Tag: music/Archives

HV136- Where Wild Things Are

Illustration from Where the Wild Things AreHearing Voices from NPR®
136 Where Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak Memorial
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-05-30

“Where Wild Things Are” (52:00 mp3):

“Where Wild Things Are” (52:00) Peter Bochan

A memorial to recently departed cultural innovators: Beastie Boys bassist and rapper Adam Yauch — aka, “MCA,” British hairdresser and business person Vidal Sassoon, pioneer FM rock n’ roll disc jockey (WOR-FM, WNEW, WFUV, XM satellite radio) Pete Fornatale, and mostly we hear mostly we hear children’s literature author/illustrator Maurice Sendak, along with all the music and movies inspired by his 1963 classic, “Where the Wild Things Are.”

The Wild Mix (playlist below) was produced by Peter Bochan, General Manager of WPKN-Bridgeport CT, announcer WBAI-NYC NY, and mixmaster at All Mixed Up Productions. His Shortcuts and other mixes are at PRX.

We also hear music from the ballet, “Where the Wild Things Are,” by composer Randall Woolf, created with Maurice Sendak and Septime Webre for the American Repertory Ballet.

More…

Eleven: Sara and Pogo

Damn this guy’s good, another Pogo creation:

This is my remix of an original song by SaraSinger42: youtube.com/SaraSinger42

The video was shot by Sara’s mother, singer and song writer Jackie Messenger: youtube.com/JackieMessenger. Sara is part of a beautiful family who have always been wonderfully supportive of me.

This track came about almost immediately when I found Sara’s channel. I wondered what her song would sound like with a beat, so I spent around 10 minutes knocking together a drum sequence before layering in her song. 45 minutes later, I seem to have spontaneously put together a complete track.
—Pogo

Read all about it: Eleven (SaraSinger42 Remix) on Vimeo.

HV132- Musicality of Speech

Musical notation of spoken word, by Diana DeutschHearing Voices from NPR®
132 Musicality of Speech: Spoken Melody
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-02-15

This program contains copyrighted material not licensed for web-streaming, so we cannot offer an mp3 of this week’s episode.

A history of what composer Steve Reich calls speech-melodies:

“It’s Gonna Rain” (1966 / 1:00 excerpt)
“Come Out” (1966 / 3:00 excerpt) Steve Reich

“It’s Gonna Rain” was composed in San Francisco in January 1965. The voice belongs to a young black Pentecostal preacher who called himself Brother Walter. I recorded him along with the pigeons and traffic one Sunday afternoon in Union Square in downtown San Francisco. Later at home I started playing with tape loops of his voice and, by accident, discovered the process of letting two identical loops go gradually out of phase with each other.

In the first part of the piece the two loops are lined up in unison, gradually move completely out of phase with each other, and then slowly move back to unison. In the second part two much longer loops gradually begin to go out of phase with each other. This two-voice relationship is then doubled to four with two voices going out of phase with the other two. Finally the process moves to eight voices and the effect is a kind of controlled chaos, which may be appropriate to the subject matter – the end of the world.

“It’s Gonna Rain” is the first piece ever to use the process of gradually shifting phase relations between two or more identical repeating patterns. The second was “Come Out.” Composed in 1966, it was originally part of a benefit presented at Town Hall in New York City for the retrial, with lawyers of their own choosing, of the six boys arrested for murder during the Harlem riots of 1964. The voice is that of Daniel Hamm, now acquitted and then 19, describing a beating he took in Harlem’s 28th precinct station. The police were about to take the boys out to be “cleaned up” and were only taking those that were visibly bleeding. Since Hamm had no actual open bleeding he proceeded to squeeze open a bruise on his leg so that he would be taken to the hospital.

“I had to like open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them.” More…

Clothesline Revival

It’s like these 1940s movies were made just so, 70 years later, they could accompany the music of Clothesline Revival:

Clothesline Revival has a couple HV connections. They helped create a mess in our Food Fight episode. And we produced the NPR Story “Clothesline Revival’s ‘Long Gone’” (also check NPR’s “Music Review: ‘Of My Native Land’ from Clothesline Revival“).

CR samples extensively from ancient audio archives, especially in their first two CDs, Of My Native Land and Long Gone. Their latest, featuring “Voice of the Lobster” — the song in the vid — is They Came From Somewhere.

Clothesline Revival is Paleo Music: space | face.

Grand Rapids LipDub

Here’s some real hyperlocal community journalism for ya, with a beat, “The Grand Rapids LipDub;”

The Grand Rapids LipDub Video was filmed May 22nd, with 5,000 people, and involved a major shutdown of downtown Grand Rapids, which was filled with marching bands, parades, weddings, motorcades, bridges on fire, and helicopter take offs. It is the largest and longest LipDub video, to date.

This video was created as an official response to the Newsweek article calling Grand Rapids a “dying city.” We disagreed strongly, and wanted to create a video that encompasses the passion and energy we all feel is growing exponentially, in this great city. We felt Don McLean’s ‘American Pie,’ a song about death, was in the end, triumphant and filled to the brim with life and hope. – Rob Bliss, Director & Executive Producer, Status Creative

Maccabeats Miracle

Light ’em up, folks, it’s a g-ddam “Miracle”, more Hanukkah harmonies from the Maccabeats and for their Miracle Match Bone Marrow Foundation fundraiser:

Need more Maccabeats? So did Adolf:

Mission Control: SomaFM

Mission Control net radio channel logoNASA recently helped launch the net radio channel Third Rock Radio, playing questionable to good rock n’ roll along with NASA news updates.

But Rich Rarey of NPR Labs pointed out (on Pubradio) there’s already a fine NASA-centric, space music channel on SofaFM called Mission Control, “Celebrating NASA and Space Explorers everywhere.”

The feed is full of ambient music well-mixed with astronaut transmissions from space and conversations with Earth. Warning: the real-time reality feel and ambi/astro synchronicity is a bit addicting. Suggest you sample their 128K stream; other bitrates and a popup player are also available.

Sez Mission Control DJ (& SomaFM co-founder) Rusty Hodge :

A while back, on a whim I decided to mix in live audio from a Space Shuttle launch with our Space Station Soma music. I got a lot of great feedback on it, and did it again for the next launch.

I’ve always been fascinated by space exploration, since I was a very young kid watching the Moon landing on a 9″ black and white TV. So when NASA celebrated the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 by rebroadcasting the mission audio in real time, but 40 years delayed in July of 2009, I knew that SomaFM had to add a soundtrack to it. That’s how our Mission Control channel started.

Now whenever the Space Shuttle is up, I mix in the real-time audio feed from NASA with ambient music. When it’s not up, we mix in historical recordings of he Apollo missions. I hope you like it as much as I do!

HV127- Behind the Beat

Photo, by Eleonora Alberto, of Cyro Baptista, surrounded by percussion instrumentsHearing Voices from NPR®
127 Behind the Beat: Inside Musician’s Minds
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2011-12-07

“Behind the Beat” (52:00 mp3):

“MITOW: Camille” (2006 / 6:03) Musicians in Their Own Words

From Musicians in their own words, an NPR series produced by David Schulman: The French singer Camille Dalmais, better known as Camille, has many voices inside her. She makes her music by overlaying everything from a sniffle to a growl to an operatic F-sharp. She speaks about the intimacy of the French language, spirituality and finding a natural music in the sound of everyday speech.

“Mozart’s Hidden Kitchen” (2007 / 6:49) Kitchens Sisters

From Hidden Kitchens, an NPR series by the The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & NIkki Silva): Imagine a Mozart Festival without a note of Mozart. Instead, more than 60 artists from around the world were invited to Vienna by director Peter Sellars and asked to pick up where the musical and social visionary left off, to create new works of art. Called “New Crowned Hope,” for the free-thinking Masonic Lodge in Vienna of which Mozart was a member, it was a month-long, genre-spanning event linking agriculture and culture, with food at its heart. It featured a Maori dance troupe; a Venezuelan street chorus singing a new opera by John Adams; new films from Chad, Iran and Paraguay; Mark Morris’ dance company; Chez Panisse founder and culinary activist Alice Waters; lunch ladies from across Europe; and farmers, chefs and seed-savers from throughout Austria. Aired on NPR Morning Edition. Mixed by Jim McKee of Earwax Productions. Music: John Adams, David Williamson, Frances Nelson, Sarah Folger & harmonia mundi, and Wieslaw Pogorzelski.

“MITOW: Cyro Baptista” (2007 / 9:12) Musicians in Their Own Words

From Musicians in their own words: Beyond-Brazilian musician Cyro Baptista is fluent in the musical languages of samba, cabela, and yoyoma. Also, squirrel. He proves it in this piece, and demonstrates how he narrowly averted disaster during a recording session with the fearsome-to-some-people soprano Kathleen Battle. Cyro’s secret weapon? A vacuum cleaner hose. (More at PRX).

Drawing of Sam and sax, from Long Haul Productions

“American Dreamer: Sam’s Story” (2010 / 26:09) Long Haul Productions

Sam is a talented and articulate young jazz musician, brought to the United States at age 5 by his Mexican parents. He stayed out of trouble, was drum major of his high school’s marching band, fell in love with playing jazz on the tenor sax, and got his diploma with honors — only to find that for an “illegal,” graduation marks a dead end. Though Sam dreams of attending college to study jazz performance, he hides his status from even his closest friends. He can’t legally work, drive, get financial aid, or even gain admission to some colleges. “American Dreamer” follows him from his high school graduation, through the following summer, as he struggles to raise money to continue his education and weighs the risks of working and driving illegally against his own desire to achieve his American dream. Aired on NPR Latino USA and All Things Considered.. A one-hour version is at PRX and Long Haul Productions (Dan Collison & Elizabeth Meister). Produced with help from the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Top photo of Cyro Baptista © Eleonora Alberto.

Stereo Stack

Are you ready for the Wall-to-Wall Wonderland of Dual Dynamic, Kaleidoscopic, Spectra-Sonic, Stereophonic Sound? Well, the 1960s record-label design departments sure were.

Here’s just a few of the scores of Stereo LP banners displayed at Stereo Stack:

Banners advertising Stereo, from LP covers, screenshot from StereoStack.com

Stereo Stack, via Boing Boing.

HV125- City of Angels

scene from the film Hearing Voices from NPR®
125 City of Angels: An Ode to Old L.A.
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2011-11-02

“City of Angels” (52:00 mp3):

We’re occupying the streets of Los Angeles; our demands: bring us stories…

“Pilgrim Land” (2005 / 0:43 excerpt) Tom Russell
“Old America” (3:32 excerpt)
“Bukowski #2 on the Hustle=” (2:08 excerpt)
“Honky Jazz” (4:14)
“Swap Meet Jesus” (4:21)

From the album Hotwalker: Charles Bukowski & A Ballad for Gone. An Americana ode to old L.A., the music, the culture, from beat outsiders to religious revivals to long gone radio sounds; with stuntman, circus midget, and actor Little Jack Horton.

Hotwalker is the best Sam Peckinpah movie since Peckinpah died. It’s a ghostly jubilee, an audacious slab of Blue America. Narrated aby noir cowboy, Tom Russell, it is a singular recording, bound to be controversial — it’s not only going to ruffle feathers, but leave feathers scattered on the ground.”
—novelist-poet Luis Urrea

A couple web extras…

Tom Russell’s ‘Hotwalker’ Influences,” an inteview by NPR’s Alex Chadwick:

“WLS Radio Interview w/ Tom Russell” (10:21 mp3):

“Man on the Street” (1995 / 8:11) Joe Frank

From Joe’s “Streetwise” hour, and the CD collection Joe Frank Team Favorites: an interview with an anonymous homeless man on the streets of Los Angeles. Music: Thomas Newman “Rock Hammer” The Shawshank Redemption: Soundtrack.

More…

Mirabilis

Mirabilis, singing duoHeard on Sarah Jackson’s KGLT show last night, this women’s duo who were, well, Mirabilis:

“Mirabilis” is a Latin adjective meaning “amazing, wondrous, remarkable.” It’s also a “neo-classical/ethereal musical project started by Dru Allen of This Ascension and Summer Bowman of the Machine in the Garden.”

The song above, from their album Pleiades, is “Riu Riu Chiu,” Renaissance era Spanish villancico.

Also heard, The Puppini Sisters (face | space) doing “Panic” from Betcha Bottom Dollar:

Stetson Kennedy

Writer Zora Neale Hurston sings and dances with children in Eatonville, Fla., June 1935.
Writer Zora Neale Hurston sings and dances with children in Eatonville, Fla., June 1935. Photo: Alan Lomax/American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

William Stetson Kennedy
October 5 1916 — August 27 2011
(Website | Wikipedia)

In 2001 I stopped by Stetson’s house, on a beautiful marshland near Jacksonville, Florida. We talked about his 1939-40 recording expedition, accompanied by Zora Neale Hurston, documenting the songs and stories of Florida. That interview and those recordings become the NPR story “The Sound of 1930s Florida Folk Life” (22:00 mp3):

The Klan Unmasked is Stetson’s story of infiltrating and undermining the KKK. He tell it in this next clip, “Nazi-minded Klansmen” (4:26 mp3):

His good friend Woody Guthrie wrote a song about him, “Stetson Kennedy.” lyrics: Woody Gurthrie; music: Billy Bragg & Wilco, from Mermaid Avenue Vol. II (2:40 mp3):

I done spent my last three cents
Mailing my letter to the President
Didn’t make a show, I didn’t make a dent
So I’m swinging over to this independent gent

Stetson Kennedy
Writing his name in
Stetson Kennedy
Writing his name in

I can’t win out to save my soul
Long as Smathers-Dupont’s got me in the hole
Them war profit boys are squawking and balking
That’s what’s got me out here walking and talking

Knocking on doors and windows
Wake up and run down election morning
And scribble in Stetson Kennedy
I ain’t the world’s best writer, ain’t the world’s best speller
But when I believe in something I’m the loudest yeller
If we fix it so you can’t make no money on war
Well we’ll all forget what we was killing folks for

We’ll find us a peace job equal and free
We’ll dump Smathers-Dupont in a salty sea
Well, this makes Stetson Kennedy the man for me

Stetson Kennedy on his porch, Jacksonville FL USA

The Avalanches

The Avalanches 2001 album, Since I Left You, is a remix mash mind-melding found-pop-sound masterpiece. Listen to the blends & beats of “Electricity:”

It’s also their only LP, and it’s out-of-print. But the Aussie band left behind some amazing/amusing videos. And Modular Records insists “a deluxe 10-Year Anniversary treatment” is on the way. Till then, here’s the title track:

Big Damn Band

Listening to the Yellowstone Public Radio live broadcast of the Magic City Blues fest. Playing right now, fresh from three days of Sturgis gigs, rickin’ the stage is Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band — all 3 members:

The video for The Rev. Peytons Big Damn Bands new song Clap Your Hands was shot in one day in a barn in Indiana. All of the dancers, artists, freaks, weirdos, cowboys, kids, donkeys, bunko steerers, chickens, and regular folks, who are all Hoosiers, all volunteered their time and talent because they believed in the song and the band. The video was directed/produced by the acclaimed music video producer Kevin Custer (Lil Wayne, Soldja Boy, Flogging Molly) who remarked the day of the shoot, it would have cost a fortune to get all of these props back in NYC. To which The Rev. Peyton replied, These arent props they are just crap you find in a barn!

140MB Music from 170M Americans

170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, logoThe campaign 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting has some good news and a gift of thanks:

Thanks to you, the majority of federal funding for public broadcasting was preserved during the 2011 budget debate.

As a token of our gratitude, 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting and Anti-records are releasing RAISE YOUR VOICE! Sixteen free tracks from some of your favorite musicians – available only to advocates for public broadcasting for a limited time.

How can you download your free album?

Visit RYVoice.org and enter your contact information – then follow the downloading instructions on your screen.  (Yes, we already have your contact info, but we still need you to enter your email address and zip to set up the download properly.  We won’t send you any duplicate emails – promise!)

Invite your friends through Facebook and Twitter to join our campaign and download their free album as well! The 2012 budget debate in Washington will be a tough fight, and we need as many advocates to join us in support of public broadcasting.

RAISE YOUR VOICE! features artists who love public broadcasting and want to give back, including: Tom Waits, Wilco, Neko Case, Booker T. Jones, Man Man, Frank Turner, Mavis Staples, Jolie Holland, William Elliott Whitmore, Tinariwen, Lost in the Trees, Sean Rowe, Dr. Dog, Joe Henry, Marketa Irglova and Devotchka.

Thank you to Anti-records and these amazing recording artists for their contributions to the 170 Million Americans campaign!

Thank you, again, for being a part of our campaign to support a strong public media in America.

Sincerely,
170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting

Frack You

As part of a ProPublica investigation into the deep, dark toxic chemicals we penetrate Mother Earth with to make her cough up “natural” gas, here’s “Fracking: The Music Video– My Water’s On Fire Tonight:”

The video is by David Holmes and other J-students at NYU’s Studio 20 . Sez they: “The best explainers are direct, concise and easy to understand. But investigative journalism is rarely any of those things, instead reflecting the messiness of real life.”