HearVox News Audio, art, & cultcha blog

HV063- Lincoln Monument

Hearing Voices from NPR®
063 Lincoln Monument: A Civil War
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-07-01

Audio will be posted here by 7/8/2009.

For Lincoln’s birthday bicentennial year and Independence Day, Old Abe, the Civil War, and its still-present aftermath:

The United States Marine Band recorded a “Lincoln Centennial” on February 12 1909 (from A Lincoln Portrait).

Abe’s 1860 presidential campaign song was “Lincoln and Liberty;” it’s sung for us by Dan Zanes (ex-Del Fuegos, off Parades And Panoramas: 25 Songs Collected By Carl Sandburg For The American Songbag).

“I Heard Lincoln That Day,” says Gettysburg eyewitness Walter Rathvon, in archival audio recorded on Lincoln’s birthday 1938 by WRUL radio, Boston. Set to an instrumental “Lincoln’s Triumph (a Funeral March),” part of the Lincoln Shuffle (by Bryce Dessner, guitarist for The National and Clogs, composed for the great bicentennial site 21st Century Abe, used with their re-mixing blessings).

NPR recreates the “Gettysburg Address,” with the words of John Dos Passos read by Noah Adams, and Lincoln’s speech read by Lars Hoel; produced by Bob Malesky for NPR’s The Sunday Show. More…

Michael RIP

From Fatboy Slim’s 1996 Better Living Through Chemistry, “Michael Jackson” (5:49 mp3):

which samples the samples in the 1987 Negativland track on Escape from Noise, “Michael Jackson” (2:08 mp3):

Clash of Civilizations

4 POTUSAs (Ford, Carter, JFK, Reagan), 2 Dems and 2 GOPs lay down a “Legacy,” by Clash of Civilizations:

Their upcoming CD, COUNTER-PROPAGANDA, is at the COC site (and in widget below). Check “Declaration of Independence” for some 4thJuly topicality.

Pie Ribbons

Breaking News: Ben Lloyd, artitect, intellect, and corn-crust wizard of Comma Q, has swept the Fort Benton MT Summer Celebration Pie Contest, winning:

• First Place Fruit
• First Place Cream
• +
• BEST OF SHOW!

Needless to say, this is causing quite a stir among the locals, especially in light of last year’s pastry-based controversy reported in the Great Falls Tribune.

Maira’s Monticello

I love the work of illustrator Maira Kalman. First saw her art at 21st Century Abe’s “Finding Lincoln.” Today a friend showed me her NYTimes And the Pursuit of Happiness Blog: Maira’s pointed her pen at Thomas Jefferson, “Time Wastes Too Fast.”

Maira also illustrared the recent edition of the writing-essentials classic, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.

Danny MacAskill- Trials Rider

In bicycle trials, evolved from motorcycle trials, “the rider negotiates man-made and natural obstacles without their feet touching the ground” (Wikipedia). This video of Scottish Trials Rider Danny MacAskill (for Inspired Bicycles was filmed around Edinburgh:

(Music: “The Funeral” Band of Horses).

via Jess Atkins.

Medieval in Montana

Looks like my hometown is finally letting loose it’s requirement that government job applicant’s turn over all their FaceSpaceTwit passwords, buddy lists, and secret Santa names (”Commission eliminates Facebook policy“). However, city fathers still hold onto their claim in an older policy which reserves them the right to “deflower” the first-born of any municipal employee.

HV016- Bugs and Birds

Hearing Voices from NPR®
016 Bugs and Birds: Sounds of Summer
Host: Jeff Rice of Western Soundscape Archive
Airs week of: 2009-06-24 (Originally: 2008-06-18)

“Bugs and Birds” (52:00 mp3):

Jeff Rice of the Western Soundscape Archive hosts an hour of creeping, crawling, flying critter sounds for the start of Summer:

Sound artist Nina Katchadourian makes car alarms from bird calls.

Ken Nordine argues “For the Birds” on his 2001 CD A Transparent Mask, with music by Paul Wertico and Jim Hines.

Virginia Belmont’s Famous Singing and Talking Birds tweet the “William Tell Overture (Canary Sextet).”

Recordist Lang Elliot’s CD Prairie Spring captures a “soundscape of prairie meadows and potholes in spring and early summer.”

An extinct woodpecker revives an Arkansas town; it’s “The Lord God Bird” by Long Haul Productions, with an original song composed for ther story by Sufjan Stevens.

Brian Eno’s music mimics some “Flies,” from the 2006 compilation Plague Songs.

Folk are buggin’, gettin bittin, swatting and swearing at “Mosquitos,” by M’Iou Zahner Ollswang (from the 1985 collection
Tellus #11: The Sound of Radio.)

Scott Carrier takes a morning walk with poet Jim Harrison.

Lang Elliot soaks up the sounds of “Sora Dawn” — “a pothole marsh at dawn with bittern, wrens, rails, and more (Prairie Spring).

Dr. Rex Cocroft, of the University of Missouri, attaches a phonograph needle to a blade of grass, plugged it into a tape recorder, to go “acoustic prospecting” for little-known suburban lawn sounds like “Leafhoppers,” rarely hard by humans.

Host Jeff Rice breeds bugs to make “Moth Music.”

Ken Nordine declares this “A Good Year for Spiders” (A Transparent Mask).

Entomologist Ian Robertson,, of Boise State University, does the “Gnat Dance” with host Jeff Rice and an outdoor chorale performance for insects.

And special thanks to Dr. Hayward Spangler of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson for braving bugs between his teeth while “Listening to Ants.”

This hour produced with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.