All language subtitles for WBCN And American Revolution - Documentary [2019]

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RON DELLA CHIESA:
This is March 15, 1968.

Official YIFY movies site:
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And now it's time

for our revolutionary
new experiment in radio.

(audio distortion)

("I Feel Free" by Cream playing)

♪ Bomp bomp bomp,
bomp bomp bomp ♪

♪ Bomp bomp bomp, bomp
bomp bomp ♪

MAN: This is WBCN in Boston...
Jerry Garcia Band, Duane Allman,

they're all here.

("Revolution" by the Beatles
playing)

♪ You say you want
a revolution ♪

♪ Call out the instigators ♪

♪ Because there's something
in the air ♪

MAN: Railroad tracks on
Mass. Avenue were blockaded

for a while tonight in Cambridge

in a militant anti-war protest.

♪ The revolution will not
be televised ♪

♪ Will not be televised ♪

♪ Will not be televised,
will not be televised ♪

MAN: This is WBCN in Boston,
the American Revolution.

♪ I can't see a thing till you
open my eyes ♪

♪ Can't see a thing till you
open my eyes ♪

♪ Can't see a thing
till you open my eyes ♪

(projector whirring)

JOHN HENNING: By the score,
the hippies have been descending

on the Boston Common.

Their recreation area is this
grassy plot

on the corner
of Charles and Beacon Streets.

MITCHELL KERTZMAN: The summer
before was the Summer of Love

in San Francisco-- we didn't
have a Haight-Ashbury community.

We did have the Boston Common.

DAVID SILVER: Hi, hello.
WOMAN: Hi.

SILVER: Why are you here?
WOMAN: Because I

like love-ins.
(chuckles)

SILVER: Is it possible to love
everybody?

WOMAN: Yes.
SILVER: How come?

How come people haven't loved
everybody for 2, 000 years?

WOMAN: Because they've been
mixed up.

HENNING: The very presence
and activity of this community

has caused crossfire
and conflict from other groups

inside the community of Boston.

Namely, the police department,
local businessmen,

and members of the
Boston City Council.

If you've got a group of people

who have no means of
communicating

with the establishment, as has
been the case with the hippies,

then communication
becomes the primary problem.

("Dirty Water" by
the Standells playing)

♪ I'm gonna tell you a story ♪

♪ I'm gonna tell you about
my town ♪

♪ I'm gonna tell you
a big fat story, baby ♪

MAN: These people think
that the,

the normal community, the
"straights," as they call it,

just don't understand them,

don't want to understand them,
and completely reject them.

And they just go
from bad to worse.

♪ On the banks of the
River Charles ♪

♪ Aww, that's what's happening,
baby ♪

ELIJAH ADLOW:
Conformity gives shape and size

and character to society,
doesn't it?

Just think of these hippies down
on Charles Street,

every one of whom is trying to
look different from the other.

Aren't they a mess?

♪ 'Cause I love that dirty
water ♪

♪ Oh, Boston you're my home ♪

♪ ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

JOHN VOLPE:
I would hope that the,

most of these people would
take up a trade

or a profession and get to work

and help to build a better
America.

♪ ♪

Hippies have caused a little bit
of problem in our,

in our business.

♪ Wishin' and a-hopin' ♪

♪ Oh, that just once ♪

MAN:
They're using the Boston Common

as a, as a lavatory.

They're full of bugs
and parasites.

You show them a bar of soap,
they'll run for the hills.

I mean, what is going to happen?

This is not the same city
of Boston that we grew up in.

JOSEPH F. TIMILTY:
Boston Common was set up

originally for the benefit of
all the people of Boston.

Today, a colony of unwashed,

unshaven people have managed
to infest

that area and desecrate that
community by their love-ins,

their sit-ins, their smoke-ins,

and a few other ins that I
wouldn't dare to describe today.

We now have a different type
of pollution: people pollution,

hippie pollution,
the flower people.

All I am asking is
for the police department

to enforce the regulations.

(people shouting)

My name is Ray Riepen,

and in 1966, I moved
to Cambridge and

was going to do some
graduate work

at the Harvard Law School.

Shortly after that,
I opened the first rock club

on the East Coast, called
the Boston Tea Party.

A woman whose divorce
I'd handled called me one day

and asked me if I would do some
free legal work

for Andy Warhol and Film-Makers'
Co-op in New York,

which had been backed by
the Ford Foundation.

They had talked about
opening a Boston branch.

Shortly after I put my money up
and signed the lease,

she called me and told me that

the Ford Foundation
had changed their mind

and that they, they were not
going to open

a Boston branch
of the Film-Makers' Co-op.

So, I quickly had to figure out
what I was going to do,

besides file for bankruptcy.
(chuckles)

It just occurred to me that
with 240,000 students in Boston,

that the best chance I had

to pay the rent on this thing
was to give,

you know, play rock music there

and have, you know,
have a rock club.

MAN: ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪

We're at the Boston Tea Party
tonight!

(crowd cheers)

In Boston, Massachusetts.
MAN: All right, right on.

MAN: There is no place
like this place,

and runnin' around about
this place,

lookin' at things like this
place...

♪ Lord, you know,
this must be the place ♪

(cheers and applause)

♪ Boston, Massachusetts ♪

("Tutti Frutti" playing)

KERTZMAN:
Well, we were

all hippies, we all had long
hair, and Ray didn't.

Ray was a straight guy.

You would not have picked
out Ray

to be the owner of the
Tea Party.

Ray was kind of an interesting
character, I mean, here he is,

so very much the Kansas City
lawyer.

He had a way of kind of sitting
back from it all,

and I think that
he quickly realized

that he was really
on to something.

Well, when you went in, it was,
like, this old

kind of temple-like building.

Across the top of the stage,
it said, "Praise Ye the Lord."

In the '30s, the building had
been used as a Calvary temple,

so there was this little,
you know, religious overtones.

Up in the balcony would be

the light show.

NELSON: A filmmaker
named Ken Brown,

who produced these great
little films of stuff

that he cut out and these little
characters who'd move around.

♪ Whoo, tutti frutti ♪

RIEPEN: It had a good vibe
to it, you know?

♪ ♪

It was just a great,
funky place.

SINGER: ♪ A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop
alop-bam-boom ♪

We had the real thing.

(The Who playing
"I Can't Explain")

BARRY SCHNEIER:
I was a Tea Party regular.

I went there as often
as I could, I mean...

Let's think about
this for a second,

the fact that I could go see
the Who

for $3.50 is insane.

There is a terrific poster from
May

of 1969 that just tells you

what was going on at the
Tea Party.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
was opening for the Who

and they were doing three nights
at the Tea Party.

DEBBIE ULLMAN:
The Allman Brothers played there

for the, their first time up
north.

Duane Allman, of course,
was there.

It was amazing that you could
see music

of that level in such
a small, intimate environment.

CHARLES DANIELS: There was
a whole transition period

that was starting to happen with
these traditional blues players

performing in front of a white
audience for the first time.

People just never really
saw anything like that.

Seeing people like Muddy Waters
for the first time

was just mind-boggling.

(Muddy Waters performing)

TOMMY HADGES:
Ray was good at finding talent,

bands that these days,

you'd say, "My God,
Led Zeppelin, really?"

Yes, yes, really.

(Led Zeppelin playing
"Communication Breakdown")

NELSON: Led Zeppelin made their
first U.S. tour

in January '69.

They actually had only about

an hour's worth of music
in their set.

The audience
was just going crazy.

Led Zeppelin started just
improvising,

and they went on to play
for four hours.

Their manager,
a guy named Peter Grant,

was quoted afterwards, saying,

"Wow, I knew we'd made it when
I saw

the reaction of the people
at the Tea Party."

("Communication Breakdown" ends)

(guitar notes playing)

LOU REED: Thank you very much,
this is a song called "Heroin."

("Heroin" playing)

NELSON: The last weekend
of May of 1967,

the Velvet Underground
played the Tea Party.

It turns out that this was
a really, really important gig,

because up until that time,
they'd been part

of Andy Warhol's Exploding
Plastic Inevitable,

and the multimedia
and the whole thing.

And this was the first gig that
they ever had

where it was just
the four band members

playing as a rock band.

("Heroin" playing)

LOU REED (archival): You know,
Boston was the whole thing,

as far as we were concerned.

It was just, it was the first
time we played in public

and didn't have all
those things thrown at us.

The, you know, the "leather
freaks," the...

You know, "druggies."

It was the first time anybody
just listened to the music,

which blew our minds
collectively. (chuckles)

("Heroin" ends)

(cheers and applause)

When Ray Riepen first developed
the, the whole concept

of the Tea Party, there wasn't
any radio station at all

that played any, any of this
kind of music.

The only place on radio that you
could listen

to rock and roll was on A.M.
radio,

and you got 40 songs played over
and over again.

That's why they called
it Top 40.

♪ Party kids burn ♪

♪ The guy
with the swinging show ♪

♪ Down in Boston, Mass. ♪

♪ He's the guy that the kids
all know ♪

At the time, we didn't notice

that it was, like, the same
songs every 30 minutes or so,

because it was kinetic, and it
was active, and it was loud.

SINGERS: ♪ WNEX ♪
WOMAN: Plays hits number...

SINGERS: Five, four, three,
two...

ROBOTIC VOICE:
One, one, one, one.

♪ Yummy, yummy, yummy,
I got love in my tummy ♪

Your job was not so much
to be responsive

to the audience as it was

to force this music
down their throats.

And then putting them
on the air

in this high-energy format

with 18 minutes
of national commercials,

very highly produced
commercials, every hour.

MAN IN COMMERCIAL: Oh, there's
a miserable old acne pimple!

What to do?

The DJs were all, usually
outsized personalities,

sometimes screaming,
sometimes not,

but always with some sort
of schtick.

DJ: We're gonna play
this one for everyone saying

"Whoo, whoo, Ginsburg!"...
(horn honks twice)

...tonight at Adventure Car Hop.

♪ Sugar, oh, honey, honey ♪

JAMES MONTGOMERY: And they
always talked like this.

(imitating):
"Hey, Sunday, simply...

Chris Karamesines and his nitro-
burning dragster!", you know.

In Italian,
there's a great phrase,

and the opera singers use it,
"senza coglionis."

(chuckles)

It means without balls,
literally.

And, you know...
And you know something is

sort of, sort of white bread,
it's a sort of...

It lacks-- it lacks feeling,
it lacks passion.

And I think that a lot of that
was what was being broadcast.

Everybody had the
same records,

but you couldn't hear it
on the radio.

Jefferson Airplane,
their debut album.

♪ It's no secret
how strong my love is for you ♪

WINER: Steve Miller Band,
Quicksilver Messenger Service.

You know, jazz rock
was being born,

and Cream's album came out,
and Donovan.

♪ Look on yonder misty mountain,
see the young monk ♪

BARNA:
The music business

changed by 1968 to, 70% of the
record sales were albums.

And some record would come out,

and you would just listen to it
over and over again

and you would just talk
about it.

And the Beatles, in 1967, when
they released "Sergeant Pepper,"

they have talked about knowing
the fact

that when they put that out,

they were going to completely
dominate the conversation

and the airwaves about this
record-- and they were right.

♪ It was 20 years ago today ♪

♪ Sergeant Pepper
taught the band to play ♪

PETER SIMON: Well,
"Sergeant Pepper" started it.

That was an album that really
changed the way we dressed,

the way we looked, the way we
thought, what drugs we took.

You know, "A Day in the Life"
comes across

as one of the most important
songs I've ever heard,

and it still is,

about how absurd a day can be,
and how, when you get stoned,

you see it from a different
perspective.

I mean, really,
that's what that song's about.

"Woke up, got out of bed,
took a smoke and then went..."

(vocalizes)

♪ And somebody spoke and I went
into a dream ♪

♪ Ah... ♪

♪ Ah... ♪

Well, I got the idea
that in a town

of 240,000 students,
84 colleges,

it might be, you know,
appropriate to play the music

they were buying
at the record stores.

I went down to the N.A.F.M.B.
convention,

which was the week before

the National Association of
Broadcasters'

principal convention,

and I thought, "Well, I'll go
down there and tell them

what I'm thinking about doing
and see what they say."

And so, you know,
I told them that I thought,

you know, I'll limit the
commercials to eight an hour

and have conversational tone

and play album cuts.

They all asked me, well,
what my background was,

and I told them, well,
I was a lawyer,

and I was doing graduate work

at Harvard Law School,
and they suggested

that I concentrate on that
and leave broadcasting to them,

because I was the dumbest person
they had ever met.

That there was nothing about
my concept of programming

that was economically viable
in America.

JIM PARRY: He was what we
needed, he was an entrepreneur

who had kind of the affinity
for the culture

and, but at the same time,
kind of

the personality
of the entrepreneur,

which is kind of, "My way or the
highway, I have this vision."

So I began to pull
Dun & Bradstreets on all the,

you know, radio stations
in Boston.

And here was WBCN
that had been in Chapter 11,

and it was about to go down
again and was late payment.

And they were somebody
that I knew that

they had to be desperately
looking for an alternative

to just going off the air.

So he wound up connecting

with a man named
T. Mitchell Hastings.

DELLA CHIESA: T. Mitchell
Hastings was a, a genius,

and he also created
a small radio called

the FM Hastings Jr.,

which was a small,
pocket-sized radio.

NELSON:
So T. Mitchell Hastings

owned a radio station
in Boston named WBCN.

But then he began to acquire
some other stations.

In Hartford, WHCN.

WNCN, which was in
New York City.

And these stations were all
essentially bankrupt,

because they were
classical music stations

that couldn't sell any
advertising

and, you know, begging on air
for people to buy spots.

DELLA CHIESA (archival):
You're listening

to Concert Network Radio.

We have been
in severe financial trouble,

looking for funds here at WBCN.

If you can help us, send your
contribution

to 171 Newbury Street,
Back Bay, Boston,

and if we don't have
adequate funds,

we'll be forced to go off
the air.

We had problems, you know?

We had people coming in
from the Associated Press...

In those days, we had the,

we had the newswire
right at the studio.

Disconnecting it, taking it out.
(laughs)

Because the bill hadn't
been paid.

And I went to him and I said,

"Mr. Hastings," you know,
"what am I gonna do?"

I was program director
at the time.

He said, "Well, read
from the newspaper."

That was it.

So, Ray was able to convince
this technical genius,

T. Mitchell Hastings,

into just giving him
the overnights.

He knew exactly what was going
on in San Francisco,

and in Pasadena, California,
and in New York,

where other FM stations
took advantage of the fact

that nobody wanted
to listen to FM,

and started broadcasting rock
in stereo.

I was supposed to be class
of '68 at Tufts.

I was a philosophy major
with no career prospects.

HADGES: When I got to Tufts,
it just happened that

the dorm that I was living in,

the next room,
this guy named Joe Rogers

was playing this incredible
Muddy Waters,

he'd play Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Stuff that I'd never heard--
jaw-dropping, amazing music.

(performing jazz piece)

So I was working at the,

or doing a show
at the Tufts station,

and one evening, unannounced,
Ray appeared there.

I think that was easy enough
for him to do,

because I'm pretty sure
we didn't lock the door.

I listened to the college radio
stations

and drove around, and then I
just drove over and walked in.

They were on the air
and I just walked in

and introduced myself
and I said,

"I'm trying to get some time
on a network

"and I need some announcers.

Would you guys be interested
in going on real radio?"

HADGES: Meeting Ray was really
an interesting experience.

I heard he controls the club,
the Boston Tea Party,

very important guy,
and he's gonna start

a commercial radio station.

I'm, like, "Okay, fine,"
you know, "I'm in school,

I'm a full-time student,
what can I do?"

But I went over to his
apartment,

which was this amazing,

modern, gorgeous place in
Cambridge, but oddly enough,

there wasn't one piece
of furniture in the room, okay?

He had a lot of books stacked
around,

but no furniture, and I'm, like,

"If this guy is so freaking
successful,

why doesn't he have any
furniture?"

I told them
what I had in mind,

and they probably thought
I was crazy, too, because,

you know, it didn't exist yet.

The deal was, if you worked
on a college station, maybe,

was to try and be professional,

and of course, professional
meant standard broadcasting,

which I thought was ugly radio.

And that was one of
the genius parts

of Ray Riepen's plan
and his business model for WBCN,

is that he did not hire

professional radio announcers--
he hired kids.

What he cared about
was your passion for the music

and what was called at the time
the underground culture.

I'm looking at...

(chuckles):
...a momentary flashback

caught in time, which is

the BCN air staff.

Jim Parry was one of the DJs.

Joe Rogers was then
Mississippi Harold Wilson.

Sam Kopper,

J.J. Jackson,

who was the first
African American DJ at BCN.

Then there's Steven Clean,
Steven Segal.

Al Perry, who was also a DJ,

but also was a guy who kind
of took one for the team

and became a sales guy,
ultimately sales manager,

and then general manager.

You can see Al wearing a tie,

so he was probably fresh from
a sales call to some agency.

This truly tells the tale.

When we got there,
we were just excited

and in awe of the idea
that we were being allowed

to play any sort of music

and could speak any way
we wanted to on, on the radio.

And then when it turned out that
the radio station

was going to debut on
a Friday night, well, then,

what they had to say was, "Well,
I guess, Rogers, it's you."

(laughs):
It wasn't because I was

their ace designated lead-off
hitter.

It was, that's
how the schedule was,

and my instructions were simply,
"Don't screw it up."

DELLA CHIESA: We have been in
severe financial trouble

here at WBCN-- we're
experimenting with new formats,

trying to kind of feel
our way around.

I'm Ron Della Chiesa,
I'll be here tomorrow evening

with another mixed bag
of programming for you.

And now it's time for our
revolutionary new experiment

in radio, as we told you:

our first live broadcast
with Mississippi Harold Wilson.

So on, this would
be March 15 of 1968, yeah,

I carried my records up the
stairs to, up to the top floor

of the Newbury Street building
where the station was.

Began by playing some
Mothers of Invention,

Frank Zappa, some sort of
farting and belching noises.

(radio tuning sound effect,
audio distortion playing)

(farting sound effect playing)

("I Feel Free" by Cream playing)

HADGES: That first broadcast,
March 15, 1968,

I remember Joe Rogers,
Mississippi,

you know, dropped the needle
and played amazing music,

and it was a magical time.

♪ ♪

♪ Feel when I dance with you ♪

♪ We move like the sea ♪

♪ You, you're all I want
to know ♪

♪ I feel free ♪

It was completely
free form,

it was, play whatever we want,
bring in records from home.

For the first time, there was an
outlet for music

like this on the radio.

This was music of substance,
these were artists of interest,

these were artists
who displayed their roots

and their influences.

The music was just always
important to us,

and it was clearly ours.

Older people didn't like it,
didn't understand it.

You'd hear Jimi Hendrix.

Not, not necessarily
"Foxy Lady."

You might hear "If 6 was 9."

You'd hear a song six deep
into the Hendrix album.

♪ If the sun ♪

♪ Refuse to shine ♪

I remember Joe Rogers had
brought to the playlist,

and I started playing one of
the earliest known recordings

of Aretha Franklin, when she
was with a gospel choir,

a stomping gospel song.

FRANKLIN: ♪ I'm walking ♪
CHOIR: ♪ In the light ♪

FRANKLIN: ♪ In the light ♪
CHOIR: ♪ In the light ♪

Whatever rock was happening,
fine.

You want to play some folk,
no problem.

If you wanted to play some
Beethoven

or some Carl Orff--
no problem, mix it up.

Throw in some Monty Python,
throw in some spoken word.

You never knew what
you were going to hear

on the radio station.

Every station would get the
records by the Firesign Theatre,

and it would just take you
for a trip.

It was literally...

...acid-y, you know,
it was like acid.

(phone rings, picks up)

MAN:
Nick Danger, Third Eye.

CALLER: I want to order a pizza
to go, and no anchovies.

MAN: No anchovies?
You've got the wrong man.

I spell my name Danger.
(hangs up)

CALLER: What?

You'd hear some Muddy,

you'd hear some Grateful Dead,
you'd hear some Tom Rush--

you'd hear a little bit
of everything.

It was just, like, amazing.

♪ Caldonia, Caldonia ♪

♪ What make your big head
so hard? ♪

Quite simply,
you were not going to hear

this music anywhere
except at WBCN.

I remember the absolute shock

of hearing long-form sets of
30, 40, 50 minutes,

and suddenly we had found
on the radio

what was the soundtrack
of our lives.

It's so vivid to me what it was
like...

You just walk in and,

to a radio station,
and there'd be all these albums.

You could tell by the color,
almost,

of that one edge what artist
it was.

We would pull these albums out,

and, you know, you'd pull--
first, you'd pull four or five

and say, "This is how
I am going to start my show."

And then you start getting
inspired along the way,

and you'd say, "Ah, this song
would go with..."

(chuckles): And you'd run up
before the record ended

and you find that album,
you pull it out,

you go to the
other turntable that was empty,

and you put the record on,
slap it on there,

and you'd queue it up.

But if it was in the same key,
you'd let it go,

and that was the magic moment
where the two songs

would go together...
(humming)

And then the other song would
come up,

and people would go...
(sharp inhalation)

(hoarsely):
"Oh, man, that was great."

I remember distinctly driving

from New York to Boston, and BCN
you could just start getting,

like, 40 minutes outside
of town,

and I remember hearing
the static.

(imitates static)

Finally, it settled into a
song that I knew by Bob Dylan.

♪ When you're lost in Juárez,
and it's Easter time, too ♪

And all of a sudden,
just hearing that coming

through my speakers from
a radio station in Boston,

I knew that I just felt home.

BOB DYLAN: ♪ When you're lost
in the rain in Juárez ♪

♪ When it's Easter time, too ♪

NELSON: One DJ would go from
10:30 to 2:00,

and then from 2:00 to 5:30,
Peter Wolf would take over,

you know, in the wee hours.

KERTZMAN: Peter Wolf was a
well-known musician in town,

and he was a rock star
in Boston--

later, obviously,
a huge rock star.

And he was doing 2:00 to 5:00
or 6:00 a.m., and you could just

feel everything change
when Peter walked in the room.

WOLF: Ah, yes,
kooma labor gomma gabor.

This is Woofer Goofer,
Mamma Toofer, Habba Doofer,

you're listening to WBCN FM,
104.1 in Boston.

And you know what WBCN mean?

You know what WBCN means?
DANIELS: Wolf!

WOLF: You got it, baby, Wolf's
boss...

(exclaiming)
Let it happen, cap'n!

♪ ♪

I would be on the air when he
would come in,

and he would almost always come
in with his friend Big Charles.

I was kind of like his sidekick.

I started calling him the
"Woofer Goofer"

and then I became the
"Master Blaster,"

anything you can do I can do
a little bit faster.

WOLF: WBCN in Boston,
Woofer Goofer, Mamma Toofer,

104.1, having a little fun.

You got it, baby!

(song begins):
♪ Mother-in-law ♪

RIEPEN: It was a total violation
of everything we stood for,

but he was such a great guy
and such a great personality.

Here was a radio station

that was an underground rock
station,

and Wolf was doing the overnight
show, and it was just amazing.

(Wolf speaking gibberish)

WOLF: Yeah, we're doing it, WBCN
in Boston, give us a call.

You know what I'm talking about.

When the station began,

the broadcasts were from
the fifth floor

of 171 Newbury Street,
that's where WBCN

as a classical station existed.

NELSON: Because T. Mitchell
was very leery

of having long-haired hippies
going into his studio,

which was kind of a, you know,
upscale shopping area,

and a lot of ad agencies there,

he just didn't want to be
associated with these people,

even though he was
maybe thinking he'd be happy

to take their money.

I don't know whether they
thought we'd steal

the classical records or whether

somebody would be smoking funny
cigarettes up there, or what.

But they didn't socially want
the two groups to interact.

PARRY: We were hippies,
we had long hair,

we had, you know, rock and roll
band shirts.

And we did, you know,
sort of the usual substances.

The decision was made that it
would be better

to do the actual shows from,
away from Newbury Street.

Ray got two turntables
and a microphone

that could be installed over

in the backroom of his
dance hall,

the Boston Tea Party.

The studio was literally

on a side room backstage at the
Boston Tea Party,

which was an amazing place
to be sitting,

because you'd see these bands
going back and forth, and, like,

"Oh, look, there's Jefferson
Airplane," or "Oh, look,

there's the Who," or whatever.

And somebody brought up the
point that it was going to be

kind of noisy when we turned on
the mic, and he was, like,

"Who gives a shit?

It's gonna
sound fantastic, let it go."

♪ ♪

HADGES (archival): The
instrumental from the album

by the Quicksilver Messenger
Service, a song called

"Gold and Silver," and don't
forget, they will be in

at the Boston Tea Party,

53 Berkeley Street,
this weekend,

so you want to go out
and see them.

Tom Hadges
leading the American Revolution.

The place, 104 on your FM dial
in stereo, the new WBCN.

The record library was a closet,
it was about this wide,

had a door and I think
four shelves on it.

And this was also the green room
during shows,

so Ten Years After,

the British neo-blues band,
were there one night,

and Ray Riepen,
in his expansive mood, said,

"Hey, you want some records?
Take some."

So Alvin Lee, was the lead
guitarist, said, "Okay,"

and grabbed everything from
B through D,

and, you know, packed them
in the thing

and went away-- so we could
not play the Beatles

or the Doors for a month or so,
till they got replaced.

So this is, uh...
kind of a loose operation.

The response
from people was so great,

they loved the music and they
loved the different approach,

because we were sort of treating
radio not as a performance,

but as a relationship
with our listeners.

So what was on March 15
an overnight programming slot

by May 1 was 24 hours.

ROGERS: Different announcers had
done shows, and in the process,

mentioned to the listeners
that it would be good,

if they can hear us,

maybe they could send in a
postcard.

BARNA (archival):
This is Rich Barna with you

on the American Revolution, and
if'n you like what you hear,

why not write us, as we like to
know what it is that you like--

and also what it is that
you don't like.

ROGERS: And they did,
and they sent in

thousands and thousands
of postcards.

The mailman delivering the mail
was bringing it in duffle bags

of these postcards
from listeners.

MAN: "You have me as well as
half the philosophy department

here at Harvard
as faithful listeners."

"The revolution is becoming ever
more popular

at Newton High."

"I work in a store where we play
your music all day."

"Man, everybody's listening."

("Open My Eyes" by Nazz playing)

By time it went on
the air, you know,

in that spring, full time,

you could walk down

some of the streets
in Boston, like Comm. Ave.,

and people would have their
windows open

and their radio speakers

deliberately
on the windowsill,

playing this to the world.

And everybody is on the same
station.

♪ And I can't see a thing
till you open my eyes ♪

♪ Can't see a thing
till you open my eyes ♪

♪ Can't see a thing till you
open my eyes ♪

I have vivid memories
of walking up

Massachusetts Avenue
in Cambridge, every store,

whether it was the record store

or the Orson Welles Cinema,

you heard it in every store.

LAQUIDARA: You could go from one
end of Boston

to one end of Cambridge
and not have a radio,

and you could hear BCN
all the way.

JAMES MONTGOMERY: At the B.U.
library,

they had this really cool thing

where you could just put
headphones on and plug it in.

You could look around the room
and every,

everybody in there, every one of
them, was listening to WBCN.

DANIELS: BCN was really
becoming established

I mean, there was nothing else

on the radio that was even close
to what was happening.

ANNOUNCER: You're listening
to wonderful,

bigger than a bread box radio,
WBCN in Boston.

(jazz scatting)

(drum bangs)

We felt like we were going
through a revolution.

At that time, the station

was mostly about the music,

but remember, when the station
leadership chose

"The American Revolution"
as the theme,

I think that's a recognition
that there was more to it

than just
a lifestyle revolution,

that it was also
about a political revolution.

PARRY: It's playing off,
"Here's Boston,

"Boston was the hot bed of
the American Revolution,

the original one--
this is a new one."

My first memory
of BCN was when,

I don't know which disc jockey
it was, but when they said,

"This is the American
Revolution," you know?

And you felt that they meant it.

Good evening, my fellow
Americans.

By early '68, there was
a sense of expectation

on a political agenda.

Lyndon Johnson's presidency
was being threatened.

SAM KOPPER: This man, who albeit

had a good domestic record
on equal rights,

had a horrible foreign policy in
that he was

sending young men off to a war
that we should not have been in.

(indistinct audio, gunfire)

BIEBER:
People were cutting their hair

and shaving their beards
and Going Clean for Gene.

KOPPER:
Gene McCarthy, he was our hero.

I remember being at Fenway Park

for a huge Gene McCarthy rally.

BIEBER:
Johnson went on national TV

with a message
that nobody was expecting.

JOHNSON:
I shall not seek,

and I will not accept,
the nomination

of my party for another term
as your president.

BIEBER: And that just

threw open the gates.

Everything
just really changed, quickly.

ANNOUNCER:
This is the "CBS Evening News,"

with Walter Cronkite.

CRONKITE:
Good evening.

Dr. Martin Luther King,
the apostle of non-violence

in the Civil Rights Movement,
has been shot to death

in Memphis, Tennessee.

And then,
you know, Robert Kennedy,

two months later, in June
of '68, he was killed.

After my shift, I got in my car
and was driving home

and I tuned the radio,

and what I heard was the
Robert Kennedy rally after

the California primary.

KENNEDY: ...the divisions,
whether it's between

Black and whites, between
the poor and the more affluent,

or between age groups
or on the war in Vietnam,

that we can start to work
together, we are a great country

and a compassionate country.

SEGAL: I remember listening
to the results

of the, of the vote.

(crowd chanting)
KENNEDY: So, uh...

My thanks to all of you,
and now it's on to Chicago

and let's win there, thank you.
(cheers and applause)

SEGAL: And it was, like, we won,
we won, we won!

(people screaming)

"Oh, my God, Robert Kennedy
has been shot!"

(screaming)

KOPPER: I remember coming in to
do my morning show.

I had this copy in front of me:

"Robert Kennedy has been shot,"
and so I went on the air

to say that,
and it was just, you know,

it's among those moments in life
that you just...

You feel like you're totally
hit in the chest.

(crowd crying and shouting)

KERTZMAN:
The assassination of Kennedy

was such an emotional,
almost physical, blow,

because it felt like
there wasn't any hope

in the legitimate
political channels anymore.

And then the absolute, you know,
confrontation

of the Chicago Convention
in August of '68.

♪ So your brother's bound
and gagged ♪

♪ And they've chained him
to a chair ♪

♪ Won't you please come
to Chicago ♪

♪ Just to see ♪

Well, I think
if people stay in the park,

they'll be okay,
they'll be treated

with respect by the police.

Those people that,
those Yippies that march

on the Amphitheatre
or go downtown

and demand their rights...

They'll be risking their lives.

That's right, these cops here
are tough, they'd...

They'd kill you with a smile.

REPORTER: He's being kicked and
smashed

by these police officers here,
he's being hit by billy clubs.

They're kicking him,
they're jumping on him--

it's unbelievable!

We were shouting
at the cops yesterday

that they should go to Prague

and teach the Russians and
stuff,

and apparently they took
that as a compliment.

Instead of Bobby Kennedy,
we got Hubert Humphrey.

(chuckles):
And certainly the...

as institutional
a politician as there was.

I proudly accept the nomination

of our party.
(cheers and applause)

KERTZMAN: I don't think any of
us really thought

that Hubert Humphrey
was a great

receptacle for our hopes
and dreams.

And then you add to that the
third-party candidacy

of George Wallace,
who was playing

the segregationist, racist card,

and it was an autumn of chaos,
huge marches,

students demonstrating.

♪ Regulations, who needs them? ♪

KERTZMAN: Nixon was

and felt like the
personification

of American evil, of everything
that was wrong in the country.

♪ Built a new mechanical man ♪

♪ Looked just like
a human being ♪

WAYNE: Nixon ran
on a platform of peace.

We didn't believe him
for a minute.

He was Tricky Dick Nixon.

Nixon had been Eisenhower's
vice president,

and so to many oldest Boomers,
we remember,

you know, this strange,
gargoyle looking guy.

(chuckles): He was, like, out
of central casting for the job.

There wasn't anything
you could look at and go,

"Oh, no, maybe he's really
a nice guy on the side."

No, he's like this all the time.

From then on, it was,
we are at war with Nixon.

We are at war with American
political leadership.

♪ He's a genuine plastic man--
oh, yeah ♪

(song ends, applause)

Shortly after the station
started,

Ray started getting phone calls
from professional disc jockeys,

who said, "Ray, you got to get
rid of those kids.

Bring me in, we can really make
this thing fly."

And somehow, Ray came
to the conclusion,

made the decision that he was
going to stick with the kids.

It was a crazy decision,
but that was it.

Everything followed
from that decision.

The sequence of offices for BCN
was interesting.

We were in the Tea Party
there for a while.

But then we moved
to Stuart Street

for the full-time offices.

We were in a small studio
over a luncheonette

run by a guy named Flash.

We were up on the third floor,

so you could smell, you know,

if the burgers got burned,
it somehow came up.

We had a relatively small space
and a lot of people,

because the station had become
a 24-hour station.

HADGES:
I remember when bands would come

and they'd look around
and there'd be, like,

all kinds of crap on the walls

and piles of junk on the floor
and stuff.

They'd get instantly
comfortable.

Maybe there wasn't a chair,
maybe they had to sit

on a table--
that's also possible--

but the studio functioned
very well.

All of the equipment itself
was impeccably

bought and maintained,

but everything else about
the place was a mess.

So the story with my
photographing WBCN

is that I was such
a fan at first,

that I sort of got to know them

and they began feeling
comfortable with me

as a photographer.

And I would show up, photograph
them

here, there, and everywhere,

and then at one point,

we all gathered into their
little record library,

which was tiny.

One of the DJs, John Brodey,
decided it would be cool

to take off his clothes.

And that's the X-rated version
of that picture.

And... it was like one family,
one big happy family.

ANNOUNCER: There seems to be
a whole jock revolution

happening in America.

ANNOUNCER: This is your old
friends here at WBCN in Boston,

104.1.

ANNOUNCER:
This is WBCN in Boston.

ANNOUNCER: This is WBCN in
Boston.

ANNOUNCER: I'm never sure
if what I'm hearing

through my earphones
is not the same as what

you're hearing through
your radio, really.

It goes through a lot of changes
before it gets to you.

(amplifier feedback)

KOPPER:
It was all about freedom,

being basically a commune
of people working together to--

of all equals and irreverence.

We were speaking truth to power.

I mean, we were 22-year-olds,

who, you know,
thought we knew all the truth.

Boston was in the
grips of counterculture,

students trying to find new ways
of living,

new ways of being.

You know, the great discussions
were, "How are we ever gonna

"live our life in this kind
of a society?

"How do you have a moral life?

How do you have a good life?"

We hated the old men
sending the young men

off to war, but that kind of
consciousness expansion

was happening then

politically,

socially--
obviously on racial issues--

and musically.

ERIC JACKSON:
More and more artists

were putting political messages
in their songs, and I think that

appealed to a lot of people,
because they wanted something

a little bit more than just,
"Baby, I love you."

And so, you know,
"Baby, I love you,

but we got something
we gotta do."

You had one song.

"There is something happening
here," you know?

And it's all Buffalo Springfield

and it drives from right
at that moment.

♪ What a field day
for the heat ♪

♪ A thousand people
in the street ♪

DAVID HULL: Rock music has
always been about creating chaos

and raising hell, you know?

I mean, that's what it's
supposed to do.

If you're doing your job right,
that's what you're doing.

And it's people's natures, that
are that age, to be belligerent.

You know? I mean,
it's a biological fact.

It's hormonally driven,
and we felt sold out.

We felt bitterly betrayed
by our country,

and you fuse that attitude
with the sort of inherent

anarchy and chaos
of rock and roll,

and it was an extremely
potent thing.

And BCN became
the mouthpiece for that.

It became the delivery system
for that music to the audience.

You know? To all of us.

Free expression was...

I mean, we talked about
that all the time.

It was, like,
how much can we get away with?

These were the times
when the Rolling Stones

came to play "The Ed Sullivan
Show,"

and they could not play their
song

"Let's Spend the Night
Together,"

that was their new hit song,

but were not allowed to say the
word "night."

And Mick Jagger had to say,

"Let's spend some time
together," because the concept

of spending the night together
was too risqué.

♪ Let's spend
some time together ♪

♪ Now I need you
more than ever ♪

At the same time, we watched

"The Smothers Brothers," that
they were struggling with

what they were being allowed to
do and what they couldn't do.

RICHARD SMOTHERS:
What are you doing?

THOMAS SMOTHERS: I'm getting
ready to go to college.

At the time,
that was the state of the art

of the struggle for expression.

Our government is asking us as
citizens, good citizens,

to refrain from traveling
to foreign lands.

Okay, all you guys in Vietnam,
come on home.

And clearly, at WBCN,

we just-- we ignored
most all of those rules,

and that was something
the audience could hear.

We didn't really care
what the rules were.

We tried to-- well, we did,
we made our own rules.

We, we formed a radio
consciousness

that was further and further
and further more political

and more dangerous, and we
worked hard to be dangerous.

We were the first station
that played

John Lennon,
"Working Class Hero,"

where John Lennon says, right in
the middle of the song,

he says, "You think you're so
clever and classless and free,

but you're all fucking peasants
as far as I can see."

We played that, no beeps,
nothing.

Using an obscenity like that,
it was part of the song.

You really didn't have a right
to cut that out.

And... there were times

when songs like that needed
to be played, just, period.

One of the things
we were supposed to do

was to push the edge
of the envelope,

and it wasn't so much that you
were concerned about

offending someone, because
obviously, the audience

you were playing to were not
going to be offended,

but because of the FCC,
and all you need to do is

get a letter from somebody, and
you've got this incredible fine

you got to deal with
and all of that.

Each announcer had
his or her own

FCC license-- you could lose
your job

there or any place else
by losing your license.

Somebody would write
a letter to the FCC,

and next thing you know,
I'd get a letter.

And then I'd have to go down,
they'd have a--

I don't know what they call
them--

but they'd have a conference,
and here would be some...

you know, administrative person

in the Federal Communications
Commission in Washington,

wanted to know what kind of
a deal I was running up there.

ANNOUNCER: The Non-Violent
Direct Action Group

is planning a little winter
campaign

to focus attention on the war
in Indochina.

Their meetings are held on
Wednesday nights at 7:30 p.m.

at the Phillips Brooks House
in Harvard Yard.

We'll remind you about
that again next Wednesday.

This is WBCN
and we're in Boston.

The Vietnam War hung over
everything.

If you graduated from high
school or college in that time,

probably your first concern,
as a male, then, was,

"Am I going to be drafted?"

263.

That's my lottery number.

If you had number one,
you were going.

And you got number one by the
date that you were born,

and my date, September 9,
was number 263 out of 365,

so I didn't get drafted,

and I was really, really,
really happy.

Boston was seething,
I mean,

250,000 college students,

most of whom by then had turned
against the war.

Don't forget, I mean, Boston was

a battleground of ideas,
it wasn't just a community.

This was the place that
Henry Kissinger,

you know, taught at Harvard.

And so, so were activists
opposing the war there,

and there was a back-and-forth.

There were protests at M.I.T.,

there were protests all across
the Boston area

in all these universities.

Because we saw the universities
as part of the war machine,

the war system, you know?

That they were providing
intellectual capital,

that they were contractors
for the Pentagon,

providing studies
and research and training.

And, you know, we opposed that,
we wanted to expose it.

So we began to look
at every way

that we can impede
and oppose the war.

About 300 students today took
over

the main administration hall
at Harvard.

Acting in protest against

the Reserve Officer Training
Corps program,

they evicted several deans
and then locked themselves in.

REPORTER: What would
it take for the SDS

to make peace
with the university?

ANSARA: Well, we've
said all along that we have

a series of demands that are
non-negotiable demands,

and it would be very, very easy.

All the university has to do
is meet them.

The Harvard strike got a lot of
attention,

because Harvard gets a lot
of attention.

This was the elite, the crème de
la crème of American students,

and I was writing for the
"Old Mole" in Cambridge.

ANSARA: The "Old Mole" was our
underground newspaper,

and we had a small collective

of people putting it out.

And I came into the offices

of the dean of Harvard College,
which was occupied--

this is before
the Occupy Movement--

occupied by all
of these activists

smoking dope in the
dean's office.

And I talked to some of the
people from SDS, Harvard SDS.

I said, "You got to stop
this immediately,

"because this will become
the story,

"that you're defacing
the university.

Get these people out of here
right now."

So they did, they got all
the students out of there.

I said, "Are the doors locked?"

They said, "Yes."
I said, "Good.

Let's go into the filing
cabinets."

So we seal off the offices.

And the offices
are filled with files.

And they're looking through.

And what they're looking for is
any files that say

"C.I.A.,"
Central Intelligence Agency,

any files that say "R.O.T.C.,"
Reserve Officer Training Corps,

any files that say "Dow,"
or other major corporations.

And we're finding them.

And we began to find

all kinds of secret documents
about,

from the Pentagon to Harvard,

from the C.I.A. to Harvard.

"Henry Kissinger will be in
Saigon next week."

He was then a professor
at Harvard.

And all this material was there.

The university said,
"We have no contracts

with the Central Intelligence
Agency."

We're finding files
that have contracts

with the Central Intelligence
Agency.

So now we're pulling all these
papers out,

and the question is, what are
we going to do with them?

And so we say, "Well, you got
to publish this somehow.

How are we going to get this out
of here?"

Meanwhile, the State Police
surrounded Harvard Yard.

In the dean's office, we had
these little bookbags,

green bags, and so we filled one
with these documents.

The "Old Mole"
was down the street.

And I took one, a student, and
we came to the door,

the State Police on this side
of the fence,

the activists on this side
of the fence.

"How am I going
to get out of here?"

So I pick a fight with this kid,
"Let me out of here!

"I hate this revolution!

"Look what you're doing to
Harvard!

You're destroying the whole
place, I can't stand it!"

At which point, a cop comes over
and says, "Let this guy leave!"

And the cop escorts me out,
not knowing

that in my bag are
all these documents. (laughs)

And Danny was part of a team
that then set to work

to really analyze the content
of the documents,

and to begin to map out a real
analysis of what they showed,

and he was just terrific at it.

The next day, the
"Old Mole" had a special edition

with, printing all
of these documents from inside

the halls of Harvard,
which showed how compromised

the administration was and how
supportive it was of the C.I.A.

and various government contracts

in support of the war
in Vietnam.

And that was an important moment
in the Harvard strike.

The angry conflicts

on the college campuses
continue.

President Pusey of Harvard
held a press conference to say

he called in the police because

the students occupying the
administration building

were breaking into
the confidential files.

Today, about 3,000 students
gathered to protest

the police coming on to the
campus Thursday morning,

when they swung their clubs
and arrested about 200.

REPORTER:
The confrontation produced

some of the worst violence
experienced at Harvard

in its entire history.

ANSARA:
They effectively brought the war

right back into Harvard Yard

and galvanized 16,000 members

of the Harvard community
to go on strike.

("Something in the Air" by
Thunderclap Newman playing)

REPORTER: It's a warm, clear day
here at the Boston Common.

ANSARA: We had also seen that
Nixon and his administration

had no plan to end the war,
and so at this point,

there was as close
to a general strike as we could

possibly figure out, and it was
called the Moratorium.

Stop what you're doing
and take time out

to register your opposition
to the war.

ANNOUNCER: The Greater Boston
Peace Action Coalition

needs volunteers to leaflet,
help out in the office,

and sell buttons.

For more information,
call 661-1090.

WINER: We were pretty tireless
in making people aware of it.

It would have been very
difficult to have been in Boston

at that time and been part of
the community,

and not be aware of exactly why
and when and where

that event was taking place.

♪ We got to get together sooner
or later ♪

♪ Because the revolution's
here ♪

In Boston, every single college

and university basically
shut down.

You had the law schools marching
to the Common,

you had high schools marching
to the Common,

you had suburban housewives

leading delegations
of suburban housewives.

MORTON DEAN: In historic Boston
Common, an immense crowd,

the largest Vietnam
peace demonstration ever seen.

SCHNEIER: We were so hurt that
our country would continue

to proceed and sacrifice lives
for a conflict

that everybody knew
really wasn't,

that it wasn't justified,
it just wasn't right.

ANNOUNCER: Our next speaker
will be Abbie Hoffman.

HOFFMAN: I'll tell you what's
wrong with this society!

Abbie Hoffman gave
his usual great,

you know, speeches
with his funny lines,

but one of the immortal lines
was when he pointed

over to the Hancock building.

HOFFMAN: John Hancock building,
hypodermic needle.

Look at it--

John Hancock building!

Fucking John Hancock...

John Hancock was a
revolutionary!

He was no goddamn
life insurance salesman!

We all laughed, but,
you know, he said,

you know, "It's time to up
the ante here."

HOFFMAN: April 18, 1775.

Everybody who is here

who is now alive remembers
that famous day and year.

Paul Revere, he rode out through
M.I.T., out through Harvard Yard

and Arlington and Lexington and
Concord, screaming and yelling,

"The pigs are coming,
the pigs are coming,

the pigs are coming!"
(cheers and applause)

He said, "Get your shit
together!

We gotta have a revolution!"

BCN had paid a skywriter to put
a peace sign

up in the sky,

and everybody cheered and it was
announced that BCN had done it.

REPORTER: The applause is for
a skywriter

who was just made a huge peace
sign in the sky.

ULLMAN: And, you know, here it
was writ large in the sky

by the radio station
I was working for.

That was a thrilling thing.

The peace symbol came from
a fellow,

I believe his name was Wayne.

I seem to think that I might
have

wrote a check for that myself.

'Cause we didn't have a lot of
money, you know-- I don't...

There were times when I just
wasn't going to go

into someone's office who was
over me at the time,

and fight with them.

On my coffee table at home is a,
someone put out a book

about peace, and if you flip
through it,

that peace symbol is in it,
so... (chuckles)

("Something in the Air"
continues)

I mean, we're each powerless,
you know?

I mean, none of us at that
time-- being so young, too.

You know, it's hard to get your
parents' attention

or your boss's attention
or your teacher's attention,

you know, through most of your
life at that point.

We had very limited experiences,

and the causes
that we held precious

and the issues that we felt
were the priorities

were things
that we might never have

a chance to express adequately.

Through this collaborative
experience,

we were able to get
the world's attention

and make our feelings known.

It elevated our aspirations
to doing more

and, you know, validated us,
validated the battle.

PERRY: Our audience, they had to
be informed about

what was happening
to their country,

what was happening locally.

BCN did a very good job,
as the movement

got more political, of not being
the, the leader.

In other words,
people didn't go to the streets

because BCN told them to go
to the streets.

It was the internet of its day,

when you could communicate with
the station,

the station would communicate...

It was the community resource of
how you knew what was going on.

("Don't Let the Green Grass Fool
You" by Wilson Pickett playing)

ANNOUNCER: That's the new single
Wilson Pickett's got out,

"Don't Let the Green Grass
Fool You."

Before that, Ben E. King,
"When You Love Someone,"

and then Forever More,
"Eight O'Clock and All is Well."

We were getting
so many phone calls

that it was impossible to
actually answer the phone

when you're doing your show.

ANNOUNCER: You know,
I just want to share

something with you, okay?

All right, since I've been on
the air at 10:00,

I've had a really hard time,

getting, you know, like,
a show together

the way I'd like to.

I don't know, what I am leading
up to, I guess,

is, we really,
we really would like

some volunteer help down here.

You know, like, we're in no
position to pay bread for it,

but we really need help
answering phones,

and connecting people up with
the right numbers and things.

The Listener Line was
a telephone line

in which people who listened
to the radio station

could call us and ask us
anything.

All stations had request lines,

but, you know, deep down inside,
you knew they weren't

really listening to what
you said and--

even if they answered the phone.

If you called
BCN's Listener Line,

you would instantly realize,
"Well, geez, these people

really do care about what
I have to say."

HADGES: I remember there being a
complete reference library.

I mean, people would say,
"Where can I get a good pizza?"

They'd want to know things that
you'd, you know,

you'd go to Siri on your iPhone
now and ask questions.

But you'd call
the Listener Line instead.

GROUP: ♪ Questions, questions,
you ask us the questions ♪

♪ Answers, answers,
well, we do our best ♪

MAN:
The number is 536-8000.

One of the things
I loved doing

was the Cat and Dog Report.

You'd say,
"Hey, I lost my cat."

"What color was the cat?
Okay, what color...

What color eyes did it have?"

So it was called
the Cat and Dog Report.

And it was popular.

(laughs): I don't even know how
we, you know,

how we got there,
but somebody brought in

a stray puppy once, and we said,

"Oh, let's get all the
stray puppies

and, you know, let's find a new
home for them," or something.

ANNOUNCER:
Okay, it's animal time.

Seems like everybody's
had their litters,

and all these people
have surplus cats.

I've got some coming up myself,
so I know how it is.

Two fluffy black cats.

They're about
seven weeks old now.

625-1885 if you'd like one.

People would want
to call the Listener Line

when they had a problem,
and it would be

the first call
that they would make.

I can remember people
who were suicidal,

that our... Listener Line people
would stay on the phone

with them for hours.

And acid casualties.

It was a tremendous service
for the community.

Kate Curran was the one...
one that sort of organized

the entire group.

It was a completely
volunteer service,

and it was a very important part
of the station.

ANNOUNCER: This is the
Holy Modal Rounders

with a mantra for you.

GROUP:
♪ Hayakawa ♪

♪ Kamikaze ♪

♪ Sukiyaki ♪

♪ Cowabunga ♪

ANNOUNCER: The Golden Guru
for WBCN Boston says

chant this mantra every day
and make bad karma go away.

There was a great history of
acts stopping by for interviews,

who also decided that they would
bring a guitar along and play.

It, it really hadn't happened
on the radio before.

Another time, uh... the Listener
Line person came in and said,

"The musician's downstairs,
he just played at the Arc,

"another musician, I guess they
both played at different places,

uh, Jerry Garcia."

I said,
"From the Grateful Dead?"

"Yeah."
"Who's the other one?"

"Duane Allman from
the Allman Brothers.”

"Yes, send them up, we'll play,
yeah cool."

So they come up and we're...
(inhaling)

(holding breath, coughing):
...you know.

"So what do you got now for us,"

and we're doing this on air,
we're smoking dope.

(Garcia coughing)

ANNOUNCER: Oh, my earphones.
(laughs)

GARCIA: I'm sorry, man.
(laughter)

ANNOUNCER: Even Jerry Garcia's
cough is melodic.

GARCIA:
Haha, yeah, sure.

MIKE: Even his cough is heavy.

LAQUIDARA:
Even his cough is heavy.

(laughter, strumming guitar)

These guys, there's Jerry Garcia
and Duane Allman.

(playing "I Know You Rider")

GARCIA:
♪ The sun will shine ♪

♪ In my back door ♪

♪ Some day. ♪

I mean, stuff like that couldn't
happen today with musicians.

Unless they were paid big bucks,
by, you know, a record company

or somebody to go and do that.

But here's these two guys
coming up, they'd each played

their respective gigs,
and they came up,

and they played for two hours.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

ANNOUNCER:
The video theatre presents...

(dramatic music playing)

"Reefer Madness."

In order to exist
we had to have commercials,

so everybody knew that.

Even the most jaded announcer
knew that.

TIM MONTGOMERY: The advertisers
tended to be small shops.

The ads were incredibly
inventive and funny.

(men singing playful tune)

Michael Fremer
was a stand-up comedian

in Boston
and he did a lot of voices.

(door opening)

FREMER (high voice): Hey,
what's the matter now, Beaver?

(sullen voice):
Gee Wally, I don't know,

it's just that
there's a big sale

at New England Music City,
and Cheap Thrills,

and Eddie Haskell
took all my money.

You didn't turn
the advertisement off.

You either turned it up
or listened to it.

What could be better for an
advertiser than have someone

listen to your commercial?

The sales people didn't decide
what went on the air,

the announcers decided
what went on the air.

Didn't care about
the ratings.

We didn't care about
any of that stuff.

We were just concerned about
doing great radio.

Partly, it was the sound.

We didn't want a hype sound
on the air.

It just didn't fit.

But the other thing
was the product.

The whole sense of
this product is right

for this station, for WBCN.

This product is not.

And of course they were
appalled.

They were doing us a favor.

Here we were, this independent
rock and roll station,

and they were nice enough
to call us and want to do us

a favor and give us an ad
and then we'd tell them,

"I'm sorry, it's too ugly."

MAN:
On the bulletin board at WBCN,

there's a handwritten sign,
which says at the top,

"We don't want to advertise:"

there follows, "cosmetics,
hair oils, deodorants,

"underwear,
WBCN news department.

"Any product that purports
to make a person better liked

or more pleasing
than his real self."

LAQUIDARA: For a sponsor to say,
"Like the real you's

a drag, man, if you use our
product, you can be better."

Well, you know, like,
we just don't like to do that,

because it's just not real,

it's just not what's
really happening.

One of the reasons
they listen to us

is to get away from that crap.

I was on the front page of
"Advertising Week" every week.

I was the highest grossing...

I was getting A.M. time,

I was getting $55
for a 30-second spot.

I had done that in 14 months,
so we revolutionized...

And, of course, a year later,
every station in the country

tried to sound like BCN.

(scrubbing through stations)

GLICK: Larry Glick for the WNEX
Public Affairs Department.

Guam-based B-52 bombers hit

South Vietnam's notorious
guerilla-infested zone.

In the very beginning
we did not have news on,

because our attitude was,
all these other radio stations

these days have five minutes
of news at the top of the hour

and some of them have
a half-hour news at 6:00,

and news is perfectly
well covered.

We were getting heat on that
from the, you know,

you had a certain obligation
as far as the FCC was concerned

to provide news
and public affairs.

So Charles is saying to me
in this period,

"Come and do the news,
come do the news.

"You know, just don't come on
and call me,

"and say,
'Here's a demonstration,'

come do the news."

But I didn't want to do it.

That's not me, I'm an organizer,
I'm not the news.

And by chance, a dear friend
of mine, Bo Burlingham,

just one of the sweetest people
in the world,

shows up on my doorstep,

and he has been,
much to my great sadness,

caught up in Weathermen.

Well, I was as desperate
as everybody else was

because it looked like the war
was going on interminably.

Students for Democratic Society,
when it started out,

it was very nonviolent.

The Weathermen actually
seemed like

they were serious about
doing something, and I decided,

I would go with them.

And now,
much to my great delight,

he and his soon-to-be-wife Lisa
show up on our doorstep and say,

"We're out. Out of Weathermen."

And... and they lived with us
for a while,

and then got on their feet.

I was in a situation where
I needed to get a job.

So, I was talking to Michael
about that and he said,

"Well I heard that WBCN
is looking for a news director."

So I go in, I introduced Bo
to Charles and to Ray,

and they hire him and we put
together some volunteers,

including Danny Schechter,
who will support him.

We came up with a plan that
we were going to get together

a team of people,
who were going to gather

the news during the day,
and then Charles was actually

going to read it, with,
you know, rock and roll,

and all sorts of other things
going on.

ANNOUNCER: When the sun came up
this morning,

the WBCN news team was there.

For them it was just the start
of another day.

♪ ♪

BURLINGHAM:
The first day we did okay,

and then Thursday rolled around,

we had this meeting over lunch,

and I remember they all left,

and then I heard
the ticker machine,

which was where we got
most of the news.

And it said,
"Flash, flash, flash."

A federal grand jury in Detroit
today charged the 13 top leaders

of the Weathermen with plotting
to bomb public buildings

in Chicago, Detroit, New York,
and Berkeley, California.

Attorney John Mitchell said,
"The indictments grew out of

"an investigation begun after
three other Weathermen

"blew themselves up
in a fashionable townhouse

in New York's Greenwich Village
in March."

David?

BURLINGHAM: I looked at
the list of names,

and it started off with a bunch
of names of people

who I knew were underground.

And I got to the last name
on the list and it said,

"Robert Burlingham."

And I was, you know,
I was totally stunned,

and I'd really not been involved
at all in the underground.

Bo comes in with this... the
thing he'd ripped, and he says,

"Charles, we have a problem."

Long before they said,
"Houston, we have a problem."

It was,
"Charles we have a problem."

And I looked at it and it says,
"Attorney General John Mitchell

has just announced that
indictments are being issued

in Detroit for 13 Weathermen.”

And so I go,
"So what's wrong with this?"

And he says, "Seventh name."

I look down, seventh name,

(laughing):
Bo Burlingham, my news director.

So he calls me up right away
and says, "Oh my God,

I'm about to be arrested--
the FBI."

So I come and pick him up.

The first thing Michael and I
did when I left BCN

was to go see Ray Riepen,
who had hired me.

I said, "Well, you know, geez,
I got this...

"this is a federally licensed
business, it makes me nervous

"to have a guy that's indicted
for dynamiting federal buildings

"on the payroll.

I gotta let you go."

BURLINGHAM: And he said,
I'm actually a part owner,

I have a newspaper

"called the 'Cambridge Phoenix,'
and if you wanted to,

you could work there."

I thought that was very generous
of him.

So that's what we did, and
he wrote for the newspaper then

for a year or two,
and then I think,

"Mother Jones" out on
the West Coast.

Meanwhile we're getting
the lawyers to work on it

and the FBI had no idea.

I mean, he's doing the news
on WBCN,

and the FBI has no idea
he's in Boston.

All charges were dropped, yeah,
there were all sorts of

illegalities and irregularities.

And so we needed
a new news director,

and... and that's when Danny
Schechter came into the picture.

NEWSCAST ANNOUNCER:
We'll have news coming up

in about five minutes--
Danny was out covering things...

I became the news director
at BCN, you know,

filling in for Bo Burlingham.

And I bring... I write script,

and I bring it to the DJ
to read.

It was a 2:00 newscast.

Jim Parry was the DJ,
and he takes a look at

what I typed out and he says,
"I can't read this.

"I can't even... I can't even
understand what it's saying,

"this is a sloppy mess.

You read it."

He then introduces me.

(imitating Jim): "And now
Danny Schechter

the news inspector,
the news ingestor."

I started playing with these,

"Danny Schechter,
the news inspector,

Danny Schechter
the news selector,"

and sort of the news dissector
was one of those.

And, I loved that idea
of the news dissector,

and it sort of stuck.

YOUNGER SCHECTER: In the news
right now, police in Boston

got orders this morning to halt
an anti-war demonstration.

About 30 Vietnam veterans,

carrying toy M-16 rifles
and in full fatigues,

stalked across City Hall plaza

in a mock search and destroy
mission.

This was an era in which,
you know, the Vietnam War

hung over everything.

While I was at BCN I tried to
cover it in a different way

than it was being covered
by other media outlets.

The AP copy would come over.

And it would make a reference to
40 of the enemy were killed.

And Danny would just
scratch it out,

and he would eliminate the word
"enemy."

And, of course, at the time,
all you were hearing was,

you know, "the enemy this,"
"the enemy that."

We were killing people

who, who were presented as our
enemies and they weren't.

As far as the war was concerned,
there was critical commentary,

but if you look at the criticism

it's, "We're not fighting
it the right way,

we're making mistakes,
we should do better."

Danny was an exception.

That's why people who had a
different picture of the world,

including many young people,
tuned in to hear

Danny Schechter,
your news dissector,

I think at 6:00.

And then you got a picture of
what was actually happening

from a very different
point of view.

The WBCN news team didn't have
a model for how to do the news.

They were creating
what it would mean for

a rebellious rock and roll,
freeform

FM station to start
incorporating news.

♪ If your memory
serves you well ♪

ANNOUNCER:
Who's the one

who has pledged an honorable end
to the war in Vietnam?

MAN: ♪ Who do you think
you're fooling? ♪

ANNOUNCER:
Nixon's the one.

NIXON: You want peace.
I want peace.

MAN (dramatically): Oh, that's
nothing to what

I could say if I chose.
(chortles)

They were combining music.

They were combining hard news.

They were combining parodies
and comedies,

and did so brilliantly,
in a way that paved the way

for "The Daily Show"
and Stephen Colbert.

And there's a direct line
through that.

YOUNGER SCHECHTER: I was living
in a house with a group of

people, and one of my roommates
was active on behalf

of the Indians at Wounded Knee.

The FBI came to the house
one morning...

This was a story that came
directly to me,

woke me up one morning,
and I covered it,

and then we played the whole
tape on BCN.

It was great radio.

I lived in a house
with a number of other people

who were activists.

One of them, Bill Zimmerman,
was a pilot,

and he had delivered food to the
Indians in Wounded Knee.

The American Indian movement
had seized this tiny village

on the Pine Ridge reservation
in South Dakota,

as a protest against
the conditions

of reservation life in America.

The hamlet of Wounded Knee,
South Dakota, still remains

under control
of militant Indians.

The government still refuses
to talk to their leaders.

One could drop food
into the village via parachute

and there would be very little
the federal forces could do.

This was an attempt
to help them.

An act of solidarity.

ZIMMERMAN: And we made the drop
on April 17, 1973.

And so eventually the FBI
found out about

who was behind these planes,
and this whole action,

and came to my house, where Bill
also had a room, to arrest him.

FBI AGENT: And what is your
name, sir?

YOUNGER SCHECTER:
And who are you, sir?

FBI AGENT: My name is Bob Smith,
I'm with the FBI.

YOUNGER SCHECHTER: Bob Smith?
FBI AGENT: That's right.

They came in, all of them had
their guns drawn,

and they were making
a lot of noise,

so the other people who lived
in the house woke up.

FBI AGENT:
You got the tape recorder going?

YOUNGER SCHECHTER:
Yes, sir, I certainly do.

FBI AGENT:
All right, what's your name?

YOUNGER SCHECHTER:
Dan Schechter.

WBCN in Boston,
I'm covering this here.

Danny immediately produced
a portable tape recorder,

and went up to
one of the FBI agents,

and introduced himself as

Danny Schechter,
the news dissector,

and said,
"I'm here covering the bust.”

(laughs)

FBI AGENT: Are you a resident
of this dwelling?

YOUNGER SCHECHTER: Yes, no,
I'm covering this arrest.

What's happening here?

FBI AGENT: We have a warrant
for other people.

Are you a resident
of this dwelling?

YOUNGER SCHECHTER: Can you tell
me who you have a warrant for?

FBI AGENT: We don't have to
tell you anything.

YOUNGER SCHECHTER: You don't
have to tell me anything?

And they weren't really
expecting that.

That there would be somebody,
a journalist, in the house

actually covering it.

And so they threatened me,
you know, with arrest myself

about, you know, that I was,
you know, interrupting justice.

FBI AGENT:
Now, if you interfere with us,

you're interfering with justice.

We have told you we have
a warrant for this man

and other men.

Now do not interfere
with justice.

I'm telling you now.
LICHTENSTEIN: Amazing, right?

His sense of theatrics
was amazing.

You know, in other words,
the whole idea

of challenging these guys,

"I'm a reporter and I'm covering
this story right now."

The fact that,
"This is my house

and I am just coming out at 6:00
in the morning."

He probably was, you know,

wearing his bathrobe or
something.

SCHECHTER:
And Zimmerman was arrested.

He was, you know,
indicted in Boston.

The charges were later dropped,

which is often the case,
that the FBI would violate

its own rules
and legal protocols.

I'm sure that they never get
that sort of a reaction,

so that is so great,
so typical of the guy.

WINER: To set the stage,

and it's unthinkable
at this point in time,

women were really

a curiosity in terms of
being on the air then.

I think even our own enlightened
announcers, male announcers,

may not have been quite
so enlightened.

Because, again,
they're coming from an old world

and moving into this new one.

I loved BCN,
and listened to it all.

I mean my, you know,
my car radio was just,

that's where it was set, on BCN.

We used to do public service
announcements,

we called them PSAs for...

it was called Project Place.

ANNOUNCER: If you're scared,
uptight about anything

and you're falling, drop into
Project Place's drop-in center.

LAQUIDARA: Project Place needed
some help,

so I made a tape of a PSA,

"If you're a doctor,
you want to call this number,

and if you're a chick
and can type."

I hear Charles Laquidara,
who was one of my faves,

I love Charles Laquidara too,

make this announcement saying

Project Place needs volunteers

and, "If you're a chick,
and can type, call us."

And I thought,
I cannot believe this.

Calling women "chicks,"
I think some people thought

was a hip thing to do,
but I think women

were reading Betty Friedan,
you know, at the time.

RUTHCHILD: So I went to a Bread
and Roses meeting, and said,

"We have to do something
about this."

And one of the people
in the group said,

"Let's get some chicks."

LICHTENSTEIN: "Chicks?"
- Like little baby chicks.

And then,
in the middle of the next day,

our poor manager,
his name was Len Cohen,

Len's sitting there,
and all of a sudden,

they come walking in.

It was suddenly a lot of women
getting off the elevator.

We walked into the office,
they had no idea.

I mean they were like,
"What is going on here?"

And we scattered the chicks
and said, you know,

"These are chicks,
we're not chicks."

They've got a cardboard box they
dumped... they opened it up,

and dumped it on his desk,
it's like 40 baby chicks.

"These are chicks.

We are women."

We got up from our desks
in the sales room,

and we saw...
I saw some baby chickens

come out of their hands,

and the chicks were walking
around on Len Cohen's desk.

It was like within two weeks
we had our first women show.

And that ad, needless to say,
went right out the window.

What happened was it kind of
showed that, you know,

we were open to criticism,
and we took it,

and we did something about it.

The demands that we made
that day included

that they give us an hour
of airtime.

ANNOUNCER: The following hour
was pre-recorded

by Bread and Roses
for Women's Liberation.

RUTHCHILD: We talked about
violence against women,

we talked about
reproductive rights,

we talked about the major issues
of the day,

and it was played on BCN.

WBCN took that situation
and helped change itself

but also helped contribute
to what was going on

at that particular time.

There were no women on the air
at BCN,

so the decision to hire a woman

was a very important step
for the station to take.

Both Maxanne and Debbie Ullman
were hired in rapid succession.

Maxanne had established herself
in Seattle.

And one of the great things
about Maxanne,

her ears were impeccable.

Maxanne heard bands
that none of us heard.

And I'm talking about Aerosmith,

some of us minimized
their importance,

thinking that they were
too derivative

of the Rolling Stones,

that was an obvious comparison
in the beginning.

You know, Maxanne heard
the quality of what they did,

the musicianship, song writing,
and so on,

and very quickly
she was proven right.

And she kept playing the same
song over and over

by this Boston group,
that local group--

"Dream on, dream on,
dream on."

"Max, find another song!"

"This group is going to be huge,
Charles!"

"Yeah, but you don't have to
keep playing it."

And then, of course,
she broke Aerosmith,

broke them in the world.

AEROSMITH:
♪ Dream on, dream on, dream on ♪

Queen.
Queen broke out of Boston.

Maxanne was one of the first
people to hear the record,

the first album,
an unlabeled slab of vinyl,

is what they played it
for us on.

And it knocked her socks off,

or whatever it was she was
wearing on her feet,

maybe her flip flops.

And she was invariably right.

QUEEN:
♪ Keep yourself alive, yeah ♪

♪ Keep yourself alive ♪

♪ Ooh, it'll take you
all your time and money ♪

♪ Honey you'll survive. ♪

PARRY: Maxanne rocked harder
than any of the rest of us,

it's not like girls
are wimpy musicians.

Maxanne was out there

pounding it out, and she became
one of the stars because of it.

MARSHA STEINBERG: It was a rock
and roll station,

that was the part that made it
so radical,

that they accepted that,
the demand, and then

all of a sudden you had,
you know,

these women disc jockeys.

Picking the music, and
interacting with the musicians

in the way that disc jockeys do,

and it was like transformative.

I remember one night
I'm listening to BCN,

I'm at home, and someone
called me up, and said,

"You ought to turn on
Jerry Williams."

He's a famous talk master
at the time in Boston.

JERRY WILLIAMS:
Hello America, welcome back,

fourth and final hour here on
WBZ radio, the spirit of 103.

He was talking about WBCN,
so I immediately tune in,

and I'm listening to these
outrageous things

he's saying about WBCN.

WILLIAMS:
The free of form I like.

CALLER: Right.

WILLIAMS: But that business
of freaks announcing...

CALLER: I agree.

WILLIAM: Like everybody
sitting around smoking pot.

Then he goes on and on
about women,

and how women want to sound
like men,

and they really don't belong
on the radio.

WILLIAMS:
Radio is just a voice.

And sometimes women's voices,
because of the high frequency

of those voices,
sometimes turn some people off.

Jesus, sounds like
another world, doesn't it?

God!

WILLIAMS: You know what turns me
off about women on the air?

WOMAN: No.

WILLIAMS:
They're trying to be men.

(laughs)

If they would try to be women,

be themselves, be female...

Some women try to fall into that
trap of saying,

"Hi there, Sally Kraufloin,
from Los Angeles, California,

bringing you the news."

You know, it's...
they're on that male kick.

Be yourself, be like you are.

WOMAN CALLER: As one man said,
the radio is a woman's companion

during the other day.
WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm.

WOMAN CALLER: And I think I
would certainly as a woman

rather listen to a man
than listen to a woman

rattle on and on.

I could call up
any of my friends and talk.

WILLIAMS: There's a place
in broadcasting for women,

but not the ones I heard on BCN.

Wow, they are really
straight on.

(imitating husky growling)

I can't even tell the guys
from the girls over there,

for that matter.
(Winer chuckling)

When they're walking
down the street

I can't tell them apart either.
(Williams and caller laughing)

You know, you look back on it
and you think it's like

looking back on what women
used to wear in the 1920s.

You go, "Oh my God,
this can't be real.

"Did someone really say that?

Did someone really
believe that?"

But all you can kind of do
is look back on it

and think, as a result of that,

there was an impetus to change
even more quickly.

You know BCN had a commitment
to diversity in music and ideas

that mattered.

John Scagliotti and Andy Kopkind
came to work at the station

doing commentaries, they did

"The Lavender Hour,"
which was a gay radio program.

BCN was one of the first places,
I think, where

diversity took off
in a much greater way.

I think the idea
that we found ourselves

in the middle of an experiment

where gay people, Black people,
women,

were all kind of
working together.

Andy and I were gay, so that
changed the dynamics of BCN.

There were two gay guys there.

Andy had started a career in
"Time" magazine.

They got him out of
London School of Economics.

You know, he was on his way,
he was going to be

the next editor of
"Time" magazine.

Then he got arrested
for being gay in Griffith Park,

and that ended,
and then he went to work for

the "New Republic"
and he embraced his...

the Civil Rights
and all these other things

that he grew up with and felt,

but now was able to work on them
in a much... a real way,

but he was very talented
and was a good writer.

We had covered a lot of
gay stuff in our news,

and we did the first gay pride
march in New York.

EMCEE:
Bette Midler!

(cheers and applause)

SCAGLIOTTI: We always followed
the cultural aspects

in our programming,

so of course Bette Midler would
be on the, you know,

the first gay pride coverage
on WBCN.

(crowd singing and cheering)

And then Sunday night
was never a big time,

and so Norm, he didn't know
what to do with Sunday night,

and nobody wanted to do it.

And so he came up with this
cockamamie idea of "Potluck."

Which would be that anybody
could sign up for "Potluck"

and be on the radio
in our staff.

So it was our chance,
Andy and my chance,

to actually be DJs, you know,
because we were doing the news

and all of this,
but we just wanted

to go and play some records.

You know, we love playing music,
we had parties at our house.

We had the greatest gay parties
in town on Newbury Street.

♪ ♪

But we figured we couldn't
just be DJs

so we decided to do the first
"Lavender Hour."

The "Lavender Hour"
was a very important addition

to what was going on.

The first time that people
could actually come out.

No one was doing anything like
that on the radio in those days.

That was really pioneering
stuff.

ANNOUNCER: If you've been to
a gay bar or a gay dance

in the last six or seven years,

you've heard the jukebox
play the Supremes'

"Stop in the Name of Love."

And tonight,
for our "Potluck" show,

we'll find some other music

and poetry that expresses
the range

of gay experience these days.

Or I'd go out and interview
David Bowie,

and have a fight with David
Bowie at a press conference

about why he was just going
to be a bisexual,

why wasn't he coming out
all the way?

And he would yell at me

and then we'd play "Changes."

YOUNGER SCAGLIOTTI: What made
you start writing gay songs?

DAVID BOWIE: Um... what made me
start writing gay songs?

YOUNGER SCAGLIOTTI:
Well, let's put it this way,

it's not something that would be
normally acceptable

on the top 40 market
or any rock market

before you started writing.

BOWIE: Well, you see,
it's acceptable to the people

that I've wrote to and play for.

That always has been.

Who doesn't like gay people?

There's no... there's no
antagonism at all.

YOUNG SCAGLIOTTI: You seriously
believe that gay people

are not subject to oppression
in this world, are you crazy?

BOWIE:
Who said that I didn't?

I said that I found no hostility
towards anyone.

SCAGLIOTTI:
Well, that is (bleep).

Okay, well I'm not trying
to be hostile.

You have done
some openly gay stuff,

which I was very glad to hear
for the first time,

coming from a singer.

You must have had some process
of forethought

before you actually started
writing material.

BOWIE: I was inspired.
(laughter)

Well, I just thought
it was just me, this is my life,

I was in a little bubble,
you know, this gay bubble,

where it wasn't a big deal
and the people I worked with

didn't find it a big deal.

But, guess what, it's 50,000,
or a million watts,

or I don't know, huge watts.

People are listening to you
in New Hampshire,

they're listening way out
in western Mass.

And all of a sudden there's this
gay thing on the radio.

The first time
on commercial radio

that a gay program
had ever been on.

We didn't know that, now we do,
but we didn't know it then.

Then we started getting letters,
and it was really incredible

to get this letter from kids

who were like gay, 16,

and we would get like a letter

that would say, "Oh, I was
thinking of committing suicide.

And it just saved me,
it just saved me."

All of a sudden I realized,
"My God, I'm having a great time

being a DJ doing
'The Lavender Hour,'

and all this other stuff,"
and meanwhile people

are actually seeing this

turning into such a massive
moment for their lives,

was pretty incredible,
very incredible.

Good evening
my fellow Americans.

When Nixon announced
the invasion of Cambodia,

WBCN was on and they said,

"Turn on the TV,
the president's going to talk."

So we turned on the television

and there's Nixon pointing
to Cambodia and Laos.

We take this action not for the
purpose of expanding the war

into Cambodia,

but for the purpose of ending
the war in Vietnam.

It looked like he was winding
down the war at the beginning,

but then he escalated.

And, you know, BCN said,
"There's going to be

a demonstration,
you know, tomorrow."

My recollection is from like

May 1st through May 4th

there were giant protests
across the country.

That was the start of what
eventually led to Kent State.

At Kent State itself
they went to demonstrate

and the administration
said that they couldn't.

So it was an
"illegal demonstration"

and they called in
the National Guard.

I'm David Brinkley, NBC News.

Kent State University in Ohio
has had campus violence

for three nights causing the
National Guard to be called in,

and today the guardsmen
opened fire on the students,

killing four of them--

two young men
and two young women.

("Ohio" by Crosby, Stills,
Nash & Young playing)

♪ Tin soldiers
and Nixon's coming ♪

♪ We're finally on our own ♪

♪ This summer I hear
the drumming ♪

♪ Four dead in Ohio. ♪

WINER: When students were shot
by the National Guard

and they didn't have weapons,

and it was such a shock,
it was such a crime.

I don't think anyone anticipated

that sort of response
from the authorities

and the consequences
were irreparable.

So college campuses everywhere
reacted to this.

WALTER CRONKITE:
Boston University, Brown,

and Tufts have suspended classes
for the rest of the school year.

A national coordinating center

at Brandeis University
says there were

240 such strikes today.

There was a war going on, and it
wasn't just a war in Vietnam,

there was a war at home.

There was a war covering up
the war.

There was a culture in Boston
that was partial to,

supportive of,
actually informing people

about what was really going on
and BCN was part of it.

CHOMSKY:
It was at this period

that BCN was coming to be
a voice that was quite unique

and courageous and that made
a huge difference.

The FBI is reported preparing
to shut down some of the 500

small agencies it maintains
around the country

because of security reasons.

Last month more than a thousand
documents were stolen

from the FBI office
in Media, Pennsylvania.

This story here,
it's another example of BCN

trying to inform the public
about information

that major media
and the government

didn't want people
to know about.

LICHTENSTEIN: Can you explain
what happened--

they went in, they stole files?

SCHECHTER: I mean there was
an activist group that found

a FBI office

in Media, Pennsylvania,
of all things.

That name is fascinating,
you know.

And they were able to...

we would say then liberate
these documents

and try to make them public.

And, you know, so BCN
was certainly interested

in this information because
it was about the ways in which

our government was spying on us.

And, of course, the government
didn't want this known

and we did want it known.

STEINBERG: They started
reading them on the air,

all that spying,

all that kind of, you know,
COINTELPRO stuff became public.

And that undermined
any possibility that

that would ever be secret
and they couldn't stop it.

Danny did a really good job
at like "Just read it, read it,

read it on the air."

I mean what it says about BCN,

and particularly about, like,

Al Perry, who was the general
manager at that time,

it's like he didn't try
and shut that down.

AL PERRY:
I remember this, yeah, yeah.

Look... what's the issue here?

Danny didn't steal them.

They were made available to him,
so, yeah.

What are you gonna...
you're not gonna... you know...

If you don't do this,
then it's... it's just...

they're in control, complete
control, and you can't...

You know, there's... there's
a time when you have to

take a stance.

And maybe that's what,
in a lot of ways,

WBCN was about in that respect.

There was a time when it just...
you had to say,

"This... we're stopping it
right here," you know.

NIXON: There can be no whitewash
at the White House.

♪ ♪

ANNOUNCER: We all heard about it
first on the 17th of June.

The news reports said,
"Five men were arrested

"with bugging equipment at the
Democratic National Committee

"headquarters in the sprawling,
luxurious

Watergate apartment office
complex in Washington, D.C."

It was the theme of the
WBCN news for months on end.

And by making it so conspicuous,
we got those points across.

("Grand Hotel" by Procol Harum
playing)

ANNOUNCER:
The Watergate Five,

all using aliases taken from
Hunt's mystery novels,

finished a lobster dinner
on the night of June 17th,

and then...

("Mission Impossible" theme
playing)

broke into the
Democratic Headquarters

to repair bugging devices
that they had already planted

as well as to photocopy
important documents.

It was like a soap opera
that we weren't writing,

but that surpassed
our expectations

with every new episode,

and it just kept getting better
and better.

YOUNGER SCHECHTER: Yeah, Charles
Colson was a C.I.A. agent?

FONDA:
Yes, this... this memo,

which is...
it was a confidential memo,

but what hasn't appeared
in the papers, as far as I know,

is the fact that
which appears in this document

that Colson is C.I.A.

Hunt is asking him whether or
not during the time in the '50s

when he was in Saigon, he was
receiving information reports,

orders through military channels
or through his C.I.A. channels,

his Colson's C.I.A. channels,
and Colson says that, yes,

he was receiving them
through C.I.A. channels.

The station offered news and
perspectives and reporting

and investigate journalism,
and we won all sorts of

top journalism awards
for doing it,

and the culmination of it

was 1972 when Nixon, you know,
was running

for re-election and he was being
challenged by George McGovern,

a peace candidate.

Massachusetts came through
for McGovern

and the only state to do so.

McGOVERN: We want to give
a special note of thanks

to the people of Massachusetts.

(cheers and applause)

It isn't just an accident that
the American experiment

began in Massachusetts and that
we're carrying it on here

at the nation's capital.

We're going to keep doing that
for a good many years to come.

Whether we can legitimately,
as the BCNers

of that time, take credit

for enlightening enough
Massachusetts people

to alter the result here
in Massachusetts, I don't know.

But it's certainly symbolic
of the consciousness raising

we were trying to do
and the effect it could have.

(applause)
ANNOUNCER: Take it away.

(piano playing)

WINER: As time went on,

we started broadcasting live
on a regular basis

from a couple of different
locations.

Jazz Workshop,
run by Fred Taylor,

one of the great jazz clubs
in the world.

Next door you walked down
the stairs and to the left

was Paul's Mall,
owned by the same guy,

booked by the same guy,
Fred Taylor.

These were dingy,
underground clubs,

very, very constrained
in terms of space.

You know, if Randy Newman
was performing at Paul's Mall,

the front row was, you know,
six feet away from him

and that was it.

NEWMAN: Randy Newman's
comes back on stage,

timing it perfectly.
(laughter)

(playing "Lonely at the Top")

♪ I've been around the world ♪

(cheers and applause)

♪ Had my pick of any girl ♪

(smattering of laughter)
That's not funny.

(audience laughter)

I'll sing it again
and don't laugh.

♪ Had my pick of any girl. ♪

In 1973, we had this young guy
from New Jersey come in,

never played live
on the radio before,

had never played in Boston
before.

If I recall,
he even had a tuba player there,

and it was on Maxanne's show.

MAXANNE:
Hello, Bruce Springsteen.

SPRINGSTEEN:
We're on the air?

MAXANNE:
Yeah, we are on the air.

SPRINGSTEEN: Hey!

(both laughing)

All right, all right.

Is the tuba mic all right,
right there?

Yeah? Okay, here we go.

Take it away, fellas.

MAN: One, and a two, and...

(band starts playing)

Those sorts of appearances,
and the spontaneous

just showing up in the studio,

and they were really magical
moments.

SPRINGSTEEN: This is my very
first time on the radio,

and I want to say hello
to my mother,

who lives in California.

Hi, Mom.

(laughter)

All right, let's do, uh...

(playing "Growin' Up")

♪ Well, I stood stone-like
at midnight ♪

♪ Suspended in my masquerade ♪

♪ And I combed my hair 'til it
was just right ♪

♪ And commanded the night
brigade ♪

New Jersey, New York
was not a problem,

but spreading out from there
was really tough for them

at the time.

MAXANNE: Don't you want to say
a word or two

about Asbury Park, New Jersey?

SPRINGSTEEN: I've been trying to
get out of there for 20 years.

(Springsteen laughs)
MAXANNE: No...

I think that he really
appreciated the fact that BCN

was willing to be so supportive.

SPRINGSTEEN: I really do want
to thank WBCN and Maxanne,

because when we first came here,
when we first came to Boston,

we played to about ten or 20
people.

And now it must be damn
50 people in the place.

(laughter)

MAXANNE: Well, the power of
media is just overwhelming.

(laughter)

SPRINGSTEEN: But I want to thank
you very much and let you know

that we really appreciate it
because we really do.

Bruce was playing in a lot
of clubs around town.

He's playing at Charlie's Place,
he's playing at Joe's Place,

and he seemed to just bop
from club to club.

He played in... he didn't just
play in one or two venues,

he played in all these
crummy bars.

But then he was playing
theaters,

Harvard Square Theater,
that's like a theater,

that was a big deal.

EMCEE: Tonight we're lucky
enough to have Bruce Springsteen

and Bonnie Raitt.

(cheers and applause)

He took the stage,
and within minutes,

people knew that there
was something going on here

that was extremely
extraordinary,

and extremely incredible.

Opening up his set with
"New York City Serenade,"

which starts with a
classical piano introduction

by David Sancious.

That's unheard of!

A band hits the stage, you hit
it with... hit it hard--

the horns blare,
the guitar blares.

He comes out there and he starts
with this beautiful

melodic piano and people
are going, "What is this?"

(playing
"New York City Serenade")

But this one... this one photo,

the way his back is arched,

the way his hands are extend out
on the keyboards,

it's just...
something's about to happen,

and that's the feeling you get
from it.

(song continues)

It wasn't till later on,
that I had...

that I had learned that
that was the show

that Jon Landau was at.

And as he said, "I have seen the
future of rock and roll,

and its name is
Bruce Springsteen."

(band continues playing,
winding down)

SPRINGSTEEN:
Hey, Boston, come out tonight!

(cheers and applause)

SCHNEIER:
That date is always called out.

Bruce Springsteen opens
for Bonnie Raitt.

Jon Landau declares him
the future of rock and roll.

Absolutely one of the highlights
of WBCN live broadcasts

was from the Jazz Workshop
of Patti Smith,

the Patti Smith Group.

ANNOUNCER: Maxanne,
what's going on down there?

MAXANNE: They've been turning
away people by droves.

There's lines down the street.

SMITH:
This is the best night,

it's the best part of the show:
the tune up.

WINER: They'd just come out
with their debut album

the year before, Patti Smith
the writer, the cultural figure.

Not exactly a mass appeal artist
but our cult loved her.

SMITH: ♪ Jesus died for
somebody's sins but not mine. ♪

♪ ♪

Because she was on a major
record label at the time,

Arista Records,

the record executive,
the promotional executive,

took her backstage before
she began and said,

"Look, this is on the radio,

don't say any bad words."

But he was kind of heavy-handed

in the way that he conveyed this
to her.

And so Patti came on stage
and the band was rocking...

SMITH:
♪ And I go to this here party ♪

♪ And I just get bored ♪

There was the Patti Smith
broadcast and my assignment

was to be back at the studio

with my hand on the... well,
basically the on-off switch,

basically which controls
whether or not that...

whether or not that broadcast
would proceed.

And I was sitting with my boss,

with the general manager of BCN
at the time, Al Perry,

and we were enjoying the show,

and at a certain point
she stopped,

and she did a little monologue
about the importance of radio.

It was very heartfelt
and very sincere.

SMITH: You know what radio has
in it?

R-A-Y-dash-D-I-O.

And "Dio" is God, so like radio
is like ray of god.

That's its highest possibility.

The show moved on
and at a certain point,

she just stopped dead
in the midst of a song,

and admitted to the audience

that she felt very intimidated

by the limitations
being placed on her

to say what was on her mind.

SMITH: We shouldn't worry about
slang terminology

on a rock and roll station.

(cheers and applause)

I mean, you should be able
to express yourself in America.

We have like one of the most
colorful languages,

which is like integrated
with our art,

the art of this generation
is rock and roll.

And she just started blurting
out... in the form of a poem

she started blurting out
obscenity after obscenity.

A stream of obscenities.

SMITH: ♪ If you don't want to
hear it uncensored, cut me off ♪

I can't even read
my fuckin' poem.

It just doesn't even interest me
anymore.

♪ It's not to fear-- fuck ♪

♪ It's only a word--
fuck, fuck, shit, piss ♪

♪ They're just words
that we invented ♪

♪ Like we are not afraid
of machines ♪

♪ We will not be
afraid of words ♪

♪ Oh please... ♪

So there was a difficult
decision there.

Because as the obscenities
came out,

you had to decide whether to let
them go or to cut them off.

And I guess at the time
it seemed to me the better idea

to let them go.

I think she went out of her way
because she was sort of

singing it to kind of alert
the station of the fact,

"I'm going to sing this song
to the club.

"If you don't want to hear these
songs... these words broadcast,

turn me off right now," and it
would have been an option.

Well, it didn't happen,
obviously, but, you know,

that's... that's radio,

If that doesn't quintessentially
sort of package up

BCN's true essence,
stuff like that on the radio,

wow, amazing, amazing.

Never happened again...

Never happened again.

SMITH: ♪ We like Birdland ♪

Tweet, tweet, tweet.

(cheers and applause)

ANNOUNCER: WBCN in Boston.

SMITH: Is my microphone off?
One, two.

Oh, so my microphone's on?

Oh, I didn't hear it,
but it's on, right?

Oh, right on, Patti!
(laughs)

I mean, well she was an artist,
she was a poet,

so when she said,
"This is rock and roll radio,

and we should be able
to say what we think,

or say what we feel," you felt
like you could do that at WBCN.

You could say what you think
and you could say what you feel.

The fact is that really BCN
was one of the few stations

in America that played the music
of Patti Smith.

It was not traditionally
commercially viable--

you know, she would push
the limit.

She pushed the envelope
artistically.

And these were the kinds
of artists

that we wanted to support.

Eh, maybe no one heard it,
and I don't think anyone did

because I don't recall ever
hearing about that.

One of the few.
(laughs)

You know, we were beginning
to get ratings.

The station was making
more and more money,

and symbolically, I guess,
moving

to the top of the
Prudential Tower. (laughs)

The move to the Pru was the
dramatic one because that was

the plushest, most amazing,
modern, sterile,

mainstream,
corporate U.S.A. place

you could imagine moving into.

That place should have been
the home of the "Today Show."

And I don't think I said
hello yet.

Hello, I'm Tom Hadges, this is
WBCN you're listening to.

We're in Boston.

I'll sit here till about 2:00
this afternoon.

HADGES: People would pay
to come up to the 50th floor

to walk around the top
of the Prudential Building,

which was the single largest,
tallest building in Boston

at that time.

And, "Oh, by the way,
there's BCN."

Hi, everybody.
(music playing loudly)

Good music. Right here.

You know, BCN was considered
alternative media,

but at the same time
mainstream media.

You know I would go to work
at 6:00 in the morning,

and walk around the sky walk,
and look at Boston waking up,

and looking at the beauty
of this whole area

and BCN was on top of it.

There was a tension growing
between the demands

of paying the bills
and what we all wanted.

We all wanted to be faithful
to the original concept of WBCN

and the mission of BCN.

HADGES: Personally, for me,
it was a challenge.

It was the difficulty of being
sure that we could maintain

our honesty, and the fact that
we weren't selling out.

Ugly Radio is Dead was just as
important when we moved into

the Pru mid-'70s as it was when
the station launched in '68.

JOHN BRODEY: No question, being
up there was a daily reminder

of how much value the station
held just on a business level.

But I think there was,
not a capitulation,

but a certain realization
inside that you went, "You know,

"this is not going to last
forever.

Days are... days are numbered."

ANNOUNCER: Try new coconut
Newsoft fabric softener.

Discover for yourself

the softness of natural coconut
conditioners.

COMMERCIAL VOICE:
Oh brother, I quit.

Well, we were starting to sell
national advertising.

I became responsible
for national ads.

I'll never forget the first time
I went to New York

with our national rep,

made my first call,
had to put on a tie.

And I walk in
and the media buyer,

a rather imposing woman,

stood up behind her desk
and cursed me out

because apparently they had sent
a reel...

all the ads came in these little
eight-inch reels to the station,

and whoever was the production
manager at the time--

I'm not going to name
any names--

had written "F.U." on the box

and mailed it back
to the agency.

(laughing)

Oh my...

So I had a lot of those
experiences.

(laughs)

(tone playing)

(indistinct chatter)

NIXON: Hey, you're better
looking than I am,

why don't you stay here?
(chuckles)

Blondes, they say, photograph
better than brunettes.

(laughing)

I'm afraid you'll catch me
picking my nose.

(laughs)

Oh, you want a level, don't you?

Yes, yes.

Good evening.

This is the 37th time I have
spoken to you from this office,

where so many decisions
have been made

that shaped the history
of our nation.

Need anymore?

You know, people talk about
the '60s being the Hippie Era,

the Golden Era,
whatever you want to call it,

depending on what
your perspective is.

The '60s went past the '60s,
because my guess,

if I had to say when the '60s,
when that Golden Era,

when FM radio started going
in the other direction

of being capitalistic and not
being underground anymore,

I think it was after Nixon
resigned.

I have never been a quitter.

To leave office before my term
is completed is abhorrent

to every instinct in my body.

The fact that it ended
with Nixon's upper lip

perspiring profusely,
that was a good ending.

I remember sitting there in my
home with my three-year-old...

with my three-year-old daughter,
and forcing her to watch it,

and telling her that,

"I just want her to remember
these images."

You know, even vaguely because
she's just little.

But eventually I would talk
to her about the significance

of this and it's something

she could tell
her grandchildren about.

It was a great day.

Therefore I shall resign
the presidency

effective at noon tomorrow.

Vice President Ford
will be sworn in as president

at that hour in this office.

You know, it was, uh... elation

and, uh... celebration,

and but also sadness that it,
you know, it had to come

to all the way to this,

to get this gargoyle
out of running our country.

I mean, at the end of it all
my parents were against me,

my long hair, everything from
the beginning.

They said, "It's the drugs,
Steven, get off those drugs."

But at the end, they sat down,
and my father had tears

in his eyes and he said,
"You were right."

He said, "You were right,
they've been lying to us."

(applause)

NEWSCASTER: There's the
president waving goodbye.

You hear the applause.

NELSON: By '74, it's not only
that Nixon resigned,

he was such a convenient target
of all of our wrath.

But it was, everything was
becoming in a way

more institutionalized,
more commercialized.

The acts that played the Tea
Party were now playing big halls

and getting paid tons of money,
the ticket prices were going up.

There were a lot of stations all
over the country now doing what,

you know, in a way what BCN
was doing.

I think pretty much not as well
and not as overtly political.

But playing the kind of,
you know,

the album cuts and all that.

So it really was becoming
much more of, you know,

institutionalized and just part
of the regular American culture.

PERRY:
Little did we know, you know.

Little did we know that we would
be involved in something

that would be as much fun and
so meaningful to so many people.

The best thing about it was
we were doing it ourselves.

We were making it up
as we went along.

We were developing friendships,

we were putting up
with each other,

we were trying to create
something

that hadn't existed before.

You don't get that opportunity
much in broadcasting.

I think one of the other things
I'd like to see people remember

WBCN for was what it stood for.

Independence, having people
make up their own minds

as what to play, what to say.

We've learned a lot
since the '70s

around what inclusion means.

And some of what learned is that
we're actually

all on the same planet here,

in the process of suffering
some of the same consequences

of our neglecting to recognize
our shared humanity.

Of course the question
that everyone's asking is

can this happen again?

The fact that everyone
can be a communicator.

Pick up your smartphone,
shoot a video.

If it's important, it will get
seen by a lot of people,

and it can create social change.

No question about that.

Abbie Hoffman,
the godfather of the Yippies,

was from Worcester, Mass.,

and he, you know, became a sort
of occasional correspondent

for WBCN and was on the air.

And, you know, when he was asked
to summarize, you know,

the legacy of his work,

you know, he said basically,
you know, "We were young,

"we were sometimes crazy,
we made mistakes,

but we were right."

I think that could be said
of WBCN.

MAN:
One, two, one, two, hey!

("My Generation" playing)

SMITH:
♪ People try to put us down ♪

♪ Just because we g-get around ♪

♪ I think they're very cold ♪

♪ Hope I die before I'm old ♪

♪ I said this is my generation ♪

♪ My generation ♪

♪ People try to put us down ♪

♪ Just because we g-get around ♪

♪ All of these that
are fucking shit ♪

♪ Hope I die because of it ♪

(song continues)

(singing indistinctly)

♪ I'm not trying
for a new sensation ♪

♪ Talkin' 'bout
my g-generation ♪

♪ My generation ♪

♪ My generation ♪

(singing indistinctly)

(song ends, feedback squeals)

Good night.

(cheers and applause)

MAXANNE: You there, Fatman?

FATMAN:
Yes, Max, how they doing?

MAXANNE: Well, I think...
I think that

with all the Minguses,
and the Miles, and the 'Tranes

that have been in this room,

nobody ever destroyed
the ceiling quite so bad before.

John Cale just put the nick of
a bass through the ceiling here.

(Maxanne laughs)

FATMAN: Oh, I wish we could have
seen that.

MAXANNE:
Good night, Fatman.

FATMAN:
Good night, Max.