A lot of people like to time major announcements to the Country Radio Seminar, including, apparently, Christian broadcaster EMF. It was at CRS last year that WPLJ New York, WRQX (Mix 107.3) Washington, D.C., and several other Cumulus outlets were sold to the Christian AC K-Love owner. This year, it was Entercom’s longtime Active Rock outlet WAAF Boston, prompting the inevitable “from rock to rock of ages” headline in the local press.
When I first became aware of WAAF growing up, it was “the Worcester rock station” for those who went beyond the progressive WBCN and “kickass” rival WCOZ. But WAAF outlasted both stations. In the early ‘90s, it went through a brief stint as hair-band-driven “Rock 40” under consultant John Gorman. In the late ‘90s, now unarguably a Boston outlet, it got into an extreme rock battle with WBCN (then nominally still Alternative) over who was “the Godsmack” station. There are great appreciations of WAAF on Facebook from both former PD Ron Valeri and former GM Phil Zachary, if you have access to them.
Like many Active Rock stations, WAAF expanded and became more reliant on library. It never became Active Rock in name only. At the end, it was dealing with former Alternative outlet WBOS Boston, which became the last entrant in the trend toward “next generation Classic Rock stations,” which is to say Active without those pesky currents. I’ve felt more enthusiastic about the currents in Active lately, but at the end, WBOS with no signal issues had gotten more traction than, say, KVRK Seattle against Entercom sister KISW.
During these “Final Listens,” I’m always on the lookout for “were they still trying to do radio?” and WAAF was. There was a new Pearl Jam song that was both front and backsold. There was a crossover between veteran middayer Mistress Carrie and the afternoon host about the Black Crowes, and about the airline passenger who filmed her seatmate jostling her because she was reclining.
(UPDATE: The last hour was primarily the reminiscences of Carrie and Mike Hsu, joined by the station’s Mike Brangiforte and PD Joe Calgaro. It contained the revelation that until the sale, plans were underway for WAAF to go newer/harder again, to the point of the revisions already being in the station’s music database. The only two songs played that hour were Rush’s “Freewill” and the final song, “Black Sabbath” by Black Sabbath. The first song played on the HD/streaming only WAAF was Incubus, “Pardon Me.”)
Here’s WAAF just before 2 p.m. on February 18, several hours ahead of the sale announcement and during its second “Workday Blitz” music bloc.
- Metallica, “The Unforgiven”
- Buckcherry, “Crazy Bitch”
- Faith No More, “Epic (What Is It?)”
- Black Crowes, “She Talks To Angels”
- Volbeat f/Neil Fallon, “Die To Live”
- Bush, “Machinehead”
- Staind, “It’s Been Awhile”
- Seven Mary Three, “Cumbersome”
- Pearl Jam, “Superblood Wolfmoon”—Carrie mentions that the new Pearl Jam album sounds a little like Talking Heads, before adding “not this one.” Then she backsold it by mentioning that people were texting the station to find out what it was
- Black Sabbath, “Iron Man”
- Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Dani California”
- Offspring, “The Kids Aren’t Alright”
- Shinedown, “Attention Attention”
- Theory of a Deadman, “Bad Girlfriend”