The first public radio series I ever produced was made possible by the first grant I ever got, from National Public Radio’s Satellite Program Development Fund in the mid-eighties. As I remember, the award totaled $10,000 and the project took three years.
I love this series, but I am still mortally embarrassed by the name I came up with: Skip Through the Shadows: Scenes from Childhood. I’ve always sucked at making up titles. You see, I was trying to convey the idea of both the agony and the joy of childhood.
I gathered well over a hundred hours of interviews around the country, mostly with everyday people but also with a few luminaries. My strangest pairing of interviews consisted of an afternoon with John Waters in Baltimore and a meeting in Pittsburgh the next morning with Fred “Mister” Rogers.
I also interviewed Appalachian singer-songwriter Jean Ritchie, blues legend Brownie McGhee, Big Bird’s inventor Kermit Love, Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, and some others. Another of my heroes, Dr. Benjamin Spock, wrote a little testimonial about how much he liked the series.
Producing these programs was a true descent into— I don’t know, but it was very dark in there for a couple years. I guess that’s why I made up the project in the first place. It’s the anti-Hallmark look at childhood in all its despair and magic.
There are ten programs, each about seven-minutes long. I was lucky enough to get them all to air on NPR’s All Things Considered, most of them even in the prime spot: the closing piece of the daily ninety-minute show.
I also won a couple awards, including Top Honors from Ohio State.
Here is the first program, called I Must Be From Another Planet. You will hear many voices, including a few from my own private life: my grannie, my first-grade daughter reading a story that I wrote in first grade, my dad interviewing three-year-old me about my imaginary friend “Tinna,” and me singing with my friend Maria, accompanied by Dad on guitar. Here’s a secret: you won’t ever know it while listening because of the tapestry of voices, but it’s really all about me and my own pain. T’is the artists’ prerogative.
The was beautiful! The music and the interviews all mixed together. Really top-notch pacing – and a thread leading all the way through. I stopped everything I was doing while I listened.
More please.
Oleg, I like you more and more each day.
There are nine more childhood programs on their way and you will soon be so sick of them.
Thank you for your most appreciated comment.
I’d forgotten how very touching this piece was. Dad has a slight Boston accent though. How do you feel as you review this fine work that you’ve created? Does it give you pleasure? It gives me pleasure, more so even with the passing of the years.
What happened to Larry London?
TPB: Thank you very much for your kind comments. You ask how it is for me to listen to this old stuff. Yeah, actually, even though I wince at bad edits I do enjoy hearing it. It makes me a little sad, though, and it makes me wish I was still doing stuff from my heart. I have a project in mind that I dreamed up a few years ago and I’m dying to do it, if only I could get funding.
Mark: As a matter of fact, I happened to run into Larry at a musical event last year. Hadn’t seen him for twenty years. He looks just the same. Wonderful guy. Still performing and composing. You know him? From SFAI?
No, I think I knew him through your first X, Zeuss. Played an oboe or some such thing. I can’t remember. Seemed like a nice artist type guy, though.