Soundcheck

For Soundcheck's series Pick Three, we ask guests to share a playlist of three favorite songs. This week, Ann Patchett, the bestselling author of books like Bel Canto, State Of Wonder, and the new essay collection This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage -- selects music that mirrors and inspires her writing life. Ann Patchett's Pick Three   Eric Satie, Gymnopedie no. 1, performed by Frank Glazer "This is music that I listened to a lot when I was in college, when I was in graduate school. There's a lot of stuff that sounds like Satie that is extremely satisfying, peaceful, but then you go back and you listen to Satie and you think, 'Oh yeah, this is it.'"   "Ebben? Ne andro lontana," from Catalani's La Wally, performed by Renee Fleming "I knew nothing about opera until I started writing Bel Canto. I gave myself a crash course, really fell in love with opera, and then bizarrely became kind of the go-to person. The Times was saying, 'Oh, Pavarotti -- is he going to sing his last Tosca? Let's call Ann Patchett and find out!' So I feel like a great opera lover and a great opera fraud all at the same time."   "Numberless Are The World's Wonders," from The Gospel At Colonus, by Bob Telson & Lee Breuer "It was a piece of music that I got when I was in graduate school in Iowa...and I had my cassette tape and my Walkman, and every morning when I would go to class, in the snow, in Iowa, in the dark, it's 30 below, I would listen to this music every day. It really became my religion. It's such stirring, powerful, beautiful, beautiful music. And it's completely fresh... like any great gospel is, it doesn't age."

Forget what you think you know about a cappella music: London's Juice Vocal Ensemble is one of the most original groups out there, thanks to experimental and playful arrangements that recall the music of Bobby McFerrin and Meredith Monk.   Featuring sopranos Anna Snow and Sarah Dacey, and alto Kerry Andrew, Juice Vocal Ensemble's 2011 debut album, Songspin, blended contemporary classical with jazz, pop, world music and electronic music. That record won an Independent Music Award for “Best Contemporary Classical Album,” but it's the trio's wild reinventions of songs by Guns N’ Roses, Erasure, Mariah Carey, and Flatt and Scruggs that has earned Juice even more accolades.  Hear the powerful and skillful trio perform in the Soundcheck studio.  

Since the 1970's, more than 200,000 people have received cochlear implants, which allow deaf patients to hear speech, and sometimes even talk. But not all auditory signals are created alike: While people with cochlear implants can hear speech, those patients can't hear music. But now, a team from the University of Washington is making strides towards changing this: They've developed an algorithm for existing cochlear implants that allows them to process some of the building blocks of music, namely, pitch and timbre.  In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Johns Hopkins' professor Dr. Charles Limb explains why music is harder to process than speech, why cochlear implants aren't a silver bullet, and how even with the newest cochlear implants, music still won't sound quite the way you expect. 

The legendary choreographer and director Bob Fosse forever changed the way America dances. He's the only person to win an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy in the same year. And according to Sam Wasson, author of the new biography Fosse, he revolutionized the American musical twice. In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Wasson says Fosse introduced a grit and edginess never before seen in musicals; and his inspiration came from his own traumatic experiences as a young dancer in seedy burlesque clubs. And though Fosse's life was filled with depression and over-indulgence, Wasson points out that it was also full of love and friendship. Interview Highlights Sam Wasson, on why Bob Fosse is critical to an understanding of American pop culture: He revolutionized every medium that he influenced. Most great artists, if they're lucky they revolutionize one. Television, film, stage, dance...in each respect, Fosse left an imprint. That's just unbelievable; that' s just a giant talent. On Fosse's inspiration for Cabaret: Up until that point, most movie musicals were sort of out of date; they were old-fashioned; they didn't really speak to the post-60s feeling of America, which was depressed and angry. You can't really sing about depressed and angry - at least up until that point, on film you couldn't. And Fosse found a perfect idiom - a dance idiom for that and a cinematic idiom for that. He found it in his own dark, depressed past. He grew up in these horrible burlesque halls. These were really bad, mean places, especially to a kid of 13.   Watch the trailer for Sam Wasson's Fosse, featuring a number of notable cameos from Bob Fosse's world:  

The ornate chamber pop songs of Princess Music are mostly the work of Tyler Ludwick, a folk-based songwriter with a knack for playful arrangements and rich harmonies. But it's with his fuller ensemble that those orchestral flourishes truly shine, thanks to dynamic strings and woodwinds, intricate polyrhythms and lyrical melodies that capture a wistful beauty.  Princess Music is based in Denver, yet it’s in Europe that the group has found the most fans: The band gained popularity through Spotify and SoundCloud in places including France, Sweden and Italy, and in turn, that led to a successful Kickstarter campaign that allowed Princess Music to record their debut album, Odobenidae. Hear Ludwick and Princess Music perform songs from Odobenidae in the Soundcheck studio.  

Web sites that publish lyrics are practically a dime a dozen: Type "lyrics Royals" into Google and you'll get tons of sites that have complete lyrics to Lorde's megahit single. All these lyrics floating around are actually under copyright -- and only a few of those actually pay the licensing fees to reproduce them. And while this practice has gone on for years, as these sites grow in popularity they also attract advertisers -- and that's when the publishers take notice. Recently the National Music Publishers Association has filed takedown notices on a bunch of these unlicensed sites. In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Jonathan Reichman, an intellectual property lawyer known as the Copy Cat, delves into the details of musical intellectual property surrounding these lyrics sites. Reichman explains that the site Rap Genius is making a compelling argument that they've transformed the copyrighted work into something new. With its crowd-sourced Wikipedia-style information, Rap Genius might squeeze by with a claim of fair use, something Reichman guesses will happen with most of these sites.

Fashion photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber is best known for his ad campaigns for Calvin Klein. But he's also the man behind the Chet Baker documentary Let's Get Lost, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Weber is the subject of a retrospective at New York's Film Forum, and joins Soundcheck for a jazz-tinged Pick Three. Bruce Weber's Pick Three Autumn Leaves, performed by Chet Baker & Ruth Young in 1977, on the album Chet Baker Plays and Sings They Dance All Night, performed by Robert Mitchum, from the album Calypso - is Like So...! I'd Like You For Christmas, performed by Julie London

In 1997, Kathleen Hanna -- the no-holds-barred frontwoman of the influential '90s band Bikini Kill and later of the band Le Tigre in the early 2000s -- released a solo album under the moniker Julie Ruin. The self-titled album was a lo-fi but fierce collection of bedroom ballads and socially-charged songs that touched on feminism and politics, all in Hanna's distinctive ecstatic voice. Now, 16 years after that album -- and seven years away from music dealing with a long-undiagnosed case of Lyme disease -- Hanna is back with a new record. This time, what was once a pseudonymous side-project is a full-fledged band -- The Julie Ruin. On The Julie Ruin's Run Fast, it sounds as if Hanna is taking those stripped-down songs and themes and fleshing them out with a sharper punk sound, and an even more empowering message. The result is a record of noisy and intelligently aggressive songs that address Hanna's illness and vulnerability, but also her recovery and community. Ultimately, both The Julie Ruin and Run Fast serve as a triumphant and raucous return for Kathleen Hanna, one of rock's most powerful voices.    Set List: "Goodnight Goodbye" "South Coast Plaza" "Kids In Ny"

Béla Fleck has become a household name by reinventing the banjo for contemporary music with globetrotting compositions spanning from bluegrass to classical to pop, and along the way he's picked up 14 Grammys. Now he's teamed up with the much-lauded, adventurous string quartet Brooklyn Rider for a new album, The Imposter, and are touring with a new composition by Fleck, written specifically for a "banjo quintet." The group discusses the new collaboration and performs the new work, Night Flight Over Water, in the Soundcheck studio. Set List: Night Flight Over Water: Tumbledown Creek Night Flight Over Water: Hunter's Moon  

Recently Alena Jones -- from Spoonbill and Sugartown Books -- asked us for some book recommendations about women in music. Today, we get some help from a pair of notable music writers: Ann Powers, the NPR Music critic and correspondent, and Jessica Hopper, music editor for RookieMag and author of The Girls' Guide To Rocking. Read about a few of their favorites below. Do you have a great book about female musicians or a great music book by a woman? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter at @Soundcheck! Ann Powers' Book Picks: The Original 1982 Lori Carson Ann Powers recommends this novel, written by singer-songwriter Lori Carson, for its "beautiful, lyrical, yet wonderfully detailed evocation of the life of a musician." It follows two parallel worlds, splitting into two storylines when the main character Lisa must decide if she wants a baby.               Queens Of Noise Evelyn McDonnell McDonnell's book looks at The Runaways as an important band, both musically and as a groundbreaking female act and shows "how young women found themselves within a structure that was really constructed by this svengali figure, Kim Fowley," Powers says. "Evelyn makes a case for them as a band, and really as feminist pioneers."           "How She Got Over," from The Fan Who Knew Too Much Anthony Heilbut This essay from a collection of Heilbut's writing looks at Aretha Franklin as a person and musician, from the women that shaped her life, to her efforts to apply gospel music techniques to secular music. "I've read a lot and written a lot about Aretha Franklin," says Powers, "but reading this essay really changed the way I thought about Aretha. Buy it just for the Aretha chapter, it really will change your life."             Jessica Hopper's Book Picks: Hotel California Barney Hoskyns Hoskyns book takes a broad view of the 1907s Laurel Canyon music scene. Hopper praises the book for the in-depth look at Joni Mitchell and Linda Rondstadt. "Until Rondstadt published her own book recently, there wasn't a lot [written] about her that was very good," Hopper says, "and there's not a good Joni Mitchell book in existence. I found it to be the perfect amount of dishy and total nerd information."             Stand By Your Man Tammy Wynette and Joan Dew This autobiography of Tammy Wynette opens with her in the emergency room where one of her children is dying. The whole book is "really dramatic and really fascinating," says Hopper. "This book is kind of from an earlier era where there wasn't as much sort of media savvy or oversight. People put out less varnished pictures of themselves and it's certainly of that era ... She does not gloss over a lot."            

Tony Fletcher has been writing about music since he was a kid, and has published bestselling biographies on The Who's Keith Moon, R.E.M., and The Smiths. Now he tackles his toughest, funniest subject yet: himself. In his latest book, Boy About Town, Fletcher remembers growing up uncool, while loving cool music, and reflects on the style and scene of 1970's London in writing pulled from his diaries, interviews and letters. In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Fletcher shares stories of starting his own band, trying to interview his favorite musicians for his fanzine Jamming!, and living through a DIY era. "The means of production opened up," Fletcher says. "It was so vibrant. The music didn't need to sound professional anymore -- in fact, the less professional, the more interesting."  Purchase Boy About Town on Amazon.

Long before Miley Cyrus made twerking a household word, it was one of many provocative dance moves born out of the New Orleans club culture and subgenre of hip-hop known as bounce. Big Freedia (pronounced "free-duh") -- the stage name of New Orleans native Freddie Ross -- is one of bounce's biggest stars and since the late 1990s, has helped bring a wave of openly queer bounce performers to wider audiences. In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, the "Queen of Bounce" talks about her new reality show on the Fuse network, and about the art of booty shaking. "It's all about the ass," says Big Freedia.   Big Freedia :: Azz Everywhere from Nathan Lee Bush on Vimeo. Interview Highlights Big Freedia, on trying to bring bounce to Connecticut:   It was my first show and my only show in my whole career that the crowd was not prepared to accept me. They were pitching things; they were not happy. It was these young rich white boys and they were really upset that I was in the middle of Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa… a queen from New Orleans. On Miley Cyrus' infamous twerking on MTV's VMAs: She was -- what we call it is exercising, in New Orleans. It’s one of the dance moves. She didn’t properly twerk. [Proper twerking is] hands on your knees, back upright, and your butt going up and down, giving that basketball-type motion.  

Music has played a pivotal role in the work of writer Chuck Klosterman: Throughout his career, he's has written essays about everything from hair metal to Coldplay. So it's no surprise that in his latest book, I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined), Klosterman includes plenty of musical heroes and evildoers. He reveals how and why people pass judgment on bands like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and even the Eagles. Klosterman also discusses his decision to write about Adolf Hitler, which he didn't originally intend on addressing. He argues that people's perception of Hitler as the embodiment of evil is so strong that even Bob Dylan — who in Klosterman's estimation is "the greatest non-reliable narrator in pop" — decided to keep his lyrics straightforward lest he be misinterpreted. That got our host John Schaefer thinking — and writing — about how musicians reckon with Hitler. Listen to Soundcheck's interview with Chuck Klosterman, read John Schaefer's blog post, and let us know in the comments below who your musical heroes or villains are.   This segment originally aired on Aug. 1, 2013. Interview Highlights Chuck Klosterman, on The Beatles and The Rolling Stones as examples of good and evil: The perception’s that the Beatles are good and the Rolling Stones are the bad version of them. But within the bands, interestingly, Paul McCartney is generally seen as the villain of the Beatles. He’s really the only Beatle that’s polarizing. Almost every other Beatle has a general positive sense towards [them]. In the Rolling Stones, over time, Mick Jagger has become sort of the villainous character, even though Keith Richards spent pretty much all of the seventies trying to be a villain on purpose. It’s interesting how that worked out — how time changes these things. On Van Halen’s breakup as an example of how people choose to frame good or evil: You could make a very good argument that both the David Lee Roth camp and the Van Halen camp made these huge mistakes and were missing the big picture. But what ended up happening is people pretty much decided what part of Van Halen they liked the most — what they thought was, to them, what made the band meaningful. And then they picked which side that was and then just believed their story. On how Bob Dylan's stylistic changes when singing about Hitler on “With God on Our Side”: When talking about the crucifixion of Jesus or Judas or all of these things, Bob Dylan, as his wont, is sort of unclear [about] what he’s precisely saying. But when he talks about World War II, he leaves no room for interpretation. It is the one time in the song when the lyrics are very straightforward, and no one could hear those songs and misinterpret what his intention was. So even Bob Dylan — who’s in the most rarefied position of our culture — even he is very uncomfortable saying anything about Hitler or Germany that a person could make a mistake on.

Even before Los Angeles pop band HAIM (rhymes with "time") released its debut album, Days Are Gone, in September, they'd won over a ton of fans and critics -- even topping BBC's Sound of 2013 poll earlier this year. Combining three sisters -- Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim -- and drummer Dash Hutton, HAIM also blends an array of musical influences. Songs like "Falling" and "The Wire" evoke '80s radio pop, silky early '90s R&B, and big "we're all in this together" sing-along rock anthems brimming with infectious electronic hooks, sterling three-part harmony, and killer guitar melodies. And while those fantastically catchy singles have already dominated this spring and summer, the captivating and undeniably fun live show is where the group truly shines. With Days Are Gone on the horizon, HAIM truly seems poised for bigger things to come. This segment originally aired on Sept. 9, 2013.   Set List: "Honey & I" "Falling" "Go Slow"

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steve Reich has had a major influence on the sound of contemporary classical music -- from his early work composed around spoken word to later blockbuster compositions that have garnered widespread critical praise. He regularly composes commissions for performers like Kronos Quartet, the Rothko Chapel, and the Barbican Centre in London. While much of his music is performed in concert halls, the worlds of electronic music and rock have also taken note. And in recent years, that influence has gone both ways. Now, the Met Museum will be the site of a concert featuring the New York premiere of a new work, Radio Rewrite, inspired by the music of Radiohead.  While Reich "hasn't heard a peep" from Radiohead regarding the new composition, others have told him that they can still hear the original lyrics in their head -- which he considers a compliment. "When you set words to music they should just be glued together," Reich says. In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Reich talks about the ideas behind his rewrite of "Everything in Its Right Place", Reich's inspiration for David Bowie, and how Radio Rewrite is a little different from some of his other works.     Radio Rewrite premieres at the Met on Nov. 16, 2013. You can stream the performance live on Q2. Interview Highlights Reich, on his influence on other musicians: David Bowie was in the audience in Berlin at the Nationalgalerie in 1976 when we did the German premiere of Music for 18 Musicians and Brian Eno -- I was playing a concert in London with my ensemble in 1974 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at Southbank Centre. A guy comes up to me afterwards, long hair, lipstick, says "How do you do, I'm Brian Eno." Poetic justice! I was the kid at Birdland sitting in the kids section listening to Miles Davis and Charlie Parker and Kenny Clark and there's Brian Eno listening to me. That's the way life's supposed to be! On how he had to ignore his training: It's a two-way street, I mean it's always been a two-way street in Western music -- except for when I went to music school. My generation opened the window that had always been opened till the time of Schoenberg and Berg -- and particularly Arnold Schoenberg. That meant no harmony, no pulsing rhythm of any sort, no melody that any postman's every gonna whistle. And if you did otherwise you were laughed at.   Radiohead's song "Jigsaw Falling Into Place that inspired Reich's recent composition: