8 songs in 8 hours

This is sort of intriguing. As the music business changes, artists change with it (or I guess it's really the other way around). 'Ben Folds, Damian Kulash (OK Go), Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls, solo), and author Neil Gaiman will write and record eight songs in eight hours (4:00 p.m. to midnight) at Berklee College of Music, Monday, April 25, and release them 10 hours later during Rethink Music, in Boston. Like Radiohead did recently, this group will show how recording and release schedules are no longer bound by distribution challenges.' More... (Via)

And the tension mounts!

You go to the movies, and before the feature starts there's about twenty hours of previews, all calculated to get you all heated up about these coming attractions. Of course, these previews are created before the movies are completed, and often bear little or no relationship to the final feature. And sometimes they bear such a resemblance that you think you've seen the whole movie and now you don't have to. But have you ever noticed the music? This article shows how the same music is used over and over. Play some of the samples, and if they don't make your heart race, you're probably not going to be going to the movies any time soon. (Via)

Where are the Broadway musical singers?

I admit to being a musical fan, going back to my first exposure to Broadway, Mary Martin as Peter Pan. (I also saw her in The Sound of Music. My parents loved Broadway and I went along willingly.) But this NY Times post raises an interesting question. Are we going to lose the great voices of Broadway in exchange for celebrity encounters? 'Are we entering an age when being able to sing to a high standard is no longer a requirement for making appearances in even first-class musical theater productions? The unhappy answer is probably yes. The casting of movie stars has been de rigueur for revivals of classic plays for some time now on Broadway, but in the past couple of seasons we’ve seen the trend encroaching on musical theater terrain, too.' More...

Book binding

MobyLives featured this video from the Toronto Standard. As they say, it "is an excellent reminder that, as books become more and more disposable, there are still people out there who value the book as an object and will go to great lengths to preserve the very special ones."

MADE IN TORONTO, THE BOOKBINDER from Toronto Standard on Vimeo.

Poetry films

Open Culture pointed us to this series on YouTube. There's something about seeing images while listening to poetry that synchronizes the images seen by the eyes with the imagery heard in the words. This is worth spending a little time with.

Caroline Kennedy's poetry anthology

NPR talks to Caroline Kennedy about her new book, a collection of favorite poems. 'Kennedy's mother, Jacqueline, was instrumental in instilling in Caroline a love of poetry. Every holiday, Caroline and her brother, Jack Jr., were asked to present a poem as a "gift" to the family. "She [still] had to buy us presents," Kennedy clarifies with a laugh. "I just want to make clear that this was a one-way deal." But Jacqueline really wanted the children to select poems they liked as their presents to her. "I think it was a wonderful way of opening up an exploration and discovery that was completely self-motivated, no homework, no pressure."... It's a family tradition she has carried on with her own family.' More...

Robin Williams on Broadway

Williams is starring in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo; playing a tiger, actually, in a play about the war. Time.com takes the opportunity to ask the actor ten questions. His answers range from funny to serious. 'My feelings about the war are about ghosts. I was just there recently, and [everything is] "winding down." What do you leave there when it just ends? There's a line in the play: "The Americans think when something dies, that's it, it's over." But when you go to the Middle East, you realize there's a real sense that things stay around.' More...