BRIDGEPORT — Just about everyone who knows anything about The Vibes knows that this is the celebration’s 20th year. But there is an even more significant milestone happening on the local music scene in 2015.

This year marks the half-century mark of WPKN broadcasts out of its current studio in the Student Center at the University of Bridgeport. It’s a fiercely independent, counterculture radio station that’s been a beacon for the offbeat, a friend of the fringe and an exit ramp to the extraordinary.

Since 2007 the Vibes and the radio station have linked up to put the four-day Seaside Park indie and rock extravaganza on the air, broadcasting from a nondescript construction trailer. The on-air talent says it’s a little like broadcasting a sports event, with announcers staging interviews and serving up inside info during the interstitial gaps between the acts.

“I think we’re in a better place than we’ve been in a long time,” said General Manager Steven J. di Costanzo. “We have a lot of young people coming in doing their own shows, like Michelle Spinei, who hosts an all-vinyl show she calls “Surf Party Apocalypse.”

WPKN went on the air for the first time in 1963 with a tiny 100-watt transmitter on a frequency of 88.1 megahertz, one that’s since been reassigned to the flagship station of WMNR in Monroe. A power increase to 700 watts and the switch to 89.5 took place in 1967. In the 1970s, power was boosted to 10,000 watts, making it one of the more powerful radio stations in the region today.

But central to a radio station is its studio space, and that took shape in 1965 in what was then the new wing of the John Cox Student Center. Today those studios appear much the same as they did when Lyndon Johnson was president.

“If someone wanting to make a movie of a counterculture radio station in the 1960s, this would make the perfect set,” di Costanzo said as he circled into the on-air studio. He said that one of the carpenters who worked on the studio a half-century ago stopped by recently to marvel at the place.

More Information

The Radio Vibes team

David Golden: producer & co-host

Bruce Swan: co-host

Janet Golden: field reporter

Zack Foster: segment producer

Dave Schwartz: technician

WPKN

Call letters: “Purple Knights Network” (after the mascot of the University of Bridgeport)

Frequency: 89.5 FM

Studio: 244 University Ave, Bridgeport, Connecticut 06604-7775

Tower: Booth Hill, Trumbull

General Manager: Steve Di Costanzo

This is not to say that WPKN is a shrine to the age of patchouli oil and lava lamps. Rather, it’s become a place on the radio dial where the needle in the groove has met the era of streaming and Facebook. DJs, for example, are just as likely to pull a tune off of Spotify and Apple Music as they are from an LP or a CD.

“We grab music from just about everyplace,” said Terry Hopper, one of the midday hosts. “Spotify, iTunes, you name it. But, yeah, I go back into the vinyl collection a lot.”

Listeners can stream the station through the WPKN app on their iPhone or the WPKN website.

“Even the crowd in their 20s in 30s are crazy about this place, because they missed the whole turntable era, and there’s a resurgence of interest in something that just seems more authentic,” di Costanzo said. “It’s great to see how interested are in this place. They don‘t make stations like this anymore.”

The station has seen several general managers and scores of on-air hosts come and go, but one thing that has remained constant — its vast collection of recorded music that continues to grow every day. Station personnel have painstakingly filed and stored every vinyl record and every CD that has been sent to them by the record companies, and staffers and even listeners have made contributions to the collection, too.

These recordings are shelved and numbered in the order that they have come through the door, so one might find an LP by of the Julliard String Quartet next to one by the Marvelettes. Years ago, the mystery of finding music could only be unlocked by consulting ledger books; today the collection is cataloged and cross-referenced on a computer file.

“It’s all part and parcel of out free-form nature,” di Costanzo said.

The staff lives, sleeps and breaths music. Bob Anderson, one of the hosts, was with Sony Records. Bob Nolan, who hosts the show “Antique Blues,” was the president of the Rhythm & Blues Society. Music Director Howard Thompson used to be with Island Records and A&R Records and even played soccer with Bob Marley.

On the WPKN shelves are 55,000 LPs and about the same number of CDs. More recording are in storage off-site. It would take you about 15 years of non-stop listening to get through the entire collection.

“Most stations file music alphabetically or by genre, but here, since it’s filed chronologically, it’s like drilling through layers of rock to an earlier geologic era.” di Costanzo said while thumbing through some LPs from the early 1980s. Station DJs will frequently mine this trove of vinyl for their shows — shows that often have hours of planning invested in them.

The partnership with The Vibes began in 2007, although station personnel insist that the best way by far to hear the event is head down to Seaside Park.

Gordon Taylor was the originator of Radio Vibes as a low-power FM broadcast. We didn’t know each other when Vibes partnered with WPKN in 2007, and didn’t know what to expect. We ended up forming a magical partnership,” said David Golden, producer and co-host of the Vibes broadcasts.

“We’re grateful to Ken Hays (the founder, owner and promoter of the festival) for inviting us in, and to his staff for making it all possible” Golden said. “Then there are the dozens of WPKN programmers — they are the unsung heroes of the station.”

WPKN can’t broadcast every one of bands playing at the Vibes. Most of the bans that have spun off from the Grateful Dead such as Phil Lesh & Friends and RatDog haven’t allowed live airing of their concerts as well as a few others. But most of the Vibes acts welcome the added publicity.

“We have over a million people in our footprint,” said di Costanzo. “Everyone here is a volunteer except for me, which is not necessarily a good thing — it would be good to have more cash flow to pay our people.”

Two of those volunteers are from The Talking Heads.

“About five years back we approached Chris Frantz about doing a show,” said di Costanzo. “It airs on the last Friday of the month from 4 to 7 p.m. His wife Tina has been with him a few times but he usually does his show solo and often has guests from his CBGB's era.”

This was in reverence to the music club in New York’s Bowery that was regarded as something of an epicenter for cutting edge rock. The club closed in 2006.

“He's both gracious and generous. We are very lucky to have as part of the WPKN family,” he said. .

Di Costanzo says that WPKN has begun thinking of itself not only as just a community radio station but also as an arts organization.

“When you apply for grants for instance, you’re asked what sort of organization you are, and ‘radio station’ isn’t usually one of the choices,” he said. “People assume that because we’re a public radio station, we get all of our help from NPR (National Public Radio) — nothing could be further from the truth.”

The station recently missed out on a $64,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which hurt, station officials said. The station needs about $300,000 per year to operate.

“They felt that we should have a bigger budget, but that’s why we applied for the CPB grant in the first place,” di Costanzo said. “We’re also not affiliated with NPR, and most NPR station do get help from CPB.”

But he said that other fund-raising efforts have born fruit.

“The car-donation program has done well,” he said. “We did well last year — in our fund drives, about 30 percent of our donors are new people,” he said.
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