Radio Free Boston (43 page)

The untouchable Stern brought
WBCN
enormous ratings and revenue success on a daily basis, but his presence had seriously unbalanced the radio station. The schizophrenia in its programming would not improve, at least not until the New York–based shock-jock solved the problem himself by opting out of terrestrial radio years down the road. Tony Berardini would later assess, “If you had to mark the day where
WBCN
fundamentally changed, beginning it on the path that eventually led to it going out of the format, our decision to put Howard on in the mornings was the turning point.”

I think Oedipus realized that the station needed a kick in the ass; it felt like a lumbering, sleeping giant. [
WBCN
] hadn't really competed in a long time; it didn't have to.
NIK CARTER

A BAD-BOY

BUSINESS

WBCN'S
embrace of modern rock scored statistically from the first, but a dramatic visual confirmation of all this ratings hoopla played out in June 1995 when the station presented its first “River Rave,” at Boston's Esplanade on the bank of the Charles. Four fledgling bands from the '
BCN
play-list—Sleeper, Letters to Cleo, General Public, and Better Than Ezra—made up a modest bill barely expected to draw much more than five thousand people. That said, police presence was formidable, and the city was nervous about a repeat of the bloody riot that had occurred the previous year when
WFNX
presented Green Day at the same location. A beautiful spring day brought the sight of thousands of concertgoers streaming out of Back Bay and across the Storrow Drive pedestrian bridges, stepping off the Red Line at Charles Street and strolling over the river on Massachusetts Avenue. Like the brooms and their water buckets in
Fantasia
, the people just kept coming, until a crowd of over fifty thousand filtered onto the grounds for
the free concert, dwarfing the stage and the small coterie of station staffers standing in amazement behind the security barriers. Worries of another melee could not be suppressed, and the police called in for reinforcements. “We were absolutely overwhelmed with how many people showed up,” Roger Moore,
WBCN'S
broadcast engineer for that day, related. “But, there were no incidents whatsoever; we were all expecting the worst and nothing bad happened at all.”

The success of this first River Rave would inspire a new tradition to go along with
WBCN'S
fresh direction, with the concert growing into an annual event. Oedipus commented, “The first one, at the Hatch Shell, was good, but the great Raves occurred later, the ones at Great Woods and then Foxboro.” In future years, despite moving to these new locations that were nowhere near any river (if anything, only dirty culverts or muddy drainage ditches), the name stuck, and the River Rave became an annual expectation. Injected with steroids, the 1996 festival expanded to seventeen bands and relocated to Great Woods in Mansfield; the following year it morphed into a two-day extravaganza of thirty groups; and by 2000 the enormous digs of Foxboro Stadium were required to house the now-gargantuan affair. The unexpected success of the first event also emboldened Oedipus to create a Boston adaptation of
LA
sister station
KROQ'S
“Almost Acoustic Christmas Show,” calling it the
WBCN
“Christmas Rave.” Two dozen groups and artists, showcased in eight venues, from tiny T.T. the Bears in Cambridge to the Orpheum Theater downtown, performed on one night in December 1995. There had been a precedent set when '
BCN
staged Peter Wolf in an unplugged holiday party in the Middle East the year before, but the Christmas Rave was a full-blown electric event featuring future household names like the Dave Matthews Band, Goo Goo Dolls, 311, Jewel, and Ben Folds Five.

The Raves of 1995 underscored
WBCN'S
format realignment, as did the presence of a new school of young
DJS
, like Shred, who had been at the station since 1988 but blossomed with the station's concentration on new groups and alternative sounds: “'
BCN
was always about breaking new bands; we made the hits. And it didn't have to be rock; even if it was a pop song and it sounded good, we'd play it anyway.” Shred's favorite moments were meeting Damon Albarn of Blur; talking to Green Day in the '
BCN
conference room; and speaking in awe backstage at Avalon with a personal hero, Johnny Cash. In '93 Oedipus hired petite redhead Melissa Teper for the
weekends and flll-ins from a small station in Marshfield where she performed as the coquettish “Siobhan,” playing tunes from the Emerald Isle. “DJ Melissa,” as she became known, answered an ad looking for Listener Line volunteers on Charles Laquidara's show and, like so many before her, grabbed onto that dangling radio lifeline. “'
BCN
was great about that: giving the little guy a shot. That's what the station was all about: finding and nurturing new talent. Even Oedipus was an intern once.” The wisecracking Harrison came to the station in '94, joining the weekend air staff, and soon following Bill Abbate's example of doubling as a
DJ
and a member of the Patriots broadcast crew. Janet Egan, guitarist in the high-profile local metal band Malachite, worked at
WFNX
as a
DJ
and local music maven before Oedipus hired her away for similar duties at '
BCN
. Under her radio pseudonym “Juanita the Scene Queen,” she brought weighty street cred and experience to the lineup. Neal Robert defected from
WFNX
, after helming that station's afternoon shift for seven years, making the switch even though there were no full-time jobs to move into at his new home. “I still felt I had made the right decision; I was psyched to be at '
BCN
.”

By 1997,
WAAF
had been feuding on and off with '
BCN
for thirteen years with mixed results. The Worcester station had a solid foundation of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old males but hadn't had much impact on “The Rock of Boston” with its lucrative core of twenty-five- to fifty-four-year-old male and female listeners. Sure, the two stations elbowed each other at times when competing for promotions with groups they shared on their playlists, but when it came to ad dollars,
WBCN
sat in a commanding position, even before the arrival of Howard Stern. However, with '
BCN'S
realignment away from album-oriented rock and toward “modern rock,” shifting to a younger target demo of eighteen- to thirty-four-year olds, the presence of harder-rocking
WAAF
in the mix became undeniable. Then, the odds changed again in favor of the Worcester station as a new tag team of Opie and Anthony arrived from Long Island. The pair took over the afternoon slot at ‘
AAF
and soon demonstrated their own low-brow path to “greatness” with stunts like “Whip ‘Em Out Wednesdays,” in which women were encouraged to expose their breasts to male drivers. The campaign became so popular in just a few weeks that the state police had to take a stand in response to those citing safety concerns over lapses of driver attention. To assuage their opponents,
WAAF'S
managers slapped the pair's wrists by suspending them for two weeks. '
BCN'S
Shred reasoned, “We had
Stern, so we opened up the can of worms. There certainly wasn't any good taste involved; it was how far these jocks could push the limits.”

“I listened to Howard Stern and actually enjoyed him,” said Steve Strick, “but I was not a fan of Opie and Anthony. With Howard, there was some sophistication there and some professional writing going on; it wasn't just two goons making fun of boobs.” But like or dislike their approach, the new morning team's brand of raw humor proved effective and invasive, finding fertile ground with ‘AAF's existing audience and then growing beyond. Eileen McNamara writing in the
Boston Globe
labeled “O & A” as “two witless disc jockeys at a second-rate rock radio station in Worcester”; nevertheless, this supposedly obtuse team was soon significantly impacting the radio ratings in the Boston market.

“‘
AAF
had always been respectful and never had the balls to actually go after the station in the way that Opie and Anthony did,” Mark Parenteau commented. “They were the first ones that really saw that '
BCN
could be vulnerable.” O & A made a very clear public target of Parenteau, attacking his character relentlessly on the air. “We believed that rock and roll is sometimes stronger, if not the strongest, in afternoon drive,”
WAAF'S
vice president and general manager at the time Bruce Mittman pointed out. “In our research, we kept seeing the word ‘old' in relation to '
BCN
, so O & A attacked the station, and Parenteau, for being ‘old and tired.'” Although a success for nearly two decades, '
BCN'S
afternoon jock was, admittedly, spending far less time living the rock and roll lifestyle than he had before: “The station was hugely successful; we were making tons of money. I lived in Hopkinton then, and I had a house in Vermont. I'd go in every day and do the show, but I didn't hang out on the scene like I had in the past.”

“Mark became much more domestic, and there's nothing wrong with that,” Oedipus added. “He grew up, got older, and had other responsibilities; but he lost that youthful quickness. He was still a funny bastard, but Mark was no longer relating to the younger audience.”

Opie and Anthony took it one step further and began ridiculing the veteran
DJ
about his homosexuality. Parenteau explained, “They attacked me for being gay, and it was uncomfortable because Oedipus had always said, ‘Don't talk about it on the air.' I'd mention things in double entendre, so if you were gay, you would know I was too, and if you weren't, it could be taken another way. Oedipus didn't think it would be good for business, nor did I, to be the gay disc jockey or the gay radio station.”

Summer '97, goofing off with Snoop Dogg backstage at the River Rave. (Left to right) “Chachi” Loprete, Oedipus, Snoop, and Mark Parenteau. Parenteau's days at '
BCN
are numbered; he will leave within six months. Photo by Leo Gozbekian.

“So, do you take the high road and not respond to anything, then hope it goes away?” Chachi Loprete asked. “Or, do you bring yourself down and fight them on their level? We did nothing, for a long time. Parenteau kept his mouth shut through the whole thing, because how do you fight that?”

Parenteau continued, “I wanted to go balls to the wall with them over it; but of course, I would have had to acknowledge that I was gay. [But], the way the gay thing has turned out for lots of celebrities since, I don't think it would have made any difference. In hindsight, I think it would have made great radio; it would have been no skin off my nose if everyone knew I was ‘the guy.'”

“The fact was that Mark couldn't beat Opie and Anthony,” Oedipus countered. “At that point, he had the talent, but he didn't have the anger. They were really nasty, and it was tough to play in their ballpark. That really changed the face of it.”

“Their guerilla listeners would drive by the house, make noise, and throw cans in the driveway,” Parenteau confessed. “Suddenly I felt I had no privacy in my life, and I ended up retreating; I didn't want to run into this ‘
AAF
thing all the time.”

In the winter 1997 Arbitron book,
WBCN
placed seventh in the market for all listeners twelve years and older, continuing to win the eighteen to thirty-four male ratings race by scoring an 11.6 to
AAF'S
7.9. Still, while Howard Stern could be credited with maintaining the comfortable margin, the afternoons were definitely losing ground to Opie and Anthony's unrelenting assault. By the summer ratings period six months later, Opie and Anthony soundly trounced the veteran in the eighteen to thirty-four male battleground by scoring a 13.3 percent audience share to his 9.4. Tensions between Oedipus and Parenteau, as they disagreed on a winning strategy, often boiled over, their clashing and flamboyant personalities reduced to shouting matches or steely episodes of silence. By the fall, Oedipus had concluded, “It was time for Mark to move on; he was no longer relating to the audience.” Parenteau was not surprised but disappointed, believing that the main reason for the cold shoulder was actually a financial one: “Within the structure of
CBS
they had a lot of
DJS
that were making a lot of money; we're talking a quarter-million dollars a year, and in some cases even more than that. Mel was trying to pare down that cost and replace million-dollar talent with forty-thousand-dollar-a-year jobs, which he did. So, Oedipus was playing this whole Mel game at the time; he had to.” In the face of declining ratings, Oedipus and Tony Berardini chose not to renew Parenteau's contract, which meant that the
DJ
was out of a job in early November '97. “There was this whole statement [drawn up] that said I wanted to leave because I wanted to go do other things.”
WBCN'S
press release stated, “The venerable disc-jockey plans to take a short break from his radio show to pursue several entertainment-related opportunities that were recently presented to him.”

“That just wasn't the case,” Parenteau refuted. “I didn't want it to go down that way.”