Laquidara Returns To Boston
• OK, now that we have your attention… legendary Boston morning personality Charles Laquidara, best known and beloved for his lengthy tenure as host and ringmaster of The Big Mattress on the late, equally iconic WBCN/Boston, is back in town Wednesday night and will be holding court at the Paradise Rock Club to greet his many friends and fans and promote his forthcoming project — a “multimedia memoir” he calls Daze in the Life.
Laquidara hosted the famously eclectic Big Mattress on WBCN from 1972 until 1995, when WBCN picked up The Howard Stern Show and Laquidara moved over to Classic Rock sister WZLX for another five years. On Aug. 5, 2000, Laquidara played the final song of his three-decade Boston radio career, Tony Bennett‘s “The Best Is Yet to Come” and moved over to Maui for a life of semi-retirement.
In a phone interview with Boston University’s radio station, WBUR, Laquidara, now 79, discussed a variety of subjects, including his 32 years in Boston radio and Wednesday’s Boston event, which just happens to coincide, almost to the day, with WBCN’s 50th anniversary. Laquidara joked, “They’re going to see an old man with a prune face, when I was really a hot chick magnet back in those days.”
Wednesday’s guests will enjoy a sampling of Charles’ memoir two weeks ahead of the launch of dazeinthelife.com, the repository of thousands of hours of classic Laquidara audio and video that goes live on April. 1. Watch the teaser video below.
