Flannery Says
A rare audio file has surfaced, Flannery O’Connor gives a lecture one year before her death at 39. She gives this lecture at Notre Dame, about her writing, as well as reads her classic story A Good Man is Hard to Find. Very rare, and her Southern wit and charm are evident through and through.
update: the lecture she gives is also found in the book Mystery and Manners, I forgot to mention earlier.
- “Compassion is a word that sounds good in anybody’s mouth and which no book jacket can do without.” - Flannery O’Connor
Good morning America!
Just some music to lighten you up in your financial crisis.
Death in Vegas, Soul Auctioneer.
McCain’s Voicemail to Palin
Crazy Sprinkler Lady, Re-scored
When I first watched yesterday’s rant against rainbows that ain’t natural, I was struck by the simple, almost melancholy video of her backyard intruder. I went to the piano this afternoon to give it a more appropriate soundtrack.
My mom, the iPod and genericide
My mom, quite unintentionally, is waging a one woman genericide war on the iPod. Not only does she refer to all media players as iPods but she calls ANY small electronic gadget an iPod. Cellphones, PDA’s, calculators and remote controls are all iPods as far as she is concerned.
Ivete Sangalo e Rosa Passos – “Dunas”
[Swoon.]
Heavy Breathing from NPR
A sixteen second audio file by Chuck Jones of people inhaling during an episode of All Things Considered.
(via reverse cowgirl)
LEGO-esque media players
Oh, would that it were true.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Kgj6EiZtw[/youtube]
By way of the mighty Crushinator, who warns, “This here song is a certified earworm. But it’s so good. C’mon, listen. First time is free.”
Making beautiful music together
I finally got around to listening to this week’s podcast produced by my colleagues: Crossing Melodies: Gregorian chant meets Judeo-Iraqi songs of prayer in Miami. The snips of music really are gorgeous. Go listen.
just because i can
10 Recording Bloopers That Made the Album
John Lennon - Working Class Hero
Here, the tonality changes completely at 0:10, and again at 0:30. Lennon supposedly recorded a demo on his home tape recorder, and at mix time, he and Phil Spector (who produced the track) preferred the emotion in the home recording for one verse only.
soundsnap
Well, here goes the last chance of salvaging the day for something productive.
2007 World Champion
Livestock Auctioneer Trent Stewart of Redmond, Oregon:
Seems to me like somebody ought to lay down a funky beat on that.
(via The Design Company)
How come my road trips are never like this?
I am going to see Gogol Bordello next Saturday. I am so stoked.
Busker Du
Busker Du (dial-up) is a recording service for buskers through the telephone (preferably public payphones hidden in subway stations).
Audio recorded will be posted to this audio-blog and made available to all who cherish lo-fi original music. Try it out at your favorite subway station or street corner.
(Thanks, sc!)
Good Marketing
Campaign #1
The Radioactive Atomic indoor/outdoor speakers are the latest in an enormously successful series of reliable, good-sounding, and arguably over-priced home entertainment products. An ever-growing number of clever, attractive, and popular consumers has come to realize that Radioactive Atomic speakers open the doorway that leads to a better future. Are you brave enough, smart enough, redeemable enough to pass through that door? We doubt it, but read on just in case.
Weekend Reading…and Listening
Audio anthros
Andrew’s earlier post mentioning The Paris Review’s interviews with influential writers reminded me of the Leakey Foundation’s audio archive of well-known anthropologists discussing their work:
These selected excerpts from interviews and lectures are firsthand recollections of many of paleoanthropology’s great pioneers describing moments of discovery and sharing anecdotes from their research experiences in the field.
Link.
Emperor
I have rarely enjoyed a flash intro as much as this one.
Also, why so many metal bands that begin with the letter “E”? It’s creating a whole section for ipod scrolling: Emperor, Enthroned, Entombed…
Words into music: Diana Deutsch and Scott Johnson
(Cross-posted at Blog Meridian)
Via Crooked Timber comes a link from a program called RadioLab on the research of music psychologist Diana Deutsch on the interrelationship between spoken language and music. The whole program is worth your time, but the first few minutes demonstrate quite elegantly how a looped phrase will seem to acquire its own “melody” such that, when you hear it again in the context of the original, it will still sound “sung.”
If you go to the Crooked Timber post, you’ll see in the comments the names of composers who have experimented with this idea, Steve Reich being the most prominent. As a sample of this sort of thing, I thought I’d throw in, for your listening pleasure/annoyance (depending on your taste), Scott Johnson’s “John Somebody (Part I)”.
Guitar Sounds 1
Django Reinhardt and His Gang playing J’attendrai :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR6jkgvyAkw
Sixty years later Andreas Oberg covers Django’s compostion, Nuages:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8dRv8fAvZ4
Then Stochelo Rosenberg does a finger-breaking solo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa5PDQTwhhI
And finally Roland Dyens takes the stage and plays Tango en Skai:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZJwZYjh4bY
Turning Point
accoustical liberation of books in the public domain
LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net (via podcast and catalog). Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.
99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story
The Third Coast Festival, in collaboration with cartoonist Matt Madden (99 Ways to Tell a Story), proudly announces 99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story - an experiment in documentary radio style and execution inspired by the French literary group Oulipo.
The TCF invites producers of all artistic backgrounds and experience levels to submit a finished, short (2:30) audio piece for 99 Ways to Tell a Radio Story. In the Oulipo tradition of imposing constraint on the creative process, each submission must exhibit a distinct production style and include a specific first sentence and three particular sounds, which have been pre-selected by the Third Coast Festival and Madden.
Details may be found on the TCF website.