Speechification

Sometimes good radio leaves me in awe. It’s the patience, the respect for material, the attention to process. Here’s a good example. Sarah Cuddon has visited and recorded the wives of the first generation of American astronauts and she’s come back with something quite thoughtful, sad and lovely (MP3).

In 1958 USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine - an unqualifed triumph of American ingenuity - sailed submerged from the Pacific to the Atlantic by way of the North Pole and sent the remarkable signal: “Nautilus 90 North”. The programme (another Archive Hour highlight, this one from March 2006) makes use of evocative tapes recorded on-board during the amazing voyage and the voices of surviving crew (including later-to-be-President Jimmy Carter).

And, since I’m here. Remind me someone: why doesn’t Archive Hour have a decent archive? MP3.

I’m putting this up quick because I reckon the five (five already!) Speechification contributors will be racing to do so. Since the rest of them probably have better things to do with their Saturday nights, I’m first! It’s another Archive Hour (I love the Archive Hour).

This one celebrates found and accidental and informal and amateur recordings collected by American independent media celebrities the ‘Kitchen Sisters’, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, for broadcast on their NPR radio show Lost and Found Sound.

If Russell’s last selection was Speechification crack, then this one must be Speechification cocoa. It’s full of breathtaking recordings from sources you won’t believe: 9/11 voicemail messages, a Buster Keaton sing-along, Tennessee Williams mucking around with his friends, a man who actually heard the Gettysburg Address… Moving and joyful stuff. (MP3).

And another thing: why don’t they just turn Saturday Live into a British Lost and Found Sound?

It doesn’t matter how much you think you know about Jack “Dr Death” Kervorkian, the man’s still full of surprises - and not least because his ‘vocation’ asks us all sorts of tough questions: about the limits of humanity, about being human in general. Late in this interview Fergal Keane asks the Doctor: “are you an arid rationalist?” and Kervorkian says: “sometimes I’m not so rational.” (MP3).

I stayed at The Chelsea Hotel once. Spent a few nights there in the early nineties (with my old pal Ivan). I guess things had gone off the boil a bit at The Chelsea by then but it was still unbelievably exciting to be walking those corridors and riding those clunky old lifts. There were still plenty of nicely-pickled old artists and junkies in (permanent) residence - but nobody you’d have heard of.

Stanley Bard - the owner - still patrolled the public areas talking to anyone. Cats wandered the halls. Someone who looked like he probably ought to go upstairs for a lie down was painting a mural in the lobby - it was like a kind of old people’s home for beats and punks. My TV didn’t work but that didn’t seem terribly important. I mentioned it at the front desk, though, and they sent a very old man in a wig up to look at it.

Anyway, here’s another item from the archive: a Radio 3 interval talk from April 2005 by Barry Miles, a slightly bouffant beat historian who spent time at The Chelsea back when it was the centre of the world. He has some lovely stories and delivers them in an appropriately laid-back tone. I wonder if it’s been turned into a themed boutique hotel by now? (MP3).

The pic is by wallyg on flickr.

What a story. Every year at around this time hundreds of young men - mostly from Britain and Australia - travel to the American wheat belt (the big, flat bit in the middle) to drive those house-sized combine harvesters and those train-length grain trucks and, basically, bring in the harvest.

Point of information: this particular adventure is not suitable for your mid-life crisis. Only under-30s need apply. Damn (MP3).

The pic - taken in Montana - is by goatopolis