April 24, 2005 (#20)

Sweet Phil From Sugar Hill
Phyllis Fletcher- Producer/Reporter KUOW Seattle

A man has 14 children with 13 different women, dies young, and leaves his kids no choice but to learn about him through each other, and through the letters he wrote from prison.

Interview with Phyllis Fletcher

Re:sound host Gwen Macsai talks with Phyllis Fletcher about Sweet Phil and how her documentary brought the disparate parts of her family together.

Tony Schwartz: 30,000 Recordings Later
Davia Nelson—Independent Producer, Kitchen Sisters
Nikki Silva—Independent Producer, Kitchen Sisters

Tony Schwartz has not only recorded some of the most important social figures of his day,  but also some of the most mundane daily occurances: children playing jumprope, cabbies in New York. He single handedly changed the world of advertising with his creation of “the daisy ad.” He has created political campaigns, a radio show that ran for over 30 years, short films, books, lectures, and it all started in 1945 when he got his first wire recorder and he has been recording ever since. (NPR's All Things Considered, 1999)

Featured Music:

Casino Vs. Japan, “Koma Sign-Off,” Whole Numbers Play the Basics (Carpark, 2002)
Lullatone, “Leaves Falling,” Little Songs About Raindrops (Audio Dregs, 2004)
Rainstick Orchestra, “Powderly,” The Floating Glass Key in the Sky (Ninja Tune, 2004)
Casino Vs. Japan, “Trad Velecido,” Whole Numbers Play the Basics (Carpark, 2002)
The Books, “None But Shining Hours,” Lost and Safe (Tomlab, 2005)

April 17, 2005 (#19)- The Women Show

The International Language of Women
Gwen Macsai- Independent Producer, Re:sound Host

The essay that explains, at long last, why women always go to the bathroom in twos. (NPR’s All Things Considered, 1991)

Dreaming of Fat Men
Lorelei Harris- Features, Arts & Drama Editor at RTE Radio 1

One evening in 1994, four women came together for a feast. They had never met one another before. As far as anybody knew, they only had one thing in common. They were all obese: not a little bit overweight or pleasantly plump or well rounded or anything like that. These were four very fat women. (RTE Radio 1, 1994)

The Walls
Laura Vitale- Independent Producer

Every semester the bathroom walls in Brown University's main library are painted fresh, and by the end of the semester they are full of contemplative scribbles in overwhelming quantities. The heartfelt, highly repetitive graffiti often creates something like poetry.

Featured Music:

The Cars are the Stars, “Helikopter,” Fragments (Chez Moi, 2004)
E*Vax, “The Process of Leaving,” Parking Lot Music (Audio Dregs Music, 2001)
E*Vax, “What We Mean,” Parking Lot Music (Audio Dregs Music, 2001)
Broken Social Scene, “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl,” You Forgot It in People (Arts & Crafts, 2003)

Extras:

Lorelei Harris discusses the unusual production of Dreaming of Fat Men Behind the Scenes

April 10, 2005 (#18)- The ShortDocs Show
Each year, the Third Coast International Audio Festival commissions stories based on a single topic. We call them “ShortDocs,” and in this edition of Re:sound, we feature several from 2004, when the topic was thirst, and 2003, when the topic was darkness.

Dinner at the Blind Cow
Adam Burke - Independent Producer

You're in complete darkness from the moment you enter. Blind waiters take your order, help you find your water glass, lead you to the bathroom. Some diners struggle, but others find the Blind Cow in Zurich, Switzerland, a sensory delight.

Memento Mori
Jude Fletcher - Independent Producer

Some members of producer Jude Fletcher's family have a fondness for taking pictures of the dead. And as eerie as this may seem, photographing the dead, or memento mori, was popular back in the nineteenth century.

Listening to Jamie
Hugh Levinson - Producer, BBC

Imagine a cold, London winter. Now listen as the bizarre and unpredictable sounds made by producer Hugh Levinson's sleeping newborn punctuate the dark in the most unimaginable ways.

Interview with Hugh Levinson

Gwen Macsai talks with Hugh Levinson about Listening to Jamie, and getting cheap laughs at the expense of his firstborn.

Hidden Messages

Presenting hidden messages found in the proposals for the 2004 ShortDocs call for stories about darkness.

The Color Is Black
Rick Moody – Writer
Jerome Schmidt – Sound Designer

Rick Moody and Jerome Schmidt present darkness construed as manifestations of the color black through history, space, time, and in the natural world.

“And I Walked...” Stories from the Border
Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler – Independent Producers, Reporters, KNAU

In this story, the thirst for the American dream translates into a literal thirst for the scores of illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the desert from Mexico into the United States in search of better-paying jobs.

Featured Music:

Languis, “Half Way There,” Unithematic (Simballrec, 2000)
Rainstick Orchestra, “Powderly,” Floating Glass Key in the Sky (Ninja Tune, 2004)
E*Vax, “To Scale a Fish,” Parking Lot Music (Audio Dregs Music, 2001)
Featured Music: Beequeen, “Buzzbag Drive,” The Bodyshop (Important Records, 2005)
Credits Music: The Books, “Smells Like Content,” Lost and Safe (Tomlab, 2005)

Extras:

Learn more about the Third Coast Festival ShortDocs.