What Balcony, radio shows 1984-86



Returning to Somerville, Mass from the cross-country Olympia adventure, we looked for somewhere to live. Jake got hooked up in a house with Lenny DiFranza. I eventually got a room in a house with Len's friend Stuart Hoyle, who was having a nervous breakdown and was never around. The other roommate was a Viet Nam vet who played trumpet in the Boston Subway stations. The house was in one of the worst neighborhoods in Somerville. Gangs of kids would occupy the front steps for hours.

I attended the Boston Museum School, where I started work on a film about Hollis Frampton, and did radio shows at WMFO. Jeff Plansker began doing a late-night show right after my own, so we merged them into one 8 hour slot. Tim Clifford also appeared regularly for the show. My idea was to open the studio into the spaces outside the broadcast booth. We narrated the sunrises and talked about racoons walking on the railroad tracks outside. We hung out on the balcony, which was actually a fire escape. The show became known as What Balcony and went on for about 2 years, continuing the tradition of freeform improv and anything goes that we'd done with other groups of people. Kip Chinian was also doing a show on WMFO at this point, so we'd see him there more often, doing his own brand of oddball assault, telling stories about running in the fog on the baseball field out across the train tracks behind Curtis Hall.

Slowly the group of people we'd known around WMFO began to change, some moving away from the school. Factions began to form. I received criticism rather than support from people who once had liked me and my approach to radio. While I continued being involved with WMFO until about 1987, it was good to leave the area eventually, and leave the radio station open for new hands to play with.

There is a CD of excerpts from What Balcony shows available here.