Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Rock DJ Who Ignited The Cars [Highlight From Episode 319]

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The Rock DJ Who Ignited The Cars [Highlight From Episode 319] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on
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  Speaker 1: Rock Moving in Stereo ric Ocassik. The Driving Force of
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  Speaker 1: the Cars is the book our guest is the author,
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  Speaker 1: Peter Aaron max An s Tori incredibly popular, not just
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  Speaker 1: not just to the car story, but to just the
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  Speaker 1: history of Boston rock and roll. She was on WBCN,
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  Speaker 1: which was at the time was kind of an upstart,
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  Speaker 1: sort of a hippie FM station. What it was called
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  Speaker 1: progressive music at the time, which was basically rock that was,
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  Speaker 1: you know, not cloying attempting to have top forty AM
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  Speaker 1: radio hit type music. You know, bands could stretch out
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  Speaker 1: and play longer songs and play play music that had
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  Speaker 1: a deeper feeling to it. And she was very well
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  Speaker 1: informed and very very much ahead of the curve for
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  Speaker 1: what was cool up there. I mean, Dave Robinson in
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  Speaker 1: our interview for the book like You talk at length
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  Speaker 1: about how she was so cool, always knew all the
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  Speaker 1: coolest bands before anybody else did, and turned them on
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  Speaker 1: just to so much music. Rick in particular. She became
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  Speaker 1: like a mentor to Rick and he listened obsessively to
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  Speaker 1: her show, which was on in the afternoon Prime Drive
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  Speaker 1: time on WBCN, and WBCN was sponsored a street fair
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  Speaker 1: in you know, Newbury Street or Back Bay area, and
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  Speaker 1: one of the bands that got on the bill was
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  Speaker 1: Cap and Swing. And Rick had published a chap book
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  Speaker 1: of poetry and went up to meet her and say
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  Speaker 1: he was a fan and gave her this sign book
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  Speaker 1: of poetry and that led to him giving her tapes
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  Speaker 1: of Captain Swing, and she played some of the stuff
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  Speaker 1: on the show. You know, it did it okay as
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  Speaker 1: far as the audience reception, but you know, you know,
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  Speaker 1: nothing amazing. But they became closer friends and she would
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  Speaker 1: play him all kinds of new music that became influential
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  Speaker 1: to him. And then after they had this kind of
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  Speaker 1: ill fated showcase gig at Max's Kansas City in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy six, she you know, helped kind of push him
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  Speaker 1: into trying some different ideas and some moves that clicked
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  Speaker 1: and became the Cars. And then when she started playing
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  Speaker 1: the car's demos on early demos of My Best Friend's
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  Speaker 1: Girl and Just What I Needed on WBCN, the radio
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  Speaker 1: went nuts, like they were the most became most requested
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  Speaker 1: songs on the station, and those songs were getting reported
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  Speaker 1: in the trade journals, and so these industry record major
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  Speaker 1: label record industry people would would see the cars just
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  Speaker 1: what I needed. And instead of where in the in
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  Speaker 1: the chart where there would be the name of the
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  Speaker 1: label that the recording was on, it would just say tape.
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  Speaker 1: And so that caught the eye of some of these labels.
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  Speaker 1: And it just so happened that, uh, the sister of
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  Speaker 1: of someone from a lecture was was going to Harvard
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  Speaker 1: and the cars were would play as dances at at
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  Speaker 1: Harvard frequently, and she talked her brother into coming up
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  Speaker 1: to see the band, and and uh, a couple other
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  Speaker 1: labels were snooping around, and that's and that's how they
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  Speaker 1: got signed