From sound designer David Grimes comes this cut-up speech-song, “Embarrassed” (1:36 mp3):

Grimes also did the sound for It’s JerryTime’s video “B Train Blues.”

(no votes)

 Loading ...

Seattle’s The Stranger columnist Dan Savage on yesterday’s democracy inaction– I mean, in action: “The Cloverfield Caucus:”

Maybe the caucus system works—when precincts have at most 10 people in them and no one gives a fuck about the election. But it’s total pandemonium right now at Stevens Elementary… The gym resembles the Brooklyn Bridge scene in Cloverfield—only without the promise of giant, derivative monster showing up to put Capitol Hill caucus-goers out of our misery. And instead of bloodied hipsters asking each other “What the hell is that?” over and over again, it’s roughly 1500 people wearing tasteful scarfs asking each other, “Where the hell is the line for my precinct table?”

(no votes)

 Loading ...

This eeem from HV’s radio compadre, Chrysti the Wordsmith:

As some of you already know, I’ve signed a contract with Riverbend Press (formerly Falcon Press in Helena) to concoct material for a ‘cliche-a-day’ desk calendar. It will be published in October: 365 synopses of common expressions in the tradition of the ‘word-a-day’ calendars that verbivores enjoy.

The publisher just sent me a draft page of the calendar [below], and I am quite inspired by it. I have to share it with you, in hopes that you will send me cliche suggestions, and to simply show it off!

So for the next several months, I’ll have my geeky head buried in dictionaries large and small, tracing the stories behind a year’s worth of cliches.

So submit those cliches to Chrysti, and tell her HV sent ya.

(no votes)

 Loading ...

Way back in WFMU’s blog is an album that continues to dazzle me, Yann Tomita’s Doopee Time. Sez Station Manager Ken:

Here’s a strange and wonderful record called Doopee Time by the Japanese composer and experimentalist Yann Tomita. Trying to describe this record (or Tomita) is difficult - part muzak, part dada comedy, part I Dream of Jeannie, with a running commentary by The Doopees, two Japanese doll women named Suzie and Caroline.

All the Doopee mp3s are up at WFMU; here’s a few of my faves:

“Air By Bus” (4:15 mp3):

“Caroline Cries to Chopin Opus 28 No 4″ (1:57 mp3):

“What’s The Time?” (0:33 mp3):

(no votes)

 Loading ...

StoryCorps cuts yet another devastating slice of real-life this week, “Hector Black remembers the murder of his daughter, Patricia Nuckles, by an intruder in her home.” (3:00):

(no votes)

 Loading ...

At least monthly friends and I are tromping trails in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness. But I never knew much about its namesake, ‘cept he was once Montana’s US Senator — until now.

Turns out our spectacular wilderness area was well-named. Lee Metcalf’s legislative life is detailed in this Center for the Rocky Mountain West essay by Pat Williams (another fmr US congressman): “Montana’s Metcalf blazed his own trail.”

After Metcalf’s US Army service, including the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, he helped design the first free elections in Germany. He introduced Medicare ten years before its passage. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was originally the Murray-Metcalf Bill. The Peace Corps passed Congress under the leadership of Metcalf and Mike Mansfield — another amazing Montana Senator. Sez Williams:

“However, it was as a conservationist — environmentalist — that Metcalf made seminal change for the West and the nation.… From the initial Wilderness Act to landscape restoration, pesticide control to fish and wildlife refuges, Lee Metcalf moved doggedly and with success to preserve the best of the West and in doing so he not only created a whole body of conservation laws for the nation, but he also changed the way we envisioned ourselves on the land.”

Thanks, Lee.

Here’s Lava Lake in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, site of a 2004 Hearing Voices high-level meeting (elevation 7106 feet):

Photo: Sam Gardner - USDA Forest Service, Aug 13, 2005 Gallatin National Forest

(no votes)

 Loading ...

In The Observer, Simon Napier-Bell, manager of bands from the Yardbirds to Wham!, details a history of adversarial relationships between musicians and their record labels: “The life and crimes of the music biz:”

‘Systematic thievery,’ said the Dixie Chicks in their writ against Sony. ‘Intentionally fraudulent,’ claimed US music lawyer Don Engel.

via WFMU’s blog.

(no votes)

 Loading ...

From their site: “The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetabile sound universe. The ensemble overcomes preserved and marinated sound conceptions or tirelessly re-stewed listening habits, putting its focus on expanding the variety of vegetable instruments, developing novel musical ideas and exploring fresh vegetable sound gardens.”

From their automate CD, here’s an excerpt of “cut 2″ (1:03 mp3):

(no votes)

 Loading ...