Moon Over Morocco podcast

BB pal Vann Hall writes:

Beginning Thursday, March 1, the ZBS Foundation has decided to release the second Jack Flanders tale, "Moon Over Morocco," as a free podcast. "MOM" was written by ZBS chief Meatball Fulton; its environmental and location sounds were recorded by Fulton in Morocco, and [hipster cred alert] backing music was recorded by Paul Bowles.

I don't know if you're familiar with ZBS's radio dramas, but they are always interesting (if occasionally annoying) romps through spacetime, with a healthy dose of mysticism and Eastern philosophy tossed in. In the mid- to late-70s, I'd catch the occasional episode from a ZBS program airing on NPR; I remember especially well the time my father fell asleep driving* while listening to "Moon Over Morocco" and started talking back to the radio. ("Falling asleep" while driving is actually a family trait I occasionally share; it doesn't seem to effect our ability to drive all that much, but every so often I'll wake up and have no idea where I am.) It wasn't until the 1982 rebroadcast of "The Fourth Tower of Inverness" (1972), though, the first of the Jack Flanders mysteries, that I was able to listen to an entire storyline. (And when I needed a handle for CompuServe's IRC-like CB chat service the following year, the name of Inverness's resident mad scientist, Dr. Marlin Mazoola, immediately came to mind.)

Over the years, ZBS has become expert at aural VR — their "Dr. Fritz" series made use of a Kunstkopf to allow authentic 3D recording — but even their earliest productions manage to suck your brain out your earholes and carry it off for a good, hard run through the park.

"MOM" is usually heard as it was broadcast on NPR, in ten 1-hour episodes, but it was conceived as fifty 12-minute episodes aired weekdays over a ten-week period. The podcast returns to the original 12-minute format, with a new episode released daily for seven weeks.