Random Tape

A failed pilot for a weekly radio segment

A class of four-year-olds remembers an old friend

An ICU nurse on life inside the pandemic

Im performing live as a guest on Stagefright, hosted by Lolly Goodwoman at SatJune 20th   7-9pm followed by a 72-hour afterparty.  

Today we feature an episode of another podcast. 

anyone else missing the rain?

Happy 420 y'all

An old story that aired on WWOZ in 2011.

Queremos Paz y Libertad

An iPOD voice memo recording of a tune I came up with at a piano in Newton, MA in 2012 at 11:11 AM.

A rough draft of a story about Roosevelt High School'd 2019 Prom.

A message from your friendly neighbor Sergio

This is raw tape of a phone call from somewhere in the depths of 2007

The begining of a great love story.   To hear the rest visit www.belowtheten.com

Live Radio on an island

This tape came from a thirft store in the desert. Written with purple marker on the label was "To Ray from Mike 2/3/93"

Thanks to Steve Degroodt for sending me this recording he made of a bluegrass band playing during the 1978 earthquake in Santa Barbara.

Found Tape from the Cassette Library Album.

On December 22nd Hollywood Park closed after more than 75 years. This is the story of the rise and fall of one of America’s greatest horse racing tracks.

They rarely tlak to the media.

The Piano Van Chris Stroffolino plays some tunes from inside the World Famous Piano Van. This is a companion episode to a story I produced for Episode 7 of The Organist. see the van in action at www.pianovan.com

Kenneth and Miriam ring in the New Year.

A found tape from the south by way of the desert.

Little Daddy sets the scene outside the King Eddy Saloon in Skid Row.

A voice mail and conversation with the one and onle--Lewis Greenberg.

A Story by Nason Smith.

Meet Steve Sharp. His mission: To spread love and celebrate peace every Friday from five to seven…

All the answers to last weeks cliffhanger are revealed...

This tape was made by Paul a man in New Jersey to let his family know that he didn't want them to interfere with his plans to go on a diet he hoped would cure him of AIDS. Logan Jaffe found this tape at a yard sale in Gainesville Florida.

My brother-in-law Matthew has perfect pitch. So we spent a day going around the house looking for objects that make sounds and determining their pitch.

Mastering the art of the followup quesiton.

A HUANTED Teddy Ruxpin Tape.

This man was killed by Drew Carey! (Sort of)

This song showed up right after September 11th at the college radio station where my friend was a DJ.

Election night 2008 at Sydney's Saloon in New Orleans.

Listening to tapes on the roof with Matthew.

That's a century in human years!

A poem by Jim Tascio.

This is what the world may sound like after the Apocaplypse.

William Stout is best known for his dinosaur paintings. But he also worked in radio, did the storyboards for Thriller, and Raiders of the Lost Ark and deisgned the characters for Pan's Labrynth. But he got his start drawing portraits and Disneyland. This is a story of those humble beginnings.

This may be an infinite fatal reset loop.

Thanks to Myke Dodge Weiskopf for this recording of a call to prayer in Timbuktu

Late one night I picked up a strange signal on my radio dial...

The man they myth, no really the myth who is this guy?

It's Alive!

Frank Lloyd Wright recorded hundreds of talks in the living room of his desert compound, Taliesin West. In this talk Wright expounds on anarchy.

Architect, 1 percenter and desert hobo David Doge didn't intend to design a musical staricase in his magnificant home on the outskirts of Phoenix. The song in this episode is My Xylophones Love me by Melodium

Late on night Matthew Kielty got a mysterious call from an unkown number...

What keeps the taggers tickin?

We talked about it.

On a recent trip to central America, Dennis Conrow wrote and recorded a short story and enlisted the help of some locals in San Pedro, Guatemeala to be characters in the story. This is some raw tape and an excpert form the porject.

This is what english sounds like to someone who doesn't speak it?

When Dan Newman 's ice boat crashed through the surface of the frozen lake he had no idea he was about to do something that had never been done.

The sound of the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca, Minnesota.

An awkward moment with Jeffrey Lewis.

A collection of field recordings made around the State of Colorado between 1982 and 1987.

I lent my friend Moose a tape recorder and he returned it with with tape full of interviews he had done with his friends. One of those interviews was with Herbie, an artist who collaborated with a couple bearded friends to make a sculpture called Re-Neavus. I cut it up and added some music by Barin Darnew.

Speed Levitch giving one of his signature wlaking tours of Columbia, Missouri.

Luke Cumberland is a second-year student in the MFA writing program at Washington University.  He is editor of the anthology "Faces of Virginia Poetry", available on LuLu.com. His most recent poetry has been published on StatusHat.org. He is from Virginia; he lives in St. Louis and he has never lost an arm wrestling match in his life.

I found this recording in a box of old tapes. I think I picked it up at a thrift store in Louisiana. It appears to be role playing excercises at a beauty school.

Nason Smith's nonfiction has appeared on NPR: Hearing Voices and his fiction has been published in The Pinch. He lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Welcome to Florida. You look great!

One of the great things about New Orleans is that you can set up a card table and sell booze in the street. This is what it sounds like.

My friend Keaton was having some trouble working on a tandem bicycle at the bike shop he works at when a customer recommended a solution he found on the internet.

Film maker Karim El Hakim told this story at a live storytelling event at the True/False Film Festival.

This cover was performed by Walt McClement on banjo and Mary Go Round (the one time holder of the world record for spinning the most hoola hoops at once: 76 if my memory serves me correctly) on accordion and vocals. The song All the Pretty Horses is about the and the Army Corps of Engineers decision to dynamite the levee at Caernarvon, Louisiana to save New Orleans. The breach caused a flood that displaced thousands and was later deemed unnecessary. Check out the book   I recorded this late one evening in the upstairs of Mimi’s in the Marigny in New Orleans.

I was walking my dog the other night when I came across Larry Boutan sitting on a concrete wall drinking a beer. I bought some beers and joined him. This is the story of Larry’s very first beer.

is the band director at O Perry Walker High school in New Orleans. He runs one of the best marching bands in the state along with a concert band and a Jazz ensemble. Rawlins doesn’t just teach kids to play an instrument though, he provides discipline for a lot of kids who live in a chaotic environment. He teaches them about commitment and the benefits of hard work and education. He puts in a tremendous amount of work at O Perry Walker. When you ask him what the reward is for the countless hours he puts into teaching he says it’s a single moment that lasts for one maybe two seconds. This is an excerpt form a story I did a few years ago which you can listen to Wilburt Rawlins Jr. is also featured in the book Photo by: Susan Poag / The Times-Picayune

The Sound of Suffocation.

James Arthur’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, New England Review, and Narrative. He has received the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize. Charms Against Lightning, his debut poetry collection, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. During 2012 he will be in residence at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, Massachusetts. Photo by: Sean Hill

I came across this piece of found tape today. I know nothing about it.

A deleted scene from a story I produced for Marketplace Morning Report.

They get fucked up in strange ways in Sweden.

A recording of a tornado siren in a park in St. Louis, MO.

Thaddeus Conti reading an excerpt from his poem Invite to the Pestilent with live musical accompaniment by Josh Wexler and Sunny Metha. You can purchase Thaddeus’ book http://www.amazon.com/%C3%A6poetics-Thaddeus-Conti/dp/1935084011. And you can hear the full version of this piece http://www.prx.org/pieces/47733-invite-to-the-pestilent Photo by:

I can only assume Garrett was moved by the Christmas spirit when he left me this message. Or perhaps he was wasted on egg nog.

Ever wondered how a couple of straights can satisfy a lesbian? Look no further. A friend of mine sent me a CD of old radio porn that included this track titled The Threesome.

This poem appears in the October, 2011 issue of      Alec Hershman lives in St. Louis where he teaches at St. Louis Community College and at the Center for Humanities at Washington University. His poems can be found in upcoming issues of Denver Quarterly, The Journal, The Burnside Review, Sycamore Review, Juked, and online at , , and . He is currently poetry editor for .

I’m not exactly sure what the purpose of this device is but it makes cool sounds. It was attached to the outside of a train station in a small town in northern Italy.

Edgar spends most of his days sitting on a five gallon bucket in downtown Seattle. One night I hung out with Edgar and his friends and recorded their arguments songs and pushup competition. This piece was the first place winner of the Big Shed Verite+1 audio competition.

I recorded this a few years ago outside the Pompidou in Paris.

Philip Matthews is currently the Jr. Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis. His work has appeared in Trapeze, Phati’tude, Poets for Living Waters, and Sonora Review. He is continually influenced by surreal visual and sound art, and works as a gallery assistant at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

I attended a fancy party where a beautiful woman modeled a dress that was hooked up to a garden hose. The dress sent streams of water into the sky and reminded my friend of this sad tale of enema addiction.

Today's episode of Random Tape features a song by artist Daryl Waits. You can find the track, Jennifer Love on the album Eastern Front & Digital Penetration at paradeco.com

I was hanging out in Cabrini Park, a dog park in the French Quarter in New Orleans when Badass Emma saw my microphone and asked me to interview her. She told me the story of how she lost her dogs in Katrina and about her job as a cook. We talked about the good old days and the future of New Orleans. This is one of several vignettes that make up a portrait of one of the baddest ass women you’ve ever met.

I was hanging out in Cabrini Park, a dog park in the French Quarter in New Orleans when Badass Emma saw my microphone and asked me to interview her. She told me the story of how she lost her dogs in Katrina and about her job as a cook. We talked about the good old days and the future of New Orleans. This is one of several vignettes that make up a portrait of one of the baddest ass women you’ve ever met.

I was hanging out in Cabrini Park, a dog park in the French Quarter in New Orleans when Badass Emma saw my microphone and asked me to interview her. She told me the story of how she lost her dogs in Katrina and about her job as a cook. We talked about the good old days and the future of New Orleans. This is one of several vignettes that make up a portrait of one of the baddest ass women you've ever met.

I was hanging out in Cabrini Park, a dog park in the French Quarter in New Orleans when Badass Emma saw my microphone and asked me to interview her. She told me the story of how she lost her dogs in Katrina and about her job as a cook. We talked about the good old days and the future of New Orleans. This is one of several vignettes that make up a portrait of one of the baddest ass women you've ever met.

I was hanging out in Cabrini Park, a dog park in the French Quarter in New Orleans when Badass Emma saw my microphone and asked me to interview her. She told me the story of how she lost her dogs in Katrina and about her job as a cook. We talked about the good old days and the future of New Orleans. This is one of several vignettes that make up a portrait of one of the baddest ass women you've ever met.

Thaddeus Conti is the self-proclaimed poet laureate of Hog Alley. This poem can be found in Thaddeus’s book

My girlfriend recorded this gem while doing interviews for a radio story about in New Orleans.

This is the song of the barge, bobbing on the river near Hopeville.

I wore a wire for several years and secretly recorded my life. I recently produced for the radio show Wiretap. One of my ideas for the piece was to record myself calling up people from my past to explain that I had recorded them without their knowledge. This is a recording of one of those conversations. You can hear the Wiretap story here: http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap/episode/2012/01/20/man-vs-machine/

"Nothing can stop us. Not even if they try. Not even if they want to, or ask the question why. Mr. Torino, why did you lie to me in seventh grade?" -Mark Excelle Mercer IV

Sometimes you wish audio had pictures.

Most days you can find Tim Raines playing guitar on the corner of Ninth and Olive in downtown St. Louis. He's the electric guitar player with a stuffed bear dressed in prison garb perched on the lip of his guitar case.

James Arthur’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, New England Review, and Narrative. He has received the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize. Charms Against Lightning, his debut poetry collection, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. During 2012 he will be in residence at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, Massachusetts. Photo by: Sean Hill

When I was a kid I had this clown doll that would laugh when you pushed a button in its chest. It was terrifying. It's more the cackle of a chain-smoking maniac than the laughter of a clown but then again some clowns are heavy smokers.

I recorded this fiery sermon that I heard on the radio in West Virginia.

After a successful meal Captain Tom has no trouble patting himself on the back for a job well done.

Back when I was a deckhand on the M.V. Ptarmigan, a glacier tour boat in Alaska, I used to hang out in the wheelhouse and listen to Captain Tom tell stories. I called him up recently and asked him to tell me the one about about the time he won a ham in a furthest listening contest.

I spent an afternoon in the parking lot of the grocery store asking people to read me their grocery lists and these are a few of the responses i got.

Bill Keaggy responded to postings by musicians on fiverr.com who offered to write and record a song for five dollars. He sent each of them a found grocery list and asked them to record a song inspired by the list. This is my favorite track from , an album of songs inspired by found grocery lists which you can download for absolutely free here: http://www.grocerylists.org/

This is the sound of hundreds of electronic slot machines on the floor of Lumiere Casino in downtown St. Louis.

If you ever did any late night channel surfing between 1993 and 2001 you probably came across the legendary pitchman hollering about sports cards and Beanie Babies on the Shop at Home network. A friend of mine made a CD of some of the best and this is but a taste.

My cousin Gavin does the best T-Rex impersonation I’ve ever heard. It puts my terrible acting to shame.

Do you want the love of the fire? Cuz I’m not gonna wait around to give you my desire. For some reason an ex-girlfriend of mine gave her number to a guy who called himself The Dragon. Not surprisingly he left her a string of insane voice messages. These are just a few of The Dragon’s many attempts at wooing.

This is the sound of Matthew Shifrin using his BrailleNote—a computer for the blind that pushes plastic nodes through tiny holes to display text in braille.

Five Days after I began broadcasting classical music over one of St. Louis' existing Christian stations Albert Pujols announced he was leaving the St. Louis Cardinals for the Los Angeles Angels. Now what does Albert Pujols have to do with JOY-FM you might be asking. Pujols was one of the major donors to the down payment fund for the purchase of KFUO. I propose Pujols take JOY-FM with him and in exchange we get one of L.A.’s classical stations. We would even settle for kMozart 1260 AM. For this episode of Random Tape I hit the streets to find out what people in St. Louis think of Pujols’ departure.

Classical music station KFUO in St. Louis was one of the oldest radio stations west of the Mississippi. The stationed was owned by the Lutheran church up until last year when On July 6th, 2010 KFUO broadcasted Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor and then went silent. The following morning JOY-FM began it’s broadcast of Christian contemporary pop music. There are now six christian stations in St. Louis and zero classical stations. On Saturday December 3rd, I powered up the 40-watt FM transmitter I built and “tagged” a Christian station (89.5 FM) with Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor K. 626: Sanctus. For a couple square miles at least, you can hear classical music on the radio again coming from high atop the chimney of a This is a recording of the moment my signal went live.

My friend Casey was a holdout during Hurricane Katrina. He worked occasionally for a friend who owned Old Time Photo, one of those business where you take fake historical photos with your friends. On the night president Bush came to the city there was a seven-o-clock curfew. Casey was heading home at seven twenty when he had an encounter with a couple of state troopers. Casey tells the story of what happened next.

I was walking my dog the other night when I came across Larry Boutan sitting on a concrete wall drinking a beer. I noticed he was missing his right thumb so I asked him how he lost it. This is the story of that fateful night when a large woman started hurling canned goods at him…

Francis Matherne was the organist at St. Henry’s catholic church in New Orleans for 25 years. A while back he brought some of his poems over to my house so I could record them. This is a short clip from that recording session.

I came across this LP from 1963 that features three naked women playing bongos on the cover. It’s one of the most inexplicable recordings I’ve ever heard. Each side is a single fourteen-minute track of what appears to be two people having sex on a rusty bed while a man plays the bongos and shouts in what may or may not be a real language. I give you the final two minutes of side A. Now that’s what I call goddamn great drum music!

These voice messages were left on my friend Danny’s phone by his dad. They are two of my all-time favorites. We’ll never know how the second message ends. The machine cut Danny’s dad off mid-message.

I was reading in bed one night when I heard a strange sound coming from the foot of my bed...