Top 40 on WBZ

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

> On Wed, 7 May 1997, I wrote:
>
> > But, to me, the key thing is that there were no top-40 hits that it
> > "wouldn't" play -- except of course for "Eve of Destruction," which
> > Westinghouse headquarters pulled off all its stations AFTER it was number
> > one on Dave Maynard's weekly countdown.

A. Joseph Ross wrote:
>
> Really?  Why was that?  I recall, in the early 70s, there was a song (I
> forget who did it) that began, "When I think of all the crap I learned in
> high school ..."  And WBZ aired the song, but somehow modified it to
> eliminate that line.
>
> Dan Cole wrote:
>
>Simon and Garfunkel  "Kodachrome"   ...when I think of all the crafts I
>learned....

Weak attempt at censuring, but common at the time.
>

        On "Eve of Destruction," one Sunday morning (I'm pretty sure it was
summer of '65) Dave Maynard did the top-30 program and when he got to the
number one song, explained the absence of last week's number one song from
the entire list by saying briefly that Westinghouse Broadcasting had
decided that none of its stations would play that song. The gist of the
reasoning, if I recall correctly, was simply that it was "too negative."
One of the many airchecks I wish I had.

        In my original post, I was referring to the mid-60s period. As to
"Kodachrome," my vague recollection is that radio-station copies were
issued with the "crap" line replaced by the repetition of the corresponding
line from another verse of the song and that lots of stations censored that
line. Does anyone recall what the other Boston stations, especially the AM
stations, did with it?

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