Leaving the dial

After 41 years, the Rock of Boston bids farewell

 There’s a video clip doing the rounds where U2’s Bono is strolling along a beach, saying, “Happy Birthday to BCN. Without BCN we’d all be BLEEP, let’s face it.”

WBCN was the first radio station in the United States to play U2’s music and after the Irish superstars performed a special invite-only show for the radio station in March at the Somerville Theatre, BCN execs and U2 retired to a private bash at posh restaurant Upstairs on the Square. The soiree was something of a last supper.

BCN’s 41-year-old music format switched to sports talk on Thursday, leaving the station that calls itself The Rock of Boston online at www.wbcn.com and at 98.5 HD 2 for HD radio listeners. According to a new generation of Boston musicians, Bono was wrong.   

“It doesn’t bother me,” says Wild Light’s Tim Kyle. “The big rock radio station is a dinosaur. It shocked me; I grew up listening to WBCN. But I haven’t listened to it for 10 years or so, because they play the same music they played in 1995.”

The Motion Sick’s Michael Epstein agrees.

“Every time I tuned into the station I heard Sublime, Pearl Jam, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers — the same music I heard in 1993. Commercial radio stations have doomed themselves by shrinking their playlists.”

However, the idea that Boston is a “sports town” and not a music one doesn’t jibe with the Hush Now’s Noel Kelly.

“That’s what Boston really needs, another sports radio show,” he scoffs. Kelly was worried BCN’s local artist showcase, Boston Emissions, would be nixed. But the show’s host, DJ Angelle Wood, snagged a spot for the show on BCN sister station, WZLX.

“The show being saved is a win,” says Wood. “In its new home there is new opportunity.”