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October 2004

Election Day Warmup Song Ballot

Friday, October 29, 2004

The musical content of Friday night's Spinning On Air will be determined by votes from the listeners. Here's an advance "absentee" ballot you can submit now, and host David Garland will take email votes during the show (9-11 pm). Listeners will vote for their preferred choice of two different possibilities for each musical selection, for example Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In the Wind" or The Free Design's "Kites Are Fun," Red Mitchell's "Declaration of Interdependence" or John Wayne's "The Pledge of Allegiance," Serge Gainsbourg's "New York USA" or Beverly Kenny's "This Little Town is Paris." There will be a mix of styles, and of familiar and obscure pieces. Garland will be joined by songwriter and raconteur Sport Murphy, and Garland and Murphy will each "campaign" for one of the alternatives in each pair. The point will be to give listeners a little bit of practice in making decisions and casting votes; kind of a warm-up for Tuesday! (That, and a fun music show.)

» Go here to submit your advance "absentee" Song Ballot


Electric+Acoustic

Friday, October 22, 2004

Up north, electricity is important. Not just for light and heat during those long cold nights, but for making music, too. Host David Garland presents some musicians from Norway, Denmark, Canada and elsewhere, who are using electronics to color and shape their music. Trumpeter/singer Arve Henriksen, the band Efterklang, and others, are finding new ways to combine electric and acoustic instruments to create an unusual and new orchestral sound. We’ll also hear some older electronic music; in fact we’ll hear “the world’s first attempt to compose popular electronic music”: the “Song of the Second Moon,” a 1957 piece by Dick Raaijmakers, plus other works from the entertaining new box set “Popular Electronics: Early Dutch Electronic Music 1956-1963.


Laura Veirs, Rachel Lipson

Friday, October 15, 2004

Against all odds, there are new guitar-playing singer/songwriters with new things to say and new ways to say it. Two such subtle innovators join host David Garland to play and talk about their music in the WNYC studio. Seattle-based Laura Veirs has gained an enthusiastic audience in Europe, and, with the Nonesuch release of her album "Carbon Glacier," is poised for wider exposure here. Her songs about the ocean, the creative impulse, and "topographic lines" have a sophisticated simplicity, and she plays a mean guitar. Rachel Lipson hasn't been widely heard yet, but this performance, which includes ukelele player David Herman Dune, gives you the chance to experience her stripped-down, understated, dream-like songs which have one foot in Woody Guthrie territory and the other in the avant garde.


Music from Montreal

Friday, October 08, 2004

Host David Garland visited Montreal recently, and has returned with evidence of its vital, intriguing music scene. Rents are still pretty cheap up there, and artists and musicians from Canada and elsewhere have gathered to experiment and share their work. Bands such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and A Silver Mount Zion have helped bring international attention to Montreal, and Garland speaks with Ian, one of the founders of Constellation, the feisty independent label that issues music by those bands and others.

We'll also hear from the groups Set Fire to Flames, and Shalabi Effect, and a few musicians making "folktronica" with laptops and acoustic instruments: Cian Ethrie, Peter + Petite Musique, and others. American Brian Lipson lives in Montreal these days, and we'll hear some of his surprising songs and trumpet drones. Here's a chance to hear some great but little-known music!


The Incredible String Band

Friday, October 01, 2004

The original Psych-Folk ensemble, The Incredible String Band, joins host David Garland to talk about their long career and to perform in the WNYC studio. Visiting the U.S. for the first time in 30 years, the British group has timed things well to coordinate with a resurgence of interest in their trailblazing, imaginative music. While most hippies were plugging in electric guitars, The ISB were using acoustic guitars, sitars, fiddles, lutes, and a vast range of other instruments to make wildly creative songs of rough-hewn virtuosity. They're first albums were released in the mid-Sixties, and their visit to Spinning On Air will bring us up to date. .

» See pictures of The Incredible String Band's visit to WNYC!