BBC Report: “Thinking up beautiful music.”
Musicians may soon be able to play instruments using just the power of the mind. Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London have developed technology to translate thoughts into musical notes.
Friend of HV, Gregg MvVicar, hosts the 1000th edition of his daily radio UnderCurrents: American Music With A Passport. This Saturday he spins the show’s top 75 tunes since UnderCurrents started flowing in 2005, selections of “Rock, Blues, Folk, Native, Country, Funk, Electronica, Reggae, World, Conscious Hip Hop, Dub and more.”
This from WBAI-NYC and RadioArt…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A James Joyce Celebration
Radio Bloomsday
June 16 on WBAI 99.5 FM and wbai.org, 7 PM – 2 AM
Starring Alec Baldwin, Anne Meara, Kate Valk, Bob Dishy, Alvin Epstein and Caraid O’Brien as Molly Bloom
NEW YORK, NY (June 11, 2008) – Radio Bloomsday is an intimate radio program featuring readings of James Joyce’s Ulysses plus selections from Joyce’s entire canon, performed by leading actors. Bloomsday is celebrated every year on June 16, the day Ulysses takes place.
“Radio Bloomsday will make the works of Joyce accessible to a 21st century audience — the newly initiated and devoted stalwarts alike,†explains host/producer Larry Josephson. “This year’s show begins with a survey of all of Joyce’s works, followed by a spotlight on the holy trinity of characters in Ulysses: Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly.†Alec Baldwin plays The Citizen, Alvin Epstein (the original Lucky in “Waiting for Godotâ€) reads a tribute to Samuel Beckett, Joyce’s former secretary. Anne Meara will perform the role of Gertie MacDowell. Kate Valk reads Joyce’s poetry, and Amy Stiller will do a tribute to Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. Caraid O’Brien rounds out the evening with a marathon performance of Molly Bloom’s famous monologue, unabridged and unexpurgated. Plus, contemporary reviews of Ulysses, letters from Joyce and the opinions of his peers will be read throughout the evening… Radio Bloomsday will be broadcast live on WBAI 99.5 FM and wbai.org, Monday, June 16, from 7 PM until the wee hours of the morning. (press release)
If you’re a fan of static, noise, confusion, and disorienting disembodied voices — and who isn’t? — then check ShortWaveMusic’s latest Duelling XMTRs!, “The Dance of Heaven’s Ghosts.” Blogger Myke Weiskopf captures the broadcasts of multiple transmitters on the same SW radio frequency. Sez Myke: “I hear whale songs, slamming doors, airport paging voices, jet turbines, cicadas, Emergency Broadcast System tones, a Wagnerian female choir, perhaps even the Perseid meteors themselves. It’s The Ghost Orchid crossed with The River multiplied by Kurzwellen, all generated by the simplest synthesis of skywave and transistor.”
Caught on shortwave (09/23/2007 unidentified stations 6155 kHz) “Duelling XMTRs! #7: Kurzwellen Turbine Forest” (7:34 mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®
015 Father Figures: For Father’s Day
Host: Jay Allison of Transom.org
Airs week of: 2012-06-13 (Originally: 2008-06-11)
Father Figures (54:00 mp3):
Paternal praise, pride, disappointment and love:
Scott Carrier gives his son Milo a “Ski Lesson.”
From Animals and Other Stories we hear “Reflections of Fathers,” aka, Bugs & Dads (producers: Jay Allison & Christina Egloff, music: Ben Verdery & Rie Schmidt).
Comic strip artist Lynda Barry wishes her divorced dad a “Happy Father’s Day.”
A doctor tells his daughter about her granddad in “StoryCorps– Dr. William Weaver.”
“Grilling Me Softly” is how host Jay Allison describes his daughter’s questions about his love life.
Dan Robb’s family remembers the day “Dad’s Moving Out” (from Jay Allison’s Life Stories).
“Doc Merrick” and daughter Viki go through some girl problems.
David Greenberger tells David Cobb’s story “Because of Dad” (music performed by Bangalore, composed by Phil Kaplan).
Deirdre Sullivan’s father advises “Always Go to the Funeral” (from This I Believe).
And Dave Masch wants to be “A Better Father” (produced by Viki Merrick).. Photo © Scott Carrrier.
Oh, the many faces of the Public Service Announcement. There’s this 2004 Radio Mercury Awards winner for Stonewall – Columbus; “Method: The Gay Son” (1:00 mp3):
Contrast that with this recent ad (found on Music For Maniacs) opposing a 2008 Colorado Senate Bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (SB 200, now law); “Focus on the Family ad” (0:38 mp3):
The NY Times map of “Where the Candidates Found Support” provides one of the more interesting views of the Democratic primary race. Note how Clinton won a swath of the country (from north Texas to upstate New York that you could term Trans-Appalachia. Obama, meanwhile, took the everything on the other side of them thar hills, which happened to be both more heavily populated and more African-American. But I think it’s interesting too how he picked up all of the predominantly white Northwest too.
“Demography trumps everything” sez David Runciman in the latest London Review of Books, “The Cattle-Prod Election:”
“But viewed in retrospect, it is clear that it has been quite predictable. All the twists and turns have been a function of the somewhat random sequencing of different state primaries, which taken individually have invariably conformed to type, with Obama winning where he was always likely to win (caucus states, among college-educated and black voters, in the cities), and Clinton winning where she was likely to win (big states with secret ballots, among less well-educated whites and Hispanics, in rural areas). Even the initial drama of that week in early January – when Obama’s victory in Iowa had seemed to give him a chance of finishing Clinton off, only to be confounded by her victory in New Hampshire, which defied the expectation of the pundits and had them all speculating about what had swung it (was it her welling up in a diner? was it hastily rekindled memories of Bill? was it hints of hubris from Obama?) – turns out to have been an illusion. Iowa was Obama country (younger, smaller, caucus meetings) and New Hampshire wasn’t (older, bigger, voting machines). The salient fact about this campaign is that demography trumps everything: people have been voting in fixed patterns set by age, race, gender, income and educational level, and the winner in the different contests has been determined by the way these different groups are divided up within and between state boundaries. Anyone who knows how to read the census data (and that includes some of the smart, tech-savvy types around Obama) has had a good idea of how this was going to play from the outset. All the rest is noise.”
This Slate graph (via WSJ) of National Poll Averages shows how Clinton’s support never really varied but Obama’s continually rose. (Also see RealClearPolitics McCain vs Obama trendlines.)
It was 40 years ago today; the Ambassador Hotel in LA— Robert Francis Kennedy (Nov. 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968).
From Shona Laing’s 1988 South, “(Glad I’m) Not a Kennedy” (3:28 mp3):
This many-sampled collaged mix of a Missy Elliot cover (“Get Ur Freak On”) keeps rolling ’round my head; found at WFMU, it’s by Satanicpornocultshop from Osaka, Japan and called “Pinky” (3:06 mp3):
https://rex-lumber.com/lyrica-pregabalin/
Satanicpornocultshop: MySpace
Website: Nu NuLAX NuLAN / neji
Hearing Voices from NPR®
014 Fans and Bands:
Groupies, Gravediggers & Rock n’ Roll Singers
Host: Ian Svenonius of Weird War
Airs week of:Â 2009-5-13 (Originally: 2008-04-06)
“Fans and Bands” (52:00 mp3):
Features a tribute to Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 -Â June 2, 2008):
Host Ian Svenonius, of the band Weird War, introduces “The Groupies,” an album of 1969 interviews by producer Alan Lorber (Iris Music Group, Alan Lorber Orchestra).
We visit with the pilgrims at Pere LaChaise cemetery, come to see “Jim Morrison’s Grave” (a sound-portrait by Mark Neumann of Documentary Works and Barrett Golding).
John Denver‘s anti-Christian conspiracy is exposed in the series “Song and Memory” from producers Ann Heppermann & Kara Oehler, with Rick Moody.
And Bo Diddley blows up his mom’s radio in David Schulman’s series “Musicians in Their Own Words.”
Diddley:
Every year amongst the Radio-Mercury Awards Winners are some real radio gems. This year one ad turns radio’s fear of dead-air on its arse. It’s for the revolutionary new car, “Aptera” (1:00 mp3):
Others to check are winners in the PSA, Political, and Student categories. Or just listen your way thru Mercury’s Ad/PSA winners library.
Nuthin’ like a good gas crisis to spurn some excitement for energy conservation— the Aptera electric and hybrid vehicle, 300 miles-per-gallon, extended range models, “composite safety cage similar to Formula-1 cars,” exceeds 85 mph, 0-60 mph in under 10 seconds, “designed from the ground up as an electric vehicle;” that’s just some of its innovations.
The car had a cameo in this Touchstone Energy ad:
The new book by Bush’s ex-spokseman, Scott McClellen (What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception) has the press blaming the Bush admin and blaming the author, but nary a news item about where the real blame lies in misleading America on the facts of Iraq: “”And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers… The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.”
Scottie’s book has little new about how the White House sold the War or outed CIA-op Ms. Plame. What is new is his opinion that the people he saw daily on the other side of podium, i.e. the DC press corps, weren’t doing their jobs: “The media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding”
The media have rose as one to ignore the the accusations in their typical hear-no-evil fashion; as in this from the LA Times, D.C. journalists to Scott McClellan: Huh?.
There are a few exceptions:
Editor & Publisher, Media, Who Got War Wrong, Take Exception to Scott McClellan’s Charges— “Most, on Wednesday, still defended their coverage. But few have ever really come to terms with the magnitude of their failure.”
CJR, Pre-Iraq War Coverage: “Pretty Good Job†or “Embarrassing?†and Yellin: News Execs Pushed For Positive Bush Stories— “When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”
Salon, Scott McClellan on the “liberal media”— “The New York Times and The Washington Post both trumpet the fact that McClellan made statements harshly critical of Bush. But they completely ignore McClellan’s far more significant indictment of their ‘deferential,’ Bush-enabling conduct. Isn’t it rather self-evidently newsworthy that Bush’s own press secretary blamed the American media for allowing Bush to get away with all sorts of falsehoods?”
The Salon article refers to an excellent earlier press self-eval by Howard Kurtz:
WA Post (2004), The Post on WMDs An Inside Story: Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn’t Make Front Page— “‘The paper was not front-paging stuff,’ said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. ‘Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?'”
And congrats to Jake Tapper for extensive press-related quotes from the book:
ABC News, McClellan: Media During Run-Up to Iraq Were “Complicit Enablers”—
“And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it… the media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. Was the president winning or losing the argument? How were Democrats responding? What were the electoral implications? What did the polls say? And the truth–about the actual nature of the threat posed by Saddam, the right way to confront it, and the possible risks of military conflict–would get largely left behind…”
“If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should have never come as such a surprise. The public should have been made much more aware, before the fact, of the uncertainties, doubts, and caveats that underlay the intelligence about the regime of Saddam hussein. The administration did little to convey those nuances to the people, the press should have picked up the slack but largely failed to do so because their focus was elsewhere–on covering the march to war, instead of the necessity of war.
In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
“The network that can find a way to shift from excessively covering controversy, the conventional horse race and image-driven coverage to give a greater emphasis to who is right and who is wrong, who is telling the truth and who is not, and the larger truths about our society and our world might achieve some amazing results in our fast-changing media environment.”
The press is likely comforatable continuing to pretend it wasn’t the principle percussionist beating the 2003 war-drum. The public, however, may not be: Make Mainstream Media Answer for Spreading Propaganda.
Terry Gross (Fresh Air host) delivers some humble, humorous, and educational remarks to the 2008 Graduates of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
By respecting a guest’s right to decline to answer a personal question, by giving him or her the responsibility to define what’s going too far, I’m giving myself the freedom to ask absolutely anything. Having been assured that I won’t invade his or her privacy, a guest is more likely to answer seemingly personal questions than he or she might have been otherwise.
You don’t want to think about prostate problems. What man over 50 would? Jeff Metcalf certainly didn’t; until the diagnoses in 2004: prostate cancer. That’s when Metcalf, an English professor at the University of Utah, began keeping a journal. His diaries open as a play this summer.
Here’s the HV radio version, written by Jeff Metcalf, performed by Paul Kiernan, recorded by Scott Carrier, produced by Larry Massett, music by Parazitii, “A Slight Discomfort: My Prostate Diaries” (53:00 mp3):
Jeff has assembled info & links on our Prostate Diaries page.
[This is a shortened version of our Winter Soldiers page.]
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” –Thomas Paine 1776
For the first time boots-on-the-ground soldiers testified before Congress (C-SPAN) in May 2008 about how the Iraq war is being waged. Those testifying were members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War.
A couple months earlier the group gathered to record soldiers and marines “giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out.” They called the event Winter Soldier, taking the name from a similar 1971 movement of Vietnam vets.
These are some of the voices of the IVAW “Winter Soldiers” (7:25 mp3):
The above audio is edited excepts from former marines Jon Turner and Michael LeDuc, former soldiers Clifton Hicks and Garrett Reppenhagen, Jon Turner again, and former soldiers Jason Hurd and Kristopher Shawn Goldsmith. Longer unedited excerpts from their and other IVAW testimony is at our Winter Soldiers page.
Hearing Voices from NPR®
013 Crossing Borders: From Mexico to US
Host: Marcos Martinez of KUNM-Alberquerque
Airs week of: 2012-01-18 (Originally: 2008-05-28)
“Crossing Borders” (52:00 mp3):
A Tale of Two Countries:
In “Sasabe,” a Sonora, Mexico border town, Scott Carrier talks to immigrants on their hazardous, illegal desert crossing, and to the border patrol waiting for them in Sasabe, Arizona.
Luis Alberto Urrea reads from his books Vatos and The Devil’s Highway, about death in the desert.
Guillermo Gómez-Peña imagines “Maquiladoras of the Future,” fantasy border factories.
“And I walked…”, by Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler, is a sound-portrait of Mexicans who risk their lives to find better-paying jobs in the United States.
And sounds from the Quiet American’s one-minute vacation.
Photos © 2004 Julián Cardona from Sasabe, Sonora, Mexico :
quikmaps.com is an easy to use & config Google-map making tool. Here’s a quickmap of all the HV stations carrying the HV weekly hour series: