"Gordon, Richie, you gotta come in here. NOW!"
The voice of the huge dorm neighbor, Mark McKee, thundered through the narrow hallway of the third-year Phillips Academy dorm. The face of McKee, newly-installed right guard on the Andover football team, was as lit up as a 17-year-old's face could be.
"Omigod," he bellowed, "You won't believe what I'm hearing."
His single room was darkened, shades drawn in the late afternoon, spring 1967, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Tempestuous times were about to befall the American cultural scene up and down the land. But no one knew that yet. Red lights and green florescent dial numbers shone through the innocent gloom as Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" whined and threatened the peace and tranquility of the youth-at-hand. Not just "White Rabbit," but the whole album side was revealing its suggestive rhythms and pulsating, undermining attitude. We three stood in the blackened atmosphere as our wonder transformed to exuberance at the irreverent, empowering music we were at last hearing.
McKee was about the most unlikely person one would ever suspect of recognizing the paradigm shift about to unfold in American culture. He had heard this brand new radio station, WBCN, only three days before, and he could no longer keep it to himself. The American Revolution was what the station called itself and its newest jock, Charles Laquidara, was promising something totally new on the radio.
After 42 years of broadcast, WBCN announced it was being silenced last week. The Mix 98.5 would take over its call numbers with its non-threatening lineup of well trodden tunes that are decidedly not revolutionary and mostly from the various "me-first" decades that followed rock's pioneering era. A sports talk station would slide in to take Mix's 98.5 band spot, which is where the Patriots will be heard on radio for the coming few seasons.
WBCN will disappear forever from the radio airwaves and beneath the waves of history — just as other music icons, including Musician Magazine, have done before it. Their time, place and raison d'etre have become muddied, co-opted and mostly irrelevant. But oh, how they remade the landscape back in their day.
Before there was 'BCN, there was only Top 40 on the AM band as the feeder for rock. FM existed, but it was for your parents' music, you know, the Ray Coniff singers-type music — just a step above Lawrence Welk.
Top 40 was tightly controlled by the record companies and radio stations with an elaborate system of promotion that determined exactly what got played. Several scandals involving pay-o-la had reared their ugly heads, but listeners didn't care if it was mob money, corporate money or The Colonel's money controlling the list, as long as they could sing along in their cars.
But 'BCN was the pioneer of album rock where they would play entire album sides or extended album cuts longer than the 2- or 3-minute, AM-style of song. They were inventive, creative and really good at picking the new classics that defined what we know as music today. Led Zeppelin didn't make it to AM until having been discovered on FM.
Soon, every other city had an FM station imitating WBCN and its fuzzy, furry, fabulous disc jockey patter, its inventive discussion of the bands, the music and the concert scene. The band concert circuit basically grew out of FM radio and 'BCN in particular. The Boston Tea Party, in the shadow of Fenway Park, was the live translation of what 'BCN was playing.
You could go in on a given night and see Fleetwood Mac, Hendrix, Zepelin or The Allman Bros. — bands that weren't recognized on the national scene yet, but were sucked up by fans in Boston, thanks to our pioneering station.
So hats off to the history of WBCN. In latter years, their listener base was probably biggest at Pats game-time. So many imitators and competitors rendered them a victim of their own success, that their musical sand castles finally tumbled into the sea ... just like Jimi Hendrix said they eventually would.
But we remember. It wouldn't have happened without you, WBCN.
Gloucester resident Gordon Baird is founder of Billboard's Musician Magazine and the West End Theater, and is producer of the "Gloucester Chicken Shack" TV show.
