The Radio Mercury Awards 2010 announced their finalists. As always these winners have produced lotsa winners — here’s just a few from several of the categories…
General: “Significant Others” Agency: Anson-Stoner / Client: Apex Pest Control (0:30 mp3):
PSA: “My Daughter Kara ” Agency: Clear Channel Creative Services Group / Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America/The Ad Council Client: (1:00 mp3):
Several age-old questions have long plagued man’s mind. Today we discovered the definitive answer to one of them:
Q: Does a bear shit in the woods?
A. Yes. Quite a bit, especially during chokecherry season: Bear scat with ample amount of chokecherry seeds,
Bear Trap Canyon Wilderness, Madison River, Montana
Megan Taylor grew up feeling she was living in the wrong body. In her 20s, she decided to do something about it. First, she changed her name to Miles. Miles began taking testosterone, scheduled a double mastectomy — part of sex reassignment surgery — and began changing his body into one that felt right. The hardest part was telling his parents. Through it all, he kept an audio diary.
Pasquale Spensieri spends his days driving around Brooklyn looking for dull blades. When he rings the bell on his truck, the owners of upholstery shops, restaurants and pizza parlors come out with knives and scissors to sharpen. Pasquale’s father first started sharpening knives during the Depression, with a pedal-operated grinding machine strapped to his back. At that time, there were hundreds of door-to-door grinders in New York. Today, at the age of 71, Pasquale is one of the last. Produced by Joe Richman and Emily Botein (WNYC) for their series New York Works.
“Walking High Steel” (12:15) Jamie York and the Kitchen Sisters
Since the 1880s, Mohawk Indian ironworkers have been known for their ability to work high steel. From the Empire State Building to the the World Trade Center, generations of Mohawks have helped shape New York City’s skyline. Each week, they commute to Manhattan from their reservation in Canada, framing the city’s skyscrapers and bridges. In September 2001, after the fall of the Trade Center Towers, the sons and nephews of these men returned to the site to dismantle what their elders had helped to build.
BeatlesTube.net lists Beatles songs and videos, w/ lotsa info on each. For example, here’s a “Lucy…Diamonds” animation (from Yellow Sub movie), then some of the John/Paul quotes about “Day…Life.”
JOHN 1968: “‘A Day in the Life’ –that was something. I dug it. It was a good piece of work between Paul and me. I had the ‘I read the news today’ bit, and it turned Paul on. Now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song, and he just said ‘yeah’ –bang bang, like that. It just sort of happened beautifully, and we arranged it and rehearsed it, which we don’t often do, the afternoon before. So we all knew what we were playing, we all got into it. It was a real groove, the whole scene on that one. Paul sang half of it and I sang half. I needed a middle-eight for it, but Paul already had one there.”
that was co-written. The orchestra crescendo and that was based on some of the ideas I’d been getting from Stockhausen and people like that, which is more abstract. So we told the orchestra members to just start on their lowest note and end on their highest note and go in their own time… which orchestras are frightened to do. That’s not the tradition. But we got ’em to do it.”
PAUL 1988: “Then I went around to all the trumpet players and said, ‘Look all you’ve got to do is start at the beginning of the 24 bars and go through all the notes on your instrument from the lowest to the highest– and the highest has to happen on that 24th bar, that’s all. So you can blow ’em all in that first thing and then rest, then play the top one there if you want, or you can steady them out.’ And it was interesting because I saw the orchestra’s characters. The strings were like sheep– they all looked at each other: ‘Are you going up? I am!’ and they’d all go up together, the leader would take them all up. The trumpeters were much wilder.”
This tune is transfixing: “War & Peace” Music and Words concept by Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本龍), Words by Arto Lindsay
Performed live @ ZEPP, Tokyo 24 July 2005, by: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Steve Jansen, Christian Fennesz, Skuli Sverrisson, Keigo Oyamada. “War & Peace” studio vers is on the 2004 CD Chasm
War & Peace
Is war as old as gravity?
If I love peace do I have to love trees?
Are there animals that like peace and animals that like war?
Is peace quiet?
Is making war an instinct we inherited from our hunting or farming
ancestors?
Were farmers the first warriors?
Do we love without thinking?
Do we do the right thing without thinking?
When children fight with their brothers and sisters are they learning
how to make war?
How do we test the limit of our bodies without war?
Why do they compare war to a man and peace to a woman?
Peace is unpredictable.
Why is war so exciting?
War is the best game and the worst life.
Is peace the hardest work?
Is peace a time of tension?
What are the different kinds of victory, in a war, in a race?
“Crow Fair II: A Portrait in Sound” (52:00) Steve Rathe
This is the final hour of a two-hour special on the annual Crow Fair in southeastern Montana, recorded in 1977 by NPR. For all the info, see part one: HV096- Crow Fair I.
“Crow Fair: A Portrait in Sound” (52:00) Steve Rathe
A century ago the six Crow Reservation Districts came together for a cultural gathering with other Great Plains tribes. Every third weekend of August the Crow Fair honors that tradition in a “giant family reunion under the Big Sky.” Five days of celebration in southeastern Montana, with a parade, Pow Wow, rodeo, and traditional and fancy dancing.
In 1977 a team of NPR producers and recordists spent a week collecting sounds and interviewing people at this annual event. This early ambient sound-portrait breathes with the arts and activities of the Crow people: the Apsaalooke Nation.
Splendid with Sound: The audio world lost a great producer today, Carolyn Jensen Chadwick. With her husband Alex she co-founded NPR’s Radio Expeditions (article in Current) and produced the Interviews 50 Cents films.
Carolyn was Maya Lin’s sound consultant for “What is Missing?” She produced scores of sound-drenched, audio-intense stories for NPR — we’ve run several, with more coming.
We hope you’ll spend an hour soaking in her sonics below. Hubby Alex once described a jungle as “splendid with sound.” That phrase also does justice to CJC’s enveloping, enrapturing, sometimes ecstatic, and always engaging work.
Master-engineer Skip Pizzi (NPR, Microsoft) would play this first piece at workshops to illustrate how a simple story can be superb, when elegantly enhanced with stereo sound. David Molpus narrates a portrait of “Equestrian Olympian: Bruce Davidson” (1984 / Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer / 12:39 mp3):
Radio Expeditions often recorded those who recorded sound, such as Rex Cocroft on “A Journey to the Edge of the Amazon” (2006 / Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer / 8:54 mp3):
Among the natural sounds CJC captured were those of human nature, as when her husband Alex pitted wits with the regulars at a small-town casino, playing “Poker at the Ox” (Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer; Michael Schweppe, engineer / 9:55 mp3):
And in the mountains of Payette National Forest, it’s all guns, guitars, guts, and wild game, inside an “Idaho Hunting Camp” (Carolyn Jenson Chadwick, producer; Michael Schweppe, engineer / 12:57 mp3):
Past, present, and future POVs of time, thru the lens of a Philip Zimbardo lecture, and the art of RSAnimate:
The Secret Powers of Time
RSA is the (deep breath) Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. They’ve been animating excerpts from their series of talks. Nary a note on who the artist is, tho, but it seems these whiteboard wonders are from Cognitive Media.
Voices from all sides of adoption. Stories about living with questions and searching for answers. We hear from birth families (mothers, siblings and a father), adoptees (both kids and adults), and various adoptive families including open adoption and international adoption (China).
Eighty years ago, on the courthouse square in Marion, Indiana, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were murdered by a mob of townsfolk. A photo of the lynching prompted the poem by Bronx schoolteacher Abel Meeropol, “Strange Fruit,” which became lyrics to a well-known Billie Holiday song.
Decades later, a box of recordings was found in a basement with recollections of people who witnessed — even took part in — the murders. This riveting Radio Diaries premiered this week on NPR…
On Aug. 7, 1930, Lawrence Beitler took this photograph of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, lynched in the town center of Marion, Ind., for allegedly murdering a white factory worker, Claude Deeter, and raping his companion, Mary Ball. But the case was never solved.
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
First, Congress wondered about the constitutional validity of such protection. The Constitution allows Congress to protect “writings,” and Congress was uncertain as to whether a sound recording could constitute a writing. Second, Congress worried that allowing producers to exclusively control both the musical notation and the sound recording could lead to the creation of a music monopoly.
For many years, Transom.org editor, Sydney Lewis, worked side by side with Studs on his radio show and his books. For this remembrance, a blend of documentary and reminiscence, she brings together a crew of Stud’s co-workers. They share great stories and wonderful previously-unheard tape of Studs himself. Sydney Lewis co-authored Studs’ book Touch and Go: A Memoir.
From Carlin’s 7 words to Stern’s shock Jock to Jackson’s right breast, Newsweek put together this entertaining timeline of FCCProfanity on TV: The FCCs Evolving Rules.”
A MS Pubcasting exec explained why they pulled TerryG off their air: “Too often Fresh Air’s interviews include gratuitous discussions on issues of an explicit sexual nature.” Damn, I’m gonna have to start listening more often.
Sometimes on Radiolab you hear Robert Krull-Witch refer to his co-host, Jad Abumrad, as a composer. Didn’t think much of that till my recent emusic purchase of In C Remixed. It’s alt.versions of Terry Riley’s “In C”, performed by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, and scored by more than a score of composers: among them none other than pubradio’s JadA.
There’s 29 fine compositions of this 2-disc set. Turns out Jad’s is my favorite of the whole In C crop. So, with Jad’s permission…
“Counting in C (after T. Riley’s In C) (Jad Abumrad Remix)” (6:08 mp3):
The Radio Mercury Awards 2010 announced their finalists. As always these winners have produced lotsa winners — here’s just a few from several of the categories…
Last night on NPR ATC, “
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Elephant seal, California’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
Humpback whale near Maui, Hawaii.
Mali camel herder “
Roy Sesana, Bushman elder (Kalahari Desert, Botswana), on a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, “
CJC, EP of
From Carlin’s 7 words to Stern’s shock Jock to Jackson’s right breast, Newsweek put together this entertaining timeline of 
Here’s the Fresh Air ep that got the series cancelled in Mississippi, featuring the phenomenal “
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