Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN

Movin' On Up

“Media Freaks Act Out Battles of the Radicals” read the headline of the Boston Globe story by Parker Donham in June 1970. He was describing the wild, often naked, scenes at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, as it hosted the Alternative Media Conference First Gathering. The event was a rallying cry for more than 1,500 hippie announcers, writers, producers, and directors scattered across the country in the days before radio conferences became big business and MTV, and then the Internet, linked (and homogenized) singular cultures across North America. The conference represented a microcosm of the entire counterculture as different groups with widely divergent views squared off in debate while extracurricular sex and drug use flourished openly. A young Mark Parenteau, then a teenage DJ in Worcester with the radio handle of Scotty Wainwright, signed up and made his way north. “They were having Creem magazine, Rolling Stone, other alternative newspapers, all the legendary FM jocks who had become There was selflessness in being a personality in those days. The biggest insult a listener could give you was, “You’re on an ego trip.” You were speaking on behalf of a cultural community, and we were the rallying point, for a time, of that budding, tightly knit community. norm winer MOVIN’ ON UP movin’ on UP 61 famous . . . I guess it was a ‘getting-together,’ but it was [also] a huge party. Every city had a band representing them, and the band for Detroit was the MC5. Wow! I loved their energy. So that weekend I gravitated and hung out with all the Detroit people.” That would lead to “Scotty Wainwright” meeting all the right names and soon getting himself hired at Detroit’s WKNR-FM and then WABX-FM. But he’d get back to Boston . . . eventually. In addition to describing a circle of skinny-dipping, joint-smoking filmmakers around a college swimming hole discussing the artistic merits of filming an orgy, the Boston Globe story also mentioned that four WBCN disc jockeys attended the conference. Norm Winer was swept up by the same carousing spirit that Parenteau witnessed: “This is where Atlantic Records signed J. Geils Band on the spot. . . . Dr. John was there . . . Baba Ram Dass [the spiritualist] and Jerry Rubin. It was the first time we met many of our counterparts. They shared our philosophies and convictions; it really fortified and energized us. We weren’t just crackpots clinging on to an unrealistic goal—there were other people sharing that.” Andy Beaubien drove to the conference with Charles and Norm: “It was strange and bizarre, but fun and exciting. I remember driving back, all energized, but also politicized. We came to the station and we all went on the air and had a discussion, kind of a debriefing, taking phone calls live. There was this sense that this was the beginning of a major change.” “We were very utopian in our way of thinking,” Jim Parry acknowledged. “We wanted to be crazy, committed, but responsible, music-loving human beings,” Sam Kopper stressed. “Those were our ideals and makeup, and I’m proud of that.” “A lot of the decisions were made by all of us for a long time,” added Al Perry. “There were occasionally some interesting arguments, but I think we stood for the community.” It was, as the song said, the dawning of Aquarius, and a spirit of unity bonded the members of ’BCN’s young staff, inspiring them to reach out to serve their brotherhood of listeners. Kate Curran, who came to the station as “an indentured servant for Charles,” as she jokingly referred to her unpaid status, headed up the effort to establish a daily schedule of volunteers who would be available to answer listener calls. “Charles, kind of, put me in charge. At first we had people answering the business phone [because] there wasn’t a separate line. If it was a business call, they’d hand it over to the secretary. It was very confusing. Then there was a separate line, but 62 radio free boston we’d have issues if a volunteer didn’t show up for a shift because the new phone line would just ring and ring and ring. The secretary didn’t have time to answer it, so she’d just wrap it up in a blanket and put it in a bottom drawer.” Those early efforts, though, resulted in a formal WBCN Listener...