Radio Free Boston (30 page)

Loprete ended up giving Carla Nolin, one of the “weekend warriors” on the air during that marathon twelve-hour shift, a ride home and soon became her in-studio producer. His first paying job at the station was sweeping the garage floor. “Then Tank hired me to be a van driver. One van, me and Tank. There were no bar or beer nights back then, nothing; we drove the van to concerts.” Then in November 1982, there was a serious promotional mix-up at an Aerosmith concert in Worcester, in which twenty-five pairs of tickets were accidently given away
twice
by David Bieber's assistant. Tank and I stood by the van, parked next to the Centrum entrance, conspicuous in our silver satin
WBCN
jackets. But we would rather have been incognito as several irritated listeners confronted us about the absence of their names at the will-call window. “Hey, Carter Alan . . . hey Tank!” We handed over our own tickets to the first disgruntled winners, but when so many more showed up, we realized this was a major screwup. Thanks only to the station's reputation and close relationships with Aerosmith and the promoter, Don Law, were we able to slip all the ticketless into a sold-out show. It was an embarrassment I never saw repeated at the station. “Twenty-five pairs of tickets that the station didn't have,” Loprete reiterated. “I'll never forget it because it gave me my job.” The aforementioned assistant was ousted the very next day and Loprete elevated into her position. “Now, I don't smoke much now, but back then, on the day I got hired, I was in the garage in my car with a bag of weed, rolling up a celebratory joint. I saw Tony Berardini, the general manager, coming toward me! I rolled my window down, the pot was on my lap, he saw everything, put his arm in, shook my hand, and said, ‘I want to congratulate you on your new job.' Then he walked away. Amazing! It was no big deal back then.”

Promotions in motion: Mark Parenteau and Larry “Chachi” Loprete in the “classic” sixties television Batmobile. Photo by Leo Gozbekian.

The “#1 Rock 'n' Roll Connection!” Courtesy of the David Bieber Archives.

For his love of
WBCN
, Loprete said goodbye to Polaroid, axing a $30,000-a-year job to work as an assistant in a radio station promotions department, a trade he says he never regretted: “Working with David [Bieber] was the greatest experience I ever had. He's a visionary, and I always thought he was the heart, soul, and conscience of the radio station. David did have his idiosyncrasies: he does his best work at three in the morning, so he always stayed up all night and didn't come in till one in the afternoon.” That left Loprete the job of managing day-to-day operations of the small department. “He was a real rock to depend on, including his wake-up calls to me every day,” Bieber noted about his new assistant. “He was excellent in directing other people as they came along, like Adam Klein and Jason Steinberg. And it was also nice to see his growth and development as a celebrity.” Loprete's enthusiasm and wit became obvious to the
DJS
, who started incorporating him into their shows. “They would need assistance on the air to describe contests and draw winners, so Ken Shelton and Parenteau would call me in to help.” He did this so much that he became known as the “Vice President of Prizes,” and when newsman Matt Schaffer dubbed him “Chachi” in a quick aside one day, the nickname stuck, and remains to this day. Shelton commented, “Tank and Chachi, at first, were helpers, but they grew into the '
BCN
family. The listeners welcomed them: ‘Hey! There's Chachi driving the van! Hey Chachi!' Then, a guy who could barely carry on a conversation when we first met him grew into a real talent on the air.”

WBCN'S
on-air slogan became “Your Number 1 Rock and Roll Connection,” as the station sought to be top of mind with as many aspects of its listeners' lives as possible. Under David Bieber's direction and Infinity's
willingness to sign the checks, the promotions department was given the green light to expand the station's profile and reach. “There had been a point in the beginning of '
BCN
where [the station] hadn't been attuned to promotion, marketing, and creative services,” Bieber stated. “Over the next ten or fifteen years, there was a logical expansion of those things, because it became important to sales and programming that they all get done.” In 1968, any attempt at a promotional tie-in with a client—for instance, allowing Miller Beer to hang its posters at a Boston Tea Party show sponsored by
WBCN
—would have been viewed as outrageous and improper. But in the eighties, that sort of practice had become an accepted and even necessary way of doing business. Using sponsor money to help generate promotional paraphernalia or foot the bill to produce events became the norm, as evidenced by the flood of
WBCN
T-shirts and bumper stickers that now accompanied every station benchmark. This promotional relationship was explored and developed early in the decade at the Rumble and then at
WBCN
movie screenings. “It was unique to the time,” Bieber mentioned. “We partnered with the company that had the first-run theaters in town and the suburbs, doing film promotions where Chachi would host [at the theater], welcoming everybody, giving away prizes and creating the '
BCN
identity at any screening we did. There was the movie
Caveman
that Ringo was in; we gave away the caveman suit that Ringo wore. The point was to make any film bigger than just a screening.” The station's relationship with the local theater chain became so significant that a
WBCN
introductory film clip, “based on an
ET
–
Star Wars
trailer, ran before every feature in every theater they owned, every day, for years,” Bieber added.

WBCN'S
presence at local concerts proved to be one of the most effective ways to brand the station with the key artists of its core library and new groups on their way to success. Interacting with listeners and the artists themselves at the shows only enhanced
WBCN'S
image as an
FM
rock station that was on top of what was happening culturally. The most memorable on-air broadcast of this period occurred during David Bowie's visit to Sullivan Stadium in 1983.
WBCN
had always featured David Bowie's music through every bend in his career, enjoying a strong relationship with the artist and placing the station at the forefront of a long list of those seeking access. Permission was granted for a free-ranging live broadcast from, and during, the event, which would draw over fifty thousand spectators. Along
with the broadcast would be an all-encompassing, alphabetical “A to Z” presentation of Bowie's music catalogue on the air. As a resident David Bowie fanatic, Oedipus assigned the lead commentator role to himself, bringing along Bradley Jay, the recently arrived
DJ
who also knelt in the church of Ziggy Stardust. Practiced and professional are skills one hopes to achieve from years of broadcasting experience, but the excitement of being backstage and close to one of their idols transformed the two jocks into “giddy and happy little girls!” Jay remembered. Albert O, also assigned to the broadcast that day, and working in the audience area and press box, added, “Oedi and Bradley were such rabid fans and they got so excited! That's what '
BCN
was all about: we were the fans; we were the spokespeople for all those who were out there listening.”

Early in the afternoon, Jay checked in, live on the air, from Sullivan Stadium. He spoke into the microphone in hushed tones, mere yards from David Bowie as the star ate dinner backstage. “Over to my right is a big, long black car, and out of that car came David Bowie and Bianca Jagger. They went over to the buffet line and right now David's about . . .”

“Ten feet, ten feet!” Oedipus piped in excitedly, trying with difficulty to keep his voice down.

“Well, maybe twenty, Oedipus . . .”

“No . . . fifteen!” the program director successfully negotiated.

“Okay. He's eating with Bianca, and we could tell you what he's eating, but that would be kind of tacky . . .”

“Lobster. They're eating lobster!” Oedipus delightfully supplied. Bradley just chuckled before continuing: “Remember Arthur, his bodyguard in
The Man Who Fell to Earth
? Well, he checked our passes; he came over here and it was . . . just amazing . . . and my mind is just fried!”

During the broadcast, throughout the day, the “David Bowie A to Z” continued on
WBCN
. Jay and Oedipus actually got to talk to Bowie about the alphabetical list when the two were invited into the star's dressing room, a moment that Oedipus hysterically recounted on the air a few moments later. “We were just in David Bowie's dressing room! The rain is pouring and we're in plastic bags,” he reported at machine-gun speed.

Bradley gave him the
WBCN
umbrella so he could go onstage in the rain! Bradley and I . . . sat in the limousine that David Bowie was sitting in, and after we got out of the limousine we went over to David Bowie's dressing room and we
talked to David Bowie! We told him we were playing “Round and Round” at that very moment, what you were playing Carter [I was the
DJ
anchoring things back at the studio], on the air at
WBCN
, and he was listening and he loved it. We said, “David, are there more than 226 songs that you ever recorded?” And he said, “I don't know.” And then Bradley said, “Well, we have ‘Liza Jane.'” He said, “Then you have everything I ever recorded!”

With the barest of breaths, Oedipus dove back in at a hundred miles an hour: “It is happening here, the rain is coming down, Bowie's going on in exactly one minute, and it is so intense, everyone's jumping; he can't wait. We are so excited; we shook hands with David Bowie!”

“Twice!” Jay shouted.

“He loves Boston! Back to Carter from the Bowie Connection:
WBCN
Boston!”

Losing their cool and all vestiges of stodgy professionalism to become an amazed pair of civilians with minds completely blown, both Oedipus and Jay were living the listeners' dream. The moment was infectious . . . and vastly entertaining. But it would become even more so after the concert, when the tag team arrived, spent and happy, back at the
WBCN
studio to join “Raz on the Radio” as she worked her 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. shift. Oedipus sidled up to a microphone and began recapping the night: “While Bradley and I were backstage and Albert was up in the booth, Bradley and I snuck into the limousine. Actually, we know Michael the driver, great guy, good friend with David Bieber. We snuck into the limo, and he said, ‘David sits on this side and Bianca sits on this side' . . . so, we looked in the ashtrays and what [do] we have here . . .”

“Can you picture this?” an amazed Raz said to her listeners. Here they are with . . .”

“. . . a David Bowie cigarette and a Bianca Jagger cigarette,” Oedipus finished.

“Why don't you describe the butt itself, Oedipus,” Jay chimed in as everyone laughed.

“Bianca's has red lipstick on it; she smokes Carlton. I get that one. And we took two Bowie cigarettes; one goes to Bradley, and he's going to give it to his girlfriend, actually. Bowie only smokes about a quarter of the cigarette; then the rest he stamps out.”

“Hold it close to the microphone so we can see it, Oedipus,” Raz joked.

“It's a Marlboro, kinda stamped out,” he continued. “What we're going to do here, the three of us, Albert, Bradley, and myself, [is] we're going to smoke David Bowie's cigarette. His lips have been on this cigarette.”

“Molecules from David Bowie!” Jay emphasized in wonderment.

“. . . live on the air!” Oedipus yelled.

Someone produced a match, and the sacred smoking session began. After taking a drag, Bradley Jay observed, “Along with David Bowie's molecules, I get a few of Oedipus's here too!” Out of the litany of voices and laughs, Oedipus asserted, “This is not put on; everyone has to know that we actually sat here and just absorbed David Bowie.” Jay loudly inhaled and then blew out smoke next to his microphone, then, passing the smoldering butt over, he said woozily, “Albert, it's your turn; I'm kind of getting dizzy!” The cigarette went around and around in a ritual even David Bowie himself would probably have found hilarious, odd, or maybe a little disturbing if he was listening. As Carla Raczwyk wrapped it up, telling her listeners, “You wouldn't believe it . . . you wouldn't believe it!” and started up another song in the “A to Z,” the jabbering excitement of the
DJS
, having now partaken of some authentic Bowie
DNA
, could be heard mingling with the opening notes of “Sweet Thing” from
Diamond Dogs
. “It was the greatest show we've ever seen in our entire lives!” Oedipus shouted, before Raz, laughing, shut down the microphones and the music took over.