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On July 14, CBS, current owners of the legendary FM rock station WBCN-FM in Boston, announced they would be closing the station effective August 13, to make room for the city's second "sports talk" radio outlet. The demise of the "Rock of Boston," as WBCN is known, including the retirement of its call letters, quickly became the talk of Boston. And it's not hard to understand why.
Since March 1968, WBCN has been a major artery for relevant music, culture and politics for generations of listeners in Boston. The press coverage surrounding the station's closing has focused on WBCN's impressive role in breaking four decades of bands, including the Who, Aerosmith, J. Geils, and U2, among others. However, it was arguably during WBCN's early days, from 1968 to 1975, as one of the nation's first "free-form progressive rock" radio stations, that WBCN had its greatest impact in Boston and nationally, as it both chronicled and helped promote the great social, cultural and political upheavals of that era.
I worked at WBCN starting in 1970, at the age of 14, first as an intern, and soon after covering news and hosting my own weekly show. With the recent announcement of the station's closing, I reflected on the station's early days, and its legacy, in an Op-Ed article in the Boston Globe.
It began:
"The year was 1968. Young Americans were dying in an unpopular war halfway around the world. Protesters were battling police on campuses and in the streets throughout the country. A national upheaval was underway involving the anti-war, civil rights, feminist, and gay and lesbian movements. These revolutions would forever transform the nation socially, culturally, and politically. But you would never know it from listening to the radio, where fast-talking DJs played ads for acne cream along with Top 40 pop ballads like Frank and Nancy Sinatra's "Something Stupid.''
And then came WBCN-FM.The radio station, which billed itself as "The American Revolution,'' was the vision of a young, hip entrepreneur named Ray Riepen, who simultaneously created the "alternative'' newspaper The Boston Phoenix and the legendary rock club the Boston Tea Party. WBCN began broadcasting from the back room of the Boston Tea Party on March 15, 1968. From the moment it hit the air, the station helped define, as well as promote, popular culture and politics in Boston for the '60s/boomer generation in a way that nothing had before. And its impact quickly spilled over nationally.
Since Tuesday's announcement that WBCN's owner, CBS, will take the station off the air in August, its role in launching music careers, including The Who, The J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, and U2, has been widely cited. But WBCN was more than a cultural innovator. It was a social and political force as well, particularly from 1968 to 1975, when, long before Facebook or MySpace, the station served as the social medium that connected a generation in Boston . . ."
(Click here to read the entire Boston Globe Op-Ed article: "The Glory Days of the Rock of Boston.")
The closing of WBCN-FM comes at a time when there is a growing disconnection between the general public, and community and national media, as well as a fading of the belief that one reporter, or one newspaper, or one community radio station, can make a difference. To help today's young people understand the power of media to create social change, a new documentary film, The American Revolution, is being produced. It will examine WBCN, from 1968 through 1975, and the social, cultural and political impact the station had. My company is producing the film, and as part of its creation, we are collecting personal recollections from that era, as well as archival material, including audio, photographs, and memorabilia, both from WBCN as well as that era generally. You can see more about the documentary, and how to share your recollections and material, at the film's web site at WBCNthefilm.com
It is ironic that for the final four days of WBCN, CBS relaxed its programming rules, so that, for the first time in decades, announcers could play or discuss whatever they wanted on-air. I was driving around Cambridge yesterday, listening to WBCN, which sounded as good as it ever had. There was the live version of Jimi Hendrix's "Band of Gypsies" (with the five-minute guitar solo); unreleased live U2 performances; the Ramones; tapes of unsigned local bands; a discussion about Timothy Leary's lasting impact on popular culture; and even some dead air. It may be going away, but for one last weekend, WBCN was back. And it was good.
Follow Bill Lichtenstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Bill_LCMedia
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Check Out the shows on my Podcast –
http://wls
Especially the 1st two shows - Tribute To WBCN - 20th Anniversary -
Most of other shows has BCN clips from the past.
My first two episodes
http://wls
http://wls
For Updates - E-Mail to cox.netl43@cox.net or Befriend on FaceBook
Thx Mike Andrade
I went to college with '68 era program director Sam Kopper, and he was a big part of what WBCN was at its prime. After his departure the station drifted more and more into corporate waters until it became irrelevant to the people who loved the music. In its heyday, it was nothing less than amazing. I'm glad it had a small chance to return to form for a few hours before its format switch.
The internet stations are all that is left for those who once loved Radio. When Sirius took over XM, they pretty much wiped out the big playlists and the one channel that approached freeform. Terrestrial and Satellite are both corporate now, and it's a shame that it has come to this. I doubt younger people today could have an inkling of the cultural power that stations like WBCN once wielded. RIP, radio.
Loved BCN in the 80's and 90's, but they definetly went down hill in the past 10 years... Stern, Opie and Anthony... blechh. Just play the music.
'BCN was the first station to play my music.
I've been away from Boston for many years, and I know the station hasn't been what it once was, but it's the end of an era.
Even though over the past few years I have not listened to BCN as I did through the 70's and 80's I cannot help but feel like I have lost a friend. As I listened over the past 4 days to the DJ's and the "different" (what i once called BCN music) music selections, including so many songs that you could only hear on that station, I could not help but to reminisce about how much I once enjoyed the station and what it once stood for. It is just another sign of the times (boy I sound old), with each passing day the world becomes more generic, more corporate and less personal. Sorry to see it die even though the life had been taken away years ago.
FM radio died long ago . . . no one thought to bury it. I grew up in Detroit, not Boston, and began listening to "underground radio" in its strong, early days. RIP.
Began in '68 and helped break The Who...
Apparently it's a radio station AND a time machine...
BCN has been irrelevant since they started with Stern. I took them off my presets completely. All the originality and edge was instantly gone from that moment.
They removed some of the soul from Boston from doing that. We are not a suburb of New York. That never seemed to dawn on them after they became corporate.
Corporate shills.
You know that Howard is a graduate of Boston University, right?
Relevance? World leaders have studied at Harvard, that doesn't make them Bostonian (or Cambridgian, if there is such a word). Point is, Stern is not about the music, and his show is not relevant to Boston in the way that a Bostonian-produced show would be.
Don't you mean, "BCN was back. And it was wicked good."
Another strike against corporate mainstream media companies. This is just sad. To internet radio everyone! Terrestrial radio is dead and this development is yet another indication of that.
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