Airwaves

by Brian Goslow

Nothing captures the attention of an audience like a "best of" show. May 20 and 27, from 10:30 p.m. to midnight on WCUW (91.3 FM), Worcester Phoenix "On the Rocks" columnist John O'Neill will be joined by his predecessor, Joe Longone, to present the 50 greatest rock-and-roll groups of the past 30 years. The shows will mark the end of O'Neill's reign as host of the station's Wednesday-night showcase, The Litter Box.

"I'm fierce about what's called rock and roll and was shocked when I was switching channels and turned on VH-1," explains an exasperated Longone. "They were doing the 100 greatest artists of all time and at number 26 there's Chuck Berry, the father of rock and roll. Then came Bob Marley at number 25, and I could only figure they were using pop artists -- everybody makes the mistake of calling anything after 1955 rock and roll. After watching that, I told John we should do something to celebrate the history of real rock and roll."

Longone and O'Neill used three criteria in choosing their Fab 50. "Number one was rock action," Longone explains. "How far could this band blow your mind when you saw them live?" A band's recording career and its overall influence were also taken into consideration. "How many heads did they turn and how many bands did they spawn? The group's got to have the fire, the simplicity, and honesty of Chuck Berry or the first Beatles' album. The joy of performing has to be jumping off the records."

Longone admits the list is subjective and personal. "Half the bands your average fan wouldn't know because they've never been played on commercial radio. There's a great ignorance out there about anything from the past. Rock and roll is a genre just like jazz and blues. If you go to see rock and roll, you should see something close to its traditional roots.

"We decided since rock and roll was supposedly dead in the late '60s [an event he notes coincided with the publication of the first issue of Rolling Stone, 30 years ago], we'll do the latter-day sub-culture bands who still play rock and roll the way Chuck Berry used to do it."

Who's in the Top 50? "I'd rather keep it as much of a secret as possible so people tune in," Longone says. "The bands who influenced the '77 bands are in there, seminal bands like the Velvet Underground and the Stooges. If `Search and Destroy' isn't rock and roll, it's what it should have evolved to. It's gritty, street wise, with basic chords. Many bands, even in Worcester, were influenced by the Stooges. That was the book they chose to read from.

"There's a certain amount of late-'70s American and British bands who chose a traditional form of rock and roll, along with a scattering of '80s and '90s bands." The Time Beings, whose It's About . . . Time CD was recently used for music bumpers on regional sports radio, are the only local group on the list. "It was probably the only time they've ever been on commercial radio. They've released a limited amount of material, but what they have is pretty good. At certain times, we were blown away by them live, even when there were only five people in the crowd."

This might be your last chance to hear two people who've donated years of their lives to the local music scene. "It'll be like the old days; we'll alternate selections, trying to outdo each other each song," says Longone, with much anticipation. "It'll be a boxing match like Frazier and Ali. You can't get two people more nutty about rock and roll."