ZBS- Rattlesnake Blues
On this afternoon’s NPR Day to Day another ZBS series, 2 Minute Noir, “Even Rattlesnakes Get the Blues” (2:13 mp3):
On this afternoon’s NPR Day to Day another ZBS series, 2 Minute Noir, “Even Rattlesnakes Get the Blues” (2:13 mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
004 Comedy with a Beat—
Comic Bits with Music Beats
Host— David Ossman of Firesign Theatre
Airs week of— 2009-04-08 (Originally: 2008-03-26)
Comedy with a Beat (54:00 mp3):
Laughs and lyrics:
Wally Cox yodels. Peter Sellers sings while shaving.
Jack Kerouac croons “Ain”t We Got Fun.”
Charles Mingus jazzes up Jean Shepherd”s “The Clown.”
Comedian Greg Giraldo is layered over Lazyboy.
“Lenny Bruce Gets Busted” in Jonathan Mitchell“s documentary.
And we hear rare and classic sketches from host David Ossman’s Firesign Theatre.
“Underwear Goes Inside the Pants” Lazyboy fea. Greg Giraldo:
HV doubled down with two pieces on NPR Day to Day, the first— There’s history and politics hidden in the songs of Tibet, which has been under Chinese control for half a century. A music recordist visits during Losar, the Tibetan New Year, looking for traditional music (produced for KGLT-Bozeman), “Song of Tibet” (3:30 mp3):
A masters hands plays the Danyen; a Tibetan type of banjo:
Photo © Jack Chance, March 2008, Kathmandu, Nepal
Another HV on this afternoon’s NPR Day to Day was their second from the ZBS series, 2 Minute Noir. An angel wants to walk on the dark side in “Say ‘So Long’ to Shangri-La” (2:25 mp3):
Yesterday on StoryCorps®— Pinky Powell could pick 100 pounds of cotton by lunchtime. Her great-granddaughter tells her tale of life on an Alabama plantation. This one hurts, “Mary Ellen Noone” (2:15 mp3):
The 14-station Wyoming Public Radio network just added our weekly hour to their sked. Which means we now have more stations in WY than all other stations in the universe combined. Our thanks to the Cowboy State for more than doubling our carriage.
Hearing Voices from NPR®
003 Her Stories: For Women’s History Month
Host: Dmae Roberts of Stories1st.org
Airs week of: 2012-02-29 (Originally: 2008-03-19)
“Her Stories” (52:00 mp3):
The Kitchen Sisters go to “Tupperware®” parties.
A supermarket checker checks out her life, in ZBS‘s radio soap Saratoga Springs.
Jenifir returns “Home From Africa” with all 13 Symptoms of Chronic Peace Corps Withdrawal, produced by Jake Warga.
Host Dmae Roberts has a collage of and about “Sisters.”
In a new syntax of whispers and words Susan Stone tells the story of “Ruby” and her husbands.
And Sonia Sanchez (produced by Steve Rowland of Shakespeare Is), Tracie Morris, Jill Battson and Meryn Cadell perform short poems.
Music from Tara Key’s Ear & Echo.
MySpace has pages for people, places, and now things. Composer Peter Traub has started ItSpace, 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.” A story by Jesse Dukes on NPR Day to Day, “Objects Sing at Itspace” (5:04) mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
002 Visiting Hours— In Hospital
Host— Ceil Muller of KQED Public Radio
Airs week of— 2009-03-11 (Originally: 2008-03-12)
Visiting Hours (52:00 mp3):
“The Kiss and the Dying” is host Ceil Muller’s (of KQED) etiquette list for those who may be dying, and for the soon-to-be survivors.
“Fire and Ice Cream” is from Brent Runyan’s book “The Burn Journals,” and Jay Allison’s Life Stories radio series. Brent’s nurse in the burn unit asks the 14-year-old out for ice cream… and a date?
In “Our Father” Brian Brophy documents his dad’s passing, with recordings of his family, the chaplain, the hospital and hospice staff, and the wake.
Carmen Delzell helps heal her “Grandmother’s Hip.”
And Nancy Updike watches patients pass the time with TV in “Channeling Health.”
Music by Pete Fountain, Brave Old World, Peter Ostroushko, Jimmy Smith, and Rotterdam Ska Jazz Foundation.
NPR is back into radio drama, at least for a couple minutes. Today’s NPR Day to Day premieres the ZBS series, 2 Minute Film Noir. An American private eye falls in love with a French woman who is more than mysterious, she’s ethereal, in “Chez Tootsie” (3:26 mp3):
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
001 Street Map— The People Next Door
Host— Katie Davis of Neighborhood Stories
Airs week of— 2009-03-04 (Originally: 2008-03-05)
“Street Map” (52:00 mp3):
A walk around the block:
Scott Carrier walks around the Salt Lake City blocks, talking to people in “The Neighborhood.”
Host Katie Davis, of Neighborhood Stories, contemplates changes at the “Corner Store” on the DC street where she grew up and still lives.
Larry Massett helps his friend bid “Goodbye, Batumi” to his hometown in the Republic of Georgia.
And a modern day Romeo and Juliet is staged, amidst a growing number of homicides, in “Oakland Scenes: Snapshots of a Community” by Youth Radio and poet Ise Lyfe.
Music by Eva Cassidy, James Brown, and Parazitii.
Hearing Voices is now a new weekly hour series. We’re calling it The Best of Public Radio; a sixty-minute stream of “driveway moments†all connected by a weekly theme. We listen to broadcasts and podcasts; we dig through audio archives; and we scour the web to find the best stories, sound-portraits, slam poets, docs, radio dramas, features, and found-sound.
Each week a new Guest Host steers the show home. About 15 stations all already on board — broadcast schedules coming soon. Here’s a sample from our very first hour, airing next weekend, and hosted by Katie Davis of Neighborhood Stories; it’s called “Street Map” (9:24 mp3):
Good news: Last week we signed a deal w/ NPR®. They take care of our distribution and podcast. We take listeners for wild weekly radio rides. Good deal, huh? Reminds us of Car Talk’s disclaimers, “And even tho Robert Siegal spills his soy cappuccino over his Opera Divas Disrobed calendar every time he hears us say it, this is NPR, National Public Radio.”
So we ask you a simple question; which you, in turn, might pose to your local station: “Are your Hearing Voices?”
HV Series Promo 1 (0:30 mp3):
HV Series Promo 2 (0:30 mp3):
Marvin Granger:
• formerly of MPR stations (he gave a young GarrisonK his first radio job);
• first GM of Spokane Public Radio;
• former GM of WBFO-Buffalo (where Terry Gross got her start);
• former GM of WDET-Detrioit;
• for two decades GM of Yellowstone Public Radio, whose signal now saturates more territory than any other pubradio net in the nation.
Yes, that Marvin Granger tells me his last day in public radio is this Friday, the day of his call-in show Your Opinion, Please — Friday Feb 29 6:30-7:00 pm MT (which streams so anyone anywhere can listen & call 800.441.2941… hint, hint.)
Marvin recently received the 2007 Montana Governor’s Humanities Award. Hear the “Homeground” interview (30:00 mp3):
A couple excerpted quotes from Marvin’s career; about pubradio, he told Spokane Magazine:
“We can play music which is ‘culturally important but commercially weak’ in nature, such as chamber music and contemporary experimental music. It’s one of the few places creative people gain exposure.â€
And his early participation in the debate over the value of Arbitron is discussed in the report (pdf) “Guys in Suits with Charts: Audience Research in U.S. Public Radio.” His opinion: PDs’ concerns for radio ratings “collided with the art of programming commercial radio.”
MG has been a boon to our broadcast buddy Chrysti the Wordsmith; a friend to our little local college station KGLT — even tho we share the same dial as his station; and an adviser to us at HV (he won’t be entirely off-air: later this year he’ll be hosting HV’s Winter Solstice hour).
Marvin, we all wave you a hearty and appreciative aloha. If just half of us in this biz contribute half as much as you did, pubradio will soar.
YPR stations
Another stellar StoryCorps, sisters Janaki Symon and Melissa Wilbur discuss their hate-to-love relationship. “I never particularly liked you…†(1:52):
NPR webseries, Biking the Iditarod:
“Jill Homer, of Juneau, Alaska, is training to ride her bicycle in the Iditarod Trail Invitational — 350 miles of wintry pedaling over tough terrain. It’s the same course used by the famous sledding race.”
Her blog: Up in Alaska- Jill’s Subarctic Journal:
“Jill is an Alaska journalist who likes to bicycle in horrendous conditions and eat goldfish crackers and Pepsi for breakfast. Jill records her daily adventures in pictures and words.”
Jill encounters a Juneau native: NPR: Wolf Versus Pug.
Graham Smith (aka, the athenian), one of NPR’s Iraq inquisitors, observes a disturbing “journalistic tic” wherein the newscaster segues from bloody-to-bloody story with “In other violence….” Next, it’ll be “In Ultra Violence….”
The latest in David Schulman’s Musicians in Their Own Words features vocals by Brazilian Flora Purim, soprano Cecilia Bartoli, folk-singer Gillian Welch, and Tuvan rocker Albert Kuvezin — not in performance but pre-performance, “A Musician’s Guide to the Pre-Concert Warm-Up” (4:25 mp3):
Once again this blog becomes a StoryCrops cheerleader; this time it’s Christmas cheers for SC’s latest in which Jerry Johnson intervus his mom, Carrie Conley, about raising six kids by herself (4:18):
Yesterday on NPR Day to Day, Arthur Jackson is a Bell Ringer for the The Salvation Army. This former crack addict found God, stays off drugs, sings and rings bells at the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Produced for HV by Todd Melby of 2 below zero, “Arthur Jackson: Singing Salvation Army Bell Ringer” (3:28 mp3):
Tomorrow on NPR Morning Edition- Hidden Kitchens is Weenie Royale: The Impact of the Internment on Japanese American Cooking, the latest in the Kitchen Sisters series. Here’s a preview of “Weenie Royale” (2:23 mp3):