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Howie column ping

RIP: Big Mattress, WBCN
By Howie Carr | Sunday, July 19, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Duane Ingalls Glasscock was the first radio show I ever got involved in, which I’ll explain in a moment. But first I want to say goodbye to Duane’s flagship, WBCN [website], the Rock of Boston, which as you know is going off the air next month.

None of which means anything to anybody who wasn’t living here sometime between the late 1960s and the early 1990s, and if you want to dismiss these photos as just more narcissistic Boomer nostalgia I won’t argue. All I can do is paraphrase Bob Dylan: You would not think to look at them, but they were famous long ago.

These pictures from ’BCN’s “Golden Age” were taken by my friend Larry Bruce, who at the time was an engineer there. You can see these, and lots more, by going online to bostonherald.com.

Back in ’BCN’s glory days, everybody read the same news, watched the same TV shows and listened to the same radio. The culture had yet to fragment.

So everyone listened to ’BCN on Saturdays to hear Duane Ingalls Glasscock - morning guy Charles Laquidara’s alter ego, a 17-year-old “clone” who played songs like “White Punks on Dope” over and over again, while randomly insulting callers, asking them, “Have you ever been phoned in Upton, Mass., for being a lucky wise guy?”

You had to be there, I guess.

Anyway, I was covering City Hall, where City Councilor Freddy Langone had been conducting slapstick hearings into Mayor Kevin White’s use of the Parkman House during the Pope’s visit to Boston in 1979. One of the radio reporters spliced together a couple of Freddy’s great soundbites and put them on his telephone answering machine:

“Who ate at the Pakkkkkh-man House? Who? Who. H-W-O-H who? . . . Was it da Pope? Did da Pope eat at the Pakkkkkh-man House?”

On Saturday morning, I called up ’BCN’s listener line and told the intern or whoever to write down the reporter’s number, call it and record the voice message.

“Duane will know what to do with it,” I said, hanging up. And he did. All day, driving around the city, I was tuned in as Duane would make some obscene suggestion to a female caller on Girly Watch, or shout out “Hello Rangoon!” after which Freddy would come on with his plaintive question: “H-W-O-H Who?”

I’d be at a stoplight and look over at the car next to me and I’d see those people laughing too, at the joke I’d engineered, sort of. It was the first time I realized the power of radio - the power then, you understand, as opposed to now, which is not nearly as much.

I got to know Charles Laquidara, even doing a column on him when I found out that he seemed to be using a different birth date on every official document he had - driver’s license, FCC permit, gun permits, etc. He wanted a sitdown. I suggested Foley’s.

I gave him the payphone number at Foley’s in case he got lost. As Charles got closer and closer to Foley’s he kept calling me with eyewitness reports of the terrifying pedestrians he was seeing. This Dover station area didn’t look much like the Dover he lived in.

“Maybe I should bring my gun in,” Charles said. “Is it safe on the street?”

“Safe?” I said. “You’re the bleepin’ liberal here. You celebrate diversity, and you ask me if the South End is safe!”

Then he invited me to his place, WBCN. When I got there, I thought I’d wandered into some kind of off-loading warehouse for truck hijackers. Charles had all kinds of free stuff being delivered to him by advertisers and fans, and it was all being lugged to his car by “interns” - i.e., people who you don’t have to pay. All I could think of afterward was, what a racket, and how do I muscle into it?

Well, nothing good lasts forever. ‘BCN battled KISS head to head in the ratings until maybe 1988, but then rock fell apart, quickly followed by the Rock of Boston.

Eventually Howard Stern pushed out Charles, who’s been living in Hawaii for 11 years now. The Cosmic Muffin died, Parenteau went to prison, Billy West went to Hollywood, Matty got rich at the disco station and now everybody’s pointing fingers at each other over the demise of a station no one’s listened to in years, except for when the Patriots [team stats] were playing.

I’d love to hear Duane Ingalls Glasscock one final time - live. Thursday night I was on the phone with Charles and another old ’BCN hand, David Bieber, talking about the prospects of a farewell performance. I’m not optimistic.

“Maybe after all this dies down,” Charles/Duane said, “but I wouldn’t want it to end up like a bunch of old farts playing bingo at the American Legion.” Which is probably exactly how it would turn out. “Besides, didn’t we do something like this once before, with Robin Young? Help me out here, guys, can’t you remember?”

Only vaguely, Duane. It didn’t come off well, as I recall. Everybody involved should have done the funky chicken - inside joke.

You had to be there. Hello Rangoon!
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1185782

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