This week’s HV cast: The first half of A Hot & Dry Summer Special, hosted by Ben Adair of APM Weekend America: Coyotes, owls, frogs and songbirds are part of Desert Solitudes, recorded by Bernie Krause and Ruth Happel in the Sonoran and Chihuauan deserts, part of New Mexico’s panhandle. Host Ben Adair heads down to the ghost towns, Opera Houses, century-old abandoned mines, and billion-year old boulders along Death Valley’s “Mojave Road.” And Kraut-rockers Faust dial in “Long Distance Calls in the Desert,” from their album Rien. A special from Hearing Voices, “Desert Air 1- of 2” (23:00 mp3):
This week’s HV cast: A community radio station in Gondar, Ethiopia broadcasts health education programs on subjects ranging from HIV/AIDS prevention to the dangers of using dirty tattoo needles. A story by jake Warga, “Radio Gondar” (2:33 mp3):
It’s true, I’m a sucker for vox-sampling bands. One of the most rhythmic of the spoken-weird snippet genre is The Coconut Monkeyrocket. Their new CD is With Birds (emusic). Their site has mp3s, as does (the excellent “free music Net Label”) Comfort Stand.
Joe Frank performs live at Largo in LA, Wednsesdays in September. Opening night is sold out. For info on the 12th, 19th, and 26th, Largo: 323-852-1073. Performances start at 9pm. Doors Open at 8pm. Largo’s at 432 N Fairfax (South of Melrose, North of Beverly).
Don’t know who the 2 folk are in above poster for Joe’s show; but between that lady’s lips and the guy’s diamond brain embed, well, how can anyone in LA county not attend?
Still catching up on the Radio Lab listening. From season two’s “Where Am I?“:
Pilots call it “G-LOC” (gravity-induced loss of consciousness, pronounced “G-lock” not “glok”). Turns out this kind of experience (call it what you want) occurs quite frequently among fighter pilots. Producers Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler bring us the story. We’ll hear from pilots Tim Sestak, and Col. Dan Fulgham on what it’s like to lose yourself while flying a plane. And we’ll hear from Dr. James Whinnery, who simulates G-LOC by placing pilots in giant centrifuges. His research monitors their brain activity as they accelerate to speeds inducing this loss of consciousness.
Nawlins jazz flute player Eluard Burt passed this week. We did a nice (if we say so ourselves) sound-portrait of him in 2005. It’s part of our New Orleans [Yawp] webwork.
Burt’s flute was recorded at Dave Brink’s 17 Poets January 2005. Here’s “Eluard Burt, NOLA” (5:28 mp3):
George Ingmire of WWOZ is playing a tribute to Eluard on his show today.
OK, I’ll try not to post an FoTC vid every week, but just had to embed this French lesson from last week’ show, Flight of the Conchords “Foux Da Fa Fa:”
This week’s HV cast: Great literature allows us to learn to empathize with the experiences of others. So how is it a man now on trial for crimes against humanity is an avid reader of fiction? Might he simple be reading the wrong books? A trip to The Hague to hand-deliver the ‘right’ books to Slobodan Milosevic. A story by Ben Walker, “Remedial Theory” (13:29 mp3):
Also found at WFMU’s Blog, “a battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.” You gotta watch it all; you’ve never seen nuthin like it. Note: the start may disturb those who have probs w/ how lions shop for meat:
WFMU posted Ralph Records 1987 “Collection of Folk Songs,” Potatoes. There’s mp3s by well-known weirdos like Negativland, artist Howard Finster, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Bongwater. My faves are the archive-sampled prison work songs and sounds by Rhythm and Noise, “Bertas Hammer” (3:16):
And at KGLT we wore the grooves of this get-back-at-ex-boyfren anon a-capella, “The Billy Bee Song” (1:24)”
During April of 2006, I ran a recording studio at Mercer Union. Passersby were stopped and asked to sing, from memory and with no practice, the Beatles’ Yesterday. They were given headphones with an instrumental track to help them out. If they couldn’t remember the words, they were told to “just make it up.†Everyone was paid a $5.00 performance fee. I then took all the versions recorded and created a mix featuring 60 layered individual tracks of people trying to remember the words.
The Daily News Record (Harrisonburg VA) today published an NPR=commies editorial, titled “An NPR Celebration?” It raves over a single word in an NPR piece on China’s red army.
The article is unattributed, and neglects to mention, among many other things, that the idea for their op-ed is lifted, in part word-for-word, from a National Review blog by Mona Charen — whose livelihood is based on bashing liberals.
This is nothing new, GOPs hate Dems and vice versa — their bickerings are what passes as political debate in this country. But what did fascinate me is nearly all the verifiable info (including the NatlRevu source) was provided not by the paper but by the readers in their online comments.
People argue whether the unwashed masses are qualified as “news” reporters. Or must raw info first be filtered by Qualified Journalists, the annointed arbiters of What We’re Told. Having worked in MSM for decades, I have developed an alternate theory: The News is Always Wrong; at least non-MSM sources have a chance of being right. I’ll tell ya about it sometime.
Flight of the Conchords was a BBC radio series, is an HBO TV show, and are New Zealand’s “fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a cappella-rap-funk-comedy duo.”
From NPR World Cafe intervu, “Beautiful Girl” (3:09 mp3):
This week’s HV cast: The first half of A Hot & Dry Summer Special, hosted by Ben Adair of APM Weekend America: Coyotes, owls, frogs and songbirds are part of Desert Solitudes, recorded by Bernie Krause and Ruth Happel in the Sonoran and Chihuauan deserts, part of New Mexico’s panhandle. Host Ben Adair heads down to the ghost towns, Opera Houses, century-old abandoned mines, and billion-year old boulders along Death Valley’s “Mojave Road.” And Kraut-rockers Faust dial in “Long Distance Calls in the Desert,” from their album Rien. A special from Hearing Voices, “Desert Air 1- of 2” (23:00 mp3):
Jim Nayder’s 
This week’s 
It’s true, I’m a sucker for vox-sampling bands. One of the most rhythmic of the spoken-weird snippet genre is 
Alix Spiegel spent some time with folk 
Nawlins jazz flute player Eluard Burt passed this week. We did a nice (if we say so ourselves) sound-portrait of him in 2005. It’s part of our 
This week’s 
WFMU posted Ralph Records 1987 “Collection of Folk Songs,”