This excerpt from Dave O'Brian's article (actually, about WBOS-FM) gives a good account of a major reason why we consider Maxanne Sartori to be one of the most important individuals in Boston rock history. She was with WBCN, according to our records, from 1970 to 1977--a time when that station mattered a lot. By that time, the Bosstown promotion fiasco had done tremendous damage to the New England rock community. Of the really good bands from the Bosstown era, I believe only Orpheus kept playing into the early 1970s. The old Club 47 coffeehouse had been turned into a bookstore/gallery. And even the mighty Boston Tea Party was on its last legs. The Boston-Cambridge scene was in serious need of help.

Maxanne Sartori joined the WBCN staff in the fall of 1970.

They needed to hire a woman [said Sartori] because some radical feminists were angry at Charles Laquidara. He had said on the air that "We need some chicks to type." So the feminists sent him a box of baby chicks. You could say I owe my career to Charles because he's the one who said chicks on the radio.¹

Ernie Santosuosso of the Boston Globe thought that J. Geils "restored credibility to the Boston rock scene."² And while that band's debut album, The J. Geils Band (CD, Atlantic, 1970), was critically acclaimed, the group's rise to its Freeze Frame (CD, EMI America, 1981) peak was far from rapid. Much as I love J. Geils, I subscribe to the theory that it was Aerosmith circa 1974-1975, following the success of "Dream On" and especially the "Sweet Emotion" single, that brought Boston out of its post-Bosstown depression.³ And hard-rock fan Maxanne Sartori was largely responsible for getting Aerosmith's music out to the New England record-buying public.⁴

Michael Cleanthes and Asa Brebner formed Mickey Clean and the Mezz in 1972. By September 1974, this outfit was playing original material at the Rathskeller (affectionately known as the Rat) in Boston's Kenmore Square. Quite soon, a diverse rock scene was building in the area, centered on the Rat, the Club in Cambridge, and later, Cantones. More and more of the bands were performing in a new-wave/punk style. By early 1976, a certain quirky group, with a seemingly ever-changing membership, started going by the name, Cap'n Swing; and again, it was Maxanne Sartori who put the band's music before rock audiences, by playing their radio tapes on WBCN. These players included Ric Ocasek, Benjamin Orr, and Elliot Easton.

By the end of the year, Ocasek/Orr friend Greg Hawkes had joined (one might say, re-joined) the band; and on Sartori's recommendation, former Modern Lovers and DMZ drummer David Robinson was recruited. "I figured it was worth a try," said Robinson. "It was going to be my last band." These guys gave their debut performance as the Cars at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire on New Year's Eve. Members of the band had been working constantly on their music since the fall. Said Robinson, "We knew we were good before we did our first gig."⁵

Those demos found their way to influential hometown DJ Maxanne Sartori, who put "Just What I Needed" and "My Best Friend's Girl" into heavy rotation at WBCN. Unreleased demos by unestablished bands were even harder to get on the radio in 1977 than they are now; and when Cars songs started appearing on radio tipsheets next to Aerosmith and Elton John, with the word "tape" listed where the label name should be, it sent up a flag for A&R reps to make a beeline toward Boston.⁶

Going through some of our archive's materials, arranged chronologically, it's impressive how much Boston's 1976 rock community had rebounded from the failed Bosstown promotion. And our sources of information generally point to Maxanne Sartori as one of the driving forces behind this development.⁷ We don't have enough material at this time to write a full profile of her career in Boston. So it seems fitting and proper that we post this appreciation of her pivotal contributions on WBCN.

-- Alan Lewis, posted April 5, 2002

1. Boston Globe, 6/8/1983.

2. Boston Globe, 9/18/1977.

Of course, Santosuosso was right, as far as he carried the point.

3. Steve Morse of the Boston Globe has made this point in several articles--and probably a whole lot more than several.

4. Len Epand, in the 9/25/1975 issue of Rolling Stone, called Sartori "the first DJ to give Aerosmith airplay in Boston, on WBCN-FM." According to Sartori, Boston's rock critics were nowhere to be found in Aerosmith's early days. Thus, it was Maxanne Sartori, more than anyone else, who broke the band that reintroduced Boston's rock community to a national audience.

Aerosmith's debut album sold 40,000 copies in Boston alone, and "Dream On" was a bit local hit, both thanks in large part to Sartori; but the single and LP did a lot less, commercially, outside New England. "Sweet Emotion" was a small national hit and the album, "Get Your Wings" went gold by April 1975, inspiring Columbia Records, at last, to put up serious money to promote Aerosmith. We think it's fair to say the investment paid off.

5. The New England Music Scrapbook operates in a pretty folky part of New England, and our archive focuses a lot on folk music well into the 1970s. This is unusual, and owes much to where I lived at the time, because I grew up in and around Bangor, Maine, on big band swing, country, and rock and roll (with a heavy emphasis on Boston bands that were popular up there). My listening matter started broadening again, first through the music of country singers Yodeling Slim Clark and Dick Curless and then the Cars. The Cars and their advocate, Maxanne Sartori, thus exerted a huge influence on the start of this Web site.

The members of the Cars were helped by many people on their way to success, going all the way back to the time Ric Ocasek's grandmother bought him a guitar when he was 10. They have always seemed grateful, and we give these guys very high marks, indeed, for passing on the favor by helping newer bands, in turn.

6. From the booklet that accompanies The Cars Anthology: Just What I Needed (2 CDs, Elektra Traditions/Rhino, 1995).

7. Special mention should be made, too, of James Isaacs (Henry Armetta), who founded first the Real Paper's "Local Color" column and then went on to found "Cellars by Starlight" in the Boston Phoenix. Isaacs gave extensive coverage to Boston's new club bands of that era.

We received the following summary of Maxanne Sartori's career from Don Barrett of www.laradio.com:

Sartori, Maxanne: KLIT, 1994. Maxanne started her radio career in 1969 at progressive KLFM-Seattle. A year later she crossed the country to WBCN-Boston and stayed with 'BCN until 1977 when she joined Jazz outlet WRVR-New York. In 1983, Maxanne went to program WBOS-Boston and the following year joined WNEW as md and dj until 1987. Following her stint on the East Coast, Maxanne worked Seattle and Monterey radio stations. She currently lives in New York and is in the record business. -- E-mail message, 3/16/2002

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