The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 97

Literary Life F2 Book Review F3 Going Places F6-8 Advice F12 Movie Directory F4-5 TV and Radio Fll-12 THE BOSTON GLOBE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 2000 J-' 1 11 i New-rock 'BCN reverts to old ways of recruiting males ,1 if- jgFW (i By Clea Simon GLOBE CORRESPONDENT i 'M 1 i The music is meant to be played loud: forceful waves of guitar riding a heavy bass beat The who comes on to joke before another barrage of distortion and rage, makes fun of a female caller. She had complained about his language, and that made her fair game for the young man with the microphone and the invisible audience, which he presumes is largely male, young, and cranking the volume even as he speaks. Is the radio tuned to WAAF-FM (105.7), Boston's bad-boy hard-rock station? No, it's WBCN-FM (104.1), the top-ranked alternative rock station. As the up-and-coming WAAF has started to meet and even best WBCN in recent rating periods, an undeclared battle has begun. And as the arrests and general misbehavior of WBCN's May 27 River Rave made clear, it's apparent that the alternative rock station is carrying the fight onto WAAF's turf, aiming to beat the hard-rock station at its own game.

The result, for listeners, is two stations that have never sounded more alike. "Competitors who get locked into one-on-one format battles often wind up resembling each other consciously and subconsciously," explains Tom Taylor, editor of the radio-trade publication Street Daily. "It was true in the Cold War, and it's true in the rock wars in Boston. And this battle has enough testosterone to run the New England Patriots whose games are aired on WBCN for sev- A -i Taf SUZANNE KRE1TER GLOBE STAFF PHOTO Ken Levine (above), majority owner of Irrational Garnet In South Boston, Is one of a number of local video-game entrepreneurs. 4i vXl.

By Nathan Cobb GLOBE STAFF Levine, who spent a short time as a Hollywood scriptwriter after graduating from Vassar in 1988, is the majority owner of Irrational Games in South Boston, which is developing two game titles with seven-figure production budgets. Come nightfall he goes home, works some more, and, yes, often fires up a game or two. "I was up until 3 o'clock playing Mario Golf the other night," he sheepishly declared on a recent afternoon. Once upon a time, guys like this might have been trying to crank out the great American noveL Or peddle a screenplay in Hollywood. Ken Levine, in fact, actually was a scriptwriter for a while.

But now the 33-year-old Arlington resident is creating characters for a much Jnvfili CK Young guns are laboring to create the video games they really want to play I 1 If 1 Bill oJ GLOBE STAFF PHOTO MATTHEW J. LEE A fan crowd-surfing at the WBCN-FM-sponsored River Rave on May 27. eral seasons." On paper, the two shouldn't hare much in common. When the CBS-owned WrfCN switched formats to the alternative or "modern" rock format approximately five years ago, it supposedly embraced a fresh mentality with the new musical style. That meant that not only were the songs played more daring, more influenced by '70s punk and '80s New Wave than by classic rock, but also that the Js wooed an audience that was seen as better educated and more evenly divided between the sexes than traditional rock listeners.

The alternative format after all, had grown out of noncommercial college radio, which promoted more experimental music on independent labels. Coming out of the "do it yourself' punk ethos, this format also supposedly embraced nontraditional artists and fans minorities and women. RADIO, Page F9 smaller screen, although not necessarily a smaller audience. Ken Levine's got game. Levine is one of a gaggle of local video-game entrepreneurs, former gameboys and an occasional gamegirl who hunkered down circa 1980 with a joystick and, say, an Atari 2600.

Today, they're working long hours and bucking longer odds to create the computer and console game hits that dot a chancy and changing business. But high risk can mean high yield: video games have grown to rival the movie industry as a cash cow $6.1 billion in US sales last year. "I could go off somewhere else and make more money," added Levine, who was sitting inside new office space that overlooks the bricks of industrial Southie and is semi-filled with about 20 programmers, designers, and artists. "But I'm part of a technologyart form that's still trying to find itself. I'm helping to define it It's like the movie industry at the turn of the century.

It's exciting." Herein the standard bio for such grown-up vidkids: Fashion Notes Summer reruns you can wear By Tina Cassidy GLOBE STAFF Drawings for Magdalen Abakanowicz's dancing figures, proposed for the UMass sculpture park. By Christine Temin GLOBE STAFF Jt I. i Traditional guayabera short-sleeve spread-collar shirts worn by Cuban men have also made a comeback, just in time for those dress-down office appearances, untucked, with khakis. How mainstream have these become? You can find the Cubavera brand at Filene's or although you have to look hard, because sales clerks rarely know what they're called. They don't come just in white or 100 percent cotton anymore, either.

They're pink, baby blue, yellow, beige, and some sweater knits with zippers. Fast-forward to 1980, when you first read "Preppy Handbook" for clues on how many pieces of duct tape would be appropriate to hold your Weejuns together. Eye of the Needle on Newbury Street seems to remember the look just FASHION NOTES, Page F10 This summer's retro chic timeline starts before World War II and ends around the time you last cracked "The Official Preppy Handbook." Trend-spotting Governor Benjamin Cayetano of Hawaii has proclaimed this "The Year of the Aloha Shirt," which was invented in the 1930s, hit peak popularity in the '50s, and reemerged when thrift-store-shopping hippies bought them in the '60s. The shirts whose inventor, Ellery J. Chun, died last month at 91 initially sold for about $1.

Today, the best vintage ones can cost thousands. Or you can buy the affordable knockoff. So, you'd rather look like Ricky Public art at UMass: It's still no walk in the sculpture park A barren peninsula enlivened even ennobled by a host of sculptures by a roster of the most esteemed international artists working today; a project paid for privately, but accessible, for free, for the enjoy- Perspectives mentofall. What's to object to? UMass-Bos- ton art history professor Paul Hayes Tucker thought there wasn't anything at all, when he conceived his plan for a public sculpture park at UMass four years ago. In late 1997, the first work went up a vast steel abstraction by Mark di Suvero.

His 55-foot-tall "Hum" became the big man on campus, sculpturally speaking. It wasn't a work anyone could ignore, but no one objected, not to Tucker's knowledge. Then, last month, some members of a group called the CtolumbiaSavin Hill Civic Association objected to the park PERSPECTIVES, Page F10 GLOBE STAFF PHOTOS MATTHEW J. LEE This season's cool shirts for men have a familiar look: top, a Tommy Hitfiger aloha style; below It, the traditional guayabera; at bottom, a Polo Sport aloha shirt All are from Macy's..