Using an actual historical document as a starting place, this piece becomes a haunting 15-minute radio drama of two men's sudden realization of their own mortality. The piece pays homage at times to golden age masters like Arch Obler and Orson Welles, yet doesn’t take on the now-campy quality that some older radio dramas can have. What listeners do get, though, is a thoughtful, realistic imagining of the way things could have gone had Apollo 11 gone horribly wrong. What we hear is not the grandiose rehearsed pomposity of the "One small step for man" speech but the private thoughts of two men who ask each other "how many people do you think they'll bury up here before they're through? However many it is, it's a drop in the bucket when you consider the entirety of mankind." This is extraordinarily compelling radio, excellently conceived, acted, edited and produced. I cannot wait to hear more from this series.
Listening to "The Latvala Files" is a little like sitting on a stool at a grungy bar in a strange city you're just passing through, while the locals tell a story to each other. Sure, they're friendly enough and include you in the conversation, but they're not really talking to you. They're talking to each other. That's what I get when I listen to this piece. Just like you can't stop the barstool storyteller to fill in with enough backstory, it's really hard for those of us who have not educated ourselves in the lore of the Grateful Dead to follow what's going on here. We know about Jerry, we know there were lots of drugs, and that everybody seemed to have a good time, whether they remember it or not. But that's about where the knowledge of the Dead stops with we layfolk.
Dick Latvala, from what I gather, was a man whose life was devoted to attending Dead concerts and recording them for posterity--perhaps the John Lomax of the Jam Bands, doing anthropological field recordings of legendary concerts. It might have been good to have included more music from the concerts to give it a little more first-hand appeal; as it is, there are a few "you shoulda been there when..." moments in this piece. However, Latvala says something interesting about his original motivation for recording: "I was recording to see if I really heard what I thought I heard." Of course, since this was a Grateful Dead concert after all, we know that one's senses were probably not to be trusted. However, I think that is a good motivation for sound preservation in general. In that respect, Latvala is no different from any of us who work in the sound recording media.
Comments by Dennis Conrow
Comment for "Moon Graffiti"
Dennis Conrow
Posted on July 13, 2010 at 02:42 PM | Permalink
Compelling radio
Using an actual historical document as a starting place, this piece becomes a haunting 15-minute radio drama of two men's sudden realization of their own mortality. The piece pays homage at times to golden age masters like Arch Obler and Orson Welles, yet doesn’t take on the now-campy quality that some older radio dramas can have. What listeners do get, though, is a thoughtful, realistic imagining of the way things could have gone had Apollo 11 gone horribly wrong. What we hear is not the grandiose rehearsed pomposity of the "One small step for man" speech but the private thoughts of two men who ask each other "how many people do you think they'll bury up here before they're through? However many it is, it's a drop in the bucket when you consider the entirety of mankind." This is extraordinarily compelling radio, excellently conceived, acted, edited and produced. I cannot wait to hear more from this series.
Comment for "The Latvala Files: Hangin' Out in the Vault"
Dennis Conrow
Posted on June 05, 2007 at 11:41 AM | Permalink
Review of The Latvala Files: Hangin' Out in the Vault
"Did I really hear what I thought I heard?"
Listening to "The Latvala Files" is a little like sitting on a stool at a grungy bar in a strange city you're just passing through, while the locals tell a story to each other. Sure, they're friendly enough and include you in the conversation, but they're not really talking to you. They're talking to each other. That's what I get when I listen to this piece. Just like you can't stop the barstool storyteller to fill in with enough backstory, it's really hard for those of us who have not educated ourselves in the lore of the Grateful Dead to follow what's going on here. We know about Jerry, we know there were lots of drugs, and that everybody seemed to have a good time, whether they remember it or not. But that's about where the knowledge of the Dead stops with we layfolk.
Dick Latvala, from what I gather, was a man whose life was devoted to attending Dead concerts and recording them for posterity--perhaps the John Lomax of the Jam Bands, doing anthropological field recordings of legendary concerts. It might have been good to have included more music from the concerts to give it a little more first-hand appeal; as it is, there are a few "you shoulda been there when..." moments in this piece. However, Latvala says something interesting about his original motivation for recording: "I was recording to see if I really heard what I thought I heard." Of course, since this was a Grateful Dead concert after all, we know that one's senses were probably not to be trusted. However, I think that is a good motivation for sound preservation in general. In that respect, Latvala is no different from any of us who work in the sound recording media.