Read Online Radio Free Boston by Carter Alan - Free Book Online Page A

head east when his mother died. Back in Milford,he tuned in WBCN , heard Jim Parry on the air, and called him up. When Parry noted Laquidara’s local roots and West Coast experience, he encouraged him to visit the station, where the two met and Parry introduced him to fellow KPPC-FM alum Steve Segal. Now, as the ’ BCN’S overnight star was about to leave, Laquidara found himself in the perfect spot. Sam Kopper recounted: “I remember there was this [final] falling out between Peter Wolf and Ray. So, it went [quickly] from ‘maybe we should bring this Laquidara dude in’ to ‘Laquidara is doing nights.’”
    â€œThe timing was amazing,” Steve Segal mentioned. “Charles just walked in. I said, ‘Sam and I just thought we’d throw you on the air and see what happens.’ At the time, he was an actor playing an underground disc jockey, but over the years he became a knockout performer.”
    â€œI was a mediocre everything: a writer, cartoonist, actor, disc jockey,” Laquidara explained. “However, in 1968, with the advent of underground radio, there was a place for a guy who was simply real. He didn’t have to have a deep voice; he didn’t have to talk fast or have a golden throat. And, he could fuck up, which I did . . . a lot! Sam Kopper went to Ray Riepen and he hired me. To this day I’m indebted to Ray Riepen.” Then he added with a snicker, “Even though he tried to fire me a couple times.”

The only thing anybody was ever concerned about was the FCC . That was the only brake on the system. Nobody would ever say, politically: “You’re too radical.” Frankly, the listeners loved it, the bands loved it, the staff loved it. BILL LICHTENSTEIN
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    By the beginning of 1969, the Wheels of Fire album by Cream, with its rambling, fifteen-minute rock jams and abstruse, poetic lyrics, had gone to number 1 in America; the “all-you-need-is-love” Beatles were squabbling, and Janis Joplin brought San Francisco acid blues to the top of the album chart. Martin Luther King Jr.’s path of nonviolent civil rights protest ended in gunfire and death; three Americans had just circled the moon in Apollo 8; the Vietnamese peace talks commenced in Paris; the Democratic National Convention had been ravaged by a torrent of street violence; and likely presidential nominee Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated in Los Angeles. “The jocks really knew their stuff,” Ron Della Chiesa observed. “They were on the edge of what was new, what was happening, and what the youth market was going to be. Think of the timing of all that: Vietnam was going on, the protests, civil rights, the spin-offs from the assassinations, the country in upheaval. Then, there was the music; it couldn’t have beenmore timely . . . the stars lined up.” Tommy Hadges remembered, “There was an amazing array of music that was coming out. The war was going on; there was a cultural revolution, a drug revolution, a political revolution. But [it was] also about being in Boston . . . in a city where it is renewed and refreshed every year with all the new students that come in. With the university environment having a lot to do with the social revolution going on, WBCN fit right into that.”
    Joe Rogers offered his view of WBCN’S music mission: “I always felt that I was there to bring this music to the people. The reflex was, you’ve got this huge record library and ‘look at the things I’ve found!’ The emphasis was on doing sets [of music] and segues; we thought that’s what our craft was. You tried to sneak one song into another in a clever way, whatever that would mean.”
    â€œIt was kind of like college radio, you played the music you liked and you talked about it,” Jim Parry described. “Each show was quite a bit different. I would put a lot of folkie things in and Charles,