Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio

John Weingart has been sharing his discriminating taste in music with Central Jersey Sunday evenings from 7-10 p.m. since 1974, making Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio New Jersey’s oldest folk music show.

By: Susan Van Dongen

	TimeOFF/Andrea Kane
	"I enjoy promoting people who wouldn’t get heard otherwise, and it’s fun to get people out to these concerts," WPRB disc jockey and folk guru John Weingart (above) says.

   It is refreshing to turn on the radio and not hear teen pop, copycat metal bands or Ja Rule. It is also a pleasure to be spared on-air personalities who have been hired for their ability to insult listeners.
   WPRB 103.3-FM’s John Weingart would never offend his audience. For three decades he’s grown to consider his listeners to be a group of friends who share a love of folk, bluegrass and blues. His Sunday night show, Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio, is a kind of aural crossword puzzle. He wants fans to make the connections between his stream-of-consciousness selections — Big Trout Radio’s "On the Esopus" and The Waif’s "Fisherman’s Daughter," for example. (Here’s a clue: Fishing season just started up again).
   Mr. Weingart says he makes quite a few of these associations on his long drive to work, from his home in Stockton to the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers in New Brunswick, where he is associate director.
   "I have an hour commute to work, so I spend a lot of time listening to new music in my car," he says. "It’s really a part of me, so anything I listen to and like I try to think of how I can make it part of the show."
   He’s been sharing his discriminating taste in music with Central Jersey Sunday evenings from 7-10 p.m. since 1974, making Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio New Jersey’s oldest folk music show. And yes, for audiophiles who might be curious, Mr. Weingart has gathered an enormous collection of records, tapes and CDs. He gets a plethora of new music from record companies and artists every week.
   "A friend said I had 4,000 CDs and I have a lot of old vinyl — probably several thousand records because I’ve been doing radio for so long," he says. "I’ve just acquired a lot of music and have never gotten rid of it."
   Records are, of course, notoriously heavy to move. Fortunately, Mr. Weingart has been in the same house for 22 years so he hasn’t had to make the schlep. He sometimes has dreams — or nightmares — about having to haul his collection home, though.
   "I have this dream I’m back at college and I’m getting ready to leave for the summer and I see that I have all these records," he says with a chuckle. "In the dream I’m thinking ‘Hmm. I got them here in the fall, so I must be able to get them home somehow.’"
   As a teen-ager, Mr. Weingart became interested in folk music listening to records by Pete Seeger and The Weavers. The radio bug bit him while he was still in high school in New York City when he discovered WBAI, one of the first listener-sponsored stations in the country. He also found folk music shows on several college radio stations and became a fan of Peter Wernick’s bluegrass show on WCKR, Columbia University’s station.
   "I’ve always loved music, but I never could make any myself," he says. "I used to listen to WBAI, which was very exciting radio. I went to Brandeis University in the late ’60s and did radio shows there (at WBRS). Three years later I started graduate school in Princeton and came to WPRB to ask about doing a show here."
   That was in 1974. He came and went a few times, but after an especially fine tribute program to Paul Robeson in February 1976, station management invited Mr. Weingart to stay on. He’s been at WPRB ever since.
   A true "disc jockey" — meaning he spins some actual vinyl records during the course of the show — Mr. Weingart is a diehard fan of non-commercial stations, where the person on the air chooses what they play and has planned their show to be entertaining and educational.
   "I was driving somewhere in South Jersey, listening to a nonprofit jazz station in Philadelphia," he says. "It was such a great show that I stopped and called the station to say so. But when I spoke to the guy on the air, I found out he was playing from a list. He didn’t know anything about the music. I kept listening, but just knowing these choices of songs weren’t his really took something away from it."
   Many people may not realize that WPRB is not listener supported, a blessing for radio lovers who have little patience for those fund-raising "beg-a-thons," which, unfortunately, must sustain so many public stations.
   "WPRB has the unique advantage of having a very powerful signal and amazingly few commercial interruptions," he says. "You might hear one or two during my show, but they’re usually for concerts, so they blend right in."
   That’s not to mention the "fake" commercials Mr. Weingart sometimes slips in, often courtesy of venerable jokesters like The Firesign Theater.
   In addition to his professional work and his involvement with WPRB, for the past few years Mr. Weingart has promoted a series of concerts at Prallsville Mills in Stockton. This year’s concerts include the Howard Fishman Quartet on May 9 and Chuck Brodsky May 16. Ginny Reilly, David Maloney and Geoff Muldaur are slated to perform in November. On his show he’s also been promoting the annual New Jersey Folk Festival, April 26 on the Douglass Campus at Rutgers. (See stories on pages 6-7.)
   "I enjoy promoting people who wouldn’t get heard otherwise, and it’s fun to get people out to these concerts," Mr. Weingart says. "I’m happy to know that people come out because they hear the artists on my shows.
   "For me, the music and radio are inseparable. I take a lot of time thinking about what’s going to make a good radio show, what will surprise the listener, make them laugh and be puzzled."
John Weingart hosts Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio on WPRB, 103.3 FM, Princeton, Sundays, 7-10 p.m. On the Web: www.veryseldom.com. For information about the concerts at Prallsville Mills, call (609) 397-1826.