Benjamin Nead
My blogs
Blogs I follow
| Gender | Male |
|---|---|
| Industry | Communications or Media |
| Occupation | Radio Announcer |
| Location | Tucson, Arizona, United States |
| Introduction | Born in 1958, I grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, where I was variously employed as a cab driver and bartender through my early 20s, then relocating to Tucson, Arizona, in 1983, where I've been living ever since. I built an electric guitar when I was 24, under the tutelage of Charles Fox at Guitar Research & Design in South Strafford, Vermont. This subsequently led to a career in repairing and restoring stringed musical instruments of all sorts, which I maintained through my early 30s. A volunteering hobby of radio announcing at college and community stations transitioned into a new broadcasting career by 1988. Mostly, I've been associated with presenting Jazz music over the airwaves. I also record live Classical music performances with minimalist 2-track stereo microphone techniques for local arts presenters. I've returned to woodworking in various capacities, building Free Flight model airplanes through my 40s to the present and teaching this art to school age children for a number of years. Most recently, I've developed a desire to build some modern furniture for myself. The latter is the motivation behind starting this blog. |
| Interests | Free Flight model airplanes, Jetex, Dr. Jan Zigmund, aviation history, Orville & Wilbur Wright, Louis Bleriot, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Bessie Coleman, Jack Northrop, Sir Frank Whittle, Hans Von Ohain, Eric Brown, Chuck Yeager, Scott Crossfield, Richard Whitcomb, Paul MacCready, Burt Rutan, Rocketry, Robert Goddard, Werner Von Braun, Frank Malina, John Whiteside Parsons, Sergei Korolev, Yuri Gagarin, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, vacuum tube electronics, Edwin Howard Armstrong, John Logie Baird, Philo Farnsworth, audio recording, Rudy Van Gelder, Tom Dowd, Manfred Eicher, electric cars, supercapacitors, lithium batteries, green energy, solar power, photovoltaic panels, LED light bulbs, biodiesel, hemp, organic gardening, vegetarian cooking, sustainable living, woodworking, visual arts, Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Chesely Bonestell, photography, Ansel Adams, W. Eugene Smith, modern architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, De Stijl, Gerrit Rietveld, Bauhaus, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, industrial design, Alex Tremulis, Preston Tucker, Raymond Loewy, Buckminster Fuller, free thinkers, scientists, Epicurus, Leonardo Fibonacci, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, peaceful visionaries, Mahatma Gandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Casar Chavez, Clara Barton, 20th century world history, guitars, listening to Jazz music, meeting new people and hanging out with old friends, cats, getting to walk to work instead of having to drive, drinking espresso, exploring the austere beauty of the Sonoran Desert. |
| Favorite movies | Wings (1927), King Kong (1933), Lost Horizon (1937), Rebecca (1940), The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), Treasure Of Sierra Madre (1948), The Third Man (1949), DOA (1950), The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), Rear Window (1954), Twelve Angry Men (1957), Inherit The Wind (1960), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968), Network (1976), Apocalypse Now (1979), Diva (1981), Blade Runner (1982), The Right Stuff (1983), Tucker (1988), Falling Down (1993), Contact (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Fog Of War (2003), Who Killed The Electric Car? (2006), The King's Speech (2010). |
| Favorite music | Jazz, Swing, BeBop, West Coast Jazz, Hard Bop, Free Jazz, Sidney Bechet, Jimmy Luncerford, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Budd Johnson, Artie Shaw, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, Lester Young, Charlie Christian, Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, Charlie Parker, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, George Russell, Tadd Dameron, Mary Lou Williams, Max Roach, Dexter Gordon, Michael "Dodo" Marmarosa, Wardell Gray, Howard McGhee, Teddy Edwards, Theodore "Fats" Navarro, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Lennie Tristano, Art Pepper, Shelly Manne, Art Blakey, Paul Chambers, Wes Montgomery, Jackie McLean, Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Elmo Hope, Booker Ervin, Herbie Nichols, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Sam Rivers, Bill Evans, Jim Hall, Ron Carter, Larry Young, Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland, Henry Theadgill, Classical Music, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin, Gyorgy Ligeti, Robert Graettinger, John Cage, Astor Piazzolla, Film Music, Franz Waxman, Carl Stalling, Blues, R & B, Rock 'n Roll, Sonny Boy Williamson, Chuck Berry, James Brown, The Beatles, The Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Frank Zappa, Experimental Music, Phillip Glass, Brian Eno. |
| Favorite books | Reinventing Fire (Amory Lovins), Bottled Lightning (Seth Fletcher), Made To Break: Technology And Obsolescence In America (Giles Slade), The Hunt For Zero Point (Nick Cook), Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles (David Darlington), Gateway To Aero Science (Charles Hampson Grant), Model Glider Design (Frank Ziac), Violin Making: As It Was And Is (Ed. Heron-Allen), The Real Jazz (Hugh Panassie), Black Nationalism And The Revolution In Music (Frank Kofsky), Straight Life (Art Pepper), Sticks & Stones (Lewis Mumford), From Bauhaus To Our House (Tom Wolfe), On The Road (Jack Kerouac), Senator Joe McCarthy (Richard Rovere), The End Of Faith (Sam Harris). |