Eddie Mosh Archives - WPRB History

WPRB via Three Inches of Putrid Water

Text: Scott Fulmer ’90

I remember a lot of failures. Failing to cue the right song, failing to turn on the mic, failing to read the weather report. Near-failing grades, too. Every DJ has nightmares of irrevocable failures and total chaos, only to wake up and be thankful that real mistakes are quickly lost in the atmosphere.

There were failed promotion stunts, like the rain of nerf balls dropped by the Raritan Valley Flying School over the live Communiversity broadcast on Nassau Street. The lucky person who returned a certain colored ball to Axel’s booth would have won a weekend to Florida, or something like that. However, the wind carried the balls away from the center of town. I don’t know if anyone claimed the prize.

I remember the WPRB night at City Gardens in conjunction with the Mekons concert. We promoted it heavily, but the small enthusiastic crowd was mostly ‘PRB staff. And there was that paid promotional audience-involvement stunt for the First National Bank (Adam, check that.) For weeks we advertised the first annual Bank Vault Cram-In. The group that fit the most people into the vault would win a new CD player. No one (but a few enterprising ‘PRB staffers who thought we needed a new CD player, myself included) showed up. The bank manager was not very amused.

Everything seemed to break or was broken when I was a DJ. The headphones were always broken, as were the chairs; the turntables in Studio C were rarely working at the same time; cart machines and their remote control buttons were always fickle or feckless. Not to mention this production director’s love affair with the elderly Scully reel-to-reel recorder. I also remember the valiant efforts of the helpless engineers, Charlie and then James and then Steve, to reconstruct the scene of the technological crimes. All i can report to have built were some record shelves; setting off the fire alarms by burning the wood with a very dull radial saw is admitted, too. But why dwell on failures? WPRB also fostered many wonderful memories…

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Fishbone at City Gardens

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.

1981 Decline & Fall playlist

When a reunited Detention came to record a live session at WPRB in 2010, Kevin Shields gifted this 1981 playlist for the show “Decline & Fall.”

Mark Dickinson and Lloyd Handler (aka “Larry Void”) started “Decline & Fall,” WPRB’s late night punk/hardcore show earlier that year. The program’s run spanned the entire decade, with the hosting torch passed several times over into the eventual hands of Ethan “Eddie Mosh” Stein and “Slammin'” Sam Youakim.

During the mid-late 80s, Chris Mohr would periodically host special editions of the show re-titled as the “All Fall Decline & Fall”, and would feature music only by The Fall.

Punk specialty shows have continued to air sporadically on WPRB over the years. From “Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn” to “Punk vs. Metal” to “Totally Wired.”

Perhaps someday, the Decline and Fall franchise will be re-animated.

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