Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN

A Radio Commune

Ray Riepen gathered his recruits for the new WBCN air staff, but, in a surprising move, avoided chasing after professional disc jockeys. “I didn’t want people who were in radio trying to figure out what we ought to do, because they couldn’t. They were swimming in the sea of a Top 40 world; all over-hyped and screaming. As far as [producing] something tasteful or smart, they didn’t have that kind of vision.” Joe Rogers marveled at the idea: “He could have staffed the station with real announcers, but he stuck with rank amateurs because that’s how he saw it. In the end I guess it was the right decision, but it was a peculiar thing to do at the time.” The place where Riepen could find the type of people he wanted, in an environment that embraced freethinking and was uncluttered by format and focused on the music, was on the Boston area’s many student-run radio stations. With Top 40 dominating the AM band and classical programming holding down the FM side, college radio was the place where the sounds of the There was an immense freedom; you were defined by your personality and your musical tastes. That was very intoxicating and exhilarating for everyone involved because you realized you were part of something incredibly new. Peter wolf A RADIO COMMUNE a radio CommUne 21 burgeoning folk and blues revival and growing rock revolution could be heard. “When Ray originally decided to start a radio station, he went to the MIT and Harvard stations: WTBS and WHRB, to find people who would be willing to do this sort of alternative [he envisioned], and that was the core that started [WBCN],” Tommy Hadges pointed out. Both Hadges and Rogers were Tufts University students but had found their way onto WTBS. Riepen checked them out as well as several other jocks at the station including Jack Bernstein, plus Steve Magnell at Tufts and Tom Gamache on Boston University’s WBUR. He passed on Gamache but approached the others and set up a meeting at his nearly unfurnished Cambridge apartment to present his plan to them. After floating the idea around the room and receiving assurances from the jocks that they were certainly interested, not much else was discussed. Even later, when Riepen had confirmed that WBCN was giving the jocks a shot, there was virtually no planning or guidance from their mentor. Rogers elaborated, “No serious preparation. We knew there was a date coming up and whatever that was [in his best Riepen imitation], ‘Be ready and go do your god-damned radio show! Don’t fuck it up!’ There was no discussion of the format; it was, ‘Just do what you’ve been doing on these college stations, but do it better!’” Riepen added, “They didn’t have the concept that I had, but once we set the parameters, I didn’t restrict them. I wasn’t going to program the station; the idea of it was to be freeform and spontaneous.” It was only three weeks after their initial meeting that Rogers got the call to get down to 171 Newbury, but in that time Riepen had also pitched his idea to a familiar face at the Tea Party. “Peter Wolf sang in a group called the Hallucinations, who were mostly guys from the Museum Art School; I used to book them from time to time. Peter Wolf was kind of a star; he had the moves. He was a smart guy and very together in certain ways.” Showmanship, a keen ear for what the people wanted, and an encyclopedic knowledge of R & B and blues combined to make this gifted neophyte an excellent candidate for some musical vocation, in spite of his chosen field of study. As Wolf put it in the 2003 essay compilation Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, “I was a student looking to become a painter somewhat in the German Expressionist manner. But then I was sidetracked by the blues.” Born and raised in New York City, Wolf’s entire life was surrounded by the arts: learning the basics of drawing, filling canvas after canvas, and 22 radio free boston then seeing jazz greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis in the Village and soul giants James Brown and Ray Charles at the legendary Apollo. Upon arriving in Boston on his thumb, Wolf pursued his love of music with...