Prog Rock Archives - WPRB History
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Prog Rock

Skipping Prog Rock LPs, Hot Coffee on My Pants, and Lies I told the Program Director

[By Ted Stern ’76]

Yes, there actually was one summer where I spent my vacation doing the 6AM morning show. It seemed like a cushy enough job, and no one else wanted to do It. I soon found out why. With only a skeleton crew of students around, and most of them here because they partied too much during the semester, some late nights sort of tended to develop. Soon I was dragging myself out of bed just to make it to the station in time to play the opening cart with all those fascinating statistics (how far does 17,000 watts go anyway), never mind shove a cup of coffee down me first. But then I developed a system: There were a few eclectic German bands in the rabbits [aka vinyl stacks] with some twenty-two minute tracks—boring avante-garde gibberish, but just long enough to Iet me make it to the deli just off of the main drag, grab a doughnut, and scoot back. (more…)

The Musical Box, and Prog vs. Punk at WPRB

 

[By Bill Rosenblatt]

When I first showed up at WPRB in the Fall of 1979, the station’s musical center of gravity was shifting from progressive rock to punk and new wave. I was a prog fanatic – thanks in part to listening to WPRB during my senior year of high school in Philadelphia, especially late at night when the signal was stronger (this was before the early 1990s power increase) and DJs were more likely to play 10-minute epic prog tracks. But by the time I had gone through DJ training, I was one of the few remaining people who was still into prog. So I started a specialty show called “The Musical Box”, named after an early Genesis tune, which focused on prog rock as well as jazz-rock fusion. I believe I did the show from 1980 through 1982. Later on, Kevin Boyce ’83 joined me as cohost.

LISTEN: Musical Box Promo #1 (featuring stylish use of “Heart of the Sunrise” by Yes.)

 

LISTEN: Musical Box promo #2 (with great re-purposing of “California Über Alles ” by the Dead Kennedys”

 

We had an on-air “rivalry” between Mark Dickinson ’84 and myself.  Mark was the resident expert on hardcore punk; he did a specialty show on it called “Decline and Fall”. The rivalry was “Punk is not music, the musicians can’t even play their instruments” vs. “Prog is pretentious, self-indulgent dinosaur music that isn’t real rock ‘n’ roll.” It was nothing personal; I had great respect for Mark, and he even got me to fill in for his show once.

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