This post previously appeared in my old blog Beeblehead dot com back in 2015. I’ve made revisions to the text and plan to update Peter’s story in a future post here after I travel to Knoxville to see first-hand how Peter’s fared since his improbable landing in that town almost eight years ago. I continue to add more of Peter’s radio shows to his archive I’ve established here at Mixcloud. If you’re a fan of rock music and have eclectic musical tastes, I strongly recommend giving his shows a listen.
For reasons not fully understood, even to me, I have taken on a very special project in Peter Choyce. I first became aware of Peter during his days as a college-radio disc jockey for WZBC in Boston. Today, he's a recovering addict living in Knoxville, Tennessee, subsisting on the generosity of the taxpayers and a few dear friends, who like me, see a rare talent in Peter, and who think the world would be a lesser place without his voice. I've taken on this project purely for selfish reasons. I curate Peter’s extensive archive of radio shows, and I get ground floor access to what might become one of the most amazing come-back stories ever.
College radio’s golden age
My fascination with college radio began just about the time I left college. With the early 1980s came the beginning of the end for AOR or progressive rock radio, a time when musically savvy DJs enjoyed some autonomy in the studio. The nascent new wave movement got airplay on these stations, but those that played anything as “radical” as Elvis Costello outside of a few alternative stations soon became as rare as hen’s teeth. By the mid-1980s, the commercial radio landscape had devolved into the wasteland of classic rock and top-40 schtick that still festers on dying airwaves today.
Meanwhile, the Western Massachusetts college radio scene flourished. Low-powered stations scattered up and down the Connecticut River valley between Northampton and Hartford run by students filled the gaps left behind by commercial radio. Naturally, when I moved to Boston in 1984, I expected more and better. I soon discovered otherwise. While more professional in operation and stronger in signal, the stations adhered to more rigid formats, rarely deviating from long-established schedules. WZBC broadcasting from Boston College proved the exception, and within its more free-wheeling programming, I discovered Peter Choyce.
Peter’s broadcast on WZBC in 1996:
Unlike the students that ZBC mixed into the schedule, Peter knew not only how to assemble a playlist, but also how to play to an audience. His mastery of the board, sharp wit, eclectic musical taste, and engaging personality ran circles around most everything beaming from any transmitter. Music selections ran the gamut, from early 60s garage rock, to French yé-yé, to punk and post-punk, to grunge, and beyond. Within all that, Peter would spin a surprise or two and at least one “challenging” track to test the listeners’ mettle. I never changed the station during even the most annoying songs, because I knew that Peter would right the ship with something satisfying.
I have listened to a lot of radio, and for what it’s worth, I believed that Peter’s talents as an on-air radio personality had few equals. Peter had Howard-Stern-like potential, without the need to resort to porn stars and fart jokes. To be clear, I did not always agree with Peter’s political opinions or musical tastes, but he rarely failed to entertain.
Adding to Peter’s appeal, he had a gift for writing and shameless self-promotion. In the web’s early days, he created an site that fearlessly and sometimes tastelessly described some of the more outrageous events of his life, splashed across his splendid mess of a website. As a designer, I bristled at the site’s organization and layout, but like a bloody, cataclysmic car-wreck, I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was clearly the work of an epically narcissistic personality, but he did seem to live a life more interesting than most.
Then I lost touch with Peter. We both moved out of Boston — he to the West Coast and I to Worcester, which in ZBC parlance, was a college radio dead zone. He returned to Boston periodically, but because reliable internet streams remained a good five years away, I had to endure this dark period of radio with Worcester’s joke of a college station, WCHC (Holy Cross), and tapes made from programs I caught during off hours from a few other area stations.
Peter goes west and unravels
By the time that just about every college station put their shows on the Net, Peter had decamped to California, taking up at Los Angeles's ZBC sister station KXLU, and found work with Central Casting in Hollywood. If you look closely, you'll see Peter pop up in the background on such shows as "Deadwood", "Curb Your Enthusiasm", "Law and Order”, and more. While he would not become radio’s next big thing, he at least found steady work at the bottom rungs of the epicenter of the entertainment industry.
Unfortunately, Peter’s personal situation began to deteriorate after developing a drug habit and losing his slot on the radio station. He also lost his eponymous internet domain, so his blog eventually vanished. He appeared a few more times on WZBC in the summer of 2013 during a return trip to the area. It was then that I finally met Peter at a diner in Philadelphia while he was in town to attend his mother’s funeral.
While I avoided any flirtation with the drug scene, I have met those who fried their brains from this abuse. I could tell he was off somehow. He sat before me, but his mind floated somewhere else. Nevertheless, I felt honored to finally meet one of my radio heroes.
During the lunch, he revealed much to my delight that he had hundreds of tapes of his old shows. I immediately offered to digitize that archive, but for whatever reason at the time, probably a lack of trust in some nutty fan, he shrugged it off. I merely wanted to hear the shows again, and at the same time digitize them as well.
KXLU broadcast from 2011:
About a year later, Peter abandoned L.A., trekking back to the East Coast and attempted to settle in Asheville, North Carolina, a very liberal enclave within a very conservative region. His Facebook posts indicated that he was clean, and that he looked forward to his new sobriety. Despite this, wherever Peter went, drama seemed to follow. I safely watched from afar and read his entertaining accounts of the injustices inflicted upon him via Facebook, all-the-while hoping that he would settle into some sort of stability.
In the summer of 2014, I reiterated my offer to digitize his show archive, and this time he enthusiastically jumped on it, sending me a box of 25 tapes. When we met again in Philadelphia in late autumn, he brought along another 50 tapes. Today, you’ll find his growing archive of shows here.
Still, Peter’s trip was hardly uneventful. On his trip north, Peter fell off the grid. His sister frantically posted on his Facebook feed, asking if anyone had heard from him. He eventually popped up again, arriving in Philadelphia. I again offered to buy him lunch at the same diner as before. There he described his ordeal in very dramatic fashion. According to Peter, the Washington D.C. police detained and incarcerated him overnight because, as he explained, he made the mistake of stopping to empty his trash in the parking lot of a McDonald’s known as a drug dealer way station. It didn't help his case that he drove up in his un-registered “art car” festooned with slogans about the coming "revolution."
Working on the comeback
At the time of our second meeting, besides digitizing his tapes, I also offered to set up a new blog for him. Despite his obvious addiction issues, I saw and continue to see, the potential for a Robert-Downey-style resurrection. Beside the tapes and the blog, I envisioned setting up a net-casting studio where he could once again get behind a microphone, this time free of the restrictions an employer would impose.
Given the state of the radio industry, the last thing Peter needed was a job at a radio station, college or commercial. His talent combined with is obvious persistence and abundance of opinions would make him a natural, making him a good bet to become a rising internet star.
The fact that he had no other job and received government assistance only made it better. He had nothing but time on his hands. He simply needed to get his act together and apply himself. However, as I follow his life as posted on his occasionally shut-down Facebook page, I have my doubts.
Yes. I know about my attachment to lost causes, underdogs, and the under-appreciated — people brimming with potential who just need a lucky break and a little support. With my own history to guide me, I should know better. But lucky breaks do happen (mostly to other people).
I’m removed far enough from Peter’s vortex to protect myself. It takes little of my time to work on this project. And, who knows? If he does find his groove again, I’ll only have to worry about him not become another Lonesome Rhodes.
I welcome your feedback by any means available to you, but leaving a comment here and sharing these posts helps to raise my profile here on Substack. Did you listen to Peter’s shows? What did you think? Tell me more!
Too bad you missed WMFO, out of Tufts University in Medford. It has been and continues to be a completely free-form radio station for ever 50 years. You probably moved out before the station which was broadcasting an 10 watts and beaming northeast, powered up to 125 watts. I was in Saugus and on a hill so I was able to receive that station clearly. Closer to Boston, and WRBB (Northeastern U) was on that frequency back then. They were actually playing rap music in the early 1970s, long before it became popular.