Oral History with three WXPL alumni

Oral History with three WXPL alumni

WXPL history 1987- 1993

Summary

The group interview with alumni of WXPL, the radio station at Fitchburg State University, covered topics such as their experiences at the station, their initiation process, and the station's governance. The interviewees discussed how they got involved in college radio and the music they were exposed to. They also talked about their mentors and teachers at the station and their first experiences on the mic. The interviewees emphasized the serious and organized nature of the station, with a clear power structure and a budget. They also mentioned the fun and social aspects of being part of the station, including throwing keg parties to raise funds. The conversation explores the relationship between the radio station and the university, the diverse range of shows and genres, and the impact of WXPL on the participants' personal and professional lives. The station was both admired and seen as weird by the campus community. The hosts reminisce about their favorite moments, including playing an advance copy of an R.E.M. album, breaking into the music case, and interviewing local bands. The experience at WXPL taught them valuable skills in communication, teamwork, and problem-solving, which have influenced their careers in fields such as finance, project management, and advocacy. WXPL, the college radio station, played a significant role in the local music scene. Many bands and musicians were associated with WXPL, and the station sponsored shows and hosted keg parties with live entertainment. The station also negotiated contracts with big-name bands and dealt with their demanding riders. Despite some drama and band breakups, the core group of WXPL members made the station reach its peak of success. However, over time, the importance of FM radio declined with the rise of streaming and satellite radio. The station's enthusiasm and momentum started to fade, but there is hope for a revival with new generations of students and a focus on podcasting and streaming.

Takeaways

Joining WXPL, the radio station at Fitchburg State University, was a significant part of the interviewees' college experience.
The interviewees were initially interested in having classic rock shows but were exposed to a wide range of music genres through their involvement in college radio.
The station had a structured programming format, with rotation shows and specialty shows, and a clear hierarchy of roles and responsibilities.
The interviewees took their roles at the station seriously and were involved in managing the station's budget and advocating for its needs.
While the station was serious and organized, there was also a fun and social aspect to being part of the station, including throwing keg parties to raise funds. WXPL was both admired and seen as weird by the campus community
The radio station provided valuable skills in communication, teamwork, and problem-solving
The experience at WXPL influenced the participants' personal and professional lives
Favorite moments include playing an advance copy of an R.E.M. album and interviewing local bands
The enduring friendships formed at WXPL continue to be a significant part of their lives WXPL played a significant role in the local music scene and sponsored shows and keg parties with live entertainment.
The station negotiated contracts with big-name bands and dealt with their demanding riders.
The core group of WXPL members made the station reach its peak of success.
The importance of FM radio declined with the rise of streaming and satellite radio, leading to a decrease in enthusiasm and momentum for the station.
There is hope for a revival of WXPL with new generations of students and a focus on podcasting and streaming.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background
05:16 The Journey to WXPL: How Alumni Got Involved in College Radio
11:41 From Classic Rock to Alternative: Exploring Music Genres at WXPL
15:26 Mentors and Teachers: Guiding the Way at WXPL
22:25 First Time on Mic: Memorable Experiences at WXPL
26:42 The Power Structure: Governance and Management at WXPL
29:09 Serious and Fun: Balancing Responsibility and Socializing at WXPL
45:47 Memorable Moments at WXPL
54:31 Skills Learned at WXPL and Their Impact on Careers
58:36 The Enduring Friendships Formed at WXPL
01:04:07 WXPL: The Hub of the Local Music Scene
01:08:46 The Drama of Band Breakups
01:11:46 The Core Group: Making WXPL a Success
01:17:05 The Decline of FM Radio
01:21:47 WXPL's Impact on the Music Industry
01:23:30 The Changing Landscape of College Radio
01:26:36 Reviving WXPL: Embracing Podcasting and Streaming

Katherine Jewell

July 17, 2024

Katherine Jewell

Original format in .wav is too large to upload. Available here: https://riverside.fm/shared/exported-clip/5633438a09b61efd5fcc

Kate Jewell (00:00.658)
There we go. OK, so so I've done a lot of oral histories for the book project, and so I have a very like fluid kind of standard way of doing it. But this is my first group interview. So for the recording, what I'll do is I'll have everybody go around and identify themselves and where they are. It's July 17th, 2024. I am Catherine Jewell. I am in Belmont, Massachusetts.

And I am here to interview alumni of WXPL, the radio station at Fitchburg State University to get their stories and recollections and general history of the experience of all things being a DJ in Fitchburg. So whoever wants to jump in and introduce themselves. And then maybe you all could start by kind of going back to where, how you got to Fitchburg, how you got to the radio station.

Rock (01:00.074)
Okay, sure. I'm Rock. My real name is Michael Piantagini, but everybody back then called me Rock. And I'm in Medford, Massachusetts right now. At the time though, I lived in Haverhill. And I had a lot of great times. I was the business manager for a while at XPL and it was Fitchburg State College at the time.

Chuck Ferreira (01:00.136)
Rock, start with you.

Kate Jewell (01:00.506)
it.

Rock (01:29.378)
That's all I

Kate Jewell (01:30.81)
Okay, who wants to go next? Chuck, you want to go next?

Chuck Ferreira (01:33.834)
Sure. Chuck Ferreira. I live in Watertown, next town over. I was from Taunton slash Dighton Mass, which is like southeastern Massachusetts. Fitchburg State College had a great communications media program. that's for some reason I ended up interested in that when I was in high school. And that's why I ended up at Fitchburg. And then during my tenure

WXPL I was a DJ, but also I had a stint as a program director and I actually made it up to assistant station manager for a brief time. For like a couple semesters that I had, by then I had sort of like gone in different directions in my life and I was barely there for like a whole semester, but yeah.

Peg Ricardo (02:18.563)
Bye.

Chuck Ferreira (02:32.596)
Joining the radio station was like the first priority when I got to college.

Kate Jewell (02:40.86)
Hug?

Peg Ricardo (02:41.998)
I am Peg Riccardo. I live in Toxbury, Massachusetts, and I did back then as well. Gosh, why did I pick Fitzberg? Actually, I'm not even gonna tell you why I Fitzberg, but it was between Fitzberg and Framingham. I didn't really have much of a direction. I thought I was going to be a teacher, and I just knew that I wanted to be far away from home that I could live there, but close enough that I could go home and do my laundry if I wanted to.

Peg Ricardo (03:11.242)
How I ended up at the radio station is kind of, it's Craig actually, I think. It was the summer after my first year and there was a few other people from my hometown that I graduated with that were at Fitchburg. And me and my best friend at the time had gone with another friend over the summer because they had already been involved in the radio station. So we went to some.

Chris' apartment off campus and we met the Craig Albano who was like, kid, you should come hang out.

That's how I ended up at XBL. I was a DJ. I think I was a program manager for a bit. Station manager for a bit. Actually, I spent more time at the station than I did at my classes, quite honestly. So it was an amazing experience. Met some amazing people. And I'm excited to talk about it with you guys and to see you guys. I miss you guys.

Chuck Ferreira (04:07.633)
I know this is like, is cool, we haven't seen you in a long time, Peg. We gotta remedy that. We gotta start getting you out to some of the get togethers. We'll all chip in for a babysitter.

Peg Ricardo (04:17.336)
Yes, yes.

Kate Jewell (04:24.583)
I know how that goes. and just one technical note. So this Riverside platform is nice. It's like a squad caster app, but it also does video. I'll just be archiving the audio components with their transcripts. And what's nice about this is it records locally and uploads. So even if your Internet blips, you can keep talking and it'll still be recording you and then it'll kind of fill in the gaps.

later and then it also records everybody as a separate track, which my comedia colleagues tell me is important. So it's better than recording over Zoom. Zoom you just get the one compressed thing. And so especially for archival quality, this will be good. So why don't we talk about music? So

Chuck Ferreira (04:58.203)
Yeah, that's cool.

Kate Jewell (05:16.026)
What did you know about college radio when you started? Like when were you joining? What was sort of the vibe around, I hate that word, but what did you know about college radio? Was this something new or was this something that you knew about and were absolutely determined to get involved in?

Rock (05:38.134)
I had an interesting upbringing because I lived in the suburbs at the time and my town didn't even have MTV at first and I couldn't get V66. And so really all I knew was hard rock and scorpions and rat and all that stuff. I wasn't particularly a fan of it, but I heard it because that's what everybody listened to. And when I went to Fitchburg, before I started,

I thought I'm gonna get a classic rock show and it's gonna be great. And then I discovered, wow, there's all this other music that's amazing. cut to the fall, that first semester, I'm going to the paradise to see O Positive, which blows me away now, but at the time it was a big deal. So I learned a lot about, I learned everything about music going to XPL because all that music that they played, all that alt rock.

Peg Ricardo (06:11.662)
Just like every other kid.

Rock (06:37.964)
or at the college radio at the time that we called it. Now it's a little bit different. There's no more F and X and no more BCN. So yeah, things are different now. I mean, it's still fun, but things are different

Chuck Ferreira (06:56.549)
Who's next?

Peg? I am? Pretty much the same, I mean, it's almost identical, like a suburb kid listening to classic rock and oldies, things like that, heavy, know, hard rock, stuff like that. And I had the same designs. I was going to get a classic rock show. It was going to be the best classic rock show. mean, the big joke was...

Rock (06:59.714)
You are.

Peg Ricardo (07:01.629)
Yeah, you got it.

Kate Jewell (07:02.908)
Thank you.

Chuck Ferreira (07:25.829)
that everybody, every freshman that joined WXPL wanted a classic rock show. And I think it's because we are a lot of us, you know, all came from environments where we didn't necessarily grow up maybe near a prolific college where we could have been exposed to more of the kind of, you know, indie classic college rock. So most of us knew

you know, we knew all of our classic rock inside and out. you know, so, you know, there was only going to be so many classic rock slots allotted. So everybody kind of sort of was, when you were a freshman, we, we had so many, there was like this golden age where I think a lot of us kind of joined the station where there were so many DJs, like so many station members that you literally had to like intern.

with an older, more experienced DJ. And so you learned the ropes that way. I I'm sure over the years it changed. It's like there were empty slots. Within 10 years of us all graduating, the station kind of trickled down and you would have just dead air spots. That was unheard of for us. basically everybody, you got put on a show with

second or third or fourth year student that had a know a year of experience under their belt and You did you learned a lot about all these all these weird bands that You had never heard of when you were growing up in the suburbs you know and and Yeah, you slowly Really got into that stuff and and then it kind of changed your whole perspective so I don't know if that completely answers the question, but

It was this sense of discovering a lot of new music, which was exciting, and also learning this awesome new skill. That was the allure. That was what got you hooked, I think.

Kate Jewell (09:45.094)
Thank you. about you?

Peg Ricardo (09:46.84)
You know, I'm going to be the anomaly in the group. I did not want a classic rock show. That was, like Chuck said, very rare. That's what everybody thought they were going to do, and they were going have the best one ever. I think overall, music really wasn't that important to me. I didn't spend a lot of time listening to music.

Chuck Ferreira (10:00.324)
Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (10:08.408)
I live in the broadcast range of U Lowell's radio station, which at the time, late 80s, early 90s, I think is when we were all at Fishburg, was like the coolest. So I could hear that sometimes. I was listening to FNX.

Chuck Ferreira (10:14.99)
Very good station.

Peg Ricardo (10:25.784)
But it wasn't a huge part of, know, whatever. I think I ended up more for a social thing at XPL and then kind of fell into it. But then because the classic rock wasn't the thing, right? Where the bands that were coming out at that time that were breaking through with college radio, I'm gonna try and listen to them, I'll forget them. But I remember being so excited that we're like, wow, Nirvana started college radio, all these other bands. And you learned about them because

weren't doing classic rock shows that you heard and you had no choice. Like really obscure whatever the CDs would show up and they'd end up you know they'd get our music directors decided what was cool or what we were playing for various reasons. We'll talk about later but so you were learning about all these bands whether they were local or not and it was music became more important to me then you know and it was really eye -opening that small town

there's so much more out there, whether it was music or even just different people we were meeting, you know, and opinions. And it was an amazing time to be alive.

Chuck Ferreira (11:26.764)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (11:39.008)
Well said,

Kate Jewell (11:41.008)
So what was your initiation process like? I say that very vaguely for important reasons, but I'm curious how you interpret

Peg Ricardo (11:53.262)
Well, mean, not that we were hazing, you know, like some of the Greek organizations, but there's a version of it, I'm sure. I remember we would have our meeting at the beginning of the year.

Chuck Ferreira (12:02.583)
was a version of

Peg Ricardo (12:07.684)
So we'd have our posters hanging up in Jidavi. You know, come join the radio station. We're having our first, you know, station meeting at, um, like on the Science Building. Yeah, yep. And you know, gotta show up and you're gonna, the first thing we gave everybody, and these are 18 year olds, right? First time they're away from home and it was pretty much like a working, blue collar, working class crowd that would end up at Freshberg State. This is the first time these 18 year olds are away from home. So sheltered in high school, like for most

Chuck Ferreira (12:15.715)
Science Lecture Hall.

Rock (12:16.93)
Science lecture hall.

Peg Ricardo (12:37.65)
experiences and we hand in this questionnaire. You're like, what's your name? You know the last question. You know, what kind of music do you listen to? Like, what's your favorite band? At the very end, we toss in, are you a virgin? We're so edgy, right? And the answers we would get back, it's so, it's funny, but so inappropriate as a talk to think about it.

Chuck Ferreira (12:39.83)
Ha ha

Chuck Ferreira (12:52.588)
hahahaha

Chuck Ferreira (12:58.284)
So funny, some of them. well nowadays, nowadays we would not be able to get away with it.

Rock (13:01.707)
Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (13:05.368)
we would not. And the answers we would get and the people who would be offended really told us a lot of, I think that's our first version of how the initiation process would go. Great insight into personalities here.

Chuck Ferreira (13:20.004)
yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (13:23.682)
There was one that I remember, I won't repeat it, but it was the funniest answer. It was just one sentence and it was like five words. It was the funniest answer. I mean, I guess we could, we're all adults, but that's up to you, Kate. What's that? One answer I remember and it was like the most epic, I think a bunch of us were just all rolling around laughing.

Rock (13:38.53)
Go for

Kate Jewell (13:39.538)
History's uncensored. History's uncensored.

Rock (13:43.992)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (13:52.043)
It was just the candor of the answer. just said, no, period. I like to fuck, period. I was like, wow, that's brilliant. That is so perfect. Like most of them were like these long, like hemming and hawing answers, like, cause people didn't know how to answer it. And this one kid just said that. And I just remember that being the funniest answer ever. Yeah, it probably did. This guy gets a classic rock show.

Peg Ricardo (14:00.866)
I ruined his one. Yup.

Peg Ricardo (14:10.755)
Yep.

Peg Ricardo (14:14.754)
He got a classic rock show. Probably did.

Rock (14:17.218)
Yeah.

Ha

Chuck Ferreira (14:20.887)
But that was probably as close to hazing as we got. you know, and again, to my point, when you got assigned to a DJ to learn, that person, I mean, that person had all the say, like you sort of, you know, did everything that they asked you to do, you know, within reason, but it was, you really were an intern.

you was pretty funny. And Craig, who you will speak to, and he could get away with saying this back then because there was a mountain of DJs. Yeah. A show is

Peg Ricardo (15:02.104)
Right now there's five options in my head that you're about to say.

Rock (15:05.303)
Hahaha

Peg Ricardo (15:08.43)
Privilege not a right.

Rock (15:09.208)
The privilege, not a right.

Chuck Ferreira (15:09.299)
Not a right, yeah, yeah. And that was the thing, because there were people who worked in the station that didn't have shows. They did other things and they were fine with that. But most everybody, I think, joined because they wanted to be on air.

Kate Jewell (15:26.46)
So who were some of these mentors and teachers and what do you remember from learning to do radio? Like, do you remember your first time on mic? Do you remember the first records you put on? who was walking you through that process?

Rock (15:26.647)
for

Rock (15:41.58)
I think we had to do a demo, didn't we have to do a demo tape to hand

Chuck Ferreira (15:46.485)
Something like that. You had to book production studio time? Yeah,

Rock (15:49.632)
Yeah, I don't think I did it there. I think I did it at home. I can't remember. Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (15:54.862)
faded out after a bit too. But yeah, you had to do like a test.

Chuck Ferreira (15:56.757)
Go.

Rock (16:00.086)
Right. Not that it mattered, because you weren't going on the air right away.

Peg Ricardo (16:03.938)
Yeah, yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (16:04.361)
Right. Right.

Rock (16:06.4)
I remember I interned with

brad eisenhower and i was like an eight a show crazy to begin with but we of course we were on the air and i don't remember much about that show but others was also we moved a few to a couple times so we originally in the library in a pretty small space and production beyond their studio wasn't very big and i just remember him you we got really into it we got the digital undergrounds

Chuck Ferreira (16:18.636)
We had them, yeah.

Rock (16:39.778)
what's that their first single which i'm forgetting the name of right now yes the Humpty Dance and he played the hell out of that song and danced in the studio and everything it was crazy it was fun but it crazy

Chuck Ferreira (16:44.79)
Not the Humpty Hum dance. Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (16:54.941)
There was no... There are no windows in there either. No airflow.

Chuck Ferreira (16:58.496)
Yeah.

Rock (16:58.946)
No, not at all. Yes.

Chuck Ferreira (17:03.947)
I actually don't remember who I interned with that complete. I think I worked with a few people and by the next semester I was given a show, it was just like a standard middle of the day block kind of thing. like when you had that kind of show, it wasn't like necessarily a specialty show. You played from the rotation. We had a bin that it was like medium heavy light. And then there was a clock that was on

Peg Ricardo (17:15.812)
rotation.

Chuck Ferreira (17:33.697)
that was attached to the wall on the station and it guided you through the show. it was like play, you know, the first hour, like the first 15 minutes, three heavy rotations, take a break, play a cart, do a PSA, two medium, two light, three, you know, so was like, so you had to go to the bin and you played something and then you put what you played in the very back. So everybody was like, you know, to keep it moving and

Rock (17:59.66)
Yeah, to keep it moving.

Chuck Ferreira (18:02.825)
So it was very organized and regimented even for a college radio station.

Rock (18:09.848)
but that still left room for you to play what you wanted.

Chuck Ferreira (18:13.024)
You could play like there was a couple DJs choices. Yeah. You couldn't, like you could not be doing a daytime regular show and then put on a 12 minute Zeppelin track. You know, like that was frowned upon. You could if it could fit into the time, but it was frowned upon. I remember trying that. Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (18:14.766)
thin reason.

Rock (18:28.482)
You could.

Yes.

Peg Ricardo (18:35.3)
A of Craig was listening.

Peg Ricardo (18:40.494)
We, it was, think, mention those rotation shows. If you were new, you ended up with the eight in the morning till, I think we went to, what was it, like four or five was rotation shows. And like Chuck said, they were very structured, yeah.

Rock (18:54.094)
Or to six, I

Peg Ricardo (18:57.346)
People struggle with that a bit because, if they weren't familiar with the music yet, right? They had to be a little bit more indoctrinated and open mind here. Do more than, if you can hear it on mainstream radio, we shouldn't be hearing it on XPL was kind of what you would hear from our program directors and station managers. If you survive that and show that you're going to show up for that eight o 'clock show all the time and follow the rotation, you could apply to get a specialty show, which would be

Kate Jewell (19:17.148)
music.

Peg Ricardo (19:27.222)
evening shows which you had a lot more freedom. Still we're not playing, I think we had one at one point, I think we had a top 40 going on for like a semester. Yeah and that was like the only one but, yep.

Rock (19:35.97)
Captain Ken.

Chuck Ferreira (19:39.503)
And once he left that one away though, pretty sure, no. yeah.

Rock (19:42.914)
Ken produced the hell out of that show. I mean it was solid all the way through unbelievable He more is a program director now wherever he

Peg Ricardo (19:45.604)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (19:47.956)
Well, he became a professional DJ, didn't

Yeah,

Peg Ricardo (19:53.72)
Yeah, we had, gosh, we had the metal guys, the warrior, yep. Yep, big O guys.

Chuck Ferreira (19:58.503)
we should get one of... We should get... I should refer you to Michael Barones, who was our metal director. their show was so well respected that they would get... So radio station, college radio station, well, mean every radio station, but college radio stations would... Record companies would have a special division that

Rock (19:59.202)
You need to talk to the big O guys.

Kate Jewell (20:03.356)
video.

Rock (20:15.468)
very much.

Chuck Ferreira (20:28.381)
service the you know college radio and the metal guys had like all of the big metal labels were constantly sending them stuff and and and keep in mind we we only had like a 100 mile radius if that like that that's not even I mean you if you got a In good in good weather though, you could die. remember this one time we were driving to a conference. I don't know if it was who was it was

Rock (20:46.926)
Not even, not that at all. It was like 12 miles

Peg Ricardo (20:48.162)
Not even.

Peg Ricardo (20:57.649)
as yow. I went with you. Yow.

Chuck Ferreira (20:59.004)
We were driving and it was on a Sunday. Yeah, we got as far, well, we got to 495 and it was still coming in and out. Because I remember, because it was a Sunday morning and that guy, Aaron Whipple, was doing his jazz show. And we kept getting, by the time we got to 495, we were still getting, it was cutting in and out, but we were getting it. But the point I'm getting at is that the show was, the metal department,

Peg Ricardo (21:01.54)
We got almost a bolt in. That's not 100 way, but.

Kate Jewell (21:04.557)
I'm

Peg Ricardo (21:14.264)
He was so cute.

Rock (21:14.336)
Okay.

Chuck Ferreira (21:28.825)
had such a great show. mean, they had like three shows during the weekend. It was always at night. They had different DJs. Yeah, something like that. But they had they did such a good job that like all of these labels were sending them so much music and

Peg Ricardo (21:36.1)
Were they 10 to 12? Yeah.

Rock (21:38.178)
Yeah, they were late,

Rock (21:47.19)
And local people, like local high school kids knew them. They were popular. They even introduced bands. There was a club in town and they introduced bands at that, which is amazing. None of us ever did that.

Chuck Ferreira (21:50.096)
yeah, were celebrities.

Chuck Ferreira (21:58.787)
Yeah, yeah, we are. Kate, I'll try to I'll try to connect you with Mike. His name's Michael Baroness and he's still a good friend of mine and he he was the driving force behind that.

Rock (22:12.492)
Right, and him and Mark Fields did the Big O Thrasho.

Chuck Ferreira (22:15.556)
Big O Thrasher. I have the t -shirt still.

Rock (22:18.262)
Yeah, they made a t -shirt.

Peg Ricardo (22:19.832)
went looking for it, I couldn't find it and thought about you.

Chuck Ferreira (22:21.371)
Yeah, I've got it somewhere, yeah.

Rock (22:23.003)
Mine is gone, I

Kate Jewell (22:25.222)
Let's put a photo.

Chuck Ferreira (22:25.75)
did wait, have we completely drifted off of the question? What was the question?

Kate Jewell (22:28.752)
No, absolutely. yeah, I mean, I like, think you kind of covered sort of like the programming structure, which I was interested in, but I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the station management. Like how was the station governed? What were those different roles? Like what was the power structure?

Rock (22:29.016)
Probably.

Peg Ricardo (22:29.764)
It did.

Chuck Ferreira (22:45.019)
We took it very seriously.

Peg Ricardo (22:45.176)
You know, it's an interesting way to put it. Yeah, we took it very seriously. We did not have a lot of faculty oversight. know, every club needed to have a faculty advisor. Yeah, and then we had, my gosh, his name was Tom Weier. And then we had the French guy, Spanish guy.

Kate Jewell (22:46.791)
Ha ha!

Rock (22:56.664)
George Borah.

Kate Jewell (23:02.65)
In English.

Chuck Ferreira (23:02.735)
Yes.

Rock (23:08.61)
The French guy?

Chuck Ferreira (23:10.373)
That might have been when you were still there. Yeah. Yeah. They left us alone.

Peg Ricardo (23:12.228)
That was towards the end, but yeah, we didn't have a lot of oversight. So like they were there. Sometime, yeah, they left us alone and we had a budget. I think our budget was close to $10 ,000, I want to say.

Rock (23:25.794)
I think so.

Peg Ricardo (23:27.044)
So we had to come up with a budget for how to run this station. We had to manage over, I think at one point we had like 150 DJs. We have relationships, professional relationships with record companies who are sending us product in exchange for hoping for it to be played on the air. We are being published in music publications, CMJ. Yeah, music directors were, I mean, we're kids and they were really well respected. We talk about, you know, the metal

Chuck Ferreira (23:37.947)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rock (23:48.696)
CMJ, rock pile.

Peg Ricardo (23:57.67)
like a mark, you know, they were garnering tons of respect. You know, our other music directors were as well, like our top 10 of what we were playing in our rotation was getting attention from industry people. And we went to college kids who, we took it very seriously, you know, we were meeting with administrators, you know, we meeting, I think we, at one point we had a weekly meeting with the college president.

Chuck Ferreira (24:02.41)
yeah.

Rock (24:14.508)
Yeah, we were.

Chuck Ferreira (24:18.802)
Chuck Ferreira (24:23.302)
Well, he had the open. had the what he did was remember that Vinny Vincent Mara. he had a open he had open hours for once a week. It was like a two hour slot and he would just be in his conference room and you could come in and we always booked time.

Peg Ricardo (24:26.978)
Yep. Yep, Danny Mark, yep.

Kate Jewell (24:30.716)
We are.

Rock (24:35.288)
for everybody.

Peg Ricardo (24:40.76)
We took advantage. You guys would show up in shirts and ties. And you know, it was a great mix. We had business majors.

Chuck Ferreira (24:44.294)
yeah, yeah.

Rock (24:51.298)
I was a business major.

Peg Ricardo (24:52.748)
Right? And we really worked it and made sure we were known by the decision makers in the college. You know, some of us had jobs at the student activity center. We had the keys to the building. We had the keys to everything. We could get in anywhere. But we knew who all of the power players were in the college. We made sure that we made ourselves known. And when there were complaints, like they didn't know where to find us. We had we moved from the library to this giant space in the basement of Thompson. Like we had the

folks asking us, well what do you need? Do you want us to build CD racks? Do you want us like this furniture, that furniture? So we really were running a mini business and we really were. It was the ultimate group project. You know, we would have executive meetings, we would have full station meetings, we had agendas like we had to do, we had to do later.

Chuck Ferreira (25:28.132)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (25:45.486)
Yeah, it was crazy.

Peg Ricardo (25:47.64)
I honestly, spent more time at the time it was a big problem for the people paying my tuition that, you know, I wasn't doing so well in my classes. I wasn't showing up because I was all about the radio station. And I got to say all of the skills that I have now came from my work at the station. That's where I got my education. I point that out frequently now to folks who are upset with my grades at the time, but we took it very seriously

Chuck Ferreira (26:10.284)
Yeah, it's good.

Peg Ricardo (26:17.526)
you know if you didn't there was some peer pressure there like you didn't get your show drop the chop

Chuck Ferreira (26:20.867)
You got, well, you got, you just sort of got, I think that the, yeah, people who, yeah. I think the people who didn't take it seriously, they just sort of naturally got, there was no like, big move to kick people out or whatever. It's just like, they just got kind of pushed to the fringe and then, well, they just left.

Rock (26:25.398)
I'm good.

Chuck Ferreira (26:42.105)
because we had we had an executive board and an operations board. had a station manager, assistant station manager, program directors, music directors. And then you had special specialty show music directors and and everybody. There was a hierarchy that, you know, like Peg said, for for a bunch of 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds, like it was very organized. You know, looking back on it. Yeah, I mean, we had a lot of fun and we we did a lot

crazy bullshit, yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, the triangle. God. Yeah, I mean, I guess we can say it. This is so long. We would literally we would literally throw keg parties. OK, and charge ten dollars ahead and the five five. But but and of course, you know, we had a certain person working the door that would let all the pretty girls in for free anyway.

Peg Ricardo (27:13.08)
The triangle.

Peg Ricardo (27:22.508)
I like the

Rock (27:30.958)
Five.

Peg Ricardo (27:31.96)
Bye, Bucks.

Chuck Ferreira (27:41.209)
But the point is, is we would take that money and funnel it into extra things that we needed at the station that we weren't getting from the funding. And of course, you know, that was, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we did a lot of that. to Peg's point, there was every year there was a, you had to literally go in and fight for your funding. There was a, you know, a meeting where,

Peg Ricardo (27:53.358)
Beers to bucks to bands. It was all about getting bands, yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (28:11.545)
a few of us would have to attend and, know, of course, you know, everyone's trying to cut budgets. And so they would always try to, they would always try to cut our budget. And I remember giving this impassioned speech to the director, you know, talking about how unlike, unlike many other organizations on campus, if we don't, if our, if our equipment and our technical ability to exist doesn't work, we don't exist because

Rock (28:18.67)
course.

Chuck Ferreira (28:41.506)
a radio station that can't broadcast is no longer a radio station. And you need the equipment to work. And we had a lot of outdated equipment. So that year we were going to get slashed and we ended up getting an increase. we really did, you know, we would go, as Peck mentioned, we would go and speak with the, a few of us would go in every week and speak with the college president. And he actually got to the point where he loved us. Like

Rock (28:45.719)
No, you need the equipment.

Chuck Ferreira (29:09.071)
because I think he knew how serious we took it and how much pride we had in it. And so he would, I'm convinced that a lot of good things that happened to us were because he would kind of like push things through for us. So there was a lot of that. mean, like seriousness of it, but also having a lot of fun. And I think to Peg's point again, I think a lot of us would be at the station.

probably more than we should have been. you know, yeah, we, yeah, cutting, we did, a lot of us probably did cut too many classes and because that was where our passion lied. I mean, you know, it was a real thriving radio station and it was, it was popular. was one of the most, it was probably the most popular organization on campus at the time, but you know.

Rock (29:39.254)
I lived at the station. I was there all the

Chuck Ferreira (30:04.644)
To Rock's point earlier, we had fans, especially for the specialty shows at night. People that knew nothing about the college. They just found the station on the airwaves.

Kate Jewell (30:18.182)
So I'm wondering more about that relationship between the station and the university. did you feel like, were you like the cool kids on campus? Were you like the weirdos on campus? Like.

Chuck Ferreira (30:28.516)
A little of both. We actually got cocky about it, to be honest with you. We started to get a little cocky too. Like it was like where we knew we were such a good organization at the time that we would kind of like throw that around a

Peg Ricardo (30:29.668)
I'm a duck.

Rock (30:31.404)
Well, keep to the rest of the

Peg Ricardo (30:36.078)
Yeah.

Rock (30:45.878)
Yeah, but I don't think that the students in general thought we were cool because we were playing all this dorky music that they didn't understand, you

Peg Ricardo (30:46.168)
We

Peg Ricardo (30:54.05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did have a pretty wide range, though. If you think about the folks who were joining the station, we really did have... DI committees would love it right now, right? Because...

Chuck Ferreira (30:55.811)
I think the older students did.

Peg Ricardo (31:08.504)
There was a great variety of musical tastes. We had a Christian rock show. We would have a political talk show. We had the sports guys who liked to cover the Fitchwork sporting events. So they would broadcast down from the hockey rink. You know, we, it was a metal guys, but then, you know, there was classic, jazz, Aaron Whipple with his jazz. We had at one point, yeah, yup. There was a blue show. There was,

Chuck Ferreira (31:24.524)
yeah, I forgot about

Rock (31:33.112)
There's a blues show, I think,

Peg Ricardo (31:38.951)
I will put we experimented with a poetry reading show, which was really just a D -Day trying to impress their English professor to get a better grade. I was also on that show. So, and then you would have these business majors who were so like, know.

Rock (31:45.387)
Yeah.

Kate Jewell (31:47.964)
That's it.

Chuck Ferreira (31:50.673)
Peg.

Peg Ricardo (31:56.376)
focused and ambitious and this was going to look so great when they were going for interviews and then we were really a big communication school so this gave you that experience you know having an audience so we had a really amazing cross -section so there were the weirdos there were the the cool kids not so cool kids but i think once you were in at the station and especially the the folks who live there and who were there all the time recognized that you also took this seriously and you were going to be responsible and show up

your show no matter what it was. I think overall the group was very very accepting and after hours you know we talk about these keg parties and the hanging out like it really was everyone's welcome. If you're a jerk and not showing up for your show then we're like you can't hang because you're not taking it respond like you know but yeah we were very welcoming I think and everyone the my gosh the hip -hop

Chuck Ferreira (32:46.137)
Yeah,

Peg Ricardo (32:56.152)
Yeah, had, we got D Nice and yeah, yeah, like it was all genres, all like it was... Yeah, yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (32:57.285)
that was a great, the hip, the urban, I think they were like urban shows. The urban shows were really popular. Maybe second only to the metal show at the time. I think those guys were great. They were super, super professional about it, as I recall. Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (33:07.929)
Yep.

Peg Ricardo (33:11.342)
Yup.

Peg Ricardo (33:23.896)
And without XPL, we wouldn't be hanging out like in July we were a party, right? Because,

Rock (33:29.898)
No, all of my friends are still from Fitchburg State. I don't have - I don't know anybody from high school anymore or anything.

Chuck Ferreira (33:32.662)
Yeah.

Rock (33:38.53)
So yeah, it's all Fitchbrook State, which for me means WXPL.

Kate Jewell (33:43.814)
love that. So what was the, so you mentioned some changes in the studio over time. So what were the changes that you all experienced in the studio? What do you think was going on there? Like what was the decision -making process? Like how did it get better, worse?

Peg Ricardo (34:01.38)
I mean, they the great move. you know, they mentioned that we were in the library on the third floor. We'd have to keep it down because we're in the library and we're limited to the library hours. So you couldn't have 150 DJs coming in and out.

Chuck Ferreira (34:08.346)
Yeah.

Rock (34:15.79)
Well, we're also limited because we were at 91 .3 FM. There was a Worcester station that was 91 .3 FM. And so we had to shut down at midnight because they felt like we were interfering with their broadcast. So we did. But I mean, they're an Indy station too. But yes, we cut off at midnight. That happened before we were there. But yeah.

Peg Ricardo (34:41.314)
Yeah. my God, even going FM, going FM, I think it was slightly before us, but we convinced the college to let us take over the Thompson Tunnel, the basement.

Chuck Ferreira (34:52.142)
Yeah, so this Thompson tunnel that's been referred to, there's a building next to, know, literally a couple hundred feet away from the main building. Fitchburg had this, if you want to call it our quad, all the old buildings were connected by these like ancient tunnels. And under this building called Thompson, there was

Peg Ricardo (35:13.732)
tunnels.

Chuck Ferreira (35:18.788)
the tunnels all kind of like led to that building, which then led to the campus, the main campus building. So it was the last stop before you get to the main campus building. there were more like rooms in that basement and there was this huge area that we thought would work as a.

a great radio station and it did for many years. mean, the basements, you know, it a basement. you know, it had its fair share of like little issues and there were pipes and some of the walls were starting to get a little crumbly and things like that. But we made it work. Crumbly meaning like the outside of the walls were crumb, not unsafe. But, you know, we had to retrofit that place. Like we had to

put holes through concrete walls to like run cable and things like that. like, I remember one night just being down there with a mallet and like a metal pipe and just, because we had to, the ability to run the main cable that went to the transmitter to the air studio, there was no real good way to get it through there.

You would think that this would be left to the facilities people to do this, but they were so like we weren't high on their on their Priority list. So I remember one night like three or four of us took turns with this like iron like Pole and we were like pounding hole through the bricks and we got through we we actually got through so they could We had this guy who worked for Lowell. What was his name Bill? the engineer

Peg Ricardo (37:03.843)
Yep.

Chuck Ferreira (37:06.392)
I forget his... And he was like, need, I need a...

Rock (37:06.769)
yeah.

Peg Ricardo (37:06.872)
We paid, we had to, he got paid. We also had to pay him in Coke with aluminum cans, because he would pour it in because it tasted better. Yeah. That's a weird guy.

Chuck Ferreira (37:14.126)
We're like, need, I need a hole like this big. I need it like this big to run the cable through. And it was like this thick. So we did it. We were all exhausted from it, but we did it. And he was able to put the cable through and bring it down to the trans, know, bring it back up to the transmitter. But it was that kind of thing, you know. And then we turned that place completely into our own. And we had a key to the building and we actually would.

Peg Ricardo (37:39.054)
Really key to the building.

Chuck Ferreira (37:42.702)
That's when things started to get a little kooky because we would be there much later than midnight a lot of the times. And I don't know how that Worcester Channel, you talked about Rock. I don't know how they felt about it, but I remember a lot of shows going till two in the morning or beyond that at that point. But that was again, I mean, we were technically breaking the rules, I guess,

Rock (38:10.946)
Well, they would have to know about it and I don't know that they listen to us.

Chuck Ferreira (38:14.126)
There you go. Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (38:15.422)
There you go. Or them, actually. We'll listen to them. Guess what else changed? think for the time we were there, we were still sticking with that, you know, rotation shows during the day. We have obligations to these record companies that are sending us material, specialty shows in the evening. We had...

Huge amounts of DJs like we had too many DJs almost and I think as we got to probably like after 93 When the majority of the golden years had finally moved on I think I was there for the year or two We didn't have as many DJs. So it was getting harder to fill the staff. Our meetings were getting smaller At the point that I was there I think that we I think it was different coming the beginning of the you know popularity going down

some dead air probably after, you know, I think my time there we had started to see but at that point in time we were there I think for the most part how we ran it was the same.

how the administration worked with us. I mean, they expect us to be really responsible. Like if there was a complaint, like they were coming to us like, not you're in trouble, but like you need to solve this. Like this is your thing, you know, and we would get the colony. I feel like they respected us to do that as well. You know, I think there was one teacher, I remember one of our station managers.

spent a lot of time at the station and I think they missed a final or something and man I think he went and told them like there was an emergency at the station I think we heard the FCC was coming

Rock (39:59.33)
Wow.

Chuck Ferreira (39:59.449)
The FCC was coming.

Peg Ricardo (40:01.302)
Wouldn't you know the guy believed it, was all concerned, let them do it later, forgave the inexcusable absence, and then followed up. Did everything work out okay? So there was a high level of trust in what we doing, what we were saying. We use it for good and sometimes not so good, but.

Chuck Ferreira (40:18.159)
Yeah.

Kate Jewell (40:21.842)
Do remember any specific controversies or complaints that came in about the station? Like what would get onto the radar?

Peg Ricardo (40:27.946)
yeah, think late 80s, early 90s, it was a big thing. know, what can you say? Like censorship, right? What can you not say?

Radio, what should you not say? But that conference Chuckie talked about that we went to that was a panel I think some of us were on as program directors talking about that So that would come up, you know, people didn't like what they heard. They didn't like what the DJ said in the music They didn't like the lyrics in music. I mean which Tipper Gore was at the time putting stickers on albums. So That was a big topic and controversy. That was a lot of complaints we would get We were pretty much like you don't like it. Don't listen, you know Free speech we could do a lot. It's

Chuck Ferreira (41:06.607)
Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (41:08.246)
We did get into both facilities and they threatened to shut us down because we were a little messy. We came in one day with a big note. Actually, I still have it. I have the photo album and I still have the letter from Steve Lanciati that, know, clean it up or you're just getting shut down.

Rock (41:17.1)
We were pretty messy.

Chuck Ferreira (41:22.582)
nice.

Rock (41:24.376)
Ha ha.

Rock (41:29.709)
Wow.

Chuck Ferreira (41:31.685)
We got in trouble a lot because we were, during the day we were underneath one of the nursing, where we were, like, and so we would be a little loud. I mean, the air studio had these pretty big monitors and you're rocking out to your show, man, you crank it up and like, would get yelled at for that. And we would sometimes be liberal with like at night going through G lobby and

Peg Ricardo (41:40.632)
The nurse deals off it, yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (42:00.559)
picking out pieces of furniture that we liked, we'd go furniture shopping and... We would steal furniture and like, no we didn't. No, we didn't.

Peg Ricardo (42:06.104)
We had an chair too.

Rock (42:07.494)
chairs.

Kate Jewell (42:07.579)
I'm Cher.

Peg Ricardo (42:11.618)
No, we didn't. We would slide some furniture, borrow.

Chuck Ferreira (42:15.257)
slide it, borrow. So I mean, but nothing like, nothing horrible. Yeah, right. We never had any like, serious, like serious controversies or anything terrible happening. you know, nobody ever got hurt. was never any like harassment or anything. You know, everybody was pretty cool. And like, it was just more of like those damn kids, you know, that kind of an attitude.

Peg Ricardo (42:19.842)
It was still on the property.

Rock (42:46.35)
Well, one thing that they haven't mentioned yet was at one point we decided there wasn't enough cohesion because everybody was pals, everybody was friends, people hung out and all that stuff. And we decided that seemed to be going away. And what they had done before is have record breaking parties because we got in tons of vinyl. Most of it was terrible and we never played it. So it piled up. So we had tons of extra records. So there was one week we said,

We're not going to have a meeting this week. We're going to have a party at this known party house. And we're going to tell everybody we couldn't get the conference room. So our meeting is going to be at 33 Congress. that's the, then it'll be, we'll cancel the, the meeting and have a record breaking party. So we did that 10 minutes in the police show up and arrest everybody. Everybody got arrested and

Chuck Ferreira (43:39.07)
yeah.

Peg Ricardo (43:42.158)
Break a record, get a record.

Rock (43:44.298)
Break a record get a record. Yeah, and it was it was in the the strobe which was the paper at the time and it was even in the the Sentinel app and enterprise and Yeah, that that was terrible and Most people were fine with it but there were a few people who were really upset about it like my daughter had no idea and look what she got into and I and all of that and

Chuck Ferreira (43:46.287)
hahahaha

Chuck Ferreira (44:09.999)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (44:10.81)
Meanwhile, she was working the door, killing the four dogs.

Rock (44:13.268)
Yeah, right. But yeah, mean, luckily it ended up getting continued without a finding, which is good. But yeah, that was, but we had to go through, were in the jail at the police station till one in the morning, till the guy came in, because they have a guy who comes in who you can sign out. Yeah, then we had to go to court, you know, where all of

There was 64 of us or something like that. And that was chaos. But again, luckily it got continued without a finding. But that was a huge problem. A couple of us, because I was on the executive board at the time, we had to have a meeting with executives at the school. And we basically told them we don't know how it happened, you know? And tried to play it down and we didn't get in trouble. Yeah, we didn't get in trouble for it, luckily. But yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (44:57.895)
yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (45:06.309)
Few bad apples.

Rock (45:11.788)
It was crazy. That was a pretty big

Peg Ricardo (45:16.238)
But I think it had the desired effect though, because those stuck around you. There was a lot more cohesion after that.

Rock (45:21.55)
Yes,

Chuck Ferreira (45:22.415)
Yeah. Us against the world.

Kate Jewell (45:27.102)
That'll do it. So for the three of you, can you, do you have some kind of like, like top three moments? Like what moments in the station and your station experience kind of stand out to you either individually or as a group? Like what's your nominations?

Rock (45:47.478)
I have a good one. I remember R .E had a new album come out, or it was coming out, and we got our advance copy, and I wanted to play it on my show that day, because I happened to have a four to six show, I think, and I wanted to play it. And our music director at the time said, no, it's got to go through the process. We have to check it out first and everything. And I'm thinking, this is R .E I mean, of course it's going to be in the rotation.

But so we put it in the music case, which was locked. And so we broke into the music case, took the album out, put every song on a cart, and I played all the songs on my show that day. Now he apparently heard it, because they played it all day in the campus center. And he apparently heard it. He came in. He's like, what's going on? I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you're playing the new REM? I'm like, I don't have the CD.

Chuck Ferreira (46:23.579)
Take the hinges

Rock (46:43.852)
and he went and he looked in the case and the CD was in there. But yeah, I just kept playing them off the cart through the whole show. It was pretty great.

Peg Ricardo (46:51.288)
when he figured out how you guys were getting into the cabinet, like, that was a beautiful afternoon. Yep.

Chuck Ferreira (46:54.597)
Take the hinge off.

Rock (46:55.768)
Took the hand job. Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (46:57.689)
Yup. You take a screwdriver, you pop the hinges off. Somebody else holds the door so that the lock doesn't bend and twist. Reach in and grab whatever you want. Put it back. Put the hinges back on. It took forever for people to figure out how to get in there.

Peg Ricardo (47:15.576)
That was a great day. think he chased you. Chris was pretty even -tempered, right? Like, you didn't really see him lose his cool -to -opted, but like, that day he was so, like... That was a great day. I put that on my list.

Rock (47:27.48)
Chris is now a political science professor, by the way. are you?

Kate Jewell (47:29.81)
I'm talking to him at 2 .30, so.

Chuck Ferreira (47:30.329)
Yeah. awesome. Tell him we say hello.

Peg Ricardo (47:30.466)
No. there you go. tell me, wisdom. Yes, we say hello. You know, I think, and that's, I'm glad you're talking to me, because I think hearing about how, like the process for like what was going to end up on air, like.

Everybody was welcome to go, but I think the little record listening group that they had going on, to listen to these things and decide, like, is this going to go in rotation or not? That was another fun thing that you can get involved in, know, meet some new friends and learn some new things and really shape what our station was playing. So he'll probably have some great insights on that, yeah. Yeah, thank you, the music committee. But yeah, the day that he figured out how how he already was seeking out there.

Chuck Ferreira (48:08.463)
Music Committee.

Peg Ricardo (48:17.058)
It was pretty funny. Rocky Trillowmaker.

Chuck Ferreira (48:17.189)
really funny.

Kate Jewell (48:18.82)
out of time or automatically the people or which one was it? Which REM album was that?

Peg Ricardo (48:27.092)
out of time.

Rock (48:27.138)
think it was out of time. Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (48:30.586)
That about right.

Rock (48:32.27)
I looked at the years on it and it had to be out of

Kate Jewell (48:36.294)
Well, I'm now good friends with REM's manager, Burtis Down, so I'll have to tell him about that one. He loves all the REM stories. He will love that.

Chuck Ferreira (48:44.067)
yeah, yeah.

Rock (48:44.59)
I'm sure he'll love it. Yeah. Definitely.

Peg Ricardo (48:51.95)
my god, Rock, I was thinking about you a couple of weeks ago when they had played. I'm like, man, I Rock is so excited right now.

Rock (48:59.33)
When who played? when they reunited? Yeah. I still haven't seen it, believe it or not, but yes. I know.

Peg Ricardo (49:01.72)
Yup, yup.

Peg Ricardo (49:06.336)
my goodness. Do you not know how to get it out of the cabinet?

Chuck Ferreira (49:06.607)
I think.

Rock (49:10.988)
No, yeah, exactly. Can't find

Chuck Ferreira (49:11.162)
We need to give you a refresher on

Rock (49:16.511)
That's the other thing we're not talking about. The world was so different then. Because there was no internet, there was no Facebook. None of that stuff existed at

Chuck Ferreira (49:21.636)
Yeah, yeah. You literally needed the CD or the record. you couldn't, there was no other way to get it. Yeah, that's true.

Rock (49:27.146)
Yeah. Yeah. And I just remembered one other thing too, because we got tons of vinyl, as I said. And I remember one hard rock album came in and the artist's name was Guy Mandude. Yep. And of course it was terrible. But yeah. Definitely.

Chuck Ferreira (49:41.29)
yeah, yeah, yeah. Boy, did we all have a... We all had a laugh about that. Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (49:48.622)
Yep. I think I would put on my list one of the metal guys, Mike Baronis. We were, gosh, we were out very late. I think my sister might have been visiting. I'm not even sure about. I remember we went to, it probably Denny's, open late. We had been drinking at a keg party or something. And then we had a great, cause we had a key. So we had a great idea. Like, hey, let's go over to the station and let's do a show.

Chuck Ferreira (50:14.178)
Peg Ricardo (50:16.02)
So what does Mike choose to play on our secret show? Madonna. And he's totally rocking out to Madonna. It was really, I was like, wow, that was so unexpected. And it was funny. It'll probably kill me for telling that story.

Rock (50:32.376)
Speaking of metal guy, I remember I was doing a show one day and Mike Baronis came in and he handed me Nirvana's Nevermind. He said, dude, everybody's loving this, you should play this. I was like, yeah, okay, but I didn't play it. And they became huge.

Chuck Ferreira (50:47.555)
Yeah. Nice going, Rock. Yeah, we had that poster. Yeah. The naked baby. What the hell is this? Yeah. I think for me, one of the coolest things, you know, we had the new station and we had this huge air studio with like tables set up and like we actually one of the one of our so we had some local bands that were, you know,

Peg Ricardo (50:48.492)
Yep. You get that poster hanging up too. And everyone's like, what's that? Like, who's that? The naked baby shouldn't be hanging in here. Yep.

Rock (50:56.083)
Yeah.

Rock (51:06.048)
It was a huge, room.

Chuck Ferreira (51:14.851)
To this day I look back and I consider them like they were WXPL house bands. Rock mentioned one of them earlier, O Positive, but the other one was a band called Tribe. they were, they actually, like O Positive, they had a brief stint signed to a major label. They actually got to be on the Conan O 'Brien show. They got big.

Rock (51:25.539)
Go

Rock (51:41.356)
They made two major label albums.

Chuck Ferreira (51:44.43)
Yeah, two majors. so we actually, we played them so much that we actually got them to come down and do a live interview. Yeah, rocked at the interview. I think I engineered it. Like just so all you had to do was talk. Cause I remember being in there at the board and like we had them and it was just like, wow, this is like big time real radio happening here, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rock (51:53.729)
I interviewed

Rock (52:08.332)
We were all pretty excited.

Peg Ricardo (52:10.008)
That was such a spectacle.

Rock (52:12.151)
It was.

Chuck Ferreira (52:12.897)
And the pictures are still around. There's a picture of us all with them in the production studio. I look like an extra from a John Hughes movie. It's pretty funny. Yeah. But that was good. think the number one memory, or I don't know if it counts as like a memory so much, it's just like the number one thing about WXPL is just the enduring

Rock (52:22.284)
Don't we all?

Chuck Ferreira (52:40.653)
the enduring friendships that to this day, we still joke and talk about WXPL. It's always going to have a huge place in our hearts, but the friendships were pretty amazing. And I actually have to think like when I talk to other people, I realize more and more how rare it is that this group of, let's say anywhere,

20 ish people thereabouts or maybe a little more managed to stay in pretty close contact. A lot of us still get together for various parties and whenever somebody's you know is in something's wrong somebody has a health issue or somebody's kid you know has a health issue we all sort of like come together and support.

It's like, you know, somebody puts the bat signal up into the air and we're all there. It's like there's no questions asked. Everybody's got one another's back and that I don't know if like while we were there if that was obvious that that was happening but we certainly all did hang out with each other the most on campus like we would typically be kind of clustered together whether it

at the dining common or wherever we were. But the most impressive thing is just like how the station set us all up to be pretty tight throughout the years. that's just, it hasn't changed one

Kate Jewell (54:31.996)
So how did, and I hope, I don't know if the heat wave's messing with my internet, hopefully not. Check if it goes out, we will both go out. We're on the same place probably. So how, I know you mentioned how you got so many practical skills for this. I'm wondering how, know, socially, clearly the radio experience has continued on how.

Chuck Ferreira (54:40.802)
Yeah, right. We're on the same grid.

Kate Jewell (54:59.078)
Where are you all in your professional lives now? And how has the radio experience influenced or been part of that? Or just your college years in general? How do they set you up for what you're doing now?

Peg Ricardo (55:14.892)
I would think that it was really like a coming of age, right? We absolutely could have been a John Hughes movie, know, a cooler one than Pump Up the Volume for sure.

just be exposed to through music really because your favorite genre of music and what you're really into is what drew you to the radio station and know if we're gonna stereotype you know if you're interested in kind of music you probably have a certain kind of experience and that was already going to be different than you know what i had been exposed to up until that point so being able to be tossed into this you know microcosm of a business we were running and have to learn how to work through those difference

whether they were cultural, whether they were, know, financial status, whatever it was. But you had to produce this product that we all cared so passionately about, that dynamic and figured out. And just being open to hearing another way of thinking about something and to still navigate and get to where you needed to be was huge, so eye -opening, and that really informed a lot of how I operate today. You know, some of the older folks, I remember we're driving down

The main road in Fitchburg. Who knows where we were going, right? We supposed to be in the car. And there were some folks standing on the side of the road, you know, with their pro -life, anti -abortion, whatever happening. And at time, like, we need to get some post -aborts. Like, we need to get out there and, you know, counteract this, whatever. And just the, I mean, all college kids, you know, whatever. But it was just the idea that, like, we had something to say. And this is how we're going to get that out there. And like it or not, like, I'm going to learn how to back up

whatever that is. And now what I do, project management for a bit for a very conservative company.

Peg Ricardo (57:09.388)
All those skills, like the budgeting, how are we going to move the station? How are we going to get this equipment? How are we going to train people? Really helped in that career. I had kids and one of my children has a disability and that really kind of was another shift. So now I do a lot more advocacy work and I actually work with the state to support individuals with disabilities. There's a lot of advocacy in there and a lot of using my voice and being able to speak. So, you know, those DJ days where you're on the radio and you're at

make a phone in front of you and you have to be clear and you have to be concise and you have to get your message out and not...

be like really nervous to do it and anxious. So those DJ days absolutely helps me now with public speaking and being able to do it and to use my voice in a different way than I did when I was introducing the secret copy of REM and then saying I don't know where it came from. But all of those skills and those experiences, I really do credit them to my time with college radio and XPL much more than the classes that I was paying to

Rock (58:03.874)
Hahaha.

Peg Ricardo (58:18.374)
And I didn't end up going into teaching, no? Because I found something else through college radio. And I agree with Chuck also. All of these relationships and you guys, like, all these years later, you we may not talk, but as soon as I see you, wow, we're so excited. And you you're right back there. like, we always have each other back, whether we talk all the time or not. Because we know too much about each other that... That's right.

Chuck Ferreira (58:35.798)
Yeah

Chuck Ferreira (58:44.325)
Yeah, we have enough dirt.

Rock (58:47.096)
No.

Peg Ricardo (58:47.461)
that we don't wanna get out, so...

Chuck Ferreira (58:52.322)
Rock you.

Rock (58:53.958)
sure. What are... I don't even remember what the question was now,

Chuck Ferreira (58:59.97)
Well, it was like how did it prepare you for like where you're at now?

Peg Ricardo (59:00.652)
I talked about.

Rock (59:02.766)
Oh. Well, you know, I was a business major and at some point when I was at school, I was like, I'm in the wrong major. I should be a communications major or something. But it seemed like a lot of work to do it. So I didn't. So I stayed a business manager and I worked for the Phoenix newspaper for a few, for 10 years and I did several positions there. And, but at my last job, I'm unemployed at the moment because I was in a horrible accident

Chuck Ferreira (59:17.432)
Ha ha ha.

Rock (59:32.824)
could have killed me luckily it didn't but i worked for harvard medical school at the time and they laid me off but i worked as a in in finance they're doing miscellaneous things for them most of them were in my department were grant managers and that sort of thing but i did everything else in that finance group so how did xpl influence that i'm not really sure to be honest with you

except that i have a lot of great friends from it because all my friends are from xbl but yeah and i still remember it like i was i was there all the time because i i went i had gone five years and my last semester was not much i had a couple classes i was taking to get the credits and that was about it but i was there all the time and i want a great time i did

a couple of interviews I interviewed the bass player from driving and crying the lead singer of gang green and all of tribe and I still can't believe tribe came out to our station by the way the whole band got in a bus or whatever and came out to our station for our listeners which I don't know how we don't know how many that was but it can't have been many and but they were interviewed on the air it was

Chuck Ferreira (01:00:31.523)
yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:00:54.025)
Yeah, it was. It was awesome.

Peg Ricardo (01:00:55.326)
my gosh, Chuck, so you know most members of that band now, because you're still rock and roll. Do they remember that? And do they remember like...

Chuck Ferreira (01:00:59.145)
Well, yeah, I'm in a band with one of them, really good friends with his wife who was in the band, Terry. yeah, so I guess that segues into my little portion. For me, a lot of what Peg and Rock are talking about, it's just like, don't.

Rock (01:01:01.678)
You're in a band with one of

Rock (01:01:11.202)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:01:28.233)
The specifics of like, how did it really prepare me for, you know, professional or adulting? I think it would be really hard to pinpoint specifics, but it's more of a general, you know, like a lot of the stuff we talked about earlier, having to basically run a business, manage a lot of people, you had to you had to develop good communication skills.

dealing with people of different levels of interest and power in the college community. But for me, I ended up

I took my communications media degree along with all of my WXPL experience and parlayed that into working for some creative video agencies. I became an executive producer and an account manager. So I would work with marketing CMOs of Fortune 500 companies and helping them put together

know, high end giant trade show video projects and whatnot. But once I left that, I actually became more serious about, so I'm a musician, I'm a drummer, and I became much more serious about my music career. I actually, nowadays I own my own painting business. So that's like my day job.

And you need to be able to be able to market yourself and you have to have good communication skills to keep winning jobs but I did that so that I Would have a better quality of life meaning work to

Chuck Ferreira (01:03:16.776)
work to play ratio. And so, you know, I'm in several bands in the Boston community. One of them, of course, was mentioned by I think Peg, like was a member of that band Tribe we talked about. But, you know, I also play with the keyboard player from the Cars, Greg Hawks, the synth player. You know, we do this giant hour and a half long show with him at these at different theaters and

Rock (01:03:46.188)
that are all sold

Chuck Ferreira (01:03:46.503)
venues that are they sell out people still want to come see him but you know we need but so you know the whole music side of things in fact for a very brief time rock and I were in a band together on campus like there was this mute there was like a little music scene on campus and I think I know everybody was

Peg Ricardo (01:04:04.43)
me not talk about that.

Chuck Ferreira (01:04:07.539)
Everybody that was in that music scene was or I'd say 90 % of the people that was that were in that little music scene were somehow associated with WXPL whether they were a member or you know We also had lots of hangers hangers on like people who just come hang out people just come hang out and like you know so There was a lot of

Peg Ricardo (01:04:27.587)
Hey.

Chuck Ferreira (01:04:32.164)
And I think it prepared me in a lot of ways with music and just music communications, marketing, the whole deal. It's just all come into play in my current life. yeah, Peg, you're right. Why didn't we talk about all the bands? mean, we would have these keg parties and these bands that I'm telling you about would be the entertainment. These were pretty...

pretty elaborate parties until they would get busted by the police at least 75 % of the time.

Peg Ricardo (01:05:07.288)
Bye.

Well then there's the official ones. Yeah, we had O positive, played, orgasm,

Rock (01:05:09.816)
but we also sponsor shows.

Chuck Ferreira (01:05:11.888)
We sponsored shows.

Rock (01:05:13.72)
We had a positive play. We had them there once, and I think they played once just after I left.

Peg Ricardo (01:05:19.34)
Mighty Mighty Boss Tones. So we were negotiating contracts with these bands who were, I mean, huge, huge, but they were pretty big, it's in the area.

Chuck Ferreira (01:05:21.372)
That was a big one.

Rock (01:05:21.868)
last time.

Rock (01:05:29.036)
Big. enough.

Chuck Ferreira (01:05:30.524)
Big enough.

Peg Ricardo (01:05:30.572)
And dealing with their writers, they're ridiculous. I remember we would be freaking out because now we know they put things in the trash if you read the contract, but like, my God, they need a bowl of just green &Ms. we were spending our own money for some of these things were outside of it. How do we fulfill the case of beer that they want? Because the college won't let us use our money to do that. They were jerks. Yeah.

Rock (01:05:50.988)
No. In fact, the Bostons, they had a lot of booze on their rider. And we told them, we're run by the state, we can't do that. And so they took it off the rider. But then when they went on stage, the guy who was the station manager at the time grabbed me and said, they brought their own booze, their dressing room was loaded with booze. So they had to go throw it all away while they were on stage.

Peg Ricardo (01:06:02.328)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:06:06.15)
Hey.

Rock (01:06:20.864)
And I wasn't in the room at the time, but I can only imagine what that must have been like. That was crazy.

Peg Ricardo (01:06:27.166)
because they also had to kind of put a bunch of people on their gases. I mean, we were, it was in the commuter car, so we were in like a college property with this thing and this.

Rock (01:06:36.652)
which was set up different than it is now.

Peg Ricardo (01:06:38.724)
There's rules about that like it wasn't really open to the public and because they're big we had all these like People shown up there are already drunk, but like there's to cause trouble and like I remember being at the the door I was I was the most responsible at the door because I wasn't letting the cute girls in for free because we had bills to pay We had to turn away like all these folks showing up like nope being said I was on this list friends of Ed I think that's who it was

Chuck Ferreira (01:06:39.056)
Yeah, yeah.

Rock (01:06:57.986)
Ha ha

Peg Ricardo (01:07:08.697)
up and so we were also working security at these things like working around but yeah. I chose the battle of the bands we did with the you know the local the college ones on campus those were fun too.

Chuck Ferreira (01:07:12.024)
yeah, yeah.

Kate Jewell (01:07:16.248)
The Scandals.

Chuck Ferreira (01:07:24.254)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.

Peg Ricardo (01:07:25.494)
And the drama that came with that, right? The breaking up within the bands and the restructuring. And I do need to say for this historical record that Chuck Ferreira is the very most rock and roll of all of you in those bands at that time. The most rock and roll.

Chuck Ferreira (01:07:31.294)
yeah, there was a lot of that.

Rock (01:07:41.742)
Well, I know my band that was a Fitchburg State band, kicked him out a couple of weeks before our first show.

Peg Ricardo (01:07:51.)
Don't you regret that.

Chuck Ferreira (01:07:51.12)
That's right. That's right you did, because I was shirking my responsibilities. I had to learn the hard way. There was a girl involved, so... Yep, yep. And I couldn't be bothered with practice. I had to hang

Rock (01:07:53.976)
Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (01:07:59.01)
Well, there was a girl involved. But Chuck is the most rock and roll.

Rock (01:08:01.294)
There was? Yes.

Rock (01:08:11.618)
No, would disappear from practice for a half hour at a time to talk to her on the phone.

Chuck Ferreira (01:08:15.194)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Peg Ricardo (01:08:16.59)
But my God, what a good sport was Chuck? Because after that happened, and I mean, it was very awkward, and your feelings were hurt. It was very dramatic. And not that long after that, Chuck agreed to participate in somebody else's documentary, like a film project for school, where they documented the breakup of the band. And Chuck was such a good sport to participate and make, you know. Well, to Chuck it was, right?

Chuck Ferreira (01:08:23.384)
At the time it was traumatic. It was traumatic.

Chuck Ferreira (01:08:31.629)
the documentary that KMAC and

Rock (01:08:40.834)
Well, it wasn't a breakup of the band. It was him getting kicked out of the band. Sure.

Chuck Ferreira (01:08:42.444)
It was, yeah, yeah.

It was called Lump, No Gimma Crackery. That was the title.

Rock (01:08:49.518)
I remember when that happened, the way, two other members of the band, me and the singer, were roommates with Chuck. He didn't speak to either one of us for three months. And we lived in the same apartment.

Peg Ricardo (01:08:50.612)
But he was so good, yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:09:03.62)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just walked by. We just walked by, yeah. So that was one of the rare times in all of this happy, warm, fuzzy stuff we've been telling you where there was a bit of an iciness. Because we were all sort of, at that point, major players at the radio station.

Peg Ricardo (01:09:06.818)
I think he

Rock (01:09:23.693)
Well,

Chuck Ferreira (01:09:33.464)
I guess, one way to put it, like, more active, I guess. And so it was sort of some weirdness. like, you know, we all got past it. It's fine. yeah, what Peg is referring to, I saw somehow the stars and planets aligned so that I ended up being post -college and now even more than ever the most active musically.

Rock (01:09:38.616)
Sure.

Chuck Ferreira (01:10:03.402)
in terms of music projects than my buddies from college. It's just weird how that happened.

Rock (01:10:05.186)
Very much

Rock (01:10:10.326)
at the time just to give you a little more perspective the band had only been together since september and chuck was in yeah and chuck was a brand new drummer at the time who had not drummed before and so yeah he was still learning how to play what's

Chuck Ferreira (01:10:16.024)
Yeah, that's why we got that house.

Chuck Ferreira (01:10:21.092)
Yeah. Yeah. It's true. I said it's true. I had only gotten my drum kit the summer before. Yeah.

Rock (01:10:32.076)
Yeah, so he was still learning how to play and all that. And the drummer we got had been playing for a few years. We grabbed him from another band and in two weeks he learned our set and we played.

Chuck Ferreira (01:10:43.108)
Yeah, yeah,

Peg Ricardo (01:10:43.598)
Yeah. And in the documentary of this, you know, falling out, Chuck, it's just classic. He's sitting in the room. a cat on his lap and he's got... That's right, that's right. He was a cute cat. He's like, I just don't understand. I'm very rock and roll. But that's a line. I have a beverage, you know, wild animal on my lap, prints on the wall. So I'm very rock and roll. So it endures.

Chuck Ferreira (01:10:56.004)
Was your cat, Troy.

Chuck Ferreira (01:11:01.786)
Well, I had a glass of wine.

Rock (01:11:03.522)
He was playing up the not being rock and roll thing.

Chuck Ferreira (01:11:11.79)
I was wearing like a Cosby style sweater.

Rock (01:11:14.7)
Yep. Yep. It was great.

Peg Ricardo (01:11:14.852)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:11:18.65)
really funny. Yeah, I mean, you you had to, at that point, you just had to roll with it. That was, that was my way of forgiving everybody, I guess. But I, you know, I deserved it. They should have kicked me out. You know, I wasn't, I wasn't holding my end of the bargain. You know, they could have warned me first, given me like the first warning and said, hey, we, you know, but whatever, you know, life moves on.

Rock (01:11:43.906)
Sorry.

Peg Ricardo (01:11:44.052)
Yeah. You still did your show, so.

Chuck Ferreira (01:11:45.994)
I'm happy, yeah, with another band. joined another band with some other people that were loosely affiliated with the radio station. Not seriously affiliated, yeah, so all's well that ends well.

Kate Jewell (01:12:02.684)
things come together. All right, so I've hit all of my questions or topics. No, this is how it's supposed to go. The tangents are the best part. But anything that I'm missing here in this story, in this history of WXPL that you would like to have on the record, other than Chuck being the most rock and roll.

Chuck Ferreira (01:12:08.494)
I know, we took you on a tangent there.

Chuck Ferreira (01:12:24.464)
I think the thing is like the postscript for me is like there was even years like Peg did. did the, and think Brock said he did too. I I purposely did like the five year, it really was the four and a half year plan, but I was like, I kind of figured out by my junior year that I am in no rush to graduate. this is,

Peg Ricardo (01:12:24.91)
Thank you.

Rock (01:12:25.466)
Ha ha ha.

Chuck Ferreira (01:12:51.46)
Why would I want to leave this environment? that does not look, adulting would not recommend one star. I was like, that does not look fun. So I was like, I'm not going to bust my ass to get the credits I need when I could just take an easier approach and enjoy more time. So I remember

like Rock, you know, a lot of people like Rock and Craig and a lot of these other people that you're going to talk to had already left. They had graduated. And like, so there was like a few of us of this core group that we're talking about, which was the group from like 87 to like 93, right? Like there was like that group of people that had a lot of overlap and there was a lot of just sort of like handing off the station to the next.

to the next person, like, okay, you will clearly be the next station manager. We'll just make it happen that that's how it goes. Cause like you're in, you get it. And you're in this like little inner circle and we want it to keep running well. But I think like, by the time Peg was getting ready to leave, which was a year after me, I think she had alluded to it, that the station was sort of going through this, like it was losing its, it was losing that momentum.

I just think it was a natural thing. It was just how things were shifting. what was interesting was that we, lot of us for many years, we kind of stayed, we kind of kept an eye on it. And like we would be in touch with like the card station manager or whoever and be like, you know, hey, what's going on? like, and I remember we even had like, this is going back maybe.

even just as recent as 15 years ago or so, there were like some reunions where we would take a tour of the station and like, the station is in a new location now from when we were there. And I remember that they were getting rid of a bunch of stuff and we talked the current kids, well, current at the time, we talked to them and you've got to keep this metal, it had all these bumper stickers from different bands.

Rock (01:15:08.599)
Yes.

Chuck Ferreira (01:15:10.254)
and other radio stations and it was like the cabinet that we inherited, was like, you know, it held like, well, it had many different purposes. Yeah. So we were like, you have to keep this cabinet. And they were like, but they're making us throw it out. We're like, no, you can't throw this out. So they convinced the campus center, the person in charge of the campus center because, so that they were moving into this beautiful new fancy.

Peg Ricardo (01:15:19.192)
Those questionnaires were still in there. Like, with that question.

Rock (01:15:23.714)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:15:38.02)
facility and they wanted it to look like clean and professional because it was like people would be walking by with open windows and we convinced them to we convinced them to put it to put the cabinet in a closet and To never let the cat never let that cabinet go and they were on so they actually started to be like They fought for it like they got excited because they they started to like sense the history You know, and then we did like a few like guests

Rock (01:15:45.314)
and it is clean.

Peg Ricardo (01:15:45.632)
anti -college radio sounds like it.

Chuck Ferreira (01:16:07.024)
DJ shows and whatnot. Now honestly, I haven't kept up. I don't know what's been going on. Maybe you have, Peg, but there was clearly this phase when, and I feel very fortunate to have been a part of it. Like I said, I'm gonna say like before it was FM and it was the Fitchburg Radio Club. And then at the end of that, right to when went to FM,

Rock (01:16:15.97)
I

Chuck Ferreira (01:16:36.954)
when a bunch of us, and you'll talk to Craig and he's gonna have the better history of that part of it, then it went to the group of people that is this core group that we've been talking about. And we were the ones that sort of, feel like, made it reach its peak. Like we sort of like were in the peak phase of the radio station, which I'll always be thankful for. I mean, when we were there, it was such an amazing organization.

And so afterward it was kind of like, man, like, you know, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that there's so many radio stations that are streaming and like FM isn't as important as it was, know, there's satellite radio, there's streaming, there's this, that, and the other thing. And yeah, like, so I think we were seeing all of these kinds of things start to erode the importance of an FM radio

Rock (01:17:22.967)
Lot of fun.

Chuck Ferreira (01:17:33.452)
And I have not done my due diligence over the past several years. I should check in with them again and see who's there and yeah, see what's going on with it.

Peg Ricardo (01:17:40.523)
I have a problem either.

Kate Jewell (01:17:43.324)
COVID was rough. There's about six DJs right now.

Chuck Ferreira (01:17:45.836)
COVID was rough, but I definitely think that there appeared to be over the last 10 years or so a general lack of enthusiasm for that kind of thing. And I think that we saw that at the times we would, you know, there are times we visit. In fact, we were there. We were there. Yeah, yeah. We took those photos. Rock, remember that? We all had the PEG masks.

Peg Ricardo (01:18:07.16)
Three years ago, Chuck, because you took those photos for me.

Rock (01:18:14.177)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:18:14.954)
Yeah, that was for your birthday. But we were there and we are, was like, think it was like a Sunday or whatever. So the campus center, I mean, you could walk through it, but nothing was happening. And we walked by where the station was, but it was dead. Like nothing was happening. But, you know, I don't know. No. We would be, there'd be people sleeping. That's not, that's,

Peg Ricardo (01:18:16.408)
That was, those were my favorite from you guys, those were amazing.

Peg Ricardo (01:18:32.804)
Can you imagine? Like we wouldn't have, there's no way that, yeah.

Rock (01:18:36.898)
Well, no, in the summer, we weren't really on the air.

Peg Ricardo (01:18:40.748)
A little bit. I mean, I was still around. Yeah, not all the time.

Rock (01:18:42.178)
mean a little, but not all the time.

Chuck Ferreira (01:18:43.912)
I actually that brings up a good I remember driving from where I lived like at least once a week to to come up and take my key

Peg Ricardo (01:18:51.32)
Yep. cause you were doing that when it was just me. You were still showing up cause I gave you a show. Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:18:56.939)
Yeah, and I used to do like a midnight tattoo show, like a weird like, yeah, here's a key. Don't, don't make copies. Here's a key. Yeah, so yeah, we had this one little doorway that led like was at the front of the building and it was this like sneaky little doorway that we could go in and like we had a key to that. So you didn't have to go through the main tunnel.

Peg Ricardo (01:19:00.142)
And I was like, whatever, check, just, you know.

Rock (01:19:05.538)
Ha ha ha

Peg Ricardo (01:19:06.307)
I don't need to know who you're with.

Right? Yeah, that's a few. We had a gold plated one too.

Rock (01:19:10.264)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:19:25.439)
Yeah, I think sort of like the postscript is that I think a lot of us, we all have our lives and we're very busy, but I wouldn't, I don't think it would take much. Like if there was ever like a need for us to like, the elders unite and like, go in and like, get re -involved to like help breathe life back into the place. Cause I do think it's kind of dead. I would certainly donate time.

Peg Ricardo (01:19:42.8)
Yeah.

Peg Ricardo (01:19:50.99)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:19:55.444)
try to like reinvigorate and get you know the current student body you know into it again. I just I just don't I just don't have the energy right now to be the driving force behind that you know. Somebody has to somebody else would have to get that ball rolling but I would be very excited to see a new generation of students be excited about it again and I think that could happen it just needs it would just need some

Peg Ricardo (01:20:02.018)
I would do.

Peg Ricardo (01:20:07.298)
Yeah, but have to be serious about it, right?

Chuck Ferreira (01:20:24.896)
reorganize that you reorganizing and maybe it needs to become you know streaming we need to you know podcast and streaming

Peg Ricardo (01:20:29.186)
Maybe they need to just podcasts or something. I think if you.

Kate Jewell (01:20:31.43)
I guess is what I'm working on. So I don't know. I'm not the faculty advisor. I was on the record, but somebody just left who was technically the advisor of the station. and there's a new president. So there may be some opportunities and we are, we founded a podcast for the university. So we are, we were trying to regularly release content, which this may be a part

It's called Perseverantia if you want to look for it or everywhere you can find your podcast, but I would like very much to connect the podcasting with the radio. That's kind of my on my agenda for this upcoming year.

Chuck Ferreira (01:21:10.102)
Well.

Chuck Ferreira (01:21:13.676)
Cool. Well, you know a bunch of people who care. you have our contact info or we have yours. I'll definitely make sure you have mine.

Peg Ricardo (01:21:17.358)
That's right.

Rock (01:21:22.83)
We were there 30 years ago, but still.

Peg Ricardo (01:21:25.796)
You're a lie. Why? 30.

Chuck Ferreira (01:21:26.802)
But I have to say, and I'm not saying this just to be big headed, I really do think that everybody you're going to be talking to, like Craig and if I can connect you with Mike Baronis, and you're going to talk to Chris Cook later, and I don't know who else you have on your agenda, but yeah. Metal guy. Metal guy. In fact, you should try to get Mike and Mark. I know

Kate Jewell (01:21:42.97)
Mark Fields. Yep. Okay.

Rock (01:21:47.084)
Mark -Mark Fields did the show with Mike Barones.

Chuck Ferreira (01:21:55.399)
Mike Bronis is not on social media these days, but I can easily reach out to him and connect you to him. Cause Mike and Mark ran the metal show that we were talking about. But everybody, I feel like everybody you're going to be talking to was there during the phase when this station was growing. And also the most successful few years, like the most successful, like let's call it a 10 year span when it had.

Kate Jewell (01:21:59.942)
That'd be great.

Chuck Ferreira (01:22:26.001)
when it was growing and it had the most success that I feel like it ever had. And to this point, I mean, I'd love to see it do even better, but it certainly hasn't. And I think that's a bummer to me. I don't know, I just think there's so many things that go into that, but I also don't think it's impossible for it to kind of come back to life. So I'd like to see that.

Peg Ricardo (01:22:53.56)
I think college radio in general, that was, it's heyday, right?

because there wasn't streaming and social media or even like a touch to your phone all the time. So if you were going to hear something new and unexpected, it was going to be college radio. And I think if we really looked at, we talk about these bands that, you know, they broke on college radio. XBL was playing in Nirvana and then they got huge. That period of time we're talking about, if we look at the music industry itself, as it was, those things were becoming more mainstream, I think then you start to see

Chuck Ferreira (01:22:58.843)
Well, yeah.

Peg Ricardo (01:23:28.102)
maybe college radio was the beginning of its demise because our cache was, we're edgy and cool and you hear these things. But then it was, wait, no, it's like on top 40. And now it's like, oh my God, now the classic rock show is that progressive cool stuff we playing 30 years ago. We're hearing it while we're grocery shopping, which is really hurtful. But it

Rock (01:23:49.038)
Something Peg said reminded me of a detail that I don't know how many people know this but Hangin' Tough, the first big new Kids on the Block album, they thank one radio station and that radio station is WXPL because one of their brothers did a show at XPL and played them, which is unbelievable. WXPL is thanked on Hangin' Tough, which is incredible.

Chuck Ferreira (01:23:49.958)
Yeah,

Kate Jewell (01:24:06.236)
You're kidding.

Chuck Ferreira (01:24:06.518)
Hahaha!

Chuck Ferreira (01:24:13.639)
That's hilarious.

There you go.

Rock (01:24:19.586)
Ha ha ha

Kate Jewell (01:24:20.503)
That's a new one!

Chuck Ferreira (01:24:21.233)
Can't do better than that.

Peg Ricardo (01:24:24.834)
And at the time, we really wouldn't admit it. We're like, my God. Now it's cool. It was a cool for us. I forgot about that.

Chuck Ferreira (01:24:27.482)
No.

Rock (01:24:28.383)
Yeah.

Kate Jewell (01:24:30.22)
That was not cool.

That's amazing.

Peg Ricardo (01:24:36.404)
Even our PSAs, I could probably talk about this forever now that you got me started, it wasn't just the music. We talk about our PSAs and our carts, which is almost like an A -track, right? And you stick it the machine. We produced those and we had one, I can't remember if had now, about the environment and recycling and these things. We actually donated our sub -channel on our transmitter to Reading for the Blind.

Chuck Ferreira (01:24:55.712)
yeah.

Peg Ricardo (01:25:04.47)
So we were broadcasting out, you know, books and newspapers, like on our sub channel. We had to do much other than make sure that our transmitter was on. But that was pretty cool too that we were doing that and not like a bigger station was doing that so that we could reach that area of the state. But we did some good too. It was just all parties.

Kate Jewell (01:25:20.699)
That's really interesting.

Chuck Ferreira (01:25:21.895)
Speaking of that, I know Rock knows this, I don't know that you know this, Peg. So there was a, with the new station, they were throwing a bunch of stuff up, they were gonna throw out the actual, in, you know, in the station, the in -station part of the transmitter. So, you know, the device that had the VU levels,

the device that you would turn the station on and off, that whole thing. You remember, it was to the left. I have that stuff. Yeah, I have it. It's in storage because they were gonna literally throw it out and I'm like, can I just take this? And I'm like, what am I gonna do with this? I can't let them throw it out. So I have it, it's just in storage and at some point I guess I'll have to get rid of it but it's because.

Peg Ricardo (01:25:55.694)
Yep. To you really.

Rock (01:25:56.523)
yeah. You do?

Peg Ricardo (01:26:08.332)
No.

Peg Ricardo (01:26:12.546)
So you have that, I have the photo album, and Rock's got the So Cools, so Rock still wins. Yep.

Chuck Ferreira (01:26:15.003)
Yeah. We have to make a little museum.

Rock (01:26:17.312)
No.

I have more than that, I have

Kate Jewell (01:26:22.459)
gosh.

Chuck Ferreira (01:26:23.6)
I

Rock (01:26:24.)
have one of these, which I think was after I was there. And I think the phone number is different now, too. And now you have to use an area code, which we didn't have to at the

Chuck Ferreira (01:26:27.397)
Yeah, I've got one of those, yeah.

Peg Ricardo (01:26:27.447)
yes!

Peg Ricardo (01:26:31.405)
Yo.

Chuck Ferreira (01:26:31.921)
Probably.

Peg Ricardo (01:26:35.256)
No.

Chuck Ferreira (01:26:35.879)
Probably changed several times. Plenty of t -shirts, plenty of vinyl in my vinyl collection that have stickers on it. yeah.

Peg Ricardo (01:26:39.149)
out.

Peg Ricardo (01:26:42.499)
are the towels. So we had some towels printed up. I have one actually, but it was like, I was gonna pull it out, but I didn't have time to grab it. they showed up at building 19 and a half. So whoever printed our towels must have made some mistakes. So it was like years later. Someone was like, look what I found. Yeah, no.

Chuck Ferreira (01:26:51.024)
Skate to death.

Chuck Ferreira (01:26:55.681)
wow. Wow.

Rock (01:26:58.51)
Speaking of another thing that's gone, because there's no Building 19

Chuck Ferreira (01:27:03.653)
Right, right.

Kate Jewell (01:27:04.946)
That's a deep cut.

Chuck Ferreira (01:27:06.972)
Yeah. But yeah, guess you can, hopefully Kate, can see, mean, I know we probably should wrap, but I think you could probably see how much love we have for the station and the time we were there and, you know, even hope that it could come back, you know, or come back, come back the way, reinvent itself so that it could, even if it's not the same way it was like,

Kate Jewell (01:27:28.963)
innovate.

Peg Ricardo (01:27:29.026)
reinvent itself, right? Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:27:35.974)
becoming more prolific organization again.

Kate Jewell (01:27:40.306)
I mean, this is my constant refrain because I've been doing a lot of interviews for the book, which you've all touched on, like so many of the themes that I write about. And, you know, everybody's always asking me, like, what's next for college radio? Is it going to go away? Is it going to die? And I keep saying that, you know, college students are like really creative people and that we just need to give them the space to figure out what the next thing that college radio is going to be is. You know, it was a certain thing for that moment in the music industry and cultural politics.

Peg Ricardo (01:27:41.708)
Yeah.

Chuck Ferreira (01:28:04.72)
Yeah.

Kate Jewell (01:28:11.132)
And, you know, we're in a new media landscape, but radio is still valuable, and I think they can figure it out if we give them the space and the support.

Chuck Ferreira (01:28:20.869)
Yeah, I mean, there's some great stations that are still very popular. You've got MBR, you've got ERS. mean, those are big players, but still the model is more so, we were more so aligned with the kind of model that MBR has. ERS is basically professional, but MBR is still very much.

Kate Jewell (01:28:39.366)
Mm -hmm.

Chuck Ferreira (01:28:47.533)
I like listening to it because it's very much a college radio station still. But you know, they're very well run and they have a huge radius. So it's still important. It's still important.

Kate Jewell (01:28:57.84)
Yeah, and those community connections too. We should do that. Here, I could stop recording. I'll sign off. Let's see.