Not your grandpa's kind of radio.

Welcome to We Had Voice's PodBean page! This is the starting point for all things WHV related. We're not community website-ists, of course. You can also find us on MySpace, Vox, with YouTube coming soon. You can hear our stuff online, or you can see us live in NYC! Our next show is planned for summer of 2007, so check back in the weeks to come for more info.
The links to the right are a good place to start to learn more about us. Cheers.

Session #1

When and where
The Tank, NYC - March 22nd and 23rd, 2007 @ 8pm
Who
Into The Sunset by Wes Chow, performed by Matt Biagini, Malachy Orozco, Kelly Hayes, and Allison Kao
Neil Shark by Wes Chow, performed by Malachy Orozco and Kelly Hayes
Rodopark written and performed by Eliza Bent
Mortified guest Brandy Barber (3/22) and Giulia Rozzi (3/23)
Musical guest Marc Von Em (3/22)
Musical guest Cariad Harmon w/ Oli Rockberger (3/23)
Produced and directed by Wes Chow. Special thanks to Zoe Moore and the Tank, Giulia Rozzi, David Nadelberg, and Leah Ho.
Notes
This session was recorded over two nights (March 22 & 23, 2007) at the Tank, a non-profit performing arts space in downtown Manhattan.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote about the “limit of a single sitting” -- where literary works should not overpass a natural length. Poe is as good as any to blame for all of my childhood problems and adult inadequacies, so I’ll point my finger at him now and say, “he made me cut material out of the podcast.” I limited the podcast to the length of a CD -- that is, 80 minutes -- and so some great material sadly didn’t make its way into the final recording. I apologize for this. But also, that’s a reason for you to see a live WHV show.
As far as writing credits go: Eliza wrote her short story in college. Brandy and Giulia selected diary entries from when they were teenagers. Marc, Cariad, and Oli performed their own material. The rest of it was written by myself, which I’ve placed in the Creative Commons with a ShareAlike 2.5 license. What this basically means is that you may take my work and perform it, re-publish it, hack it up, build on it, sell it even, so long as you make your changes available in the same sharing spirit. Mash-ups make me happy. The “Who’s At Starbucks” script, in fact, is a mash-up of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First” routine and its historical parent, a turn of the century vaudeville routine called “the Baker Scene,” along with a dose of modern sensibilities/cursing thrown in.
I wish I could write for the show all day. But, as it stands, I’m not blessed with the multiple personalities required to do this, and so I enlist you, gentle listener, to submit your own work and collaborate with us to produce something with more staying power. Even if you write really bad poetry, we’ll find some way to make it work. Until the Internet dies, the best place to get information about submitting is the website: www.wehadvoices.com.
I can’t sign off without mentioning the two fantastic spaces that have molded this show into what it is.
I found the musicians at Rockwood Music Hall, a gem of a bar/music venue that charges zero cover and serves copious amounts of alcohol. It was there that I first thought of putting on a podcast variety show, and where I had my initial talks with musicians.
The other space, of course, is the Tank, who’s mission “is to provide a welcoming, creative, collaborative, and affordable environment for artists and activists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas.” If this show was uncharted territory for us, then the Tank was that exotic land out there providing us safe landing and a new world.
My only hope is that we didn’t bring smallpox.
Wes Chow
April 1, 2007

Sessions

Session #1 - March 22nd and 23rd, 2007 @ 8pm at the Tank, NYC.

Contribute

Drop us an email for information about contributing content, acting and musical talent, suggestions, world peace, or if you're generally a cool fellow. Subscribe to the WHV annoucement list to be updated about our going-ons.

What's in a name?

In 1950, Billy Wilder skewered Hollywood with his ode to getting dumped, personally and professionally, in Sunset Blvd. The film deals with the eccentricities of Norma Desmond, a silent film star who finds herself lost and forgotten in the era of talking films. Desmond, played by real life silent star Gloria Swanson, cuts at the inadequacies of film actresses who require the help of an audio element to convey ideas. “We didn’t need dialogue,” she says, “We had faces!”
Your opinion is noted, Ms. Desmond. But you have it wrong. In an era of dazzling visual effects, computer graphics, pyrotechnic rock concerts, quick cutting, slick advertisements, and plastic surgery, it’s easy to forget that storytelling doesn’t require the eyes. In its most basic form, storytelling is, simply, speaking. It’s not a dying tradition -- eavesdrop in a bar and you hear traces of the art -- it has merely been knocked off its throne.
And so we leave you to go on your merry way tonight, with simply a reminder: speak up, speak clearly, (but above all) speak.

About

We Had Voices is an old time radio variety show reinvented for the 21st century. The live performance features a collection of short plays, readings, music, experimentation, and an eclecticism that's just a wee bit off kilter. It ain't your grandpa's kind of radio. Take it in with wide eyes and open ears, but don't forget -- it's all in your head.
We Had Voices debuted in March, 2007 to a crowd that hadn't quite realized that video killed the radio star a long time ago. What WHV brought back to life was a Prairie Home Frankenstein creature with a flair for making bad puns and cannibalism funny. WHV is cementing their style, eight feet tall, and has strange sprockets sprouting from their necks.
Their first performance was a labor of clandestine love -- the result of a half year of collecting material and throwing it in front of appreciative sold out downtown audiences. WHV is stepping up the pace and producing a quarterly session with continuing storylines and exciting new musical talent. They bring New York's best innovative artistic talent into a single room, and then step back and take cover as things get hot.
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