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Funstigators

Uncle Mark’s 4th Annual Mondo Xmas Spectacular (Part 1)

With Jon Solomon’s 27th annual Holiday marathon on the approach, what better time to take a spin back through WPRB’s glorious Christmas specials of yore? Here’s a recently unearthed aircheck recording of DJ Mark Dickinson’s Mondo Xmas Radio Spectacular from December 15th of 1984. It’s a wild smackdown of sounds ranging from The Fall to Jimi Hendrix to Tuxedomoon to the Sonics…. only we had to cut all of that out for copyright reasons, leaving only the thrilling sounds of mic breaks from more than 30 years ago. Joining Mark are DJs and friends Dana Batali, Nicola Graham, Jared Silverman, Mark Crimmins,  “Death” Ray Gonzalez of the Funstigators, and the Shields brothers of notorious Jersey punk band Detention. (“Dead Rock & Rollers, they were out of controllers!”)

You’ll also hear a rehearsal medley of hardcore holiday tunes from the Wild Hairs, courtesy of the Shields brothers. Stay tuned for part two in the coming days!

 

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(Re-)Introducing WPRB’s 1980s House Band: The Funstigators!

By Steve Buratowski ’84

DOWNLOADS: The Complete Funstigators WPRB Tapes (.zip file) and the original Funstigators bio (.pdf)

One by-product of WPRB in the early ’80s was a band called the Funstigators. The band consisted of Steve Buratowski, Mark Crimmins, Ray Gonzalez, Kevin Hensley, Chuck Steidel, and Charles Sullivan. All were class of 1984 and, and except for Charles, joined the station as DJs soon after arriving at Princeton. Mark, Chuck, and Charles were roommates, and as far back as freshman year one of their favorite things to do on weekends was to get some cheap beer and play music. Chuck and Mark had guitars, and Charles played one of those tiny squeaky Casiotone keyboards that were popular in the ’80s, using an overturned trashcan as a stand.

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Friday WPRB DJ Pinup: Ray Gonzalez!

[AKA “The Death Ray”]

Years on air: 1982-84

Favorite Bands: REM, The Fleshtones, The Funstigators

Memorable on-air moment: Terrible live on-air interview with Wall Of Voodoo. Stan Ridgway wasn’t there for some reason and I was completely unprepared and ill-equipped to speak with the rest of the band. I made a couple of lame jokes and ended up pissing them off.

Advice for current WPRB DJs: This was originally passed along to me from Billy Disease (Kevin Hensley): Never just play one Ramones track when you can play two back-to-back.


“Pretension Ltd”, “Vast Bunch of Grapes”, and Spin Magazine honors, by Chris Mohr

Chris at WPRB in Fall t-shirtI first started listening to WPRB in the winter of 1980-1981.  I was bored to tears with the sameness of the dinosaur rock of WMMR, WYSP, and WPLJ.  So here was this cool station down at the other end of the dial that played Elvis Costello, Devo, and all sorts of other stuff that was never played on other stations.  It was tremendous.

The summer of ‘81 I listened to WPRB as much as eight hours a day.  I did jigsaw puzzles and listened to Tom Burka, who played a new album every day at noon, Bill Rosenblatt, Alan Flippen, Jordan Becker, and Mark Dickinson (I think), who were the regular rock DJ’s.  The airsound was excellent–polished but not too professional, loose enough to be entertaining but yet everyone knew what he was doing (I don’t recall any women DJ’s that summer.)

That fall I wrote to Bill Rosenblatt to say how much I liked the station and to ask whether it was a professional station.  It wasn’t clear once the school year started, since there seemed to be a larger airstaff.  To my delight, he wrote back and explained that WPRB was in fact run by Princeton students and that its studios were in the basement of a dorm called Holder Hall, which at that point was still a sophomore slum.
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