Memories of John Garabedian and V-66...

[Doug Drown]

I remember John Garabedian when he was "Johnny Gardner" on WPTR and WORC.
Haven't heard him in years.  Ah, the memories!  He was a class act.

-Doug

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Nelson" <raccoonradio@mail.com>
To: "BostonRadio Mailing List"
<boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 8:48 AM
Subject: Memories of John Garabedian and V-66...


> When in Burlington VT, I taped some WXXX 95.5 for a tape trader. Turns out
they were doing a syndie
> show that also runs on stations like Kiss 108: the Open House Party with
John Garabedian (hmm! I'd
> heard that name before...)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Garabedian
>
> I'd known of WVJV-TV, "V-66", our own version of MTV (a project with Woo
Woo Ginsburg) and WGTR...
> Anyway, the show I taped featured CHR music by request and a brief
interview with Avril Lavigne. The
> Open House Party site has more info on John (as well as a portrait of the
late Sunny Joe White). You
> may know of this guy...
>
> "At the age of 17, John joined Worcester station WORC-AM as a disc jockey.
Several years after joining, he became a co-host of the original Open House
Party radio program...In 1969, John and partners founded WGTR-AM (now WBIX)
as a top-40 station serving MetroWest from Natick...Two years after MTV's
1981 debut, John and fellow WMEX alumnus Arnie Ginsburg started a
Boston-area 24-hour music video station, WVJV-TV"
>
> (Open House Party started in 1987 on Kiss 108...he does it from
> any of his 3 homes: suburban Boston; Vermont, and the Cape)
>
> http://www.openhouseparty.com/history.html
>
> V-66 (remember those bumper
> stickers?) played music videos a la MTV...they played some by local
artists as part of that
> (and another indie UHF station in town, WQTV-TV 68, used to have a
show--Friday nights at 6, I think?--
> that would play videos or taped performances by local bands. This was a
station which used to scramble
> its signal and play movies (pay TV) but at times the signal was
unscrambled.
>
> As for V-66...
> http://www.worcestermass.com/dynamix/v66.shtml
>
> "The VJs were some of the best and the brightest in Boston -- John
Garabedian (now doing "Open House Party" on Saturday night radio) and David
O'Leary (now at WBOS 92.9) among them. Also, I remember a bizarre commercial
that Garabedian and Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg did when the Patriots were
playing the Bears in the Super Bowl -- they had a teddy bear bound and
gagged and tortured it between videos."
>
> The comments bring back memories...
>
> David O'Leary was a VJ. Artists played (local) included New Man, The
Stompers, and Robert Ellis Orrall.
> The logo, as seen on the page linked above, had a purple "V", slightly off
kilter, with yellow lightning
> bolts that form a "66" in the middle
>
> Other comments on that page show that V-66 viewers fondly remember them
playing local artists such as
> The Fools, Digney Fignus, New Man, Rods & Cones, The Lyres, Rubber Rodeo,
Ball & Pivot, Til Tuesday & The November Group.
>
>
>