X-Nico

unusual facts about The Listener



Anthony Berkeley Cox

The Scoop and Behind the Screen (1983) (Originally published in The Listener (1931) and (1930), both written by members of the Detection Club)

Cecil Levita

Levita had alleged that Richard S. Lambert, the founding editor of The Listener was unfit to serve on the board of the British Film Institute (on which his wife served) because Lambert had published an article about a house which was supposedly haunted by Gef the talking mongoose.

Eric Rhode

His writing on film appeared in Sight and Sound, The Listener, Encounter, The Observer; he contributed pieces on literature and art to the New Statesman and The Financial Times, while the New Society and The Times Literary Supplement published pieces on psychoanalytic topics, and occasional pieces ran in The Sunday Times.

Kathleen Nott

Essays and reviews by Nott were also published by Encounter, Partisan Review, The Nation, The Listener, New Society, Commentary, The Times and The Spectator.

M/F

Burgess in his memoir quotes Frank Kermode, who in The Listener, showed that he had read his Lévi-Strauss and saw that the novel was perhaps not fully intelligible without a knowledge of the riddle-incest nexus.

New Zealand flag debate

The Listener magazine held a flag design contest in 1989, attracting nearly 600 entries.

Sibyl, Lady Colefax

Harold Nicolson penned an affectionate tribute that appeared shortly after in The Listener.

Uenuku

It was the first TV drama to be entirely performed in te reo (The Listener magazine softened viewers by providing a translation prior to screening).


see also

Anne LeBaron

Writing about LeBaron's 1989 Telluris Theoria Sacra (for flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and piano), musicologist Susan McClary notes that the work "...points to LeBaron's more pervasive interest in music's ability to mold temporality, immersing the listener in a sound world in which time bends, stands still, dances, or conforms to the mechanical measure of the clock" (Lochhead 2007).

Blacktrash: The Autobiography of Kirk Jones

The listener is taken from street drama on "My Dogz Iz My Gunz" to metaphysical musings on "Oh My God" and rage-filled vents on his girlfriend in "Cheatin'" before an ironic post-mortal cover version of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" finishes this album which went deeper than many critics had expected from the hardcore rapper.

Break Up the Family

As with "Late Night, Maudlin Street" Morrissey takes the listener back to his 1970s childhood in Manchester, however the lyrics here differ as the narrator is pleased to be breaking away from his past rather than nostalgically looking back.

Colors of noise

Grey noise is random white noise subjected to a psychoacoustic equal loudness curve (such as an inverted A-weighting curve) over a given range of frequencies, giving the listener the perception that it is equally loud at all frequencies.

Farewell Aunty Jack

The music was written by Rory O'Donoghue, who also did the singing as the character "Thin Arthur", whereas "Aunty Jack" (Grahame Bond) provided wise-cracks and other spoken commentary to the lyrics, addressed to the listener and the singer.

Grey noise

Grey noise is random noise subjected to a psychoacoustic equal loudness curve (such as an inverted A-weighting curve) over a given range of frequencies, giving the listener the perception that it is equally loud at all frequencies.

Hwyl Nofio

The project provided tangible evidence of this landscape in an accompanying book that inculcate the listener into a world of chilling folk myths and the resonances of family histories, as well as timely references to the legacies of surrealist filmmaker and poet Jane Arden (director) and the novelist Bruce Chatwin.

I Don't Know Why I Act This Way

A follow up effort to Start the Car, and A View from 3rd Street, I Don't Know Why I Act This Way brings the listener to something new with Jude Cole.

Illbient

Psychedelic musician Helios Creed joked that "although Eno invented ambient music while ill in bed - 'illbient' is actually an extreme retro offshoot that demands that the listener produces a doctor's note before being allowed to purchase."

Jane Ussher

The book includes many portraits originally published in the Listener of notable New Zealanders, ranging from sport stars such as Jonah Lomu to actors such as Russell Crowe.

Malcolm Lipkin

As The Listener commented on The Pursuit (14 February 1983): "Lipkin, who studied with Seiber and Blacher, doesn't exactly sound new but he doesn't sound like anyone else either."

Nadirim

Following the lead from games and movies with similar settings and drawing inspiration from Arabic musical traditions and local, authentic instruments, BAFTA-winning composer Tamás Kreiner (Best Original Game Music, Imperium Galactica II., 2000) and Ervin Nagy at Newtex Productions created an all-original score which captures the mood and mysticism of the land and immediately draw the listener into the experience.

New Zealand Listener

Since 2004, the Listener has produced an annual New Zealand Listener Power List of the 50 most powerful people in New Zealand.

Oom-Pah-Pah

The word "oom-pah-pah" is seemingly used euphemistically to refer to both intoxication and fornication; however, as the song points out, the word's meaning is only as dirty as the listener interprets it.

Phonetic reversal

On the song by Radiohead "Like Spinning Plates", Thom Yorke actually sings the first verse voiced and sounded out backwards, and then the final cut of the album studio version has that superimposed back-masked as the first verse of the song so it would be cognizant as being sung forward to the listener, albeit with unnatural intonation and inflection apparent in his voice.

Ronald Firbank

The poet W. H. Auden praised him highly in a radio broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in June 1961 (the text of the broadcast was published in The Listener of 8 June 1961).

Speech compression

Time-compressed speech refers to voice compression for immediate playback, without any decompression (so that the final speech sounds faster to the listener).

The '59 Sound

Absolutepunk.net raved about the album, saying that it's "Packed full of vivid imagery and storytelling that resembles "Born to Run"/"Darkness on the Edge of Town"-era Springsteen, "The '59 Sound" is an impeccable work of punk-rock art where each listen offers something new, never taking any hint of imagination or personal effect away from the listener; this is the album The Killers wanted to make with "Sam's Town" but were unsuccessful at."

The International Tweexcore Underground

However, they use these names so that the listener knows that Gareth never cared for Fugazi and Black Flag and Aleks never cared for Heavenly or Beat Happening/K Records.

Toni Fisher

Disc jockey Wink Martindale commented that the record label billed the singer as "Miss Toni Fisher" because of her powerful voice, which is consistently audible over the phasing, the instruments, and the background noise, to confirm to the listener that the singer is indeed a woman.