Part Two: On the Radio - WMUA in Amherst
In the summer of 1968 my parents and I (My brothers were already at work or college) moved from Illinois to Massachusetts. This was just before the start of my senior year of high school. There, on the advice of some of my new friends, I tuned in to WBCN, Boston’s ‘underground’ radio station, and had my mind completely blown.
My previous exposure to radio had been AM Top 40 for the most part, and though I’d widened my musical tastes somewhat, through peer exposure, to include groups like Cream and The Doors and - okay, I’ll admit it - The Monkees, I had never heard anything remotely like the smorgasbord offered by WBCN - The American Revolution, as they described themselves then. Rock, blues, jazz, folk, classical, world, experimental - music from the past, present and future all somehow spun together with taste and humor and passion. John Coltrane, Ravi Shankar and John Cage rubbing elbows with the Stones, Dylan, Buffalo Springfield and the Bonzo Dog Band. It was completely nuts and I loved it. My life-long obsessions with music and radio started right there.
My first rock concert: Janis Joplin & Big Brother, with The Butterfield Blues Band, autumn of ‘68.
When I finally got around to getting serious about college in 1973, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, I majored in Media Studies, fell in with a bunch of serious music fanatics and began my career in radio. I started off at tiny little WSYL, a closed-circuit station which “broadcast” to the dormitory building it was in and the two buildings on either side of it. It was there that I first took my radio handle, Your Sacred Cowboy (a joke that nobody ever gets, swiped from the first album by The Firesign Theatre), which I’ve used pretty much ever since.
After getting my broadcast license I quickly moved to the main campus station, WMUA. I did a music show there for three years, and also began learning the fine art of radio production, creating station ID’s, sign-ons and sign-offs, concert promos and random weirdness, all with the somewhat bent humor that was a hallmark of the times. Here are a few examples:
Sacred Cowboy Intro #1
‘Vowel Movement’ ID
WMUA sez ‘March!’
‘Swami Satchidananda’ Sign-On
‘Radio Gnome’ Promo
Radio Gnome Intro
‘Meditation at Wendell Depot’ ID
Sacred Cowboy Intro #3
‘Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho’ Sign-off
‘Straight-Talking Radio’ ID
‘Hot to Trot’ ID
‘Donald Duck’ ID
My previous exposure to radio had been AM Top 40 for the most part, and though I’d widened my musical tastes somewhat, through peer exposure, to include groups like Cream and The Doors and - okay, I’ll admit it - The Monkees, I had never heard anything remotely like the smorgasbord offered by WBCN - The American Revolution, as they described themselves then. Rock, blues, jazz, folk, classical, world, experimental - music from the past, present and future all somehow spun together with taste and humor and passion. John Coltrane, Ravi Shankar and John Cage rubbing elbows with the Stones, Dylan, Buffalo Springfield and the Bonzo Dog Band. It was completely nuts and I loved it. My life-long obsessions with music and radio started right there.
My first rock concert: Janis Joplin & Big Brother, with The Butterfield Blues Band, autumn of ‘68.
When I finally got around to getting serious about college in 1973, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, I majored in Media Studies, fell in with a bunch of serious music fanatics and began my career in radio. I started off at tiny little WSYL, a closed-circuit station which “broadcast” to the dormitory building it was in and the two buildings on either side of it. It was there that I first took my radio handle, Your Sacred Cowboy (a joke that nobody ever gets, swiped from the first album by The Firesign Theatre), which I’ve used pretty much ever since.
After getting my broadcast license I quickly moved to the main campus station, WMUA. I did a music show there for three years, and also began learning the fine art of radio production, creating station ID’s, sign-ons and sign-offs, concert promos and random weirdness, all with the somewhat bent humor that was a hallmark of the times. Here are a few examples:
Sacred Cowboy Intro #1
‘Vowel Movement’ ID
WMUA sez ‘March!’
‘Swami Satchidananda’ Sign-On
‘Radio Gnome’ Promo
Radio Gnome Intro
‘Meditation at Wendell Depot’ ID
Sacred Cowboy Intro #3
‘Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho’ Sign-off
‘Straight-Talking Radio’ ID
‘Hot to Trot’ ID
‘Donald Duck’ ID
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