Mike Lupica, Author at WPRB History - Page 5 of 12
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Mike Lupica, Page 5

“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.

 

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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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.

Kicking Mainstream Taste to the Curb

[By Justine Heilner 96, above, with Matthew Robb 94. Working the door at the WPRB-sponsored Tsunami/Spent show at the Princeton Arts Council]

I knew first thing freshman year that I wanted to be a DJ at WPRB because my brother Alex Heilner, three years my senior, was one too. I lived just around the corner from the studio in Hamilton Hall. Jen Moyse trained me—what an intimidatingly cool person to learn from! I was ‘lucky’ to never have to do a graveyard [late night] shift because Matthew Robb and Sean Murphy tricked me into being Traffic Director in exchange for a better time slot. What the hell did I do as Traffic Director?! I recall a lot of dot matrix printouts and a computer in a small room down the hall…

The first time I had a show my hands were shaking so much I had a hard time cueing the record. I had never done any kind of public speaking and I am not particularly into performance. I didn’t do banter and I didn’t have a sidekick or partner so I decided to just keep my speaking to a minimum and play the music. Listening to tapes of my first shows I thought I sounded like a really young girl. I created a radio voice—when I listen to young women DJs on college radio now, I know exactly what they’re doing. (more…)

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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Friday WPRB DJ Pinup: Tim Kastelle!

[aka “Rockin'” Tim Kastelle]

Years on air: 1982-1989

Favorite bands: This is kind of like asking which oxygen molecule I like best when I’m breathing.

Memorable on-air moment: [My wife] Nancy and I had joint bachelor and bachelorette parties by doing a graveyard (late night show) with our friends the night before we got married. It was a Saturday night, so we started early at around 11 pm. It was a cool thing for many reasons. Everyone that was there did something – the 12 or so ex-DJs all played a set, while everyone else picked songs, or read the weather or news, or something. And all through the night we were getting calls from people who were happy to hear voices they hadn’t heard in years. Like Sean Murphy said in his post last week, I majored in radio, and this ended up being the last show I ever did. It was a great combination of friendship and connection that were the hallmarks of all of my great WPRB memories.

Advice for current WPRB DJs: Experiment with everything. The station gives an amazing opportunity to try out every idea you have, even the stupid ones. And the stupid ones often end up be the best. So much of university life is regimented, but at the station you have unbelievable autonomy – take full advantage of that!


On the Lasting Benefits of the WPRB Experience

[By Dave Forrest ’60]

Reminiscences of the heroic age of PRB in the late 50’s retain their noble lustre beneath the encrusted molluscs and other crud of time. Other contributors to this [project] will no doubt limn the brilliant PRB trajectories of such mythic figures as Siggins, Crowther, McGuire, Dunn, Fuellhart, McCracken, Miller, McGiffert, Fleishhaker, Medina, et al. and the promulgated joys of midcult and masscult offerings of the station.

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