Grease weekend

[Karen McTrotsky]

The first Grease weekend featured mainly local talent while the second was
less interesting from a local history point of view since it brought in a
lot of  out-of-towners.  While for some unfathomable reason Dick Biondi
kicked off the second , the second began more appropriately on  Friday
night midnight with a jock from the WCOP rock and roll days,   Paul Coss
who  at the time was the WBZ-TV program manager.  There was the obligatory
Fenway (not sure of which one) and a Dan Donovan ("first of the original
Dan Donovans" he called himself which would suggest Johnny Dark, and
probably not Arthur McTague, since he was doing traffic on a format
competitor as Kevin O'Keefe at the time) and Ginsburg.  It was heavy on
ex-WMEXers with some  BZ and WCOP folks too, Joe Smith was on one of them I
don't recall if it was the first.

In many ways, they just did   the early 60's BZ format ("Request line
number ALgonquin4-5678,:"Stand by for news, first, fast, factual").  Larry
Justice did a lot of shifts and appeared to have an absolute blast,
although his was more reminiscent of  MEX "color radio" than early BZ.. If
I remember correctly, he stayed on during the usual Sunday night
maintenance period, no doubt to the shock and chagrin of Carl DeSuze.

Until the Grease Weekend, the only oldies on BZ were a
middle-of-the-roadish Jim Sands program with no requests and a daily
feature  Justice and Guy Mainella did just before the Five O'clock Report
that they called the "Grease Corner" which featured the playing of a single
oldie, usually 50s.

The first Grease Weekend was far better than the second, and it was because
of Justice whose energy and unbridled enthusiasm for the whole thing was
one the great radio performances of all time. Unfortunately, It worked so
well that apparently Westinghouse marketers got to work and decided Round 2
needed "celebrities" that meant nothing in the market, including the
lamentable decision to bring in Wolfman Jack to give it celebrity appeal,
thus ruining it nostalgically and artistically.

Lawrence K. probably remembers everything about it.  He's in real estate in
Fla. LarryJusticeRealtor.com (bio page of his Web site has a publicity shot
of him with the Beatles when he MCd them in Philly)