The Crossing East project has posted several videos made from their (Peabody winning) radio series. “Refugee Dreams Revisited”:
Other X-East vids: “Chinese Frontier Herbalist” and “Hawaiians and Native Americans.”
NPR Labs published a visualization of U.S. public radio coverage (compiled from data current June 2007). The full-size map is a 3.6MB jpeg. Here’s a scaled down vers:
Born in Butte, Montana; died in Clearwater, Florida. Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel, Jr., October 17 1938 – November 30 2007:
Everywhere in this world I go
No matter who or what I know’
The people they look and most of them stare
And I wonder if they really care
They see this king with his golden crown
Some of them smile but most of them frown
Each time I was hurt they all said
That guy is lucky that he’s not dead
(And they were right.)
But I wanted to get up and try it again
I kept telling myself that I knew I could win
So I’d close my eyes and to the Lord I would pray
Oh help me God… let me walk someday.
And He did.
Every stitch on every scar
Just brought me closer to my dream afar
To be a man and to do my best
To stand alone is my only quest
Success is a term that has broad use
For you and I to have none in life there is no excuse
For YOU to do what I do is not right
But for ME it’s not wrong
What I’ve been trying to tell you all along
Is that it’s got to be
So, if you wonder why
The answer to that is
That just like you… I gotta be me.
–Evel Knievel, 1974
via Ben- Comma Q.
Are you Hearing Voices? From the always reliable Onion News Network In The Know, Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough?:
Dear Nor’easters,
If you wanna good dose of coordinated noise-phonic instrumental rock-guitar symphonies, catch Kinski (Sub-Pop artist and my frens) on their East Coast dates:
11.28.07 Velvet Lounge, Washington, D.C., w/ Clockcleaner & Kohoutek
11.29.07 Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PN w/ Alasehir (members of Bardo Pond)
11.30.07 Club Europa, Brooklyn, NY. EARLY SHOW! 7 pm w/ Oneida & White Hills
12.01.07 Middle East, Boston, MA, w/ Oneida & Cul de Sac
12.05 thru 12.08 Scoring a live dance performance for robbinschilds called C.L.U.E in NYC. We’d recommend getting tickets in advance. More info at PS 122.
Kinski, Airs Above Your Station, “Semaphore” (6:06 mp3):
Audio artist & HV-fren Susan Stone got a Untied States Artists USA Fellow award, along with its whopping $50K. Congrats to one of radio’s innovators. Check out this SStone concoction from an audio cookbook, “Pineapple Boat” (1:15 mp3)
Last year HV collaborator Dmae Roberts also won one of these godsends.
Artist Gennie DeWeese died yesterday. Anyone in the arts who ever crept thru our community (s.w. MT) was affected by her aesthetics. Her scrolls (like “Montana May” to the right; © Gennie DeWeese) were inspired. As was the period she put away her paintbrushes and painted instead with cattle markers, bought at ranch supply stores.
She and husband Bob were immortalized in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which Pirsig wrote after he, like the DeWeeses, taught here at Montana State U. Some excerpts from the book:
From where the deck disappears around the corner of the house, suddenly comes Gennie DeWeese with a tray of beer cans. She is a painter too and, I’m suddenly aware, a quick comprehender and already there’s a shared smile over the artistic economy of grabbing a can of beer instead of her hand, while she says, “Some neighbors just came over with a mess of trout for dinner. I’m so pleased.”
[and from a later conversation at the DeWeeses …]
“Did I ever talk about an individual named Phædrus?”
“No.”
“Who was he?” Gennie asks.
“He was an ancient Greek — a rhetorician — a `composition major’ of his time. He was one of those present when reason was being invented.”
“You never talked about that, I don’t think.”
“That must have come later. The rhetoricians of ancient Greece were the first teachers in the history of the Western world. Plato vilified them in all his works to grind an axe of his own and since what we know about them is almost entirely from Plato they’re unique in that they’ve stood condemned throughout history without ever having their side of the story told. The Church of Reason that I talked about was founded on their graves. It’s supported today by their graves. And when you dig deep into its foundations you come across ghosts.”
I look at my watch. It’s after two. “It’s a long story,” I say.
“You should write all this down,” Gennie says.
I nod in agreement. “I’m thinking about a series of lecture-essays…a sort of Chautauqua. I’ve been trying to work them out in my mind as we rode out here — which is probably why I sound so primed on all this stuff. It’s all so huge and difficult. Like trying to travel through these mountains on foot.
“The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn’t the way it ever is. People should see that it’s never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It’s never been anything else, ever, but you can’t get that across in an essay.”
“You should do it anyway,” Gennie says. “Without trying to get it perfect.”
“I suppose,” I say.
[more conversation…]
“Well, it isn’t just art and technology. It’s a kind of a noncoalescence between reason and feeling. What’s wrong with technology is that it’s not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that. People haven’t paid much attention to this before because the big concern has been with food, clothing and shelter for everyone and technology has provided these.
“But now where these are assured, the ugliness is being noticed more and more and people are asking if we must always suffer spiritually and esthetically in order to satisfy material needs. Lately it’s become almost a national crisis…antipollution drives, antitechnological communes and styles of life, and all that.”
Both [Bob] DeWeese and Gennie have understood all this for so long there’s no need for comment.
–© Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Many of us remember the DeWeese gallery which showcased dozens of Montana’s finest artists. Best wishes to Gen & Bob’s ridiculously talented family. Boatloads of us here in Bozeman are gonna miss ya, Gen.
© Gennie DeWeese, Waiting for Tina,
Oil Bar Scroll, 52 x 68 inches, 1993
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.” Here’s an example, some rhythms made from stair “Banisters” (1:02 mp3):
Peter Traub‘s ItSpace is a 2007 commission Networked Music Review of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (who produced the 1990’s sound-breaking series New American Radio).
via Lu Olkowski.
Play the FreeRice vocabulary game and for each word you get right, they donate rice “through the United Nations to help end world hunger.” The words get progresively harder as you proceed: “WARNING: This game may make you smarter.” Ad revenues fund the food donations. The virally marketed charity started with 830 grains of rice donated the day it launched, Oct 7 2007. Nov 1 total was 59,167,790 grains. Yesterday 140,585,040.
In this week’s HV cast we have our own Middle Eastern summit— Students visiting America from across the Arabic-speaking world share their perspectives on the misunderstandings between their home nations and the United States. A story by Barrett Golding (9:11 mp3):
Just when you think the web is a crass commerical lowest common devolutionary ticket to viral idiocracy… you stop and realize, it’s actually much worse than that. But, hey, Jesus’ b-day approacheth, so go Elf Yourself.
(My wife and sis-in-law elfed.)
Bullion bounces beats on back of Beach Boys. The UK producer Bullion took the music of hip-hop producer J Dilla and layed it under Beach Boy interviews and songs from their masterpeice Pet Sounds.
The results vary, but I do like a couple of the spoken-word tracks, like “Pet Sounds” (1:03 mp3):
Download at Exclaim or myspace.com/bullionness
Douglas Grant of Low Noise Records has this ad-spoof for the US.gov’s radio time channel, “WWV- The Tick” (0:46 mp3):
Anyone interested in anything related to starting and managing a successful radio series needs to read The Program Doctor’s Manifesto in The Transom Review: Jim Russell.
From Flickr user MumbleyJoe, Pigeon Point Lighthouse near SF, CA: “Once per year at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse they shut down the weak insipid modern presumably electric light and switch over the the 5 kerosene lamps and fresnel lens of the original, as it was 135 years ago.”
“For over 50 years, outlaw American radio broadcasters exploited a legal loophole and aired powerful pirate radio from the Mexican side of the border. So called ‘border blasters’ – or ‘X stations’ – were true innovators whose influence continues to be felt today. OTM’s Jamie York tells the story.”
With powers as high as 1M Watts — 10X that of the largest legal US transmitters — “locals saw it electrocute birds in mid-flight,” sez reporter Jamie York. From selling goat glands and baby chicks, to live love-making, to giving Wolfman Jack, Woody Guthrie, and the Carter Family an international audience, “The X Factor” (16:49 mp3):
via Kathy: Creative PR.
StoryCorps® this morn (NPR-ME) once again plucked the heartstrings, reminding us what we have to give thanks for. Danielle and Gabrielle Hall remember their mother Martha, who died of breast cancer in 2003. “I have pictures of our last Thanksgiving…” (2:08 mp3):
Every once in awhile you hear a new band and think: “What is that?”— in a good way. That happened the other day with Akron/Family. Not sure what to think about their music, or I should say musics, cuz every song is a different style; hell, there’s often several styles in the same song.
The press on them only deepens confusion, like these descriptions in an emusic review:
“band of itinerants, wandering between the Pacific Northwest, upstate New York, and rural Pennsylvania…” “came together in Brooklyn in 2002 under the freak-folk banner.”
From their latest Love Is Simple, “Ed is a Portal” (7:32 mp3):
Firesign Theatre has their old podcasts at Archive.org, inclduing their NPR “April Fools” ads; like this gem, “US Plus” (0:40 mp3):
Oldie, but a web classic (originally a Flash creation by dunno-who), “End of Ze World”: