There was some interesting material presented in this feature on fueling a van with restaurant grease—and a planned trip across the country to publicize this alternative furel. There was straight-forward reporting and some nice scenes. I would call it an OK feature. The voice over narration needs a little coaching and the scene setting could have been a tad stronger.

This was a very well produced piece by a young African American woman Auliya Jackson. It tells a heart-felt story that left me with a lot of questions after hearing it. The piece starts out with Auliya talking about how she is on a trip to Georgia to meet the grandmother she has never met. She recounts the drive through rural Georgia—passing through “a butt crack town” where there was confederate flag slowly waving in the wind. This rightly freaked her out a bit.

Then the diary makes a surprising transition to a scene where her dad is upset because she didn’t bring dress clothes or shoes, and he starts asking his sister if she has anything to lend Auliya. They then go to grandma’s house and she starts looking at photos. There are none with grandma in them. At this point she remarks that she has never even seen a photo of grandma and today’s grandma’s funeral. This is the first time we hear that her grandma had died—and we are 6 ½ minutes into the 9-minute diary. And it is still holding my attention.

From there we hear some clips from the lively funeral itself and then to some reflective thoughts hours later. She finally got to see an obituary photo on the printed funeral program. In tears the diary ends with Auliya saying that she never got to see or even talk to her grandmother and now she is buried.

Auliya came across as a thoughtful young woman—who in her own way raised very significant issues. In the present day, surely she could have or should have had at least a photo or numerous phone conversations with her grandma. Why not? Whatever the reason, it left me sad for her, her family and whatever situation prevented such important intergenerational interaction. This was a very well done piece and I only wish it would have filled in more blanks—but that is sometimes what happens with a well-told and presented slice of life diary.

This montage features two Texans who attended the Republican National Convention in New York City. One is the chaplain of the Republican Party of Texas and the other is a delegate who is coming to her second after last being at the convention that nominated Ronald Reagan. This was a very well-done montage. The production values were outstanding, the editing was clean and the some of what the conventioneers had to say was insightful—which is unusual in montages. I especially liked the quote from the chaplain that went something like, “I’m here to stand for righteousness…here to fellowship with others of like minds.” What a quote and what an insight. Very nicely done.

In this 13+ minute interview, M. Travis DiNicola talks with David Wilson from the Museum of Jurassic Technology. The piece starts with a very long read into the two-way. The interview rambles from considering the museum’s microscopic works, to a long discussion on micro-miniature artists and engineers who push themselves beyond limits to do such things as carve sculptures of the Pope’s bust into individual strands of human hair, to very tangential material about some famous magician (who I have not heard of) who is a big fan and supporter of the museum. What was the purpose of this interview? I certainly was left with the impression that this is a very unique museum—but I got little sense of what I would see or experience if I were to visit. This topic would have been better handled with feature report treatment. I wanted to hear a simple general overview of the museum, then some of the peculiarities that a visitor might encounter and then introduce the genius behind it.

In this piece a member of a small Texas tribe, John Black Feather, takes us behind the scenes of what goes on in a public Pow Wow. The piece has a number of nice scenes and uses a lot of natural sound. The production itself was well done and well mixed. There wasn’t really anything new or insightful in the piece. It was a loose narrative strung together with excerpts of Native American drumming. After having extensive exposure to the Navajo and Hopi of northern Arizona in my previous job, I think there can be a tendency sometimes to treat many topics involving Native American customs and traditions almost too gently and reverently. The tradition certainly deserves the attention. But what is the intention of this radio piece? Who is the intended audience? There have been so many radio pieces on Pow Wows and this one didn’t cover enough territory for me and much of the information was almost too much at a surface level for such a lengthy feature report.

Wouldn’t it be great to be sent on assignment to Iran and put together a multi-part audio journal of your experience? I hope Vermont Public Radio picked up all the bills on this one. I listened to the first part of this five-part series. There were some very nice scenes from arriving at the Iran airport and coming face to face with a swarm of humanity on exiting the terminal to hearing his brother call out the Iranian pronunciation of his name when he came to pick him up. For those who like audio travel-logs, this is a very competent production. It covered a lot of territory. Almost to quickly for me. I wanted more substance than such a treatment provided. The production was nicely voiced and presented and the audio quality was exceptional.

As a Program Director of a large network I would have a hard time placing this program on the air. I also don’t think it would fit on a more adventuresome music stream aimed at 20-30 year olds. I applaud the effort to present new and varied music to listeners and he’s obvious the host is a big fan of Mum. I can tell he put a lot of effort into the interview and its production. That said, to me it sounded a tad crunchy, the music fought with the narrative and the narrative itself was rather ready. I listened to about 10 minutes of the program and knew I had heard enough. I am not in the demographic that this program is aimed at and neither are the present audiences that I program to. So I’m basing this review more on a personal reaction to the piece and the production approach that I’m most familiar with.

This was a very unique story that covered a lot of ground, numerous sources, scenes and much information. It tells of the best way for a musician to stay healthy; to understand how the mind and body work. It tells of some of the hazards of being a musician from the trumpeter who pops his lips to a Broadway singer who performed night after night in front of the exploding effects during the musical Tommy. The story aired previously on Studio 360, it’s a very nice piece and I would considered airing it had it not already aired in that program.

Fight the Bush presents a string of chest thumping clips from President Bush. Each of these are presented out of context but the effects of them strung together with the fight the power music underneath would only resonate with someone who already has strong negative feelings about the President. Frankly there is no way I could ever justify putting this piece on the air because of its strong one-sided point of view. That said it’s very well produced and a creative piece of audio. There’s been a number of such pieces produced over the years and this is a well-done piece of audio production that may find a home on the web but not likely on a major market public radio station.

This piece had a fascinating editing style, where breaths are taken out, different effects are placed on the narrator’s voice at appropriate places and unique long pauses at key junctures in this strange story. The story itself and the storytelling were very well done, but it didn’t keep my interest throughout. I think it has to do with the fact that this 20-minute piece could’ve been 10 minutes shorter. Frankly, although the editing style was unique, it got tiring after five minutes. The ear is use to listening to breaths and the ends of sentences and the brain uses that opportunity to digest what was just presented. The story needs more of those opportunities to allow the listener to catch up with the narrator. The story was dark, had surprising twists and had a unique portrayal about the despair of alcoholism. It’s so unique that, although I wouldn’t air it as it presently stands, it is worth a good listen because of the very unique story telling method and production finesse.