No more Zeppelin. No more Skynyrd or Tom Petty or Rolling Stones. And not a whole lot more Don Cerphe Colwell, either.
Classic rock and the DJ who brought that music to local radio audiences long before the rock was considered "classic" are both fading from the airwaves. Beginning Monday, Colwell's station, WTGB (94.7 FM, "The Globe"), will switch to playing contemporary pop tunes. With the demise of the region's only classic rock outlet, the music that helped transform FM radio into a cultural force in the 1970s will become just another baby boomer memory.
Colwell -- who has always gone by his middle name, pronounced "surf," on the air -- is arguably the voice of Washington's rock generation. As an undergraduate at American University in the early 1970s, he began working part time at a little FM station in Bethesda called WHFS, where he explored records by such artists as Jimi Hendrix and interviewed such up-and-coming talents as Bruce Springsteen.
Over the decades, Colwell, 57, never left the local airwaves, and never strayed far from rock. He joined WHFS full time in 1973 as it grew from hippie outpost to tastemaking mainstream force. He outlasted changing musical styles and the radio industry's periodic convulsions and eruptions. For years, he was the knowledgeable and smooth-voiced "rock guy" at such stations as DC101, WJFK and the Arrow 94.7, the predecessor of the Globe
Colwell said he didn't ask to become part of the new station, and probably wouldn't have fit in anyway. "Could I do it? Yeah," he said. "I really love radio, and I really love Washington. But I'm really not a Kelly Clarkson kind of guy. I'm more of a Springsteen, U2, Coldplay guy."
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