The following anecdotes, newspaper clippings and other WPRB memorabilia from 1980-1989 are taken from the book WPRB's 50th Anniversary: A History of Princeton University Radio 1940-1990, edited by Adam M. Rosen '91.

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Part of my role as a disc jockey is that of a teacher. I educate the masses about music that you've never heard but that I think you'd like. Many of my (and other WPRB DJs') favorites have one handicap excluding them from stardom; perhaps they're foreign or have a weak vocalist, but can play with the best. In other words, WPRB plays (somewhat presumptuously, I admit) what We Think You Should Hear, along with enough Springsteen and Neil Young to keep you listening and advertisers buying.

WPRB DJs carry torches for two rock extremes which WPST and WYSP simply never play; minimalist new-wavers like the Residents and Gary Numan, and fusion-art-rockers like Gong, Bruford and P.F.M. Most of us are partisan to either one style or the other. However, We Think You Should Hear some of each, so we have an emphasis system which basically forces Genesis freaks like me to play XTC and The Clash. I object to this musical analog of the Butler Law (although it really helps our popularity), and I pontificate on my favorites with phraseology like 'always good to hear from...' or 'fine guitar work by...'

However, a WPRB DJ doesn't just preach his musical gospel; as one of my trainers said, 'A radio station is not a stereo with two turntables.' I have to be a good P.R. man on the phone. Calls from listeners come in three categories: first, and most usual, are requests. I used to dislike playing them because they interfered with My Vision, but people usually Have Good Taste, so now I play as many as possible (no, I won't play 'Stairway to Heaven'). Second are complainers about my bad grammar, my fun-poking comments about certain groups or that 'Like, you never play any Dead, man!' Last are people who compliment my show and/or who have the insane idea that I am a well-traveled, experienced professional (needless to say, I like these the best). I enjoy talking to people 'in character,' but they always seem to call eleven seconds before I have to go on the air. This brings me to another must for DJs: calmness and presence of mind. A well-done radio show may sound effortless, but it involves lots of timing and quick decisions. If you look for an album only to find that it's on 'permanent borrow,' you have to think of an acceptable substitute fast. If a cartridge machine fails to work, you must switch to the other one deftly and scream later. If there are forty-eight seconds before the ABC news, you have to decide whether to B.S. on the mic, play a station ID or public service announcement or play an instrumental and fade it out. Then again, the 'no second chance' aspect is part of the thrill.

However, the biggest thrill for me is when a caller asks, 'Hey, wow, what's this stuff you're playing? It's real intense!' So is being a DJ on a fine, truly progressive radio station, WPRB Princeton. - Bill Rosenblatt '83

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My fondest memories concern the impromptu things that happened, on and off the air, when groups of us got together in high spirits, especially late at night. Bill Rosenblatt '83 and Spencer Palocz '83 once did an all-news graveyard shift, reading the farm report and Living Today off the UPI wire and inserting 'random news minutes,' carts grabbed at random from the newsroom, containing network voice reports and actualities recorded days or weeks earlier. I did an all-Jefferson Airplane and Friends graveyard once, from midnight until about 7:00 a.m. When I signed off, I said something about probably no one stayed up to listen to this, but I had a good time anyway. After I got off the mic, I got a call from a fellow who had not only listened to the whole thing (or so he claimed), but had taped it as well.

The best, though, was 'Long Song Weekend,' which occurred while we were renovating the place during the summer of 1982. Kevin Boyce, the Chief Engineer, was the regular Saturday afternoon DJ, but he was being kept quite busy elsewhere in the station because he was one of the only technically competent people there. So, he began playing longer and longer songs as the day went on, and every so often, a song would end and the nearest person to the studio would rush in and do a segue. Finally, somebody suggested that anyone who did that go on mic, using the name Kevin Boyce. An hour or so later, someone else suggested that we do a giveaway by lining everyone up before a microphone and having the listeners choose the real Kevin Boyce (I don't believe anyone actually got it right, however). After 4:00 p.m., when Mark Crimmins's airshift began, we called ourselves Mark Crimmins; the thing ended sometime after 6:00 p.m. when we all went to dinner.

We also put a time capsule in the walls of the station that year. It contains some UPI copy, a program log, other assorted paperwork (board meeting minutes, perhaps, I don't recall exactly) and was stamped with every rubber stamp we had in the business office. It's in the wall separating Studio B from the hallway leading to Studio C and the newsroom. - Alan Flippen '84

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I was on the air when President Reagan was shot in 1981. I had recently finished training and had been assigned the Monday 12:15 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. slot. As a new jock, I'd get there about 11:00 a.m. to start organizing my albums, only to find the booth filled with candles by the jazz jock, Stanley Jordan '81.

Midway through my show that afternoon, the phone rang and someone asked me if I knew anything about Reagan being shot. I said I'd heard of the 'Dead Kennedys,' but nothing about 'President Reagan Being Shot.' It was tough to keep up with all the new bands.

Just then, the wire began ringing like mad. That's when my rigorous WPRB training and hours of on-air experience kicked in. I got the information from the wire which said that James Brady was dead and Reagan was shot and quite likely killed. By the time I broke in with this report, the booth was filled with 'PRB staff and we decided to pot up the ABC wire.

Steve Grossman '84 and I lived above WPRB, in 10-A Holder, our sophomore year and were often called upon to help out at the last minute. One morning, at about 6:00 a.m., we got a call asking, begging, praying for one of us to handle the Classical show until someone more qualified could take over. Well, my vast knowledge of classical music spans from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Fantasia, so I tried to beg off, but when Bill Rosenblatt '83 offered to buy me a six-pack of any beer I chose, I knew it was time to pull on the sweats and do my duty for the station.

A little Beethoven, a little Mozart. This ain't so hard. The news went off without a hitch, the classical jock showed up and I was outta there. Feeling pretty good about my performance (and my upcoming six-pack) I headed for breakfast. That's when it all began...

'Nice show, Jim.'

'Thanks.'

'But you're not supposed to segue classical songs...'

'Okay, so I made one little goof. No biggie.'

'Good work, Jim.'

'Thanks a lot.'

'Never heard anyone talk over the end of Mozart before...'

Call me an innovator. My self-image slipping, I continued toward breakfast. That's when it happened:

'Halkett, you bonehead! It's not a *cut* by Beethoven! A piece! A composition! Even a song! But not a cut!'

Suffice it to say, I got the six-pack, but was never asked to host a classical show again. - Jim Halkett '84

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In the fall of 1986, Spin magazine named WPRB the best commercial college station in the country. Ken Katkin made the original contact with Spin and Vickie Gonzales was the one who convinced them to pick us. They gave us a write-up a few paragraphs long in an issue featuring radio stations, and they printed a promotional poster for the issue with a huge photo of David Lee Roth and a WPRB logo in the lower right-hand corner. For the last several years, a copy of that poster has been in the window of the old announcer's booth (a.k.a. 'The Game Show Booth' as Frederick Ilchman and Arthur Burris used to call it) hiding the Classical CDs from view.

In the spring of 1988, Jeff Gordinier and I did a show starting at midnight Sunday called 'Pretension, Ltd.' It started off erratically as a combination of us doing readings and playing atrocious music, such as Cybill Shepard's album of torch songs. We got sick of making fun of bad music and just tried to use good atmospheric music to compliment the readings. In one of our best shows, Beethoven's 'Pastorale' played while Assaf Josh Henig read a bucolic brochure about New Jersey tourism that he had just happened to pick up from the mailboxes. It was a good combination.

For our last show, we asked seven writers to come up with a script for a radio play. Each piece was written entirely separately. There were seven characters and they had the same name as the writers; otherwise, the seven parts had nothing to do with each other. It was performed by the seven as a single work called 'The Mollusk Man.'

The promo for that show was fun to make. Jeff Gordinier read a section of Moby Dick. I then cut out parts of the monologue to come up with a new text that was mysterious and funny. I taped Jeremy Toback, bassist of Noise Petals, reading the promo part twice. He read them at almost exactly the same pace, so I put both versions on the master for stereo effect, mixing each with a little different equalization. The text from Moby Dick provided the memorable line, 'Vast bunch of grapes, winding through these intricacies, the great blubber hook. . ..' That lead, in 1990, to the show Vast Bunch of Grapes, which Rob Maxwell and Ethan Stein, among others, did that was similar to Pretension, Ltd. - Chris Mohr '88

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During my junior year, 1986-1987, the station manager at WPRB tried to end all jazz programing. Not only did I rescue the jazz programming, but I got us a show on Monday nights. My roommate, Mike Eastwood '88, and I tried to liven the show up. I took verbal solos over the air during the instrumental breaks and we whispered subliminal messages such as 'you love jazz' underneath the music. I had just handed over the control of jazz programming to someone else, and the first move he made was to cancel our show and kick us off the air. - Daniel Porter '88

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I remember lots of failures. Failing to cue the right song, failing to turn on the mic, failing to read the weather report. Near-failing grades, too. There were failed promotional 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 in 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 Fidelity Bank. 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.

Still vivid are those historical events in radio history that my comrades perpetrated. Live radio broke into a new arena (the bathroom) when 'Cousin' Dave Mills shaved his beard off on the air. Ken Katkin's 1990 Independence Day show featuring 'five independent groups and artists' will hopefully spawn similar shows, and maybe a few name stars. Rob Maxwell, wrapped in Saran Wrap while DJ-ing one night, never sounded so 'fresh' (uugh!). Jon 'Roscoe' Picoult's listener-voted Midnight Mini-Concert was reported to be unusually undemocratic, lacking actual audience input. But let Roscoe show you the picture sent to him by his sex-crazed teeny-bopper fan. There was Chris Mohr's All Fall Decline and Fall, and Eddie Mosh's (Ethan Stein) last ever Decline Reunion, without his teammate, Slammin' Sam (Sam Youakim). And who that was there will forget Ilch's (Frederick Ilchman) 7 a.m. Third Anniversary Silver Platter bash.

The pleasures of graft were undeniable. A free T-shirt from Public Enemy, or Frontier Records, or the Stone Roses, or Skinny Puppy, still hang brightly. Some of the items that I remember were: a rubber fish, a rubber Psychedelafunkapus, a washboard, an inflatable brontosaurus, a penny-whistle with instructions and various candies and liquids. Aidan Wasley accumulated quite a tangle of key chains. And for some reason, record promoters commonly believe free condoms will make us listen to their petrifying music.

Finally, as a senior with too much time on my hands, I joined the cult of pretension, the Vast Bunch of Grapes crew. Indeed, the pleasures of tape loops and feedback were undeniable, too. While the show may have seemed inaccessible to the general public, our WPRB friendships that had been growing for the past few years ripened during a frenzied hour of creative graping each week. And my friends I'll never forget. Such is the power of radio. - Scott Fulmer '90

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To read a decade-by-decade history of WPRB, click on the links below.

1940s - 1950s - 1960s - 1970s - 1980s - 1990s