Bob Boilen

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Bob Boilen (2014)

Bob Boilen (born April 10, 1953 in New York City ) is an American radio host , musician and author . In his three decades long career with National Public Radio (NPR), he made a name for himself as a tastemaker who has his preferences above all outside the musical mainstream . He gained national fame as the inventor and host of the programs All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts .

Life

Bob Boilen grew up in the Queens New York borough and Bethesda , Maryland . As a child he became interested in listening to records and bands like the Beatles or the Doors after trying in vain to learn to play the guitar himself. To finance his education at Montgomery Community College , he worked 48 hours a week in a Rockville record store as a teenager . He later moved to the University of Maryland, College Park , majoring in business , but disliked it and dropped out.

Boilen is divorced and has a son (* 1992 or 1993). Because he has prosopagnosia , he always wears a brown fedora in public out of compassion for other people who have difficulty recognizing faces . He lives in Silver Spring , Maryland.

Career

Musician and composer

In the late 1970s, Boilen shared an apartment with a friend in Washington, DC and ran a record warehouse. In the synthesizer he finally found an instrument that was suitable for him and founded the band Tiny Desk Unit with four fellow musicians from the local punk scene . Their esoteric- psychedelic brand dance music brought the group a few gigs , in 1980 they released their only live album on the indie label 9½ x 16 "Records . According to Bob Boilen, the band" destroyed "themselves with alcohol, heroin and other drugs. During his short-lived During his band career, he had acquired various production skills while working for a city television station.

Between 1982 and 1986 Boilen worked as a technician, sound engineer and composer for the Impossible Theater in Baltimore . In 1983 he created the audiovisual installation WHIZ BANG - A Short History of Sound , for which he was one of the first composers to use the technique of sampling . The Washington City Paper named Boilen Performance Artist of the Year in 1985, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH) gave him financial support for his work as an artist and composer of electronic music . After working at the Impossible Theater, he produced a music video show for a DC TV station, among other things .

Radio presenter

Bob Boilen at his desk

In 1988 Boilen turned to his "first love", the radio . He applied to the NPR telecast All Things Considered and first began temporarily with the cutting of interview tapes . Within a year he was promoted to moderator of the news program and held this position for the next 18 years. Due to the great interest of the audience in the recorded music excerpts, Boilen developed the live format All Songs Considered in 1999 , which became one of the most successful NPR programs, especially as a podcast . The first broadcast with Boilen as a presenter took place in 2000. He recognized the potential of the Internet at an early stage and from 1997 onwards produced an online show called Science Live for the Discovery Channel . Since 2008, the avid concert-goer has hosted the Tiny Desk Concerts , each recorded at his desk at the NPR headquarters in DC.

Over the years Bob Boilen has earned the reputation of a tastemaker (roughly equivalent to an influencer ) and helped many young, aspiring artists to a career. Apart from the musical mainstream, he attends around ten concerts a week and collects ideas for his programs. In early 2016 he had a guest appearance on the Simpsons episode Gal of Constant Sorrow (season 24, episode 17). In the same year he published his first book Your Song Changed My Life , for which he interviewed 35 legendary and current musicians about the most important songs of their lives. In addition, he continues to work as a composer and musician, especially with his project Danger Painters , and makes the recordings available for free streaming on his website .

Awards

  • 1985: Washington City Paper Performance Artist of the Year
  • 2011: Emmy Award in the category New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Arts, Lifestyle and Culture for Project Song: Moby (together with producers John Poole and David Gilkey and sound engineer Neil Tevault from NPR Music)

Discography

Tiny Desk Unit

  • 1980: Tiny Desk Unit (live album, 9½ x 16 "records)
  • 1981: Naples ( EP , 9½ x 16 "Records)
  • 2007: Sputnik Fell on My Birthday

Danger painters

  • 2008: Danger Painters
  • 2009: The Pink Chair
  • 2010: iii
  • 2011: IV
  • 2013: V
  • 2014: [Sic]
  • 2014: Summer EP (EP)
  • 2015: S7even
  • 2016: Ate
  • 2016: Another Summer (EP)
  • 2017: 9
  • 2017: Fall
  • 2017: 11
  • 2018: Picture the End of Summer

solo

  • 1983: Music for Unitards
  • 1985: Laser Dance
  • 2004: Just This, No More
  • 2005: Rotten Seeds Sown by Force
  • 2006: The Way One Thing Leads to Another
  • 2008: New Songs and Shakey Ideas
  • 2010: Talking Vision
  • 2011: Candy from the Future
  • 2012: Talk / Listen / Listen / Talk
  • 2018: Take It to Bed: Music for Clouds

bibliography

  • Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It.HarperCollins , New York 2016, ISBN 978-0062344458 , 288 pp.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Marcus J. Moore: How 'All Songs Considered's' Bob Boilen went from Tiny Desk to tastemaker. In: The Washington Post . April 14, 2016, accessed on August 31, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Bob Boilen. Connect Beyond Festival, accessed August 31, 2019 .
  3. ^ Richard Harrington: Sounds of Technology. In: The Washington Post . October 11, 1983, accessed August 31, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b Bob Boilen. NPR , accessed August 31, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Bob Boilen: 662 Shows in 365 Days: Bob Boilen's Year in Concerts. NPR , January 9, 2015, accessed August 31, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Bob Boilen: 506 Shows in 365 Days: Bob Boilen's 2015 in Concerts. NPR , January 8, 2016, accessed August 31, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Bob Boilen: So ... I'm Going to Be on 'The Simpsons'. NPR , February 18, 2016, accessed August 31, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Boil, Bob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American radio host, musician and author
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , United States