American Top 40 in the Boston market

Bob Nelson raccoonradio@gmail.com
Fri Mar 5 10:52:04 EST 2021


Re AT 40--a friend recorded a rebroadcast of the show a few years ago off
KOLA in Calif. One of the songs was Fight the Power by Isley Brothers. The
"B.S."
word was still in there, unedited. Later covered by
Public Enemy.
Over the years there were incidences where a song
may have been edited for content or Casey wouldn't give the title for some
reason.

A friend of mine in England does oldies countdowns
on "hospital radio". Some songs were UK hits but heard only on
college/progressive radio here, by artists like Siouxie and the Banshees or
Sham 69. There
were novelty songs by The Barron Knights (who only hit here with the
Supertramp parody Topical Song).

In Nahant the signal of WHEB 750 Portsmouth came in and I could hear AT40
on it, with some splashover from WCAS 740. It was also I believe on WJTO
and on
WIGY (FM) Bath ME. One of the famed Casey Kasem outtakes was him reading,
"You're listening to AT40 on WIGY, Maine's number one for--I'm not reading
this. How do I know if they're really #1..."--Bob Nelson


On Thursday, March 4, 2021, Tim Gordon <tgordo49@gmail.com> wrote:

> I remember "The Spirit of New England" as a catchy ~1-2 minute promo tune
> on WRKO AM680 in the mid- or late-70's at the very tail end of their music
> days. It was played in rotation just like regular songs, not set apart in
> ad breaks.
> --Tim
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 4:08 PM Garrett Wollman <wollman@bimajority.org>
> wrote:
>
> > <<On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 15:59:58 -0500, Garrett Wollman <
> > wollman@bimajority.org> said:
> >
> > <<On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 11:11:35 -0500, Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>
> > said:
> > >> In the mid-1960s, WBZ was using "the Spirit of 103" in many of their
> > >> promotional ads, and then they transitioned into "the Spirit of New
> > >> England" in the early 70s. I also vaguely recall a jingle from that
> era
> > >> about "the spirit of Massachusetts is the Spirit of New England."
> >
> > > Not from that era!  That was the Massachusetts tourism jingle from the
> > > late 1980s.  (Which is also when they changed the license plate design
> > > to add that slogan.)
> >
> > And now I belatedly realize that I was thinking of "The Spirit of
> > America", and Donna wrote "The Spirit of New England".  Sorry, Donna,
> > my error.
> >
> > -GAWollman
> >
> >
>


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