Beck is a 23 year-old hip/hop folk rocker, who goes by first name only and whose single, "Loser" has become the anthem for the underachievers of Generation X. His music has been described as "triumphantly anti-professional, idiot-savant music in which a heartfelt solo can be provided by kazoo as easily as guitar." Beck was part of the Los Angeles underground, with songs like "MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack." Beck's first album, "Mellow Gold," (released on DGC) was recorded at home on four and eight-track recording equipment.
Scholar and activist Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He's Professor of English and Chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard and one of Afro-American studies most visible and controversial proponents. Gates believes that Black studies should be a methodology, not an ideology, and that you don't have to be black to teach African-American literature.
Sonny Sharrock was a guitarist. His genre was the free-jazz movement of the late 1960's Jon Pareles said in the New York Times that Sharrock's "guitar solos streaked and clanged, using blistering speed and raw noise to create music that had both the openness of jazz and power of rock." (Rebroadcast of 10/23/1991)
Jazz musicians Red Rodney and Sonny Sharrock. They're both important jazz figures who recently died. We will rebroadcast previous interviews with both Rodney was a trumpeter and band leader. He rose through the big band ranks and played in Charlie Parker's quintet. He was known as one of jazz's best improvisers. And he was known for regaling journalists with his stories-- often of dubious veracity. (Rebroadcast of 6/15/1990)
Mary Previte, superintendent of the Camden County (NJ) Youth Center. Previte, the great granddaughter of missionary pioneer Hudson Taylor, grew up in China with her missionary parents. During World War II, she and her fellow students and teachers spent three years in a Japanese concentration camp. Previte credits the structure her teachers' created with making the horrific experience bearable. For the past twenty years, Previte has run the youth center, a holding center for boys and girls charged with serious crimes.
Critic David Bianculli on the veteran British television writer, Dennis Potter, the author of "The Singing Detective" and "Pennies From Heaven"; Potter is gravely ill, and yet he continues to compose a new mini-series. At New York's Museum of Television & Radio, they are running his most recent miniseries, "Lipstick on Your Collar".
Film Director John Dahl. His new film is a thriller called "Red Rock West." It takes place in a tough little town in Wyoming over a forty-eight hour period. It has a film noir feeling and plot that twists and turns. It stars Nicholas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle and J.T. Walsh.
Mystery writer Walter Mosley. He's written a new book in his series about gumshoe hero Easy Rawlins. It's called "Black Betty" (Norton). Betty's a shark of a woman who leaves dead men in her wake. Like the other books in the series, "Black Betty" has Easy in post-War, but pre-present South Central L.A.--this time the year is 1961. Mosley gained public attention when then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton said that Mosley was his favorite mystery writer.
Writer Mikal Gilmore, youngest brother of executed killer Gary Gilmore. Gilmore's 1977 death --at his own request-- by firing squad in Utah, was the first American execution in ten years. Brother Mikal finds seeds of his brother's two murders sown far back in Gilmore family history, and its Mormon roots.
Civil rights attorney and law professor Jack Greenberg. He was just out of law school--a white Jewish man from the Bronx when he joined the fledgling NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). Greenberg took over the helm of the LDF from his mentor Thurgood Marshall when Marshall was appointed to the Federal Court of Appeals. During Greenberg's tenure there, the LDF litigated some of the watershed cases of the civil rights struggle. He has just published a memoir of his 35 years at the LDF.
Television correspondent Robert Krulwich. In a Frontline production (co-produced with the Center for Investigative Reporting) called "Public Lands, Private Profits" to be aired at 9 p.m. tonight on PBS (check local listings), Krulwich examines today's gold mining industry--the impact of mining activities and the current political battle for control of mineral resources on public lands. The Mining Law of 1872 was passed to encourage settlement and development in the West. It's still on the books.
Author and physician Abraham Verghese. An Indian raised in Ethopia, Abraham Verghese arrived in the United States in 1980 as a rookie doctor. Upon completing an internship in infectious diseases, Dr. Verghese accepted a position in the rural, Appalachian town of Johnson City, Tennessee. The year was 1985 and AIDS had begun to ravage large metropolitan areas. Within the year, Dr. Verghese was treating his first case of AIDS in this rural outpost.
Film director Bernando Bertolucci. He broke new ground with his 1972 film "Last Tango in Paris." Pauline Kael called it "a landmark in movie history." In the 80's, he became dismayed by the pervasive materialism he saw in the West. His focus turned to the East. He made "The Last Emperor" set in China and "The Sheltering Sky" set in the Sahara Desert. His new movie is "Little Buddha." It's a fable. A Tibetan monk travels from the Kingdom of Bhutan to Seattle to visit a young American boy.
