The stories behind the songs

Passing along a couple of cool music-production podcasts that caught my fancy:

• A "Record Producers" overview of Tony Visconti, the famed producer behind hits from David Bowie, T Rex, Thin Lizzy, Morrissey and Paul McCartney.  "The Record Producers" was a British series that profiled famous producers, but this Visconti installment is the only one I can find (I'm open to any help in finding others, or even the original series). The podcast goes by quickly but is loads of fun, including a bit on Visconti hiring him to do an orchestral score but refusing to let him know any other details about the song (turned out to be "Band on the Run"). 
• NPR is following Neko Case as she pieces together her new album. Based on the first installment, this could be a long process because we learn Case doesn't come to the studio with ideas in hand. Instead, she patches things together over time, stitching with her mood. And based on where her head is at now, this may be an enlightening look into one of alternative music's most engaging artists. 

'78 Project' takes musicians back in time

If you thought vinyl LPs were going retro, that's nothing. Adventurous musicians are going back into the dark ages of recording through "The 78 Project," which uses an old Presto machine to record 78 rpm songs direct to vinyl, with the finished product ready for listen minutes later. 

"Soundcheck" captured this in a recent episode and it's a fascinating trip down memory lane, and gives you an idea of the processes music historians like Alan Lomax took in the first half of the 20th century to record old blues, country and calypso in remote locations in North America. 

The videos below capture the magic the musicians experience, but the audio stream of the "Soundcheck" show is illuminating in that you can compare analog vs. digital audio. 

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5 seconds of every No. 1 pop song all in one spot

File this under weird and unneccesary but nonetheless engaging: "Five Seconds of Every #1 Pop Single."

Yep, it's an audio string of five-second snippets of chart-topping pop singles from the 1950s on. A SoundCloud user who goes by the handle mjs538 laboriously pieced together hundreds of audio files totaling more than 70 minutes. That is a ton of work. 

I can't say it makes for long-form listening but it's fun to hear how song styles change and how many one-hit wonders have come and gone over the years. Can you say C.W. McCall? 

You can play Part 1 above and Part 2 below.