The 15 months I worked on Pacific Drift were the most intense of my career. Queena Kim, Ayala Ben-Yehuda and I created a ton of content all of which, with only one or two exceptions, was better than most you hear on public radio these days. That said, there was wide variation in tone, subject and, I’ll admit, quality.
Hey, what can I say, we were busy.
My favorite full episodes are, without a doubt, episode 15 (“Dreams of a Brighter Day”), episode 16 (“The Uses of Fear”) and episode 11 (“Better Living Through Popularity”).
Other favorites include, from season one:
- Episode 1 (“Our City, Ourselves”)
- Episode 2 (“Art, Science and the San Andreas Fault”)
- Episode 3 (“The Markings of Culture”)
- Episode 4 (“God:Faith.:Sex:Love”)
- Episode 6 (“The Woman Show”)
- And, episode 10 (“Dreams of Justice Illusive”)
From season two:
- Episode 17 (“Religious, Sexual, Drug-induced”)
- Episode 20 (“The Christmas Show”)
- Episode 22 (“Do We Ever Trust The Voices Inside”)
- Episode 23 (“The City of Secrets”)
- And, episode 24 (“A Brief History of Pain”)
Personally, I never thought I’d make a Christmas show, let alone one I’d like so much, but there you go. Life is beautiful.
One of the guiding principles in making the show — and the origin of the word “drift” in the name — was the intermixing of story, subject, theme and sound. So some of my favorite moments in the series actually come between stories — as one ambient sound trails off while a song mixes in, or as two people have an inadvertent conversation, or as subjects get confused and deeper truths revealed.
From the very first episode, you can’t resist this stark guitar hit. Maybe New York and LA aren’t all that different, after all.
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This seamless blend from story to story to story to story — taking us from cellular physics to synesthesia via LACMA and your cochlear — are exactly what Pacific Drift aimed to be about.
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For my money, these five minutes from episode 4 are a pretty incredible blend from God to teenage sexuality via hardcore porno.
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From episode 11, the stories of two women with AIDS, linked by a simple song strikes me as a wonderfully beautiful way to spend 20 minutes of your life. I’ve heard this dozens of times and I still get tears in my eyes as the women speak and goose bumps when that organ comes in. To say nothing of Nico’s voice.
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Episode 15 best captures this idea over the course of 59 minutes, but the first 10 do it best of all — Brian Eno, Miranda July, Ed Ruscha, Thomas Newman and Aimee Bender all collide in a particularly mixed up wonder.
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Finally, this back and forth between Ayala and me and our separate interview subjects creates a particularly confusing blend of things (though not a confusing narrative flow) in the first several minutes of episode 22.
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As I wrote about on Transom.org, we started developing a new style over the course of the production where linear story-telling was discarded or purposefully undercut in favor of a linear progression of ideas or emotion. Seemingly dissimilar stories bounced across the air in a sometimes confusing way in order to build toward an emotional or intellectual — rather than narrative — denouement. It sounds highfalutin but makes a lot of intuitive sense when you hear it.
The two best examples of this are:
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Episode 23, chapter 7: Frank Warren and Chuck Rosenthal Tell You All Their Secrets
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And finally, there are just a heck of a lot of really great stories. This is by no means a comprehensive list, just a dozen or so of the real standouts.
Episode 1, chapter 6: Charlie LeDuff in Slab City
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Episode 3, chapter 9: DJ Vodicka Takes on the Most Dangerous Prison Gang of All
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Episode 4, chapter 1: Julia Sweeney Lets Go of God
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Episode 5, chapter 2: Mark Sussman Uses the Method
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Episode 6, chapter 7: Sam Stern Says Things are Much, Much Worse Than You Could Ever Imagine
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Episode 7, chapter 7: The Squirrel Rebellion
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Episode 11, chapter 2: David Ritz Gives Marvin Gaye the Best Advice of His Life
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Episode 13, chapter 6: Sam Maloof and Danny Hillis Wrestle with Each Other and Everyone Who Will Come After Them
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Episode 16, chapter 12: The Scariest Delicacy of All
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Episode 17, chapter 3: Charles Grob Doses the Walking Dead
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Episode 17, chapter 9: Charles Guelperin Kills So That Others May Live
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Episode 20, chapter 8: “Bienvenido El Duende,” by Trinnie Dalton (mostly cuz I love hearing Scott Carrier play an elf)
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Episode 22, chapter 4: Nikki Davis Loses Her Mind and It Never Really Ever Comes Back
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Episode 24, chapter 6: Teeth are the New Blue Collar
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:53 pm[...] from Ben Adair, whose rangy, nasal radio voice was last heard on short-lived and long-lamented Pacific Drift. Natural Sounds hosts a podcast, mixtapes, and collages, both phono- and photographic. Go their now [...]
