Station causes stir with song’s airing

Radio station WNCD
93.3-FM was ordered to
stop playing the song.

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

VINDICATOR ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — It’s one of those things that could happen only “Here In Youngstown.”

Anyone listening to rock radio station WNCD 93.3-FM Thursday afternoon became part of an exclusive club — the first to hear music from Bruce Springsteen’s next album. The problem is, they weren’t supposed to.

The album, “Magic,” will be released Oct. 2, and the first single, “Radio Nowhere,” is scheduled to make its radio debut Tuesday.

But WNCD somehow received a copy of the song Thursday — five days early — and played it. And in that instant, WNCD became “radio somewhere.”

“I know not how we got it,” said Bill Kelly, the station’s vice president/market manager, who noted, “If we got it, we play it.”

Play it, they did — twice, in fact, in a 15-minute span. In doing so, WNCD became the first radio station to play music from “Magic.” WNCD show host Fast Freddie began plugging the song at 2:50 p.m., and gave it its first spin at 3:15 p.m.

Ordered to stop

Within 45 minutes of playing “Radio Nowhere,” Joe Guzik of Columbia Records — Springsteen’s label — called the station to order it to stop playing the song. The station complied. Guzik, vice president/rock promotion, told Kelly that WNCD was the only station in the world to play the song.

Guzik did not return a call to The Vindicator.

Kelly wasn’t sure how Columbia found out so soon but said the songs his station plays are tracked electronically for the trade press. “I’m guessing it set off a blip at Columbia,” he said.

About ‘Magic’

Friday’s episode wasn’t the first time Springsteen has put this city on the map.

His song “Youngstown,” from the stark 1995 album “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” focused the nation’s attention on the economic plight of the Rust Belt. With the mournful refrain “Here in Youngstown,” the song put a voice to a worker’s dilemma after the closing of a steel mill. The Boss played the song in a concert at Stambaugh Auditorium on Jan. 12, 1996.

Springsteen, who reworked American folk songs on 2006’s “The Seeger Sessions,” returns to his old rock sound on “Magic.” He is accompanied by the E Street Band for the record.

According to Kelly, “Radio Nowhere” is “a great rock song, with great lyrics. It’s the kind of song you will remember.”