01:43:21,041 --> 01:43:22,500 to say what was on her mind. 2082 01:43:22,542 --> 01:43:25,291 We shouldn't worry about slang terminology 2083 01:43:25,375 --> 01:43:27,291 on a rock and roll station. 2084 01:43:33,792 --> 01:43:36,542 I mean, you should be able to express yourself in America. 2085 01:43:36,625 --> 01:43:39,125 We have like one of the most colorful languages, 2086 01:43:39,166 --> 01:43:41,250 which is like integrated with our art, 2087 01:43:41,291 --> 01:43:44,417 the art of this generation is rock and roll. 2088 01:43:44,500 --> 01:43:47,542 And she just started blurting out... in the form of a poem 2089 01:43:47,625 --> 01:43:49,125 she started blurting out obscenity after obscenity. 2090 01:43:49,166 --> 01:43:52,250 A stream of obscenities. 2091 01:44:02,000 --> 01:44:04,166 I can't even read my fuckin' poem. 2092 01:44:04,250 --> 01:44:07,917 It just doesn't even interest me anymore. 2093 01:44:27,417 --> 01:44:30,291 So there was a difficult decision there. 2094 01:44:30,375 --> 01:44:36,542 Because as the obscenities came out, 2095 01:44:36,625 --> 01:44:41,291 you had to decide whether to let them go or to cut them off. 2096 01:44:41,375 --> 01:44:45,917 And I guess at the time it seemed to me the better idea 2097 01:44:46,000 --> 01:44:47,250 to let them go. 2098 01:44:47,291 --> 01:44:49,667 I think she went out of her way because she was sort of 2099 01:44:49,792 --> 01:44:51,667 singing it to kind of alert the station of the fact, 2100 01:44:51,750 --> 01:44:54,041 "I'm going to sing this song to the club. 2101 01:44:54,166 --> 01:44:58,375 "If you don't want to hear these songs... these words broadcast, 2102 01:44:58,417 --> 01:45:01,291 turn me off right now," and it would have been an option. 2103 01:45:01,417 --> 01:45:03,291 Well, it didn't happen, obviously, but, you know, 2104 01:45:03,417 --> 01:45:06,291 that's... that's radio, 2105 01:45:06,375 --> 01:45:10,250 If that doesn't quintessentially sort of package up 2106 01:45:10,291 --> 01:45:13,917 BCN's true essence, stuff like that on the radio, 2107 01:45:14,000 --> 01:45:15,542 wow, amazing, amazing. 2108 01:45:15,667 --> 01:45:16,667 Never happened again... 2109 01:45:16,792 --> 01:45:18,875 Never happened again. 2110 01:45:25,250 --> 01:45:26,250 Tweet, tweet, tweet. 2111 01:45:29,417 --> 01:45:30,750 WBCN in Boston. 2112 01:45:30,792 --> 01:45:33,875 Is my microphone off? One, two. 2113 01:45:33,917 --> 01:45:35,792 Oh, so my microphone's on? 2114 01:45:35,875 --> 01:45:38,166 Oh, I didn't hear it, but it's on, right? 2115 01:45:38,291 --> 01:45:40,250 Oh, right on, Patti! 2116 01:45:40,291 --> 01:45:43,417 I mean, well she was an artist, she was a poet, 2117 01:45:43,542 --> 01:45:46,417 so when she said, "This is rock and roll radio, 2118 01:45:46,542 --> 01:45:48,792 and we should be able to say what we think, 2119 01:45:48,875 --> 01:45:53,000 or say what we feel," you felt like you could do that at WBCN. 2120 01:45:53,041 --> 01:45:54,417 You could say what you think and you could say what you feel. 2121 01:45:54,542 --> 01:45:58,250 The fact is that really BCN was one of the few stations 2122 01:45:58,291 --> 01:46:00,291 in America that played the music of Patti Smith. 2123 01:46:00,417 --> 01:46:07,291 It was not traditionally commercially viable-- 2124 01:46:07,417 --> 01:46:08,291 you know, she would push the limit. 2125 01:46:08,417 --> 01:46:10,375 She pushed the envelope artistically. 2126 01:46:10,417 --> 01:46:12,875 And these were the kinds of artists 2127 01:46:12,917 --> 01:46:15,667 that we wanted to support. 2128 01:46:15,792 --> 01:46:18,667 Eh, maybe no one heard it, and I don't think anyone did 2129 01:46:18,792 --> 01:46:22,000 because I don't recall ever hearing about that. 2130 01:46:22,041 --> 01:46:24,375 One of the few. 2131 01:46:26,542 --> 01:46:30,250 You know, we were beginning to get ratings. 2132 01:46:30,291 --> 01:46:31,417 The station was making more and more money, 2133 01:46:31,500 --> 01:46:35,750 and symbolically, I guess, moving 2134 01:46:35,792 --> 01:46:38,667 to the top of the Prudential Tower. 2135 01:46:38,750 --> 01:46:42,417 The move to the Pru was the dramatic one because that was 2136 01:46:42,500 --> 01:46:49,750 the plushest, most amazing, modern, sterile, 2137 01:46:49,792 --> 01:46:52,291 mainstream, corporate U.S.A. place 2138 01:46:52,417 --> 01:46:55,750 you could imagine moving into. 2139 01:46:55,792 --> 01:47:00,000 That place should have been the home of the "Today Show." 2140 01:47:00,041 --> 01:47:01,750 And I don't think I said hello yet. 2141 01:47:01,792 --> 01:47:04,125 Hello, I'm Tom Hadges, this is WBCN you're listening to. 2142 01:47:04,166 --> 01:47:05,417 We're in Boston. 2143 01:47:05,542 --> 01:47:07,417 I'll sit here till about 2:00 this afternoon. 2144 01:47:07,542 --> 01:47:10,041 People would pay to come up to the 50th floor 2145 01:47:10,166 --> 01:47:12,792 to walk around the top of the Prudential Building, 2146 01:47:12,875 --> 01:47:15,667 which was the single largest, tallest building in Boston 2147 01:47:15,750 --> 01:47:17,125 at that time. 2148 01:47:17,166 --> 01:47:18,417 And, "Oh, by the way, there's BCN." 2149 01:47:18,542 --> 01:47:20,291 Hi, everybody. 2150 01:47:20,417 --> 01:47:23,542 Good music. Right here. 2151 01:47:23,625 --> 01:47:27,166 You know, BCN was considered alternative media, 2152 01:47:27,250 --> 01:47:28,542 but at the same time mainstream media. 2153 01:47:28,667 --> 01:47:31,291 You know I would go to work at 6:00 in the morning, 2154 01:47:31,375 --> 01:47:34,792 and walk around the sky walk, and look at Boston waking up, 2155 01:47:34,875 --> 01:47:38,000 and looking at the beauty of this whole area 2156 01:47:38,041 --> 01:47:40,041 and BCN was on top of it. 2157 01:47:40,166 --> 01:47:44,792 There was a tension growing between the demands 2158 01:47:44,875 --> 01:47:49,750 of paying the bills and what we all wanted. 2159 01:47:49,792 --> 01:47:53,917 We all wanted to be faithful to the original concept of WBCN 2160 01:47:54,000 --> 01:47:54,542 and the mission of BCN. 2161 01:47:54,625 --> 01:47:57,417 Personally, for me, it was a challenge. 2162 01:47:57,542 --> 01:48:02,125 It was the difficulty of being sure that we could maintain 2163 01:48:02,166 --> 01:48:07,166 our honesty, and the fact that we weren't selling out. 2164 01:48:07,250 --> 01:48:11,625 Ugly Radio is Dead was just as important when we moved into 2165 01:48:11,667 --> 01:48:16,291 the Pru mid-'70s as it was when the station launched in '68. 2166 01:48:16,375 --> 01:48:19,166 No question, being up there was a daily reminder 2167 01:48:19,250 --> 01:48:21,542 of how much value the station held just on a business level. 2168 01:48:21,625 --> 01:48:24,625 But I think there was, not a capitulation, 2169 01:48:24,667 --> 01:48:28,417 but a certain realization inside that you went, "You know, 2170 01:48:28,500 --> 01:48:29,542 "this is not going to last forever. 2171 01:48:29,667 --> 01:48:32,417 Days are... days are numbered." 2172 01:48:32,542 --> 01:48:33,542 Try new coconut Newsoft fabric softener. 2173 01:48:33,625 --> 01:48:35,792 Discover for yourself 2174 01:48:35,875 --> 01:48:38,750 the softness of natural coconut conditioners. 2175 01:48:38,792 --> 01:48:41,000 Oh brother, I quit. 2176 01:48:41,041 --> 01:48:46,375 Well, we were starting to sell national advertising. 2177 01:48:46,417 --> 01:48:48,041 I became responsible for national ads. 2178 01:48:48,166 --> 01:48:50,792 I'll never forget the first time I went to New York 2179 01:48:50,917 --> 01:48:52,375 with our national rep, 2180 01:48:52,417 --> 01:48:55,500 made my first call, had to put on a tie. 2181 01:48:55,542 --> 01:49:00,667 And I walk in and the media buyer, 2182 01:49:00,792 --> 01:49:03,792 a rather imposing woman, 2183 01:49:03,875 --> 01:49:06,875 stood up behind her desk and cursed me out 2184 01:49:06,917 --> 01:49:10,625 because apparently they had sent a reel... 2185 01:49:10,667 --> 01:49:14,667 all the ads came in these little eight-inch reels to the station, 2186 01:49:14,792 --> 01:49:16,417 and whoever was the production manager at the time-- 2187 01:49:16,542 --> 01:49:17,625 I'm not going to name any names-- 2188 01:49:17,667 --> 01:49:21,417 had written "F.U." on the box 2189 01:49:21,500 --> 01:49:22,875 and mailed it back to the agency. 2190 01:49:25,291 --> 01:49:25,542 Oh my... 2191 01:49:25,667 --> 01:49:30,000 So I had a lot of those experiences. 2192 01:49:46,792 --> 01:49:49,375 Hey, you're better looking than I am, 2193 01:49:49,417 --> 01:49:51,166 why don't you stay here? 2194 01:49:51,291 --> 01:49:54,041 Blondes, they say, photograph better than brunettes. 2195 01:49:55,667 --> 01:49:57,750 I'm afraid you'll catch me picking my nose. 2196 01:50:00,041 --> 01:50:01,166 Oh, you want a level, don't you? 2197 01:50:01,250 --> 01:50:02,166 Yes, yes. 2198 01:50:02,250 --> 01:50:03,667 Good evening. 2199 01:50:03,792 --> 01:50:07,250 This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office, 2200 01:50:07,291 --> 01:50:09,417 where so many decisions have been made 2201 01:50:09,500 --> 01:50:11,792 that shaped the history of our nation. 2202 01:50:11,917 --> 01:50:13,542 Need anymore? 2203 01:50:13,625 --> 01:50:18,625 You know, people talk about the '60s being the Hippie Era, 2204 01:50:18,667 --> 01:50:21,500 the Golden Era, whatever you want to call it, 2205 01:50:21,542 --> 01:50:22,542 depending on what your perspective is. 2206 01:50:22,625 --> 01:50:28,625 The '60s went past the '60s, because my guess, 2207 01:50:28,667 --> 01:50:31,667 if I had to say when the '60s, when that Golden Era, 2208 01:50:31,750 --> 01:50:36,125 when FM radio started going in the other direction 2209 01:50:36,166 --> 01:50:39,625 of being capitalistic and not being underground anymore, 2210 01:50:39,667 --> 01:50:41,750 I think it was after Nixon resigned. 2211 01:50:41,792 --> 01:50:46,667 I have never been a quitter. 2212 01:50:46,792 --> 01:50:49,542 To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent 2213 01:50:49,667 --> 01:50:52,875 to every instinct in my body. 2214 01:50:52,917 --> 01:50:56,041 The fact that it ended with Nixon's upper lip 2215 01:50:56,125 --> 01:50:59,041 perspiring profusely, that was a good ending. 2216 01:50:59,125 --> 01:51:04,667 I remember sitting there in my home with my three-year-old... 2217 01:51:04,750 --> 01:51:05,667 with my three-year-old daughter, and forcing her to watch it, 2218 01:51:05,792 --> 01:51:07,917 and telling her that, 2219 01:51:08,000 --> 01:51:09,625 "I just want her to remember these images." 2220 01:51:09,667 --> 01:51:11,291 You know, even vaguely because she's just little. 2221 01:51:11,417 --> 01:51:14,041 But eventually I would talk to her about the significance 2222 01:51:14,125 --> 01:51:15,375 of this and it's something 2223 01:51:15,417 --> 01:51:17,041 she could tell her grandchildren about. 2224 01:51:17,166 --> 01:51:18,375 It was a great day. 2225 01:51:18,417 --> 01:51:23,250 Therefore I shall resign the presidency 2226 01:51:23,291 --> 01:51:25,166 effective at noon tomorrow. 2227 01:51:25,291 --> 01:51:29,625 Vice President Ford will be sworn in as president 2228 01:51:29,667 --> 01:51:32,667 at that hour in this office. 2229 01:51:36,125 --> 01:51:39,250 You know, it was, uh... elation 2230 01:51:39,291 --> 01:51:41,750 and, uh... celebration, 2231 01:51:41,792 --> 01:51:45,500 and but also sadness that it, you know, it had to come 2232 01:51:45,542 --> 01:51:46,792 to all the way to this, 2233 01:51:46,917 --> 01:51:50,500 to get this gargoyle out of running our country. 2234 01:51:50,542 --> 01:51:53,667 I mean, at the end of it all my parents were against me, 2235 01:51:53,750 --> 01:51:56,667 my long hair, everything from the beginning. 2236 01:51:56,792 --> 01:52:00,291 They said, "It's the drugs, Steven, get off those drugs." 2237 01:52:00,417 --> 01:52:04,792 But at the end, they sat down, and my father had tears 2238 01:52:04,875 --> 01:52:08,166 in his eyes and he said, "You were right." 2239 01:52:08,250 --> 01:52:11,041 He said, "You were right, they've been lying to us." 2240 01:52:12,917 --> 01:52:15,291 There's the president waving goodbye. 2241 01:52:15,375 --> 01:52:18,792 You hear the applause. 2242 01:52:18,917 --> 01:52:22,792 By '74, it's not only that Nixon resigned, 2243 01:52:22,917 --> 01:52:26,917 he was such a convenient target of all of our wrath. 2244 01:52:27,041 --> 01:52:30,542 But it was, everything was becoming in a way 2245 01:52:30,667 --> 01:52:32,792 more institutionalized, more commercialized. 2246 01:52:32,917 --> 01:52:37,417 The acts that played the Tea Party were now playing big halls 2247 01:52:37,500 --> 01:52:41,000 and getting paid tons of money, the ticket prices were going up. 2248 01:52:41,041 --> 01:52:44,417 There were a lot of stations all over the country now doing what, 2249 01:52:44,542 --> 01:52:46,500 you know, in a way what BCN was doing. 2250 01:52:46,542 --> 01:52:50,667 I think pretty much not as well and not as overtly political. 2251 01:52:50,750 --> 01:52:53,125 But playing the kind of, you know, 2252 01:52:53,166 --> 01:52:54,792 the album cuts and all that. 2253 01:52:54,917 --> 01:52:59,417 So it really was becoming much more of, you know, 2254 01:52:59,542 --> 01:53:03,875 institutionalized and just part of the regular American culture. 2255 01:53:06,625 --> 01:53:09,917 Little did we know, you know. 2256 01:53:10,041 --> 01:53:14,417 Little did we know that we would be involved in something 2257 01:53:14,500 --> 01:53:18,125 that would be as much fun and so meaningful to so many people. 2258 01:53:18,166 --> 01:53:20,792 The best thing about it was we were doing it ourselves. 2259 01:53:20,917 --> 01:53:23,417 We were making it up as we went along. 2260 01:53:23,542 --> 01:53:25,500 We were developing friendships, 2261 01:53:25,542 --> 01:53:26,875 we were putting up with each other, 2262 01:53:26,917 --> 01:53:29,667 we were trying to create something 2263 01:53:29,750 --> 01:53:31,250 that hadn't existed before. 2264 01:53:31,291 --> 01:53:34,750 You don't get that opportunity much in broadcasting. 2265 01:53:34,792 --> 01:53:37,792 I think one of the other things I'd like to see people remember 2266 01:53:37,917 --> 01:53:44,000 WBCN for was what it stood for. 2267 01:53:44,041 --> 01:53:47,750 Independence, having people make up their own minds 2268 01:53:47,792 --> 01:53:51,000 as what to play, what to say. 2269 01:53:51,041 --> 01:53:53,750 We've learned a lot since the '70s 2270 01:53:53,792 --> 01:53:57,291 around what inclusion means. 2271 01:53:57,417 --> 01:54:01,250 And some of what learned is that we're actually 2272 01:54:01,291 --> 01:54:02,917 all on the same planet here, 2273 01:54:03,000 --> 01:54:06,417 in the process of suffering some of the same consequences 2274 01:54:06,500 --> 01:54:08,792 of our neglecting to recognize our shared humanity. 2275 01:54:08,917 --> 01:54:12,250 Of course the question that everyone's asking is 2276 01:54:12,291 --> 01:54:12,917 can this happen again? 2277 01:54:13,000 --> 01:54:16,917 The fact that everyone can be a communicator. 2278 01:54:17,000 --> 01:54:20,125 Pick up your smartphone, shoot a video. 2279 01:54:20,166 --> 01:54:22,917 If it's important, it will get seen by a lot of people, 2280 01:54:23,000 --> 01:54:25,291 and it can create social change. 2281 01:54:25,375 --> 01:54:25,917 No question about that. 2282 01:54:26,041 --> 01:54:30,166 Abbie Hoffman, the godfather of the Yippies, 2283 01:54:30,250 --> 01:54:31,875 was from Worcester, Mass., 2284 01:54:31,917 --> 01:54:35,291 and he, you know, became a sort of occasional correspondent 2285 01:54:35,417 --> 01:54:38,041 for WBCN and was on the air. 2286 01:54:38,166 --> 01:54:41,667 And, you know, when he was asked to summarize, you know, 2287 01:54:41,750 --> 01:54:43,166 the legacy of his work, 2288 01:54:43,250 --> 01:54:46,917 you know, he said basically, you know, "We were young, 2289 01:54:47,000 --> 01:54:50,875 "we were sometimes crazy, we made mistakes, 2290 01:54:50,917 --> 01:54:53,917 but we were right." 2291 01:54:55,917 --> 01:54:58,291 I think that could be said of WBCN. 2292 01:55:00,000 --> 01:55:02,417 One, two, one, two, hey! 2293 01:56:41,667 --> 01:56:42,792 Good night. 2294 01:56:45,792 --> 01:56:47,792 You there, Fatman? 2295 01:56:47,917 --> 01:56:49,250 Yes, Max, how they doing? 2296 01:56:49,291 --> 01:56:51,417 Well, I think... I think that 2297 01:56:51,542 --> 01:56:54,041 with all the Minguses, and the Miles, and the 'Tranes 2298 01:56:54,166 --> 01:56:56,041 that have been in this room, 2299 01:56:56,166 --> 01:56:59,125 nobody ever destroyed the ceiling quite so bad before. 2300 01:56:59,166 --> 01:57:02,750 John Cale just put the nick of a bass through the ceiling here. 2301 01:57:05,041 --> 01:57:08,041 Oh, I wish we could have seen that. 2302 01:57:08,125 --> 01:57:08,917 Good night, Fatman. 2303 01:57:09,041 --> 01:57:11,041 Good night, Max.