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A 700-Foot Mountain of Whipped Cream
Episode 286

A 700-Foot Mountain of Whipped Cream

Clive Desmond covers the golden age of radio ads, featuring Frank Zappa, Ken Nordine, Linda Ronstadt, and Randy Newman in this featured episode.

99% Invisible

November 28, 201753m 48s

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Show Notes

While the 1960s shift in print and TV advertising has been heavily documented and mythologized by Mad Men, Madison Avenue’s radiophonic collision with the counterculture is less well known. A radio advertising producer, writer, and composer, Clive Desmond takes listeners on a highly subjective journey through one narrow, eccentric, corridor of radio advertising. Here, he has rescued beautiful forgotten nuggets of radio history and delicately arranged them into a glittering associative chain—a constellation of jingles and spots that somehow all add up to more. A version of episode was originally featured on The Organist, a bi-weekly experimental arts-and-culture program from McSweeney's and KCRW.

A 700-Foot Mountain of Whipped Cream

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