SpHEARS: The Academy Records Radio Hour: Recent Episodes
Academy Records
Initially broadcast over the airwaves on SMFAtufts 1630 Am station, the SpHEARS program brings to you a roster of guests where, over the course of the season, guests play and discuss seminal sounds, tracks, or sonic events that have inspired their work. Volume I ran from December 2018 to the Summer of 2019. Volume II began in November of 2019 and is currently on hiatus due to our current state of affairs. This site archives the show for those not able to listen to the original broadcast or stream. Additionally, your can search each episode title on Spotify for each show's individual playlists. For more information on Academy Records please visit www.academyrecords.org
Liz Corkery, artist/printmaker extraordinaire recently relocated to the West Coast joined us for an episode of dramatic notions back in April 2019 . We discuss all things narrative, diorama-esque and cinematic impulses in patterning and timbre. Dig in with the headphones and listen to Boris Karloff's sonorous voice later in the hour as we set the stage, screen and screen (printmakingly speaking, as it were) for some sonic story hour.
April 20, 2019 SpHEARS had long time Academy Records friends, Cara Kuball and Damon Bishop come on the show to talk all things pancakes, publishing and pubescence. They run the long standing film festival, the International Pancake Film Festival. Remember when you first got into music? Long drives with the fam, NOW meetings with the grown ups in your county? Well...Damon and Cara do and they fill us in on the trials and tribulations of just wanting to do good in society. Girls to the Front with a hot plate of steaming cakes and give it a listen!
Stuff referenced: Unit B Gallery, San Antonio, ASMR, Boat Rides, Echo Park Film Center, Billy Mumy, Fishheads, Boston Compass, Brattle Theatre, Winter of the Witch, Chip n Dale, I Got It, TeenBeat, Sassy, Women and Children First, Diver Down, Bikini Kill, The Fall, Vito Acconci, Gallagher, Feminism. Betty Freidan, James Caan, Dragnet, Flash Gordon, Branch Dividians, Dead Milkmen, NOW, fIREHOSE, Firehouse, How's Howard, Davey & Goliath, Nighthawk, Nightingale Cinema, Starksy and Hutch, National Lampoon, Fletch, Steely Dan, Hollywood Theatre, Mike Kelley, MCA Detroit, Pat Falco, Newton Art Center, Floor Length and Tux, Spider Bug, Winnie the Pooh, Hub Comics, Quimby's, SMFA Art Library, Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection, Sue Grafton.
Where Are You Tonight? I know where I'll be and it'll be sitting and listening as Ken Tighe, painter extraordinaire appears (audibly at least) on SpHEARS back in Spring 2019 and we trip ( or is it trapped?) the light fantastic, sonically speaking on all things Dylan, Caravaggio, Chip and Dale and the rest of the motley gang, as it were...so it goes. Light does move at the speed of sound...or is it vice versa painter man?
Mimi stopped by the studio on a great spring day back in 2019 and we had great rap about punk, post punk, art school, photography, jeans, mosh pits all while we try and break down how even alt scenes don't veer too far from the majority, patriarchachly speaking that is. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss anybody? She selected a great track from your fav and mine Sleater-Kinney but we wandered all around the genre dial and as usual I picked too many response tracks to fit in our schedule. Sit back, headphones on and take off, eh?
Lean Triplett Harrington joins us on Sphears for a great conversation about Finding you way and how music helps present pathways for discovery, as it were, as it is. She chose tracks by Nirvana, Eliot Smith and Crooked Still. This episode took my down the path of Boston's sounds from the 60's until now. Good finds!
Providence based artist Jim Drain came on the show March 9, 2019 to talk about Belafonte's turn with Day-O or what is oftentimes called the Banana Boat Song. We dug deep and travelled far. Sit back and enjoy the soothing sounds on this one.
Now Brooklyn's own Marcela Caruso and Arthur Daraujo previously of Boston then Previously Sao Paulo come on SphEARS for Episode 9 with a selection from the great Tim Maia. We talk all things travelling, jazz, baiao, cults and MBP. Tasty!
Jim Woodside, a painter hailing from Massachusetts came on the show back in March and talked about the great cover of Just Like Tom THumb's Blue's by Nina Simone. Tune in to hear the convo on SpHEARS episode 8!
Amy Beecher, Artist, educator and podcast host extraordinaire came on SpHEARS for a lively discussion about food based innuendo in food, being a young new yorker discovering Riot GRRL, cake tastings and how it all wound up to make the totality we all know and love as Amy.
Yuri Stone, Assistant Curator at the MIT List Center for Visual Art joins us on the fifth episode of SpHEARS (12/18/18 for those keeping track). Yuri and I knew each other a bit back from our Chicago days and we talked about all things art, cities, and hardcore related. Not much difference between apartment galleries and putting on rock shows in your basement turns out. Yuri has since moved on from Boston, where this show was recorded to Washington DC. Here's a few of the tracks we played that day....I'll get around to posting hashtags of the concepts and events we referenced as well.
The Microphones: The Glow Part 2, Neutral Milk Hotel: Song Against Sex, Eric's Trip: Behind the Garage, The Royal Trux: The Theme from M.A.S.H., You Only Live Twice: Alvarius B and many more to add later.
Stuff referenced: Martin Kippenberger, Maximum Rock n Roll, The Renaissance Society, Baltimore Hardcore, and tons more.
You can still listen to the tracks we selected over at Spotify: check out the playlist at: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ERDViGjTcClakQPTjSTqR