Year: 2008/Archives

HV Series Podcast

NPR has started hosting our HV series podcast (iTunes subscription). And right now it’s being featured on both the front of NPR Podcasts page and the iTunes Podcast Directory

LB Grand Prix

Been outta touch for a week — I was off snortin’ methanol and splittin’ eardrums. Drove down to the Long Beach Grand Prix, an ocean-side street race with open-wheel drivers from around the globe. Two-hundred thousand fans around a two mile course of Fast & Loud in downtown LB — by fast I mean 186mph avg and 200+ on the straightaways; and loud, well, the punk bands we heard one night at an LB club were whispers compared to those race engines. When they go by, you’re ears sizzle. Haven’t heard much yet of the hours of recordings we captured, but, for now, here’s a half-minute taste of the “LB Grand Prix- Champ Cars 1” (0:31 mp3):

When the Tecate® Girls saw my co-recordist, Joe Skyward, they insisted he squeeze into this picture with them — something these ladies will treasure forever:

Mountain Gorillas

This week on NPR ATC, HV’s Jake Warga had a story on the recovering mountain gorilla population in Rwanda. Seems the genocide decimated populations of more than just people. “Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda” (8:19 mp3):

HV008- About Aging

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
008 About Aging—
I Thought You’d Never Ask
Host— David Greenberger of Duplex Planet
Airdates— 2009-04-22 (Originally: 2008-04-23)

“About Aging” (53:00 mp3):

Host David Greenberger of Duplex Planet presents glorious moments and observations from people in the last years of their lives:

Dave Alvin discusses the song he wrote about his dying father, “Man in the Bed,” from the Western Folklife Center’s What’s in a Song? series.

Comedians Bob & Ray are “The Whirleys”.

From StoryCorps comes a remembrance from Richard Craig of his days as a dance host on cruise ships.

In Sound Portraits “The Ground We Live On” journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc faces mortality in recordings she made during her father’s last months alive.

And host David Greenberger shares some stories told him over the years by the elderly, including “Growing Old in East LA“.

HV007- The Earth Sings

Hearing Voices from NPR®
007 The Earth Sings: For Earth Day
Host: Dmae Roberts of Stories1st.org
Airs week of: 2012-04-18 (Originally: 2008-04-16)

The Earth Sings (53:00 mp3):

Host Dmae Roberts of of Stories1st.org, for Earth Day, presents Sounds for and from Mother Earth:

The Quiet American takes an audio trek through Nepal”s “Annapurna” Circuit.

Host Dmae Roberts records Maori music and culture. We hear Pulse of the Planet’s “Extraordinary Sounds From the Natural World.”

And from Gregg McVicar and the Earthsongs series: Sioux Soprano Bonnie Jo Hunt layers opera over insects (on Robbie Robertson’s Music for the Native Americans), and the band Pamyua mimics creature calls.

Death in Venice

Here’s another entry in our What NPR Was category: In the late 70s & early 80s Keith Talbot produced several series for NPR; among them was The Radio Experience. One episode, “Death in Venice” by Larry Massett, was mainly interviews with Venice FL retirees.

The half-hour is like a swim in the ocean, soothing, stimulating, but watch for the rocks and rip tides — it pulls you in. The piece told us then what non-fiction creative radio could be. Almost thirty years later, it still does.

Larry Massett wrote the narration, produced, and played his original music; Joe Frank narrated. From June 1981, “Death in Venice” (29:01 mp3):

Larry sez:

“I had no idea what was doing. And so I didn’t have any questions for anybody. I just stood on the beach in Venice with a microphone. If anybody asked I just said I was recording.

All I knew was is it was a retirement area, and there were a lot of fossils on the beach. Certain people saw the mic and came up and started talking. It was only after I got home and started to paw thru the tape that I realized what they had chose to talk about was the love of their life.”

The piece will be in an upcoming HV hour on Memory. Another Massett/Talbot experience, “Ocean Hour,” is up at Third Coast (with an KeithT interview on the NPR days of yore).

Rebecca Flowers

Writer Rebecca Flowers has produced some stellar radio for HV. Her first novel is now out has her frist novel out on Nice to Come Home To.

“A lovely, funny story about the saving graces of surrogate families and unexpected love. The narrator, Pru, has such a self-effacing, irreverent sense of humor that I couldn’t help but root for her all the way.”
—Lolly Winston, New York Times bestselling author of Good Grief and Happiness Sold Separately

“So fresh and funny and warm, it echoed in my head long after I had closed the book . . . Beautifully written, with wit and heart to spare . . . She’s Jane Austen gone mod, and I can’t recommend this hopeful and endearing tale strongly enough.”
—Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama

“Rebecca Flowers is a genius of the small and lucent, the details that make a character live and breathe: revelatory moments, quirky and dead-on metaphors, searingly funny observations. ou will know Pru Whistler the way you know real people and you’ll miss her the second you finish the book.”
—Marisa De Los Santos, author of Love Walked In

Ruben’s Tube

Soundwaves on fire, now if they could just turn it into a sound editor; a classic physics experiment, the “Ruben’s Tube:”

Forvo pronunciations

Forvo is another online pronunciation guide. But this one via a social-net hopes to have “All the words in the world pronounced by native speakers.”

Forvo is the place where you´ll find words pronounced in their original languages. Ever wondered how a word is pronounced? Ask for that word or name, and another user will pronounce it for you. You can also help others recording your pronunciations in your own language.

What NPR Was

NPR has changed. As evidence I offer this early 80s promo produced by Jesse Boogs for NPR. This imagistic radio dramatic audio artistic style said NPR then. Now, not so much; “Morning Edition promo” (1:00 mp3):

Vocal Sampling

Got an email from a listener, Matthew Hazelwood, the conductor of the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra. He heard our Radio Dial hour in which I played an a cappella vocal group imitating the sounds of tuning thru the radio dial. I got the recording from a friend who taped it off the radio in South America. Neither of us know who the singers were, so, in the program I asked if anyone in radioland knew.

Conductor Hazelwood did indeed:

“Heard your program this evening on IPR here in Interlochen Michigan and enjoyed it very much. The a cappella group you were asking about is a fantastic Cuban group of 6 vocalists. There are called “Vocal Sampling” (yes, they use an English name), and that “Radio Reloj” is a great track from an early CD of theirs. They are fantastic musiciansand the rest of the track that follows the sound effects section you played is stunning. All the best with your new show.”

So thanks, Matthew; and here ’tis in its entirety, Vocal Sampling, from their 1995 Una Forma Mas, “Radio Reloj” (3:56 mp3):

And if that ain’t enuf, “Vocal Sampling 2006 10”:

PRX MacArthur Awardee

The MacArthur Foundation selected the Public Radio Exchange for one of its 2008 Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, which comes with half-a-million $mackers. PRX is an audio archive site, an essential public radio tool and community. We at HV use it almost daily. Righteous to see their recogintion. PRX was one of eight orgs chosen for this MacArthur Award.

PostSecret

“PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.”

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Frank Warren came up the concept, catalogs the cards, and created a community.

prednisone online
Frank Warren has been on NPR’s WE-SAT and ATC. And PostSecret has spawned a swarm of of books and flock of videos. These animated PostSecret cards accompany Donora‘s song “Shhh” in the film “PostSecret – A Valentine Video:”

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Meryn Cadell

Meryn Cadell is one of my favorite spoken-weird artists. Bongo Beat Records re-released her best CD, Angel Food For Thought, with this video of “The Sweater:”

Sound Sculptures

“Advanced Beauty is an ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound…is an ever-growing collaboration between programmers, artists, animators and architects. The first release will be a collection of Audio-Visual Sound Sculptures, on High Definition DVD and 5:1 Surround Sound. “

And, if you happen to be in Sheffield England in early May, you can attend a premier of these sound sculptures at the Showroom Cinema.

I’ve included a preview of the sound sculptures below:

HV006- Radio Dial

Hearing Voices from NPR®
006 Radio Dial: Signals from the Sky
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-05-26 (Originally: 2008-04-09)

“Radio Dial” (52:00 mp3):

Radio stories about radio, then stories about radio stories:

These “Dueling Transmitters” are an atmospheric found-sound un-manipulated mix of Spanish ham-radio operators, slow Morse code, data squalls, and the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran. From the Shortwavemusic blog post “The Effects of Radiation.”

An FM radio station in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, is called Urbana. It’s hip, bilingual, plays music from all over the world, and is famous in Uruguay for its 30-second sound portraits featuring the voices of famous people mixed over avante-garde music.

The Cuban a-capella ensemble approximates a radio dial with their vocal chords. From the group Vocal Sampling’s (site | space) CD Una Forma Mas.

Shortwave/music mixes by LA sound artist Myke Dodge Weiskopf, off his 30: a Retrospective 1976-2006

The government’s all-time all-the-time radio station goes commercial, voiced by former WWV announcer John Doyle.

More…

Bookslut

My wife, Victoria, who is indeed well described by the following domain name, sends this link: Bookslut, “a monthly web magazine and daily blog dedicated to those who love to read.”

Remember Me

Concord Monitor photojournalist Preston Gannaway won a Pulitzer for her shots in a series of articles which “chronicle the death of Carolynne St. Pierre, a Concord NH woman who wanted to leave her children with a record of her final months.” The online version is this beautiful photo-audio slideshow called “Remember Me.”

via Bill Slammon- WVEW

Bow Down, Mister

Lord help (forgive?) me, I love this old Boy George tune; and lo & behold, I now find its boolywood-meets-baptist visuals housed on the internet. Originally released 1990 under Boy’s alter-band name, Jesus Loves You with the short vers of “Bow Down, Mister:”

Secrets and Noise

The latest PRX podcast has an environment/media mix, first whispered then shouted, Amy Conger‘s “Secret and Noise” (4:12 mp3):