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Past Programs 2011
MAY 7, 2011
LIVE from the San Francisco Ferry Building - Show 905
Join us in the Port Commission Room on the second floor of 1 Ferry Plaza in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together. Sedge welcomes:
Author
Louis B. Jones
Fiction director for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and author of the brand-new novel Radiance.Film Maker
Richard Schickel
Life and Time magazine's film critic and movie historian for over 40 years with his latest book, Conversations with Scorsese.Farmer
Lee James
will briefly step out of the farmers market to talk to us about Tierra Vegetables, her family farm in the heart of Sonoma County.Acoustic Trio
The Devil Makes Three
bring us their punky perspective on vintage American blues.The Enchanting
Mike Greensill
Resident piano player and accompanist for Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live.
MAY 14, 2011
LIVE from the San Francisco Ferry Building - Show 906
Join us in the Port Commission Room on the second floor of 1 Ferry Plaza in San Francisco, to make beautiful radio together. Sedge welcomes:
Music Critic
GREIL MARCUS
author of The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes.Farmer
DAVID WINSBERG
of Happy Quail Farms.Singers
MEREDITH MONK AND KITKA
in the first collaboration between a local favorite and a MacArthur Genius.
MAY 21, 2011
LIVE from the San Francisco Ferry Building - Show 907
Online Organizer
ELI PARISER
Board President of the 5-million member organization MoveOn.org, with his insightful new book The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You.Author
JULIAN DAWSON
author of And on Piano. Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock's Greatest Session Man.Journalist
DAVID TEMPLETON
whose critically-acclaimed solo show Wretch Like Me is now at the Roxie Theater.Travel Writers
SPUD HILTON & MARY MOORE MASON
stop by, representing the 450 travel writers in San Francisco this weekend!
March 26, 2011
LIVE from Revival Bar & Kitchen Restaurant - Show 899
We gather at REVIVAL, 2102 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, to make beautiful radio together!
Sedge welcomes:
MICHAEL McCLURE, award-winning poet, playwright, songwriter and novelist, with his newly-published book, Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems.
ANTHONY HOROWITZ, screenwriter of acclaimed British World War II detective television series Foyle's War, and author of the bestselling Alex Rider children's series, with the final installment, Scorpia Rising.
LISA TAYLOR, author of Your Farm in the City: An Urban Dweller's Guide to Growing Food and Raising Animals
BRIAN CHRISTIAN, author of The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What it Means to Be Alive.
QUINN DEVEAUX AND THE BLUE BEAT REVUE with their New Orleans soul and early blues sound that is sure to get you up out of our seat.
The Rambunctious MIKE GREENSILL
FEBRUARY 26, 2011
LIVE from the Ferry Building in San Francisco - Show 895
Join us at the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!
Sedge welcomes:
WESLEY STACE (AKA singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding) with his new novel, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON: In her singular voice—humble, elegiac, practical—Maxine Hong Kingston sets out to reflect on aging as she turns sixty-five, in her new book I Love a Broad Margin to My Life
Naturalist CLAIRE PEASLEE on Central Valley waterbirds
DAN HICKS and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge
and so much more!
March 12, 2011
LIVE from Revival Bar & Kitchen Restaurant - Show 897
Join us at REVIVAL, 2102 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, to make beautiful radio together!
All tickets for this show are $28.* and include prix fixe breakfast and coffee service.
Sedge welcomes:
ALAN PAUL, author of Big in China: My Unlikely Adventure Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Reinventing Myself in Beijing
ADAM HASLETT, author of Union Atlantic
HAMILTON GABRIELLE, founder of New York's acclaimed Prune Restaurant, with her new memoir Blood, Bones & Butter.
MARK MOFFETT, AKA "Dr. Bugs," author of Adventures Among Ants
KARL AND CARL'S Tips on Travel
EOS ENSEMBLE, an exciting chamber music group comprised mainly of members of the San Francisco Opera orchestra
EVIE LADIN, in a solo performance
THE EFFERVESCENT MIKE GREENSILL
*No discounted tickets or gift certificates accepted for this show
March 5, 2011
LIVE from Revival Bar & Kitchen Restaurant - Show 896
Join us at REVIVAL, 2102 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, to make beautiful radio together!
All tickets for this show are $28.* and include prix fixe breakfast and coffee service.
Sedge welcomes:
T.C. BOYLE, celebrating the publication of his thirteenth novel, When the Killing's Done
CAROL EDGARIAN, cofounder and editor of Narrative Magazine and author of the novel Three Stages of Amazement
TOM SHADYAC, director of Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor, Patch Adams and many more, on tour with his latest project, something completely different. In his new documentary I AM, Shadyac asks some of today's most profound thinkers two questions -- What's wrong with our world, and What can we do about it?
LORETTA LYNCH, with music that's a little bit front porch, a little bit backwoods, the art motel on a long stretch of highway
STEVEN WILLIS, with a new CD Taproot
THE SPONTANEOUS MIKE GREENSILL
*no discounted prices or gift certificates accepted for this show
March 19, 2011
LIVE from Revival Bar & Kitchen Restaurant - Show 898
Join us at REVIVAL, 2102 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, to make beautiful radio together!
All tickets for this show are $28.* and include prix fixe breakfast and coffee service.
Sedge welcomes:
CATHLEEN SCHINE, whose new novel The Three Weissmanns of Westport is a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility
SARA WHEELER, author of The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle
KEITH THOMSON, author of Twice A Spy (sequel to Once A Spy)
LINDA TILLERY and BARBARA HIGBIE, in honor of In honor of National Women's History Month
TYLER NELSON and NANCY GUSTAFSON, of Lorin Maazel's Castleton Festival Opera, performing next week at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, the first time the company has performed outside of their home theater in Virginia.
*No discount tickets or gift certificates accepted for this show
FEBRUARY 19, 2011
LIVE from the Ferry Building in San Francisco - Show 894
Join us at the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!
Sedge welcomes:
CHRIS SMITHER with a new CD, Time Stands Still
SUSAN HALL, artist and author of River Flowing Home
JANE MCGONIGAL, game designer and author of Reality is Broken
SHARON SALZBERG, author of REAL HAPPINESS: The Power of Meditation
SUMMER BRENNER, author of My Life in Clothes
KEN OLSEN, Olsen Organic Farm
ZAHRA NOORBAKHSH, whose comedy show All Atheists Are Muslim is now at San Francisco's Stage Werx Theatre
More wonderful guests, TBA
In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building
RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.
FEBRUARY 12, 2011
LIVE from the Ferry Building in San Francisco - Show 893
Join us at the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!
Sedge welcomes...
LISA NAPOLI, public radio show producer and host, and author of Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth.
MARK STEVENSON, futurist, stand-up, musician, and author of An Optimist's Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer "What's Next?"
MICHAEL DAVID LUKAS, author of The Oracle of Stamboul, in which a preternaturally intelligent little girl becomes an advisor to the Ottoman sultan.
TOMMY EMMANUEL, Australian guitar wizard with a new album, Little by Little
The SAN FRANCISCO BOYS CHORUS, led by Artistic Director Ian Robertson, will share their Grammy Award winning sound with us before their upcoming performance in Robert Moses' world premier of Fable & Faith at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building
RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.
FEBRUARY 5, 2011
LIVE from the Ferry Building in San Francisco - Show 892
Join us at the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!
Sedge welcomes...
SNL's LARAINE NEWMAN, performing Feb. 4 and 5 at The Marsh in San Francisco
RODNEY CROWELL, Grammy-winning performer, and author of a new memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks
PEGGY ORENSTEIN, award-winning writer, editor and speaker talks about her newest book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter
HELENE MARSHALL of Marshall's Honey Farm
THE MOORE BROTHERS, the innovative acoustic duo from Grass Valley
In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building
RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.
JANUARY 29, 2011
LIVE from the Ferry Building in San Francisco - Show 891
Join us a the Ferry Building in San Francisco to make beautiful radio together!
GREIL MARCUS revisits more than forty years of listening to Bob Dylan, weaving individual moods and moments into a brilliant history of changing times
MIKE DAISEY, on his double-header--The Last Cargo Cult and The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs--at the Berkeley Rep
BRUCE JENKINS, author of Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins, about his father, Gordon "Gor" Jenkins, top-notch composer, arranger, conductor and performer
THE BOBS, beloved (and award-winning) a cappella practitioners return to the WCL stage
"HE SAID/SHE SAID" - duets performed by Dan (from the Bobs) and Angie Doctor (from the group Clockwork)
The Magic MIKE GREENSILL
In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building
RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.
JANUARY 22, 2011
LIVE from the San Francisco Ferry Building - show 890
Our first LIVE Broadcast of 2011
JOAN GUSSOW, author of Growing, Older: a Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables, in which the author writes about everything from garden pests and national food policy, to zucchini and butterflies
LINDA SCHLOSSBERG, award-winning writer with her debut novel Life in Miniature, a wholly original coming-of-age story.
TOM RACHMAN, author of The Imperfectionists, his highly acclaimed debut novel about a struggling international newspaper in Rome
DAVID VANN, former National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Wallace Stegner Fellow, John L'Hereux Fellow, with his new novel Caribou Island
WILL BROKAW of Brokaw Nursery, on California-grown subtropical fruits
Music by OR, THE WHALE, a band that will rock you, make you dance, and maybe even inspire you to contribute to their amazing vocal pyrotechnics—voices everywhere, indeed.
In the Port Commission Room on the second floor of the San Francisco Ferry Building
RESERVATIONS: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB.
JANUARY 15, 2011
A Marvel of The WCL Archives- Show 889
Whoa, you can be there again! January 26, 2006.
presented LIVE at the now defunct Empire Plush Room in still extant York Hotel. ( Back LIVE 2011 at the Ferry Building January 22nd)
MONEY is the theme today, and
DAVE BARRY, humorist and columnist, has something to say about the subject in his new book Money Secrets...
LIZ PERLE, author of Money: A Memoir, also Editor-in-Chief of Common Sense Media
MATTHEW and TERCES ENGELHART, authors, The Abounding River, owners of Cafe Gratitude
THE COTTARS, amazing young CELTIC musicians from Cape Breton
CHARLIE OWEN, San Francisco's best-kept-secret soul singer
and the ever-splendid MIKE GREENSILL, investing in the house piano.
JANUARY 8, 2011
Early years highlights - Show 888
Our Anniversary Show - Today - a live-ish special mixed with some highlights from those formative years. We pulled together just a few hilarious and moving moments with a few of the 10,000 guests since Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live first broadcast January 8, 1994 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco. West Coast Live succeeded his successful West Coast Weekend, which began in October 1984, following a year of Breakfast Jam he began in September 1983, both produced live. Yikes, 27 years of live radio!
The theme today turns out to be Voices -- voices still here, some gone, voices produced through other forms -- of instruments, history, emotions. We start with the first :30 prior to the first broadcast from the Cowell Theater, before we went live to air, and the opening moments from January 8, 1994, with DIANE HIDY at the piano. You are there!
In the First Hour we begin with a conversation with the inimitable JULIA CHILD about food and eating and love, from 11/16/1996 when she was 84, doing her best Meryl Streep impersonation. We reveal her favorite hors d'oeuvre.
From 10/221994, TERRY JONES of MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS expounds of falsettos, and how comedy is made in Life of Brian. What fun we can have in a live, spontaneous show with a lively audience!
Later, on 11/25/2006 at the Plush Room, LAURIE ANDERSON and the Tuvan Throat Singers CHIRGILCHAN came in and we persuaded the TUVANs to teach the renowned a capella group THE BOBS how to throat-sing. First you imitate a Harley-Davidson....
MIKE GREENSILL plays the brief interval break,
then the 2nd Act begins with THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT from 8/31/1996 as they were on their way to acclaim
From November 11, 1995, as we celebrated the reopening of the Legion of Honor Museum, STUART CANIN demos with a Bach fugue the Guarneri Del Gesu violin Jashcha Heifitz played and donated to the museum. And he recreates the beginning of the FRED ALLEN - JACK BENNY feud of 1936 with the :45 Bee.
STUDS TERKEL, the late, great Chicagoan waxes on the horrors of solo violin music, except for STUART CANIN, JASCHA HEIFETZ, and FRITZ KREISLER and how his mother always wanted him to play like MARVIN, his upstairs neighbor. Then we here about the importance of stories that make political movements human and personal.
MIKE GREENSILL and WESLA WHITFIELD updated the 1952 LOUIS JORDAN jazz classic as Greensill for President for Nov. 1, 2008, a story of political adventures that are the same, but different, and still the source for great lyrics.
And we close with a high-energy song from the 6/8/1996 show with TAJ MAHAL joining with JIM CAMPILONGO and the 10 GALLON CATS for a festive fishing and libation number. We had to retrieve TAJ from the end of the Cowell Theater pier, where he'd gone to hang out that beautiful morning with the Russian fisherman using cuttlefish and cut fish as bait and spark plugs for weights.
The closing credits from that day features DIANE HIDY rocking out with her classical verve
RESERVATIONS for the Live Broadcast at the Ferry Building in San Francisco: for your 2 hours of slow-food organic radio with only the freshest conversation, music and play: 415-664-9500, or TICKETWEB. Also facebook.
JANUARY 1, 2011
New Years's Day Frolic - Show 887
Gentle Frolic and New Year highlights for this special that made it way through ice and snow and sunshine and time and space to be with you as we commence 2011.
Originally broadcast January 3, 1998 from The Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco.
OMAR SOSA and JOHN SANTOS, featuring music from their latest recordings Nfume - For the Unseen and Omar Omar.
Monologist SPALDING GRAY. Seven years ago, Spalding went elsewhere. What stories he told. Here he talks about The Slippery Slope. Poignant then, and especially now. He says stories are a form of reincarnation.
Slack guitar music from GEORGE KUO, MARTIN PAHINUI, DENNIS KAMAKHI, and DAVID KAMAKAHI.
KEVIN KELLY, editor of "Wired" (in 1998). Here talking about technology as we knew it in 1998 and in Out of Control. His new book, 2011, is What Technology Wants. What a time-trip.
Travel tips from CARL AND KARL, timeless, chanelling on Samuel Beckett, Walter Benjamin, Jonathan Winters, and George Carlin.
Music from piano player MIKE GREENSILL who's partied all night to be with you today.