All in Music Features

All Music Features

Music Features

WFNX dies before it gets old

Passion Pit

One of the greatest anti-establishment rallying cries of the 20th century was the notion that you can't trust anyone over the age of 30. If what free speech activist Jack Weinberg famously told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1965 — a year before the creation of the Boston Phoenix — was in fact an accurate caution, then perhaps the sentiment also holds true for alternative rock radio.

>> SHARE YOUR WFNX MEMORIES: WFNX.COM/WEAREWFNX <<

WFNX, the trailblazing, bratty, and oft unruly rock radio station launched in 1983 to give the music section of the Phoenix an aural presence on the FM dial, will never blow out the candles on its crusty, salty 30th birthday cake. WFNX's 101.7 FM frequency was sold to Clear Channel last week by Phoenix publisher Stephen Mindich, ending a nearly-three-decade run as a forum that put alternative rock radio on the map in an embodiment of eternal youth and a rebel yell. "It was an institution," says current program director Paul Driscoll. "Boston has lost a piece of its identity and soul."

Amanda Palmer

Which seems in line with WFNX's raucous history. The station always seemed to teeter on the brink of chaos, balancing life on the edge from its initial broadcasts helmed by radio misfits in 1983 (after Mindich purchased Lynn-based WLYN-FM) to recent years, which saw listeners shift to the Internet, iTunes, and satellite radio. The early years set the tone for its legacy, as the station joined a small handful of alt-rock radio outlets that were emerging just as the modern-rock underground was set to break through into the mainstream in the early '90s.