JESUS, TAKE THE DIAL

Why is the radio so full of Christian rock? You can largely thank the Educational Media Foundation, the little-known nonprofit taking the devil's music off the air

- KATIE THORNTON

LOOKING OUT THE studio window of the radio station where she'd worked for 29 years, DJ "Mistress Carrie" Sarao could see a crowd gathering outside. It was a Friday night, Feb. 21, 2020, and freezing, but that didn't stop hundreds of Bostonians from flooding the parking lot when they heard the news. There was no invitation, just an impulse, an impromptu meetup of loved ones known and unknown. At midnight, the city would lose its last rock radio station.

Debuting in 1970, WAAF helped launched the careers f local bands like Aerosmith and God-smack, and put national groups like Shine-down on the map. To many listeners, the station was as much a part of Boston as Fenway Park and clam chowder. WAAF was, Mistress Carrie's longtime colleague and fellow WAAF DJ Mike Hsu told me, a "local Massachusetts club of troublemakers and assholes." At big rock concerts, chants of "AAF! 'AAF!" were as common as feedback. Sometimes WAAF loyalists would come to blows with devotees of their onetime competitor - rock station WBCN - before the latter went off the air in 2009. For Mistress Carrie, a 51-year-old, purple-haired rock evangelist, WAAF was the soundtrack to her adolescence, as it had been for so many other Bostonians.

In the days leading up to the end, the mood at WAAF was somewhere between hospice care and a rowdy Irish Catholic wake. Old friends flooded in; listeners called with high-octane send-offs; Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton stopped by to pay tribute. But as the clock ticked toward midnight, there was a quiet in the on-air studio. Mistress Carrie's voice broke as she told her listeners to keep their heads high, shoulders back, and horns up. "We're goin' out proud," she said. "Because we were all part of something special." "It was awesome," Hsu replied solemnly.

Six minutes before midnight, Mistress Carrie and Hsu taunted the soon-tobe owners of their beloved station.

"There's only one way to go," Mistress Carrie said.