Gregg Lange Archives - WPRB History
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Gregg Lange

1968 Princeton – NYU Basketball Excerpt

Text: Edward Labowitz ’70

[Download Princeton / NYU Basketball Excerpt, 1968] (19.5mb MP3 File)

Gregg [Lange] and I broadcast the (Men’s, as there were no Women’s) Basketball games on WPRB during our years, 1966-1970. During freshman year, ’66-’67, the team was ranked third in the nation and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. However, as fledgling freshmen, we did not broadcast many of the games, but watched and listened to our mentors, John Barnard ’69 and Hal Pote ’68.

We were the regular broadcasters in ’67-’68, ‘68-‘69, and much of ‘69-‘70, until senior theses began to occupy our time and our successors took the mic.

I recently found a ¼ tape of the last 18 minutes of game time of the NYU-Princeton game, in early December 1968. I transferred the tape to digital, and it is a good thing I did, because it was beginning to deteriorate. The first 1:15 is a bit garbled, but the rest is fine. I am doing the play-by-play, Gregg does a bit of color toward the end of the game, and John Barnard does the post-game wrap-up. Our engineer was either John Bongiovani ’70 or Tom Kendrick ’72. This was the sixth game of the season, which Princeton won, making it 3-3 at that point. The Tigers went on to a 19-7 season, which was Pete Carril’s second year at Princeton. NYU, of course, eliminated its intercollegiate basketball program many years ago. This may be the last extant recording of any NYU basketball game. (more…)

Oh God, My God, I Left my Key to Heaven at Home

By Teri Noel Towe
[aka “TNT” or Teri “The Animal” Towe]

The late 60’s were a Golden Age for classical music at the station. WPRB was blessed with a string of committed and sensitive Classical Music Directors: Jeff Schaefer, Hal Abelson, Greg Petsko, and Alan Konefsky. I myself had the pleasure of serving in that capacity for a year and a half. The Classical Department had four hours every weekday evening (7 to 11) and several hours on Sunday afternoon. As a record collector and classical music nut, I found at WPRB the perfect forum for the grinding of my personal axes. For two years (my junior and senior years), I did two shows a week (Tuesday and Thursday evenings). In addition to series devoted to all the recordings of the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska and the cellist and conductor Pablo Casals, I regularly presented “The Age of Shellac”, a series devoted to historic 78 RPM recordings, which I transferred to tape on my own equipment in my dorm room, first in ’41 Hall, and then in ’03.

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The Razor Sharp Mind of WPRB’s Jeff Meyers

Photo: Jeff Meyers (aka Rod St. John) with Jean Shepherd
Text: Gregg Lange

The late 1960s was a highly active and diverse era for WPRB. News staffers aggressively covered coeducation, plus anti-war and civil rights demonstrations; the sports department traveled with Ivy champion football and nationally-ranked basketball teams; classical music was beginning to assert itself seriously; and the earlier preponderance of middle-of-the-road music was blown away by underground rock and a fabulous jazz department that appeared almost overnight, experimental specialty programs and even a highly popular Top-40 show, all by students. Meanwhile, the station sponsored concerts of all sorts, and its annual presentation of raconteur Jean Shepherd at Alexander Hall became the stuff of radio legend.

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