Radio Free Boston by Carter Alan Page B

the decisions were made by all of us for a long time,” added Al Perry. “There were occasionally some interesting arguments, but I think we stood for the community.”
    It was, as the song said, the dawning of Aquarius, and a spirit of unity bonded the members of ’ BCN’S young staff, inspiring them to reach out to serve their brotherhood of listeners. Kate Curran, who came to the station as “an indentured servant for Charles,” as she jokingly referred to her unpaid status, headed up the effort to establish a daily schedule of volunteers who would be available to answer listener calls. “Charles, kind of, put me in charge. At first we had people answering the business phone [because] there wasn’t a separate line. If it was a business call, they’d hand it over to the secretary. It was very confusing. Then there was a separate line, butwe’d have issues if a volunteer didn’t show up for a shift because the new phone line would just ring and ring and ring. The secretary didn’t have time to answer it, so she’d just wrap it up in a blanket and put it in a bottom drawer.” Those early efforts, though, resulted in a formal WBCN Listener Line that took requests and provided information about the songs being played, upcoming concerts, a list of available rides to different cities, the lost cat-and-dog report, and answers to a myriad of questions. “We hated to have to say, ‘I don’t know.’ Curran and her second-in-command, Arlene Brahm, obtained reference books, including an encyclopedia set, to answer even the most random questions a listener could venture. “The Listener Line grew exponentially,” Curran added, and soon the air staff counted on it to be there. “Danny Schechter looked at the volunteers as his own little slave pool,” she remembered with amusement. “His thing was, ‘Oh good, they have food!’” Of course, as Bill Lichtenstein could attest, sometimes being in the right place at the right time on the WBCN Listener Line could be a very good thing indeed.
    David L. Bieber in the June 1970 Boston article wrote, “A further means of activating the WBCN audience is via public service announcements, jointly handled by Andy Beaubien, who does the afternoon show, and [J.J.] Jackson. ‘We can’t put on a Robert Goulet Heart Fund appeal because it doesn’t relate to our audience,’ says Beaubien, ‘but we can perform a real public service by giving out the information about the presence of Project Place (a sanctuary for down-and-out young Bostonians) or the need for volunteers for the Cambridge Free School.’” Listener Line volunteers often referred callers to these organizations; those on bum acid trips were most often advised to phone Project Place if they needed more help (and the phone hadn’t melted in their hands). The article also mentioned some WBCN -produced public interest programming that had been presented on the air, including Laquidara’s “Eco-Catastrophe,” a twenty-five-minute documentary about the environment, and a special prepared by the women’s liberation organization Bread and Roses. Aired on International Women’s Day, that program targeted male prejudice in the media and trumpeted the group’s battle for equality in the workplace.
    WBCN’S involvement with Bread and Roses resulted from a local firestorm sparked by Charles Laquidara after he recorded a public service announcement for Project Place’s Drug Dependency Treatment Center. Sam Kopper, who caught most of the flak as program director, recalled, “They werelooking for more doctors and office staff. Charles did this spot where he said, ‘If you’re a guy, we need doctors; if you’re a chick, we need secretaries.’” The Valentines’ Day 1970 edition of the Boston Globe identified the quote as, “If you’re a chick and you can