The Audio Project

Das Phrogge is: Christopher Dillon Micha - Vocals Rob Norris - Lead Guitars JP Pantozzi - Drums Brian "B." Smith - Bass Album and song produced by Ron Thal. From the album, "Body & Mind," 1999.

Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces or rapes Leda, a Spartan queen. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. According to many versions of the story, Zeus took the form of a swan and raped Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus. In some versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. In other versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris. Especially in art, the degree of consent by Leda to the relationship seems to vary considerably; there are numerous depictions, for example by Leonardo da Vinci, that show Leda affectionately embracing the swan, as their children play. The subject was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although a representation of Leda in sculpture has been attributed in modern times to Timotheus (compare illustration, below left); small-scale sculptures survive showing both reclining and standing poses, in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius it was a well-known myth through the Middle Ages, but emerged more prominently as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel is in the public domain world-wide. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After making revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text. After its publication by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received generally favorable reviews, though some literary critics believed it did not equal Fitzgerald's previous efforts. Compared to his earlier novels, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922), the novel was a commercial disappointment. It sold fewer than 20,000 copies by October, and Fitzgerald's hopes of a monetary windfall from the novel were unrealized. When the author died in 1940, he believed himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. During World War II, the novel experienced an abrupt surge in popularity when the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free copies to American soldiers serving overseas. This new-found popularity launched a critical and scholarly re-examination, and the work soon became a core part of most American high school curricula and a part of American popular culture. Numerous stage and film adaptations followed in the subsequent decades. Gatsby continues to attract popular and scholarly attention. Scholars emphasize the novel's treatment of social class, inherited versus self-made wealth, gender, race, and environmentalism, and its cynical attitude towards the American Dream. The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary masterpiece and a contender for the title of the Great American Novel.

"Up in Michigan" is a short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway, written in 1921. It is collected in Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923). It is in the public domain world-wide. Jim Gilmore, a blacksmith, comes to Hortons Bay and buys the blacksmith shop. Liz Coates, who has a crush on Jim, is a young woman who works as a waitress for the Smiths. Jim, D. J. Smith, and Charley Wyman go on a deer-hunting trip. When the hunters return, they have a few drinks to celebrate their kill. After supper and a few more drinks, Jim goes into the kitchen and fondles Liz, and says, "Come on for a walk." They go to the end of the dock where Jim's hands explore Liz's body. She is frightened and begs him to stop. He forces himself upon her and passes out on top of her. She gets out from under him and tries to awaken him, and covers him with her coat.

"Araby" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners. The story traces a young boy's infatuation with his friend's sister. It is in the public domain world-wide. Through first-person narration, the reader is immersed at the start of the story in the drab life that people live on North Richmond Street, which seems to be illuminated only by the verve and imagination of the children who, despite the growing darkness that comes during the winter months, insist on playing "until [their] bodies glowed". Even though the conditions of this neighbourhood leave much to be desired, the children's play is infused with their almost magical way of perceiving the world, which the narrator dutifully conveys to the reader.

Das Phrogge: Christopher Dillon Micha - Vocals Rob Norris - Lead Guitars JP Pantozzi - Drums Brian "B." Smith - Bass Album and song produced by Ron Thal. From the album, "Body & Mind," 1999. This one's a banger.

Poem by Christopher Dillon Micha, as appeared in The Whirligig zine #1. Das Phrogge/Zero Charisma: Christopher Dillon Micha - Vocals Rob Norris - Lead Guitars JP Pantozzi - Drums Brian "B." Smith - Bass Mix/mash-up created by The Bookquarium mix-masters.

"The Open Boat" is a short story by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). It is in the public domain world-wide. First published in 1897, it was based on Crane's experience of surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida earlier that year while traveling to Cuba to work as a newspaper correspondent. Crane was stranded at sea for thirty hours when his ship, the SS Commodore, sank after hitting a sandbar. He and three other men were forced to navigate their way to shore in a small boat; one of the men, an oiler named Billie Higgins, drowned after the boat overturned. Crane's personal account of the shipwreck and the men's survival, titled "Stephen Crane's Own Story", was first published a few days after his rescue. Crane subsequently adapted his report into narrative form, and the resulting short story "The Open Boat" was published in Scribner's Magazine. The story is told from the point of view of an anonymous correspondent, with Crane as the implied author; the action closely resembles the author's experiences after the shipwreck. A volume titled The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure was published in the United States in 1898; an edition entitled The Open Boat and Other Stories was published simultaneously in England. Praised for its innovation by contemporary critics, the story is considered an exemplary work of literary Naturalism, and is one of the most frequently discussed works in Crane's canon. It is notable for its use of imagery, irony, symbolism, and the exploration of such themes as survival, solidarity, and the conflict between man and nature. H.G. Wells considered "The Open Boat" to be "beyond all question, the crown of all of Crane's work".

Das Phrogge: Christopher Dillon Micha - Vocals Rob Norris - Lead Guitars JP Pantozzi - Drums Brian "B." Smith - Bass Album and song produced by Ron Thal

"My Old Man" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, published in his 1923 book Three Stories and Ten Poems, which published by a small Paris imprint. The story is now in the public domain world-wide. The story was also included in his next collection of stories, In Our Time, published in New York in 1925 by Boni & Liveright. The story tells of a boy named Joe whose father is a steeplechase jockey, and is narrated from Joe's point-of-view. "My Old Man" was written in 1922. As one of Hemingway's earliest stories, it is generally regarded by critics as juvenilia, along with "Up in Michigan", also published in Three Stories and Ten Poems. Critical attention focuses chiefly on three issues: Sherwood Anderson's influence, the story's narrative structure, and the question of whether Joe's father is moral or immoral. The story was the basis for the 1950 film Under My Skin, and the 1979 television film My Old Man.

"Song of Myself" is a poem by Walt Whitman (1819–1892) that is included in his work Leaves of Grass. It has been credited as "representing the core of Whitman's poetic vision." Following its initial 1855 publication, "Song of Myself" was immediately singled out by critics and readers for particular attention, and the work remains among the most acclaimed and influential in American poetry. In 2011, writer and academic Jay Parini named it the greatest American poem ever written. In 1855, the Christian Spiritualist gave a long, glowing review of "Song of Myself", praising Whitman for representing "a new poetic mediumship," which through active imagination sensed the "influx of spirit and the divine breath." Ralph Waldo Emerson also wrote a letter to Whitman, praising his work for its "wit and wisdom". Public acceptance was slow in coming, however. Social conservatives denounced the poem as flouting accepted norms of morality due to its blatant depictions of human sexuality. In 1882, Boston's district attorney threatened action against Leaves of Grass for violating the state's obscenity laws and demanded that changes be made to several passages from "Song of Myself."

"Indian Camp" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story was first published in 1924 in Ford Madox Ford's literary magazine Transatlantic Review in Paris and republished by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's first American volume of short stories In Our Time in 1925. It is in the public domain world-wide. Hemingway's semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams—a child in this story—makes his first appearance in "Indian Camp", told from his point of view. In the story Nick Adams' father, a country doctor, has been summoned to a Native American or "Indian" camp to deliver a baby. At the camp, the father is forced to perform an emergency caesarean section using a jack-knife, with Nick as his assistant. Afterward, the woman's husband is discovered dead, having slit his throat during the operation. The story shows the emergence of Hemingway's understated style and his use of counterpoint. An initiation story, "Indian Camp" includes themes such as childbirth and fear of death which permeate much of Hemingway's subsequent work. When the story was published, the quality of writing was noted and praised, and scholars consider "Indian Camp" an important story in the Hemingway canon.

"The Student" (Russian: "Студент", romanized: Student) is a short story by Anton Chekhov first published on April 16, 1894, in the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti. It is in the public domain world-wide. It tells of a clerical student returning home on a cold Good Friday evening who stops at a fire and meets two widows. He recounts to them the canonical Gospels' story of the Denial of Peter and upon finishing, notes that these two women are deeply moved, leading him to conclude that all of history is connected through truth and beauty. At four pages, "The Student" is one of Chekhov's shortest stories and was the one he identified as his favorite among his own works. Critics have disagreed about whether the protagonist's point of view at the end of the story coincides with Chekhov's perspective. Other critical interpretation has focused on the symmetrical structure of "The Student" as well as the significance of the language used both to tell the story of the Denial of Peter and to tell the story as a whole. "The Student" has been praised by critics for its compactness and delicacy.

Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella by Russian–American writer Ayn Rand, written in 1937 and first published in 1938 in the United Kingdom. It is in the public domain world-wide. The story takes place at an unspecified future date when mankind has entered another Dark Age. Technological advancement is now carefully planned and the concept of individuality has been eliminated. A young man known as Equality 7-2521 rebels by doing secret scientific research. When his activity is discovered, he flees into the wilderness and is followed by Liberty 5-3000, a woman he loves. Together they plan to establish a new society based on rediscovered individualism. Rand originally conceived of the story as a play, then decided to write for magazine publication. At her agent's suggestion, she submitted it to book publishers. The novella was first published by Cassell in England. It was published in the United States only after Rand's next novel, The Fountainhead, became a best seller. Rand revised the text for the US edition published in 1946.