Full Moon Edition October 2023
Dusty Street passed away the other day. Scoop Nisker passed last month. You may not know their names, but if you happened to be in the Bay Area back when everybody who knew what was happening in radio and pretty much everything else was listening to the gang Tom Donahue gathered at KSAN, then those two and their colleagues were a big part of the soundtrack of your life.
There is a relentless parade of people departing this earthly realm who once were an essential part of our youth, our community, our best hopes and aspirations. There was a period of creativity and innovation taking place, amazing new music being made, an entire generation to inspire and be inspired by, and an unique moment in broadcast radio that brought it all together in a respectful, sensitive, and thoughtful manner. It was a wonderful time to be alive.
Who will tell the story of that time? We believe it should be told by the very people who made it happen, those of us who remain before we too depart this mortal coil. That’s why we founded www.radicalradio.media, an archive of FREEFORM radio and a tribute to the people who created it from whole cloth. Thanksgiving day will mark our first anniversary and already the site is gaining the specific gravity to attract like-minded people to join the effort.
One such person who came our way is Michael J. Andrade and let me tell you: you may think you know music fans but Michael is a whole different breed of cat. For some 30 years, he’s been compiling brilliant mixtapes to share with his friends and building a collection of music that is absolutely astounding.
He also has a collection of vintage radio material that lit up our little corner of the world. He’s shared that material with the www.radicalradio.media archive, which we’ll begin posting soon. Included are station IDs and sound checks from WBCN, WBRU, KFML, WMMR, WNEW, KTIM and KTYD and elsewhere. He’s gifted us with audio clips of Rosco Mercer resigning on air at WOR, Alison Steele the Nightbird at work on WNEW, Mark Parenteau at WABX interviewing John Lennon, and a vast treasure of other great stuff.
Michael Andrade (MusicMan) is the author of 360 Degrees of Rock & Roll, which is a monthly compilation of great music. If you would like to join his monthly shows and have them sent to you, you can E-Mail him at Rock43Roll@Gmail.Com and hold on to your hat because he will rock you!
One thing that has been vividly apparent as we’ve reached out to freeform deejays in building this archive is there are a lot of great talents in residence here. Trying to choose the best of them to talk about is a fool’s errand. There were so many brilliant people doing such creative broadcasting in that brief period of time when artistry took precedence over commerce. We salute them all.
If longevity is added to the criteria for selecting one among them, though, Charles Laquidara quickly floats to the top of the pool. Sometimes called the Last Deejay, he enjoyed a 30 year career at WBCN in Boston from the day he replaced Peter Wolf in the initial surge of that fabled station as a force in freeform radio through its many iterations and permutations over the years.
His Big Mattress show, and the extemporaneous Saturday morning rants of his alter ego Duane Glasscock, earned ratings that carried him through the many ups and downs of broadcasting in those tumultuous times. He was a force, and all those 30 years (“really only 28,” he’ll tell you. “I took two years off when the show was interfering with my cocaine habit.”) were steeped in creativity. Hear his version of that legendary career here: