Year: 2007/Archives

YouTube- HearVox

We’re starting to build up quite a steaming pile of slideshows… I mean, streaming pile, at YouTube:

Mississippi Cha Cha Slide

I’m visiting a friend in Jacksonville, watching his son pitch for Edward Waters College, “a private Historically Black College.” The stadium, James P. Small Field, was once home to the Jacksonville Red Caps of the Negro League Baseball team, and before that the spring training camp for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Satchel Page, Hank Aaron, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth all played here.

Now the field sits in the middle of a residential African-American section of town, and is a bit of a community park. Neighborhood people wander in and out enjoying some college ball on a sunny Florida afternoon.

There a DJ in the stands mixing on a makeshift home stereo, set up on a table in the front row. Each EWC team member has his own song, which the DJ plays as each player comes to bat. And in between we’re treated to a mix of rap and soul. All above is a long way of saying, that’s where and how I hear this killer dance tune. So lace up your dancing sneakers on, it’s the Mississippi Cha Cha Slide, AKA Stomp by Mixx Master Lee (mp3):

Astute observers of mutlicultidancicology will note this updates Casper’s all-over-utube Slide. Ya Cha Cha wit yur left. Now Stomp.

Morse Music

Music to learn Morse Code by, set to song by Andrew Crawford (mp3 2:51):

Make your own Morse Code Music.

What is Poetry?- video

An HV video by Trent Harris: Carl Sandburg reads his poems and wonders “What is Poetry?,” with music by Skyward and audio by Barrett Golding:

96 Tears & a Stripper

As head of the HV radio project, I’m always pleased to get such promising emails about ongoing productions — this one’s about Ann & Kara’s (w/ Rick Moody) Song & Memory series:

From:   Ann Heppermann
Subject: finally a fucking awesome story!
Date: 	April 25, 2007 10:44:32 AM MDT
To:   Barrett Golding
Cc:   Kara Oehler

Hey Barrett,

We got a fucking awesome story from Anthony Bourdain about his most
memorable song from childhood, 96 Tears.  He told us how he lost his
virginity to a stripper named Panama up in the Catskills. And
pyrotechnics, and drugs...

He actually said this phrase "This song...was a direct line to
heroin." And not in a sad sappy kind of way, but, fuck yeah, i was
going to be cooler than all you other kids.

OK.  we're just really excited.

Later,
ann and kara

Stark Effect – mic in track

Stark Effect makes music sampling found-sound. The sound is found on other folks’ computers with the filename: “mic in track,” which is the title of his CD and free downloads. Try “Testing 1-2-3” (3:05):

Sez Stark:

A “mic in track” is a recording made on a PC using MusicMatch Jukebox, a music utility packaged with many new PC’s that allows the user to record from the microphone input of the PC’s sound card and save the recording in mp3 format. The default filename is “mic in track” followed by a number.

If that user also happens to be running a file-sharing program (WinMX, Audiognome, Kazaa, etc.), and shares the directory in which the mic in track is stored, then these personal recordings can be easily downloaded from the user’s computer. The vast majority of them are either silent or uninteresting, but many are like Christmas presents giftwrapped in nondescript serial numbers. They represent unique examples of audio vérité.

BTW, Stark Effect is aka Dr. David Dixon, CalPoly physics prof. “The Stark effect is the shifting and splitting of spectral lines of atoms and molecules due to the presence of an external static electric field.”

People Like Us

‘Case you never hear the cut-up mix-artiste People Like Us (aka, Vicki Bennett), a huge hunk of their catalogue is offered as mp3s. One of my fave PLU trax is “What’s Love?” (5:03):

Here’s another PLU (w/ Matmos & Wobbly) I heard on a recent Some Assembly Required podcast, “Arkansas Explorer” (5:13):

GWB’s Hydrogen People cast

This week’s HV cast is for Earth Day. The Administration moves beyond Hydrogen Powered Automobiles. Another experiment in the crytomusicology of Presidential Patter. Produced by Jesse Boggs, “Hydrogen People” (mp3 2:05):

Cloth Simulation

Check this line-vector simulation of a hanging cloth, writ by JRC313.com. Pull it with the mouse (click-drag), let go, and watch it swing — cheap e-thrills via a “physics library” of code; here’s some screenshots:

Ken Nordine- Vids

Spoken-weird artiste Ken Nordine has a buncha videos posted. This one’s “Cliche Heaven”:

They’re from his DVD The Eye is Never Filled, all part of Word Jazz.

Fidel’s Candy

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Only Fidel Can Provide Candy posted four video “excerpts from what is possibly the greatest propaganda film ever, Ron Ormond’s 1971 commie-bashing If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?. Be forewarned, the commies do some awful things to these poor kids, and it can get kind of revolting. Portions of this film have been sampled heavily by Negativland, including their classic Christianity is Stupid.”

50th Anniversary of Neue Haas Grotesk – AKA Helvetica

…AKA Arial and other clones. MOMA is holding a commemorative exhibition to celebrate what has become the most widely used typeface in the world.

As a graphic designer and occasional typographer, I have preferred to avoid Helvetica. Not because it is a bad typeface. To the contrary, it is one of the cleanest, most readable ever designed. But its ubiqity and, to a degree, sterilility, compel the use of other typefaces.

Details

Some more info related to the comments posted:

It’s interesting that they mentioned in both the WaPo article and Helvetica film synopsis how much it has been used for signage. I immediately thought of Frutiger, which was commissioned expressly for signage – first for France’s Charles de Gaulle Airport – but now it’s what’s used in Switzerland. Frutiger is also a Swiss designer. I think it’s a more aesthetically pleasing typeface, particularly in heavier weights.

Like Helvetica clones, such as Arial, Frutiger has been closely copied by Adobe’s Myriad and Microsoft’s Segoe:

Chet Atkins- 1954

There’s a buncha great Chet Atkins vids @utv, like “Chet Atkins – Mr. Sandman (TV 1954)”:

Saw Chet in the 70s here in MT. Ranked among my most memorable concerts, and audiences: The men arrived in suits, boots and bollos; the women in beehives, a la B-52s, ‘cept these t’weren’t no new wavers, quite the opposite, a wave as old as wind thru the wheat, everyone come to see a country pickin’ legend . Want more? Try “Dark Eyes” and Don McLean’s “Vincent.”

This American Life: 12-Year Survey

What we thot was a radio series turns out to be a research project: This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence.

Says senior producer Julie Snyder: “There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme.”

So, where’s that leave pubradio when it’s hippest hour is now Onion fodder?

Loney, Dear

In the comments to the Young Folks post here last week, a couple HV producers (AnnH and JMenj) linked to some immensely amusing videos, Loney, Dear’s “I Am John”:

Operation Homecoming- PBS

A few months ago we did an NPR series on the NEA book project
Operation Homecoming, which asked troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to write down their experiences. This week, as part of the America at a Crossroads PBS series from, The Documentary Group produced a moving collection of video interpretations of writings from the book, along with interviews with the troops/authors:

Operation Homecoming: NEA | PBS | NPR | HV | Doc Group

These Are Jokes- Demetri Martin

Demetri Martin (Trendspotting from The Daily Show) has some clever-funny stuff of his CD These Are Jokes, like this one performed w/ his mom, “The Wisdom Song” (mp3 3:09):

Dmitri’s site | space | cd

Raider of the Lost Ark

Jakes new video for his NPR piece searching for the “Ark of the Covenant” and finding humanity. A radio story with photos from a trip to Ethiopia:

Soap Opera Suite

My bud Lukas, a WFMU Blogger and fellow KGLT DJ, has posted mp3s of the audio art classic Soap Opera Suite & Snake Oil Symphony (MP3s). These cut-up compositions are by Daniel Steven Crafts, before now available only on vinyl. A sample, “Soap Opera Suite I: The Essence of Melodrama” (5:10):

Sez Lukas: “In 1982, self-taught composer Daniel Steven Crafts released an album with two tape compositions, Soap Opera Suite and Snake Oil Symphony, on the Berkeley-based Lutra label. It is a pioneering work of found sound, and it perfectly captures the essence of TV in purely aural form. Or so I am told. I found a thoroughly used (and abused) copy on the shelves of WCBN one day, and it became one of my favorite secret weapons for weird audio collage shows and general freeform madness.”

Crafts also collaborated with Adam Cornford on (Tellus #11: The Sound of Radio) “Fundamentals: Musical Preachers” (1:00 excerpt):

In light of…

the circus/charade that’s been the media coverage of events at virginia tech, I found it more than a little amusing that chimps appear to have evolved more than humans since we split from a common ancestor:
Chimps More Evolved Than Humans

while thirty shot dead is historic for USA, it’s just another bad day in Baghdad:
160 slaughtered in Baghdad car bomb avalanche