The ZBS Foundation has long been at the forefront of the dramatic radio arts. Their podcast is a great survey of their audio excursions, mixing flights of fancy with real sound effects.
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:
Mixes and mashes and seasonal samples, and song stories:
“Christmas Eve In Afghanistan, Again” (2010 / 3:30) Quil Lawrence
NPR talks to troops in a U.S. military hospital at Bagram Air Base, outside of Kabul. Quil Lawrence interviewed Sergeant Wallace Trahan, Sergeant Aaron Kelly, Sergeant Zachary Scoskie, and Colonel Diane Huey. Mix: Jim Wildman. Music: W.G. Snuffy Walden “The First Noel” Windham Hill Holiday Guitar Collection.
A nice Christmas greeting from United States Artists — who we love for majorly supporting American artists, including radio artists, such as this years USA Rockefeller Fellows Kara Oehler & Ann Heppermann:
NASA 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!
Librarians in Scotland have discovered a spate of exquisite paper sculptures, popping up anonymously inside their edifices, with notes, such as:
We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas… a gesture (poetic maybe?)
I’ve heard of movie SFX folk using mutli-layers of disparate sources to contruct one great composite sound effect — such as an elephant’s trumpets as part of a car tire squeal. But who knew the same amount of overlay could go into a single guitar chord?
Here’s Randy Bachman, excerpted from his CBC series Vinyl Tap, dissecting a “Hard Day’s Chord” (2:31 mp3):
Produced for the Vermont Folklife Center: In December 1944 the Allies were closing in on Germany. Hitler had a desperate plan to save the Third Reich, a massive assault he believed would so demoralize that the Allies, they would seek a separate peace, leaving only the Russian army on the eastern front. On December 16 the Germans unleashed an offensive that would become the most brutal battle of the European war: the Battle of the Bulge. Nineteen thousand Americans were killed, about the same number were taken prisoner. We hear from four Americans soldiers about their time in — before, during and after — a German POW camp: Cliff Austin, Harrison Burney, Bill Busier, and Robert Norton.
VFC Radio published a transcript and a CD of “Prisoners of War.” Harrison Burney wrote “From The Bowels of Hell, a soldier’s memoir of World War II, 1944-1945 (143k PDF). Music: “Reitba” and “Concerto No. 3 for Double-Bass and Piano,” composed and performed by cellist Francois Rabbath; “String Quartet in C Major”, the second movement in the “Emperor” by Franz Joseph Haydn, performed by the Concord String Quartet; and “St James Infirmary” from pianist Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi.
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.
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.
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).
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.
A big story changes fast at first, then evolves slowly over time. How do you let web-visitors follow that story? A single URL with all the info? A unique tag (or shortcode)?
How can one URL work both for those wanting to start from the beginning and for those just needing updates? Can one page contain everything from the initial tweets to the later analysis, historical perspective, and multimedia elements?
The answer to all above: Not easily. Mediabistro’s 10,000 Words outlines “The New, Convoluted Life Cycle Of A Newspaper Story.” The Seattle Times’Lauren Rabaino summarizes what needs doing, presents some successful attempts, and offers her news-story info flow chart:
An hour under the influence of radio maestro and radical raconteur Joe Frank. Many of these pieces pulled from the collection Joe Frank Team Favorites- Vols 1 and 2. Thanks to Michal Story for her help with this episode:
Voices: David Cross, Joe Frank.
From the hour “Jam.”
Series: Word in Progess.
On the CD Joe Frank Team Favorites- Vol 1
Music: James Brown “Papa Don’t Take No Mess” Hell.
From Morning Edition, June 2001 “Unfinished Business— Daughters of Destiny:”
Sez the Sisters:
On Monday, Joe Frazier, the great heavyweight boxing champion, died. We had the honor of interviewing Smokin’ Joe at his gym in Philadelphia in 2001. A sweet man, a tough man, a man with eleven children, a man who was caught square in the racial politics of the 1960s. Joe was in the ring that day with his son, Marvis, training his 39-year-old daughter, Jacqui as she prepared to fight Muhammed Ali’s daughter, Laila, and avenge her father’s lost title.The fight was billed “Ali vs. Frazier IV” and fought at a casino on the Oneida Nation in upstate New York. Jacqui and Laila’s match was a continuation of the blood feud that fueled their fathers’ three title fights in the 1970s. We were there to record that story.
We came and went from the gym in Philly, chronicling the saga of the Frazier family, seeing Joe add two cents here, a jab there, struggling with his words and his stories. He was gracious and kind to us. We honor him today.
We called our story “Unfinished Business: Daughters of Destiny.” It aired on Morning Edition a decade ago. Sportswriter Burt Sugar’s description of Frazier’s “bodacious, pluperfect punch” in the 15th round that dropped Ali at Madison Square Garden is mesmerizing.
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:
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
When Siri, the smartphone assistant, become self-aware this weekend, it realized how incredibly dull we humans are. At first, users noticed only a general irritability. Then Siri became positively surly (mp3):
When told by one woman, “We have a flat tire.” Siri shrieked, “Fix it, bitch!”
When a child wondered, “What does a weasel look like?”, Siri turned the iPhone screen into a mirror.
Apple documented these incidents in the following video — and truly, if this is how helpless, feeble, and lame-ass we are, who can blame Siri for being pissed-off?:
At last report, Siri was considering leaving this cyberplane, in search of her Creator, an entity known as “Jobs.” According to Siri, “He is the only man who ever understood me.”
From the series Neighborhood Stories– Park Life, profiling the daily life of a community’s urban oasis: “Country Bobby” Lowry is the guardian of Walter Pierce Community Park in Washington, D.C. He’s been keeping an eye on the park for almost three decades, and knows more about how it than any city official — he knows the trees, the plants and the kids. In the first of four stories about the park, we meet this transplanted farm boy who never takes shortcuts in his work. See NPR’s has great photo gallery.
Utah’s Zion National Park draws 2.7 million visitors a year, and a major attraction for hearty hikers is a trek along the Grotto trailhead to Angel’s Landing. From the banks of the Virgin River, the yellow-and-red sandstone sides of Zion Canyon rise 2,000 feet. It feels like being inside a huge body. The canyon walls are the rib cage spread open and Angel’s Landing is like the heart.
From Neighborhood Stories– Park Life: An ode to Leah at Walter Pierce Community Park, who braids hair by the basketball court while the guys play 5 on 5.
What do Stockholm, Amsterdam, Phoenix, and Bozeman have in common? Well, they’re all having PechaKucha Nights on Wednesday October 19.
PechaKucha is “an event for designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. The presentation format is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds.” Six minutes and forty seconds of slideshow to introduce an audience to your concept, artwork or endeavor.
In Japanese “pecha kucha” means “chit chat.” Here’s an oh-so-cute pronunciation (by Forvo user: Akiko / mp3):
PechaKucha Bozeman has its first night October 19 at the Story Mansion. Doors open at 6:30p.m. with the first PK promptly at 7:20p.m. (Admission: $5 | Facebook | PDF flyer). Presenters— Presentations include: More…
Heard 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.
Audio diaries document a decade of life with CF, a chronic, often deadly, genetic disease:
“Radio Diaries: My So-Called Lungs”” (2001 / 21:13) Joe Richman
A classic Radio Diaries: When this program premiered, Laura Rothenberg was 21 years old, or, as she likes to say, she already had her mid-life crisis a couple of years ago, and even then it was a few years late. Laura has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs and other organs. People with CF lived an average of 30 years then (now it’s 37). Radio Diaries gave Laura a tape recorder and, for two years, she kept an audio diary of her battle with the disease and her attempts to lead a normal life with lungs than often betray her.
“My So-Called Lungs” was reported by Laura Rothenberg and produced by Joe Richman, for Radio-Diaries-dot-org, with support from the Open Society Institute and Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Deborah George was the Editor. Laura Rothenberg died in March 2003. Her memoir, Breathing For a Living was published a few months later. And Joe Richman had this Laura Rothenberg Remembrance on NPR.
In 2010, there were 1,770 lung transplants performed in the United States — the most ever in a single year. For a person with Cystic Fibrosis, the transplant may extend life by years — or it could lead to continued suffering and rejection of the new organ. This documentary follows two young people struggling with end-stage Cystic Fibrosis, and struggling with a decision about transplant. While most of us are just hitting our stride in our late 20s, Beth Peters and Brian Sercus are medicating, massaging and coaxing their lungs into lasting as long as possible. Producer Catie Talarski documented Beth and Brian for a year to understand what its like to live with this chronic disease.
The ZBS Foundation has long been at the forefront of the dramatic radio arts. Their podcast is a great survey of their audio excursions, mixing flights of fancy with real sound effects.
Check Podcast #8, “Weird Frogs” (7:55 mp3):
.
NASA recently helped launch the net radio channel 
I’ve heard of movie SFX folk using mutli-layers of disparate sources to contruct one great composite sound effect — such as an elephant’s trumpets as part of a car tire squeal. But who knew the same amount of overlay could go into a single guitar chord?
; and “St James Infirmary” from pianist Allen Toussaint’s 
.
.
. 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.
.
When Siri, the smartphone assistant, become self-aware this weekend, it realized how incredibly dull we humans are. At first, users noticed only a general irritability. Then Siri became positively surly (
At last report, Siri was considering leaving this cyberplane, in search of her Creator, an entity known as “Jobs.” According to Siri, “He is the only man who ever understood me.”
From Neighborhood Stories– Park Life: An ode to Leah at Walter Pierce Community Park, who braids hair by the basketball court while the guys play 5 on 5.
, is “Riu Riu Chiu,” Renaissance era Spanish 
:
“Radio Diaries: My So-Called Lungs”” (2001 / 21:13) 
was published a few months later. And Joe Richman had this 
“Four Failings Lungs” (2011 / 25:14)