Posted by: Nick van der Kolk on May 23, 2008 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

On a Sunday afternoon in 1977, audio artist Max Neuhaus, along with thousands of listeners, took over the NPR airwaves. Callers whistled into the phone, and Neuhaus processed their sounds into an ethereal, wandering, two-hour-long soundscape. (Roman Mars told the story on Re:Sound a couple years ago, but I couldn't find an online archive.) Oh yeah, and NPR was cool with it.

Having grown up on public radio long after those early days, it boggles my mind to hear stories like this. I imagine a strange audio universe completely unlike what you hear today. I mean, Joe Frank used to anchor All Things Considered for God's sake. Can you imagine Robert Siegal telling a deadpan story about his lover's unusual attraction to lions?

It's not that I don't like most of public radio, I really do. It's just that there's an important missing piece: a sense of playfulness and experimentation. That's why it was way past time for me to make it out to Radio Without Boundaries--especially after hearing Justin describe it in person. RWB is one of the few outposts for that experimentation (at least one that's easily accessible to a lot of Americans), and I can't wait to be challenged, confused, maybe a little upset. Because sometimes that's the only way to think differently about our own work.

More from Deep Wireless 2008 :
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