First Thoughts

We listened to the remarkable (and very popular) podcast, Serial, last week. It is a milestone in the use of our new media in that the producers took the classic radio documentary style and applied it completely to the series available only through the podcast online. They did not skimp on its style or depth. It was the kind of radio documentary that I would have loved to have been a part of back in the day. Hopefully this is the first major breakthrough of a new way of doing news and media in the 21st Century.

For those who may not have heard about it, here's the synopsis of the 12-week series: Serial tells one story- one true story- over the course of the 12-weeks. It was developed by the creative folks at This American Life. From their home page:

On January 13, 1999, a girl named Hae Min Lee, a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, disappeared. A month later, her body turned up in a city park. She'd been strangled. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested for the crime, and within a year, he was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. The case against him was largely based on the story of one witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he helped Adnan bury Hae's body. But Adnan has always maintained he had nothing to do with Hae’s death. Some people believe he’s telling the truth. Many others don’t.

Sarah Koenig, who hosts Serial, first learned about this case more than a year ago. In the months since, she's been sorting through box after box (after box) of legal documents and investigators' notes, listening to trial testimony and police interrogations, and talking to everyone she can find who remembers what happened between Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee fifteen years ago. What she realized is that the trial covered up a far more complicated story, which neither the jury nor the public got to hear. The high school scene, the shifting statements to police, the prejudices, the sketchy alibis, the scant forensic evidence - all of it leads back to the most basic questions: How can you know a person’s character? How can you tell what they’re capable of? In Season One of Serial, she looks for answers.

It was intriguing, baffling, enticing and addicting. We binge listened over a couple days last week. I have several different thoughts from the series but the first one kind of sets the stage for me.

I realized as I was listening and as Sarah used information and tapes of actual police interviews how in many ways detectives and substance abuse counselors can come at their jobs with a similar approach. One detective basically said that his approach was to believe no one - and everyone. (At least that's how I heard it.) There is always an active suspicion that they live with.

They also face the danger of looking for information to confirm what you think you already know. This "confirmation bias" takes facts, data, bits of information- and, when it supports the hypothesis- accepts it. When it doesn't support - well, let's just ignore it. Part of what Sarah Koenig did in developing the shows was put these bits of information out on the table- conflicting and confirming- and show how the detectives (and we the listeners) react. Fascinating.

That's where I start with this. I will have a couple more posts in the coming weeks. But if you get the chance, listen to the series. Start from the beginning and listen in order. You will be amazed by the skill of the producers.

Worth a Listen

Mississippi River at Memphis (pmPilgrim photo)

I keep getting behind on listening to one of the best shows on Public Radio ever since my station dropped it from its Saturday evening time slot. So the other day I put my iPod on and listened over WiFi while working out.

Nick Spitzer and American Routes never disappoints. This one is particularly good, considering my being a water baby and river rat.

It's called Wade in the Water and follows the Mississippi from up north at Lake Itasca all the way to the end in New Orleans. From their web page:

January 8th, 2014 ~ As the muddy Mississippi winds its way past us in New Orleans, we're reminded of the power and place of these waterways in American culture. First, we seek the source of the mighty river at the headwaters in Minnesota. Then listen to stories of steamboat captains, riverboats and rural fisherman. And learn about New Orleans own relation to the river with Tulane professor Richard Campanella. Plus river tales from Captain Doc Hawley, Aaron Neville and Al Green.

As Nick Spitzer said at the intro to the show:

Rivers are a kind of natural and historical bloodstream of American culture and music. They’re sources of life for water and baptism, and death by floods and drownings. Rivers are lazy and romantic, dangerous and polluted.
--Nick Spitzer, American Routes

As usual,Nick ties lots of threads together musically and in interviews. Take the listen.

LINK

Planning for Any Eventuality

...from last Saturday's A Prairie Home Companion:

A manager who is hiring Guy Noir, Private Eye tells Noir:

We have 15,000 atheist employees we can call in to work in case of the Second Coming. We just plain don't believe in closing.

Geeks Unite

Spent some time listening to NPR's Science Friday this afternoon. During their first hour they were giving live coverage to the close encounter of the asteroid that came within earth's satellite ring. The excitement from the scientists around the world was incredible. In one of the segments they were talking to a scientist at a gathering to watch and "celebrate" the event. As they were broadcasting live, the moment came when the asteroid approached its nearest point to earth.

They counted it down, just like New Year's Eve in Times Square.

A truly awesome Geek moment!

LINK to "Tracking a Space Rock" on Science Friday.

In Memoriam: Rooney and Keith

Andy Rooney who is probably a dictionary definition for "curmudgeon" died yesterday. He made himself a butt of jokes and satire- and loved every minute of it. He was 92.
--CBS News Link

More significant to many of us in Minnesota and around the nation who love radio and Prairie Home Companion, Tom Keith died earlier in the week of a heart attack. As is commented on the PHC page, Keith was an illustrator for radio. No, not an oxymoron, an essential job on a show like A Prairie Home Companion. It was always fun when Garrison would have these incredible story lines with sound effect after even more impossible sound effect. Many of us also remember Tom as Jim Ed Poole on the wonderful Morning Show on Minnesota Public Radio for years. Tom was 64.
--PHC Link

Here's an audio montage of Tom's work:

Here's a video from a show last month. Tom is on the far left making all that sound come alive.

A Genius of Radio

Jean Shepherd.

Shep

Best known for writing and narrating A Christmas Story, but in reality an outstanding genius of storytelling in the 50s, 60s, and 70s on WOR radio in New York. His name has come up in two recent memoirs I have been reading bringing back many an evening with the transistor radio beneath my pillow, waiting for the trumpet fanfare of the Bahn Frei Polka to begin.



He also did several different PBS series whose clips are to be found on (you got it) You Tube. He could be off the wall but was able to utilize his radio voice and delivery along with video to make some interesting points. Here is on that sees the George Washington Bridge in all its artistic glory.

Farewell, Good Doctor

The good Dr. Demento is calling it quits. After nearly 40 years on the air playing the goofy, the weird, the odd and the novelty, his last show is this weekend. He will continue to produce for his Internet site. I didn't even know he was still on the air.

In the good Doctor's honor, here is one of the consistent top 50 songs on his show over the years in a decidedly 21st Century video version.....

A 40 (and then some) Year Memory: Dangerous

Dangerous? Well, that's the word that a college friend and radio colleague called the look in a note to me last week. That look would be the one that said, "Watch out! I'm up to something." (Which is why I never play poker.)

That picture is from 1968 when I was working as a student DJ and GM of the student radio stations WLRN and WLVR at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. WLVR 91.3 FM has since gone over the air in the Lehigh Valley and has a really high class reputation for quality college radio.

What prompts the picture post here is that the Lehigh Alumni Bulletin which just came out has a really good article on WLVR and its history. The picture, and quotes from yours truly among others are in the article. Follow the link and see where I learned some of my ability to be who I am.

Link to Lehigh Alumni Bulletin page.

Watching Radio - Again

Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion were in Rochester, MN, last Saturday for their live show. If you listened, that was me applauding from Row BB in the upper level. What fun it was. Keillor is such a charming host and his style exudes calm and wonder, tinged with irony for good measure.

What struck me first was that his warm-up is just like the show. About 4 years ago we went to the Letterman show in New York. There the warm-up was noisy and boisterous. Jokes got us going. Yelling and cheering and clapping along with the band playing loud music. Just exactly what you would expect on a TV show.

But the PHC warm-up was Keillor coming out on stage, talking in his down-home style, then singing a couple of duets Andra Suchy as they walked up the center aisle. In other words it was just like the show.

Link to picture of warm-up duet.

The second neat thing was watching him pace around the stage when he wasn't on himself. he's watching and checking and talking to a stage manager. He would then sit and listen to the music. Then he would roam a little more moving to the music being played. He truly seems to enjoy what he is doing and likes the music. His foot is always tapping time, even swinging out and stomping a little as he started the opening theme.

Probably the neatest part was watching him tell the News from Lake Wobegon. He stands center stage front and starts talking. He roamed back toward a music stand two times, seeming to check an obviously very short outline. No notes in hand; no apparent script. He just tells us the story. At one point he moves around front and sits on a park bench, leaning back and talking as if it was just coming out of his head for the first time.

Link to picture of GK on the park bench.

Such storytelling is a lost art. To see someone like Keillor do it is to have your faith renewed in the possibilities of stories as an oral medium.

Then, there was even a 5-7 minute post-show song with the local singers, Sweet Dreams. It was nothing short of wonderful.

Link to picture of GK with Sweet Dreams after show.

All in all, it sure is fun to watch radio.

Link to page of last week's show: Zumbro Olmsted and The Mighty Mayo

Essential Folk Songs

Last weekend NPR posted a story from Folk Alley, the 24-hour online stream from WKSU at Kent State. They recently spent eight-weeks polling their listeners to discover their 100 Essential Folk Songs. Go to the post at Folk Alley where you can find the list and an ongoing stream of the 100 songs. NPR posted the whole list here.

Here are the Top 10 of the Essential 100.....

1. "This Land Is Your Land" - Woody Guthrie
2. "Blowin' in the Wind" - Bob Dylan
3. "City of New Orleans" - Steve Goodman
4. "If I Had a Hammer" - Pete Seeger (and Lee Hays)
5. "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" - The Kingston Trio (Pete Seeger)
6. "Early Morning Rain" - Gordon Lightfoot
7. "Suzanne" - Leonard Cohen
8. "We Shall Overcome" - Pete Seeger (Trad)
9. "Four Strong Winds" - Ian and Sylvia
10. "Last Thing on My Mind" - Tom Paxton

Looking at the rest of the list I can only see a few (Circle Game, Good Night Irene or Tom Dooley) that might have replaced something on the top 10. Otherwise, I think that at least in this part the list is as good as it can get.

The 60s: Radio Was The Key

In my post on Monday I talked about how music was the glue in the foundation of The 60s and the cultural revolution that followed. I think that the main reason for this was the power of an old medium being used in new ways- radio. As TV was taking away a great deal of the old radio ideas (soaps, dramas, comedy, news) it had to find a new way of presenting itself. In the new music was one of the answers.

Now it didn't happen overnight. I worked at a now defunct station in South Williamsport, PA (WMPT AM/FM). To set the scene, this was in 1969 - the year of Woodstock, fairly well along in the music revolution. In our (admittedly small market) we were the only station out of four that ever played "rock" music. And we only did that in the evening on Ron Shobert's "Night Train" program and on my Sunday afternoon show. I could play "lighter" rock on my 6 - 8 morning wake-up show, but that was about it. Everyone else in town played what we derisively called "elevator music" or pop singers like Perry Como, etc. Rock was too radical. Years after the Beatles hit it big and almost as they were ready to break up you could not hear the Beatles 80% of the time on the radio in our city.

But in the greater society outside the hills of northern Pennsylvania it was far different. We would all listen late at night with the transistor radio under the pillow to WBZ, WABC, WKBW, WCFL, CKLW - the big 50,000 watt giants. Counsin Brucie, Dick Biondi, Dick Sommers, Joey Reynolds, Allison Steele, Chicken Man became as well known to us in the eastern half of the country as Wolfman Jack was in California. It was an underground movement- an alternative universe.

One of the more interesting things I remember is how few "genres" of music there were in the "popular" field. Top 40 was basically it. Some of it was soul music- which was "black" music marketed to the "white" audience. Every now and then a country cross-over would occur with a Johnny Cash or the old "pop" standards with a Frank and Nancy Sinatra. But it was mostly rock and soul. And every station that played the "popular music" played them all- white or black. In many ways, I believe, this cross-color barrier music in our soundtrack helped move the civil rights issues forward. It may be to our detriment that we have re-ghettoized so much of the music today.

Sidenote: It was, however, still a racist world. I know that the "soul" music we listened to was often less radical, less "soulful" than the music played on the "black" stations. We were getting a more sanitized version and it was very difficult for African-American artists to break the barrier. The Supremes and Jimi Hendrix notwithstandting. As is often the case the exceptions prove the rule. Remember also that it took black videos a number of years to break into the rotation on MTV and that was over 15 years later! And that took CBS Records threatening to pull all their videos if MTV didn't play Michael Jackson.

Another development of the music revolution was the start of what at least sounded like minimal format radio. This began on the truly radical side of broadcasting in those days- FM- just as it was beginning to blossom in the big cities. WNEW-FM, in New York and WMMR-FM in Philadelphia were two excellent examples. They moved beyond the Top 40 format which had started the whole thing and moved to albums and long cuts and sound and music mixes. The BIG pioneer was WBAI in New York, a non-commercial station that brought the revolution that was happening in the streets to the airwaves. (WBAI is still at it. It's most influential current offering is Democracy Now.

All of this became a bonding experience that our parents didn't understand or care to share in. Voices in the night spoke to us from great distances bringing in the music that then sounded nothing short of world-shattering. As should be expected business took notice of all this with such a large base in the Baby Boomers, and all of it became quite commercial as time went on.

But that cannot take away from the power of ther musical revolution that occurred and, in many ways, opened the door for the many different music genres of today. Music, we found out, was empowering. If you could pick up a guitar and learn to play it, you too could make music for the masses. The words of the songs told us that there was a way to express our feelings - from teen love and teen angst to some of the biggest issues like war, peace, and poverty.

Some of the ways we look back at that music is simple nostalgia. But some of it is deeper. It is more profound for it reminds us that we are in a constant state of revolution. The new genres always seem to push the envelope of the previous music. To listen to some of the music from the 50s and 60s is to remind us of the roots of today and that it continues in new ways. Sadly we are more fragmented musically, but perhaps that is to be expected. Us old-timers will always struggle with changing what was so meaningful to us.

But I am glad it keeps on going- and I am glad to know that in some small way I was lucky enough to be in at some of the early days and helped make it happen if only a drop in a very large ocean.

More Reading
So many books, so little time. But I keep on reading. I am truly hooked on books. I always have been. There's so many wonderful worlds there to explore in both fiction and non-fiction. Here's some of what I've been working on.

Make It Stick is a book about why some messages and bits of information stick- continue to catch our attention. Chip and Dan Heath start with an example of some of those famous spam urban legends that never go away and move on to many excellent examples of the message sticking. They say there are the following six elements that make a message sticky:

Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
s

As a result I am looking differently at each week of the treatment curriculum we use to see how I can help make it "stickier". But it is hard, thanks to one thing the brothers highlight- the Curse of Knowledge. That simply is the fact that once we have learned something, it is hard to remember what it was like NOT to know it. We thus assume that whoever we are teaching, training, etc. already knows as much as we do. This is one of the biggest obstacles of developing messages that stick.

For anyone in advertising, teaching, training, blogging, or any other kind of attempts at communication, this is a must read. It is also interesting.

The Men Who Loved Trains is a eulogy to the great railroads of the east coast and how they were wrecked by greed and grandiosity. There are good guys and bad guys in Rush Loving's storytelling. The bad guys had no concept of railroads as anything other than a business. And they had no good concept of what that business could be or do. They were in it for themselves. Some of them were no better than the classic railroad robber barons of the late 19th Century.

The good guys in the story are the ones who loved trains as trains and worked hard to make them work for the good of all. It is a sad story from the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads through Conrail into the Norfolk and Western days of now. It is basically a business book, but it is a story of love of the companies that have been lost. (Note: I am a grandson of a New York Central railroader and the nephew of an Erie Lackawanna railroad man. Check your history books for these storied roads.)

Something In the Air kicked in the nostalgia. Big Time! Alan Freed. Johnny Lujak, Dick Biondi, Cousin Brucie, Murray the K, Dan Ingram, Jean Shepherd. Names and voices of radio in the 50s and 60s. THE names and voices of radio for millions- a generation. Marc Fisher's book is the story of a revolution spinning through air across the invisible waves of radio. I was going to write more about it here, but it has struck so many chords in this former DJ, college radio nerd, and lover of all things radio that I am working on a few other posts about it. Watch for them in the coming weeks.

Watching Radio
We went to the preview (non-broadcast) show of A Prairie Home Companion at the Fitzgerald Theater on Friday evening. What a joy to be there in person. Most engaging was Garrison Keillor's News From Lake Wobegone. To watch him tell the story sitting on the stool in the center spotlight is to be entranced again by the power of story. (I know that this is one of my standard themes, but to watch a true master while listening is a joy.)

What was really interesting was listening to the broadcast show on Saturday evening after seeing the preview. One of my reactions was, "Is that the same show we saw?" Some of it was almost verbatim, but then there would be a new twist to the story, a new line of comment, a different question to one of the guests. It was also much tighter, of course, since it was broadcast live and the end of the show comes even if you aren't finished. On Friday we got the show as a work-in-progress. That means in some ways we got a longer show that had more in it. Perhaps some of the things we heard just didn't feel right so they got shifted or dropped.

I don't know what they do on Saturday but what I noticed on Friday was that there was no pre-show hype. No comedian doing warm-up; no one prepping the audience and getting us excited. When we went to see David Letterman (also a wonderful experience) part of what made it work was the hype and excitement they build into the pre-show time. That was one type of experience.

Garrison is another. It is clear he likes what he does and it is contagious. He is also very good at it and keeps our attention. Even now, after 30 years of PHC it is still quite a draw. Keep going, Garrison. You're doing fine!