some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead

[spatch]

Today I woke up and heard Gary LaPierre on WBZ insert one judgemental pause too many while reading the news. You know what pauses I mean; the ones where he's obviously inserting a mental "tch-tch-tch" or a retching sound in the middle of a sentence. Figuring I no longer needed to put up with someone simultaneously reading me the news and telling me how I should feel about it (seeing as how I haven't needed "Traffic On The 3s" since 2003), I changed the radio over to WBUR.

And it felt so oddly liberating to know that not all the news stories in the Bay State right now involve lurid, gory deaths.

Comments

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

isn't gary lapierre retiring in a few months?

[spatch]

"GOOD!"
(with a nod to both bismuthobsidian and journeystar)

[brak55.livejournal.com]

Is WBZ the local conservative station now?

I remember the WBZ of Larry Glick and Jerry Stevens.

[spatch]

No, it's really not the Fox News of Boston radio (that's the FM talk station that's not AirAmerica) but LaPierre is their resident conservative. His "LaPierre On The Loose" segments would always highlight the "boneheads" and "fatcats" who deserved his "Dopeslap of the Day" ... who curiously usually turned out to be further to the left than he. The WBZ news still tries to remain in the center as much as possible, and then they let their talk show hosts do what they want without getting too out of hand. They're the ones who gave David Brudnoy a radio home for so many years, and even though Brudnoy's views sometimes veered out of Libertarian and into Cranky Nutjob, he always handled the show with respect for his callers and listeners.

I remember Larry Glick. I loved listening to Larry Glick back when "AM Stereo!" meant something and Glick played "Hanky Panky" every chance he got. Unlike Dave Maynard, when Glick left the air, he unfortunately pretty much disappeared from Boston's public consciousness altogether. Dave Maynard is still around, doing spots for cruise lines and I think Dux beds, but you can just hear the damage his strokes have done to his speech.

You might also be sad to know that Joe Green, the best damn helicopter pilot and traffic reporter Boston ever knew, died this week. Green's successor, Joe Morgan, flies his traffic copter well and does the traffic, but his "Joe Morgan in the BZ Copterrrrrr" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "Joe Green in the Green Machine."

[brak55.livejournal.com]

I listened to WBZ here in western NY, so I could only really pick it up at night. I found Larry Glick when I was young (60's/70's) and listened to him late at night when he was on Midnight to 6. I even had a Glicknick Club card.

I remember Dave Maynard, too. Jerry Stevens was actually a pretty radical talk show host in his day. Today's talkers remind me of him more than the other talk show hosts of the day who acted more like moderators and never really offered an opinion.

[ron_newman]

When I was a kid in Ohio, I liked to tune the AM radio dial to distant stations at night. One of my favorites was Jerry Williams on 'BZ. He was a flaming liberal back then, in the early 1970s.

[ron_newman]

Who is (or was) Jerry Stevens?

[brak55.livejournal.com]

Actually, my addled brain mixed up the name. You are right. It was Jerry Williams.