Here’s the second (and final in our existing archives) WPRU Bulletin. Paul Dunn ’58 was the Bulletin’s managing editor as a Princeton Undergraduate, and continues to play an important role on WPRB’s board of trustees today. You can download the complete bulletin (.PDF) by clicking here.
Below, an important message from Paul about WPRB’s 75th Anniversary Membership Drive.
It’s time for WPRB’s annual fund drive, running now through October 18. If you’ve enjoyed reading/seeing/hearing about all the amazing things that have happened at WPRB over the past 75 years, please help us keep the station going for the next 75. Make your pledge now!
In case you need any more convincing, here is a note from our current station manager:
Dear Members and Listeners,
This is the big one. 75 years of unique, challenging radio. 75 years of weird. 75 years of the best radio station in New Jersey. 75 years of WPRB.
Every year we ask you, our devoted listeners, to help us keep the lights on by donating during our Fall Membership Drive. And well, you’ve done much more than that. Thanks to your help, WPRB lives on as an independent radio station, giving our DJs the artistic freedom to create the programs they want to present to the masses. That’s right, we’re independent. Although we are housed at Princeton University, we are independently owned and operated and do not receive financial assistance from them.
That’s why our Fall Membership Drive is so important: it’s how we keep the station going. Last year, you helped us exceed our goal of $50,000. You proved that you think that WPRB is something special, and with this enormous support we’ve been able to deliver even higher quality radio to you.
But this year the stakes are even higher. To commemorate our 75th Anniversary, we’ve set an especially ambitious goal of raising $75,000 during this year’s Membership Drive. For 75 years, WPRB has served as New Jersey and Pennsylvania’s safe haven from the monotonous, corporate radio found on the rest of the dial. We want to celebrate this legacy by forcefully pushing into the next 75 years of WPRB’s history. With your help, we can continue to grow as an independent radio station of the 21st century by expanding our online capabilities to be able to engage even more with our devoted listeners. Exciting things are ahead at WPRB.
From October 11th at 7pm to October 18th at 10pm, we need your love more than ever. Join us in celebrating WPRB’s past and future 75 years.
Love,
Mitch McCloy
Station Manager
WPRB Princeton 103.3 FM
1987 was a busy year for Fishbone at WPRB. First up, here’s a promo for Fishbone’s gig at City Gardens from July of that year.
And below, a visionary excerpt from the WPRB interview conducted by Ethan Stein (aka “Eddie Mosh”) with band members Angelo and Norwood. This interview took place earlier that year (May), prior to the band’s gig with Adrenalin O.D.
[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.
[Words: Jen Moyse ‘94. DJ 1990-1999. Music Director 1992-94. Image: Original “Hey You Kids” playlist]
As I sit here trying to decide how to approach getting my thoughts on WPRB to paper, I’m browsing through my iTunes library, trying to identify which in my enormous virtual collection of albums I feel like hearing right now. I glance over to the bookshelf housing my 1000+ vinyl library, and back to the living room, where I still have an embarrassing number of CDs (in sleeves now) and 7” singles stored discreetly in not-terribly-unattractive boxes for easy access.
The cassettes, including a full box of recordings of Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn!, the show I delivered weekly with Mike Lupica for many years, are stored in the closet, since I long ago disconnected my cassette player. Which, now that I think of it, is still lodged deep in the closet as well.
The external hard drive includes a stash of music I haven’t even organized yet.
This is all WPRB’s fault, and I love it. It’s been 25 years since I arrived at WPRB, and I’ve been a different person since. And not just because of this wall of music. I can genuinely say that the station has influenced my life more dramatically than just about anything else (hi, Mom and Dad!). (more…)
Years on air:
Favorite bands/musicians: David Bromberg, Leftover Salmon, Railroad Earth, Beppe Gambetta, Dan Bern, Tedeschi-Trucks Band, Randy Newman. Lacy J. Dalton, Chuck Brodsky, Bruce Hornsby.
Memorable on-air moment: When I started and had an early morning show, a woman called in and said, “Young man, do you realize you are in Princeton, New Jersey? This is not Nashville.”
Advice for current WPRB DJs: From time to time while you are alone (and preferably driving), listen to a recording of your show and make sure nothing about it annoys you and makes you think about switching the station.
[Words: Mike Appelstein. Photos: Rob Schuman]
In the summer of 1986, I was a student at Rutgers University and a DJ at the campus radio station, WRSU-FM. I had grown up in the area, and listened to both WRSU and WPRB as a teenager. In those days before the Internet and streaming audio, you had to seek out cultural avenues by yourself, and I was very fortunate to have resources like these to light the way.
I’d heard my friends Gene and Bryan, both Rutgers students and WRSU DJs, on WPRB as well. One day I asked Bryan how he managed to get on WPRB. I assumed you had to be a Princeton student to qualify for airtime. “Call Ken Katkin,” he suggested.
Years on air: 2004-2006
Favorite bands: Joy Division, Andrew Bird, Cat Power, Devendra Banhart, T. Rex, Caribou.
Memorable on-air moment: Receiving a request for “Fistful of Love” by Antony and the Johnsons from a federal prisoner.
Advice for current WPRB DJs: Don’t be afraid to mix genres–some of my favorite playlists were the ones that had songs that didn’t seem to go together at all but somehow worked. You don’t always have to have a premeditated theme. And sometimes it’s okay to go mainstream. (I got a lot of flack for listening to Franz Ferdinand but I have no regrets.)
[By Stephanie Obodda. Photo by Dr. Cosmo.]
I have a lot of WPRB memories, but the most important is my first. When I got to Princeton in 1998, the social life seemed so homogeneous and it didn’t take me long to realize I wouldn’t fit in with the [University’s] eating club scene. I was already resigned to spend the next four years in my dorm room listening to music alone when fellow freshman Alex Wood and I decided to check out the radio station. The first time I walked into the tech shop and Phil Taylor handed me a soldering iron, I knew I’d found my happy place!
Even pulling a 2am shift, you were never alone in the studio. You were in the company of hundreds of former DJs who’d left their handwritten reviews on record and CD covers.
Pictured below, by Stephanie’s request, WPRB’s copy of Einstürzende Neubauten’s “Silence is Sexy”—a favorite of her era. (Hilariously tagged as “German R&B” by former WPRB DJ and Treblequake host, Brian Farmer.)
[By Ted Stern ’76]
Yes, there actually was one summer where I spent my vacation doing the 6AM morning show. It seemed like a cushy enough job, and no one else wanted to do It. I soon found out why. With only a skeleton crew of students around, and most of them here because they partied too much during the semester, some late nights sort of tended to develop. Soon I was dragging myself out of bed just to make it to the station in time to play the opening cart with all those fascinating statistics (how far does 17,000 watts go anyway), never mind shove a cup of coffee down me first. But then I developed a system: There were a few eclectic German bands in the rabbits [aka vinyl stacks] with some twenty-two minute tracks—boring avante-garde gibberish, but just long enough to Iet me make it to the deli just off of the main drag, grab a doughnut, and scoot back. (more…)
