Ray Reipen and The Boston Cultural Revolution

Ray Riepen was a hippie lawyer and serial entrepreneurial genius who in 1967 founded FM radio station WBCN 104.1 in Boston. Around the same time he also founded a club, The Boston Tea Party, and The Phoenix, an underground newspaper. Each one of these was a creation that shaped the hippie culture in Boston. But WBCN was the center for Boston area youths that were drawn to it as the source of relevant cultural information during this important period.

What was different about WBCN that made it so important among the culture of contemporary college students? WBCN was unique nationally in these years, 1968 to 1974. This was time of rebellious behaviors, the Vietnam conflict, Watergate, free love, and rock music was at its peak. This radio station broke all the rules. It offered music, news and entertainment, just what the rebellious youths of this time were looking for. WBCN was a 50,000-watt radio station that played rock music when no other FM station did. In addition to the music, they added programming that met the needs of a cultural group that had no idea that this was possible, and they took to it with an appetite that could not be satisfied. This included hiring feminist DJs, offered scheduled programs that included respectfully presented information about gay lifestyle, prison life, abused women, problems that drug use created and the DJs that read the latest pertinent news, all in addition to the new wave of rock music performed by artists no one had heard of, yet. They included Aerosmith and Bruce Springsteen to name two. All of this in the early 1970s during the undeclared war in Vietnam, Nixon and Herbert Hoover at the FBI. It was unthinkable.

How was WBCN able to be independent and broadcast under their own terms? The creator and independent owner, Ray Reipen, hired non-professional DJs and gave them a free hand in programming and advertising, and they used it. The station would not accept advertising for beauty products or other things the hippie culture might find objectionable. They played music you would not expect from a rock station, including classical, comedy, and literally anything the DJ felt like playing to the listeners.

Search for ''WBCN'' on Google.com to find information about this station. Links found will provide a wealth of history about this Station and Ray Riepen. Bruce Litchenstein produced an award-winning documentary film''WBCN and the American Revolutio'', released in 2021.

Riepen created these monuments of contemporary youth culture, then moved on in 1971 when unions set in (mmone.org, 2014) and his free hand of creativity became limited. He sold his businesses and went away. What was it that drove this man, whose appearance was that of a lawyer, to create such radically different businesses, things that had never existed before, sell each before their money-making peak and move on? No one can really understand genius, so we may never know.

References

Lichenstein Creative Media (2022), LCMedia Productions, Inc. https://lcmedia.com/

Music Museum of New England (2014, April 20), Ray Riepen. https://www.mmone.org/ray-riepen/

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