WBCN FM Airchecks from 1971

I have seven hours plus of old airchecks from WBCN FM, Boston which I will be uploading gradually. BCN was one of the first and best progressive free form stations on the continent. Some amazing genre bending music on the airchecks everything from Tyrannosaurs Rex to Ronnie Spector to Hapsash and The Coloured Coat to Tom Paxton and much more

I have uploaded the first one. Listen here:

http://www.lettheuniverseanswer.com/

 

"Wicked good", as they say, if I remember correctly. Thanks!

 

I lived through the days of underground radio in Los Angeles, and I caught the tail end of 'BCN's golden era when I moved to Boston in 1978. I'm going to enjoy listening to these. Thank you for sharing.

 

His name is spelled Charles Laquidara.

Cool site, I bookmarked it.

 

J Geils.
Peter Wolf.

 

Great, that's like a time machine. '71 was right about the time I got a decent receiver that could pick up BCN from my location in central Massachusetts.
Thanks for posting, it's pissah!

 

Wicked pissah!

 

This is really cool.

 

Wicked pissa to be more accurate. I first dug radio in about June 1971, so I missed the inception by a couple of months. Great stuff; looking forward to hearing the installations.

Ed: two months and 20 minutes too late!

 

Great find! Thanks for posting. This is Charles Laquidara's show. Charles managed to stay at WBCN through to 1996.

What a great stew of different music. Airchecks like this remind me of why I used to actually, you know, listen to music radio.

 

Cool site, I bookmarked it.[/QUOTE]
Thanks corrected. Have struggled with that spelling and Peter Wolf well.... Looking forward to uploading the rest. Some great music, ads, PSA and comedy and most of it in decent quality.

 

That is really something to have. When did they first go to the format they had in 1971? One of the early underground/college style stations?

 

I remember listening to Charles Laquidara on WBCN in the '70s on my Pioneer SX-450.

 

You might be interested in knowing there is a Documentary about WBCN in the works. I've been digitizing many many hours of WBCN programs, concerts, and air checks over the years for the production. Although the station didn't keep a tape library, many tapes still survived with former staff. Some were found in interesting places, such as a stash of tapes found in a wooden chest at a flea market. The producer appeared on Chronicle and asked the public to send in their tapes, and we got boxes of reels, cassettes, and even 8 tracks. There was some great stuff, including concerts from Greatful Dead, J Geils, Bonnie Raitt, Etc etc. It will air on WGBH in Boston when it's done. We hope it will also play in some theaters and film festivals.

This is an article from the "American Revolution" documentary website about the audio work I did.

http://www.theamericanrevolution.fm...&utm_campaign=may+newsletter&utm_medium=email

 

Cool, did you know a documentary is in the works about WBCN? We might have use for the audio from these tapes for the program, I'll forward you link to the producer.

 

I remember listening to BCN when it first started, called "The American Revolution" if I remember correctly.

First song BCN played was Cream "I feel Free". great...great staion.

 

I loved BCN. I lived in Boston from 1971-76 and then from 1978-80. I remember when I returned Charles had developed this alternate persona, Duane Glasscock. He once told Debby Harry she gave great microphone.
But the early days in 71 were the best. My home receiver only knew that station.

 

Yes I have been reading about the film. Fascinating read about your audio restoration. I'm not really an audiophile but I have always loved analog tapes. I usually upload MP3 files to my web site but I might take a portion of one of the better BCN tapes and upload a wav file in the next day or two.

Good luck with the project. Looking forward to the film but it sounds like you got a lot of tape submissions, more than you would be able to use in the film. Any plans to make some of that available to the public somehow ?

 

The original commercial free form stations such as KMPX, KSAN CHUM FM, WNEW and WBCN were pioneers and actually influenced later free form formats on college radio stations. Technically some of the earliest free form was on college radio but there was not that much of it and the format really blossomed and reached it's peak in it's commercial form. Some of the original free form jocks were converts from top 40 radio and they were pros ( albeit with a new hippy ethos) and that set them apart from college radio.

WBCN switched from classical to free form in the early summer of 1968 I think.

 

I came of age listening to 'bcn. Great memories.

 

Much appreciated!

 

The Duane character was the best. Two stories/stunts stand out.....

1. He once locked himself in the studio in order to get the station to hire a then-unknown DJ named Oedipus.
2. He gave out the address for the ratings bureau Arbitron and instructed listeners to send them a bag of S**t in response to their low ratings report. This one got the character suspended.

 

My uncle worked for 'BCN back in their hay day. I have a bunch of LPs from there.

 

I taped a great interview that Oedipus did with Ric Ocasek. He played remixes from Beatitude and some unreleased local music Ric was working on, some waitress that worked at Spit.

Nocturnal Omissions was a great show, but ultimately didn't Oedipus help change the format into a more corporate rock playlist?….that is what a friend told me who worked on the big mattress show.

 

Listening to WBCN in the mid '70s when I was a pre-teen, it seemed as if the jocks were all dialed into what was cool and "grown up." They had an easygoing, conversational style that made me, a kid, feel like I was being included in the what was happenin' and new at the time.

I remember hearing the name "Alice Cooper" for the first time on WBCN, which totally cracked me up because the singer was obviously a man. (Hey, I was probably 8 years old!)

I think it was WBCN that used to air live performances at the Paradise rock club on Comm Ave. I taped a couple of shows too: the Cars (right before their first album came out), the Jam, the Vapors, etc. Sadly, I only still have about half of the tape of the Jam (but it has been bootlegged in its entirety).