WPI Journal - The Magazine for WPI Alumni

WIN 2013

The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)

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Muddy Waters gig in the Village. I went back to campus and quit." By that time, recalls Klein, Geils and Salwitz had already left WPI, though Salwitz would return brieƃy before deciding to drop out for good. The three moved in together in Boston, took on Wolf and Bladd, and pretty soon became famous. They played about 130 dates a year and spent 6 to 8 months each year working on an album. They played venues such as the Fillmore East in Manhattan's East Village, Winterland in San Francisco, and the Oakland Coliseum in California. "We were lucky because the '70s turned out to be the golden age of rock, and because FM radio came in. Before that, everything was AM and it was all so structured with playlists. And suddenly there was this whole different type of radio that played album cuts. So we had that going for us. And WBCN started, along with a million other stations. And there were clubs. Bill Graham [rock concert promoter] was very good to us. Our Ƃrst gig out of New England was the Fillmore East. We played with Black Sabbath. And the audience was throwing stuff at us the Ƃrst time. And Bill said, "You want your money back, get your money back, otherwise shut up and listen to them." After the band's break-up, Klein plunged headlong into a passion for cooking, attending the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, graduating near the top of his class. Since he became more involved in cooking, he's managed to keep chemistry in his life. "It just didn't seem like I had the aptitude to be a chemist or chemical engineer. But now that I cook, I do get my chemistry in." NIGHTMARES... AND OTHER TALES OF THE ACADEMIC JUNGLE Salwitz, at age 66, lives in a comfortable house on a wooded lot in Lincoln, Mass., with his wife, Susan. She loves art, music, and horses, and he loves—more and more—reading about cosmology and free spirit A YEARBOOK EXPOSE "Whoa! That nude centerfold's my physics professor!" More than a few shocked WPI students likely uttered words to that effect in 1975 when the late Professor Thomas Keil , who passed away recently after a short battle with cancer, let it all hang out in a four-color spread in The Peddler, the yearbook of WPI. Truth be told, Keil let most of it hang out, relying on a strategically placed bottle of Almaden wine to provide a modicum of modesty and keep the proceedings from plunging into X-rated territory. The shot's reminiscent of Burt Reynolds' iconic 1972 nude layout in Cosmopolitan. Sort of. For The Peddler, a disrobed Keil posed on a plush rug, snifter in hand, his legs tucked behind him. He looks your average "nice guy" in his Clark Kent specs, more the type you'd take home to mom than pick up for a smoldering one-night stand. The whole thing, of course, was intended as a goof, a parody of popular culture and a snide commentary on mass-media motifs that had been accelerating since the '60s. "You need to understand the times," explained Keil, who twice chaired WPI's physics department (he held that post, so to speak, when he bared almost all) and until 28 Winter 2013 his passing in late February served on the faculty. "That yearbook was intended as a parody of Playboy," he said. "Feminism was rising, and the magazine was a legitimate target for parody." By the mid '70s, the men's magazine was gaining mainstream respectability by mixing its racy airbrushed pictorials—displays of feminine "perfection" as unattainable as perpetual motion—with serious articles about politics and social issues. The Peddler approach was designed to skewer the magazine's editorial schizophrenia and its increasing dichotomy of purpose. Keil was cast as both the objectified centerfold and the subject of a lengthy, serious interview, the likes of which Playboy conducted with politicians, scientists, authors, and movie stars—the subjects of which, in that era, were almost exclusively male. Beyond the centerfold, the '75 Peddler contained other oddball elements, in keeping with the tenor of the times but unusual for a basically conservative campus like WPI's. There was gritty, candid photography and a generally anti-establishment tone that wasn't always flattering to the school. One notable section was titled "A Guide to Individually Prescribed Instructions in Coloring." It contained heavy-handed spoofs of testing and educational themes in the form of cartoonish pictures to color and games to play. In its best gag, readers were encouraged to use crayons to "connect the dots in numerical order." (On that particular page there are precisely two dots, numbered 1 and 2.) "There was a lot of flak and controversy," recalls Barry Tarr '76, who served as The Peddler's photo editor in 1975. "A lot of people were expecting a more traditional yearbook." Keil recalled that "the admissions office stopped putting the yearbook out on their table" fearing that particular issue would generate "bad publicity for the school," though he believed that might have had more to do with photos of student living conditions than with the centerfold. There was lots of good-natured ribbing, Keil said, but "most of the people I associated with reacted with amusement"—and he didn't get a single indecent proposal.

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