On Help! with Byrd, you might have heard Gerry and my tour of the Princeton University Art Museum–a part of my summer-long investigation into collections, curated or otherwise, going on all summer.

Because so much of that experience was visual, we wanted to give you a visual component to work with.

I hope you enjoy our tour!

-Byrd

By PNP Staffer, Murray

Having just turned 17, Madeon burst onto the EDM scene with his live mix, “Pop Culture”. It garnered over 2.5 million views on youtube the day it was posted. The house-y mix includes of 39 tracks, and true to its name covers a wide spectrum of pop hits from Michael Jackson to Daft Punk (like any one’s done the latter before).

His rise in 2011 was meteoric.

Weeks before his youtube hit, he performed his first show in Nantes, his hometown.

Before that he had a handful of remixes, one of which won’s Pendulum’s remixing competition for The “Island”. Another is one of my favorite tracks, his poppy spin on The Killer’s “Smile Like You Mean It”.

Since then, he’s been on BBC Radio 1 with Pete Tong (a right of passage for EDM producers), released tracks solely his own with labels like Sony Music’s Columbia label, and performed at EDC Las Vegas and Ultra in Miami. I’m guessing his favorite achievement yet has been to opening for Lady Gaga.

In a fascinating interview Madeon did with the PR group Ooh Brilliant, we discover that he is pensive, intense and pretty mature for his age! Many of his decisions have been strategic: Pop Culture was intended to emphasize the flexibility and tangibility of his live performances (so not “pushing play”). At 11, he says that he divorced the hipster mentality and embraced pop music. As it were, he and Daft Punk are a match made in ‘influence-by’ heaven.

His tracks are very accessible, in line with what pop music means for him: “you don’t make it to express yourself, you make it to express everyone else.”

If you have a gifted 11 year old, we probably want to hear about it: pnp@wprb.com (Opinions about this article also accepted) 

By Nathan

Lyric videos. To me, having a lyric video means being a mainstream well-liked band that is trying to cull an anthem or radio-hit from an upcoming album. If you were to search “lyric video” on YouTube, for example, you would be unsurprised by what appeared: Demi Lovato, Jason Mraz, Adele, One Direction, Rihanna, Taylor Swift… the list goes on.

I’m not saying I despise these singers – come on, who can hate on Adele? – but they, or should I say, their producers, certainly have a certain goal in mind when creating lyric videos.

It’s this context that caused me to be suspicious when I learned that Vampire Weekend had three new videos out for their pre-release marketing and two of them were lyric videos.

I knew the group, now on their third album and well past their Columbia years, was trying to become more popular, but this seemed to be antithetical to their image. What, the band that included a picture of the St. A’s house chandelier on their first album? A lyric video? Please – they had to be above lyric videos.

So I clicked tentatively, but as I often am with the band, I was pleasantly surprised.

The two videos – one for “Step” and one for “Ya Hey” – are almost aesthetically flawless. Both videos read like moving versions of their three album covers. De-saturated and minimalist, well-deliberated and just a little melancholy. Just a little bit eclectic (old people with champagne, kids with basketballs, a sole question mark), but not enough to detract from the feeling that someone put a lot of compositional thought into it all – so much that they wanted to make it look easy.

The typeface, the kerning. The video clips themselves. I am taken completely by them. There isn’t much else to say other than go ahead and watch them, and ask yourself the same question I wonder myself: Why are these called lyric videos? Are there other music videos coming? If so, do they really need to?

If this is the level of composition and curation we will see out of lyric videos in the future, I am all in. And if Vampire Weekend is selling out, they’re at least doing a good job of sticking to their previous visual aesthetic.

So listen up old lyric videos: we are never ever ever getting back together

There is a new standard.

Hate lyric videos? Love them? Have semi-ambivalent feelings about them, but just want to talk to someone? Email us at pnp@wprb.com. 

It’s late, but it’s here: things for you to do in June!

part of Nancy Shill’s collage mural

Thursday, June 6 –

The Arts Council of Princeton has all kinds of everything going on all the time. On the 6th, there’s going to be a cool collage mural dedication. The artist, Nancy Shill, built her mural entirely from stuff she found in the Princeton area. [5-6:30 PM]

On the 12th, you should also check out ‘The Changing Face of Architecture in Princeton‘, a panel discussion with Alan Chimacoff, Max Hayden, MJ Sagan and Kevin Wilkes, moderated by Tom Wright. [7PM]

Friday, June 7th

…and 14th, 21st, 28th from 6-10 PM. The Junebug ArtFest will be on Main Street in Metuchen, NJ.
Bring your little child people to this one. On the 7th, there’s an event called “The Art of Making Paper Hats.” There’s also an art exhibit from the local high school, a art sale from the Paint and Palette Association, and a drum circle with a guy who won an Emmy for drumming.
If you’re in to photography, painting, jewelery, jazz, rock or what the press release helpfully describes as “boy bands”, this is for you.

Saturday, June 8th

ROLLER DERBY ROLLER DERBY ROLLER DERBY

The Jersey Shore Roller Girls have their first summer bout this Saturday in Asbury Park Convention Hall. They’re helping with the Jersey Shore recovery effort, so you should definitely and absolutely go check them out!

June 8 – June 25, 2013

If you’re in an artsy mood, Marcel Truppa‘s exhibit “Beauty Reconstructed” is running in the Baron Arts Center in Woodsbridge, NJ.
Truppa’s a collage artist from Rahway, NJ (he’s been living there since the 30s, but presumably starting working a little later than that) who assembles found objects, but also works with watercolors and oils.

Sunday, June 9th

MARS.
Okay, not NJ, but for real, this looks hilarious and great.

It’s a musical theater adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, prefaced by a speech from Professor Jim Bell and a bunch of images from his books “Postcards from Mars” and “The Space Book”.

You cannot miss this, friends. It’s at 6PM at the Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC.

Wednesday, June 12th

Labyrinth Books in Princeton is always a good place to go to hear interesting things and just to buy interesting, well curated books.
They have some interesting lectures coming up, including

Friedrich Hölderlin: Poems and a Conversation about Translation on the 12th at 6PM

and

Michael Heffler: Climbing Through Life: Hilly Vignettes about Biking on the 25th at PM.

June 15th and 16th

ART WORKS TRENTON is having their ridiculously worthwhile Art-All-Night event. There will be art. And music. And art. Go.

June 15th and BEYOND

AWESOME FEST!
Free 80′s movies in parks around Philly.

June 15th (and for a while after)

The Trenton Museum Society has approximately infinite things going on, and they all look great.

If you read nothing else in your life, read this promotional description for the Trenton City Museum show Trenton Entourage Motors ‘Round the World in 1909:

“Over a century ago, four individuals, one dog, and a car left Trenton to begin an historic drive around the world by automobile.  Harriet White Fisher, owner of Fisher & Norris Anvils on Fair Street, purchased a 1909 Locomobile and financed the entire thirteen months journey.  Mrs. Fisher was accompanied by her chauffeur/personal secretary Harold Brooks, her maid, butler and a Boston Bull Terrier named Honk-Honk. ”

YES. EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT DESCRIPTION IS GREAT. GO.

There’s also Infantry Bugle Calls of the Civil War on the 16th at 2PM, where a trumpet player slash Civil War reenactor slash author will play a whole bunch of bugle calls and talk about their history.

And if you’re big on Warsaw, Kyle Hamilton is showing a bunch of her paintings and drawings in a gallery of the museum from June 15th to July 28th in an exhibit called Memories of Warsaw.

Some Weekly Adventures:

Check out the Princeton Public Library calendar for all their events (they literally have something every day). Every Tuesday, they’re hosting a Downton Abbey Tea Time, where you can watch Downton and be elegant. And every Friday, there’s a Farmer’s Market.

A note from Y2G:

Over my last two years on WPRB, I have had a number of callers tell me they like my show. I’m always a little embarrassed when I accept their complements because I didn’t really choose the music.

WPRB did that for me.

Continue reading →

DO YOU SWEAT ENOUGH? THIS SWEATSHIRT IS GUARANTEED TO HELP YOU SWEAT AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT PERCENT MORE.

Hello listener buddy friends!

It’s our Spring Drive and we just want to reach out and say that WPRB exists because of people like you.

Also, we want to trade you this sweet, sweet sweatshirt for some of your support.

If you donate 103.3$, you not only get this sweatshirt, you get a matching magnet and an absurd and hilarious and tastefully colored shirt, plus our undying gratitude. 

Thank you!

Please pledge at http://www.pledge.wprb.com

This speaker will be relevant soon.

Do you like any of the following things:

1. Art?
2. Noise?
3. Looking at things from tall buildings?

If yes, and if you’re anywhere near NYC, you should absolutely check out ‘Sound Spills’ at 1500 Broadway, Times Square at 43^rd.

Whenever the lease on an office space expires, the building guts the floor and builds it up from scratch. But for two months or so, they give the space over to new media art in the abandoned, interstitial space of this corporate office building overlooking Times Square. This time around,  Thom O’Nions and Richard Sides were curating the 7^th and the 33^rd floors.

The exhibit itself was almost as cool as the space—it focused on the blending of sounds.

Have you ever been to a museum with new media incorporated, and been frustrated by the lack of insulation between different pieces? You’ll be looking and listening at one piece but unable to tune out the six other noisy things going on in the installations around it.

This exhibit was trying to work with and highlight exactly that problem or effect.

On the 33^rd floor, it worked really well– the whole thing was given over to Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S Davidson‘s project Volumes for Sound.

First, you had to get over the ridiculously amazing view from the 33^rd floor of a building overlooking Times Square.

Then, sound.

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A note from Station Manager Adoley–

Station Manager and Friends

Princeton University is a kind of retirement community, where all the type-A kids from high school go on convalescent leave from the world before they have to bid childhood farewell for good.

Gated–mentally, literally gated–we circulate in rivers and currents of Princetonians and close affiliates, professors and high-profile lecturers from similar institutions of similar aspirations.

It’s easy to forget, at Princeton, that the rest of the world exists.

News from the outside streams in between the grates of FitzRandolph Gate in trickles or floods, depending on how relevant it is to the campus population. But it’s all too easy, focused on papers and precepts and problem sets, to completely ignore what’s going on beyond the Princeton perimeter.

One way of subverting the stagnancy is to go underground.

Continue reading →

 WPRB FRIENDS!

Are they hands reaching out from behind a bloodhound? NO. THEY ARE BLOODHANDS.

You know what is better than a boring normal shirt for normal people?

A shirt with JUSTICE and JOY woven into its every strand.

For forty-five dollars, you can wear this shirt every day for the rest of your life with the proud knowledge that you contributed to WPRB, NEW JERSEY’S ONLY RADIO STATION.* 

PLEDGE! 

*besides all the other NJ radio stations, all of which we love and respect.