Princeton University’s WPRB is one of (if not THEE) best college radio stations in the entire country. Recently, the student senior board and the station’s Board of Trustees decided that a community-based solution centering on a membership drive was needed to strengthen the station’s future. YIKES!

Can I explain to you how much I love WPRB? Probably not but I’m gonna try and then I’m gonna ask WPRB DJ / Philadelphia Lady-About-Town Maria Tessa Sciarrino some questions and she is gonna tell you why PRB needs your help.

103.3 WPRB Princeton, the 14,000 watt non-profit radio station located on Princeton University’s campus was founded in 1940. WPRB is the oldest college FM radio station and can be heard throughout New Jersey and much of the Philadelphia area. After evaluating WPRB’s business model in early 2007, the student senior board and the station’s Board of Trustees decided that a community-based solution centering on a membership drive was needed to strengthen the station’s future. While the station is located on Princeton’s campus, it receives no direct funding from the University. Listener donations pledged during this drive will be directed towards the station’s operating budget. To read the full press release, click here. To make a donation to WPRB, click here. Check out a full list of specialty gifts WPRB is offering its listeners.

I can’t remember the first time that I heard WPRB. I remember that I discovered WPRB and WKDU (Drexel University Student Run Radio) at about the same time and I would choose a station and then take a blank Maxell 110 minute cassette and record the station while I slept and then listen / edit the tape down to include only the songs that I liked.

WPRB was probably the first place that I ever heard Slint and a bazillion other indie bands back when I was a baby-punk rocker that would have scoffed at buying or listening to “indie rock.” It’s also the first place that I heard the Wu-Tang banger “Protect Ya Neck” (on the Legendary-To-Me Vibes And Vapors radio show) and the first place that I heard ‘Killed By Death’ style punk rock (on the Legendary-To-Me Hey You Kids - Get Off My Lawn radio show) that I would have probably never had access to (uh, pre-internet…).

PRB is an exceptional place on the FM radio dial and is way worthy of your hard earned cash.

I’ve never met Jon Solomon but I still love him. He is truly an inspiration. I love that he can play some pretty out there and maybe kinda pretentious music and then, a minute later, be like “OK, here’s a great song by The Big Boys….”

I have met Art Andrews but I used to listen to his show way before I met him. I feel the same way about his old show (Your Saxophone Is My Guitar) - great mix of high brow music with occassional blasts of - I don’t know - Helloween or something.

And Julia Factorial, the Mixtape Maker/Heartbreaker herself - what can I say about her?? She is amazing. Once she came to my house and I showed her where I keep my Spitboy records (amazingly, they are NOT kept in a trashcan!). Once we went to NYC and ate vegan food and bought a million records and were bored at a nightclub and then came home at 5am and ate at the old Silk City. Her shows always rule.

(sidenote: Art and Julia have teamed up and now have a show on PRB called X Clean Yr Room X - it is the perfect mix of punk rock, dumb wave and adultcore and it is awwwwwwwwwwesome! The show is on Mondays from 7-10 pm. Tune in, stupid)

Actually, I could probably go on and on about a ton of PRB DJ’s shows (both past and present) and the fact that you can now listen online but I won’t. Instead, I decided to ask another PRB favorite of mine a few quesitons about the pledge drive.

And now - Labuda axes Maria some life changing questions -

Fun Vampires: Aside from what i can already read on the WPRB site - tell me more about this pledge drive thinger. Is the station gonna be like NPR soon?

Maria Tessa Sciarrino: To answer your NPR question - EFF NO! Our change in funding will not (at least I hope) affect our broadcasting aesthetic. I would like to think that if it does, a lot of our listeners would be totally, totally pissed. I would be too, because the whitewashed sound of NPR is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

FV: Dude, don’t diss Marketplace like that.

You used to have a show on WPRB but now i dont think you have one. What the heck happened? i used to call you up and request dumb obscure hardcore bands (”uh, can you play a Sand In The Face ((obscure NJ shorecore band)) song?”) and you’d totally find them and play them.

MTS: I generally do a show during the summer — my job is less crazy during that time. That’s how most non-student DJ’s get their start, too. Students are away and the station relies on us community members to keep it going. I don’t really mind, either. Doing summers is a lot nicer since we moved from Holder Hall to the new digs — at least there is some semblance of air conditioning!

Additionally, I’m a graduate student and the work/school schedule makes me feel like vomiting every day, so I can’t imagine what work/school/radio would make me do.

That said: I did ask for a show this fall, but I didn’t get it. Can you pledge a $1,000 to make it happen? (Fun Vampires Editor Note: The checkz in the mail!) I try to fill-in as much as possible, because if I don’t I come back at the start of the summer and feel like I’ve missed out on 48345487357836458 records, no matter how good I am at keeping up with musical trends in my own free time.

Thanks for calling in, by the way. I’m really big on people calling in — provided they give me good/weird/obscure requests. I don’t claim to have absolute knowledge of music, and the listeners help me learn about all sorts of stuff. I think that’s probably the best thing about WPRB — listener interaction. You call, we learn. We play, you learn. Except when people call in for Minus The Bear - which happens more often than you’d think, sadly. The only lesson learned by those requests is that people out there still have crappy taste in music.

FV: So you go to school and work and in the summers you DJ at PRB and you have your blog -what else do you have going on - i dont think you are booking shows anymore , right?

MTS: I ain’t doing much these days. I kind of like the decelerated pace of my life right now! I have serious workaholic tendencies, so it’s been a struggle to force myself to do a lot less. These days I really try to stick to my job and school. I’m probably going to try and do more with my blog - herjazz, but I always say that.

FV: What are some of your past and present favorite PRB shows/DJs?

MTS: Jon Solomon, Julia Factorial, Art, Dan Dimaggio, Dan Buskirk, Lizbot, Wilbo Wright, Don Rettman, Madeline (a classical DJ), Thomas (of the Worried Waltz), KPC, Rhythm of the One, Ghetto Blaster and the like are my favorites. Any DJ that doesn’t play records prior to 2000 is dead to me.

Of previous years: Mike Lupica (natch), Jannon, Dan R, Sean Murphy, Craig Dworkin, Maura, Joe (who was the person responsible for getting me a show in the first place) and Greg (of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly). When I first started out as a DJ at WPRB, Greg’s show followed mine and the quality of his playlists “scared me straight,” so to speak.

I was fortunate to enter the station at a time when the majority of the DJ’s looked down on indie rock, which meant all the other DJ’s pushed themselves a bit more.

FV: Nice! Can I just say that i LOVED Art Andrews and Julia Factorials shows and them coming together is like the greatest pairing since cocaine and baking soda. Jon Solomon, maaaaaaan, do not even get me started! Possibly thee best radio DJ evar! His regualr shows are amazing and his annual 24 hour Christmas show is next level. Back in the day i loved Jen and Mike’s Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn and the underground hip-hop show Vibes And Vapors and so many more of the shows that you’ve listed (and some stuff you didn’t - can I get a soulclap for PRB djs Baby Jess and Baby Meg - yuh!)

I bet you are a bit of a music nerd. And the station must have a ton of music in their library. Seriously, the fact that you could find and play a Sand In The Face record is kind of mindblowing. What music have you been digging lately?

MTS: My ipod was stolen 2 weeks ago, so I haven’t listened to anything new. I’m seriously bummed. Buying one was an agonizing process — “Can I afford this?”, “Am I ruining the listening experience?” and so on — but it was the best decision I ever made. A pox on the house of whoever stole it.

Now I have to rely on my unalphabetized record collection (I categorize by packaging type because, um, I’m insane?) and WPRB. I’ve been waking up every morning and turning on WPRB because let’s face it — I’d rather have the DJ make the decision.

A short list of records that have been keeping me sane:

• Scrawl “He’s Drunk”
  Why this band isn’t put on the same pedestal as other acts of their time is beyond me.
• 18th Dye “Tribute To A Bus”
  A fantastic release during Matador’s classic 90’s era that never quite got its due — it doesn’t really have a style of its own, but I like that it combines a lot of different sounds of the 90’s for me.
• Chandra “Transportation”
  A post-punk/no wave record made by a 12 year old and members of Scritti Politti back in the early 80’s. I couldn’t make this up if I tried. It’s pretty amazing.
• No Age “Weirdo Rippers”
  I realize I’m buying into the hype, but it’s quite good.
• Satanized S/T
  West Philly dudes who totally bring the noise and kind of come off sounding a bit like The Stickmen in places. This record needs to be talked about more, instead of the halfassed indie rock that makes up most of this city’s scene.
• Home Blitz S/T
  I’d love this band even if there wasn’t a WPRB DJ involved. It’s messy and awesome like those early Pavement singles.

And if John Sharkey III would send me a copy of his band’s fucking record I’d probably listen to that too.

FV: Babylon Rules? The new Clockcleaner? I have it! Want me to leak it on Fun Vampires? Mooooving on - I heard that your parents owned a PIZZA PLACE in Jersey! I’m from Jersey and i LOVE pizza. have you ever been to the pizza place in New Jersey owned by the family of Russ from the NYHC band Underdog?

MTS: No. Pizza is my favorite food ever but, for personal reasons, I rarely touch it anymore. (Mainly: I get nostalgic and sad for the family store.) Related, I have never been to Russ’ store. However, I have eaten at Lantern, the restaurant in Chapel Hill owned by the wife of Superchunk’s Mac MacCaughan. Does Daddy’s in Brooklyn count as another rock-nerd restu-hangout since it’s owned by one of the Rogers Sisters (and staffed by dudes from Black Dice & Cause Co-Motion)?

FV: I guess those count. I went to the Underdog pizza place once. It’s a nice family place on the Jersey shore. They have some rare Underdog records up on the wall - colored vinyl and stuff. I guess I got a little bit too close and someone in there yelled at me to not touch the records. I was kinda shook!

Who do i have to kill to get The Professor Show back on the air?

MTS: But there’s a professor on the air…one of those rockabilly dudes. Wait, you mean that’s not good enough? I too miss The Professor Show but that would involve finding someone with the initiative to do it. That’s another great/bad thing about WPRB — people really do propel the station’s programming. So if you have an idea, you can totally run with it. That said, if no one else is interested in taking over the reins, it lives and dies with the DJ who created it.

FV: In these crazy days of podcasts, myspace, blog rock etc - where do you see PRB / college radio fitting in? where do you see the future of PRB going?

MTS: That’s an enormous question to ask and something I’m fascinated by, too. WPRB is pretty lucky in a lot of ways — our prolonged existence has given us the clout to share music with a huge audience. When something charts with us, people notice. Blogs and podcasts, while fantastic, still don’t really have the enormous reach that we do and often have to succumb to the pressure put upon them by publicists /etc in order to maintain a readership.

That’s not often the case with WPRB, where if we don’t like something, we don’t add it. Of course, this is a double-edged sword — while we get to clearly define our aesthetic, without paying attention to other forms of mass communication, it’s quite easy to wind up trapped inside a bubble. So hopefully the station will look at these other forms of dispensing music and keep a fresh perspective on things, without sacrificing what makes us special (live broadcast, no playlists, one-on-one interaction, professional yet lacking the corny professional broadcasting bullshit, etc).

FV: The old WPRB comp Dog So Large I Cannot See Past It was a pretty deece listen. I hear it’s out of print. any chance you’ll consider making it available digitally or putting out a new comp? If you do, can i be on it? it’s only fair since a dude from Philebrity (another Philly based blog) was on the last one.

MTS: Who knows! I think it’s a great idea but it’s up to an intrepid DJ to make it happen. My uneducated guess is that we’d have to do a lot of rights-clearing before it ever made it up on the internet.

FV: Rights-clearing is for suckers!

MTS: My personal project is to start digitizing WPRB’s old reel-to-reels. Jon Solomon recently dusted off an interview with Government Issue for a show of his. I can’t believe we’ve got this amazing library of interviews (Siouxsie & the Banshees, Seaweed, etc) by former station members that haven’t been heard by the public in over 15 years. Seriously — you’d plotz if I could remember a handful of them.

FV: I heard that you were once a professional ice skater…who’s hotter Elvis Stojko or Brian Boitano?

MTS: Neither! All male figure skaters are gay and I don’t see the point in fag hagging it. I have a billion crushes on straight boys that continue to go unrequited anyway and thus consume all of my time.

FV: But you can still do crazy skate tricks, right?

MTS: You tell me!

FV: So like, yeaaaaah, this fundraiser - I always tune out during the boring NPR / WHYY pledgedrives - why should people pledge money to WPRB?

MTS: The one thing I would say about the pledge drive is: DO IT.

There are plenty of other stations (notnamingnamesbutyouknowwhoimtalkinabout) who seriously try to bite our style yet miserably, laughably fail because they don’t realize it’s not about Arbitron ratings, demographics, catering to divorced dads in Wynnewood and making pointless music blogs (Fun Vampires Editor Note: Naming names is fun. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d name this magical station WKDU - a station that went from amazing to suck in record time). WPRB’s thrived for 65+ years because we’re different. And it’s different because of who makes up the station — volunteers (student, non-student, young, old), our library (hands down the best record collection in the area) and our programming style. WPRB changes the lives of all who encounter it; mp3 blogs, podcasts and the ilk are just another excuse to kill time when the boss ain’t looking.

Think of how worse off we all would be if WPRB stopped broadcasting, and then donate whatever you can. We have a team of operators standing by — (609) 258-1033. They’re not interns or faceless drones, they’re the DJ’s you listen to. Call them and say ‘hi’. You can also donate online at: http://pledge.wprb.com/

We accept all major credit cards, check and money order. We have thank you gifts for your donations. All the shows feature specialty items exclusive to that broadcasting hour (but you have to phone in to receive them).

And for all friends, family & colleagues who are reading this, yes, our future relationships are determined by whether you give or not. You know how much WPRB means to me! I know so many of you have been turned onto great stuff, heard your own band, argued about music and whatnot thanks to WPRB — it’s time to show your appreciation for what we do.

FV: Crazy! OK, my dear readers, you heard her - DONATE! To make a donation to WPRB, click here