The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 81

C15, Nik Carter's raucous drive-time radio act THE BOSTON GLOBE FRIDAY, NOVEMBER riHHifffl) i the music flowing with minimal interruptions, opinions or quips; at a few it's to establish a personality. This, says Berardini, is integral to his station's identity. "What keeps you from not being just another commodity?" he asks. "You can hear the same music on six stations." In the wake of Howard Stern and Don Imus (heard on WEEI-FM) come folks like Carter: friendly provocateurs. "I'm not a shock jock," Carter maintains.

"I'm not out there to try and get people to say, 'Oh my God, I can't believe he got away with saying Stern cast such a huge shadow over the industry as a whole, and particularly as he's our morning man, it's sort of like taking the path of least resistance to compare me to somebody who's such a looming character." Carter agrees that being a local radio DJ is one of the cheapest forms of celebrity. "My illusions of stardom are bull," he says. "Unless, you're on the level of a Stern, Imus, or Rick Dees, you're kidding yourself if you think you're a radio star." He laughs that his four-hour shift is like working "George Jetson hours." Carter generally finishes a shift by checking his mail, noting the number of hits he's gotten on the WBCN website. (Top count during his second week on air: over 1,400.) He tries to e-mail his correspondents, those who love him, those who loathe him. He says he's getting "a little more comfortable" and "there's a little less tears" over Parenteau's exit.

Afternoon drive is Carter's baby now. You won't find him there today, though: It's a day off, as it is for Opie and Anthony. But they'll all be back on Monday. est ratings and Rocko beat Nik at night and this is how a 'heritage rock station' battles when they start to lose." "Nik takes no guff from anybody," says Oedipus. "He takes these turkeys 'right This is so far beyond a radio war.

We have to let record labels know what WAAF is doing. We're calling them Nazis." (The assumption here is that record labels would not only concur with Oedipus's take on WAAF but pull bands from WAAF-related events. Not Mittman says, "I lost a big pail of my family in the Holocaust, and I take very specific umbrage to those comments." Fans of irony will love this: WBCN's owner, CBS Radio, has a deal pending to purchase WAAF's parent company, American Radio Systems. There's some question about whether the sale will be approved, since it might give the company a percentage of radio revenue in the market that the Department of Justice will not allow. If it is approved, though, everyone will be working for the same boss, which might well change the tone of the competition.

Can this hatchet be buried? "There's nothing to bury, to my mind," says Carter. "We were not the instigators. It was never my desire to have to defend who I am on radio." Talks too much Carter did not get into the business to become a lightning rod or a racial symbol. He did TV when he was still in the seventh grade, chil dren's shows for WBZ. He started in radio as a teenager, filing spots for National Public Radio's "Spider's Web," a news and entertainment show for teenagers.

As a teenager, he began sending audiotapes to radio stations, WBCN among them. A theater major, Carter worked in college radio at WNYU-FM, until he was booted him off the air for yakking too much. (He admits the criticism might have been right: Even now, he says, Oedipus's only criticism of him is that he'll "use 25 words when three will What Oedipus dug is that he was "funny without being stupid" and knew "the music inside and out," Carter says. He gained a measure of fame as a music-sawy nighttime jock at alternative-rock station WFNX-FM in Lynn, working there for seven years. Carter left 'FNX to do morning drive for WDGE-FM (the Edge, 99.7) in Providence, where he expected to work at least a year and a half.

WBCN, however, snatched him up after six months. Carter is a knowledgeable music fan, his roots going back to the first wave of punk rock, rap, and alt-rock. "The Clash, Sex Pistols, and PiL changed my life," he says. "Prince is God. Public Enemy, Rage Against the Machine." Though he takes potshots at various music celebrities -recently the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl for romancing Winona Ryder, and Gavin Rossdale of Bush Duran Dui-an of the it's not his music knowledge that he stresses on air.

It's his personality. Rock radio has split two ways: personality arid non-personality. At many stations, the DJ's job is keep Continued from preceding page man Greg Hill was staging a walk from Worcester to Boston raising $22,000 for the Boston Food Bank. 'Off-color' For Carter, this is not exactly the radio journey he had in mind as a kid growing up in Cambridge, listening to Charles Laquidara, Mark Paren-teau, and Sunny Joe White. "I got into radio to meet girls, to play music," says Carter.

"And I'm not easily offended. I've been known to say some things that were for lack of a better term, pardon me off-color. "Shots about me, shots about the show, that's to be expected," he continues. "There's a certain amount of jealousy." But though he can put up with competitive jibes, he says, racial epithets have no place on the airwaves. Carter says he's never hidden his race.

"How could possibly?" he says. "As visible as I am. I mean, I'm out a lot, whether at station events or going to shows. For the most part, people have an idea who I am when they see me." On air, Carter has called Opie and Anthony "Dopie and Anus" or "Dopie and Adolf," or more politely, "Hokey and Ain't-funny." Rocko is "Rocko the racist." He calls WAAF "We Are All Fonies" and "the hate station in Worcester." WBCN's website has displayed a picture of Rocko morphing into a Ku Klux Klansman, and has called WAAF Hate Hate Says Mittman: "People who are not creative go down into the gutter to compete. The problem is Opie and Anthony beat Parenteau in the lat wm 'r; SUm mSm (J I3HSII! irsix dSts EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT.

KmnA, c0ARr 5: nW I AY I I iMI lUALL JUAlXL Wed-Sun IVUVV I LrVIIIMU! OnKn4feUSquarCambrk4S4-9800 SHOW Beavis and Butt-head dead? Heh-heh Letterman, a master of irony and adolescent humor, was the perfect ally. "Beavis and Butt-head," which premiered in March 1993, is the product of an ironic tone flourishing in the media youth culture of the early 1990s. The show allowed MTV to be fashionably cynical about the promotional music videos that had been its bread and butter for its first decade before it had begun relying on original programming like "The Real World." As Beavis and Butt-head joked stupidly about the stupidity of the videos they watched, they spoke to a generation suspicious of MTVs corporate intensity, wary of the 1980s-styled hard sell in music, and increasingly drawn to independent labels. Of course, Beavis and Butt-head were never too critical of the videos to stop watching them In tonight's final episode, Beavis and Butt-head skip class for three weeks, causing the school to think the boys are dead. As Daria, principal McVicker, and others flash back through memories of the pair, the two sit at home on the couch watching reruns of "The Beverly Hillbil BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD Time: Tonight at 10 Rated: TVli ings, and they compared the boys not only to beloved morons of pop culture such as Wayne and Garth of "Wayne's World," Cheech and Chong, and the heroes of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," but to classic kids' entertainment like "The Three Stooges." Often, as with most cultural arguments, the debate became symbolic and raged among those who'd never even watched "Beavis and Butt-head." The pair, in their crudely drawn lines, showed up both on the cover of Newsweek as evidence TV Tricks: The Billion-Dollar Battle to Insult Your Intelligence" and on the cover of Rolling Stone as youth heroes got up in iconic Elvis drag.

While family organizations campaigned against the show, David Letterman became its best fan, appearing with Beavis and Butt-head and making nightly references to them on his show. BEAVIS Continued from Page CI show that polarized America for a moment in the early 1990s, while delivering a new sound and attitude heh-heh" to the pop lexicon. By flaunting their ignorance and meanness, Mike Judge's suburban heavy-metaloids stimulated a storm of intellectual attacks and passionate defenses. In the show's lingo, some of America thought they sucked, the rest thought they were cool. Detractors blamed "Beavis and Butt-head" for dragging the IQ of youth-market TV to an all-time low, and inspiring teenagers to play with fire and abuse animals.

They pressured the show -successfully to soften its contents and run a message warning viewers not to mimic the violent activities of the cartoon characters. Supporters, meanwhile, saw, the show's misogynistic and scatological humor as liberation from the rigors of political correctness. They celebrated as Beavis and Butt-head ridiculed their baby-boomer teacher and his touchy-feely New Age preach- ONE OF THE I. aT4 lies" and "I Dream of Jeannie." It's a slight but amusing series closer, ending with our unpretty pah-stumbling into the suburban sunset, their best lines from "Pull my finger" to "Dammit, everything on TV sucks" still echoing in our heads. floiij Playing SONY THEATRES CHERI SHOWCASE CINEMAS CIRCLE cuveuuoaiat SONY THEATRES SOMERVILLE SHOWCASE CINEMAS REVERE tSSEUBLYSaimu im-ttu I 7i rajiiii Pillow VERY BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR!" "LUSCIOUSLY SENSUAL-Scxual intrigue and create an atmosphere of extraordinary erotic tension." "ONE OF THE YEAR'S BEST! An inspired achievement! There has never been a film quite like 'Eve's Bayou'." HI II "TO HAIL 'EVE'S BAYOU' AS THE BEST AFRICAN AMERICAN FILM EVER, WOULD BE TO UNDERSTATE ITS UNIVERSAL ACCESSIBILITY TO ANYONE ON THIS PLANET" "HAUNTING! STUNNING! HERE IS A FILM TOUCHED BY "THE POISE AND PASSION IN 'EVE'S BAYOU' LEAVES ONE GRATEFUL, EXHAUSTED AND NOURISHED, FOR THE RESTLESS MU.il i I il ixttnrrZ7tr-rT SPIRIT HERE IS TRUE SOUL FOOD." i i 'T' I 'c it11 SAMUEL JACKSON YNN WHITFIELD i in i in i mitii i 1 1 i mm miw i VP HMD I fit These Selected LUU UU UU fl SHOWCASE CINEMAS WOBURN GENERAL CINEMA BURLINGTON 10 SONY THEATRES DANVERSS WJHMMOI Late shew lonigN at Crete, Wobum, Fra nrnghami Revert SHOWCASE CINEMAS DEDHAM m.

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