It's great to hear little kids go nuts like this about a big, loud, band. The kids were pretty hyper, and a lot of their tape is a little peaky, but fun. I would have liked a little more narration to help understand the scene visually. It would have been nice to hear from the guy in the monkey costume who was afraid of the mob of kids as well. Overall a sweet little piece that channels the enthusiasm of kids really well.

The first tease of tape, was a little hard to understand. I liked the background sounds of traffic and car alarms. The tree seller was warm, and likable, and the end punchline was really great.

The Louis Armstrong song was neat at first, and then a little distracting, especially once the tree seller started talking about travelling around the world. You felt like he was in a different place, and you wanted the music to either end, or change, to reflect the transition in topic.

I wanted a little more from him though! It's a nice short piece, but I wanted to fill out the Christmas-tree selling part of his job first, before we get to the Buddhism stuff. I thought it could have easily been a nice 4-6 minute little feature.

Fun & Seasonal!

The ideas in the work (and this piece) are so many, and so varied, that they do that job for you. In perhaps in the strongest testament to Wagner's musical genius (or the piece's editing?), the ideas are held tightly together by the promise of the music itself, deftly interwoven through key musical passages. The disparate interviews (talking about Food, Jung, Zeppelin, Incest, Answering Machine Messages) and music work together to give a resounding, if impossible to summarize, answer to that nagging question radio listeners everywhere must ask about a piece: "so what?"

A fast overview of the Ring at the beginning might have been nice -- but probably also impossible. This thing is too big to digest in any less time. And the ending is exactly right. Well worth the hour.

The Valentine, 1955 leads up to a perfect pivotal moment between two children as race and culture drive a wedge between them. It is a great moment, an important moment to understand, but then the piece just drops us there. I would have liked a little more time just to digest what had happened. If this was played on the radio, I can't imagine what you would say to follow up to those last words.

Who knew that trick about hitting the high note? Short, but a pleasant and surprising little break from the norm.

Somebody had to say it, and it's said clearly here. I can't decide if I like this or not, which to me is a sign of clear originality. There would have been a bigger payoff for me if at somepoint there was a line about why people don't have anything to say, but perhaps it would defeat the purpose.