WBCN's Farewell

[Jacko]

Other CBS rock stations killed--
92.3 K-Rock/New York--flipped to "shock-talk" for a while, then back to K-Rock, now is top 40 92.3 Now. The problem was that in its last few years as rock, no one could program it correctly, especially after the dismissal of Howard Stern. They needed someone like Oedipus at the helm, instead there was a revolving door of Crackerjack PDs who didn't know what they were doing.

Old "progressive rock" stations still around playing some form of rock--

KSAN/San Francisco (1968, currently "heritage rock", mostly classic rock with some currents sprinkled in)
KLOS/L.A. (1969, currently classic rock)
WBRU/Providence (1969, currently alternative, RI's first FM progressive rocker)
KSHE/St. Louis (1967, currently "hertiage rock")
KROQ/L.A. (1968, initially KPPC-FM, was off the air for a couple of years from '74-'76)

Long-standing rock stations in New England include WCCC/Hartford (1975), WBLM/Portland (1973), WAQY/Springfield (1981), WHJY/Providence (1981), and WGIR/Manchester and WHEB/Portsmouth also date back to the late '70s, i believe.

Jacko

 

[disney fanatic]

I was listening to KMET here in LA when they became "The Wave" in 1987 and they too used "The End."

Yep! But too bad, WBCN shouldn't play the last song by the Beatles called "The End" from "Abbey Road", that might be an appropriate song to end BCN after 41 years.

 

[chitchatjf]

HEB was more top 40 in the 70s

 

[mgpt6]

Mark Hamilton played Beatles, "The End " at the end of his last shift during the last day on BCN. he also played the John Lennon call in ID from 1974; and thanked all the people at WZBC.

 

[KB1OKL]

Our own WAAF beats out all of those, it went progressive rock around 1970. I can't offhand think of any others anywhere still currently playing rock that go back farther than that.

I'm not sure if WAAF was ever really considered a progressive rock station, it always had a harder edge and had less sophisticated DJ's and was much less adventurous with it's music, it appealed to the more juvenile audience, remember the Waaf Giraffe? It was also automated for a while after it switched form WAAB-FM to WAAF, don't remember how long though.

 

[KB1OKL]

I think a lot of you younger guys are mixing up progressive rock with rock. Most progressive stations started out playing an eclectic mix including jazz, folk and rock of the day like BCN did, this included stuff you didn't hear on the radio every 5 minutes (beginning of AOR), most of them gradually became AOR stations. I can remember hearing The Doors on BCN sometime in 1968 and it was not Hello I love You or Light My Fire, it was an album cut and followed by something completely different, this was the way prog stations started out, rock was one of the smörgåsbord of things they played. WBCN was unlike anything I had ever heard before on radio, you couldn,t wait to see what was next, the DJ's were very cool, this was in contrast to AM DJ's who played the SOS all the time and talked over the beginning of songs. Prog station were not "rock stations" at least for the first several years and BCN was one of the first in the country, it helped set the standards for what prog was.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Our own WAAF beats out all of those, it went progressive rock around 1970. I can't offhand think of any others anywhere still currently playing rock that go back farther than that.

I'm not sure if WAAF was ever really considered a progressive rock station, it always had a harder edge and had less sophisticated DJ's and was much less adventurous with it's music, it appealed to the more juvenile audience, remember the Waaf Giraffe? It was also automated for a while after it switched form WAAB-FM to WAAF, don't remember how long though.

I recall WAAF as a quite progressive rock station in the early '70s. It was still playing long Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers album tracks at night, album tracks by King Crimson, Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Moody Blues, etc... those were considered progressive rock. Sure, you wouldn't hear a Miles Davis, John Coltrane or Sun Ra album side at 3 AM like you may have heard on the more free-form 'BCN, but WAAF was a progressive album rocker. WAAF was more of a "stoner rock" station, where WBCN was much more eclectic and mixed jazz and other genres in with rock, especially late at night. WAAF didn't start leaning more toward hard rock and metal until toward the mid to later '70s.

 

[Signpost]

I recall WAAF as a quite progressive rock station in the early '70s. It was still playing long Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers album tracks at night, album tracks by King Crimson, Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Moody Blues, etc... those were considered progressive rock.

WAAF was great until they hired Lee Abrams to suffocate the station's musicality. I remember hearing Roxy Music on WAAF in late 1973 - the song was "Street Life".

 

[scooty430]

Man, I was born too late. By the time I was old enough to have outgrown Top 40 (WRKO and F105,) the definitive rock station was WCOZ. Sure seemed cool at the time, and hearing Zeppelin and The Who nonstop was a revelation to a 10 year old.... But to have had both BCN and AAF spinning Roxy Music and King Crimson must have been AMAZING back in the early 70s. I had to learn about those bands through word of mouth!

 

[ChuckyG]

Here's a link to download the final 4 hours of WBCN, saved at 128K to fit under sendspace.com's 300 meg limit. I've got just about everything from the last 4 days saved as 192K MP3s, but the files are too big to post online anywhere, as far as I know.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/hl2bul

I'd love to do an offline trade with you for the rest of those mp3s. I wasn't even aware WBCN did anything special for their sign off until after it happened, so I was quite bummed out to have missed it.

Kind of upsetting they did nothing with Mark Parenteau, despite his personal shortcomings he still should have been mentioned.

 

[Brooklyndon]

Man, I was born too late. By the time I was old enough to have outgrown Top 40 (WRKO and F105,) the definitive rock station was WCOZ. Sure seemed cool at the time, and hearing Zeppelin and The Who nonstop was a revelation to a 10 year old.... But to have had both BCN and AAF spinning Roxy Music and King Crimson must have been AMAZING back in the early 70s. I had to learn about those bands through word of mouth!

Its not like WFNX never played Roxy Music.

 

[bdmass]

No we talking about rock stations are there still real AOR stations (like old BCN and WNEW) in the country? So which?

I think WHJY in Providence would qualify as a traditional AOR station in the current context playing classic (not just Hendrix and Zeppelin either) and active (everything from Stones to Guns n Roses to Nickelback to ShadowsFall).

 

[scooty430]

Man, I was born too late. By the time I was old enough to have outgrown Top 40 (WRKO and F105,) the definitive rock station was WCOZ. Sure seemed cool at the time, and hearing Zeppelin and The Who nonstop was a revelation to a 10 year old.... But to have had both BCN and AAF spinning Roxy Music and King Crimson must have been AMAZING back in the early 70s. I had to learn about those bands through word of mouth!

Its not like WFNX never played Roxy Music.

Did FNX play Roxy Music in the 80s, outside of maybe Avalon? I feel like they didn't do much mid-70s Roxy Music.

 

[KB1OKL]

No we talking about rock stations are there still real AOR stations (like old BCN and WNEW) in the country? So which?

I hate to say it but the closest thing to real AOR I've heard in a long time is Deep Tracks on XM, I can't believe some of the stuff I've heard on there, I heard the WHOLE Who Do You Love by Quicksilver Messenger Service one afternoon, that' an entire album side, I think about 26 minutes. but let's hope that Sam and BCN goes online.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I hate to say it but the closest thing to real AOR I've heard in a long time is Deep Tracks on XM, I can't believe some of the stuff I've heard on there, I heard the WHOLE Who Do You Love by Quicksilver Messenger Service one afternoon, that' an entire album side, I think about 26 minutes. but let's hope that Sam and BCN goes online.

I've played that on my show on MIT college station WMBR, which emulates the music and style of late '60s/early '70s FM "underground" early AOR. It's only a weekly two hour show, though, not a whole station format.

 

[KB1OKL]

I hate to say it but the closest thing to real AOR I've heard in a long time is Deep Tracks on XM, I can't believe some of the stuff I've heard on there, I heard the WHOLE Who Do You Love by Quicksilver Messenger Service one afternoon, that' an entire album side, I think about 26 minutes. but let's hope that Sam and BCN goes online.

I've played that on my show on MIT college station WMBR, which emulates the music and style of late '60s/early '70s FM "underground" early AOR. It's only a weekly two hour show, though, not a whole station format.

Eli, I think I've listened to WMBR in the past, where is it on the dial and when's your radio show?

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I've played that on my show on MIT college station WMBR, which emulates the music and style of late '60s/early '70s FM "underground" early AOR. It's only a weekly two hour show, though, not a whole station format.

Eli, I think I've listened to WMBR in the past, where is it on the dial and when's your radio show?

WMBR is heard at 88.1 FM in greater Boston and most of northeastern Massachusetts, and streaming at http://www.wmbr.org

I'm on Tuesdays 12 noon - 2 PM, part of the "Lost & Found" show block that focuses on different styles of music from the '60s and '70s every weekday. My Tuesday edition specializes in the early "FM underground" album rock radio era of the late '60s/early '70s, and occasionally also includes folk, folk-rock and blues. Other DJ's on the other weekdays focus on different styles from the era including '60s/'70s soul/R&B, "lost" pop songs, and more...

There are also archive streams of all shows available for listening for two weeks after airing on the website.