WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Only Fidel Can Provide Candy posted four video “excerpts from what is possibly the greatest propaganda film ever, Ron Ormond’s 1971 commie-bashing If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?. Be forewarned, the commies do some awful things to these poor kids, and it can get kind of revolting. Portions of this film have been sampled heavily by Negativland, including their classic Christianity is Stupid.”
There’s a buncha great Chet Atkins vids @utv, like “Chet Atkins – Mr. Sandman (TV 1954)”:
Saw Chet in the 70s here in MT. Ranked among my most memorable concerts, and audiences: The men arrived in suits, boots and bollos; the women in beehives, a la B-52s, ‘cept these t’weren’t no new wavers, quite the opposite, a wave as old as wind thru the wheat, everyone come to see a country pickin’ legend . Want more? Try “Dark Eyes” and Don McLean’s “Vincent.”
What we thot was a radio series turns out to be a research project: This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence.
Says senior producer Julie Snyder: “There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme.”
So, where’s that leave pubradio when it’s hippest hour is now Onion fodder?
In the comments to the Young Folks post here last week, a couple HV producers (AnnH and JMenj) linked to some immensely amusing videos, Loney, Dear’s “I Am John”:
A few months ago we did an NPR series on the NEA book project
Operation Homecoming, which asked troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to write down their experiences. This week, as part of the America at a Crossroads PBS series from, The Documentary Group produced a moving collection of video interpretations of writings from the book, along with interviews with the troops/authors:
Demetri Martin (Trendspotting from The Daily Show) has some clever-funny stuff of his CD These Are Jokes, like this one performed w/ his mom, “The Wisdom Song” (mp3 3:09):
Jakes new video for his NPR piece searching for the “Ark of the Covenant” and finding humanity. A radio story with photos from a trip to Ethiopia:
My bud Lukas, a WFMU Blogger and fellow KGLT DJ, has posted mp3s of the audio art classic Soap Opera Suite & Snake Oil Symphony (MP3s). These cut-up compositions are by Daniel Steven Crafts, before now available only on vinyl. A sample, “Soap Opera Suite I: The Essence of Melodrama” (5:10):
Sez Lukas: “In 1982, self-taught composer Daniel Steven Crafts released an album with two tape compositions, Soap Opera Suite and Snake Oil Symphony, on the Berkeley-based Lutra label. It is a pioneering work of found sound, and it perfectly captures the essence of TV in purely aural form. Or so I am told. I found a thoroughly used (and abused) copy on the shelves of WCBN one day, and it became one of my favorite secret weapons for weird audio collage shows and general freeform madness.”
Crafts also collaborated with Adam Cornford on (Tellus #11: The Sound of Radio) “Fundamentals: Musical Preachers” (1:00 excerpt):
This week’s HV cast is for Poetry Month. Sonia Sanchez performs her poem written to “all you young girls.” Produced by Steve Rowland and mixed by Joe Waters (a commission from WXPN with funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts) with original music by Jamaaladeen Tacuma. “Song #2” (mp3 1:56):
The ShortWaveMusic Soundblog was dormant; but Myke Weiskopf is back w/ his shortwave-radio recordings. His “Duelling XMTRs!” — multiple transmitters vying for the same spot on your dial — are transcendent serendipitous audio art; Pentacostal preachers overlap Muslim chants, spy stations compete w/ 3rd world pop.
Duelling XMTRs!: Family Radio vs. V2
“A Spanish five-figure CIA numbers station (‘V2’) was coolly running digits over a Family Radio liturgy in perfect balance.”
Duelling XMTRs! #3 Duelling XMTRs! #3 VOIRI vs. the World
“This has it all: interval signals for VOIRI and BBC, Spanish ham-radio operators, slow Morse code, data squalls, fading, phasing, heterodyne”:
Lotsa mp3s at ShortWaveMusic, from seven-stringed zithers to the Voice of Vietnam, along w/ explanations of “numbers stations” and “data squalls.” Mike has a new CD of his music that samples said SW transmissions. (Just bought my copy today.)
The 2007 Third Coast International Audio Festival ShortDocs competition theme is Dollar Storeys:
“Dollar Storeys is a public audio project that invites producers, artists, writers and radio fans of all backgrounds to submit finished audio stories clearly based on one of three specific dollar store items [pictured at 3rd Coast] and lasting 2:30-3:00 (min).”
Saw a Segway roll by this morn. I live outta town on a rural dirt road. We’ve seen moose, bear, elk, and deer out our door — not everyday, but certainly not unexpected. A Segway, tho, that was a surprise.
Check the platform and wheel frame. They’ve beefed up these things for off-asphalt trails since I last looked. He was movin’ over dirt at a good clip, about 15mph. Wonder if they go on snow.
Now, here’s what we country folk are more used to seeing. These furry folk were in my backyard. On the right, that’s Elk butt you’re looking at — or as it’s called here in Montana: Dinner.
The work of field-recordist extraordinaire Chris Watson (fmr Cabaret Voltaire) is on National Geographic Channel’s Galápagos web. (Click “Launch Site”; skip the opening video, use the lower-right audio controls.)
(Found at lissenup.)
A (VJ Pablo Productions) video for Skyward song “Sundial” — cover of a tune by Yasmine Mohammedi by French band Lighthouse — off the self-titled Skyward CD (emusic | amazon):
Skyward has composed lotsa music for HV productions. Check the 3-bass Loop for our auto Oddio Art maker.
WFMUs blog-post of Kurt Vonnegut MP3s reminded me the SoCal prog-rock pop band, Ambrosia, put Kurt’s couplet from Cat’s Cradle to music (circa 1975)– “Nice, Nice, Very Nice”:
Here’s one of the mp3s posted by WFMU, from Ice-9 Ballads by Dave Soldier w/ Kurt Vonnegut Jr , “Annihilation Life”:
(BTW, Dave Soldier is of the Thai Elephant Orchestra and People’s Choice Music projects.)
Community Broadcasters Conference Revised Agenda:
Thursday, 12 April 2007
0715 – 0800
Badge Pickup
Continental Breakfast
Begin complaining about RIAA and SoundExchange screwing us on webcasting
0800 – 0815
Conference Welcome – “RIAA not really ‘evil’, just ‘bastardly'”
0815 – 1000
Case Studies in New Facilities and how building would have been easier with
webcasting and everyone at RIAA dead from painful diseases
1000 – 1015
Morning Break
More complaining about RIAA
1015 – 1115
Mapping the Boundaries of HD Radio Coverage and how it’s been limited by the
Great Satan of Webcasting: RIAA
1115 – 1215
HD Radio Technology Update and how RIAA plans to kill us with it
1215 – 1315
Lunch
Keynote- “RIAA is Destroying the Internet”
And this update.
(From the PUBTech listserv.)
Last post had old folks doing “Young Folks.” On a related power-chord, here’s the oldest band in the world, The Zimmers (lead singer Alf is 90), doing “My Generation”:
Found at some velvet blog. ‘Course these oldsters also got a MySpace.
OK, it’s official. Peter, Bjorn & John’s “Young Folks” is a music phenom. I can’t play it (on KGLT-Bozeman) w/o someone calling and demanding details. Personally, I think the song’s just OK, but combine that listener response with this tres kewl vid:
And here’s where phenom-ville starts- Old folks (mostly) have now done “Young Folks” bluegrass-style (dawn Landes & the WEST Band):
Kurt Vonnegut has become unstuck in time:
Above is Part 1 of a documentary by Gottfried Geist, here’s parts: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And John Hockenberry’s interview with him (In Second Life cyberspace) for the radio series The Infinite Mind.Eight rules for writing fiction (from Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10):
In These Times interview: Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@.
In These Times article: Cold Turkey by Kurt Vonnegut.
“How nice–to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
–Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“Vox Humana” is the theme of this month’s Radio DavidByrne.com, his 3-hour monthly webcast. Sez Bryne: “I’ve recently stumbled on a bunch of wonderful recent recordings that feature spoken word or the human voice manipulated in various ways — it almost makes me think this might be a time when this vague genre might be flourishing. Really exciting and sometimes funny stuff. Not quite singing, most of the time, but definitely musical. I have read that singing uses one side of the brain and speaking the other, and this stuff probably bridges the gap.”
The a web-stream playlist (128K mp3; also in iTunes Radio: Eclectic) is stuffed w/ great musical Spoken-Wierd, including Joe Frank, Eno, Waits, T.Heads, the Books, Beefheart, and lotsa stuff by the talented SLC composer, and bud of HV, Phillip Kent Bimstein.