Lang Lang This, like the others in the series, is very well-articulated and interesting. These quick-paced pieces offer color and insight into the featured artists without fawning or allowing the artist to engage in billowing self-indulgence. The producer also offers a nice mixture of musical genres.

Even though these are good pieces, we'd never come up with a good idea for how to use them until the producer amde a great suggestion. One of the artists (this featured artist), Lang Lang, is coming to town. Airing it is a great way to offer an interesting piece, demonstrate your connection to the arts, and not have to devote your own staff time to doing so! Another great way to let PRX make your station sound better with a minimal resource investment (sorry if that sounds like a commercial, but it’s true).

The producer might actually try to focus on touring performers, thus providing a solid local connection to stations.

The music and singers are quite charming...and the piece works on many levels, with references(or at least inferences) to feminism, Latin-American machoism, U.S. cultural dominance, romance...all in all pleasant, informative and thoughtful, a very nice combination.

This piece offers a rich and personal introduction into an entire community and way of life, from a simple yet highly entertaining perspective (a popular hang-out). It is a tale that may be re-invented/produced in small towns accross the US, yet is delightfully effective in conveying the unique flavors of its particular location. The textures and cadence of the piece make for a very enjoyable listening experience.

This is a very good radio piece. We've heard the story before -- Post Partum Peace Corps Disorder -- but told with audio diaries and some production flourishes it sounds different and fresh. The narrator uses her Thirteen Symptoms of Chronic Peace Corps Withdrawl ("...1: subscribing to music normally only found in a library; 2: salivating to the sounds of polyrhythmic music...") as a framework to move around in time and space. We hear her reflections before, during and after her experience living in Benin, Africa nicely edited with some great African music. There's a lovely description of the proper way to clean a dirt florr. The piece ends beautifully. Newspeg: Peace Corps celebrates 43 years in March 04.

Definitively the kind of piece I'd like to hear on the radio. Both Michelle and her father are consumed with the struggle to make "order out of chaos" and the jigsaw puzzles become a symbol of as well the literal place where their struggles meet. It's a look at puzzles of all kinds--one woman's relationship with her father reveals a host of other truths about family and divorce, about tradition and what it does or doesn't mean, and ultimately about what lasts--what survives the failures of love. Eloquently, wittily and compellingly structured, told and scored.

This is a listener-friendly fun piece that makes a pretty good case for Karaoke. How did THEY know how easily I dismissed the activity (without ever having set foot in a Karaoke bar)?
But NOW I get it. Anybody who can hit that high note in Jay and the American's Cara Mia deserves a spot on your station.

It’s a window onto such a small, mundane moment, but still, within it, there is a feeling of an abyss being crossed. The reading style is quiet. It doesn’t over dramatize and over-reach. It is personal in the best sense, in that it communicates a sense of Adam’s personality. I hope I’m not spoiling anything by quoting to you the last line of the piece. I don’t think that I am: “He was a nice man but if I saw him again I probably wouldn’t have recognized him or his wife.” How often does a story on the radio end that way? I’d say not often, but stories end like that all the time in real life. It’s nice to hear something like that owed up to. It is honest and well written with echoes of Scott Carrier. It isn't newsy and there is no grand point, but it does make you feel less alone in the city.

Having recently produced a piece on karaoke singing myself, I found this interesting and informative. Ben seemed to interview all the right people who had thoughful insights to share, and I loved the non-Vietnamese guy who prefers singing in Vietnamese. I also got a good sense of what the place is like.

I really like the personal commentary in this piece. I think the producer makes some valid points (Selling nick-nacks via FedEx) and tells a good narrative.

Somehwere along the 4 or so minutes however it just seems to go a little flat, and then ends with no real point being made. Also the hushed tones and dreamy music don't help it in my opinion.

I would like to hear this on the radio in a slightly version.

Another strong piece from the Salt alum and the mean streets of Portland, Maine. The L. H. Karaoke Lounge shares its storefront with a pawnshop, a travel agency, a Vietnamese restaurant and a tailor but on weekend nights it becomes a popular hangout for Vietnamese crooners. If art imitates life, then karaoke imitates the life of Asian immigrants. I think many of the Salt pieces are deserving of airtime outside of the Maine listening area. A Salt series or a Salt special (maybe paired with a two-way with Salt radio director Rob Rosenthal) could be a terrific one-off idea for a station interested in highlighting how radio gets made.