Category Archives: Alumni News

Archive: 1956 One Hundred Hour Marathon

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You’re listening to clips from the 100 hour marathon co-hosted by WPRB’s Program Director Paul Dunn ’58 and Head Announcer Dick Morgan ’58 back in 1956.

Dunn says: “We had done many two-man shows and decided that a publicity-creating broadcast was necessary to tell the world that WPRB was back on the air after its then-permitted summer hiatus.”

The broadcast began at noon the Friday, September 14th, and finished, one hundred hours later, on Tuesday at 4.

There are some real gems in here, including some funky Bulgarian jazz and about twenty minutes of ‘echo chamber’ tomfoolery. The piece also features a bunch of clips from Dunn’s ’57 Sunday evening show, “Paul’s Place”.

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If you have any old tapes or air checks from way-back-when, get in touch! We’d love to hear them. Email pnp@wprb.com.

WPRB Philly Field Trip with Purity Ring and WKDU

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You guys! PRB staffers took an awesome trip down to Philadelphia to see Purity Ring and Young Magic, and to visit our new friends down at WKDU.

If you haven’t heard WKDU, you are missing out. They’re an awesome station based out of Drexel University in Philadelphia. We swung by to meet them and check out their amazing space.

 Some WKDU Highlights

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For reals though, WKDU’s ceiling is the site of all-out plastic soldier warfare and it is unreal.

We had dinner at Llama’s Tooth– 1033 Spring Garden. I swear I am not making this up.

And then PURITY RING at Union Transfer.

Screen Shot 2013-01-30 at 1.06.55 AMIt’s a really great venue with open ceiling and solid acoustics, and we got really great sound because we were in the front.

Young Magic came on at around nine. They were emotional–slightly depressing–but people were pretty into it and they had an interesting trip-hop mixed with dub step situation going on.

And Purity Ring was really great. The set was short and sweet with all the necessaries– Fireshrines, Ungirthed and Lofticries (People freaked out for Lofticries. It was the best.) They also had some great remixes and a surprising and fun Solja Boy cover.

The light show was entertaining too. They had these fibrous cocoon lamps (and or slash dinosaur eggs, spider larvae–we were pretty split on this one) dangling over the stage lighting up in time with the music. Also, they were playing this onion lamp drum kit thing. The lamps lit up every time he hit them and it meshed really well with the electronic sound.

The point is: we had a really great evening. Giant shout out to the trustees for supporting board development through the Jeff A Meyers fund, to Julia Factorial for getting us in touch with KDU and to Jake, Caroline and Matt for being so friendly. You make PRB great.

LISTEN: Teri Noel Towe’s Thanksgiving Day Philadelphia Orchestra special

For a limited time, we’re offering a streaming archive of Teri Noel Towe’s 12-hour Philadelphia Orchestra special. This program originally aired on Thanksgiving Day of 2012. Use the player below to stream the program, which is divided into two segments. Click through for a complete playlist and Teri’s notes for the program.

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Teri Towe is PAW's Tiger of the Week!

The Princeton Alumni Weekly announced their “Tiger of the Week” today – WPRB’s own Teri Noel Towe, host of Towe on Thursday (6-11 am) and Princeton University Class of ’70.

“If you recognize Teri Noel Towe ’70 by sight, you may have watched him in the P-rade, riding down Elm Drive in full costume as Royal Governor Jonathan Belcher, Princeton’s Colonial-era benefactor.

If you recognize Towe by voice, chances are you are a fan of classical music. A self-proclaimed “Bach crazy” and radio devotee, he took an early interest in music and has been hosting classical programs off and on since his undergraduate days. …” Read the rest here!

 

Pop Rocks Has A New Blog!

Hi listeners,

After much encouragement, I’ve decided to continue Pop Rocks in blog form!

From now until sometime, you can go to www.listentopoprocks.com and check out the new (and some old) electronic music I post. In my head, these are what my weekly playlists would have been should Pop Rocks have continued. You can read more on my blog, but I should also note that this blog is more about curation than acting as a timely news source. However, I will try very hard to keep up to date with everything.

Old playlists remain archived here, but listentopoprocks.com is where the new content will be posted!

As always, send me comments, notes, hate-mail (actually, don’t do that) and most importantly MUSIC at louisa@wprb.com.

Keep listening!

Louisa

Get To Know WPRB's DJs: Will Kukin

Every week this summer WPRB will highlight one its DJs in “Get To Know WPRB’s DJS.”

Name: Will Kukin

Show: Metal Mania

Blog For Your Show?: wprbmetalmania.tumblr.com

Type of music played on show?: Metal (mostly death metal and all the subgenres, melodic death metal, technical death metal, viking metal).

Reasons why you decided to be a DJ?: Went to freshman activities fair, the WPRB table was there and someone shouted out “Hey, do you like music?” and I was like “Yeah.”

Day Job: Princeton University student

Where are you from originally?: Englewood, New Jersey

What can you not stop listening to right now?: Viking Metal (a sub sub genre of death or black metal with some folk and melodic elements) artists like: Varg, Amon Amarth.

Favorite summer food?: My favorite all year food is Reese’s Cups.

What are you reading right now?: The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

What is your favorite song lyric?: Most of the music I listen to, you can’t even hear the lyrics!

What is your favorite city in the world that you have visited?: Venice.

 

For Services Rendered….

In our ever-continuing saga of tracking WPRB alumnus Ken Katkin’s awesomeness, we’d like to congratulate him on his special award from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Ken’s continuing support of that state’s grand contributions to independent music has awarded him the rank of colonel:

“For decades of unbroken support for the Babylon Dance Band, King Kong, Bastro, Bonnie Prince Billy, Slint, Bodeco, Your Food, Antietam, Squirrel Bait, Papa M, the Endtables, the Blinders, the Dickbrains, the Palace Brothers, Malignant Growth, Fading Out, and even Paul K & the Weathermen.”

We hear fried chicken was served at the ceremony. Ken, now that you know the secret recipe, we have two words to say: we’re hungry!

Paul Walsh 1921-2009.

Paul Walsh ’42, one of the founders of 103.3 fm WPRB, passed away on April 17th, 2009 in Princeton at the age of 88.

According to an obituary in this week’s Town Topics, Walsh was also “a close friend of Huddie ‘Leadbelly’ Ledbetter, the folk and blues singer and guitarist. [Walsh] later became executor of Leadbelly’s estate. He also spent many happy weekends in Fishkill, N.Y. as part of a crew of friends who helped Pete Seeger build his house.”

WPRB sends our condolences to Walsh’s family and mourn his passing.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be sent to the Seva Foundation, 1786 5th Street, Berkeley, CA. 94710.

A service in celebration of Walsh’s life will be held on Saturday, June 6th at 10:00 am ET at the Princeton University Chapel.

Condolences may be sent online at thekimblefuneralhome.com.