HV091- Bad Trip

Hearing Voices from NPR®
091 Bad Trip: Your Next Vacation
Host: Larry Massett of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-05-19

“Bad Trip” (52:00 mp3):

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Offbeat retreats and obscure tours thru the heart of Americana:

Temporarily insanity during a tour of Universal Studios in southern California. So many cool things to see, to do, to tour. The writer is overwhelmed by the magnificence of it all, and pretty much loses his mind. Based an Mark Allen’s web essay “I Suffered Stendhal Syndrome At Universal Studios Hollywood!.”

Boonville is a small community in Northwest California, founded in 1862, a few hundred feet in elevation, with few hundred residents. And… the town has it’s own language, Boontling. We go sharkin’ and harpin’ thru Boonville with Charles C. Adams, author of Boontling: An American Lingo.

Traveling America’s Intermountain West with a group of visiting Buddhist monks: sand paintings and ski hills, prayers, politics and mountain passes.

“David Lynch goes into clean neighborhoods and finds the germs and bugs beneath; I go into dirty neighborhoods and find the life.” That’s how filmmaker Tony Buba describes his twelve documentaries about his hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Buba is the son of Italian immigrants, part of the wave of Europeans who came to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to work in the steel mills of Braddock and other towns around Pittsburgh. Now the steel industry is almost dead, and Braddock is the prototypical post-industrial “‘rust belt” town, a town where a person either lives by his or her wits or lives in poverty. Buba tours through the streets of Braddock, past the old Croatian and Slovak social clubs and through streets, now empty, that once bristled with activity.

From LHP’s series of radio works: Place Portraits. Music: “The Very Thought Of You,” instrumental version by Eddie Lockjaw Davis off the 2006 compilation Jazz For Lovers, and Elvis Costello singing on Marian McPartland’s 2006 Piano Jazz: McPartland/Costello.

HV078- Shopping for Santa

Hearing Voices from NPR®
078 Shopping for Santa: A Season’s Greeting
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-12-09

“Shopping for Santa” (52:00 mp3):

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Holiday spirits and communal consumption:

We go shopping at “City X,” a sound-rich history of America’s malls and their creator, architect Victor Gruen (PRX | Radio Lab | 3rd Coast).

The producer, at age 2, sings “Silent Night” with her Dad. A woman homesteader remembers brutal North Dakota winters in the 1920s. Blues legend Brownie McGhee describes homemade Christmas presents. Adi Gevins’ father reveals that all New York Santas gain entry through the fire escape. And an Oroville grandfather uses a snow machine to make his plastic Christmas tree even more realistic. Produced for the series A Gathering of Days, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and KQED-San Francisco. Thanks to Adi Gevins, psychiatrist Ray Posie, John Langstaff: creator of Christmas Revels, and the late Peter Allison for the family recordings.

Eli Boggs, age 3, sings “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. His dad, Jesse Boggs, plays guitar.

Hearing Voices wishes you lotsa Holidays Spirits and Prosperos Anos Nuevos.

Images from Coke Lore. Ads painted by Haddon Sundblom
1942 above, 1951 below:

HV076- Small Town

Hearing Voices from NPR®
076 Small Town: Rural Routes
Host: Larry Massett of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-11-11

“Small Town” (52:00 mp3):

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Spending time in some shrinking American townships:

The postmistress of describes her Mississippi River community’s dwindling population. Music: Larry Massett.

Four former Massachusetts municipalities were flooded to make room for a reservoir. But the villages live on in the former residents’ minds. A ShortDocs winner, from Third Coast Festival.

This town in California never did exist, though it’s full of folk who live there: an unofficial RV Park and home to the homeless thrives in culture and community.

Little Talcott, West Virginia has a big claim to fame: It’s home to a famous story and song.

Slab City photo © DesertDutch.org.

Rose Maddox

Ginna Allison (Jay’s sis) long ago moved on from public radio production to web design. But she recently revisited her box of old tapes, and has been posting pieces on her Wormlips blog.

There’s some real gems in the series Skip Through the Shadows: Scenes from Childhood. And you gotta hear her sound-portrait/bio, Story of Rose Maddox.