Snap Sessions! Podcast

After a long unexpected hiatus, SnapSessions! presents Episode 60, featuring an interview with Grammy-nominated guitarist Alex de Grassi and a SnapSessions! tribute to San Francisco Giants star centerfielder, Willie Mays—"the Say Hey Kid”, just maybe the greatest baseball player of all time.  Alex de Grassi has been a guitarist since his early teens, growing up in a musical family in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s and 60s. Dropping the trumpet for the guitar after being exposed to the Beatles, the Stones and Mississippi John Hurt, de Grassi attended UC Berkeley in the early/middle 70s and took a lot of music theory along with his Economic Geography major. This led to classical guitar as well as ongoing labors as a street musician from Berkeley and SF to London, and then finally a connection with Windham Hill records and to his first album, Slow Circle, which came out in 1979. Since then, Alex has released a total of 16 albums dabbling in a variety of styles from Southern soul to Bolivian folk music to classical lullabies to the Woody the Woodpecker theme. In 1998 he was nominated for a Grammy for his album Water Garden. In addition, we talk to Alex about working with neuroscientist Daniel Levitin on his “Your Brain on Music” series, musing on the possible existence of a music gene. There’s also an appreciative nod to some recent work he's done with the Real Sarahs.  And we find out just how many guitars Alex de Grassi actually owns. SnapSessions! also pays tribute to the NY & SF Giants’ great center fielder Willie Mays who died at the end of last summer. We cover Mays’ great career, his extraordinary feats as an outfielder and hitter, and offer Doug’s personal experiences of seeing Willie play both in Seals Stadium and at Candlestick Park. In addition, we’ve uncovered some outstanding recorded highlights as well as a musical gem saluting Willie Mays from the 1950s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! presents Episode 59, featuring an interview with British comedian and character actor, Andy Linden and a SnapSessions! Environmental Report Card for Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, just in time for the November 2024 election. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! presents Episode 58—a special podcast for us. We take a look at a bizarre night in Mendocino’s history, an evening we are calling “Night of the Mendo UFOs”. SnapSessions! presents an in depth exposé of a time in the Fall of 1978 when the Mendocino Coast was haunted by a series of UFO sightings remembered by 9 Northcoast citizens including me, Doug Nunn. In addition, SnapSessions! places this in the history of UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon), recent US congressional hearings with Navy and Air Force pilots, as well a look at the place of UFOs in the history of Science Fiction since that big surge of flying saucer sightings in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! presents Episode 57 featuring a muckraking exposé of the indoor marijuana growing industry with environmental scientist, Evan Mills, as well as a look at the origins of Shakespeare Unscripted, a long form improvised play developed by Dan O’Connor and Brian Lohmann in Hollywood back in 1999. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! presents Episode 56, featuring an interview with Environmental activist and futurist, Dar-Lon Chang, President of Geo-Solar Technologies. In addition, we talk to a group of young Climate activists from Mendocino High School regarding their thoughts on recent Climate trials that have occurred in Montana and across the nation.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After a short hiatus where SnapSessions!’ Techmeister Marshall Brown first got married and then went down with Covid, SnapSessions is back with Episode 55 featuring “Deutsche Brotbacken” including an interview with German master bread baker, Martin Siemann and a look at the bakeries of Central Europe. Also featured this month is another of our environmental reports—“The Hottest Summer on Record” where we investigate our ongoing Climate Crisis, COP 28, and our past horrific summer of world-wide fires. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! is back with Episode 54 featuring an interview with Ecologist, Botanist, and Environmental Science teacher Teresa Sholars. Also featured this month is an article—“The Saga of the Oakland As”, the story of the past 55 years of Oakland As’ baseball and the sad likelihood that they may soon be moving to Las Vegas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! returns with Episode 53 featuring an interview with long-time Hollywood Art & Production Designer, Aaron Haye, as well as an article, “SnapSessions! Looks at the Future of Space Flight”, where our podcast wonders where Earthlings might be headed in the next years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! reboots with Episode 52 featuring an interview with British Comic/Poet/Musician, John Hegley and an article, Coopting Cop 27, a report on the disappointing United Nations annual Conference of the Parties on Climate Change this past fall. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mendocino’s SnapSessions! podcast presents Episode 51, Part II of their “The History of Hit & Run Theater”, premiering Sunday, March 5 on their podcast website—thesnapsessions.com. Part I debuted on January 29. Whereas SnapSessions! Episode 50 (Part I) focused mostly on Hit & Run Theater’s epic comedy revues of the 1980s, Episode 51 (Part II) catalogues the group’s work as an improvisational theater team. We start with the ensemble’s first improv work in the 80s and follow up over the past decade of improv comedy shows. Episode 51 will showcase more interviews of group members, producers, light techies, as well as musical improviser, Joshua Raoul Brody. It will also feature highlights from the group’s improvisational work from the past few years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mendocino’s SnapSessions! podcast presents Part I of the two-episode documentary podcast “The History of Hit & Run Theater”.Encompassing the first chapter of SnapSessions! two-part historical documentary of comedy/improv group Hit & Run Theater, Episode 50 features over two hours of interviews, old skits and songs, and a variety of surprises from Hit & Run Theater’s beginnings as a skit writing group in the late 1970s through the 1980s. Long time Hit & Runner Doug Nunn interviewed 18 present and former members of the local troupe and watched over 60 hours of old shows from 1981’s Improviganza through various comedy revues like Oh Velveeta, National Velveeta (both 1982), Democracy in Traction (1984), and Fiat Yux (1986), including the epic Arnold Vicious Punk Opera (1983) and its sequel, Rockalypse in 1984See a more detailed summary over at https://www.thesnapsessions.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! podcast for December 2022 presents an encore of a holiday treasure: “Tchickclucksky’s The Nutclucker & Other Chicken Holiday Treats”, a production of Rothman’s HenHouse in association with Large Child Productions. The Nutclucker was the inspiration of Harry “Henny Bockman” Rothman, a player and director of Mendocino’s Hit & Run Theater. Harry was an accomplished chicken imitator and starred in many of Hit & Run’s skits over time, especially any of them involving poultry. In 1995 he approached Doug Nunn to help him produce a chicken-cluckin’ version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and to combine that with chicken-cluckin’ versions of various Christmas carols. Thus was spawned “The Nutclucker”, which included singers Marilou “Bockbird Broiler”, Jim “Hard Broiler” Brewer, Sandy “Cluckfeld” Glickfeld, Ana “Henna” Lucas, Harry “Poutriotti” Rothman, and Doug “Cluck” Nunn, was engineered by Jim Rote-Tisserie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For November, SnapSessions! podcast Episode 49 features an interview with filmmaker and environmental activist Mischa Hedges and Abort the Court, an exploration of the history of abortion since ancient times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! presents Episode 48, featuring an interview with Mendocino singer/songwriter Gwyneth Moreland, and Doug Nunn’s Avenue of the Stars, a memoir of his time working on The Simpsons Movie as an animator. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! presents Episode 47, featuring an interview with musician and inventor Gene Parsons. We also include the premiere of Copzilla, a SnapSessions! audio comedy about a giant policeman who attacks idyllic Donut Town. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! presents Episode 46, featuring an interview with video editor and Reality TV Producer Sax Eno. We also present an analysis and appreciation of Nicole Hannah Jones 1619 Project and take a look at the reactionary response to her book as well as “Critical Race Theory”.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Otiz Cannelloni, as well as “SCOTUS vs. Mother Earth”, a look at a US Supreme Court case which threatens to upend all Climate legislation.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SnapSessions! presents Episode 43, with our artist of the show—comedian and comedy/song writer, Dave Cohen, as well as a consideration of Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel The Ministry of the Future, speculating on where our planet might be headed in the years to come. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.