Each year for the past four or five years, I’ve stumbled across the wonderful Third Coast Audio Festival. This festival celebrates the finest audio documentaries, created by expert interviewers and sound crafters. I’ve always been drawn to audio, and when NPR takes the time to broadcast the winners of the festival, it brings my day to a screeching halt. The most I can do for the next few hours is sit and listen, or perhaps wash dishes – but not too loudly!
This year was just like the others; I’d forgotten about the festival, and just accidentally happened to be listening to the radio as the show began. Give yourself a treat and make time to do nothing but listen to the Gold Award winner, “Birth Mother”. I bet it will touch you as much as it did me. Here are all of this year’s winners (perhaps for a limited time only).

Occasionally big companies do things that are really cool. DirecTV decided to partner up with XM Radio. I’ve been avoiding the idea of paying for another damn subscription service, even though XM has one station which I just love: “Beyond Jazz”, a modern jazz station. There aren’t enough paying public radio customers in most metro regions to support a regular jazz station, let aloe a modern jazz one. “Beyond Jazz” became my “while travelling and in an Avis rental car with XM” station.
On November 15, all of DirecTV’s digital music channels flipped to XM Radio channels, so now instead of “Soundscapes” (relaxing music) or “Songs of the Season” (usually mild electronica when it’s not a holiday), I can get my modern jazz fix through my TV. And since they display the artist and song title for each song, it’s probably going to be bad for my pocketbook in the long run. I’m okay with that though.

Sigh. From an article by David Pogue at the New York Times:
“Overall, Sony’s general incompetence when it comes to digital music boggles the mind. First there was its ‘iPod killer’ music players, which were initially released without the ability to play a little file format called MP3. Then there was its disastrous Connect music store, whose design was so wasteful of screen space it was almost unusable. And now the astonishing move to copy-protect all of its music CD’s-ironically, in some cases, over the strident objections of the actual bands-with software that behaves like spyware.”

Crazy stuff from the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR). Check out this video of GuitarBot playing the EmergencyBot TV Theme.

So I’ve been having a good time with my emusic subscription, although admittedly sometimes I wonder month to month whether there will be albums there that I’ll really want. So far, the Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bjork selections have been enough to justify my monthly subscription fee.
This month, for example, I’ve downloaded the majority of Bjork’s Live Box, which is four CDs – one for each of her four independent albums prior to Medulla. It’s really, really great stuff. I was bummed that I missed a recent tour she had, but being able to listen to all these tracks from concerts has been wonderful. Highly recommended if you’re a Bjork fan.
On the other hand, I’ve been listening to tracks she did for the soundtrack of Drawing Restraint 9, and I’m totally not grokking them. It’s a soundtrack album, not an ALBUM album, but urk. I loved the Dancer in the Dark soundtrack though. Hmmm.