Hearing Voices from NPR®
003 Her Stories: For Women’s History Month
Host: Dmae Roberts of Stories1st.org
Airs week of: 2012-02-29 (Originally: 2008-03-19)
John and Abagail Adams played by Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Nuff said, no? Parts 1 & 2 of the HBO 7-week mini-series “John Adams” rocked, rolled, tarred, feathered, cannon fired, and created a nation. “He United the States of America.” Based on the David McCullough 900-pager, “John Adams (HBO) full-length trailer”:
I was a private detective for years after I started as a filmmaker. I like to think, of course I could be completely wrong, that there’s this detective element in everything I do. My movies start from interviews. Everything that I’ve really done. —EM
Wait for the afterthought. Be patient. Don’t say, “Cut.†Just let them do it. The unplanned, the unexpected, the afterthought. —WH
The Thermopolis transmitter of Wyoming Public Radio was off-air. To fix it they needed to get up past three feet of snowdrifts, over three inches of ice, and into 40-mph winds blowing snow sideways across a cloud-covered hilltop. A four-wheel drive wouldn’t make it; a rental Sno-Cat would have taken days to find; and snowmobile travel would have been dangerous with the weight and bulk of the gear and parts needing transport. So how did Chief Engineer Reid Fletcher and Program Director Roger Adams make their mid-winter ascent? Hint: “Giddyup.”
C’mon, bait your line. Let’s go smelt fishin’ on the ice. Ten shacks on a frozen river are filled with ice fishermen for ten weeks each year. Owner Steve Leighton provides the bait; his patrons bring the beer; and the fish take care of the rest. Produced by Grant Fuller of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, premiered on Weekend America, “What Are You Gonna Do with 400 Fish?” (5:13 mp3):
James Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) and Luciano Pavarotti (October 12, 1935 — September 6, 2007) perform live on stage in Modena, Italy on May 28, 2002, “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World:”
MySpace has pages for people, places, and now things. Composer Peter Traub has started ItSpace, a participatory sound project. “ItSpace pages feature everyday household objects. Each page has a photo of the object, a description, and most importantly, a 1-minute piece of music composed of recordings of the object being struck and resonated in various.” A story by Jesse Dukes on NPR Day to Day, “Objects Sing at Itspace” (5:04) mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
002 Visiting Hours— In Hospital
Host— Ceil Muller of KQED Public Radio
Airs week of— 2009-03-11 (Originally: 2008-03-12)
“The Kiss and the Dying” is host Ceil Muller’s (of KQED) etiquette list for those who may be dying, and for the soon-to-be survivors.
“Fire and Ice Cream” is from Brent Runyan’s book “The Burn Journals,” and Jay Allison’sLife Stories radio series. Brent’s nurse in the burn unit asks the 14-year-old out for ice cream… and a date?
In “Our Father” Brian Brophy documents his dad’s passing, with recordings of his family, the chaplain, the hospital and hospice staff, and the wake.
Wilfrid Charles Heinz, sportswriter and M*A*S*H co-author, passed away at 93. Sez WSJ: “Bill Heinz Was a Writer to Relish.” A memorable W. C. Heinz excerpt:
There were 39,827 people there and they had paid $342,497 to be there and when Graziano’s head came up out of the dugout they rose and made their sound. The place was filled with it and it came from far off and then he was moving quickly down beneath this ceiling of sound, between the two long walls of faces, turned toward him and yellow in the artificial light and shouting things, mouths open, eyes wide, into the ring where, in one of the most brutal fights ever seen in New York, Zale dropped him once and he dropped Zale once before, in the sixth round, Zale suddenly, with a right to the body and left to the head, knocked him out.
–The Day of the Fight, 1947
NPR is back into radio drama, at least for a couple minutes. Today’s NPR Day to Day premieres the ZBS series, 2 Minute Film Noir. An American private eye falls in love with a French woman who is more than mysterious, she’s ethereal, in “Chez Tootsie” (3:26 mp3):
PRI’s Fair Game asked Andrew W. K. to write a rocker based on words from TV’s shout-fest The McLaughlin Group, “The McLaughlin Groove” (0:47 mp3):
“The next man on the moon will be Chinese.” Who know the pundit was a poet?
Gotta say, tho, Msr. W.K. has fallen mightily in subject-matter, reduced to covering shlock like TV’s punditocracy; especially considering his previous high-culture accomplishments, not least of which is Jackass’s “We Want Fun:”
Check the Fair Game site for host’s Faith Salie’s leadup to the song and intervu w/ W.K. (along with a link to SNL’s McGroup sendup).
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
001 Street Map— The People Next Door
Host— Katie Davis of Neighborhood Stories
Airs week of— 2009-03-04 (Originally: 2008-03-05)
Scott Carrier walks around the Salt Lake City blocks, talking to people in “The Neighborhood.”
Host Katie Davis, of Neighborhood Stories, contemplates changes at the “Corner Store” on the DC street where she grew up and still lives.
Larry Massett helps his friend bid “Goodbye, Batumi” to his hometown in the Republic of Georgia.
And a modern day Romeo and Juliet is staged, amidst a growing number of homicides, in “Oakland Scenes: Snapshots of a Community” by Youth Radio and poet Ise Lyfe.
Hearing Voices is now a new weekly hour series. We’re calling it The Best of Public Radio; a sixty-minute stream of “driveway moments†all connected by a weekly theme. We listen to broadcasts and podcasts; we dig through audio archives; and we scour the web to find the best stories, sound-portraits, slam poets, docs, radio dramas, features, and found-sound.
Each week a new Guest Host steers the show home. About 15 stations all already on board — broadcast schedules coming soon. Here’s a sample from our very first hour, airing next weekend, and hosted by Katie Davis of Neighborhood Stories; it’s called “Street Map” (9:24 mp3):
Good news: Last week we signed a deal w/ NPR®. They take care of our distribution and podcast. We take listeners for wild weekly radio rides. Good deal, huh? Reminds us of Car Talk’s disclaimers, “And even tho Robert Siegal spills his soy cappuccino over his Opera Divas Disrobed calendar every time he hears us say it, this is NPR, National Public Radio.”
So we ask you a simple question; which you, in turn, might pose to your local station: “Are your Hearing Voices?”
HV Series Promo 1 (0:30 mp3):
Say, today the HV News blog is one year old. Sez WordPress: we have 491 posts and 119 comments, with 168 radio-related 168 mp3s and 77 audio-related videos.
We’ll introduce a new icon today, this linked HV-logo to the left. That means it’s something produced by us, a radio story, a web-work, or an episode in our new weekly series(!!!). That’s right a new weekly HV hour. More on that in moments.
Day 1 of the Iditarod is tomorrow. One of the qualifying races was held a few weeks ago, is the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon, named for the son of a Chippewa chief who delivered mail by dog sled along Lake Superior’s rugged North Shore in the late 19th century. Launched in 1981, the Beargrease draws world-class sled dog teams from around the globe. The Beargrease is the longest, and most challenging, of sled dog events in the lower 48: almost 400 miles and 4000 spectators, starting in Duluth, Minnesota on the last weekend of January. Field-recordist Curt Olson gathered the sounds of the dogs, the mushers and the fans, “Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon” (7:00 mp3):
Marvin Granger:
• formerly of MPR stations (he gave a young GarrisonK his first radio job);
• first GM of Spokane Public Radio;
• former GM of WBFO-Buffalo (where Terry Gross got her start);
• former GM of WDET-Detrioit;
• for two decades GM of Yellowstone Public Radio, whose signal now saturates more territory than any other pubradio net in the nation.
Yes, that Marvin Granger tells me his last day in public radio is this Friday, the day of his call-in show Your Opinion, Please — Friday Feb 29 6:30-7:00 pm MT (which streams so anyone anywhere can listen & call 800.441.2941… hint, hint.)
A couple excerpted quotes from Marvin’s career; about pubradio, he told Spokane Magazine:
“We can play music which is ‘culturally important but commercially weak’ in nature, such as chamber music and contemporary experimental music. It’s one of the few places creative people gain exposure.â€
And his early participation in the debate over the value of Arbitron is discussed in the report (pdf) “Guys in Suits with Charts: Audience Research in U.S. Public Radio.” His opinion: PDs’ concerns for radio ratings “collided with the art of programming commercial radio.”
MG has been a boon to our broadcast buddy Chrysti the Wordsmith; a friend to our little local college station KGLT — even tho we share the same dial as his station; and an adviser to us at HV (he won’t be entirely off-air: later this year he’ll be hosting HV’s Winter Solstice hour).
Marvin, we all wave you a hearty and appreciative aloha. If just half of us in this biz contribute half as much as you did, pubradio will soar.
The New York Times profiles Jersey City’s WFMU in “Put the Radio On”.”
“Hands down, WFMU is the greatest radio station on the planet.†–Jim Jarmusch
“This is the kind of place that shouldn’t exist but somehow does.†–WFMU DJ Tom Scharpling
There’s some priceless airchecks (left column of the NYT article), including “How to Be a WFMU Disc Jockey,” “Death-Defying Radio Stunts: Harassing Toll Booth Attendants” and this many Louie-Louie mashup from “Music to Spazz by” (5:32 mp3):
“Basketball is a wonderful thing for a community because it is a warm place where everyone can go and it isn’t a church or a bar.†– Phil Jackson
Apathy was thick as I approached the theater for a screening of Class C. Five minutes in, I was completely converted. Class C, a documentary film produced by Bozemanite Mark Zetler, follows 5 Montana Class C girls basketball teams as they make their way to the State tournament. Instantly engaging and entertaining, it’s a beautifully crafted story about Montana and basketball; an interview with coaching legend and Montana native Phil Jackson is deftly intertwined. Go out of your way to see it!
Free screening at the Alberta Bair Theater in Billings on February 23rd at 8pm.
Airs on MontanaPBS:
Wednesday February 27th at 8pm
Monday March 3rd at 7pm More on Class C
Hearing Voices from NPR®
From the March/April 2008 Issue of The Believer, a conversation between two great filmakers: “
MySpace has pages for people, places, and now things. Composer Peter Traub has started 
Wilfrid Charles Heinz, sportswriter and M*A*S*H co-author, passed away at 93. Sez WSJ: “
NPR is back into radio drama, at least for a couple minutes. Today’s NPR 
Good news: Last week we signed a deal w/ 
