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Ken Katkin

The Fall / Mark E. Smith / WPRB Mega-Post

As you’ve probably heard by now, Mark E. Smith, the leader of iconic post-punk stalwarts The Fall, passed away last week at the age of 60. His health had been in decline for some time, as evidenced by the band’s last two American tours being abruptly canceled, as well as recent stage entrances being made by wheelchair.

Within the pantheon of WPRB, the Fall are an act of unique prominence. I can’t think of another cult band that’s existed continuously for so many years and which has been adored by so many WPRB DJs spread across four different decades. As such, when the news of Smith’s death broke, I started seeing a lot of Fall-related waxing from current and former PRB folks in my social media feeds. (A trend including content from early 80s alums, as well as folks who graduated from college as recently as two years ago.) This post attempts to gather as many of those images, words, and related gushings as possible into a singular MES/Fall/WPRB content depot.

Before we go any further, let it be stated quite clearly: Mark E. Smith was a hugely problematic character. He was arrested and charged with assaulting bandmate Julia Nagle in 1998, and there are numerous accounts of awful behavior on his part over the years. But as he was the only constant member of the band through countless lineups, any notion or idea of the Fall continuing without him is simply absurd. (As Smith once famously declared “If it’s me and yer granny on bongos, it’s the Fall.“)

As such, think of this post not as a deification of Smith—a man whose inexcusable actions should be neither forgotten nor sugar-coated—but rather, a summary of how his band’s music shaped the lives, experiences, and musical travels of so many WPRB DJs across multiple generations.

To begin, I present the above slideshow which comprises fresh scans of every piece of available Fall vinyl from WPRB’s record library. (Except the ‘Slates’ 10″, which I forgot to grab before hoofing all those records across town to scan them… apologies.) Many of the hastily taped (and re-taped) spines should give you a sense of how heavily WPRB’s airstaff has hit these LPs over the years. Note that you can pause the slideshow by mousing over any of the images.

Below are other various Fall-related pieces of media and writing from or involving a slew of WPRB DJs from the 1980s-now.

RIP Mark E. Smith. And farewell to a criterion WPRB band.

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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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WPRB: The View from Outside

[Words: Mike Appelstein. Photos: Rob Schuman]

In the summer of 1986, I was a student at Rutgers University and a DJ at the campus radio station, WRSU-FM. I had grown up in the area, and listened to both WRSU and WPRB as a teenager. In those days before the Internet and streaming audio, you had to seek out cultural avenues by yourself, and I was very fortunate to have resources like these to light the way.

I’d heard my friends Gene and Bryan, both Rutgers students and WRSU DJs, on WPRB as well. One day I asked Bryan how he managed to get on WPRB. I assumed you had to be a Princeton student to qualify for airtime. “Call Ken Katkin,” he suggested.

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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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LISTEN: Artificial Artifacts cover “Gilligan’s Island”

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”

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Two “Thanx IV Sharin'” listener postcards.

TIVS

Thanx IV Sharin’ was an Internet phenomenon in a pre-Internet world.

A talk show that aired Sunday nights into Monday mornings on WPRB in the mid-to-late 1980s, the program was one of the few in the station’s history to take live phone calls from listeners – a jerry-rigged hand-crafted “seven second delay” involving two reel-to-reel machines and a well-placed pencil pushed into a wall the only safety net keeping potential obscenity from getting over the air.

Since the immediacy of the computer age and social networking was at least a decade away, interaction between audience and the show’s many hosts beyond the telephone line was primarily made up of letters sent to the station during the week (a fair percentage courtesy the incarcerated) that would then be read on the air – often requesting other fans of the show to contact them directly.

If you listened to Thanx IV Sharin’ on a regular basis, repeat callers began to pop up frequently, almost all under aliases I can still rattle off today such as “Dad,” “Packy Vomit,” “God,” “Jane Pod,” her brother “Bill Pod” and “Chris Makepeace” (not the Canadian actor of the same name).

I can only imagine how this underground community of unconnected misfits would have flourished further with the Internet at its disposal.

As a grade schooler growing up in central New Jersey, I would try to stay up late on Sunday nights, pressing “record” on the longest cassette I had when my eyes became heavy so I could listen to as much Thanx IV Sharin’ as possible on the way to school the next day.

I have fond memories of walking around Europe with my family one summer with a tape (or two) of TIVS in my Walkman on repeat.

Even though I would become a DJ at WPRB in 1988 and have always been fairly comfortable speaking into a microphone, I was terrified of calling Thanx IV Sharin’ and could never bring myself to phone in. In my young mind the show’s rotating hosts were impossibly quick-witted and I’ve always been a subpar improviser.

Going through old boxes at my parents’ house recently, I’ve found several letters I started writing to “Arlo,” “Beetle Bailey,” “Gordon Wu” and “Golf Ball Head” Ken Katkin that I never felt were decent enough to add a stamp to.

As a longtime admirer of Thanx IV Sharin’ from afar, I’m delighted to instead present this pair of beautiful listener postcards sent to the station during the show’s initial run. To me they exemplify how creative and devoted the show’s listeners were.

You can read some of Ken Katkin’s Thanx IV Sharin’ remembrances here.

If you have old airchecks, recordings or ephemera related to Thanx IV Sharin’, please contact us as they would make for great WPRB History posts!

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“Thanx IV Sharin'”—Like Punk Never Happened

Here’s an on-air promo for WPRB’s infamous call-in show, “Thanks IV Sharin'”.

Program host Ken Katkin ’87 recalls:

“Thanx IV Sharin’, in addition to commanding an intensely loyal following, attempted to reach out in a far more personal way than was customary for radio.  Customized WPRB: Thanx IV Sharin’ T-shirts were individually handmade by the hosts and their friends, and made available to listeners for a nominal fee.  (more…)

“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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