Here’s an excellent interview with George Gallup Jr. conducted by WPRB’s John Shyer at some point in 1977 or 1978. Gallup graduated from Princeton University in 1953, and along with his brother Alec, became an executive for their father’s well-known polling company, The Gallup Organization. The interview is a fascinating window into the evolution of polling as a component of the American political process. Here’s a remarkable exchange, especially given recent developments in campaign finance law:
Shyer: [Regarding] any of the election reform bills that are taking effect now and have been passed in the last few years, do you think they’re improving the situation?
Gallup Jr. : No, it’s just hogwash. To unseat a Congressman today, an incumbent, requires… probably in the neighborhood of one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Who has that kind of money?
I started listening to WPRB during the summer of 1985 or 1986. For a misfit kid who’d not yet established a strong sense of self-identity, everything WPRB played at that time seemed utterly revelatory in comparison to the bar-band hokum, limp dance tracks, and horrific hair-metal that populated the corporate airwaves of the day. Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for me to become completely hooked. One of the first bands I associated with the station was a local hardcore act called Artificial Artifacts. They did a ridiculous cover of the Gilligan’s Island theme song, which (I soon discovered) many WPRB programmers were happy to honor requests for. THIS IS THE STORY OF THAT BAND, THAT SONG, AND THE NOW-OBSOLETE TECHNOLOGY NEEDED TO PLAY IT. (As told by Artificial Artifacts member, former WPRB DJ, and noted filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig.) -Mike Lupica
Glenn Tucker and I were roommates at Trenton State College in 1985 where I was production manager and a DJ at WTSR 91.3 FM doing the Jeff Eph show (also known as “Radio Of The Absurd.”) [A guy named] Gene was in a hardcore band named Send Help who had a 45 out titled “Buffy’s Dead” on the super cool Long Branch NJ Brighton Bar label Mutha Records owned by a leather and chains biker named Mark “The Mutha” Chesley. This of course spoofed the TV show Family Affair. Here’s a link to the song and cover art.
John and Dave Tamp, along with Adam Bushman, were friends of Glenn’s from New Brunswick where we used to rehearse in a wild crumbling space owned by the leader of Terry Hughes and the Backyard Party. Terry also hosted Monday night jam sessions at the Court Tavern.
After hearing the Dickies and Circle Jerks do humorous covers and particularly ISM doing the fantastic Partridge Family cover of “I Think I Love You”, we were inspired to tackle Gilligan’s Island which we recorded live to 2 track in some cheap basement studio in Princeton on a reel of used 1/4″ tape from WTSR.
DOWNLOAD or LISTEN: Artificial Artifacts – “Gilligan’s Island”
I started out listening to WPRB during my freshman year (1999), but I didn’t become involved as a DJ until, I think, 2001. One of my first recollections of WPRB was tuning in shortly after I’d moved into my dorm and hearing someone read from the Q section of the dictionary. I’d grown up with somewhat experimental radio theatre sneaking into the overnight hours of my now-all-too-tame local NPR affiliate, so this made me excited and curious for more. (more…)
I checked the UPI machine, and returned to tell the caller that the wire had nothing about a blackout. Of course I soon figured out WHY the machine said nothing. At :15 past the hour, the ABC network scrambled onto the air from Washington. Its New York operation, and who knew how much else, were in the dark. The fun at WPRB was underway. So was what may have been the greatest audience coverage in the station’s history. Without power, New York stations that neighbored us on the FM dial were off the air. Station members David Kurman in Mineola, Long Island, and Chris Fine near the Connecticut border in Harrison, New York, called to say I was booming in. I put Chris on the air with a report on his blacked-out but very peaceful neighborhood. John Shyer reported from the top of Holder Tower, “to the southwest, there is a glow in the sky. It is Philadelphia. But in the direction of New York, the sky is black…”
LISTEN: John Shyer reports on the NYC blackout from the top of Holder Tower. (Includes off-air technical strategizing between Rob and John.)
[Photo from the “Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn” archives]
Years on air: 1990-1999 (living nearby had its perks.)
Favorite bands: The Life and Times, Caspian, Moving Mountains, MC5, The Appleseed Cast, Shiner, Trail of Dead…there are so many.
Memorable on-air moment: When I was a sophomore, I made a casual request over the air for someone to help me locate a hard-to-find 7″ single I had just played, and coveted. A short while later, I got a call from a nice guy who offered to come down to the station and give me his copy. That was the day I discovered that people really *were* listening — and met my future longtime cohost and fanzine cofounder (and the mastermind behind the WPRB archive project), Mike Lupica. I still treasure that single.
Advice for current WPRB DJs: Explore the stacks, play everything, learn all you can, get involved, and have fun! If you’re having a great time, your listeners will, too.
Bonus content! Here’s a quick mic break of Jen back-announcing a set of music from 5.29.93.
WPRB’s John Shyer ’78 recently unloaded a box of archival airchecks on us which he claimed had been stashed in the back of his closet for decades. Dating from the mid-late 1970s, these airchecks were on both 1/4″ reel as well as cassette, and unlike most of PRB’s native collection, were all in perfect condition (no creeping black mold!)
As such, we were pretty excited to dig in and see what treasures lurked within. Here are the first fruits from the cassette pictured below: a trio of 1977-era promos for John Weingart’s “Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio” — a longtime staple of WPRB’s schedule, which is still heard on a weekly basis every Sunday night from 7-10 PM.
Stay tuned for more from John Shyer’s incredible archives in the coming months!
[Jeff Weiser (left) and Bruce Snyder help cover the 1972 election live on the air.]
By Douglas B. Quine
I joined WPRB in my freshman year of 1969-1970 and trained on WPRB-AM before serving as a newsman at the May Day protest demonstration in Washington (1970) and the election night headquarters of Nixon and McGovern (1972). In Princeton, I took on the folk & blues shows on WPRB-FM, served as Traffic Director and assistant business manager, and finally served on the Ivy Network Board of Directors.
I have many memories of WPRB, including lighting fluorescent lamps by the radiated antenna power on Holder Tower, talking with stoned listeners who called into the studios, organizing the Beach Boys, Fish, Jean Shepherd, Weather Report, & Poco concerts, and the first WPRB Tee Shirts (blue shirts with a yellow smudge at the bottom which was supposed to represent a voice print). The stories that I’ve retold the most times, however, must be the “WPRB arrests in Washington” and “The Do Me Bird”.
I started at WPRB during the second semester of my freshman year in 1979. The ability to have the entire record library—and it was still all vinyl—at my disposal was intoxicating. Unless that was the fumes from the records.
At the time, the station’s rock programming was still very much beholden to the freeform model of the late 1960s-early 1970s. In fact, to my memory, the only requirement that we had was the obligation to play a certain amount of jazz during a rock show. That all changed, though, when Ashley Ellott became station manager, and Jason Meyer became program director. They attempted to turn the rock programming into something more consistent and more rock oriented. To me, there is something to be said for listeners having a general sense of what they might hear when they turn on the radio, and having some consistency from day to day and time slot to time slot theoretically results in listeners staying with the station for longer periods. On the other hand, they also insisted that we use the slogan “Your Music,” which was generally reviled—it might have worked at a professional commercial station, but was a bad idea for a college radio station.
Favorite bands: Sonic Youth, US Maple, Gun Club, Cannibal Ox, Lightning Bolt, Sleater-Kinney, Arthur Russell.
Memorable on-air moment: The crazy Halloween noise sculpture I made one year with Narin Dickerson. I remember it involving lots of Shadow Ring records being played at the wrong speed.
Advice for current WPRB DJs: Play as many things that you don’t know or have never heard of as things that you do; there is so much good music out there, and the WPRB library happens to have a bunch of it.