4/5/2023 0 Comments Alter ego band schedule 2018![]() “The Telecommunications Act of 1996 destroyed radio,” Oedipus says. Oedipus says a big reason for WBCN’s demise is governmental action. I definitely respect and appreciate that.” “He had to follow orders to make the station very commercial and had to cut down the amount of great music we played. “Oedipus really kept the station up in the ratings,” Laquidara says. ![]() Oedipus, who started at the station as a punk rock DJ in 1977, became program director in 1981 and exited in 2004. … They stopped me from playing the blues songs I wanted to play or the folk songs I wanted to play when we started competing with the shock jocks out there.” His job was to have BCN make money and with radio, as most people who are in the biz know, if you want to have great radio, you’re not going to have great ratings. His job, or any CEO’s job, is the bottom line, to take care of the stockholders. “What happened was corporate became more and more money conscious,” Laquidara says. It’s the rock fans from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s for whom WBCN had the most impact. There’s a generation alive today that never heard Laquidara on Boston airwaves and most of today’s teenagers never heard WBCN at all. WBCN went down in 2009, one of many rock-oriented stations that lost import or bit the dust. And it was also educational as opposed to today where they just throw s- at you.” It was a learning process and a sharing process. I made some mistakes, but I also was honest and talked about things the way I thought they were, just like if you met somebody in your coffee shop or bar. “I was probably somebody who talked like a real person,” Laquidara says, “and not like a phony. They were entertainers first and foremost and none more than Charles.” WBCN’s DJs were personalities, and you listened with anticipation when they opened the microphone. “But his charm, wit, integrity and idiosyncratic personality made him the greatest rock DJ ever to crack the mic. “Music was a portion of his presentation,” says former WBCN program director Oedipus, by email from Thailand, where he and his wife spend half the year. Laquidara was a quick-thinking, left-wing (before he got reined in) DJ who mixed topical observation and comical badinage with the music. It then mutated over the years into what was called AOR (album-oriented rock) and later designated as “modern rock” or “active rock” by the radio trade magazines. WBCN started as a classical music station in 1958, but a decade later reformatted as an “underground” or free-form, progressive rock station. By late 1968, he was in Boston at the “underground” rock station, WBCN, taking over for Peter Wolf when Wolf left to sing with the J. He mixed classical and rock, knowing little about either, but going on instinct. Instead, Laquidara more or less stumbled into a radio career and got a job as a DJ in Los Angeles. He relocated to Los Angeles and was, in fact, considered for the Albert DeSalvo part Curtis snagged. In the mid-‘60s, Laquidara, who’d been studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, wanted to be an actor. You interviewed George Harrison, you met with Al Pacino, you competed with Tony Curtis for “The Boston Strangler.” You have all these stories that nobody else has.’ ” “For several years people have asked,” says Laquidara, slipping into an extreme Boston accent, ‘Hey Chaaales, are you going to write a book? You should write a book. “They’re going to see an old man with a prune face,” he quips, “when I was really a hot chick magnet back in those days.”Īt the Paradise, you'll get a sampling of the memoir and then the full product - thousands of hours of Laquidara audio and video - will go live at on April 1. Laquidara will be back in town to host and hold court. On Wednesday, March 14, Laquidara, now 79, will celebrate his 32 years in Boston radio with what he calls “a multimedia memoir” titled “Daze in the Life” at the Paradise Rock Club. It coincides, almost to the day, with WBCN’s 50th anniversary. But now, that being said, it sounds like an ego trip. Tom Petty’s song put that guy in Los Angeles as being the last DJ, but I’m definitely the last DJ. “Let me tell you why it might be a trick question,” he says. Laquidara, on the phone from his home in Hawaii, considers this “last DJ” supposition for a moment and thinks it might be a trick question. 5, 2000, Laquidara spun his last record in Boston, Tony Bennett’s “The Best Is Yet to Come” and headed to Maui for a life of semi-retirement. After leaving WBCN, Laquidara immediately moved to classic rock sister station WZLX (both were owned by CBS), making way for the syndicated and hugely popular Howard Stern Show on WBCN.
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