Cardiac Kanye is emotionally adrift on his new 808s and Heartbreak.
It seems as if, in these waning weeks of our Music & Technology series, we've generated a contradiction. And as it has been so many times before, the resolution is -- wait for it -- Kanye West.
On one hand, studio technology has improved by leaps and bounds since before the Internet age of music, and can mask bad singers better than ever. On the other, you can no longer be a terrible live performer and expect to be able to sell a record.
The Seattle Seahawks' Lofa Tatupu needs no explication of how football explains America.
benjhaisch.com/flickr
I've thoroughly enjoyed my time "visiting" Weekend Edition. But there was at least one notable drawback: Working on Sundays seriously cut into the nine hours I would have otherwise spent watching professional football, slovenly splayed out on my couch in a half-lucid, glassy-eyed torpor. (At least the 4 a.m. wake-up call makes it slightly more socially acceptable.)
So I was happy to assist in producing an interview with Sal Paolantonio, an NFL reporter and commentator for ESPN's variously converged media.
Two months ago, Liane interviewed Galveston resident Merri Edwards, who was weathering the storm at a Fairfield Inn outside Houston, Texas after evacuating her home. We followed her story as she moved from Houston to Austin, and then back again to Galveston to assess the damage in the place she has called home for 20 years.
Earlier this week Liane talked to Merri again to hear how her rebuilding process has evolved since September. You can listen to the full interview above.
Patrick Jarenwattananon, Jessica Naudziunas & Scott Pham, Weekend Edition
Those big ol' orange thingies you see on our Google-enabled interactive sound map are the latest updates to the audio-geography project we've been working on lately. (The previously posted voices are mostly in yellow.) We started collecting the sound bites on election night, and we'll keep collecting them until President-elect Obama is sworn in as President Obama -- and then plotting them in our nifty little doohickey, embedded above.
Our latest installment reflects a shift away from elation or disappointment immediately after the election, and looks forward to the actual business of administering a nation beset by a number of serious problems. That, plus Michel on Michelle: Michel Martin of NPR's Tell Me More and many others reflect on our future first lady. Click away!
Don't tell my mum, but who would have thought that I would get excited about an interview with the Welsh King of Pop, Sir Tom Jones?
Take That, Guns 'n' Roses, Bon Jovi, Kylie Minogue and The Cure! That was some of the music I was allowed to like as a teenager - I had a reputation to uphold at school. The wrong musical taste could lead to a lonely life.
I was a teenager who liked to shut myself away from the world and make tapes of my favorite songs, while thinking about my secret crushes: declaring my love for them through lyrics: "Don't you cry tonight, I still love you baby, Don't you cry tonight." Thank you, Axl Rose! Could you imagine if I played "Love Me Tonight," by Tom Jones for a guy I wanted to date? I probably would have been invited to his house -- to meet his father.
But now, I'm proud to have the gyrating, leather-pants-wearing Tom Jones on my playlist. His credibility went up in my book when he sang with British-pop-singer Robbie Williams, who coincidentally, used to be in Take That!
Now it's your turn to love Tom Jones, too. Please post your questions below and we'll call a few of you on Wednesday, so you can ask him your "burning" questions.
My 12-year-old son Aman Ardalan was super excited about getting YouTube sensation Gary Brolsma, aka "The Numa Numa Guy," to be a celebrity puzzle prize reader on Weekend Edition Sunday. Brolsma catapulted to fame when he released his YouTube video, a parody of a Romanian pop song, in 2004. At first, he found it difficult to cope with the sudden attention and for a while shied away from the media, but it didn't take him long to adapt to the spotlight. He's back and given that we are launching our YouTube channel this weekend, it made perfect sense to invite Gary to be our celebrity reader!
First, watch his famous viral video, which according to a BBC report has been viewed more than 700 MILLION times. This is the digitally remastered version of the Numa Numa video:
Now watch him here, reading the Puzzle Prize list. We probably won't get 700 MILLION views of this, but it's still pretty cool!
This week, we're thrilled to have NPR's Juan Williams join us for our Open Mic kick-off! Juan's wit and wisdom exemplify what we hope to do with our new VLOG. He and Scott hold up a mirror to the incoming administration to see if it looks like America. We want to know what you think -- who would you like to see on the mic with Scott?
Video recorded by Weekend Edition's Sarah Beyer Kelly
And remember to check out our new Youtube Channel for more vlogs.
On November 4th, Americans elected an African-American man to the office of President for the first time. This historic moment in American history triggered celebrations in the streets and jubilant exclamations of "Only in America." But for black America, November 4th also triggered a lot of soul searching. Listen to Liane Hansen, author and political analyst Jonetta Rose Barras and Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page and make sure to share your thoughts with us!
If you want to know if the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver was fully clothed during his conversation with Liane Hansen then listen to this week's show -- it's very revealing. Jamie very kindly answered a few of your cooking queries when he spoke with Liane, and we have posted the questions and answers below.
President-elect Obama made extensive use of technology during the campaign. Now he's taking his tech savvy from the campaign to the transition.
This week, President-elect Obama's transition website, change.gov, posted a video with the headline "Inside the Transition: Meet members of the Energy & Environment Policy Transition Team." It's part of President-elect Obama's pledge for more transparency in government.
Join us this Saturday and Sunday, November 22-23 for LIVE online chats with expert craftspeople who will offer advice on how to make your holiday gift-giving more creative and economical. On Saturday, November 22nd, Host Scott Simon will interview Eric Wilhelm, founder of Instructables.com. The website gets 3.7 million hits per month and shows viewers how to make more than 17,000 home projects. Wilhelm will participate in a live online discussion with all of you Saturday, November 22, from 1:30 pm to 2:00 pm EST on our Eco-Nomical Holidays group page. Please note that to participate, you will need to log-in here.
On Sunday, November 23, Host Liane Hansen will interview Tina Henry-Barrus, AKA Tina Seamonster (http://www.tinaseamonster.com). She's a D.C.-based crafter and artist, affiliated with the Washington City Paper's Crafty Bastards collective. She has a podcast at her crafting blog, http://www.hellocraft.com. Henry-Barrus will participate in a live online discussion with all of you Sunday, November 23, from 1:30 pm to 2:00 pm EST on our Eco-Nomical Holidays group page.
Juarez, Mexico, is one of the most violent cities in the hemisphere. This year, it's broken its own record--1,300 murders and counting--as rival cartels fight over the lucrative smuggling corridor to El Paso, Texas. So far in 2008, 62 police officers have been killed and last week, the city's best known crime reporter, Armando Rodriguez, of El Diario de Juarez, was gunned down while sitting in his car in his garage.
Hossein Derakhshan speaks at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in November 2005.
Andy Carvin
The Jerusalem Post, Jahan News in Iran and other regional news outlets are reporting that Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan has been arrested and accused of spying for Israel. Derakhshan, better known online as Hoder, recently returned to Iran after spending much of the last decade living in Canada. Hoder gained prominence after becoming one of the first writers to blog in Farsi. He began blogging in late September 2001, after observing how people were using blogs to share their thoughts about the 9/11 attacks. Two months later, he authored a Farsi-language guide to blogging, which spawned thousands of blogs in Iran and the Iranian expat community.
My metabolism is still set to feel low on Monday mornings. The weekend is over, and it's back to school--err, work. Even when I begin Mondays by having breakfast with my daughters at a cafe, and delivering our 5-year-old to kindergarten, I get a hangdog look when dropping her off at school. She bounds in, happy to see her friends. But I linger on the sidewalk, muttering, "Gee, and we were having such a good time."
A conceptual rendering of the stage for Death and the Powers, Tod Machover's newest opera.
MIT Media Lab
There was a lot we had to leave out of Liane Hansen's interview with Tod Machover. He spoke for more than 35 minutes for a six-minute segment, and some of it was some pretty heavy stuff. Like, what if we could invent an instrument (a hyperinstrument, in his parlance) which was as natural and easy-to-play as the Guitar Hero controller -- but capable of the expressivity of a piano or cello? Wouldn't it blur the lines between the highly-skilled musicians and the complete dilettantes? (Ahem.) The performers and the audience? Would it unlock the artistic potential in all of us?
Fortunately, we were able to preserve most of the weighty philosophical implications of so-called hyperinstruments. One important subject we weren't able to keep in the on-air interview, however, was the new opera Tod Machover was working on.
This holiday season we're looking for gift ideas that are both eco-friendly and economical. Click here to join our "Eco-nomical Group" and to participate in the on-line discussions and upload photos and videos.
Patrick Jarenwattananon, Jessica Naudziunas, & Scott Pham, Weekend Edition
"And the whole world loves it when you make that sound ..."
--OutKast, "The Whole World"
This week, Weekend Edition is taking on the globe for our Google Maps sound-mapping project. We're not trying to rule the world, of course -- just plot more points from places like France, Iran, South Africa, etc. where people have been responding to the U.S. elections and anticipating the Obama administration. Again, just click on the little markers to hear sound bites of people speaking out, all recovered from NPR's shows and correspondents. Those which are new for this week are shown enlarged, and in green and purple (for dignitaries such as Vicente Fox and Desmond Tutu).
So go ahead and have a click or two. (Use the zoom feature to help sort it all out.) You have the whole world at your fingertips.
Weekend Edition is now on Twitter. If you're not familiar with it, Twitter is an online community that lets people from around the world chat with each other over the Web and through text messaging. The trick is your posts can only be up to 140 characters in length. You can now follow what projects Scott and Liane are working on and talk directly with us.
My parents married during the so-called "Great" Depression, and I grew up watching my mother take pieces of used wax paper, smooth them out and refold them, for future use. She saved string, too. And made rubber band balls. So the notion of saving, parsimony, thrift, was deeply embedded -- in me, and in all of my young friends.
The song "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" is one I always knew. And as I was preparing to talk about it with Rob Kapilow for Weekend Edition Saturday, I learned some marvelous things about its origins.
One of the pleasures of my travels around the country to visit our member stations is the chance to meet our listeners. Of course, the first few words of conversation usually concern our program -- after all, we know we have that in common. But I really begin to learn about new things from what follows, and the discoveries are so often delightful.
My recent visit to Austin and our friends at KUT, however, set a new high mark for magical experiences.
Last week, I stood just inches away from a Stradivarius and a Guarneri del Gesu. Liane actually touched the Strad. There I was, holding a microphone over the piano top they were resting on, my hands quivering a bit in fear that I'd drop the mic on one of these precious instruments. Click on the video and you'll see which violin is which.
Jamie Oliver may be the Naked Chef, but here he appears to be wearing clothes.
Kristian Dowling/Getty Images
As Thanksgiving and Christmas approach, many of us are looking for ways to save money on food. In this slowing economy, it's becoming more and more expensive to feed families. So, what better time to arrange an interview with Jamie Oliver, known to many as the Naked Chef. In the U.K., he's becoming somewhat of a national hero.
NPR listeners responded with a high degree of passion and astute remarks to the question I posed last week in my Letter from Europe:" Do Americans really care about Europe the way they once did?" The response was overwhelmingly yes. And now I'd like to offer a post-election update:
Euphoria exploded across Europe early Wednesday morning -- from Harry's Bar in Venice to Trafalgar Square in London to Madrid's Puerta del Sol: the great majority of Europeans felt they too had won the US presidential election.
Patrick Jarenwattananon, Jessica Naudziunas & Scott Pham, Weekend Edition
Owing to our modified work schedules, most of us at Weekend Edition weren't lucky enough (or perhaps unlucky enough, depending on your point of view) to be pressed into service for NPR's coverage of Election Day 2008.
I visited Shiloh Christian School (among other places) in Bismarck, North Dakota on Election Day 2008. North Dakota is the only state in the United States without voter registration. Few problems and high turnout was reported on Election Day, and in my vlog I give you a behind-the-scenes look at what most polling places I visited in the Bismarck area looked like on this "Tuesday after the first Monday in November."
Ailsa here reporting from Glen Allen, a surburb of Richmond, VA. Glen Allen is a heavily Republican area, but pollsters say the race between Barack Obama and John McCain will be tight here. We're at St. Anthony Maronite Catholic Church on Sadler Road, where 32-year-old Makisa George has just voted. George was accompanied by her boyfriend, her daughter and her boyfriend's son. She's a registered Independent, but has made special efforts this year to get her friends and family out on Election Day to vote for Senator Obama. She called so many people, in fact, that she received a flood of calls this morning from friends, each reassuring her that they had voted.
"I mean, everybody has been calling me in the morning since 6:30 - 'I voted,' " she said. "I mean, everybody has been calling. From New Jersey and stuff, they've all been up. My brother called at 5 o'clock in the morning. He says, 'It feels like Christmas Day. Why isn't everyone up to get their gifts?' "
George said she's been especially worried about the economy and thinks Obama is the candidate who can send a real jolt through the country. She said she received several calls from both the McCain and Obama camps, asking for her vote.
"I'm registered Independent," George said, "so I think they want me."
Justine here reporting from Voting Precinct 66 at the corner of South Dakota Avenue and Hamilton Street NE in Washington, D.C., where Cosby Hunt is one of three precinct captains. Hunt teaches American History and Government at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C. We'll be following him and speaking to his students about the presidential election throughout the week. Today, Hunt reported for precinct captain duty at 6 a.m., resplendent in a red, white and blue Uncle Sam hat. He's served as a precinct captain several times before and is working his second presidential election today, but Hunt says nothing compares to this election. This is one of the biggest polling places in Washington, and nearly all of the voters in line are African-American. Particularly striking: the many elderly folks who told him that they never thought they would be able to vote for a black man for president in their lifetime. The polls are open until 8 pm. Hunt expects to be busy every minute.
Following the historic 2008 Presidential elections, Weekend Edition Saturday will take a look at how educators around the country are processing the election results with their students in high schools, colleges and universities around the country. We'll hear what teachers and professors are thinking as they head out to vote on Tuesday and then what their students have to say in discussions after the election results are in. As part of the story we'll follow Cosby Hunt, he's an American History and Government Teacher at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C. We want to hear from educators and students in other part of the country. Are you an educator or student? Tell us how you voted and why?
And on November 9th, Weekend Edition Sunday will check back with two listeners who were part of our race & politics series. Liane Hansen speaks to Greg Harden of Rochester, N.Y., and Trish Callahan of Portland, Maine. Harden, who is white, spent the majority of his life living in the suburbs. Callahan has a black biological father and white mother, but grew up in a white family after she was adopted. How did they vote? What do they expect from the next President?
Professor Michael McCoy leads his freshman engineering class at NYU.
Ned Wharton/NPR
I can't hear well. I also can't sing. More about the latter in another post during our November music and technology series. This is about my hearing, or lack of it.
Tuesday afternoon, I went back to school. The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at New York University trains students for the music industry. I'm sitting in the back of a classroom of about 13 students. Michael McCoy is sitting at the mammoth console and giving a lesson in equalization. He had set up two microphones over a drum kit and recorded a rhythm track. He plays it once as it was recorded. Then he punches some buttons to eliminate hiss and hum, and others to enhance the sound of the drums. McCoy asks the students to listen to - and analyze - the differences. I can't hear many of the changes. My ears are old, and have spent too many years in headphones and in front of big amplifiers in my youth. These young students don't miss a thing.
The presidential campaign has mesmerized Europe, the historical cradle of anti-Americanism. After eight years of transatlantic tensions, Barack Obama is Europeans' overwhelming favorite. Look at these Venetian gondoliers:
Most Europeans dismiss U.S. election campaigns as the best example of everything childish and provincial in American culture. Not this time: this campaign is the most intensely covered in recent European history. At work and in cafes, people talk about it incessantly.
Veterans' Day is coming up, and US Army Maj. James Richards, commander for the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 44th MEDCOM, will be joining us from Baghdad for a chat. Major Richards, who is 60 years old, retired from the Army in 1993, but volunteered to return to active duty in May of this year. This is Richards' fifth decade of military service. We'll also hear from his wife, Angela Richards, who will join us from Huntsville, Alabama. The couple have five grown daughters, two grandsons and four granddaughters. They'll talk about Major Richards' decision to go back on active duty and his experience in Baghdad as one of the older members of the military. We invite you to submit questions for Major Richards. Please enter your questions below.
