One could say Bradley Jay has been around the block, and they wouldn’t be wrong. The venerable Boston radio DJ wasn’t just a fixture on the legendary WBCN during its heyday from the early-‘80s onward, he has the distinction of being the last personality on-air when the plug was pulled on the station in Summer 2009. Bouncing to WZLX and then spending time as a talk show host on WBZ-AM for a number of years, Jay is one of the few DJs of his era who has fully embraced the present and the future, now immersing himself in the digital realm with a variety of projects.
Whether he’s hosting a version of the interview centric Jay Talking on Facebook, spotlighting his travels on the YouTube channel Bradley Jay Travel or spinning again via his weekly Mixcloud music show Ignore the Machine, Jay is plugged in and “around the block” has traversed to “around the world.”
Ask him what he’s most excited about these days, though, and the answer will surely be Bridge Bender. The culmination of a long held desire to create music instead of simply playing it, it’s uncharted waters for Jay, ones which he went into with sails and spirit up. Linking up with singer Future Suzi, Jay handles all instrumentation for the post-punk duo, as well as some of the vocals. The result is an eponymous debut LP, which dropped late last year. Impressive and ambitious, from the propulsive “He Was in the Way” through the haunting synths of lead single “Hotel Bar,” Bridge Bender makes it clear that Jay has learned a thing or two over the decades in terms of what makes music so entrancing.
Vanyaland caught up with Jay somewhere between international rail stations for our 617 Q&A series (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings) to find out more about Bridge Bender, pick up some travel tips, hear just how crazy things got during Woodstock ’99, and understand why it pays to do it like David Bowie.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: How did the Bridge Bender project come about?
Bradley Jay: Well, for a long time, ever since I met Jeff Hudson of Jeff & Jane Hudson, I became interested in making my own music. I started with mashups, then original songs, and I was always working alone. But one day I’m walking in Brookline Village, past a Thai restaurant, and there was a woman sitting outside drinking a green cocktail. And I do a lot of Facebook Live stuff and I walked 10 feet past and said, “Wait a minute, I have to ask her about that green cocktail.” So, I did. I said, “Do you want to do a live thing?” She said, “Yeah, sure.” She was outgoing, and at some point I asked her if she sang, she goes, “Yes. I actually trained, I wanted to be a classical singer, but life happened. I got into the corporate world.”
Her name is Future Suzi. She didn’t have any idea about my sort of post-punk world, but she was very interested and flexible and she learned right away and it was an easy match. Over the course of a year, we put out the album. And of course, the name Bridge Bender, well, it came about. We had to come up with a name, and I’m really picky about names. And we did what a lot of people do, I guess, of the Brian Eno kind of cut up method, just put some nouns and some verbs together randomly, and that one popped out. “Bridge Bender.” It has a sense of some sort of subliminal power. It has the power to bend the bridges and I just like the imagery.
How difficult was it to make a transition and were you worried about any perceptions of, “Ok, here’s this DJ guy who now wants to start making music?” Or was it just a natural progression?
Well, because I, for so long was listening to other people’s records, I’m my own way harshest critic, and I’ve been doing it for a long time. More than – let’s say 15 years – I’ve been dabbling around [making my own music]. So, it’s not just an overnight thing. But I’m super-duper critical because for all my life, I’ve been critical of other people’s work. You know, got to be; you’re a critic, you make choices, what are you going to play? And I was completely aware that I would be perceived as that and maybe more harshly judged than others. So I, really, really, really worked hard on making sure that it was not crap. That said, at some point, I trust my gut with the music I play. At some point you got to say, “Ok, this is good. I don’t care what anybody says, this is as good as I can do, at least, and I’m going to put it out there, and so be it.” It’s my art. It’s our art. And that’s it. If you don’t like it, well, that’s not a problem.
***
The video for the song “Hotel Bar.” It’s so fascinating because if you played it for me and said it was some recently uncovered synth-pop clip from the early ‘80s, I’d have believed you. Not only do you capture the mood of the track, but it’s got this really interesting Euro vibe that I didn’t think existed anymore. It’s a kind of throwback. How intentional was that, and does that Europe still exist or is it a trick of the light?
No, no, that’s real. That’s all stuff that I shot on trips and the song “Hotel Bar” is about traveling on trains – train travel by night – and looking for a sanctuary in the hotel bar in the evening. That’s what the video is, and it’s just stuff that happened on trips. The girl dancing is in Lake Bled in Slovenia, and it’s just stuff cobbled together from trips shot on a crappy camera sometimes from the train, as you saw. And I spent all the pandemic taking old footage and I made about 110 travel videos out of my old footage. So, with some of the songs, it’s easy to use that footage and that one worked out great.
And you notice magic. There’s some magic that happens when you put music to video. Sometimes it just goes even though it shouldn’t. Like the dancing, the Spanish dancing, that was in Madrid, that’s a complete other song that’s like a flamenco song they were playing. It had nothing to do with my music. The beat wasn’t the same or anything. It just kind of goes.
You’ve got the Bradley Jay Travel YouTube channel. When you’re plotting out where you’re going to go next, what criteria do you look at before you determine a new place?
Well, the ultimate trip is the Eurail trip for me where you don’t know, and you pick a city that’s got a good flight, good rate, and you have your Eurail pass, and you go that night. That night, you might take a look at the train schedule, but the real thrill is to go to the train station that day. Say you go to Paris. I’m not a big fan of Paris, but they have a train station, and you can get non-stop flights. You go to Gare du Nord; you look at the big board and see what’s leaving in half an hour.
“Oh, that train’s going to Budapest and leaves in 20 minutes. I have time to go get some cheese and some beer and stuff, and blast on that train.”
Who knows who you’re going to meet? Who knows if you even end up in Budapest? You might meet somebody going somewhere else. And that way you’re free to go as long as you don’t book any hotels or anything. And that’s how I ended up at Lake Bled where that girl [in “Hotel Bar”] was in slow motion with short hair. There was a guy wearing a kilt, and he said he was from New York, but he was kind of shady – he was shady – but he said, “So you’re going here? Well, no, go here. Go to Lake Bled instead. And we’re going to cut across and we’re going to hitchhike.” So, I just hitchhiked with this dude in Slovenia, and we got a ride right away from some mom and her mother who was 90. It was good. And that’s the best choice. Really – the exciting choice is to not choose.
How do you navigate the languages? Do you speak a lot of different languages?
Just German. Anywhere you’re going, pretty much, that they’re selling stuff? They got to speak some English, and if they don’t, somebody on the street [will]. If I need something, I might want directions, I’ll ask. I might ask two people that go, “I don’t speak English.” And a third person will. I like asking directions because it’s a nice way to meet people. And if I’m going alone, I’m super alone. That’s my only way to talk to people, is the people that I would meet. Is it a problem? I mean, is it difficult? Yeah, it’s difficult, but it’s part of the thing.
You were on WBCN from 1981 to 2009. What did you see as the biggest changes in the music scene of Boston over those three decades?
Let me say, the biggest change in the music at WBCN was, when I got there, we chose it all. The DJs chose it all. When I left there, they chose none. And that trusted curators choosing your music is what a listener would like. They don’t want to hear stuff they know is picked by a machine. So as far as BCN goes, that was the biggest change. As far as the scene goes? Well, when I got to Boston in ‘79, there were lots of little clubs, and I think the biggest change in the scene was BCN played local music on mainstream radio, not just at night. They played local music. So, a band could get huge exposure to the mainstream that way and gradually that went away and they didn’t have exposure. So, I guess the enrichment of the scene and the motivation for the scene to get notoriety on radio airplay and the fact that that went away was a big change.
One of the interesting things that happened over the last several months was you showing up in that Woodstock ’99 documentary on Netflix.
Yeah, yeah.
It was the weirdest thing, because I was watching it and I got up to get something in the kitchen, and I’m coming back and I hear your voice. I’m like, “That sounds like Bradley Jay’s in my living room.” And there you are, you’re in this thing. Did you know that you were going to be in it?
No, no, I did not. Somebody just called me up and said, “Hey, dude, you’re in that movie.”
What do you remember about that whole saga? I mean, you got to sit down with the organizers as the literal shit was hitting the proverbial fan.
That was a big deal for me career-wise and personally. The major radio stations all had setups there, and it was expected that each radio station, each jock, would get a couple of interviews because there were about 50 bands. But I went all out, and I went there early – I got there Tuesday – and I prepared interviews for all 50 bands, sat down on the computer and wrote out interviews for of all the bands. And as I thought it might, the shit hit the fan and things went weird. And I’m in there in this beautiful tent while everyone else is sweating and dying out there.
***
The interviews were done in the MTV tent with huge air conditioning and a keg of beer. It was radio DJ paradise. I’m getting some exposure, I’m interviewing Willie Nelson and George Clinton and his old crew and Elvis Costello, et cetera. And then after each interview you have a beer, and they’d say, “Well, Bradley, that was good. You did a good job. Do you think you could do this one?” Because the producers, they want a known quantity. They don’t know the next DJ and how it’s going to go. They say, “You think you can do this one?” I go, “Yep, yep, yep.” So, I did 21 interviews in three days. It’s a fact. At the end, I was very tired, but I felt like I had done a good job.
What I remember about it was immediately upon getting there, it sucked. [laughs] There was no love. A lot of people came out there to get some love. It was hate. Right from the beginning. Hot, concrete, a bummer. And then right away you get the sense that it was a commercial rip-off as far as the vendors. You could see it was, there was no love in the house. And it was a perfect storm of badness. The aggressive music, the way that the patrons were cheated, the heat, it was bound to happen. And I do remember the night of the riot, if you will, as it started to swell up, I remember certain images, like the TV people with the TV trucks ran and grabbed their equipment, locked the equipment in the TV truck and themselves in the TV truck, because it looked like all media was going to get overrun.
That’s what it felt like. Everybody freaked. There was a small chain link fence between them, and that’s what could have easily broken down. And I remember this vision of a line of riot cops with their sticks separating the media from the people pound whacking their sticks on the ground. Really, for real scary. And in the distance you could hear these weird drum circles and see the fires. And then the explosions of the real punctuation was the explosions of the compressors on the refrigerator trucks. “Boom.” I remember it being a career high for me and interviewing all these people in an intense but beautiful way, and then the ending was truly scary.
:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
When in doubt, ask yourself the question: Would Bowie do it? And if Bowie would do it, then you do it. But you got to own it like Bowie. You’ve got to have complete confidence. When in doubt, ask yourself, would Bowie do it? That’s what Bowie did for me. He owned it. He did what he wanted and he just was like, “Fuck off. I own this shit.” It kinda works for me.
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
Let’s go back to travel for the “Seven of Something.” A lot of people that I talk to for the 617 Q&A, they travel as part of their job requirement: Tour dates, promotional duties, whatever. But very few of them have the passion for it that you do. And you can see that in your videos and just willing to go up and talk to anybody. If a person came up to you and said, “I’ve got this gold card that I can take seven trips. Where do you recommend are the seven places that I go check out and why should I go to that place?” No particular order whatsoever.
Sarajevo. I really like cities that have had a conflict. I’m drawn to these cities, Berlin, Jerusalem… and Sarajevo is divided. It’s half Muslim and half looks like Austria. It’s small, affordable, huge bang for the buck, not touristy. Funky. There’s a hotel where – not that it makes it a great hotel – but Bono stayed in this one hotel in Michele, and you can afford to stay there. It’s not even that expensive. And people go to Croatia, so they should fly into Sarajevo and then go down to Croatia. Big bang for the buck. Exotic. And it’s two cities in one.
Romania. If you’re looking for the spookiness, the darkness, the goth… man. It is for real. Bucharest is another exotic place, and you can go to these old Transylvanian towns. There’s a town called Sighișoara, it’s so gothic. You walk along these stone paths with dark trees and cemeteries and dogs following you. And, again, huge bang for the buck. And the food you eat is way different and the booze you drink is way different. Underground grotto restaurants…
Rome. Because it’s big and airy. It’s not big and scary. It’s big and airy. Of course, a lot of tourists go there, but it didn’t feel jammed up. Maybe it’s because you’re expecting tourists. Stanley Tucci did the show Searching for Italy, and he did a section on that. And so, I tried to actually go to some of the restaurants he went to, and they weren’t even crowded. It was really great. Historically, huge bang for the buck. You go into the Pantheon, and there it is, right there. And it doesn’t feel touristy, even though it is – that’s my take.
Croatia. But make sure you go to Montenegro. Croatia’s getting popular, but still. Dubrovnik is very touristy, but there’s plenty of places – you’ve got to go there for one night or just for the day. There are lots of places like Makarska that you just happen upon; laid back ocean promenade and good deal on hotels.
Marrakesh. I flew to Casablanca – forget Casablanca. To me it was just kind of a town, but you got to fly somewhere, and it’s tough to get flights [directly] into Marrakesh. There’s a square called Jemaa el-Fnaa, and that is the craziest place I have ever been. In the day, it’s not so wild. But as you get to about two or three every afternoon, they start building these booths for food and they start wheeling out the food and cooking it. And it’s just crowds, mobs of people surging and so many booths cooking this crazy foods. And you can smell the food, you can hear the sort of dull roar of the people, and there’s this hot wind blowing off the desert and blowing sand in.
And they have snake charmers – the snake charmers are there to make money. They’re not that friendly. If you take a picture of a snake charmer without paying five bucks, maybe it’s 10 now, they will harangue you – and they have sharp eyes, even if you’re 20 feet away, 30 feet away. They’re like… they have guys, dudes, a crew, scanning to see if you’re going to take a picture. And so what they want you to do is come to see the snakes. And what they do is they put this friendly snake around your neck. They go, “Oh my friend, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And they put the snake around your neck and they pull you with the snake towards the other snakes, which is scary, like the cobra looking ones. And you’re like, “I’m good. I’m good.” Then you say, “Ok, here’s your five bucks, let me go.”
Istanbul. Turkish Air flies there directly if you want – and there’s supposed to be a good airline. It is also extremely exotic. The real deal hookah places. And it’s right on the edge of Asia; the Bosporus Strait on the other side of that is Asia, and there’s all these dudes on the bridge between fishing with these big, long fishing poles. And then they sell the fish to the dudes and the boats right down below and they make these fish sandwiches that are, the fish has only been out of the water for a couple hours.
Jerusalem. And then finally, the ultimate one, I think if you could only go to one place, would be Jerusalem. Even if you’re not a religious person at all, doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s just so much of the world’s focus for so long, even now, it’s focused on this few acres of land. And you can get the most intense Jewish folks and very intense Islamic folks, 20 feet from each other. You can be 50 feet from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most intense Christian spot. And even if you’re not at all a believer, it’s intense to see how much other people believe. It can choke you up.
There’s the place where the cross was supposed to be on the hill, and if you just sit there and watch the tourists come up, like a busload of tourists will come up and they’ll start crying and then they leave and another busload of tourists come up and they all start crying. It is…it’s wild. It is very emotional just to sit there. And another reason is, it’s very exotic if you want to be, but home is only a hundred feet away. Because if you get in the Jewish quarter, they love Boston. Not only do they love Boston, they’ll say, “Where you from?” You say Boston. They don’t just say, “Oh, ok.” They go, “Well, what street? Oh, oh, in Brookline? What street in Brookline. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I went to that school,” or whatever. They know the streets of Brookline. It’s that tight.