Boston Tea Party

In Boston, three events from March and April 1968 contributed to long-term change. One signaled a cultural revolution. It began at a live-rock club, the Boston Tea Party, where Led Zeppelin, Mothers of Invention, The Velvet Underground, Cream, and other now-famous groups performed. The club's entrance sported panels featuring the names of those who had given light to the world—Prometheus, Edison, and others—but the club itself flickered with strobe lights, kaleidoscopic patterns, pulsating blobs of color, and shots of Campbell Soup cans.

The Tea Party gained significance beyond its location on March 15 when local radio station WBCN began broadcasting a daily seven-hour nighttime program from the club. WBCN to that point was FM-standard 40 years ago: It played classical music and lost money. The AM dial, meanwhile, emphasized two-minute pop "bubblegum" tunes. But when WBCN starting making big bucks with longer, darker, harder rock songs, other stations in what was called "underground radio" followed, reinventing FM radio as they went.