John Schaefer

Host

John Schaefer appears in the following:

previously on the blog...

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I've talked before on the blog about soundtracks, and how they can be more than simple background music - most recently, last week when Jim Jarmusch joined us. But Michael Giacchino's music for the hit ABC television series Lost is an interesting case. For one thing, we don't expect ...

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... and a side of Beatles please.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A restaurant tells you a lot about itself by the way it's lit and by the way it sounds. Bright and noisy, with pop and classic rock at full volume means eat your food (but maybe don't pay too close attention to it), have some drinks, and see who's at ...

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"born in a small town"

Monday, May 11, 2009

I hadn't noticed a particular upswing lately in the number of country songs proudly and loudly proclaiming their creators to be Small-Town Boys. (And girls, I suppose, though this does seem to be mostly a dude thing.) But then, I don't pay attention to the contemporary country scene all that ...

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AM I SHOUTING?

Friday, May 08, 2009

I'LL BE WITH YOU IN JUST A SECOND! I JUST WANNA HEAR THE END OF THIS SONG! 'CAUSE I REALLY LIKE IT, YOU KNOW?! OK - WAIT. THERE, I'LL TAKE THE EARBUDS OUT NOW! OKAY, SO... oh. Okay, so I guess maybe I was shouting a little. It's just that ...

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Jade Simmons Performs on WNYC's Soundcheck

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Concert pianist Jade Simmons performs live on WNYC's Soundcheck with John Schaefer.

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Music: luxury or a necessity at any price?

Thursday, May 07, 2009

When the economy tanks, everyone feels the pain. Even the New York Yankees, who in the run-up to the opening of the new Yankee Stadium gave every indication that they were immune to the effects of the recession, are finding themselves slashing their (ridiculously high) ticket prices in the face ...

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When music is more than just a soundtrack

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Film makers can sometimes be really obsessive about the music in their films. The late Stanley Kubrick, for example. He was notorious for falling in love with his placeholder music - the records he'd play to certain scenes before the actual film score was composed, just so he'd have something ...

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The real jazz icon

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

At first, today's Smackdown topic seems an easy one to answer. Which instrument has had the bigger impact on jazz, the sax or the trumpet? Gotta be the sax, right? I mean, sure, the trumpet had Louis Armstrong and Clark Terry and Miles Davis. But John Coltrane, Lester Young, Coleman ...

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The "Real" Adele

Monday, May 04, 2009

"Authenticity" has become a big part of the music conversation - usually among musicians and critics more than rank-and-file listeners, but still, the talk about who's raps are more "real" has certainly become more commonplace. The "authenticity" argument stalks through London's music circles too - when Kate Nash began to ...

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Was the Grinch right?

Friday, May 01, 2009

There's a scene in How The Grinch Stole Christmas where the Grinch is explaining to his hapless dog Max why he simply must stop Christmas from coming to Whoville. Being a grinchy sort, he hates all the good will and the presents and stuff, but what really gets him, he ...

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I Got The Horse Right Here...

Thursday, April 30, 2009

I have always loved thoroughbred horse racing. I mean, I love sports in general: baseball (Yankees), football (Giants), real football - aka "soccer" (Arsenal, from north London), hockey (Islanders). But there's a difference with horse racing. Because the bettors are so much a part of the sport, you feel involved ...

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In A Word, Downtown

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Today's show is our first live broadcast from our new Greene Space, a ground-floor studio for live music, live radio, film, lectures, community events, etc. And since we're taking this step out of the radio tower and into the actual community of Downtown Manhattan, we're taking the opportunity to talk ...

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Dylan Vs. Dylan

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Poor Bob Dylan. He's got a tough act to follow, a huge shadow cast by his much younger self. But give him credit for rescuing a career that seemed to have slid into irrelevance and rediscovering his voice (or discovering a new voice, perhaps) in this decade. Modern Times was ...

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The Wrong Place for the Right People

Monday, April 27, 2009

The story of Cafe Society, and its sister club, Cafe Society Uptown, is a remarkable one - an intentionally integrated club in New York at a time when even here, such things did not exist. Founder Barney Josephson's memoir, Cafe Society: The Wrong Place for the Right People, tells ...

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Bandthropology 101

Friday, April 24, 2009

On Wednesday we talked with a sociologist about the "community" of music listeners known as Deadheads. Traveling tribes of Grateful Dead fans really do form a community, Rebecca Adams of UNC-Greensboro told us, despite not having a single fixed place to live - which one would think would be a ...

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The Euphoria of Ambiguity

Thursday, April 23, 2009

I'm here to tell you that it WAS possible to be an impressionable teenager in the '70s and fall under the sway of both La Monte Young, the godfather of Minimalism, master of drones, creator of magical overtone effects and abstruse theories of music and mathematics; and The Ramones. That ...

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Bring out your deadheads

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

In our miniseries of shows on Super Fans, you just had to know there'd be a time when we focused on the ultimate Super Fans - that curious tribe of wandering fans known as Deadheads. For decades, two or even three generations of them crisscrossed the country in their beat ...

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Are record stores worth saving?

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

On the face of it, it seems a ridiculous question. Are record stores worth saving? I'm a huge music fan - of course I'm supposed to think they're worth saving. And I do... kind of. Just not for me. Record stores are for the nostalgic, and the audiophiles, and the ...

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NYC's Steve Reich Wins Pulitzer in Music

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced this afternoon, and among the winners -- New York based composer Steve Reich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. WNYC's John Schaefer was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Jury that chose Reich.

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News from New Orleans

Monday, April 20, 2009

It's getting close to 4 years since the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina put the plight of New Orleans on the front page of the news. And inevitably, it has been pushed further and further down the list of daily news stories. But things in New Orleans are not yet "back ...

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