1. I heard this piece on the radio a couple days ago, and have now become obsessed with Tony Schwartz, who died at age 84 in June. The New York Times obit described him as an “art director; advertising executive; urban folklorist; radio host; Broadway sound designer; college professor; media theorist; author; and maker of commercials.” He had agorophobia & almost never left his neighborhood; and yet he had a collection of 30,000 field recordings, half made in the blocks around his house, and the rest sent to him by fellow collectors around the world. He has the dubious responsibility of having introduced (through his traded recordings) the original versions of “Wimoweh” to Pete Seeger, and “Day-O” to Harry Belafonte.

Schwartz also created the famous/infamous “daisy ad” for Lyndon Johnson’s reelection campaign; it is widely credited to have had a significant impact on the election, and has been criticized as ushering in the modern era of negative TV ad campaigns.

Crazy life…

His field recordings are incredible. He released a series of records on Smithsonian/Folkways (which are available on Smithsonian’s website and iTunes etc) - recordings of kids talking, sounds of the city, random recordings sent to him from around the world, man on the street interviews, and clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre in duet with Schwartz’s wife’s high-heels in a midtown office. Here is a track from one of his records, a series of vendors & barkers:

2. Theme time Radio Hour. I don’t have Sirius radio or whatever so i haven’t been able to hear Bob Dylan’s radio show, but now I & you can illegally download them all here! This is Bob & mystery lady’s intro to the first show, “Weather:”

as i roved out from Sam Amidon on Vimeo.

http://www.dovemanfootloose.com

From the BBC: South Africa’s Chinese Reclassified as “Black”

we here at speakpeppery would like to congratulate lil wayne on selling one million copies of “tha carter III” in one week. good work wayne! your album is amazing. so is your guitar playing, and your un-autotuned singing.

“my picture should be in the dictionary
next to the definition of definition
because repetition is the father of learning
and son i know your barrell burnin’”

Hi from Toronto. I’m here for about a week, while Gray builds some outdoor stone fireplaces for some friends of ours (not for free though!!!) and I do some journalism in a delightful attic office. That’s something my former editor used to say that both grossed me out and strangely appealed to me: “Let’s do some journalism!” Or sometimes, “Who’s ready to do some journalism?”

I’ve been reunited with my bicycle here in Toronto. Toronto’s not the world’s most sexy city, but I must say that it’s a first-rate bicycling city. Maybe I’m just saying that because I’ve been living in S. America for a while, where biking on the street is horrifying for me to even contemplate. But anyway, I love biking here. Canadians are generally pretty cheerful and Canadians on bikes are even more so.

We’re house-sitting an antiseptic condo in a highrise at the edge of Lake Ontario. It’s not really my steez but beggars cannot, as they say, be choosers. Our first night there I was kind of reeling at the clean-smoothness of the entire environment, at the efficiency with which you can basically inject yourself like a shiny little pinball into a whole “lifestyle” when you move into one of these condos. I was like, “dude, where’s my self?” Then I looked over at my filthy luggage and leaky toothpaste tube that was making easy work of messing up the pristine bathroom sink, and I remembered.

Anyway in the midst of this stainless steel and frosted glass overload, I went out onto the balcony. I heard some kind of live music coming from 23 floors below. After a few moments I realized that it was Billy Bragg performing across the street at the Harbourfront Centre, and the sound was so good I could hear the lyrics to “Greetings to a New Brunette” with stunning clarity. I gathered from the crowd response that it was a good concert.

Time exposure shots of crowds in St. Petersburg, Russia, by Alexey Titarenko. Courtesy of bldgblog (care of Algomantra).