December 22, 2006
Studio 360 commissioned Pentagram, one of the country's leading design firms, to give Christmas a makeover. They came up with a new typeface, color scheme, fir tree surrogate, and a radical proposal to channel the rampant commercialism to good ends. Pentagram partner Michael Bierut presents the plan to Kurt Andersen.
View Pentagram's full Christmas redesign presentation (right). Check out downloadable x.mas wrapping paper, then send an x.mas e-card to a friend!
Singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock leans toward the surrealistic. Robyn was in the studio recently with his band the Venus 3, and we asked them for a Christmas song. They put one together on the spot, and it has a strange holiday spirit all its own.
It's hard not to love Dolly Parton. The songwriter, singer, actress, and icon of country music has been charming fans for years. The Kennedy Center in Washington just recognized her with a lifetime achievement award, and the ceremony will be broadcast on CBS this week. Kurt spoke with Dolly after the release of her latest record, Those Were the Days.
It's become a new holiday tradition: every year in New York (and a growing number of cities around the globe), crowds gather and hold boomboxes all cued up to the same song. That song is an ambient techno Christmas piece called "Unsilent Night," by the composer Phil Kline. Jonathan Mitchell marched through the streets along with Kline and hundreds of boombox carolers.
One of this shopping season's big hits is called Guitar Hero 2. Like the new Nintendo Wii, Guitar Hero isn't all thumbs - you play it using real body movements. It's controlled by a miniature, plastic version of a Gibson guitar, and you have to strum in time and hit the notes right to move ahead. Aimee Rinehart found out why even professional musicians can't put down Guitar Hero .
You've heard it in the mall this season -- the 1981 song "Christmas Wrapping," by the Waitresses. Bandleader Chris Butler wrote the song as a goof, and it never went away: the Waitresses had a New Wave classic on their hands. But after their surprise hit, Butler's career took an unexpected turn, as Trey Kay discovered.
Studio 360 is a co-production of
Public
Radio International and
WNYC New York Public Radio, and is funded in part by
Ken and Lucy Lehman, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation,
DK Eyewitness Travel,
Herman Miller and
Design Within Reach. Studio 360's American Icons series is supported in part by the
National Endowment for the Humanities. Our series on creativity and science is supported in part by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our series on Underground Heroes is supported in part by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 
