Scott Bliss's posts

My interview with Nashville singer-songwriter... Brooke Annibale. #brookeannibale #nashville #singersongwriter

Should I renew the lease on my "walker"... or am I the new Adonis of the weight room?

My interview of Cathy Bruno, personal trainer... Beaver, PA

Joining us today from his office in Birmingham, UK is Andrew Dubber…

Andrew is an academic, author, public speaker, blogger, music reviewer, radio and music industry consultant, podcaster, record collector, DJ, and producer. He is Reader in Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University, he’s an advisor to Bandcamp.com… the author of both The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online and Music in the Digital Age as well the founder of New Music Strategies – a music think tank and strategy group.

Canada is a country of about 35 million people and an overwhelming 80% of them have access to the Internet. Toronto, Canada’s largest city is a hotbed of online activity including social media and blogging. Joining us today via Skype is one of Toronto’s most colorful bloggers… Raymi Lauren White… better known as Raymi The Minx…

Original interview June 2010

BLISS: This is the sad and yet intriguing story of Londoner Joyce Carol Vincent…

In January 2006, with thousands of pounds in rent past due, a Metropolitan Housing Trust officer arrived at a small North London flat with a locksmith in tow.

Ambient sound…

BLISS: They drilled the lock and entered the flat to find a large pile of unopened mail just behind the door some of it postmarked as early as November 2003. The heat and electricity were still on and the television was playing…

Unfortunately… a little further into this one room bedsit… in front of the TV and surrounded by Christmas presents still in the process of being wrapped… lay the body… now the almost skeletal remains… of a woman dead apparently for a little over two years.

There had been no missing persons report… and although she had a family including several sisters… and maybe even a former finance… no one was searching for Joyce Vincent or seemingly worried about her.

Why had it taken so long for anyone to find her? Why wasn’t anyone alarmed by what must have been her sudden disappearance?

Even when her neighbor, Michael Dobbs, noticed something odd he never reported it… saying later: “I did notice a kind of rotten smell but the bins downstairs are strong and the stairwells smell with junkies.”

During the Coroner’s inquiry a pathologist told the court that the body was so badly decomposed that dental records had to be used to identify it… and that, as a result, it was impossible to determine an actual cause of death. Meanwhile, detectives told the court there wasn’t any evidence of foul play… at least not that they could find. At the time, Detective Inspector Michael Ainslie of the Metropolitan Police said… “This is a real tragedy and a very upsetting case”.

Cut from… “Undone” by Alice Temple from her album “Be With You In A Minute” as featured in the film.

BLISS: But major London newspapers… The Times, The Sun, The Telegraph along with the BBC covered the story and they suggest… that Joyce was not elderly or infirmed but rather an attractive and relatively young, 38 year old woman who, at one point, may have even worked for a major advertising agency. They go on to suggest however that Ms. Vincent may have also been the victim of domestic violence and may have been in her flat with assistance from social services for battered women.

In any case… there wasn’t a lot to go on at that time and the case was finally recorded as an “open” verdict… and the news cycle moved on.

BLISS: But… if we leave it here, we’ve only learned a part of the story…

Carol Morley… a London based documentary filmmaker had followed the news coverage on Joyce Vincent as well and came to a conclusion that her life should not pass without more notice… or more answers to her mystery… so she began an all out effort to find anyone who may have known Joyce…

MORLEY: I knew that I didn’t want somebody to become just an anonymous headline anybody’s life deserves more than a kind of grim headline I think so that was the starting point but of course as a filmmaker and finding stuff out about her she became you know I mean I was obsessed…

BLISS: Morley advertised throughout London… in Newspapers and by posting flyers even by advertising on the sides of London cabs in an attempt to locate anyone who may have known Joyce Vincent.

MORLEY: My responsibility is to in the end to bring an audience a story that can be told in the most compelling way possible and I think with this story it was really important to have the real testimonies but also it was really important to bring Joyce to life and so for me it was about the testimonies and I kind of linked to the real in the fact that Joyce really did exist and this isn’t made up and this isn’t you know a work of fiction but on the other hand film is so beautiful at you know creating feeling and emotion.

BLISS: Morley’s efforts were successful and she was ultimately able to identify and interview a number of Joyce’s friends, coworkers, and even family as she filled in the blanks of her life. While not able to answer some of the questions surrounding her death… Morley ultimately created a dramatic documentary that honors Joyce Vincent’s life and brings some closure to the “open” verdict of her death.

MORLEY: I wanted to make a beautiful legacy and not some kind of you know let’s blame someone let’s find people let’s put the people on camera that don’t want to be on camera it’s like what’s the point of that… so, I don’t like to make films that are really miserable ah so I would never have made a miserable film but then when I started finding out about Joyce people where like she had a wicked sense of humor so I knew it was really important to imbue it with life and you know and people said she lit up a room and so for me I didn’t really want to concentrate on the ending which was the three years she was forgotten I wanted to bring her to life and really look at what that life was and that Joyce didn’t remain in the margins you know that… you know I brought her into everybody’s perspective…

BLISS: Morley’s film… “Dreams of a Life”… was released in December 2011… and is currently being screened throughout the UK.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania… I’m Scott Bliss

Dreams of a Life http://dreamsofalife.com/

“Undone” by Alice Temple from her album “Be With You In A Minute” as featured in the film.

Amazing Grace, Renee Fleming and Mark O’Connor

AMAZING GRACE… RECORDED IN THE NOTABLE ALL HALLOWS CHURCH IN THE GOSPEL OAK SECTION OF LONDON. SUNG BY THE OPERA STAR RENEE FLEMING. ACCOMPANIED BY WORLD RENOWNED VIOLINIST MARK O’CONNOR. THE VIOLIN… MADE IN PORTLAND, MAINE.

35:09.765 – 35:40 So what I’m doing now is I’m planning across the… to create that curve… using a very small plane almost like lines on a TV set creating the curve… (with ambient sound of the planning)

JONATHAN COOPER IS A VIOLINMAKER AND A TRADESMAN. HE BUILDS HIS VIOLINS TO MATCH THE UNIQUE NEEDS OF MUSICIANS LIKE MARK O’CONNOR.

22:46 – 22:59 you know one of the more interesting parts of the trade is that you have to be fluent in a number of different things… you have to have at least a basic understanding of a lot of different things… you have to understand metallurgy to an extent to understand your tools… you have to understand art to understand form… you have to understand sound… to certainly deal with what people are telling you… I think that’s very, very important and um history to know the context of where these things come from and where they’re going… because certainly the violin is an icon.

JONATHAN’S GOOD AT WHAT HE DOES. HE’S CREATED OVER 325 INSTRUMENTS SINCE THE MID 80S. AND… AT $15,000 EACH… THEY’RE AN INVESTMENT. ARTISTS LIKE ALEX AND TATIANA HARGREAVES ALONG WITH RECORDING ARTIST BRUCE MOLSKY USE HIS INSTRUMENTS TO PERFORM BOTH CLASSICAL AND BLUEGRASS MUSIC. PLAYING THEM AS BOTH VIOLIN AND FIDDLE.

8:03.625 – 8:25.00 You know they’re essentially… it is the same instrument its just a different name… it’s the same body shape, the same size… there is no difference um it’s just a term and in most peoples minds fiddle has come to mean you know maybe more country oriented or folk oriented kind of use of the instrument but really the name is interchangeable I mean there are violinist who call it their fiddle and there are fiddle players that call it their violin and so you know…

WITH ALL OF JONATHAN’S SUCCESS YOU MIGHT EXPECT HIM TO BE A LITTLE TAKEN WITH HIS OWN TALENT… BUT HE’S NOT. HE’S GRATEFUL FOR HIS TRADE AND HE’S ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT THE WORK.

18:04 – I mean I just feel extremely fortunate that I can get up every day and do something that I’m interested in… I’m thrilled by it… you know every day for me to work on it… I don’t ever come in here looking to go Oh god I’ve got to make a violin you know heaven help me… I always look at it and think Oh yea I can’t wait to do that… I’ve got this idea I want to try out… this varnish thing I want to work on … I still remember how that last thing I want to see if I can alter that a little bit… we’re… all violin makers… we’re always, at least everyone I know is always in pursuit of making a better instrument and you know I’m just grateful to have the time to do it… to have discovered it early enough in my life so that I could do it… and to have the time to do it… and to me that’s great.

BUT… JONATHON NOT ONLY BUILDS VIOLINS HE PLAYS THEM. DOES HE THINK OF HIMSELF AS A FIDDLER OR A VIOLINIST?

24:20 Oh I’m a fiddle player…

JONATHAN GETS UP AND WALKS AROUND THE SHOP. HE FINDS A FINISHED VIOLIN NEARBY AND BEGINS TO TUNE IT.

Ambient sound… tuning the violin

I mean I’m not a trained violinist… not a classical violinist at all… I was self-taught… I was a guitar player and you know the odd thing about it is that a lot of times when we’ll get together at some sort of collegial situation where there’ll be a whole lot of violinmakers who are working for classical players as well… we’ll all sit around and play fiddle tunes for the most part… or a lot of us will… some of us will go off in reed quartets with other players but a lot of violinmakers are old time fiddle players or bluegrass fiddle players.

JONATHAN WENT ON TO SAY THAT ONE OF HIS FAVORITE PIECES OF FIDDLE MUSIC WAS AN OLD SONG DONE BY BRUCE MOLSKY CALLED PEG AND ALL. RECENTLY, THOUGH… HE’S BEEN PLAYING AND REPLAYING AND OLD SONG CALLED “BOOTH SHOT LINCOLN”

Ambient sound… Jonathan playing Booth Shot Lincoln.

Well… I like that fiddle! That was Booth Shot Lincoln… yea you know that’s the nice part… to be able to make something that you can play…

FROM POTLAND, MAINE… THIS IS SCOTT BLISS

You would have to be living on another planet to not know of the impending holiday release of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Sony Pictures.

Directed by David Fincher who’s work includes The Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and even The Social Network, among many others… the movie is an American adaptation of the first book in Stieg Larsson’s so called Millennium Trilogy... and certainly one of the most anticipated movies of the year.

As the first book in the series, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo introduces us to Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative reporter who undertakes a private assignment into the 40-year-old disappearance of a young woman from one of Sweden’s wealthiest families.

Filled with the intricacies of Blomkvist’s own life and those of the violent, misogynist, right-wing Vanger family… the book, more importantly, introduces us to Lisbeth Salander… the real star of the trilogy.

Described in The New York Times as an androgynous, punkish, computer hacker… Lisbeth is also said to be… an avenging angel: razor sharp and tough as tungsten, a tiny freak of nature able to bring a man twice her size to his knees…

Psychologist, Dr. Robin Rosenberg goes so far as to suggests that Lisbeth is a classic literary superhero… who experiences posttraumatic growth and throughout the first book transitions to mission… to protector and avenger… much in the way that that Bruce Wayne became Batman or Peter Parker… Spiderman.

Non the less… if you’ve succumb to fandom… you’re well aware that there are already Swedish movie versions of all three of the books and that Lisbeth to date has been defined by actress Noomi Rapace Ra-PAHSS.

Fincher though has chosen 26-year-old Rooney Mara to star as Lisbeth along with Daniel Craig as Blomkvist.

Mara… who you may remember as Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend in the very beginning of The Social Network… is, interestingly enough, the descendant of two American football dynasties… she’s the great-granddaughter of Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney, Sr… while her paternal grandfather, Wellington Mara was the long-time co-owner of the New York Giants. She grew up in historic Bedford, NY in Westchester County and graduated from New York University… she is, in addition, the sister of actress Kate Mara… and all in all… a far cry from Lisbeth Salander… which, hopefully, will make her transition all the more interesting…

Aware of the Swedish movies Mara says her focus has been on the book and not Noomie’s prior performance…

Director Fincher, known for his extreme attention to detail, can apparently be a rather contentious character as well… amongst the hype leading up to the release of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo… is his reported anger at David Denby the movie critic at The New Yorker… who apparently jumped the gun and released his review earlier than Fincher had allowed and, in the process, earned himself a ban from any future press viewings of Fincher’s work… non the less, Denby’s review was positive…

The score for the movie was done by Trent Reznor, the Nine Inch Nails frontman and now film score composer, along with his frequent collaborator Atticus Ross. Six of the tracks have already been released for free on the Internet…

The film is due for widespread release on December 21st.

And in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania… I’m Scott Bliss.

The story of the Halifax Explosion on December 6, 1917. My first attempt at editing in Hindenburg... I recorded the narration using the Hindenburg Field Recorder app for the iPhone and then finished the piece in Hindenburg Journalist Pro.