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The Era of the Derek

[Text: Bill Rosenblatt ’83]

WPRB is one of a very few student-run radio stations in the country with a commercial license, meaning that it can sell airtime. The station has always sold ads, but the highest level of ad sales was undoubtedly the early-mid 1980s, and the man responsible for this was Derek Berghuis ’83 – a living legend in WPRB history.

Derek – his last name is pronounced “Berg-hice” – was drawn to WPRB by his brother Brian Berghuis ’81 and Brian’s friend Ashley Ellott ’80, respectively the station’s Business Manager and Station Manager, and all alums of the same prep school in Toronto, Canada. He got on air quickly during his freshman year as a member of the news department and as the “news sidekick” on a show called WPRB Weekend, which Program Director Jason Meyer ’80 did with Ellott and Derek as a commercial-sounding “chatty morning show” on Saturday mornings. WPRB Weekend left the airwaves when Ellott and Meyer graduated.  Derek did not find his position as Mercer County News Editor very exciting, so he switched to sales.

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(Radio) Revolution Girl-Style Now!

Image: “There’s a Dyke in the Pit” 7″ compilation, Outpunk Records, 1992.
[Text: Gayle Wald and Joanne Gottlieb]

WPRB’s “Ladies First” aired Monday nights at 9 PM beginning in the summer of 1992. The original idea was for a show that featured female artists and that interrogated what “women’s” music could sound like. It was one a few radio shows in the New York-to-Philadelphia area that routinely featured music from the burgeoning Riot Grrrl movement of women in indie rock. The title of the show was taken from a track by Queen Latifah and Monie Love on Queen Latifah’s groundbreaking debut LP, “All Hail the Queen”. The original promo invited lady listeners to tune in and “liberate your radios!”

DOWNLOAD: 11 Page PDF of Ladies First playlists from 1992

LISTEN: “Ladies First” promo #1


Below is the transcript of a conversation between co-hosts Gayle Wald (Grad ’95) and Joanne Gottlieb (Grad ’02) about the show and its origins.

Gayle Wald:  Joanne, how do you remember getting involved with “Ladies First” and WPRB?

Joanne Gottlieb:  I got involved with WPRB in the spring of 1990 – my friend and fellow grad student Christian Perring suggested we do the training for the station/FCC license together, and we started doing our respective shows that summer. As an undergrad, I had had a boyfriend who was a college radio DJ, and doing college radio seemed like one of the coolest things you could do, short of being in a band yourself. Doing the WPRB training was also a way to spend more time with Christian, on whom I had a big crush. (We got together that spring.) I guess my involvement with music has always had a big connection to the men in my life. (more…)

Announcing WPRB’s Public Exhibit!

We’re thrilled to announce the long-planned second phase of WPRB’s 75th anniversary celebrations (the first being the launch of this website): a physical exhibit of station history and esoterica, which will be on display at Princeton University’s Mudd Library through May of 2016, and which is open to the public!

Titled “WPRB: A Haven for the Creative Impulse”, and curated by WPRB’s Mike Lupica and Princeton University Archivist Dan Linke, the exhibit is a meatspace version of the kind of materials we’ve been highlighting on this website. On display are vintage photographs, playlists, documents, selections from WPRB’s vinyl record library, vintage broadcast equipment, and much more. There is also an interactive content station that allows visitors to browse audio selections and WPRB-related news clippings from the last 75 years.

“WPRB: A Haven for the Creative Impulse” is a free exhibit which is open to the public. The exhibit is housed in the Wiess Lounge at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, 65 Olden Street, in Princeton, New Jersey. (Right around the corner from Hoagie Haven!) Viewing hours are Monday – Friday, 9 AM – 4:45 PM.

More info.

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Prince Rakeem (The RZA) Station ID + Early Hip-Hop on WPRB

Here’s a station ID from the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA (aka Prince Rakeem) recorded for WPRB’s “The Raw Deal” sometime in the early 1990s.

 

The years 1985-1995 are generally thought of as hip-hop’s ‘golden age’, and it’s impossible to overstate the role that college radio stations played in transitioning the genre from its underground roots to the mainstream. At WPRB, hip-hop first emerged on a late 80s program helmed by Drew Keller GS ’91 along with current New York Times columnist John Leland. In the 90s, shows like “The Raw Deal”, “Club Krush”, and “Vibes & Vapors” attracted huge listenerships and made WPRB a local resource for an emerging genre and cultural movement. (At the apex of its popularity, the student hosts of “Vibes & Vapors” went so far as to rent office space on Princeton’s Nassau Street in order to manage and promote the show!)




WPRB Presents: Tsunami/Spent at Princeton Arts Council

Speaking of that WPRB-sponsored Tsunami/Spent gig at the Princeton Arts Council, here’s the hastily cut promo which aired on the station during the run up to Thursday, November 19th, 1992. Also rescued from deep-freeze: the flyer for the show that was circulated around Princeton, New Brunswick, Hoboken, and beyond. (Above.)

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The Musical Box, and Prog vs. Punk at WPRB

 

[By Bill Rosenblatt]

When I first showed up at WPRB in the Fall of 1979, the station’s musical center of gravity was shifting from progressive rock to punk and new wave. I was a prog fanatic – thanks in part to listening to WPRB during my senior year of high school in Philadelphia, especially late at night when the signal was stronger (this was before the early 1990s power increase) and DJs were more likely to play 10-minute epic prog tracks. But by the time I had gone through DJ training, I was one of the few remaining people who was still into prog. So I started a specialty show called “The Musical Box”, named after an early Genesis tune, which focused on prog rock as well as jazz-rock fusion. I believe I did the show from 1980 through 1982. Later on, Kevin Boyce ’83 joined me as cohost.

LISTEN: Musical Box Promo #1 (featuring stylish use of “Heart of the Sunrise” by Yes.)

 

LISTEN: Musical Box promo #2 (with great re-purposing of “California Über Alles ” by the Dead Kennedys”

 

We had an on-air “rivalry” between Mark Dickinson ’84 and myself.  Mark was the resident expert on hardcore punk; he did a specialty show on it called “Decline and Fall”. The rivalry was “Punk is not music, the musicians can’t even play their instruments” vs. “Prog is pretentious, self-indulgent dinosaur music that isn’t real rock ‘n’ roll.” It was nothing personal; I had great respect for Mark, and he even got me to fill in for his show once.

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Ramones and Bad Brains at City Gardens, 1991

Here’s another classic City Gardens promo, this one hyping gigs from the Ramones (who at that point in their career were playing the club every 3-4 months), and whose local appearances were frequently announced on WPRB with three-hour, all-Ramones broadcasts helmed by DJ Greg Savage.

The promo also touts an appearance from the Bad Brains. This recording dates from 1991 and is an interesting document of the brief time when Bad Brains vocalist HR and been replaced by Chuck Mosley, original singer of Faith No More.

 

WPRB and Me—Perfect Together!

By Sean Murphy ’94 [photo: Nicole Scheller]

I’m definitely not the first, and I hope I’m not the last, to be able to say that I majored in WPRB. Officially, I graduated with a degree in Politics, but my independent work and thesis focused on regulatory processes at the Federal Communications Commission. And that work resulted from many long and late nights spent playing and talking about records and bands and radio and what it meant to be non-profit, commercial, and independent all at the same time. From the music to the management lessons to the friendships, my WPRB experiences still reverberate nearly 25 years later.

I arrived at the basement of Holder Hall’s 11th entry in September 1990. I had some idea of what I might be getting into, as I’d spent the previous spring and summer interning at WMBR, 88.1 Cambridge, MA (MIT’s radio station). WPRB was different, from the rigidity of the program logs and actual paid 30- and 60-second ads to the presence of the main record library right in the control room. But the most important similarity was that WPRB saw and understood itself as an institution at, but not of, the university.

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The Legend of WPRB’s Hypnotized Cheese

Few on-air promos enjoy the kind of reputation this pair of early 90s WPRB recordings promoting the station’s “Hypnotized Cheese” t-shirts do. Apart from being one of the most popular shirts ever produced by the station (in its day, the Hypnotized Cheese guy could be frequently spotted in the crowd on any given night at Maxwell’s or the Khyber Pass), the on-air spots used to hawk them were almost as ubiquitous as the shirts themselves. (Listeners would routinely call and request them. Jon Solomon claims to have received one such request within the last year!)

To properly honor the legacy of WPRB’s Hypnotized Cheese mascot (who also appeared on the cover of a printed program guide which you can check out in our upcoming exhibit of station history at Princeton University’s Mudd Library), here are the two original promos. These spots were voiced, written, and produced by Matthew Robb (Myron), John Clements (Robin Leach impersonator), and Hugh Hynes (production).

Hypnotized Cheese Promo #1


Hypnotized Cheese Promo #2

Bonus: Here are scans of the original scripts and production notes for each.

Promo 1 || Promo 2

A limited-run, 20th anniversary edition of the Hypnotized Cheese t-shirt was produced as a special fundraising item back in 2012. It sold out rapidly, proving the design’s enduring appeal. Will there be a third edition? Time will tell…

In the meantime, here’s the video for Spectrum’s “How You Satisfy Me”, which served as background music in Promo #1 and was, by all accounts, one of the biggest WPRB hits of the era.