If you’re near Twin Cities this weekend, crash the party at the Public Radio Programming Conference. Sue SchardtMEDIA has invited me on her Thurs morn panel “Setting the Program Makers’ Table: The Sound of a New Generation,” along with Torey Malatia, (GM Chicago Public Radio), Sean Cole (American Public Media producer), and Chana Joffeâ€Walt (Seattle indie).
This week’s HV cast is in support of Burmese demonstraters: The popular Burmese rock band Iron Cross is using music to challenge the nation’s infamously repressive regime. In the great tradition of rock and roll, Iron Cross is taking on Burma’s military government with song. A story by Scott Carrier, “Iron Cross Battles Burmese Repression” (7:39 mp3):
That Rock, Paper, Scissors could be so complex?
AARP Prime Time Radio has posted a photo-audio gallery of Gordon Hempton’s Sounds of Silence. Hempton is aka Sound Tracker , “an international acoustic ecologists,” and instigator of the One Square Inch project.
Magician Raymond Crowe, “Australia’s only unusualist,” offers this hand shadow vers of Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World:”
For the preceeding Murrow mp3, I tried out the new Zamzar – Free online file conversion. Submitted an online real-audio file thru Zamzar’s eb form; received an email w/ an mp3 attached. All went well. They can do the same for image, audio and video formats.
Edward R. Murrow, CBS-TV See It Now, March 9, 1954, “A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy” (0:53 mp3):
“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”
Truth in advertising? Check this (anyone know who did this?) mock radio spot for Baltimore’s “Big Bill Hell’s Cars” (1:00 mp3; and definitely NSFW– Sensitive Ears Shouldn’t Hear This):
via Art da Nipper.
Catch This American Life this weekend? Here’s the Nike vid of Luis “TRIKZ” da Silva from Act One:
TouchRadio is the webcast (iTunes subscribe) of Touch Records, the label of field recordists and audio artists, including Chris Watson. Try one— step into this “9-Sided Room,” by Steve Roden (27:00):
This week’s HV cast: John Cage was born 95 years ago, September 5 1912. Here’s a quasi-Cage-ian sound portrait with voxpop featuring folk answering the musical question: “Who’s John Cage?”
A story by Barrett Golding, “Who’s John Cage (Silence)” (2:24 mp3):
Chicago Public Radio goes 24/7 with its new :Vocalo, and it’s sounding pert-fuqn-kewl; streaming it now: good conversational DJs, good groovin’ music– what a concept for a radio station. Sez they: “Vocalo is a gathering place, on-air, on the web, and in the community. It’s also a new broadcast format that celebrates the cultures and communities of the Chicago region.” Feel the :V.
An beta vers of an NPR Station Coverage Map. Roll over transmitter icons and it shows the areas covered and signal strength.
From This Just In via Funny or Die, “Bullies Vs. Sissies:”
Stumbled on this while trying to do something more useful: deactivatedon.com – lists of domain names that have expired. The page I came across had ones that obviously were just meant to be short-lived like nicola-and-karls-wedding-album.com but then there are just some that make you wonder, like nicotinesoda.com and organicorgasm.com or the perhaps reformed (or cured) onecrazybitch.com…and how could anyone give up allcello.com or americansagainstillegalimmigration.com? And so much for the so-called “long tail” effect, where any niche market could be fulfilled. Obviously, there just weren’t enough fetish seekers interested in bigbosomsandsquarejaws.com. Or maybe there was just too much info in infotites.com, as in you really shouldn’t wear something that revealing at your age.
If you have any particularly macho Spaniard friends, here’s their opportunity to grab iberianbull.com. Was mydotcomwebsite.com just too obvious? She was my girlfriend until she found out about mygirlfriendshotpussy.com. I may have been turneddownelsewhere.com but I’m sure not admitting it. And why the hell would I want to do wirelesswithwires.com? victorianideals.com was so two centuries ago. But we should still raise a toast to volksbier.com.
The LA Weekly article, “Night of the Living Dead,” is an unflattering portrait of Pacifica station KPFK, “where North Korea meets North Hollywood,” and its outgoing GM. For those who enjoy heavy doses of bile and vitriol with your journalism:
During her more than five-year tenure, Georgia has plunged the listener-run station into a dark hole, alienated its staff, pared down its already marginal audience, allowed its signal to decay, and filled the airtime with loonies, ranters and fringies… Not that any of the above made much difference, as Georgia’s bosses – those who run the local station’s board as well as the Pacifica network’s national board – are even loopier and less competent than she is. They’re a crew of slogan-chanting zombies, nary a one with any professional understanding of radio.
An hour from BBC Radio 4 Archive Hour: Saving the Sounds of History. “The BBC Sound Archive, one of the most important collections in the world, began almost by accident one day in the 1930s when Marie Slocombe, a temporary secretary, was told to clear out some old records. The first batch included recordings by George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. Slocombe held on to them and spent the rest of her career developing the collection, from the great and the good to the experiences of ordinary people.”
Slocombe: “First, a pilot on the wing of a burning plane in mid-air…” Next week’s BBC Archive Hour is The Sound of America: The Story of NPR.
via Rich Halten.
This week’s HV cast: A Labor Day Dialectic: A more realistic approach to spiritual awareness: how yoga might help relieve stress at the office, or not. Produced by Rebecca Flowers. A story by Rebecca Flowers, “Office Yoga” (2:16 mp3):
The Knight Citizen News Network has just published Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive, A digital literacy guide for the information age. Available as a free pdf or $10 dead-tree vers. The book fears not the feature; the chapters flow from “Digital Audio and Podcasting” and “How to Report News for the Web” to “FTP, MB, RSS, oh My!” (did you know a YottaByte is 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes, page 17) and even “How to Blog.”
via PRX Jake.
WYNC celebrates John Cage for 24 Hours and 33 Minutes on his 95th birthday with The Playful and Playable Cage: A WNYC Festival. Airs September 5th at 00:00 (midnight) until 00:33 September 6th. They’ve published an hour-by-hour schedule of the broadcast and A John Cage Web Reliquary with Videos | Interviews | Writings | Quotes | Timeline | Visual Art | Links.
JC on JC from WNYC (4:57):
Other HV Cage posts.