Don’t Forget Us: Photographing the Oil Spill

Don't Forget Us. Grand Isle, LA

The biggest piece of bad news of the last 4 months seems to be getting less bad: the Deepwater Horizon oil well is plugged, and the spill is disappearing from the surface of the Gulf fast.  As the catastrophe fades the photographer Zoe Strauss is doing her part to keep our focus on the disaster – and how it continues to affect people who live on the Gulf.

Strauss grew up – and still lives – in working class South Philadelphia and was a late-comer to photography. She was given a camera for her 30th birthday and found she had a natural talent for portraits and cityscapes that capture the overlooked minutiae of urban life.

Since then she’s documented (in her disarmingly intimate style) the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, completed a decade long project bringing art to Philadelphia’s stretch of the I-95 freeway, published a book of her work, AND shown her images at the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

Strauss says her work is “a narrative about the beauty and difficulty of everyday life” so it makes sense that she felt drawn to document the effects of the recent oil spill on residents of the Gulf Coast.

Oiled Poms, Elmer's Island, LA

Kids on Oiled Beach. Waveland, MS

Strauss named the project On The Beach (after the haunting Nevil Shute novel) and she’s been posting her most striking images on her blog. Recently, Kurt spoke to her about the new project and heard about her suggestion for a fitting punishment for BP executives.

– Britta Conroy-Randall

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The Apples in Stereo Are Back from the Future

The Apples in stereo have been turning out impeccable indie pop tunes for nearly 17 years now.  The band’s latest album is something a little different: Travellers in Space and Time is a danceable concept album about time travel.

When the band stopped by Studio 360 recently, frontman Robert Schneider told Kurt Andersen that his inspiration for the album was a trip to Disney World’s “Tomorrowland.”  The album’s gleaming production — rife with synthesizers and vocoders — is meant to be an aural version of the theme park’s humorously outdated vision of the future.

The "miniaturization control" at Disney World's "Tomorrowland," circa 1967

So naturally, when The Apples showed up to perform in-studio, the band wore futuristic costumes.  Yes, they look a little silly to our 2010 sensibilities, but Robert assured us that they’re “impervious to time travel” (so maybe form follows function?).

[YOUTUBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYWK_0iPoi4]

And when you listen to the full interview, you can hear why Kurt believes the incredibly excited Robert may contain enough pent-up energy to blow up the planet.

[AUDIO=http://audio.wnyc.org/studio/studio070910b.mp3]

—Becky Sullivan

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James Dean of classical music

is what Tim Page the music critic called Glenn Gould. Privately they were close friends. When Gould had finished his legendary 1981 re-recording of the Goldberg variations he asked Tim Page, who was then a host of a music show at WNYC, to do an interview with him. Only, Gould would script it all! Casting his friend Tim Page in the role of music critic Tim Page and himself in the role as Glenn Gould and a fictitious actor “Sir John”. The whole thing is so bizarre and interesting that we decided to post the entire interview here:

This might also be the last interview Glenn Gould did, he died of a stroke 6 weeks after the recording.

– Pejk Malinovski

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