Essentialy a self told biography piece and and a damn good one at that. These are the hardest pieces to create. What to leave in what to leave out...and if the production values are not perfect, the story gets muddled.

No worries here. Buddy is comfortable and is enganged, telling stories about his favorite record, how live music influences him and a just the right pinch of the social realities of the blues.

Perfectly edited and produced. Stations who are not World Cafe subscribers should be able to find a place for this segment in a local news magazine or local music program.

This is a speedy piece that brings up questions about the topics they cover that may not have been brought up before. Pretty cool stuff because I learned something I didn't know what I wanted to know.

It's a straight ahead acts and tracks piece with some great atmosphere music at the start and end. The two topics covered (what happens when Digital TV is fully in place and a disturbing piece about a government paying for good press) are well chosen.

The pacing is a bit too quick to do these complex justice. I am sure these want to cram as much info as they can in alloted segment time...but sometimes less is more...just ask Clear Channel --right? :)

This is nice short piece. Good use of sound effects and actualities.

The writing is good, it's personal and introspective. The story of working with fish. The smells, the sounds, the resignation are highlighted in a very serious and slightly angst ridden way. Throw in a bit of guilty liberal slumming and we've got a piece that works over and over again public radio.

There are few interesting production techniques, like repeating a phrase from a supervisor on the dock. It kind of works like the repeated phrasing in a rap/hip-hop tune.

I might suggest that the levels of the narration should be brought up a bit and that the narrator should do a few diction exercises with a voice coach, but nothing that would prevent me from recommending the segment as is.

Strong and visual, this piece brings a tone of seriousness for fish and people. Kind of a weird thought I know, but take a listen.

Okay. This is a decent enough program. Music. Interviews. A good voice on the host. The topics for this particular show are -just nearly too cool for the room- which make them pretty darn good for public radio. I liked the music and did a little chair dance driving down the road.

But.... (and you knew there would be a but).

The interview segments are really long. Too long in fact and start to wonder and wander into that place we must never visit...self absorbsion land. The host seems to be intent on bringing up topics and questions that seem more about impressing the guest that he knows more about that person's career than anyone else. Sorry, and not to be snob myself, but I was left waiting for the music to kick back up again.

The author interview is actually quite interesting and is the best of the segments. I am impressed with the hosts delivery and timing. He is comfortable and well paced. Okay, time for the second but....the hosts nick name is bit too cool for the public radio room.

But...and this is the good but...this show is aimed at the college station market and these but's are bit more acceptable for a that segment of station. The music selections are interesting and contemporary.

All and All? Not a bad show that would work on many stations, but you will have to listen to see if it will fit on yours.

I love Merle's stuff. I love his thinking. But I feel like a traffic cop here.

SFX: Siren followed by car door opening and closing and foot steps on a gravel road.

Radio Cop: Buddy Where's the Fire? You know how fast you were going?

The speed of the narration is just too fast and while everything else is perfect, the delivery keeps us skipping accross the surface even thought the pool of thought is very deep. Not to mention entertaining.

But onto the content.

I'll encourage my Morning Show to run Merle's pieces on pop music and culture pieces. He has interesting observations that do make you chuckle. Deep? not really, but for God sakes not every commentary has to twist your emotions into a ball of self flaggellation.

This piece documents the strange ways 80s bands are hanging on to some sort of fame or infanomy. We all know about that right...hanging on beyond our time? Sure deny it. Just like your listeners except when sitting in the confessional of their front seat during a traffic jam!

I love the topic, but this is an advocacy piece. No apologies from this piece or hosts about browbeating the listener into environmental submission.

Hotels making an environmental effort to reuse and recycle. It's a great topic and after it gets into it, it's quite interesting about the many different ways hotels can save energy, money and land fill space.

HOWEVER, It tackles one of my favorite topics fist and frankly, and I don't think I am alone on this, the kind of topic that annoys me into rejecting the rest of what the piece has to say. Reusing your hotel towels. I admit it==I don't do this. I'm spending the money and for it I get clean towels every day. Glad to see the option, but the piece made me feel like a criminal because I don't whole heartedly subscribe to this plot to deny me of one of the last creature comforts in hospitality. So I didn't get emotionally invested in the rest of what the folks were saying for the rest of the piece. I had to listen three times to make sure I heard the meat of the story. Sorry Veggies.

If I were editing, I would have put the most popular way of conserving at the end instead of the beginning. I would have felt guilty then.

Now, to be sure, this piece is well written and the interview segments are nicely edited. But it still talks down to listeners.

Shake your groove thing baby and enjoy it!

This is a great commentary and personal diary that brings us together in our fears and mixes in our body image struggles. Great! I love the topic!

The writing is wonderful. Air This! It brings a short and wonderful story is sure to make your listeners smile. Use it inside a themed program of our own, or even in a music based music station morning show.

This is an interesting piece. For profit prisons are a big trend in America and mixing corrections and corporations are sure to mix it up in a big way.

However, I don't think this piece is balanced. While the reporter tells the story in a neutral way, the only clips we hear are from the prisoners bringing the law suite.

At the end of the piece we get two statements: One that the for profit operator won't comment and second, that the state department of prisons did not respond to a request for interviews. Also, the question that might have been asked is not stated.

This leaves the piece hanging in the air. Not getting a call returned does not, in my judgment, absolve the reporter from getting the other side of the story. It just makes it harder. For example, how did similar lawsuits turn out? Could someone from that state comment on the effectiveness of the prison and if these lawsuits are valid. Sure, it's a tough job to put this stuff together, but that's the job.

This piece is pretty interesting. It's got a lot going for it. And there is a lot of it. For an interview on a record label, there has to be a huge hook to keep the listener interested.

I am not quite sure that this topic and interview is worthy of an hour of air time.

Technically, there is some editing to do. The billboard and Newscast hole are not NPR starndard so you might want to triple check the timings if you use this piece. Also, there are gaps between the songs and the interview segments that should be tightened up.

To be sure, this is not AAA music. It's techno loud. I love it! It reminds of days gone by an youth gone out the window. There a long cuts of music interspersed with the interview segments that, frankly, are going to be shocking the vast amount of the public radio audience. I am not sure if and where we would use this on WTMD.

The interviewer is good. Well paced. Great Questions. But there seems to be bit of a disconnect. I learned a lot about this record label and it is an interesting story, but the subjects are not the best interviews. At 10 minutes, the story would be better told.

I Don't Have Clue Why I Like This Piece So Much!

I shouldn't like this. It uses that old cliché sound effect of the moving the dial up and down...with a knob! The static between stations, the whistle. Radios just don't do that any more. Now we haveDead Silence while scanning the digit counters. Pity.

This unhosted trip up and down the dial is full of Spanish Radio BIG VOICE stuff and song clips but then the dial stops and you get a short piece from folks talking about their music their lives, how politics of Uruguay figures in.

It moves, It grooves, it gives you information that you didn't know. It gives you a sense of what it is like to spend night riding up and down the main drag of Montevideo loving life.

I'm not sure what kind of stations can use this. It is a bit long. 6 mins would make it easier for AAA stations, maybe news stations a segment at this length is cool.

Give it a spin and see what you can do to bring this to the air!

You know, the Canadian Music Rule thing can be a good thing...In Canada, but it does limit, somewhat, the appeal for those of us south of the 49th Parallel. This show is Canadian so that is a consideration when it comes to the amount of American Artists on your air.

The music is nice, the Host ok. But there is too much talk for a music station and too much music for a talk station. There are no guests to interact with the host and there are several personal stories and commentaries that take us away from the music. The travel to Quebec is much too long for music stations.

As a needle drop show, it doesn't offer much that your local jocks can't do for your station, but new shows who want to sound hip an cool beyond World Cafe and Sounds Eclectic should consider this show.

Boy, This show is tougher to review than a drag pageant in Peoria. The royalty of public radio humor, a star studded, multi award winning cast...and I have a few notes. With all humility I proceed.

Let's confine them to the radio aspect first. This is a well produced for radio stage musical lasting over 2 hours. There are no breaks available except at the beginning and end of the hours. Not so good for air. A couple of 1 min music beds with a "and now back to" would have helped.

The recording is spectacular and so well produced you think you are there. The sound effects are so WOW you'll get caught up in the story.

So if you can deal with the above, air it...but now I go on.

Look, I'm no artist, but I know what I like. As the joke goes. I chose to review this because I am a gay man who likes to laugh. However, I found the story to be a one joke Borscht Belt cabaret. Hoover is a closet case and lets see how many over the top old gay jokes we can weave in. It's a death bed flashback on how he "loved" and kept his job while affecting Hollywood and American Culture. There are great characters (gangsters, Presidents, etc)

I listened to the whole show in my car too and from work. Maybe that is the problem, maybe I just needed a martini, not a latte. But I just thought most of the humor was borderline offensive without a strong enough insight enough in J. Edgar. However, John Goodman is a damn silly ass queen and the Dilinger in Jar stuff is funny.

The Man in Black is Still In.

This is wonderful piece and I can't wait to hear the rest of the series. Johnny Cash is an American who defies and defied so much of our culture. That paradox is clear in this piece and presented in thoughtful way...so much in fact, that I feel compelled to learn more about him.

That's good radio.

Some technical notes though. First, music beds under the extended interview segments would be helpful, especially for music stations. Music listeners don't want talk but as long as there is guitar strumming underneath the words, they'll be cool. Second, celebrity hosts are great if they are great hosts. This host is a bit flat, shame to say, but not so much to prevent any station from complaining or airing the program.

Be forewarned, this piece describes Johnny's political and social points of view with very little fussing. You wouldn't want a sanded down version of the Man in Black and this piece delivers.

I chose this piece to review before it was reviewed by another EB member. Let me see if I can put this question to the producer and the community. Our stations audiences are adults. PRX does a great job in providing a forum for youth producers to exhibit their work. By what standards should stations make choices about work produced by people 10 years younger than the bottom end of our demo? What is it that stations are looking for from young professionals?

This is wonderful produced piece. The music accentuates the story. And the first half is well written and documented. Unfortunately, the second half the segment falls short on story telling and objectivity.

Sad stories of our war dead are common in all media today, but this piece finds a truly horrific story of two lives ended by the most vexing emotion of humanity...hate..be it war or family violence. The irony of the combination to be examined in this piece is overwhelming. What a great story to found.

Now telling it is difficult. The first half of the piece is well done. The story telling of the husband's death in war is, while sadly is nothing we haven't heard before, told with dignity and objectivity.

Now here is where it falls short. First, the violent father element comes way out of left field midway through the segment. We've gotten to know the wife for about three and a half minutes with no background being offered. So when we get to her violent father who comes from overseas, we're hit out of left field with this information causing a bit of confusion that deflect listener interest.

Public Radio is emotional and you can't get more emotional than this story. But public radio isn't supposed to be preachy. By the end of this piece the writing falls down to youthful complaining and angst about the injustice of the war. To be sure, I don't personally disagree, but as a radio professional, my job is to put work on the air that expands my listener's thinking, as this story does. But my job is also to prevent work from getting on the air that points my listeners down a path that limits their thinking about this. At the end of this piece, that happens.

So, I am left with thinking about this: With the determined oversight of a more experienced producer, I think this piece could be driveway moment. The producer has all the required skills to grab the listener and a bit of editing and robust discussion could have made this piece a hallmark of public radio programming for more than just the time it was on the air. I encourage the producer to rework this piece because the story is just too good.

Ultimately, I find myself wondering if I want this kind of story from a younger professional? If this story came up in my newsroom I would have certainly assigned it to my most senior reporter. I have listened to several youth producer pieces and I find the pieces I find most compelling is when a young professional tells me how his compatriots are thinking and dealing with life. So I think the best thing this piece has done for me is to focus my thinking about what I am looking for in youth produced pieces and how I could incorporate them into our air.

WOW who could have thought you do a weekly series about The Rolling Stones successfully. Well these guys do! I’ve listened to several of these hours and it shows that the producer is both and expert in Rolling Stones minutia and how to put a radio show together.

Sure there are some standard bits like This Week in Rolling Stones History, but they are delivered with authority, control and relevance to the listener. I learned things no human should know this much about Mick and the Boys. The mix of music to talk is wonderful. The host tells listeners there will a 30 min set of music so there is a bit of a commercial radio feel, but no matter since everyone deserves music.

However, these bits date the show making it unusable outside the week it was created. I would encourage the producer to make sure the show is cut so that a station could pick up the back catalogue of these shows at any time. In non-comm AAA we often say we try to bring back the glory days of 70s-80s AOR stations. This host is the real deal. He harkens back to badult as young adult sensibility to public radio cool jock. In other words, he should be on the air at a Non comm AAA full time. He's got the vibe we want on our air.

This is one of those shows I could go on about. But I’ll stop myself short here and insist that you listen to an hour right now! I’m also emailing my PD and telling him this could be a great summer special series for us. Not that he listens to me you understand!

One tech note, the host sounds a bit tinny from time to time. Not sure if this bad recording or bad computer stuff. The producer should check on it.