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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…)

Friday WPRB DJ Pinup: Zoë Saunders!

Years on air: 2007-2010

Favorite bands (of the era): Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens, Caribou, The Books, Bill Callahan, Menomena.

Memorable on-air moment: Live-broadcast of the series finale for Rock Blastaar and the Radio Rangers! Also, not technically ON-air, but near it: painting the studio mural with paint fumes in the unventilated basement!

Advice for current WPRB DJs:  Explore the station’s amazing record collection by wheeling open an unfamiliar cabinet, and push yourself to curate as eclectic a program as possible!

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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Friday WPRB DJ Pinup: Adam Flynn!

Years on air: 2005-2008

Favorite bands: Dengue Fever, Ken Nordine, Soft Machine, Four Tet, anything on Daptone Records or the Numero Group.

Memorable on-air moment: Creating the Rock Blastaar radio plays for WPRB’s inaugural drive, and performing the finale live on-air.

Advice for current WPRB DJs: Listeners can’t rewind; it’s only a mistake if you act like it’s a mistake.

 

“The Princeton Freedom Station is On the Air!”

[By Warren Fales ’43. Pictured: Unknown WPRU Engineers]

I started out with The Daily Princetonian and, in early 1941, part of my news-writing assignment was to cover the new student-operated radio station, WPRU. I became more and more interested in the station’s operations and even began to fill in as an announcer from time to time. My superiors at The Prince, pointing out that WPRU was a competitor to the newspaper, told me to make up my mind who I wanted to work for, so I finally quit the Prince.

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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!)




Saturday Soul with JB and the Soul Gang

[By “JB”, aka James E. Butler, Esq. ’74]

My experience at Princeton was defined by my participation at WPRB-FM. Quite simply, my radio show meant everything to me. My social life and “spare” time revolved around my show. It was an exciting experience to be part of the growing movement offering “soul” music on FM radio during the early seventies. I remember being one of the very first to prominently play soul albums by persons and groups who would become major acts in the 70’s, such as Roberta Flack, Valerie Simpson, Ashford and Simpson, Barry White, and Earth Wind and Fire. My three year show at WPRB kept growing until it occupied the air waves from 1:00 – 7:30 p.m. on Saturdays. I believe it was the longest show at that time. I would have gladly hosted a show every day of the week if allowed.

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Friday WPRB DJ Pinup: Tesla Monson!

Years on air: 2002-2007

Favorite bands: Auktyon, Bettye Swann, Mogollar, Dengue Fever, Las Malas Amistades, Alemayehu Eshete. This just barely scrapes the surface, but these are probably my most frequently played.

Memorable on-air moment: I don’t know if I have one in particular, but I sure do miss all those shows hanging with my girls (fellow DJ’s Andrea Lee, Kate Poole, Angelica Reilly and Rachel Younger), playing crazy world music for hours, and having stoned townies call in to tell me I was blowing their mind.

Advice for current WPRB DJs: Don’t be afraid to dig through the stacks (especially the world music stacks!) Like all good things, music tastes evolve. You never know what amazing things you will find hidden in the back. So stop only playing things you are familiar with!

Bonus audio #1: Tesla voices the promo for her show


Bonus audio #2: Tesla voices the “WPRB/Soviet” station ID.


Note: Tesla’s show was called Gde mui bili e gde mui budem which, in her self-described ‘broken Russian’ translates to where we were and where we will be.

 

1949 WPRU Sign On—Awaiting “the Magic Hour”

[By Nelson Runger ’53]

I drew the job of morning man in September of my freshman year, 1949. I had about an hour’s instruction the day before my debut—all about how to turn the station on in the morning, etc. There was no separate engineer. I was the whole staff on duty.

I cajoled my three suite-mates to get up and listen to my debut (which was a three-hour stint that began at 6:00 a.m., as I recall.) I showed up about a half-hour early, turned on all the switches and gauges I had learned the previous day, selected the records I would play during the first hour, read over the FCC announcement that had to be read aloud at the beginning of the broadcasting day, cued up the Star Spangled Banner, and awaited the magic hour. (Ed note: The routine steps of morning sign-on, then as now, are required to be chronicled on every radio station’s daily programming log. See above for example from roughly the same era referenced in this story.)

At 6:00, I played the national anthem, read the FCC announcement, and launched into my three hours of recorded music, zippy banter, occasional news items, (mostly read from that morning’s Daily Princetonian), and frequent solo work on the Jew’s harp (also called a mouth harp and a jaw harp.) At the end of my three hours, I turned the station off, there being then a period of some hours before the station went on the air again.

I rushed back to my room and found my three suite-mates staring glumly at me. They hadn’t heard a thing, the one switch I had forgotten was the one that turned the transmitter on.