Tasteless humor and pranks from WAAF shock jocks
Their debut CD is No. 21 on Soundscan's CD sales chart for Boston, nestled comfortably between the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson. Green Day and Oasis are eating their dust. Local airwaves are saturated daily with the duo's edgy, improvisational rap. Salt-N-Pepa? Puff Daddy and Sting?
Try Opie and Anthony. They don't carry much of a tune, but they make a gnarly prank phone call. The afternoon drive-time guys at WAAF (107.3 FM) released their debut CD, ''Opie and Anthony's Demented World,'' several months ago on New Jersey-based Restaurant Records, and the throngs of (predominantly) men, ages 18-34, who've catapulted the duo to the top-rated spot in the 3-7 p.m. time slot are shelling out for 24-hour access to humor breaks of questionable taste, such as ''Babes Auto Villa,'' ''Green Poopie,'' and ''Evil Barney Babysits.''
The CD, which has sold more than 20,000 copies regionally so far and was released nationally last week, includes reams of prank calls, a handful of song parodies (such as ''Marsha Brady,'' a musical explication of a boy's first sexual arousal), and random extended sexually oriented riffs on pop-culture figures like Captain Kirk and Dr. Smith (''I'm a pedophile lost in space, ahhhhh!'').
Is there, perchance, a narrative theme to Opie and Anthony's comedic vision? ''We try to tie in to current events, and bring in some observational humor,'' muses Opie, the ''Tiger Beat'' blond - as he's called by the swarthy, wild-haired Anthony. Anthony was recruited 3 1/2 years ago by Opie, then a night-show jock on WBAB on Long Island, N.Y., after his band, Rottgutt, turned in a winning O. J. Simpson parody. ''And then we get into some of that edgy stuff that sort of leaves a bruise. We like to call it cringe radio.'' ''Cringe'' will be the title of their next CD, already being planned. Both are 34 and hail from Huntington, N.Y.
''There's a bunch of those on the CD,'' adds Anthony, kicking back in his office chair. For example, the bit ''Hi, Mom, I'm in Porno.'' ''It's brutal,'' he says. ''You listen to it and you can't look anybody in the eye 'cause you're so embarrassed, or feel pain for the poor [mother].'' The ''Hi, Mom ...'' series features taped phone conversations between willing young Opie and Anthony fans and their mothers, in which the offspring confess to sundry activities certain to blow Mom's mind.
''Honestly, when that phone call [from the ''Porno'' bit] was coming in, I'll never forget, I actually left the studio,'' Opie confesses. ''We couldn't listen. We couldn't stop it. It was horrible. We were just praying that it was gonna work out OK.''
Has it ever not worked out OK? ''Uh, yeah, yeah,'' they concur. Opie, between bursts of laughter, talks about a woman who had dialed the wrong number and accidentally reached the WAAF studio. She was told that the man she was trying to reach had died. When it became clear that she was severely traumatized, Opie wriggled out with a mistaken-identity defense. ''I don't think we aired it, though,'' says Anthony.
Plenty of the material used on the air and included on the CD is certain to anger and offend people - those who question, for example, the comedy value of Alzheimer's disease or emphysema, or who take issue with the sexual objectification of women that forms the basis of much of Opie and Anthony's humor.
Case in point: the W.O.W. (Whip 'Em Out Wednesday) fiasco of last spring and summer, the pair's ''good-natured'' campaign to solicit female flashers on the highway, which became a phenomenon and subsequently the object of much criticism from women's groups, the media, and - in a final blow - Mayor Menino's office.
As to the report that W.O.W. was killed in phenomenally coincidental conjunction with Opie and Anthony's weeklong suspension for - according to WAAF management - an unrelated offense?
''Me and Ant felt like we didn't want to be the ones to stop it, you know, 'cause it would just go against everything we stand for, OK? [The general manager and program director] issued us a memo saying if you mention it again you'll be suspended, or if you use this memo on the air you'll be suspended. I knew that would stop the whole promotion and me and Ant won't look like bad guys. I said, `I'm reading this memo.' And that's what we did, and that's honest to God why we got suspended.''
Of course, everyone made nice in the name of good ratings, the quest for which has led to Opie and Anthony's well-documented war of words with WBCN's Nik Carter. ''I don't care what they throw at us as individuals or a radio station. Eventually it's gonna come down to talent and, not to sound cocky, he's not in our league,'' Opie says of Carter. What about the racial slurs? ''That's coming from their side,'' Anthony says. Opie: ''They're just trying to create talk for their guy, a Howard Stern wannabe with no talent to back what he does.''
Opie is quick to point out that Stern, whom he and Anthony seem to be trying to emulate as well, has a copy of ''Demented World'' (the three-cut promo disc was recently sent to 850 morning shows). ''I listened to Howard every day, because I was convinced it was the last day he would be on the radio. You just had that mentality, and that was a big influence on what I've been doing.''
Comedy hurts, Opie and Anthony readily acknowledge. Every time they turn on the mike they're angering somebody. Any regrets? ''You can't really feel guilty about it. I don't know, you live by the sword, you die by the sword,'' says Opie. ''I was picked on ... because I was 5 foot 2, 91 pounds, in 10th grade, and I never minded it. I alway liked the attention, good or bad. I don't care what people think about me. So negative, positive attention, who cares?''
This story ran on page C18 of the Boston Globe on 12/05/97.
© Copyright 1997
Globe Newspaper Company.