Erika J.

2/16/1999

Maximum RocknRoll

Interview with:

Nancy and Trainer: Punk Rock DJs at WMBR

Punk Rock Radio waves pulsing through the air, landing on so many ears- captivating, titillating, antagonizing or repulsing those tuned in- what is more beautiful than that?

This interview is with two Punk DJs from WMBR, Cambridge. Every Saturday afternoon 4 to 6 Nancy pilots the two hour punk rollick, “the Clueless Clubhouse.” A good dose of the punk for the Saturday afternoon hangover and to celebrate the weekend. Friday nights 10:30 to 12:30 Jason hosts “the Better Than Elvis Show.” Elvis burns on the cross for all of us. Hear this show and be healed! They don’t just play the same old tunes you’ve heard so many times before, but span the gamut from the Liars to the Diesel Queens to all the local punk to rare old stuff plus anything else they happen to dig up. And they’re damn funny, and have more to say than the typical DJ babblese. Both shows are on their third year of spew, set to 88.1 FM, “the first station on your FM dial.”

Curious? Read on. Plus you can write them c/o WMBR, 3 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. P.S. This int. was edited for length. You can just imagine the rest… by Erika J.

MRR: Are there many restraints on what you can put on the air at WMBR?

Jason: I can do basically what I want. Yet I don’t. I wouldn’t necessarily say “cunt” on the air. Just because I don’t feel like everyone bitching at me for saying it. But you can play whatever you want. And your show can be in as bad, in as questionable taste as you want. You’ve heard my show. You know exactly what I do. I don’t necessarily come out and say nasty stuff or whatever, but my point is usually well delivered. If you’re even the least bit creative you don’t need to say “shit” “fuck” and whatever.

Nancy: You can get creative musically. You can pick a subject matter.

MRR: Compare that to the corporate radio station where you work.

Jason: It’s not radio. It’s nothing like that at all. You have a sheet, and you have to fucking play that song.

MRR: Luckily none of us listen to 70s generic stations.

Jason: Right, exactly.

Nancy: Not even me and I grew up in the 70s.

Jason: It’s totally different. It’s more of a job. It’s a total product. You are appealing to a certain demographic.

MRR: Do you get any callers?

Trianer: I don’t even answer the phone. You can’t play requests on “real” radio either. Imagine that. Chances are you can’t anyway, because most of the people who call up want something out of the format. Or an obscure song from one of the bands you can’t play because the station doesn’t have it. Because all the CDs are compilations of all the music.

MRR: Very scary. Back to WMBR, the band’s audience is obviously right there in front of their faces when they are playing live, but when you are in the radio, the people listening..?

Jason: You can piss more people off and you don’t have to deal with it.

Nancy: You can. You can piss people off.

Jason: Just don’t answer the phone.

MRR: Do they just call you up and call you a cock sucker or what?

Jason: You get a lot of drunks and shit like that.

Nancy: Well, YOU get a lot of drunks.

Jason: For me yeah, because I’m on at night.

Nancy: I get a lot of weirdos because of the hour of the day I’m on. I get a lot of these PC people who tune in during Greg’s show and they stay tuned in (sounding very annoyed) until my show.

MRR: What kind of stuff do you play that they bitch about?

Nancy: I play this band, the Dorrita Sisters. I played a song called, “Let’s All Kill Michael Bolten” or something. It’s just politically incorrect Rock n Roll.

Jason: And damn funny. When we played “Let’s Get Tammy Whinnete” when she died everyone got pissed off.

Nancy: Yeah!

MRR: Did people get pissed at the “Princess Die” set you played? (a few days after Diana died Jason played the Freeze song “Princess Die” throughout his show)

Jason: I didn’t hear anything about that.

Nancy: People who listen to Jason’s show kinda expect it. It’s later in the night, Friday night, most of the PC crowd is at their wine and cheese fest.

Jason: Like when Michael Kennedy died, I played the “Dead Kennedys Special.”

MRR: Yeah, Dead Kennedys songs all night.

Jason: Everyone got a kick out of that. It was fun.

MRR: Do you meet people who expect you to be someone else?

Nancy: No. I mean a lot of the DJs don’t like to meet people who listen to their shows…

Jason: They don’t like meeting people in general! Gee, imagine that! (laughter) I don’t care if you listen to my show or not, just don’t talk to me.

Nancy: They don’t want people to know who they are. I’m sorry, I like people to know who I am. I like people to come up to me and say, “Hey, that last show you did, it sucked.” You know, for whatever reason. I like the criticism either way.

MRR: So you were in NYC during the 70’s? Were you part of the punk scene then?

Nancy: …I left New Jersey in ’77 and went up here to Boston and I knew nothing about punk. Just what I read in the papers. And I was like that’s hip, that’s cool, whatever. And I met this girl who lived in my dorm and she turned me onto punk. I’m sitting around doing bong hits one night, and she put on the Real Kids. I was just like, “Wow! Those are cool! Are those the Ramones?” “No, those are the Real Kids.” “They’re cool!” Then she put on the Ramones and I just kind of dug it. But it wasn’t until a year later that I first saw the Ramones. I started going to Max’s Kansas City, about ’78, ’79, saw Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, saw all that stuff. I saw Sid before he died. I didn’t see him perform, I just happened to see him on a street corner. It was like no big deal. It was just like somebody said, “Hey, there’s Sid” kinda thing.

Growing up is growing up is growing up. And you have all these weird experiences and these unusual things that happen to you. So you do certain things and certain things happen, and it’s a learning experience. And I think one of the big learning experiences for me, was when I met this girl who said to me, “I want to play this band. They’re called the Real Kids.”

MRR: So you’ve been hanging out at the Rat for forever.

Nancy: Forever. (laughs)

MRR: Just sort of watching the Boston scene go by for years and years. What do you think, are punks still just punks? What’s the difference?

Nancy: You have to think about what punk is all about. And one thing about the original theory of punk was that it was a short lived thing. And it still is a short lived thing. And those of us who are trying to keep it alive were just hanging by our nails, trying to keep it going. I think there is going to be a resurgence. Because more people I talk to are getting fed up with the crap that’s coming out from the record companies, the majors.

MRR: Jason, the tutu?

Jason: The tutu was brilliance that wasn’t appreciated.

Nancy: I appreciated it.

Jason: It started as a half-assed publicity stunt during our fund raising week at WMBR. I think it was like if I got $400 during my show, then on New Year’s Day I would run across the Mass. Ave. bridge in a pink tutu.

MRR: It was like a tutu and a ski mask.

Jason: Yeah, blue fishnets, a tutu, my combat boots and leather and a ski mask. At that point it was about 7 in the morning.

Nancy: And it was like 7 degrees.

Jason: Yeah, it was really cold. We did “Cheese Patrol” which is 24 hours of the cheesiest music we can come up with in all different categories. After awhile, the same people for 24 hours get fucking loopy, really nutty. As far as the tutu, I had already been up for about 26 hours at the time. There were all these old elderly couples up walking their dogs and stuff, and I’m running around in a tutu and a ski mask handing out bumper stickers. It was fun.

MRR: Is it kind of rough being a nonprofit radio station? During the fund raisers, I heard the DJs begging, “Send us money or we’re going under.”

Nancy: You have to understand that MIT only gives us the basics. They give us the space and the electricity. And that’s about it. We have to come up with the rest to pay for things like records and the equipment and things like that.

Jason: The listeners take it seriously though as well. We bring in well over $40,000 a year- for a week of fundraising. People take the station very seriously. People who have been listening to us for like 20 years, listening to Late Riser’s Club or whatever.

MRR: How do you find out about new bands?

Jason: I spend too much time at it. I go to a lot of shows. I don’t really read very many punk rock magazines or fanzines or whatever.

Nancy: I have a little formula- if I like it I play it.

Jason: What I hear on the radio, like a lot of stuff on WMBR some people play I’ve never heard before. We get a lot of brand new stuff in all the time. We have decent distributors plugging records.

Nancy: What is good is that a lot of the local bands will send their stuff to us. I mean, they want to be heard. So automatically they’ll send their stuff to us. Like Showcase, August Spies, they’ll send it in. I have a little formula. I try to play 45 songs in a show. I usually do 40. Joni’s the one who does 45, but she doesn’t talk as much as I do. Me I just ra ra ra about crap. And then I play all that lovely in between music you know, the organ favorites.

MRR: What’s about radio that you like so much that you keep doing it?

Jason: Being on non-commercial radio, like college radio?

MRR: yeah.

Jason: I have total control over it. Especially WMBR. You can do whatever the hell you want.

Nancy: It’s fun. It’s a lot of fun, yeah.

Jason: And it’s kind of freaky because it’s such a strong station compared to other college radio stations. You can get it in New Hampshire. You can get it in Rhode Island. It’s kind of creepy, you don’t realize that many people can listen to you. You’re telling jokes about your family and then when you see them they want to kick your ass.

Nancy: That’s what is really funny. You can do these hooky shows that people look forward to like Christmas, or like me and two other girls at the station do a show called “Cheese Patrol” that they started. It just took off. And every year people look forward to these three girls and their friends coming on, playing the cheesiest songs. And that’s what keeps me going.

MRR: Any other thoughts?

Nancy: You were talking about New York earlier. One of the nicest things, one of the best things I ever saw in New York was when I went to see Johnny Thunders and I paid $15..

Jason: To watch him vomit all over you.

Nancy: Basically, yeah. To watch him pass out and go “fuck you, you suck, I’m leaving” after one song. To me that’s punk rock. Yeah, after you pay 15 bucks to some guy go, “Fuck you I don’t want to listen to you any more.” Thank you very much, I hope we pass the audition.

Jason’s Top Ten

U.K. Subs- about 2/3 of everything they’ve done

The Freeze- Token Bones discography comp.

G.G. Allin- Freaks, Faggots, Drunks and Junkies

The Proletariat- Voodoo Economics and Other American Tragedies

Plasmatics- New Hope for the Wretched

Bloody Mess and the Skabs- Hungover and Stoned

Middle Class- A Blueprint for Joy

Diesel Queens- Hooked on Moronics

August Spies- August Spies 7”

Oxymoron- Fuck the Nineties, Here’s Our Noise

Nancy’s Top Ten Favorite Local Bands (Boston, MA)

Mung (R.I.P.)

Kermit’s Finger

August Spies

Dogmatics

Razorwire (get your fuckin’ act together dudes!)

Dropkick Murpheys

Showcase Showdown

Gang Green

Last Stand

Titanics