Purple Dinosaur stuns POWs; Iraqis told to "Put Down the Duckie"
US interrogators in Iraq have been exposing uncooperative prisoners to non-stop sessions of children's songs and "culturally offensive" music, in hopes of making them talk. According to the BBC, the US Psychological Operations Company (Psy Ops) has employed everything from kiddie TV favorites Barney and Sesame Street to heavy metal rockers Metallica in their quest to deprive prisoners of sleep and otherwise break their resistance.  More...

Amandla! A Revolution in Four-part Harmony
A new documentary film about the end of apartheid highlights the central role of music in black South Africa's successful struggle for liberation.  More...

Explorer Brings Back Music from Across the Globe
... the Nonesuch Records "Explorer" series, that is. The classic series is back, now on CD.  More...

Maverick Composers Hold Their Ground Online
For most pop fans, the label "progressive classical composer" would be "three strikes" against anyone. But followers of the unorthodox worlds of Harry Partch, Charles Ives, John Cage, Henry Cowell and Steve Reich are finding new audiences using the web.  More...



Museum of Sound Recording finds a Home. Actually, Three.
Alexander Graham Bell's "Watson, come here. I need you" may have been the first words carried over wires, but "Mary had a Little Lamb" were the first to be recorded. Inventor Thomas Edison shouted rather than sang that ditty in 1879, at the first test of his sound recording technology.  More...

Unplug & Play
For music fans with active lives (running, workouts and sports), even the smallest MP3 players and music gizmos have been too big, too fragile, or too sensitive to movement. Philips Electronics has recently found the key to this problem. At the end of a key ring.  More...

Practice, Practice, Practice. Ouch!
It's not only office- and assembly-line workers that are subject to carpal tunnel syndrome and repeated stress injury (RSI). Musicians sometimes find themselves losing their ability to play, or play well, because of physical and mental wear-and-tear. Now some therapists are using a high-tech player piano to help pianists get their groove back.  More...

Dolphins Turn it Up to Eleven. (Or Down to Zero.)
Submarines use an array of electronic tricks to make their pinging sonar work well. The big issue: volume control. Dolphins are tricky, too, but don't have electronics to help them see. New research reveals how they do it.  More...

Find Audio Needles in Sound Archive Haystacks
Searching for particular words or subjects in thousands of hours of audio or TV broadcast archives or congressional testimony used to be an impossible job. Conventional transcribing and indexing are costly, time-consuming, and subject to error. What if you could get a computer to listen for -- and remember -- the actual sounds of the words?  More...



How Many Heads can a Head-Banger Bang? Too Many.
Does listening to violent song lyrics act as a positive, therapeutic release for pent-up anger, or does it actually breed aggressive feelings? A new study provides evidence for the latter: violent lyrics appear to increase aggression-related thoughts and emotions.  More...

The Queen of Speech and Screech
That's what People magazine called veteran LA voice teacher Elizabeth Sabine. NBC's Tom Brokaw called her "the Auntie Mame of Heavy Metal" for her work in rescuing the voices of rock singers. Her upcoming book on vocal techniques may help save more voices - and ears.  More...

Intellectually Stimulating Music
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently asked a diverse array of academics what kind of music gets their gray matter moving.  More...



Atlanta’s new Symphony Center takes Shape, Will Change Shape
In recent months, more details have been emerging about the future home of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO). Symphony Center, scheduled to open in 2008, will house a 2,000 seat symphony hall and a smaller chamber hall. What's raising eyebrows is the main hall's plan for a raise-able ceiling, which can lifted from a 50-foot "chamber" setting to higher "Mozart," "Mahler," and even 100-foot "cathedral" settings.  More...

Great Places to Hear Old-Time Music
The Blue Ridge is the last place in the world you'd actually feel blue, at least if you have read "Blue Ridge Music Trails." This guidebook by Fred Fussell covers 160 venues & events that feature bluegrass and string band music, ballad singing, fiddling, shape-note singing, gospel music, clogging, and other traditional forms of music and dance.  More...

New York’s Cross-town Rivalries Flare
We're not talking about the Yankees and the Mets. Or even the Met. It's the New York Philharmonic that has grabbed the front pages in New York (and around the world) with its sudden announcement that it will leave Lincoln Center and move to Carnegie Hall.  More...



Hendrix Found in Seattle
The 10,000 fans who visit Seattle each year, looking to catch the vibes of the late guitarist, are frequently disappointed. Jimi Hendrix was born and raised in Seattle and now is buried there, but until recently there were few public acknowledgments of his connection to the city.  More...

Mississippi John Hurt's Home goes Country
Okay, it already WAS country. But the blues legend's tiny shotgun house with a tin roof is now a museum, and it sits further out in the country than ever before.  More...

John, Paul, George, George, and Ringo. (And a bunch of other folks.)
Of the many "fifth Beatles," none have more claim on the title than Sir George Martin, who produced nearly all their recordings. Martin is back with another autobiography, "Playback," and it's going to be big. Actually, it was born big.  More...



Robert Moog -- Rhymes with Rogue. And "In Vogue"
The man who brought the synthesizer to the mass market has been acclaimed and cursed for that contribution to music. Synth legend Moog is back with a soulful new machine.  More...

The Cat in the Hat is Back
To most people, Michael Nesmith will never be more than the member of the Monkees most likely to have been wearing a knit cap in the LA sun. Or perhaps the answer to the trivia question, "Which pop star's mother invented Liquid Paper?" But to music insiders, "Papa Nez" is the real deal -- a bona fide producer, media innovator, composer and musician.  More...

Oxford American Closes Again
The Oxford American, "a magazine of great Southern writing," has ceased publication for the second time. The magazine's annual Music Issue featured a wonderfully eclectic CD sampler as a soundtrack for the collection of histories, memoirs, and commentary on its printed pages. Can the South's own quirky culture 'zine rise again?  More...

Sheet Music, without the Sheets
When musicians are performing using sheet music, they really need an extra hand to turn pages. Or a way to turn pages with their feet. Thanks to FreeHand Systems, they now have one.  More...



From Blockbuster (TM) to Blockbuster
To find his muse, Kellin Manning of Boomkat didn't go to Genoa to borrow an instrument that belonged to Paganini [see June, 2003, Vibrations story about Regina Carter]. He went to his local video store and rented "MTV Music Generator" for his Sony PlayStation video game platform.  More...

If We Spelled it Out, You Wouldn't Get the Newsletter
Two recent articles in the New York Times point to a resurgence in interest in pipe oregons [misspelled on purpose, and hereafter referred to as "O's," so your email filters don't think we're sending you… well, you know].  More...