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.

The things that stand out to me about my experience at WPRB include: immediately meeting a group of people that would be MY people for the four years at school and beyond. We had a passion for music that was different from the white-bread tastes of what we heard on mainstream radio, or coming out of our neighbors windows or on “the street”. I learned about and had access to all this music that I couldn’t get my hands on in high school!

I had several different format shows in the four years but I think I enjoyed my Friday afternoon blues show the most. The WPRB stacks had tons of old roots/blues music and I learned so much just reading the reviews from other DJs and playing those records. I tried to keep it old school. Which is funny from a suburban white girl, but that music had been speaking to me for a long time already.

I had repeat callers who acted like they knew me. I had a psychic on my show once. I once did a 3-hour set of Spiritualized and Spaceman 3 because it was finals and Chris Vansantkumar, the DJ after me never showed up. I did a jazz show in my pajamas because my brother was hanging his thesis show the night before and slept through. I hung out during the shows of my friends and spent hours just looking at and listening to all those records.

The absolute highlight of my DJ life though was during my blues show when I got a call – it was Rick Danko, of the Band, calling from down the Jersey Shore—he said he listened to my show every week and that he liked it.

I also have to note that I am now married to one of the musicians whose music I used to play. I saw him play at Terrace Club once, and remember that show so clearly – but we didn’t meet until 12 years later and I didn’t really connect him as a person to that until much later.  I appreciate and respect his work, and his family and community of musicians’ work very deeply, probably because I learned about it at WPRB.