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NIK CARTER
WBCN Afternoon Personality

It is possible that more than any other voice on the station, Nik Carter represents the sound of WBCN in 1998. He started his professional radio career at crosstown WFNX doing overnights and then middays, and in the fall of 1995 he moved to 99.7 the Edge, WDGE in Providence. That's where he really refined his style as the WDGE's first morning jock (he was my competition when I did mornings on crosstown WBRU). After only a few months, WBCN plucked him from the Rhode Island airwaves to do evenings when Howard Stern was moved from evening tape-delay to a live broadcast, and just a few months after that he replaced Mark Parenteau in afternoon drive.

Now WBCN listeners know Nik Carter as that mischievous kid who is the class clown but always gets away with it. They also know about his well-publicized feud with Opie and Anthony, former drive jocks at crosstown WAAF. They know that Nik Carter is one of the best jocks in the radio business; they probably don't know that he is one of the nicest guys too, and he gives damn good interview.

Q: So growing up in Cambridge, did you listen to WBCN a lot?

A: "Oh yeah. I mean BCN is really, it's such a cornerstone. At the risk of sounding really arrogant, I mean, it's so astounding to be here because I mean this is pretty much where American FM rock radio was invented. I mean, the wacky FM morning show was invented here with Laquidera and the Big Mattress so BCN was always a presence. I mean the first place I heard most of the core alternative bands, the REM's and the Ramones of the world, was on BCN but also BCN always would play things that were, for lack of a better term, classic rock back in the day. BCN's always very weird and esoteric, but also a pretty bad-ass rock station. When I came here I remember I was interviewing with Tony Beradini and I remember saying to him, 'you know I remember hearing Junior, 'Mama Used To Say' on this station,' and Tony said to me, 'I'll do you better. Hot Chocolate, 'You Sexy Thing,' I have the gold record in my garage.' I remember hearing the remakes of Ray Parker, Jr., 'The Other Woman.' It was just a weird station but it always a very bad-ass rock station too."

Q: So you started doing radio when?

A: "I actually started in TV when I was a kid here, had my own show on channel 4 [WBZ-TV] which was abysmal. It was like a little magazine show for kids and then I went to NYU and studied theater and I worked at WNYU for the entirety of my time there. I actually got fired from my college radio station, too. Then I moved back, I worked at WFNX for about almost seven years and then I left there and went to Providence to work for the Edge for a few months and then I got to BCN. August 18, 1996."

Q: What was your first reaction when BCN called you and said, 'Come up here and do nights. Replace Stern.'

A: "It wasn't as extreme as you would think because about six years ago I was doing overnights at FNX and I actually came to Oedipus with a tape. I wasn't even looking for a job at that time, I was just getting no direction at FNX. And I said, 'Look, can you just, as a seasoned pro, can you just listen to this and just tell me something, anything' and you know he said everything he heard on the tape was great, but of course it was a highlights tape so he said I'd have to hear something unscoped. And I said okay, fine. So I just air checked a show, popped it in and he air checked it again and then like a couple of months later he ended up calling me and offering me a part-time job at BCN. And at the time, six years ago, I said no, because I didn't really think that I was ready, to be totally honest, and also they were still very classic rock oriented at the time and wasn't what I wanted to do. So when I was doing mornings in Providence, and Oedipus and I talked about me coming to do nights, yeah, it was a really weird thing. I came here and I replaced Stern: when Stern moved to mornings, I replaced Stern at night. And when I left Providence they replaced me with Mancow."

Q: Caught between the two warring national disc jockeys.

A: "Exactly. It was like 'Hey, look, don't shoot the messenger!' I mean, it was really weird. It was hugely flattering; Stern at night, the numbers as you might imagine are huge and when they decided to make that move and they knew they were gonna go back to playing music at night, they knew that just playing the music wouldn't be enough. Oedipus sort of had an idea for essentially what was a morning show at night and since I was already doing a morning show, it just sort of seemed like a natural fit. But I mean, yeah, I was scared shitless to be totally honest."

Q: What kind of things did you do then when you were doing nights here that made it like a morning show at night?

A: "Well I was doing a lot of the same bits that I do now on the afternoon shows, doing celebrity dicks and caught masturbating. It was a lot of phone calls and a lot of phone interaction. I mean, I was starting to write bits and produce bits but for what I do I think I'm best sort of spontaneous. But it was a personality driven show more than just the music. We were hoping that people would tune in for the personality of the jock as well. Because that's really what rock radio should be about and particularly alternative radio. I mean, there's so little personality left at alternative radio now. It's like there's so few jocks out there that are allowed to just do their thing and plus, the market had shifted so that about six or seven stations in the market were all sharing a lot of the same bands. I mean, you know the alternative thing had really, really taken hold here in Boston and it was everywhere from the CHR to the Hot AC to the AAA to us. We were all sharing a lot of the same bands and a lot of the same songs too, so Oedipus was very smart. He realized, look, there has to be another reason to listen to this radio station other than the fact that we're gonna play, say, 'Closing Time.'"

Q: And then you moved to afternoons in November of 1997. What was the reaction you had to that?

A: "My reaction or the listeners' reaction?"

Q: Yours first, the listeners' second I suppose.

A: "It was pretty overwhelming. I mean, Mark Parenteau had been there 20 years. Really, the immediate goal was just sort of damage control, because we really didn't seem to have anybody under the age of forty listening to us in the afternoon and it was like, 'something has to be done.' So I kind of felt like I had to reinvent the wheel in the afternoon, at least. But this is absolutely my dream that I set out to achieve thirteen years ago. You know, I sent Oedipus my first tape when I was nineteen and my ultimate goal -- whenever people said what do you want to do, well, people kept on telling me you should be a morning jock but I said no, I want to do afternoons in a large market. Ultimately I wanted to do afternoons at WBCN Boston, but I never ever thought it would happen, never."

Q: What was listener reaction, then, to getting rid of a guy who had been here 20 years. It was sort of the last link to the old BCN.

A: "Yeah, he was the last of the big three, Parenteau, Shelton, and Laquidera. There was a lot of stuff in the newspapers, you know, and he had bad-mouthed me quite a bit around town, so I was very sensitive to that. I was treading very lightly on my first day, and my first song that I played in the afternoon, I dedicated to him. I played Neil Young, 'Rockin' in the Free World.' I said, 'This is for Mark who is an inspiration of mine, one of the reasons why I wanted to get behind the mike, this is for you.' But to be totally honest, it might sound ungracious but the truth is there wasn't a huge listener outcry. I mean, I played it up on the air, I made it into a bit that I was absolutely the worst, you know, at the bottom trying to sneak my way out. But unfortunately [Parenteau] had really sort of stopped being a really major force in this market probably before I came in to BCN. Initially I thought it was gonna be tough for the listeners to get used to my style because they had been fed a steady diet of buttermilk for a while and I came in and I was like a two liter bottle of Jolt Cola comparatively, but it really wasn't that bad. It wasn't what I expected."

Q: Tell me about some of the signature bits of the Nik Carter show.

A: "We have a very popular feature which comes up every other Friday called 'Bi Day' which is basically where just bisexual girls come in and I have one bi girl and I get her a date with another girl. And that was born of a woman who called me and was freaking out and asking me how she was gonna tell her boyfriend that she was bisexual. I was surprised, I said, 'What do you mean? You sound like it's a bad thing." Well, she told me about how he hated that, he thought it was disgusting and that was like a running bit for three days because I said, 'Look, you know what, I don't believe that there's a heterosexual man out there who finds a bisexual woman unappealing.' The phone lines are flooded with guys calling in to say that he was crazy and she had told me that she had met another woman and so she'd actually offered him the option of the threesome and even if he didn't want to do the threesome, she was gonna be with this other woman and he could just watch. And he said no to that.

So she called me and asked me before she told him how she should tell him that she was bi and so I gave her advice, on the air. She told him she was bi, he dumped her, so she called me back, she said okay, well, I'm gonna go ahead with this date with this girl. They went to a hotel room, they made love, they used all sorts of toys. I had her to come in like the next day, she told me all about it on the air. And she was gorgeous. She told me all about it on the air. The girlfriend's little brother taped the show, and I guess the girlfriend didn't know that. I mean, the girlfriend's parents didn't know that she was into girls, so her little brother taped the show, played it for her parents and she was forbidden to see Jessie, my listener, ever again. So Jessie called me and said, 'Your show has cost me a boyfriend and a girlfriend.' I said, all right, come in this Friday, you want me to find you another boyfriend or you want me to find you a girlfriend? She said find me a girl, and that's where it came from, the bit sprang from there."

Q: Howard Stern's great line from Private Parts, 'lesbians equal ratings.'

A: "Yeah, but that was the amazing thing. I mean, initially I thought that was what people were gonna say, you know, say it was a carbon copy of Stern's lesbian dating game, but that's really not even where it came from. It was funny because women started calling me and saying how it was difficult to find other women because they weren't sure who was bisexual and who wasn't, and they didn't want to go and approach somebody who perhaps wasn't and risk offense. So I said okay, this way every other Friday I have a woman on the air. You're know she's bi, you know all the chicks are calling in to meet her are bi, and that's a huge feature.

Caught masturbating is something I do like every couple of weeks where people basically call in with their stories of how they were caught masturbating. Unbelievably so, they love to confess. The best was a woman who worked in a photo lab and she was developing pictures and she got a threesome, and she got all hot and bothered and pulled her tights down and went to work on herself and her boss walked in. And miraculously enough, she wasn't fired.

Celebrity dicks is another great bit where it is basically, you know, brush with greatness, but I just have people call in about celebrities they've met who were dicks to them. And the phones always ring off the hook. Boston being so close to New York and being a place where a lot of things are shot, you know, a lot of series and films, there's always celebrities coming through the hub, going to the Vineyard or whatever. So you always end up meeting somebody famous. And there's a lot of sports celebrities. We always get a Roger Clemens story, every single time I do it, every single time, about how Clemens stepped on a kid to get his Porsche, or pushed somebody out of the way who asked for an autograph. I mean sometimes they're so fucking funny these stories."

Q: The big thing that happened in the last year was the controversy between you and WAAF, where Opie and Anthony (now at New York's WNEW) went on the air and made a big deal out of the fact that you are black. My roommate, when I told him that I was doing this article, said 'Well, don't forget to mention he's black because it seems to be the only thing the Boston Globe ever says about him.' So what is your take, now that it's a few months down the line and they're not even there anymore?

A: "Well, I mean, it was pathetic. First of all, it wasn't just Opie and Anthony. Since they were my direct competitors in my day part, it was Opie and Anthony, but it started when I was on at night. I mean, that station has a history of this kind of behavior. When I was on at night opposite Rocko the Racist, he was the one that started it. And they used code words, he referred to me as the dark skinned lover and things of that nature, and disco boy. Actually, Parenteau was the first one who came to me and told me that he heard this, but then plenty of other people had heard it as well, and this was a big thing that went around the industry, that they referred to my show as the jigaboo jukebox when I was on at night. And you know, perhaps they weren't aware that jigaboo is basically a synonym for nigger.

So when I moved to afternoons, the first day I was on there, Opie and Anthony declared it Black Monday and they tried to say it was because Parenteau was gone and so they called it Black Monday. Then they were calling local kennels looking for their little black poodle Nik and then as things progressed, Opie and Anthony referred to me as 'the big brown turd' and things of that nature. And as I say, when the fighting really escalated and it got into the papers, that whole station came out against me, every single one of the jocks, because of statements that I'd made in the paper or whatever and you know it was crazy. I was receiving death threats.

Part of the reason why I don't have e-mail at the radio station is because Oedipus and the station as a whole tried to shield me from it, but you should have seen the e-mail I got. Oedipus had stacks of it that we saved. I mean, 'Opie and Anthony are gonna kick your black ass back to Africa,' you know, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger, Opie and Anthony rule,' 'Nigger, nigger, nigger AAF rules,' 'you fucking nigger, we'll kill you.' I mean this was e-mail, voice mail, and as I said, I got threatened in person a couple of times by you know loyal AAF listeners. It was insanity, it was absolutely ridiculous. And you know, it still happens to this day. They've been gone but it still goes on. I mean this has been going on for a couple of years, they were bashing my predecessor for very delicate aspects of his personal life.

This is nothing new for that radio station. That radio station has used racism, homophobia, and whatever else that was derogatory to do what they do. And that's not what I got into radio for -- I didn't get into radio to defend who I am. I mean the point was they were endlessly trying to find ways to point out to their audience that I was black. It was very important to them that their audience knew, and my audience knew that I was black, so they figured somehow that either lessened my credibility. I mean, they know who their audience is. Their audience is basically, you know, it's Beavis and Butthead. It's a bunch of kids who will be lucky to get their GED from the burbs, so I certainly wasn't what they were used to dealing with. A black man playing Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. Basically the attitude was, 'Who is he to play our music.' So it was heavy, it was a heavy couple of months as I say.

You know here I got the dream job, and as if there wasn't enough pressure anyway, just trying to keep the numbers up and taking over for a guy who had been there 20 years, now I have to deal with death threats."

Q: Well, did you ever run into them around town?

A: "Yeah, I had met them, I met the two of them backstage at a Bush show, we were in Veruca Salt's dressing room. And when I met them and they knew who I was, and of course I knew who they were, but we had never met -- I think they were a bit nervous, because they said a lot of things. I mean, not about me, this when I was still on at night, I wasn't in direct competition with them, and when I met them they were very gracious. I thought everything they did on air, you know, all the racist and homophobic stuff, all the sexist stuff, was just an act, and I said, well, if that's their shtick that's their shtick. Opie and I had e-mailed each other a couple of times and he was very complimentary of my show. And then when I moved to afternoons they snapped, and I initially still thought it was just them doing their gig, you know.

But I just remember, after the first time I was in the Boston Herald, it was a big picture of me and a big three-quarter page article and they just flipped out. In that article they claimed that I had called them racist, which I did not, and that's where a lot of it began. So, I mean, I don't think initially a lot of it was genuine, I think they were just looking for a little bit of publicity. And anytime I talked to anybody in an interview capacity, they always want to ask me about Opie and Anthony and it got to the point where every single time my name was mentioned, their name was mentioned in the same sentence. Because, you know, I was getting a lot of press since I was replacing the guy who had been here for 20 years.

They, of course, were getting none. And I guess, they just flipped, they were really riding my coattails with the publicity. Any time my name came up in the press, and it came up pretty often for a couple of months, you know, their name was right there, too. And it was really weird, as I say, I'd met them and they were very polite and we hung out at the show and then they flipped out and they were just very vicious. I mean, they lost it. Opie lost it one day, Opie said 'fuck' twice on the air. 'You have no fucking talent,' you know, he threatened to punch me and I was like, okay, that's good. But, yeah, I still to this day, I have no idea where these guys are coming from."

Q: Well, are they still talking about you on the air at WAAF or has it sort of calmed down?

A: "I don't listen to them and I no longer have e-mail. But you know, when I go out, if I go out to shows that are bands that we share, you know there's always somebody to add static, there's always somebody has some static from it. So that's something that I've become accustomed to"

Q: Where do you see BCN in ten years?

A: "Wow. Don't ask me, 'cause I couldn't tell you. I think whatever is going on in ten years, BCN will pretty much be right there if not ahead of the curve, because Oedipus has really steered the station over so many trends. In the 80's when there was a lot more sort of pop alternative music, you know, BCN played bands like Duran Duran. They weren't the staple of the BCN musical diet, but they certainly had a place. Every once in a while I joke on the air, miraculously enough I haven't had my knuckles rapped or anything, every once in a while I joke about how BCN went through a confused period and if you go through the halls, you'll see like a Dokken gold record or whatever. But right next to the Dokken gold record will be, I don't know Sex Pistols, 'Nevermind The Bullocks.'

I know that BCN will always be absolutely part of Boston. I'm happy as a clam at high tide. In truth, so many of my early childhood memories, as corny as that sounds, are associated with BCN. I remember the night Bob Marley died, I remember being at a party and BCN was on the radio and we found out that way. You know, when John Lennon was shot I remember hearing about that on BCN and I just remember hearing the anguish in the jock's voice who reported that. Metal Mike breaking in at night when Len Bias died, I mean, that was unbelievable. So it's always been more than a radio station. It's always been a cultural beacon, really."

Q: If you weren't working at WBCN, or I guess, if you weren't doing radio, what would you be doing?

A: "I can't even begin to answer that. I studied theater at NYU, you know and I had done a little bit of soap work and a little bit of series work here and there and I had a couple of lines in a couple of films that all ended up on the cutting room floor. But I've always wanted to do this. I think honestly if I weren't at BCN I'd probably still be at WXEX in Providence. I really would. In the six months I was there I got five job offers you know and a couple of big ones. One in L.A., one in Miami, one in Philadelphia and you know the only thing, the only station that could take me away from that was BCN because this was you know a childhood goal of mine to be where I am now at BCN.

You asked me about FNX, but honestly, I really feel like even though it was a little over six months, I really feel like my career began in Providence. I mean, before I had gotten to Providence I'd never taken a phone call, Brent Peterson taught me how to do phone calls and you know since it was an Edge station, I was working with Tom Calderon who I'd known for a long time. He could never get around to hiring me at DRE, that punk, but he said something to me that absolutely changed my whole life. We were just talking one day and he had been listening to my show. I was still young and trying to find my voice and figure out exactly where I wanted to go because I had always been sort of trying to be this CHR/Jed The Fish hybrid and it just wasn't working. When I got to Providence I felt like I could really be myself. And I'll never forget Tom saying to me, you know, 'when I listen to you I hear this sort of Dennis Miller rant-like quality.' He said, 'You know, you should really just allow yourself to just do more of that stream of consciousness. When you just sit and make observations, you know, it's good. It's topical, it's poignant and it's funny.' And he said, 'If you can just be the guy you are, as cynical as you can be, your listeners will follow you wherever you lead them.' And not to say that I'm emulating anybody or trying to emulate Miller, as brilliant as he is.

But that really struck me and that's really what I did from that point on. I basically just would sit there and talk, say what I thought. You know, whether it be musical issues or life issues it has been amazing, the response, and that's really what I try to do now. That's kind of why I really don't do many produced bits. I mean for one thing, when I came in I wanted there to be a difference between what Opie and Anthony did and what I did. And they were just like bit, bit, bit, they were just cranking out bits left and right. And I really wanted there to be a definite distinction between what we were both doing and so what I tried to do is fairly low tech: come in, play the music, talk to the people, the listeners, take phone calls, you know, stir up debate. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's relatively topical. Sometimes it just sucks ass."