by Carter Alan
To general sales manager Bob Mendelsohn, the arrival of WZLX meant a daily competition for ad dollars. “I was very concerned when Oedipus made the conscious decision that WZLX’S presence wasn’t going to change anything. It’s true that in the mideighties we had true market dominance, which would take care of most ills, but we maintained that same posture when suddenly there was a main competitor that was hungry for the business.” As a radio professional hired to WBCN by Mel Karmazin himself, Mendelsohn already had problems with the way the station was run: “When it came to the business there, anybody in a senior position thought that just because the station was cool, people should be flocking to it—which was a serious and fundamental lack of insight. Any client doesn’t really care about how cool the company is. That may get their attention, but then you have to perform the service for them that they paid you a lot of money to do. This is one of the reasons that Oedipus and I, particularly, never saw eye to eye on anything.”
Another challenger emerged in the later eighties to joust with WBCN. Located fifty miles west in Worcester with a signal that barely penetrated into downtown Boston, WAAF-FM competed aggressively for the large Metro West population living between the two cities. With a mainstream approach not unlike WCOZ from just a few years earlier, ’AAF played harder-edged album-oriented rock (AOR), avoiding the pop music sounds by artists whom WBCN regularly embraced (and even helped to break), like Cindy Lauper, Icehouse, the Bangles, or Simple Minds. However, ’AAF’s unrelenting diet of Van Halen, AC/DC, Loverboy, and so forth, achieved a focus that WBCN, for better or for worse, comparatively lacked, and the station’s approach began to bear fruit. In the winter 1986 ratings for Boston, the station found favor with a younger male audience, slipping under ’BCN’S radar to actually claim first place in “men 18–24 years old.” True, the station appealed to a less affluent, less desirable demographic, but its managers could now claim a sizable gain in a significant niche by concentrating on a narrow selection of elementary “meat and potatoes” rock. Billboard reported in May 1986, “According to WAAF program director Cynde Slater, the Katz Broadcasting facility ‘made a commitment to go after the Boston market two years ago.’ She says the only competitor the station targets is WBCN.” During these early days of a rivalry that would extend for over twenty years, ’AAF showed a “whatever it takes” mentality and single-minded concentration on undermining the ’BCN brand. Billboard continued, “At WAAF promotions are aimed directly at the WBCN listener. A recent television commercial included the following dialog: ‘BCN’S a great station; I just want to rock. Enough talk!’ Later in the spot, a WBCN bumper sticker is covered over by a WAAF bumper sticker.” Although WZLX represented the much more immediate and dangerous threat, certainly to ’BCN’S older listeners, WAAF’S attack on the younger audience would be impossible to ignore.
Then, a third opponent emerged, a radio station far less menacing than either ’ZLX or ’AAF, but you’d never know it by the amount of press that the place received. “WFNX-FM, based in Lynn, is the new kid on the block, a David to WBCN’S Goliath,” wrote Jim Sullivan in the Boston Globe in January ’86. “Formerly WLYN, the station was bought by Boston Phoenix publisher Stephen Mindich in 1983. WFNX is a 3,000-watt station that has made a small dent in the Boston market, but arguably, a larger dent in its mindset.” Sullivan pointed out that WFNX’S ratings were less than a ninth of WBCN’S but postulated that the Lynn station’s choice of music carried a far bigger stick. Playing edgy new sounds in a genre that would eventually become known as “alternative,” WFNX eroded ’BCN’S reputation as the station to turn to for the latest music . . . at least to the people who cared little for mainstream and who could actually pull in WFNX’S limited signal. The community of Boston’s writers and critics, inclined to praise advances in the arts and solidly ambivalent to the status quo, lavished attention on their new “David.” So, while WFNX could not challenge ’BCN on a business level, it certainly added torment to a station now locked into protecting its other flanks against more commercial competitors.
The WBCN slogan, “Classic to Cutting Edge,” aptly described the station’s musical mission since 1968, but it also neatly defined the flanks of the radio war raging twenty years later. On the right, WZLX played classic AOR fare, while WAAF concentrated on their basic thud rock; plus, WODS-FM featured a sugary-sweet mix of pop oldies delivered by a team of ever-cheerful, over-the-top, hyperactive announcers. These stations kept up the mainstream pressure while WFNX fought for at least an ideological left. Was it possible for ’BCN to remain standing on its original base of the Beatles, the Stones, and The Who while covering the younger trailer park, roadhouse styles of Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC, Def Leppard, and Ted Nugent? And if succeeding at that, how could ’BCN include the leading alternative edge with bands like R.E.M., the Cure, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and XTC (many of which ’BCN broke in the States)?
In 1989, Jeff McLaughlin assembled an article in the Boston Globe about the ever-increasing level of competition and changing tastes in the market. He wrote, “WBCN is ‘The Rock of Boston,’ positioning itself as the station that defined rock culture in the metropolitan area. But as its core audience grew older, it became stretched thin, its position harder to hold. The quirky pop favored by today’s 18-year-olds doesn’t find much favor with 40-year-olds in business suits, and, conversely, young people interested in the cutting edge of pop music can only tolerate a small amount of music from what they call ‘the dinosaur era’ of rock history.” Although the station’s famous assortment of veteran personalities and a strong promotional presence had been compelling enough to retain an impressive audience within WBCN’S orbit for years, now the strategy of its music mission was in question. Could the station continue on its all-encompassing course and maintain the ratings success to which it had become accustomed? John Gehron, the general manager of WODS, didn’t think so. In the Boston Globe article, he told McLaughlin, “You can take two approaches. You can grow older with your audience, or let the succeeding generational waves flow through you. You can’t do both.”
But WBCN tried, toeing the mainstream line while embracing the “cutting edge.” In 1987, Oedipus established “Boston Emissions,” a Sunday-night radio show devoted wholly to local music, as a means to further concentrate on the Boston music scene. Following his beloved “Nocturnal Emissions” program, during which Oedipus featured the alternative music he had always been most fond of, the new local music show furthered ’BCN’S commitment begun so many years before in the Rock ’n’ Roll Rumble. “Everywhere in Boston, people were dressed in black and carrying guitars,” Lisa Traxler commented. The interesting thing was that even though WBCN’S bread and butter came from the big ticket mainstream bands, its DJS were mostly interested in the music emerging from the street and college radio, not surprising since most of them came from there. During this period, the air staff prided itself in helping to establishing careers for new groups like the Alarm, Smithereens, Living Colour, Black Crowes, Georgia Satellites, and the Cult, while also comfortably programming Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, and Pink Floyd. Virtually Alternative reported in its thirty-year station retrospective in ’98, “WBCN was still on the edge when compared to the national AORS, championing bands like the Godfathers and An Emotional Fish to go with Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. Their bread and butter, however, was the same classic rock that fed the rest of the AOR world. Beneath the surface, the new musical movement was brewing. When it finally arrived in 1991, it was championed not by the historically progressive WBCN, but by the little station on the North Shore with its collegiate attitude and small signal—WFNX.”
“Oedipus always did such a great job taking what we considered to be our big artists out from under us,” mentioned Bill Abbate, who started at WFNX in 1984 and jumped ship to ’BCN four years later. “A great example of that was in ’88; [at ’FNX] we felt that we had done everything we could in the marketplace to champion the Smithereens. But we didn’t get the big show. ’BCN got them instead for
their twentieth-anniversary, monthlong celebration.” Oedipus paraded ’BCN’S clout and transmitter signal in front of the record companies and nearly always received cooperation. Abbate continued, “There’s no doubt that ’BCN played [the Smithereens], but the feeling in Lynn was, ‘Hey, we’ve got them in full rotation; this is our band!’”
When another new group named Nirvana, and its anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” hit the streets, a new movement arrived at the gates with a battering ram. Rarely can a shift in taste and a changing of the guard be measured in such a distinctive and singular event, but here it was; a new generation had advanced onto the field and with this song made its presence known. Mark Kates, head of alternative promotion for DGC, the record label that released Nirvana’s Nevermind album, remembered that WFNX and its program director Kurt St. Thomas had a relationship with the band well in advance of the album’s appearance: “The band was deeply entrenched at the station; they would have played ‘Teen Spirit’ the moment it came out. The album was released on September 24, 1991, so the single came out in August.” Nirvana had first played the Jamaica Plain rock club Green Street Station in ’89, then Cambridge’s ManRay the year after, a period in which the ’FNX program director became a devoted fan and acquaintance—so much so that Thomas prevailed on the group to appear at his station’s eighth anniversary party the day before Nevermind even hit the streets.
WBCN would not ignore “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” playing it in October after the single’s video had hit MTV’S “Buzz Bin” and well before most mainstream stations. However, to many in the local scene, this was seen as a game changer, WFNX being the point station at this crucial cultural juncture in the same way that ’BCN had been so many times before. “Back then, there was a sense of purity that if a song was so good, there was no way it wouldn’t make it to the air. ‘Teen Spirit’ was that to me, a nobrainer, and we were late to the party,” David Bieber admitted. “Nirvana actually came to the station and they weren’t even put on the air. They were given a back-alley treatment and cut some station IDS.” But to be fair, Mark Kates brought Nirvana by WBCN before DGC had begun actively promoting the group, simply because the band happened to be in Boston. This was a courtesy call for Kates to put in the bank for when he’d later be looking for support from Oedipus. The band members dropped by 1265 Boylston Street on a Sunday, when few ’BCN staffers were present. With Nirvana barely known and their record not on the air yet, the group was not invited to do an interview. In similar situations, the station would not have been accused of missing anything; however, after the band’s enormous and immediate impact, WBCN was perceived as being behind the ball in Boston. As Nirvana’s presence only grew and launched a tsunami straight through the heart of rock music, the band member’s appreciation for the earliest stations that had championed them would never waver. Kurt Co-bain remained a friend of ‘FNX, not WBCN, till the day he died.
NELSON,
HOWARD,
AND
“THE LOVE
SHACK”
After years of gazing out over a lunar-like no-man’s-land walled by concrete and barbed wire, the East Berliners who crowded against the barrier erected by the Soviets in 1961 could never have imagined the magnitude of lights, sound, production, or the simple freedom that Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters enjoyed, to stage his band’s grand 1979 work, The Wall, in Potzdamer Platz on 21 July 1990. Only the previous week, West German troops had finished sweeping the area where two hundred thousand fans now stood for unexploded bombs and mines. Their Eastern counterparts danced atop a long line of armored personnel carriers, hooting and hollering in their fatigues as Waters unwrapped the iconic double album onstage, and East hugged West in a new summer of love. I journeyed to this massive European party as a WBCN correspondent, phoning reports back to America from a bank of phones set up in a trailer jammed against the Berlin Wall. After nearly forty years of Soviet injustice and Hitler’s nightmarish reign before that, this whole area reeked tragically of history, like some decaying roadkill left by a continent-wide collision. But the immense sound of nearly a quarter-million voices booming into the Berlin night: “Tear down the wall! Tear down the wall!” shouted down the past. Could it be? Could a glimmer of hope be shed for these Berliners, that the end of their long nightmare was truly at hand?
Afterward, a few of us roamed about in a mostly deserted backstage area. Dave Loncao, a high-level Mercury Records rep, flashed a laminated pass and performed his Big Apple razzle-dazzle to secure a few bottles of red wine, all that was left from the considerable bar that had catered earlier to hundreds of VIPS. We drank enthusiastically, talking about the concert and the politics of a new Europe until the last bottle had been drained. Loncao grumbled, “What do you want to do now? We’ll never get out of here with all the traffic!”
“I guess we just have to hang out or start walking back to the hotel,” someone offered, not a happy prospect since the place was several miles away.
“Maybe we should just walk over and take a piss on the Berlin Wall!” someone else piped in. I’d like to say it was my idea, but the wine had begun interfering with any accurate record keeping by that point. Let it stand that “someone” in our group had the brilliant thought.
“Like the cover of Who’s Next?” Loncao observed, chuckling with a hand already on his fly.
“Exactly!” And with that, our little band of American broadcasters lurched over, offering up our own special tribute to the absurdity of building that ugly ribbon of concrete and metal in the first place.
Carter alan
A new decade had arrived, a noisy and kicking brat named 1990. Loud and brash, the imp quickly drowned out its older, more reserved, brothers and sisters born during the eighties. Just the end of the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the reuniting of East and West Germany was astounding enough to warrant special attention. But to that remarkable turn of events, add Lech Welesa’s presidential victory to break the back of Poland’s communist government and Margaret Thatcher’s resignation. Twenty-five cents bought a first-class stamp and a gallon of regular gas averaged around $1.15. Sporting fans watched Edmonton deny Boston the Stanley Cup (again); the Reds swept Oakland in the World Series; and Joe Montana led the 49ers in a rout of Denver at Super Bowl XXIV. The Simpsons debuted on Fox-TV, Seinfeld on NBC, while Home Alone, Dances with Wolves, and Ghost became box office monsters. As M. C. Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em sat at number 1 for twenty-one weeks and sold ten million copies, an unknown band in Seattle named Pearl Jam played its first gig and Nirvana visited Boston for the second time.
Big hair’s last stand: the eighties give way to the nineties. Carter Alan and (future) wife Carrie Christodal. Photo by Roger Gordy.
The eighties had been very good to WBCN, the station arriving at 1990 on the crest of local popularity, as well as national respectability. Friday Morning Quarterback looked back on the previous years by polling the professional communities of both broadcasting and the record business nationwide, naming ’BCN as “Best Station of the Decade.” In the 1990 Rolling Stone Reader’s Poll, and for the ninth time in ten years, the station was voted one of America’s best large-market radio stations. But just as the fresh year had brought sweeping changes to world affairs, politics, and culture, 1990 also perched ’BCN on the edge of a worrisome and uncertain future after a decade of consistency and mastery of its domain. Several personalities departed from the air staff, including Tami Heide, who transferred to KROQ for a long and acclaimed career, and Lisa Traxler, who ended up on rival WZLX in 1992. Billy West and Tom Sandman both exited the production department, the latter stepping up to a program directorship at crosstown WBOS-FM: “I didn’t see any future in me getting into programming at WBCN; I didn’t think Oedipus was going to go anywhere soon.” Sandman was correct; ’BCN’S now-veteran program director remained secure in his position, presiding over the latest changes in his staff, which would prove to be minor compared to the seismic ones arriving in just a few y
ears. Tony Berardini endured as station general manager and Infinity vice president but, by the end of 1989, had hired a general manager for KROQ and given up the arduous schedule of flying back and forth to LA every two weeks. “The real issue became that ’BCN started getting more competition from ’ZLX,” Berardini explained. “That station was chipping of enough of our ratings that it made it difficult to reach the budgets. Now I could sit down and focus on ’BCN.”
In the news and public affairs departments, the twin defections of Katy Abel and Matt Schaffer left a gaping hole. Oedipus prevailed upon Sherman Whitman, who had been part of the WBCN news team for three years until October 1987 when he left to work at WXRK in New York City, to return as news director. Whitman found the new appointment satisfying: “There was still a commitment to the news and public affairs at ’BCN; people felt they got information there that they couldn’t get anywhere else.” Then, Oedipus tapped Maurice Lewis, who sported an extensive list of credentials in local radio and television journalism, to take over for Schaffer on the “Boston Sunday Review” (BSR). Lewis said, “I had total and free reign without any interference from management; that was the beauty of the show. You couldn’t have asked for a more supportive environment.” The two new arrivals, along with Charles Laquidara, soon brought great honor to WBCN in June 1990, on the occasion of black political activist Nelson Mandela’s historic visit to Boston. Sadly, as triumphant as that moment would be, it would also represent the final hurrah for an acclaimed (and some would say, essential) part of WBCN’S original manifesto in 1968.