Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell have been friends and collaborators since they first met in 1974. While they always wanted to make an album together, they never did until recently. Old Yellow Moon includes songs by Crowell, Patti Scialfa, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson among others.
Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story made a splash, but critic John Powers says its critique of capitalism is "the kind of scattershot tirade I used to hear in my college dorm." Better object lessons: New documentaries, Schmatta and American Casino, that do far more to explain how grand economic forces shape our daily lives.
Stacey and Doug Loizeaux are niece and uncle, and are part of the family-owned demolition company, Controlled Demolition, of Maryland. They are experts at imploding buildings. The buildings theye brought down include the Seattle Kingdome, the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas(which was brought down spectacularly with a fireworks display), and the bombed federal building in Oklahoma City. Doug father pioneered the techniques of implosion nearly 60 years ago.
With his wide leaps between long tones and a sometimes generous use of space, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith nods occasionally to 20th-century European concert music. But he's also one of the modern improvisers most grounded in African-American vernaculars; he's the stepson of Mississippi bluesman Alex Wallace, and he played for a spell in Little Milton's blues band. Smith's projects are all over the map, but often have this much in common with the blues: the byplay between a strong voice — his horn, in this case — and percussive strings.
Darren Aronofsky's latest film is a big-budget Bible story called, simply, Noah. Russell Crowe plays the title character, and the movie also features Jennifer Connelly and Emma Watson.
His songs include "By The Time I Get to Phoenix," "Up Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," "Macarthur Park," "Galveston," "Didn't We," "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "All I Know." His songs have been recorded by Glenn Campbell, Johnny Cash, Joe Cocker, Linda Ronstadt, Art Garfunkle and the Fifth Dimension. At one point in the 1960s, he had five Top 10 hits within a 20-month period.
While he served as a Party leader, Junius Irving Scales was arrested and convicted under the Smith Act. After his release from prison, Scales left the party after revelations over Stalin's actions in the Soviet Union. His new book, called Cause at Heart, recalls his work as a political activist.
A concert with the McGarrigle sisters, Kate and Anna. There are new CDs of their first two albums, released in the late 70s: "Kate & Anna McGarrigle" and "Dancer with Bruised Knees." The McGarrigles are known for their close and "subtle harmony." Their music is considered hard to categorize, although it sounds folky. The sisters absorbed an eclectic blend of music when they were growing up in Canada: Victorian ballads, blues, jazz, French-Canadian folk songs, Broadway tunes, and country music.
Forman talks about his life, filmmaking career and his latest project, directing "The People vs. Larry Flynt." Among his film credits: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next," "Hair," and "Ragtime." Forman won an Academy Award for Best Director for the film "Amadeus." Forman was born in Caslav, Czechoslovakia and became an American citizen in 1975. He lives in New York.
Tex-Mex rocker Doug Sahm. For many, he's still best known for his stint with the Sir Douglas Quintet, a group of Texans and Mexicans who were packaged to look like a British Invasion band. The group sported regal coats and fakey British accents and cranked out hits like "Mendocino" and "She'a About a Mover." Sahm has been playing a variety of styles ever since, including Tex-Mex, blues, rhythm and blues, rock. Sahm is now touring with Antone's Texas R&B Revue, and has just released a new album, titled Juke Box Music.
Dr. Lynn Ponton is a psychiatrist who specializes in treating troubled teenagers and their parents. Her new book is “The Sex Lives of Teenagers: Revealing The Secret World of Adolescent Boys and Girls” (Dutton). In the book, Ponton uses case studies to take a look at the role of sexuality in adolescent development, and the conflicting messages teenagers receive about sexuality.
Journalist John Hoerr's new book, And the Wolf Finally Came, looks at the collapse of the steel industry in the Monongahela River region. He points to the breakdown between union-management relations post-World War II as the central cause for the closing of plants throughout Pennsylvania.
Ewan McGregor stars in Mike Mills' film about a young man who learns that his 75-year-old father (Christopher Plummer) is gay. Critic David Edelstein says the movie, based on Mills' own life puts the filmmaker in a category alongside Woody Allen and Charlie Kaufman.
Monsignor Doug Doussan and Sister Kathleen Pittman discuss the status of their church and the surrounding neighborhood, one year after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Doussan is pastor and Pitman is pastoral associate at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in New Orleans.
Four years ago, Eels founder Mark Oliver Everett decided to take a break. After 25 years of making music, he says, "I got to the point where if you do any one thing too much in your life, it catches up to you and makes it clear that you need to do something else."
In the 1980's, Mould pioneered alternative rock with the band Husker Du, making what was described as "angry, self-hating music." Mould went solo for a while after the band fell apart. Now he's with the band "Sugar" and they've released their third album, "File Under: Easy Listening." One reviewer writes of the new release that it "shows Mould near the peak of his power-pop form and harbors a few prominently catchy songs."
David Kertzer is the author of The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (Knopf). In the book he focuses on the time period from Napoleon to Hitler, and how "traditional" Catholic forms of dealing with Jews became transformed into modern anti-Semitism. Kertzer is Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science and a professor of anthropology and Italian Studies at Brown University.
Lester Brown is the president of the Worldwatch Institute. The organization's latest State of the World report looks into the greenhouse effect, deforestation, and rising sea levels, among other troubling trends. Brown joins Fresh Air to discuss the causes of these phenomena, whether they'll cause permanent changes, and how we can mitigate their effects.
