Radio Free Boston (29 page)

A bemused Shelton forced out a “thank you” past all the laughter from his studio guests.

“No, thank
you
!” Murray replied. “How do you keep your skin so fresh?”

Shelton demonstrated his wit and sense of humor often, but his main image was as a music authority. Conversely, Mark Parenteau, also a serious music buff, became much more identified with the growing Boston comedy scene. “Mark was very quick and had an affinity for comedy,” Billy West observed. “He didn't want to let that go just because he was playing music [on the air].” It began with the comic slant he gave most of his interviews, when he'd get a laugh from even the most bad-tempered guests, and continued with a short comedy segment he featured every weekday at 5:05 p.m. “Part of the freedom at
WBCN
, since the beginning, was playing
Monty Python, Fireside Theater, Credibility Gap, and all these culturally hippie-dippy comedy bits; they were always part of the library,” Parenteau mentioned. “But for my own sense of freedom, or excitement, I latched onto and expanded the comedy format, establishing that, at five after five, we'd play something that was funny. My theory was, people just got out of work, got in their cars, and this was a good way to get their attention. Let's let them know that as they got out of the John Hancock Tower or someplace, and they've been looking at black-and-white figures all day, that the world is still crazy.” The daily feature soon gained traction and became a very popular segment, certainly not as famous as “Mishegas,” but instantly recognizable with its introduction snagged from a George Carlin album: “Bing! Bong! Five minutes past the big hour of five o'clock!” The
DJ
frequently shattered his permitted time window for the segment, expanding from five minutes to as much as triple that, especially when comedians dropped in for a personal visit. This led to occasional head-butting sessions with Oedipus, as Parenteau related: “[He] didn't love it because he's a real music guy, but he tolerated it because it got ratings.”

Mark Parenteau, “The Honorary Dean of Boston Comedy,” with Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, and unidentified Justin Bieber lookalike. Photo by Roger Gordy.

Despite the debates over semantics, Oedipus allowed the 5:05 p.m. feature to continue, and the sight of comedians sitting on the front-office
couch (laden with its frightening amounts and varieties of
DNA
), waiting for their cue to perform in the studio, became common. “The Boston comics—Lenny Clarke, Steve Sweeney, Kevin Meaney—a lot of those key guys quickly saw the value of this,” Parenteau pointed out. “Suddenly the audience knew them; it was like a band with a hit record.” Future stand-up stars like Steven Wright, Dennis Leary, Jay Leno, Jimmy Tingle, Paula Poundstone, Anthony Clarke, and Bobcat Goldthwait all paraded through '
BCN'S
studio on their way to national fame. The 5:05 p.m. feature became an important catalyst promoting the Boston comedy scene, which now entered a decade of explosive growth, alongside the already-flourishing local music market. “There'd be these little periods where the [music] pickings were slim and comedy was the rock and roll,” Billy West mentioned. “It took off! Soon comedy clubs were the place to go.”
DJ
Hazzard, one of the performers who rode the eighties comedy wave, told the
Boston Globe
in 1997, “In the days when things were really good, comedians were like Rock 'n' Roll stars.” Clearly, Mark Parenteau had uncovered a golden nugget, just as Oedipus had exposed the demimonde of a new music scene just a few years earlier. The Boston area's existing comedy clubs began to fill up, and new ones, like Stitches and an improved and expanded Comedy Connection, opened their doors. In 1985, in a direct parallel to the success of
WBCN'S
Rock 'n' Roll Rumble, the station sponsored the first Comedy Riot at Stitches over a five-night span, raising a champion from the two dozen “open mike” hopefuls. Struggling artist Janeane Garofalo, on her way to a long-lived career as a comedian and actress, was one such Comedy Riot winner, as well as Anthony Clark, a young comic going to Emerson College, who would become a star in his own sitcom,
Boston Common
, and other network television projects.

Mark Parenteau, “the honorary dean of Boston comedy,” as he was dubbed in
WBCN'S
twentieth-anniversary supplement in the
Boston Phoenix
, developed long-standing friendships with many comics but probably none stronger, or more bizarre, than those with Lenny Clarke and Sam Kinison, both loud and foul-mouthed, type-A performers, who were switched to “On” at birth and never operated below the speed limit. “They could slice you to ribbons,” Billy West observed. “Verbally, they could take out your gall bladder and show it to you before you die.” Lenny Clarke had run into Kinison in Los Angeles and introduced him to Parenteau, who was immediately taken with the brazen, irreverent style of the former Illinois
preacher. “There was no one like him, not only the screaming and all the energy, but, like Lenny Bruce, he said things that nobody said,” the
DJ
remembered. “When there was the world famine going on, and the ‘We Are the World' thing, Sam did this routine about Ethiopia: ‘Look around you people; what's on the ground? Sand. A hundred years from now it's still gonna be sand. Move to where the fuckin' food is!' It was so politically incorrect, it was hilarious.” Kinison found a home on
WBCN
and visited the station so often that it was hard to remember that he actually came from the West Coast. “Sam told me he loved the fact that '
BCN
could and would let him go on and ‘say the shit I'm supposed to say!' Every time he came around, as he got bigger and bigger, Sam would do my show and always get mentioned in the
Herald
for some outrageous thing he did or said.” The comic became a favorite on
MTV
for his extreme and very visual persona, also regularly visiting Howard Stern's syndicated show in New York, releasing comedy albums and turning the 1966 Troggs single, “Wild Thing,” into a revamped heavy-metal hit.

Smiling, Parenteau remembered,

Lenny and Sam were in Providence one night, and they called up: “We're coming over; you got any blow?” So they showed up at my place at 1:30, maybe 2:00 in the morning. Unbeknownst to me, they had this big Lincoln Town Car and couldn't find anywhere to park, so they decided to pull the car up on the sidewalk, totally in the way of a fire hydrant. Sam had this card that he always traveled with, from when he was a pastor, which you put in the front window by the rearview mirror. Priests use these when making emergency calls, when they're performing the Last Rites; they say “Clergy on Call,” and police usually give them the benefit of the doubt. So, they left the Town Car running with the flashers on, the “Clergy on Call” sign in the window, and they came up to “just do a line or two.” Five, six hours later, the sun was coming up; we had talked all night, called Robin Williams and woke him up, and it was, like, 8:30 in the morning. Lenny went, “I got to get out of here, and we've got to get that rental car back.”

I said, “What rental car?”

“Oh, it's downstairs.”

“Where'd you park?”

“Ha-ha-ha, on the sidewalk.” So, we went down; the car was actually still there, but it had run out of gas. The blinking lights were fading because the
battery was almost dead. So now, Sam was saying, “I've gotta get to New York for a gig!” So, they handed the keys to me, and Lenny said, “Here, you get the car back; I'll pay for everything.” So off they went, and here was this big Lincoln over the curb, up on the sidewalk, tank empty, and all my neighbors, uh, looking at me. So I had it towed. That was just Lenny and Sam.

In 1982, the
WBCN
Comedy Riot was still three years down the road and the Rock 'n' Roll Rumble fielding only its fourth spread of local opponents. With Infinity's presence and Mel Karmazin's tight rein on finances, David Bieber now had to organize himself and his small promotions department somewhat. This he achieved, even though at first glance it seemed impossible for the man, given the perpetual state of chaos and vast accumulation of cultural odds and ends that collected in his office (he still possesses all the pink phone message slips left for him during those years). “One of the great things about '
BCN
, especially in that period,” he said, “[was] if you could justify something to Mel, Mike, Gerry, or even Tony, ultimately there was a sense of adventure. It wasn't like we were treading in anyone's footsteps; we were doing things that were unique, not only in the market, but elsewhere at comparable stations.” Along with the centerpieces Rumble and Riot,
WBCN
began sponsoring a free lunchtime concert every two weeks with a local or breakout national artist, including the pride of East Boston: the Stompers, who drew a crowd of 1,200 in the middle of a workday. The annual blood drives, on-the-road beach broadcasts with Mark Parenteau, custom station T-shirts available at the “Rock Shop” in local Jordan Marsh locations, a myriad of movie screenings, constant ticket giveaways, and an endless parade of colorful bumper stickers and posters were all part of Bieber's vision. It's useful to note here that what seems conventional for a radio station to do now wasn't necessarily part of the promotional or technical vernacular in 1982. Wiring up Mark Parenteau to do his afternoon show live on the air while he rolled along various
MDC
beaches in a station vehicle, attracting a cloud of listeners who met him at every stop, was not commonly done in radio. Oedipus or Bieber might have dreamt these ideas up, but the problem-solving arm of engineers (David Stimson and Eddie De la Fuente during this time) made them happen, sometimes only because they brought along extra duct tape or knew the name and inside number of a guy working at the phone company.

Bieber kept his budget down by working with a staff of low-paid (or no-paid) employees and interns. No one was really complaining: they were working for
WBCN
and loving it. Tank had moved from running the Listener Line to producing “The Big Mattress,” doing a morning sports report, and handling errands in the new '
BCN
van. “I started driving for the station after Charles's show, delivering stuff, and picking up checks and tapes for the sales department. Then, we realized that the van was this mobile billboard, so at night I'd take it and sit outside at different venues where there were concerts and hand out bumper stickers.” Of course, this meant that Tank was now working for
WBCN
around the clock.

I remember when they realized I needed help. One night I was outside the
BCN
-trum (the station's on-air handle for the Worcester Centrum—thought up by
DJ
Tami Heide), and I'd fallen asleep in the back of the van. Now, I'm notorious: you couldn't wake me up, so the van was there at, like, two in the morning. They had people looking for me at police stations; they thought I'd been arrested. So I woke up, yawning, and it was wicked late. I just drove back [to Boston], thinking nothing of it, and then the police pulled me over on Route 290 to make sure I was okay and that someone hadn't stolen the van!

When Bieber realized that Tank was actually working eighteen to twenty hours
a day
, he found the money to add some help.

One of those new staffers was Larry Loprete (eventually known as “Cha-chi”), who loved radio from the moment he saw John, Paul, George, and Ringo perform on the Ed Sullivan show: “I knew at a young age that I wanted to work in radio because I sure wasn't talented enough to be a Beatle.” Although successful as an employee of Polaroid, Loprete sent a letter to Charles Laquidara expressing a desire to do anything for
WBCN
. The
DJ
handed the note over to the Listener Line staff, and soon Loprete got a follow-up call from a young female volunteer.

She said I could start in a couple of weeks and I'd work the Listener Line after work and on weekends. Then she asked if she could ask me a few questions.

“Do you drink alcohol?”

“No.” To this day I still don't drink, never did.

“Do you smoke?”

“No, I don't smoke cigarettes.”

“Do you smoke pot?”

And I said, “Well, you know . . . I do. I like smoking pot.”

“Oh! Can you start tomorrow?”

“Sure!”

“Meet me here at 7:00 p.m. Can you bring some weed?”

Loprete showed up on time for his first shift, shared the wealth, and ended up working straight through the night till seven in the morning. “I was calling all my friends and telling them I was working at
WBCN
, because this was the station that I listened to and admired; it was so irreverent and the
DJS
were so compelling. I never stopped listening.”