Destruction Sounds
I’ve just capped off my radio show which will air tomorrow, June 28 from 7-9pm on Free103.9. It’s a two hour show on destruction. Tune in, if you can think you can handle listening to the darkest most scuzzy soundscape show ever recorded in history. If you’re unavailable at that time or radio frequency to break your ears, the show will be available on the show page for later ruination. Grraaawwwhhhhhhrrrrr!
Religious views: I got a million of ‘em.
So me and a friend from the wayback days had plugged back in thanks to The Google and to clusterflock and we had emailed for a while and then it dropped off but then I got one of them Facebook requests.
Let’s be friends. We know we’re friends, but let’s make it official. Like one of them civil unions or gay marriages.
(Damn Facebook. I love it. I hate it. I love it. I hate it. My sister. My daughter. My sister. My daughter.)
Eh, well, here is something I really like from what they call his profile.
Religious views: I got a million of ‘em.
(A gloss for the youngsters: This is a reference to a catchphrase associated with the American pianist, actor, comedian, composer, and singer Jimmy Durante, who was old before my time.)
Connie Converse | How sad, how lovely
I have recently discovered an incredible songwriter called Connie Converse. Connie wrote and recorded a number of songs over 50 years ago, in an apartment in Greenwich village. These songs have only recently been unearthed. You are about to be among the first ever to hear them.
These recordings have something of the power of those hot San Antonio nights when Robert Johnson sang into a horn in a hotel room in 1936. This woman wrote her songs before the Beatles showed up. Before Elvis showed up. Before rocknroll showed up. Long before the singer songwriter paradigm showed up.
Connie Converse was writing songs in the fifties of such intimacy, wit and poignancy that would not be heard in the mainstream until Joni Mitchell came along, a hundred cultural light years later. There’s an uncanny quality in Connie Converse. Her songs go on journeys into yearning, into the uncanny.
And her story is as mythical as Johnson’s, albeit in a completely different mood. Connie Converse left Greenwich Village – dispirited at lack of record industry interest in her songs – in 1960, right when Bob Dylan was arriving in town. She moved to some city beginning with M: somewhere she never really felt right in, though she had by the sound of it a very close supportive group of family and friends around her. One day in 1974, she packed up her volkswagen, dispatched a bunch of farewell letters, and headed off. She has not been heard of since.
She would be 85 now. I so much want to call out to her, to tell her that people are listening, that we love her songs, that there will be so many people who will listen to and love her songs now. That she was living out of time and place, that people care about her story. That I care about her story.
Connie Converse! I care about your story. I love your songs. You matter. You absolutely matter.
Now, listen.
And these are the people who literally unearthed Connie’s songs from the bottom of a filing cabinet, and made them available for the world to buy and to listen to.
UPDATE: Connie Converse is now on Bandcamp. The full album is streaming and directly purchasable there too.
You are Invited
It’s Summer! Grab a glass of lemonade, sneak some gin in it, p’raps and pull up a lawn chair.
At 6 p.m. on my radio show I’m going to play one solid hour of the very mysterious Mississippi Records catalog. Rumour has it that they dig through old garages and basements and find folk records from Blues era America and Africa. The recordings are strange, sometimes delightful, and always interesting. Pretty much presented without commentary, this is mostly for the purpose of sharing. Mississippi Records are notoriously difficult to get a hold of. I can’t even find a website, and barely a street address in portland.
click here between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., PST
(Rick Neece likes the show, ok? I don’t know how else to convince you if you’re already so far gone the words of Rick Neece won’t sway you.)
Heard on NPR today
I heard Canadian rocker Sam Roberts interviewed on NPR this morning after recently purchasing the cd Love at the End of the World. The cd, if you haven’t checked out, is just terrific, and I highly recommend you go have a listen. Here’s the website.
All Over The Map
I have recently been hanging out with the folks over at New York Society for Acoustic Ecology, and I was recently invited to contribute a short audio piece for a Giant Ear))) monthly show back in January. My snippet ended up in the front of David Watson’s All Over The Map show. Some of the ideas in the piece are sourced from our great clusterflockers! Enjoy here if you like.
Dear Clusterflock
Is there an intro to a song that damn near stops your heart?
If you have a link to the song, so much the better.
A New Almanac
There’s a new episode of my radio show, Almanac. I take it upon myself to re-envision an 80′s prom, replete with Brat Pack dancing.
(picture via random internet search)
I only post here about the ones that I’m really proud of, and this is one of thems.
Next week we’re doing an Old Tyme Radio Hour, with a fully live Detective drama with about 10 people in it, and live foley effects, so I’ll let you know how that goes.
Dear Clusterflock
The NYT asks (via):
What movie, song or work of art should we transmit to outer space in case anyone is out there?
A government bailout radio spot
[http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bailout.mp3]
Word is, radio advertising revenue is down and the Treasury Department is still throwing money at everything that moves. Which somehow reminded me, I’ve always wanted to record an ad for a car dealership
Studs Terkel. Gone. Today.
Chicago Tribune photo by Charles Osgood. May 16, 2007.
“I’m still in touch, but I’m ready to go,” he said last year at his last public appearance with the [Community Media Workshop], a nonprofit that recognizes Chicago reporters who take risks in covering the city.
Write about him later, okay?
Meantime: Rick Kogan, in the Chicago Tribune.
And: Division Street: America.
Almanac
For three seasons I’ve run a little hour-long radio show called Almanac, once a week. I usually pick a topic and choose songs, short stories and interview friends and others about that topic. Then I put it all together.
Allow me to share the latest episode, a bit different fare than usual. I wrote a short fictional story as an opener to each song.
featuring music from Beirut, Andrew Bird, Ben Folds, The Solids, Bob Dylan, Denison Witmer, Elton John, Doveman, and Iron & Wine.
Right click here to listen or download
East Village Radio
This weekend I met some friends at a party for East Village Radio at the South Street Seaport. To be honest, my motivations were more for the seaport than the party, but I headed my way down there with the hopes of a VIP pass (read free beer) and a good view of the fading light over shipmasts. It turned out to be a wicked party hosted by KRS-One and featuring a bunch of other amazing talent. Maybe someday soon, I’ll write some posts about the talent. But here I want to give a big ups to East Village Radio. The party was awesome and they put together a pretty great service. They are a free, internet only independent radio station operating out of a storefront closet in Manhattan. One of the few signs of anti-conglomeration media floating in the ether.
Dear Clusterflock: Dirty Libruls
Does NPR have a leftward tilt? Or does it merely reflect Steven Colbert’s description of “reality’s well-known liberal bias?”
My Favorite Things
I’m watching season two of The Wire, and Bodie is driving around listening to A Prairie Home Companion. A conglomeration of bliss.
Bodie is flipping through stations as Keillor’s monologue begins.
“Is this a Philly station?”
He shakes his head, confused.
“Why would anyone ever want to leave Baltimore.”
McCain Offers $300M Award for New Campaign Staff
“Most of my existing team receives great compensation from the various corporations for which they lobby,” said Mr. McCain, “but they still can’t keep my White House bid off the guardrails. I’ll miss them at first but I think I’ll get over it.”
Immaterial Sound
Postcard. L’Escalier Richelieu [The Odessa/Potemkin Steps]. Odessa, Ukraine. Detroit Publishing Company. Circa 1890-1900. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
What an utterly mad thing to imagine, and how utterly wonderful to document its failure in such detail.
The thing imagined? The sound produced upon the ‘Odessa Steps’ when a pram tumbles down them in the manner of the famous sequence from Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin.
The obvious solution was to borrow a baby carriage from some young, unsuspecting Odessan parents, and then just give it the old heave-ho. This did not, however, go exactly according to plan . . . .
(Transcript and audio file of Jared Manasek’s Savvy Traveler broadcast here.)
Chris Ware for This American Life
Coudal Partners posted this but just in case you didn’t see:
Oooo Baby…
Jeff Beck- Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, from Wired.
I’ll bet Michael Grant Smith remembers that one. Anyone else?
I just heard it on my favorite Internet radio station. Here’s a shameless plug:
I promise time well spent.
Listen!
U.S. Approves Airstrikes Against Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh’s head is round and bumpy, like the moon.
Washington, D.C. — In a bold move designed to fight “cowardly acts of international terrorism”, U.S. military forces revealed plans to launch pre-emptive airstrikes against radio talkshow blowhard Rush Limbaugh. The vitriolic pundit had spewed threatening rhetoric for years, all the while declaring his bizarre broadcasts to be “for peaceful domestic purposes”.
“It was bad enough Limbaugh threatened the new world order,” said Pentagon spokesdroid Major Lance Corporal, “but we couldn’t take a chance he would escalate his maniacal aggression against normal Americans.”
The New Yorker on TAL
One is so reluctant to express any degree of dislike for “This American Life,” the popular public-radio storytelling program created by Ira Glass twelve years ago, and featuring such stars as David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and John Hodgman, that one’s inclination is to avoid the use of the first-person pronoun for as long as possible, in order not to be identified with any reservations concerning the show.
Six Questions
According to a personality test developer on the Brian Lehrer show this morning, there are six questions that along with resumes, references, and other indices can show an employer where a potential employee should fit into their organization. According to the order read on the show, they are:
Answer True/False:
1. Before an important meeting I think carefully about what I will say
2. Most people think I am pretty laidback
3. When I was little people thought I was cute
4. When I am annoyed I let people know
5. Rules are made to be broken
6. I like foreign movies
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.
Mark Lombardi
From NPR:
A few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI agent called the Whitney Museum of American Art and asked to see a drawing on exhibit there. The piece was by Mark Lombardi, an artist who had committed suicide the year before. Using just a pencil and a huge sheet of paper, Lombardi had created an intricate pattern of curves and arcs to illustrate the links between global finance and international terrorism.
In other drawings, Lombardi explored subjects ranging from the collapse of the Vatican bank to the Iran-Contra scandal. The results are not only detailed slices of history, but also works of art — some looking like constellations of stars on a dark night, others swirling clouds of abstract lines and points.
Community Radio
[Zany radio ad music; fades beneath stereotypical obnoxious commercial radio announcer voiceover] Down at KFAI community radio, we don’t play ridiculous ads that sound like this! In fact, we don’t play ads at all! [Honk of a horn and a slide whistle drop; into little boy’s earnest voice] Then how does KFAI stay on the air, mister? [Announcer] I thought you’d never ask, Jimmy! But I’ll be honest…uh…I don’t know. [Zany music screeches to a halt; Jimmy cries, then fades out; begin real voiceover] Listener support keeps KFAI on the air. That’s how community radio works. Because of people just like you. Right now, KFAI is looking for listeners to help us answer phones during our upcoming pledge drive. It’s easy and fun — and we really do appreciate it. [Frightening overproduced commercial radio announcer voiceover again] So if you prefer your radio without boundaries — and lame-o commercials for tanning salons and muffler shops — volunteer today.
