Randy Twizzle

The IMDB has this bio for Hundley: "Popular child actor of the 1960s (most remembered for guest roles in "Star Trek" and "Bewitched"). He originated a band named the Craig Hundley Trio in the late 60s and went on to a later successful career (as Craig Huxley) in new age music as a performer, composer and producer.

From the WSJ: One recent Tuesday night at New York's Bowery Ballroom, the Crimea had just finished its second song. The Welsh quintet's first song had gone over fairly well, the second less so, and singer/guitarist Davey MacManus looked out at the still-gathering crowd. Then, from somewhere in the darkness came the cry, "Freebird!" It made this night like so many other rock 'n' roll nights in America. "Freebird" isn't the Crimea's song; it's from the 1973 debut album by legendary Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band's nine-minute march from ruminative piano to wailing guitar couldn't be less like the Crimea's jagged punk-pop. But it was requested nonetheless. Somebody is always yelling out the title. "I don't know that I've ever seen a show where it hasn't happened," says Bill Davis of the veteran country-punk band Dash Rip Rock. "It's just the most astonishing phenomenon," says Mike Doughty, the former front man of the "deep slacker jazz" band Soul Coughing, adding that "these kids, they can't be listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd." Yelling "Freebird!" has been a rock cliché for years, guaranteed to elicit laughs from drunks and scorn from music fans who have long since tired of the joke. And it has spread beyond music, prompting the Chicago White Sox organist to add the song to her repertoire and inspiring a greeting card in which a drunk holding a lighter hollers "Freebird!" at wedding musicians. Bands mostly just ignore the taunt. But one common retort is: "I've got your 'free bird' right here." That's accompanied by a middle finger. It's a strategy Dash Rip Rock's former bassist Ned Hickel used. According to fans' accounts of shows, so have Jewel and Hot Tuna's Jack Casady. Jewel declines to comment. Mr. Casady says that's "usually not my response to those kind of things." Others have offered more than the bird. On a recent live album, Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock declares that "if this were the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and you were going to die in 20 minutes -- just long enough to play 'Freebird' -- we still wouldn't play it." Dash Rip Rock often plays "Stairway to Freebird," a mash-up of the Skynyrd epic and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" that Mr. Davis boasts lasts "less than two minutes. ... You're finished before people get mad." A few years ago, Mr. Doughty started promoting the Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men" as the new "Freebird," asking audiences at his solo shows to call for the disco chestnut instead. Now, he says, he gets yells for both songs at every performance. A harsh reaction to "Freebird" came from the late comedian Bill Hicks during a Chicago gig in the early 1990s. On a bootleg recording of the show, Mr. Hicks at first just sounds irked. "Please stop yelling that," he says. "It's not funny, it's not clever -- it's stupid." The comic soon works himself into a rage, but the "Freebirds" keep coming. "Freebird," he finally says wearily, then intones: "And in the beginning there was the Word -- 'Freebird.' And 'Freebird' would be yelled throughout the centuries. 'Freebird,' the mantra of the moron." How did this strange ritual begin? "Freebird" is hardly obscure -- it's a radio staple consistently voted one of rock's greatest songs. One version -- and an important piece of the explanation -- anchors Skynyrd's 1976 live album "One More From the Road." On the record, singer Ronnie Van Zant, who was killed along with two other bandmates in a 1977 plane crash, asks the crowd, "What song is it you want to hear?" That unleashes a deafening call for "Freebird," and Skynyrd obliges with a 14-minute rendition. To understand the phenomenon, it also helps to be from Chicago. When asked why they continue to request "Freebird," Mr. Hicks's tormentors yell out "Kevin Matthews!" Kevin Matthews is a Chicago radio personality who has exhorted his fans -- the KevHeads -- to yell "Freebird" for years, and claims to have originated the tradition in the late 1980s, when he says he hit upon it as a way to torment Florence Henderson of "Brady Bunch" fame, who was giving a concert. He figured somebody should yell something at her "to break up the monotony." The longtime Skynyrd fan settled on "Freebird," saying the epic song "just popped into my head." Mr. Matthews says the call was heeded, inspiring him to go down the listings of coming area shows, looking for entertainers who deserved a "Freebird" and encouraging the KevHeads to make it happen. But he bemoans the decline of "Freebird" etiquette. "It was never meant to be yelled at a cool concert -- it was meant to be yelled at someone really lame," he says. "If you're going to yell 'Freebird,' yell 'Freebird' at a Jim Nabors concert." Still, Mr. Matthews treasures his trove of recorded "Freebird" moments -- such as baffled comedian Elayne Boosler wondering why the audience is shouting "reverb." And he argues that good bands simply acknowledge it and move on. "The people who are conceited, the so-called artists who get really offended by it, they deserve it," he says. But did "Freebird" truly start with the KevHeads? Longtime Chicago Tribune music writer Greg Kot says he remembers the cry from the early 1980s. He suggests it originated as an in-joke among indie-rock fans "having their sneer at mainstream classic rock." Other music veterans think it dates back to 1970s audiences' shouts for it and other guitar sagas, such as "Whipping Post," by the Allman Brothers Band, and "Smoke on the Water," by Deep Purple. They may all be right: It's possible "Freebird" began as a rallying cry for Skynyrd Nation and a sincere request from guitar lovers, was made famous by the live cut, taken up by ironic clubgoers, given new life by Mr. Matthews, and eventually lost all meaning and became something people holler when there's a band onstage. But as with many mysteries, the true origin may be unknowable -- cold comfort for bands still to be confronted with the inevitable cry from the darkness. For them, here's a strategy tried by a brave few: Call the audience's bluff. Phish liked to sing it a cappella. The Dandy Warhols play a slowed-down take singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor describes as sung "like T. Rex would if he were on a lot of pills." And Dash Rip Rock has performed the real song in order to surprise fans expecting the parody. For his part, Mr. Doughty suggests that musicians make a pact: Whenever anyone calls for "Freebird," play it in its entirety -- and if someone calls for it again, play it again. "That would put a stop to 'Freebird,' I think," he says. "It would be a bad couple of years, but it might be worth it." So what do the members of Skynyrd think of the tradition? Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie's brother and the band's singer since 1987, says "it's not an insult at all -- I think it's kind of cool. It's fun, and people are doing it in a fun way. That's what music's supposed to be about." Besides, Mr. Van Zant has a confession: His wife persuaded him to see Cher in Jacksonville a couple of years ago, and he couldn't resist yelling "Freebird!" himself. "My wife is going, 'Stop! Stop!' " he recalls, laughing. "I embarrassed the hell out of her."

...wrapped in Nelson Riddle

You need to hear my opinion like a moose needs a hat rack.

I just hope and pray that no broadcasts of Columbia baseball games are preempted by this festival.

ANDOVER, N.J. (AP) -- Wildlife officials set a trap, baited with bacon and molasses, in hopes of catching a bear Friday that killed a pony and dragged its carcass away. ``No other animal would have the strength to do that kind of harm,'' said Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection. The owner found the pony's body Thursday at her farm in Sussex County in northern New Jersey. The 15-year-old pony, named Phantom, suffered a broken neck and was dragged through two electric fences and up a hill. Bear prints were found. ``It was a big, big print,'' Patrolman Rod Mosner said. ``It's amazing (the bear) had that much strength and power to drag a pony that far.'' The pony weighed at least 250 pounds. This time of year, bears are starting to leave the dens where they hibernated in winter, and spring plants have not grown enough to be a substantial food source, wildlife officials said.

He was also a Son of a Dentist.

I thought Ray Noble said that during a broadcast from the Rainbow Room

Well my brother has lived in Greenbelt, Prince Georges County MD for 15 years and there's a lot of trafffic, strip malls and unconcealed weapons there also. However I don't think there are many Republicans running around. Of course I realize that PG county isn't nearly as prestigious as Montgomery Co. My brother can only dream of one day living in Rockville, Chevy Chase or Bethesda.

I was once browsing in the jazz section of the Upper West Side NYC Tower Records when I looked up and saw Dr Lonnie Smith in the next aisle. Not a big deal, but 2 days before I had purchased a used copy of one of his CDs, and it was a nice coincidence to see him in the flesh. [End of anecdote]

You've been acquitted of murder.... but your agent still won't return your calls...

My best memory of UPS was when the Hank Mobley Mosaic box was delivered.

According to newspaper listings from the 1965-66 season, Lost in Space was up against The Virginian and Ozzie and Harriet

I have an Nomad Jukebox which quite frankly is not as smart as an iPod. On Lester Young's birthday I hit shuffle and it played a Paul Quinichette selection.

No it's a guy who openly traded CDRs on organissimo.

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho Mar 9, 2005 — A teenager has agreed to admit to three counts of disturbing the peace after anonymously sending semen-frosted brownies to a fellow student. The recipient shared the treat with two other teens, police said. They said the 17-year-old Coeur d'Alene High School student was upset after a prank in which the other student put peanut butter in his cheese sandwich days before. He told a school resource officer that "he hated peanut butter and it made him more mad than he could explain," according to the police report. The teen later told School Resource Officer Jeff Walther that he got the idea of putting his semen on the brownies from the movie "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," in which characters send pastries filled with dog semen to a fraternity house. The student was arrested and booked into a juvenile detention center. He has since been released on a judge's order that he has no contact with the students who ate the brownies. The youth is to be sentenced on April 4 on the three misdemeanor counts, which are each punishable by up to 90 days in detention, prosecutors said. The victims' parents were notified and the children were tested for anything that could have been transmitted through the body fluid, although Panhandle Health spokeswoman Susan Cuff said the chance of the students' health being affected would be "extremely remote." School Superintendent Harry Amend declined comment on any school discipline against the teenager.

That was more like a nightmare. This is the beautiful dream...

Here's a Jan. 6, 1925 radio listing from New York's WHN showing Wooding's band playing at 11:30 pm. Also a helpful announcement for radio listeners.

I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on.

He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

"You'll Find Out" pops up occasionally on TCM. I've seen it there twice. It's pretty much standard comedy haunted house fare, the kind of stuff Abbott and Costello did in their sleep.