A Visit To VE3OSC

I had fun visiting the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada earlier this month. It had been years and years since I last visited it. Of course I headed immediately to their shortwave amateur “ham” radio station. Their “ham shack” is actually a self-contained modular room – think of a very small 1970s gawdy orange coloured RV trailer without wheels inside the building off in a corner and you get the idea. I think it is the only thing left unchanged in the 35 years or so the place has been open although of course the radio equipment inside it has been significantly updated. I remember being a small child and visiting it first when it opened – CTV national news anchor Harvey Kirck was there and I think he’d already been celebrating quite a bit! I used to love shortwave radio listening before the era of the internet… tuning in exotic and far away stations and places through heavy interference and crackle… BBC (of course)… Radio Moscow… Radio Sofia… Radio Havana… etc. etc. etc. (Heck… what am I saying, I still love it!) Catching one of those foreign stations on my little shortwave radio was like catching rare tropical fish. At one point while still in high school I took a weekly night school course to get my ham radio “ticket” so I could transmit too. In the end I never went for my licence because in those days you had to do 15 wpm in morse code and I couldn’t get above 5 wpm. Sigh. Today, you don’t even need it at all. The other big difference between then and today is the technology – the Ontario Science Centre ham station (VE3OSC) has a computer that shows them the overhead satellites flying by that their equipment will automatically aim their aerial at and enable them to bounce their signal off! This facilitates two way contact much further afield than otherwise possible. Fascinating stuff for a radio/audio geek like me. I only stayed there a mere five hours!

I looked around at the rest of the OSC a bit too. Lots more for younger kids than in my day but I got the feeling, perhaps erroneously, that it has been significantly dumbed down. Less emphasis on learning, making connections, asking questions and more on just “having fun” without needing to pursue the reasons why. It was a truly magical cerebral experience when I was a kid. Today it seems more like a fancy baby-sitting service.

For example, I looked at their “space” exploration displays. Where was the moon landing? The Apollo years? Gemini? Mercury? It was like history didn’t matter to them at all. Fortunately VE3OSC was still there and thriving and still attracting visitors of all ages, young and old alike.

———————–

Later, I found an interesting related site at NASA which helps you plot in real time the various satellites overhead. Or at least the ones they are allowed to tell us about! If you click AMATEUR you’ll see the ones that ham operators can bounce their signals off as they fly by for a brief window. Makes you kind of nervous in a way when you really stop to think how much electronic junk is up there, listening, watching, snooping… Hi guys! Here’s the link:

http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/Spacecraft.html

My thanks to the Ontario Science Centre’s Saturday “ham shack” volunteer Mopa Dean for generously sharing his time and experiences “on the air”. His genuine ability to educate and inspire should guarantee another generation of shortwave radio enthusiasts for sure!

Your comments as always welcome to theaudioaddict [AT] hotmail [DOT] com

Songs To Wear Pants To

OUTSOURCING MUSIC 101

I’m back this month to bring to you another great story about an unusual audio-based website. This time it’s www.songstowearpantsto.com – the brainchild of a talented young Canadian musician named Andrew, who just likes to go by his first name. His website’s memorable name is based on a random song title he came up with years ago. And that site provides a unique musical service for people who want to outsource their ideas to him.

Andrew gets requests like this: “I really like this girl, but I don’t know how to express it. If you could write a song about her with her beautiful light blue eyes, long brown hair, and great athletic body, that would be awesome.”

So people are outsourcing their love songs to Andrew and much much more. He can take somebody’s raw ideas (or even more developed ideas) and turn them into a song. But such terrific, fun, imaginative songs! He told me he’s been providing this specialized service for over four years now, and that it all started off almost by accident. Needing some cash, he offered his songwriting services on ebay. That was really successful. So he got his website going and today he’s got over 400 of his specially commissioned songs on the site. Some you can hear for free and some you can download for a small fee. They all have a wicked sense of humour and wonderfully twisted energy.

Now, Audio Addict, does Andrew ever worry he’ll become hooked, nay, dependent upon his paying customers to come up with ideas for songs instead of coming up with his own?

The short answer is no. He told me he keeps his commissioned songs and his personal songs totally separate in his head. (His personal songs can be found on another site, Andrewismusic, which can be reached from the main site.) And because he can be totally inspired by almost everything around him – including even inanimate objects – there’s literally no end of ideas for him.

OK, Audio Addict, this is all a lot of fun but what does it say about our culture? Are people no longer going to be bothered to write their own songs anymore?

I think if you’re good at something you’ll always want to do it yourself because you love doing it. You only outsource the things you’re not so good at or don’t have the time or the drive to do. Music has always been Andrew’s passion in life – and thanks to his website it’s also become his job. So he’s very happy others want to outsource their ideas to him.

If you want to get a song from Andrew or just listen to the already commissioned songs, his website is www.songstowearpantsto.com and everything you need to know is there. Everybody I talked to loved outsourcing their ideas to Andrew because he gives them back so much more than they expected. He’s obviously a very talented songwriter, musician and producer. I have no doubt we will be hearing a whole lot more about him and his music in the future.

Many thanks to Andrew for his help in preparing this item and to his satisfied customers – Amy, Azure, Brent, Emmy, Mike, Randy and Simon – for kindly providing me with their insights into how Andrew’s unique musical abilities are truly appreciated.

Your comments – ready to turn into a hit Broadway musical or otherwise – are always welcome at theaudioaddict[at]hotmail.com

Ted Allbeury

THE SECRET LIFE OF A SPY

Many years ago I had the unique opportunity to talk with one of the most modest, unassuming heroes I have ever met. His name was Ted Allbeury, a most remarkable man on so many levels. In World War Two – and during the Cold War that followed – he was a British intelligence officer, that’s a spy to you and me. Many years later he became world famous as the author of over 40 spy novels… gritty, compelling stories often set in the war or cold war era that he knew so well. It was in his not so secret life as an author that I met him and found out about the secret life of a spy, which as he told me, isn’t anything at all like the James Bond movies. Bond was pure fantasy. The character was too flashy, too memorable. The best intell operators, Allbeury told me, would be able to completely blend in, were easily forgetable and utterly unmemorable.

Furthermore, the true intell officer’s innate ability to really understand what makes people tick was also one of the reasons why Allbeury was such an accomplished author. His novels aren’t just reliant on tricky plots but really involve you with complex and often conflicted characters facing difficult moral dilemmas that you feel are drawn from real life. Exactly how much of his stories were fiction and how much were real life? Even decades after the war he refused to tell me, citing his signing of the Official Secrets Act as the reason. He could fictionalize his experiences, however, and that was “allowed”.

Throughout his years as an author Allbeury kept in touch with the intell community. I think a lot of them respected and admired his writing and the way he portrayed their secret lives with dignity, insight and understanding. Not an easy job given the often complex secret lives spies must necessarily lead. In some cases not only are you fooling your enemy, you’re also fooling your own side. Allbeury told me about George Blake who was a real life double agent. He even managed to fool himself at times in order to work both sides of the infamous Iron Curtain. Allbeury believed that Blake could compartmentalize his mind in such a way that when he was working for the British he truly believed he was loyal to them and when (say later that same afternoon) he was working for the KGB, he felt totally loyal to them instead. Blake did much more damage to the West than Philby and the rest combined in Allbeury’s expert opinion.

Imagine living a life like that – a secret life within your secret life. It hurts my head just thinking about it. But then, I haven’t had the necessary training. And according to Allbeury, the very training that keeps you alive as a spy also forces you into a life totally apart from those you are sworn to protect. Which has to make the intell profession one of the loneliest jobs in the world. After all, you know more about your opposite number (enemy) than anyone else and they know all about you too. No wonder Allbeury used to receive more Xmas cards from former enemies than he did from friends for years after his active service!

So – at the end of the day – what do spies get out of it all? Few get paid all that much and as I learned, all the glamour and excitement of 007 is a complete fantasy. I guess the most spies can get out of their secret lives is a kind of quiet satisfaction. I mean, Allbeury’s characters rarely had happy endings. And when they did it was a notable exception. I presume that was all based on his own real life experience.

I doubt Allbeury ever exactly found happiness himself because he’d seen too much of life’s darkest side. But I think he was still very much a Romantic. Despite the mindnumbing horrors that he’s witnessed and later fictionalized as a repeated act of catharsis, I think at heart he still wanted to believe in good and in the possibilities for good in mankind. I don’t know if that’s true of all spies still living out their secret lives in unrelenting isolation – but for their sake, and ours, I hope so.

If you’d like to know more about this truly remarkable man and his incredible life, just plug his name into your favourite search engine. (He had a whole other exciting life as a UK radio pirate back in the 1960s!)

Ted Allbeury passed away at the end of 2005 but fortunately lives on in his many excellent books. If you are drawn to spy novels with believable characters facing incredible challenges while engaged in the loneliest secret profession in the world, I think like me, you’ll become a big big fan of his work. You can still find his books on line, or at your local book store or public library.

Ironically, for a man who told me that the best spies are totally forgetable, Allbeury remains vividly in my mind as one of the most truly memorable, inspiring individuals I have ever met. And yet I have no doubt he was one of the best at his job. Go figure, huh?

—————–

If you’d like to hear more about the world of spying and espionage, why not check out the podcast of the International Spy Museum. You can find it here:

http://www.spymuseum.org/programs/spycast.php

Your comments, as always, are welcome to theaudioaddict [at] hotmail [dot] com

Readers’ Comments

It’s not often The Audio Addict gets e mail from its readers and when we do I like to share them with you. Two very interesting comments came in recently on the “Number Stations Mystery” post from last month. (Scroll further down to read it.)

GLS writes:

I remember encountering numbers stations back when I was into listening to shortwave radio (which was before I got my Ham Radio license in the mid-70’s). In my opinion, they are certainly not CIA of MI5, but are more probably communications and instructions amongst certain anti-government groups and insurgencies around the world. Interesting stuff (http://www.archive.org/details/ird059).

And PJM writes:

Those “Number Stations” very well could be coded military messages, possibly originating from military ships at sea. Five number word codes were common for WWII encoding. Although with computerized systems today, the data could be encoded digitally and linked with digital networks.

Interestingly, after WWII, Camp X (located by Lake Ontario in Whitby) operated a listening post for some time after the war. They would likely have listened to these number stations quite attentively. Most of Camp X’s post WWII operations information is still classified, even though the camp was shut down decades ago.

—————–

Many thanks to GLS and PJM for their thoughts. And ahhhh, the mystery continues!

Your comments, mysterious or otherwise, as always welcome to theaudioaddict [at] hotmail.com. Your privacy will be respected but your correspondence (when relevant) may be published.

OneMinuteHowTo.com

You know, we live in a paradoxical age. Nobody has time to do anything. I mean, you can probably even outsource coming up with a list of things to do in your life that can be outsourced! And yet, we all think we could do almost anything, fix almost anything – if only we had the time.

But what if the things that most need fixing are the very skills that make up your life? I think it’s our actual life skills that some of us actually need fixing up. I know how to do lots of stuff – but some of it real badly. What I really want fixing up are some of my basic life skills, and… oh yeah, in keeping with my culture’s paradox, I’ve only got a minute or so to do it! Lucky for me I discovered the fun website OneMinuteHowTo.com.

OneMinuteHowTo.com is the brainchild of American webmaster, podcaster and photographer George L. Smyth. George told me his girlfriend was the inspiration for the site a couple years ago. She’d ask him how something was done and he’d reply at considerable length. Usually sometime after the one minute mark he noted her eyes started glazing over. That’s when he got the idea for a podcast site to which anybody can contribute. The challenge is to tell the rest of us how to do something in about a minute.

Which are my favourite podcasts on his site? Well, first, I thought I’d start with the basics. Most of us think we are pretty good cooks but I realised my culinary skills might need fixing up after I had friends over who accused me of trying to poison them. Who knew you could wreck Kraft Dinner? (True story.) In his podcast HOW TO MAKE THE PERFECT EGG, Chef Cary Wolfson tells us the secret of making the perfect hard boiled egg. I often make hard boiled eggs, but half the time the shell won’t come off easily. It’s so basic a skill you may think it’s unnecessary to relearn but it’s a skill that I guess I needed fixing up. And I really did learn how to do it in under a minute. So, kudos to Chef Wolfson!

OK, Audio Addict, do you think this site promotes the idea that the only life skills worth fixing are those which can be fixed up in a minute?

No, not really. Well, no more so than the rest of society today which does seem obsessed with the quick fix – in part because experts make stuff look so easy and in part because it caters to our multi-task-driven short attention spans. But I think most of us (including the contributors to this site) know that most worthwhile life skills actually take a little longer to perfect than just a minute! I suspect that the ratio is probably something like this – the more it means to you the longer it will take to perfect.

And so to raise the ante, my next life skill that I wanted fixing up had to really mean something to me. OK. I’ve been working on my novel for a few years now – like everybody else I know. And it’s a lot harder than it looks. Or is it? Author Paula Paul’s podcast HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL on oneminutehowto.com purports to tell us exactly how to do just that. But can such a life skill be learned in a minute? Well, IMHO, this podcast is very good for someone just starting out but you could argue there are many novels that break her overly simplified formula. Or even if you do accept it, once you get going, I’d have to say this is obviously another life skill that takes a little longer than just a minute to learn! To be fair, I’m sure Paula knows that too and did very well to try to condense a lifetime’s work into less than a minute. And that’s what the site is really all about, of course – it is an engaging, entertaining way to introduce you to various life skills without causing your eyes to glaze over. Its self-imposed minute limit is really only a challenge for its contributors – not necessarily an expectation of achievement for its listeners. (Hey, if you do really learn something to perfection in a minute then that’s a pure bonus!)

The funniest podcast I found on the site (and I must admit to date I have sampled only a fraction of all those available) is HOW TO TALK LIKE A PIRATE with Capt’n Slappy and Ol’ Chumbucket – co-founders of the now famous annual Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19th). Definitely a unique life skill worth fixing up, and one I could absolutely learn to perfection in under a minute, ahoy avast arrr!

When I asked the site’s creator if he’d ever turned down any potential contributors, he told me just one. Seems it was all about tying down your partner. (I presume this refers to techniques other than tying them to you with binding promises!) George had no personal objections to it but “politely declined” the pending podcast as it might’ve got the entire site unfairly labeled as not so family-friendly.

OneMinuteHowTo.com has lots more fascinating life skills presented by guest contributors that you can listen to in about a minute, all expertly introduced by George (who turns his hand to a few How To podcasts himself). Details on how to contribute your own expertise are also listed on the site. Just recently it passed its one millionth download! Congratulations to George and to all of his fellow podcasters. It’s definitely my favourite on line audio resource of the month and one I know I will return to again, whenever the urge to “fix up” more basic life skills takes hold!

Your comments, in need of fixing up or otherwise, as always welcome to theaudioaddict[at]hotmail.com

Numbers Stations

THE MYSTERY OF SHORTWAVE NUMBERS STATIONS

One of the strangest audio mysteries ever since World War two or even earlier when they probably started is what shortwave radio listeners (or “DXers”) call numbers stations. These are often powerful secret radio stations all around the world, broadcasting in many different languages, that still pop up from time to time, often on a regular basis, on the shortwave dial. They broadcast nothing more than a series of groups of numbers in oddly disembodied and sometimes synthesized voices.

Why numbers?

One of the most easy to understand types of code are number codes, such as 1 equals A, 2 equals B and so on. Of course you can make your code a lot more complicated than that! Or – if we both have the same book, we could send numbers to each other that reference certain pages and certain words in that book. Nobody could ever tell what we were saying unless of course they too had a copy of the book. In short you can make numbers equal any letters or words or actually anything at all if you agree to it ahead of time and know how to decode the message.

So why use shortwave radio?

Shortwave radio frequencies are mostly used by international broadcasters as well as amateur radio operators for transmitting to far away distant listeners. The physical characteristics of shortwave make it ideal for bouncing signals around the planet although the signal quality is sometimes rather poor. These days with the internet you might think there would be no interest in it but the shortwave dial is still full of fascinating radio from around the world including these mysterious numbers stations.

So why would anybody want to broadcast blocks of numbers?

Clearly, these are most probably coded messages only intended for certain listeners. Whoever is sending them certainly doesn’t want the rest of us to understand what they’re saying.

Does that sound even slightly sinister? Well, check under your bed and lock your door because the general consensus of opinion of those who have studied these stations for years is that they are indeed sending coded messages from various world governments to their secret agents out in the field around the world. Can you say CIA? MI5? CSIS?

But why would such rich, powerful secret agencies around the world use such a low tech way to communicate?

Think about it… anybody can listen to these broadcasts using a shortwave radio. A cheap little portable all-band radio that can fit in your pocket would do. There’s nothing suspicious about that if you were were a foreign agent captured in a foreign country. And as far as more sophisticated and contemporary digital methods of communications – such as cell phones, e mails and satellite phones – they all leave an electronic trail that can be traced. With numbers stations, no one can trace who is listening or even prove who’s behind them.

Of course, they could all be part of an elaborate hoax or some kind of performance art. And they could also be part of some form of disinformation designed by some governments to make other less-friendly governments think that there are foreign agents secretly operating in their countries when there aren’t. If it’s a hoax it sure is an elaborate one, repeated over and over again around the world almost since radio began. No one has ever taken credit for them, and no one has ever figured out exactly what they mean. (But speaking of performance art, they have recently inspired a number of artists to incorporate them in their own work. The Wilco CD “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” for example is purportedly named after some of these mysterious transmissions).

Interested in learning more? Just use your favourite search engine on line and look for “numbers stations” although I strongly recommend you begin with Simon Mason’s brilliant site, http://www.simonmason.karoo.net – just click the link “Shortwave Espionage” on his home page. Kudos to Simon! It’s a really excellent site with lots of links to further information and tons of audio clips so you don’t even need a shortwave radio.

But… trust me – it IS so much more fun to get a shortwave radio and to try to catch them live yourself. Maybe someone out there some day will be able to decode them and tell us what they really mean. But somehow, I doubt it.

73’s until next time!

Your comments, in numerical code or plain written English, are always welcome at theaudioaddict [AT] hotmail.com

No Ones Listening?

THE OXYMORONIC PODCAST: NO ONE’S LISTENING

A special hello to DNTO listeners reading my blog for the first time.

Today I’m going to tell you about the remarkable story of one young woman, Irene McGee. Born in Poughkeepsie New York, Irene was your basic totally-involved-in-everything at school and university student who went on to graduate studies in media at university in San Franscisco. Since then she’s become quite the outspoken media activist educating young audiences nationwide in the USA about the manipulative distortions of so-called reality TV. And, really, she owes so much of this career to our friend the humble iPod. Yes, the iPod, that innovative portable medium for listening to downloadable audio programming from the internet.

In 2005 Irene chose to work at a San Francisco campus radio station and be a part of a podcast called No Ones Listening. This proved to be her best decision ever for the podcast really took off and gave Irene the platform she needed to move forward in her life’s campaign to educate her peers about the dangers of indiscriminate media consumption.

What do you suppose gave her the genuine passion to speak out about media abuses and to educate her fellow young Americans in media literacy? Well, I’m pretty confident that it had a lot to do with how she was first brought to the American public’s attention. It was about a decade ago in one of those early MTV bogus reality shows, The Real World: Seattle, which she famously quit in protest of its lack of reality only to be allegedly assaulted on camera as she left by one of her former housemates. The slap that was seen around the world! (But just try to find it on line today – it seems to have mysteriously disappeared.) Quite The Eye Opener for her – which I am sure fuelled her transformation from disillusioned reality TV contestant to battling media critic – all thanks to a career in podcasting.

That podcast received enough general public attention to lift Irene out of strictly podcasting and put her into the very beginnings of a more mainstream media career – ironically criticizing the very industry she’s increasingly becoming a part.

What is it about Irene that has made her one of the podcasting’s world’s fastest rising stars? Timing, timing, timing! And, there’s Irene herself. She an intelligent, enthusiastic character. Listeners love that. She sounds like a total amateur in the very best sense – she’s totally passionate about her subjects. It’s not just about a job. She’s also very smart. She brings interesting ideas and conversations with media big wigs like Noam Chomsky to her listeners in a very non-threatening fun kind of way.

Another reason for her success is that she’s had some really solid support all along from a few key media heavy hitters like legendary print journo Ben Fong-Torres.

A lot of what she talks about may not be so astonishing to those of us who enjoy public radio. But in the USA where most radio is pretty bland, with cookie cutter personalities and minimal intellectual content, she’s positively a media-revolutionary!

So what’s up next for Irene, the transformed former reality TV girl turned podcaster turned reality TV critic? She appears to have already had at least one gig on a bigger station in addition to her podcasting, on line and campus radio work – with much more to come – and seems to spend a lot of time and energy on public speaking tours educating young audiences about the duplicities of the media. She has also appeared from time to time on CNN to give her point of view on media related issues. All this despite some apparently on-going chronic health issues which make her story seem even more admirable.

I should add that Irene’s most recent podcast on line is from the end of last summer. No doubt she’s been super busy with all her other life projects following a nasty apartment fire last year. Here’s hoping she finds time to return to her podcast origins very soon and that she is well and thriving.

*********************

And so, Audio Addict, looking at the big picture – do you think Irene’s story tells us anything about the future of podcasting?

I think Irene’s story shows us podcasting is constantly evolving and growing up. Once it was enough just to be a podcast, its novelty and portability was the deal. Now in addition to its listen-on-demand advantage, I think more and more podcasting is going to compete successfully with other forms of media based on content alone – providing interesting personalities, intriguing ideas and unusual or compelling narratives, well-told. In fact, to me it’s always been about content, the rest is just technological plumbing.

But, Audio Addict, some podcasters just love that whole notion of its unique technological plumbing…

I understand that and if you’re just doing it for yourself and your friends, that’s great too. Anyone can do it; that’s the beauty of it. But Irene has shown us there are some very savy communicators in today’s worldwide podcasting community who will one day break through into the wider media if they have what it takes. Irene is just the tip of the pod-berg. And I do believe many of the world’s most interesting future broadcasters are podcasting on line right now. The real challenge is sorting through all the on line pod-clutter to find them! But that’s a whole other story…

***************

Irene McGee’s podcast is No One’s Listening. You can find it at www.nooneslistening.org … and trust me, lots of folk are gonna be listening out for her in the future!

Your comments, as always, welcome: theaudioaddict[at]hotmail[dot]com

The Underground Sound of Emma Clarke

A SPECIAL XMAS AUDIO TREAT FOR YOU FROM THE AUDIO ADDICT

It’s been a few months since my last posting but I haven’t forgotten you, dear surfer. Herewith, my latest audio addiction….

Emma Clarke is a British voice over artist, best known for being the until-now anonymous voice you hear on the London Underground, telling you stuff like “mind the gap”. She’s been the aural guardian of safety and common sense on the London subway system, quite a responsibility.

But Ms Clarke is more than just a voice, it seems she has a fantastic sense of humour too. Haven’t you ever wished those dreary announcements on public transit or in a mall couldn’t be – well – a bit more human, a little less stodgy and boring? Ms Clarke apparently felt the same way too. On her own personal freelance website she made some bogus parody announcements, spoofing her real ones on the London Underground.

It seems some people felt that her parodies were pretty immature and juvenile. Personally, I’ve never understood why having a sense of humour is equivalent in some people’s mind to being immature or juvenile. To me humour expresses a mature insight or awareness of life and what is really going on. I mean, this is a woman who when asked if she could make any announcement at all responded that she would get a massive megaphone and tell the world to be happy and peaceful. In my opinion, this is a thoughtful, mature person WITH a great sense of humour. The two definitely do not have to contradict each other.

Unfortunately, Ms Clarke was fired by London Transport for allegedly criticizing them. I don’t think that they strictly approved of her parodies either. In her blog she states she was misquoted in a recent interview in the press, that she was not criticizing her employers (which was their actual accusation/reason for her dismissal) but that she was actually saying how dreadful it would be for her to have to use the subway and listen to herself all day. Whatever the case, the story of her firing got out, her site went from a few hundred hits a day to over 330,000 hits at last count and Ms Clarke – a mother of two – was as of this writing out of work. (That situation may have changed, hopefully, by the time you are reading these words.)

So not acting your age (as some have accused Ms. Clarke) can have serious consequences. But if acting your age means not being yourself, isn’t that an even worse consequence? I’ve never understood what it means to “act your age”, and people have been telling me to do that all my life. I’ve decided it’s code for “I don’t like what you’re saying or doing and rather than admit it’s just my opinion that needs to be justified and clarified, I’m going to hide behind an arbitrary made up standard and say you’ve failed to live up to it”. I think you can only really act your age if you are true to yourself. Ms Clarke’s pranks may be considered silly and immature by some but I think they demonstrate a genuine understanding of what people are thinking and a mature appreciation for the absurdities of modern life. Clearly she meant no harm… and her parody announcements are so funny!

What will happen to Emma?

Hard to say. After the public outcry – largely in support of her – they may be forced to take her back. On the other hand, all the publicity can’t be bad for her career. In fact, ironically, acting in a way some people consider immature might be the best thing possible for her career. We say we hate it when people don’t act their age but we also reward those who are the most well known for doing so. Look at all the rich, famous comedians in the world.

Go to www.emmaclarke.com, look for her “fun” section and you’ll find all her audio clips there. In case it goes down again with all the recent traffic, just check your favourite search engine for various mirror sites.

Happy holidays and a safe, healthy, prosperous ‘08!

Comments, as always, welcome to theaudioaddict[AT]hotmail.com

Best Audio For July

THE END OF INTERNET MUSIC RADIO AS WE KNOW IT?

For lots of us on-line radio fans, listening to streaming music radio is one of our major pleasures. But if certain unreasonably draconian record-industry-backed legislation gets passed in the USA on July 15th, most American-based internet music radio may be forced to close down because of the new legal demand for them to pay extortionately high licensing fees.

Details of the background story are all here: http://www.savenetradio.org/

In the event that American music radio on line suffers a fatal legislative blow this summer, I’d like to salute three of the finest American volunteer-staffed community music stations on line (which are also my three favourites in the USA) – each as uniquely characteristic of its own region of the USA as any individual could be… and I urge you to check all of them out before it is too late.

KCRW – on the west coast – very laid back, eclectic but thoroughly professional as you might expect… it’s at http://www.kcrw.com

KGNU – in Boulder, Colorado – very independently-minded and iconoclastic amidst a sea of mid-western conformity. You can find it at http://www.kgnu.org

WFMU – on the US east coast (New Jersey, actually) – incredibly feisty, eccentric and a real on-line scraper living up to its geographic reputation. You can hear it at http://www.wfmu.org

Good luck to all of the above – and stay tuned for developments!

————————————–

ENDANGERED COMEDY BABE: STEPHANIE MILLER

Imagine, if you will, a life-threatening scenario in which laughter is your only defence. This is the incredible story of a woman who confronted the idea of her own death and publicly laughed the threat right back under the rock from which it crawled.

The woman is Stephanie Miller, a native of greater Buffalo, New York, former stand up comic and currently one of the most successful nationally syndicated progressive radio talk show hosts in the USA. IMHO, she is also one of the funniest, most perceptive political satirists working in America today, right up there with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The type of satire she’s famous for mocks the far right by usually just letting them speak for themselves.

Not surprisingly, her anti-Bush brand of political humour really angers some of those on the far far political right. Recently, one of them wrote her a letter, denouncing her politics, and allegedly threatening her life. Oh and oddly enough, he also sent along his phone number. So what is a gutsy, funny, gal to do? Well, if you’re Stephanie Miller, you call the guy up, live on air. You can still find the audio on line of her confronting the guy, aptly named Sock, who didn’t much like her or her appearance on cable TV news, on which she apparently defended the anti-war views of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier who died in Iraq.

The audio is so amazing to me because it’s an example of courageously using laughter to neutralize a purported bully by showing him up for what he is, quoting his own words back at him, revealing his own true nature. There’s not a whole lot going on behind his posturing. I mean, the guy won’t even stand by his own words. Of course, using humour to stand up to bullies is something many people learned to do in the schoolyard as kids. Most bullies are cowards without substance and hide behind violence or the threat of violence.

So what has happened to Stephanie’s pal Sock? Well, as far as we know, he’s still out there, writing his profanity-laced letters to anyone who disagrees with him, whatever he thinks that means. In the audio Stephanie does what she does so well, showing up her political opponents for what they are by using their own words against them. Miller uses laughter to confront reality no matter how frightening it may seem at first, and effectively reasserts control over her own life again by doing so. But of course, using laughter, I’d say she stands up to the humour-less and compassion-challenged every day on her show in the national schoolyard called the American airwaves.

The easiest way to find this remarkable reality-based audio is to go to your favourite search engine, and type in “Stephanie Miller death threat”. I’d also suggest checking out her own website, http://www.stephaniemiller.com. Listeners near or actually in the USA can hear her live on their radio coast to coast. Along with Stephanie you’ll also hear her producer Chris Lavoie and her “voice deity” Jim Ward who both brilliantly co-host the show and share her wonderfully goofy sense of the absurd. And believe it or not, she’s even funnier on air when she’s not defending herself from alleged death threats!

Comments as always welcome to theaudioaddict [AT] hotmail [dot] com.

The Lifehouse Method

When you have a huge success, I mean a really huge success, what the heck do you do next? Well, Pete Townsend’s success with the legendary rock band THE WHO might appear to be an act he could never follow. So what does Townsend do for an encore? The answer might surprise you – as it certainly surprised me – it’s his decades-long dream finally come to life on line.

***************

Inspired by Pete Townsend’s original vision in the 1970s that everyone has a musical identity unique to them – coupled with his 20 year old dream of software that would compose music to reflect that personal identity – his lifehouse method is now on line at www.lifehousemethod.com.

Essentially, it is a website connected up to some pretty innovative software that will sonically paint a musical portrait of you, unique to you – that is – to the individual input that you upload.

You must go to the site and upload some unique data that the software will analyze to compose its musical portrait of you. The four things you need to provide are (1) a sample of your voice (2) a photographic image that you strongly identify with (3) a favourite sound from which it can determine your mood, and (4) a rhythm which you can either upload or tap out using your mouse.

Dave Snowden is the software genius for the site. Together with mathematician/composer Lawrence Ball, the two of them are the brains behind the project working for Pete Townsend. Dave explained to me that the software looks at the data you upload and analyzes it. For example, what tones are used and how do they vary, and/or what colors are in the image and how do they vary. All that data is encoded and transformed several times from numbers to notes to notes played on instruments sampled in Pete Townsend’s own collection. The result is a piece of computer music that is uniquely yours, good or bad, love it or hate it.

So what’s the point?

Dave believes the lifehouse method actually democratizes music because anyone, regardless of musical ability, can plug into the lifehouse method and help create a form of music that is unique in that moment.

He also told me that he’d be happy if it just brought a bit of fun and beauty into people’s lives. But Pete Townsend obviously had the vision in the first place and it’s named for that vision which has appeared in various earlier incarnations. Together with composer Lawrence Ball they hope that many of these portraits might eventually be incorporated into other, more extensive musical works that they may choose to develop and carry on with. The great thing is that if your musical portrait is one of the ones that go forward, you will own a part of it!

Some people say their portraits really reflect them. I’m not so sure about mine but I really enjoy them. And I had a lot of fun interacting with the site although I admit I’m still thoroughly baffled by the process. If it’s some kind of cyber-prank it sure is a brilliant one! I bow my head in humble admiration at Pete Townsend who had the original vision, and Dave Snowden and Lawrence Ball who finally figured out how to do it. This has definitely been one of the most fun stories to research that I’ve ever done for this blog.

So – why not investigate www.lifehousemethod.com. It’s free to try until the end of July 2007, but you’ll need to register on line first. You will get to keep a download of your three free sonic portraits to enjoy as long as you want.

And who knows, you may end up becoming a part of music history.

My thanks to Dave Snowden for his assistance in preparing this item.

Notes (musical or otherwise) as always welcome to theaudioaddict[AT]hotmail.com