7/4

Boy this caught me off guard, I didn't realize how old he was. .

Hey, hey...something for everybody.

Is it as dumb, not as dumb or dumber than the Sharon Stone thing? I say yes.

All that food coloring can't be healthy.

Friggin' Druids...GET THE HELL OFF OF MY LAWN!!! .

.

New item in the Zappa shop: Frank Zappa The Torture Never Stops DVD $21.98 Halloween, New York City, 1981 Live at The Palladium edited, performed & music composed & conducted by FZ with Ray White, Steve Vai, Bobby Martin, Tommy Mars, Ed Mann, Scott Thunes, Chad Wackerman 2 hours with xtras - ratta tat too! I haven't seen a set list yet.

November 16, 1985 CONCERT: NEW RILEY WORKS By JON PARELES The composer Terry Riley's latest efforts to bridge the music of East and West involve improvisation, a piano tuned in just intonation (using exact proportions rather than the usual well-tempered system), and collaborations with the sitar player Khrishna Bhatt. On Wednesday at Carnegie Recital Hall, they played two new duets, ''Salome Dances for Peace'' and ''Variations on Shri Camel,'' and Mr. Riley performed the hour-long piano solo ''The Harp of New Albion,'' in a radically different version than the one he played here in March. Both duets were meditative dialogues, warm and easygoing. They drifted purposefully from one prearranged melody line or pattern to the next by way of forays up and down the piano keyboard, phrases tossed back and forth, and patterns that, by speeding up, grew richer rather than more propulsive. Both the just-tuned piano and the sitar are resonant instruments, and the duets filled the room with sustained overtones. ''Variations on Shri Camel'' grew from a gentle drone to an elaborate, raga-flavored melody; ''Salome Dances for Peace'' started with a cramped, chromatic handful of notes and unfolded with glittering, Chopin-esque scales and romantic trills to a final, floating pattern of melodies. ''The Harp of New Albion'' was even more impressive. Since its last performance, the piece's separate sections seem to have dovetailed; it came across as an exploration of scales - major, modal, pentatonic, whole-tone, raga - with each kind of scale suggesting its own kind of expanding, swirling patterns. Mr. Riley and Mr. Bhatt will perform Saturday and Sunday at the Samaya Foundation, 75 Leonard Street.

Man, that's beautiful. It looks so natural.

I didn't even think of that Erik...

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08136/882157-386.stm 5.15.08 Holland to retire Long-time New York Times classical music critic Bernard Holland is retiring from the paper, effective May 23. He accepted a buyout as part of the newspaper's desire to reduce its newsroom size. Many don't realize this, but Holland worked at the Post-Gazette in 1979 and 1980. He came to the Times in 1981. According to Susan Elliott of MusicalAmerica.com, Holland "'drifted' into music writing after teaching piano privately. Early training included studies at the Vienna Academy of Music and the Paris Conservatory." He plans on retiring to Canada, with no immediate plans on what's next. Holland's departure still leaves two full-time classical music critics at the Times -- Anthony Tommasini and Allan Kozinn -- with editor James Oestreich, free-lancers Steve Smith and Vivien Schweitzer and plenty of other freelance submissions on Sunday adding to its coverage. Elliott reports that Oestreich said, "Since the goal of the buyouts is to decrease the size of the newsroom, it's not an automatic assumption that we can hire another staff critic." Still, the paper's classical desk has an enviable staff size. But -- whatever you personally thought of Holland's writings -- the Times certainly loses a presence with his departure. WHEW!

Oh yeah, I'd expect it to be huge!

Wow!

That's essentially what a Fender Rhodes is. Instead of bars, there are little steel rods.

Unmarked chopper patrols NY city from high above By TOM HAYS, Associated Press WriterFri May 23, 4:24 PM ET On a cloudless spring day, the NYPD helicopter soars over the city, its sights set on the Statue of Liberty. A dramatic close-up of Lady Liberty's frozen gaze fills one of three flat-screen computer monitors mounted on a console. Hundreds of sightseers below are oblivious to the fact that a helicopter is peering down on them from a mile and a half away. "They don't even know we're here," said crew chief John Diaz, speaking into a headset over the din of the aircraft's engine. The helicopter's unmarked paint job belies what's inside: an arsenal of sophisticated surveillance and tracking equipment powerful enough to read license plates — or scan pedestrians' faces — from high above the nation's largest metropolis. Police say the chopper's sweeps of landmarks and other potential targets are invaluable in helping guard against another terrorist attack, providing a see-but-avoid-being-seen advantage against bad guys. "It looks like just another helicopter in the sky," said Assistant Police Chief Charles Kammerdener, who oversees the department's aviation unit. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said that no other U.S. law enforcement agency "has anything that comes close" to the surveillance chopper, which was designed by engineers at Bell Helicopter and computer technicians based on NYPD specifications. The chopper is named simply "23" — for the number of police officers killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The $10 million helicopter is just part of the department's efforts to adopt cutting-edge technology for its counterterrorism operations. The NYPD also plans to spend tens of millions of dollars strengthening security in the lower Manhattan business district with a network of closed-circuit television cameras and license-plate readers posted at bridges, tunnels and other entry points. Police have also deployed hundreds of radiation monitors — some worn on belts like pagers, others mounted on cars and in helicopters — to detect dirty bombs. Kelly even envisions someday using futuristic "stationary airborne devices" similar to blimps to conduct reconnaissance and guard against chemical, biological and radiological threats. Civil rights advocates are skeptical about the push for more surveillance, arguing it reflects the NYPD's evolution into ad hoc spy agency. "From a privacy perspective, there's always a concern that 'New York's Finest' are spending millions of dollars to engage in peeping tom activities," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Police insist that law-abiding New Yorkers have nothing to fear. "Obviously, we're not looking into apartments," Diaz said during a recent flight. "We don't invade the privacy of individuals. We only want to observe anything that's going on in public." The helicopter's powers of observation come from a high-powered robotic camera mounted on a turret projecting from its nose like a periscope. The camera has infrared night-vision capabilities and a satellite navigation system that allows police to automatically zoom in on a location by typing in the address on a computer keyboard. The surveillance system can beam live footage to police command centers or even to wireless hand-held devices. "The commander on the ground can see what we're seeing," Diaz said. On this flight, the helicopter used the camera to look for signs of trouble at several key transportation sites: the decks of Staten Island ferry terminal, the stanchions of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the giant air vents feeding the Lincoln Tunnel. All of them passed inspection. Without leaving Manhattan airspace, the chopper also was able to get a crystal-clear picture of jetliners waiting to take off from LaGuardia Airport and to survey Kennedy International Airport's jet fuel lines, which were targeted in a plot uncovered last year. The chopper has helped track down fleeing suspects, including a recent case of a gunman who had shot his wife in Queens. As officers on the ground worried about how to approach the suspect's car, the camera in the sky hovered overhead, peeked inside the vehicle and found that he had already shot and killed himself. During Pope Benedict XVI's recent visit, 23 patrolled the skies, at one point receiving a call from officers who had spotted a suspicious man with a camera on a rooftop near the pontiff's residence. Diaz radioed back that it was a false alarm. "There was a modeling shoot going on," he said.

May 28, 2008 Jimmy McGriff, Jazz and Blues Organist, Dies at 72 By BEN RATLIFF, NYT Jimmy McGriff, who since the early 1960s was one of the most popular jazz and blues organists, died on Saturday in Voorhees, N.J. He was 72 and lived in Voorhees. The cause was complications of multiple sclerosis, said his wife, Margaret McGriff. Like other jazz organists of his time, Mr. McGriff spent much of his career working in the clubs of the East Coast organ circuit, including the Golden Slipper in Newark, a club he owned in the early ’70s. He played jazz as dance music, whether it was music by Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Ray Charles or James Brown. Over swing, shuffle and funk rhythms, he played in a focused blues language that built gospel-like intensity through his solos. Mr. McGriff was born in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, which became a jazz organ mecca in the 1950s and ’60s. His father played piano, and Mr. McGriff learned it from an early age; he went on to play saxophone and bass before settling on the Hammond organ, which became a common instrument in small-group jazz instrument only in the mid-’50s, largely because of the example of another Philadelphian, Jimmy Smith. During the Korean War, Mr. McGriff served as a military policeman; returning home, he spent more than two years on the Philadelphia police force. Encouraged by his friend Richard (Groove) Holmes, another Philadelphia organist, he took up the organ, playing around Philadelphia, sometimes with the tenor saxophonist Charles Earland, who himself switched over to the organ soon thereafter and became another one of that instrument’s great players. His first hit, in 1961, was a 45-r.p.m. single of Ray Charles’s “I’ve Got a Woman,” a local jukebox success that was featured on the radio. It led to a full album for the Sue label; it also quickly led to another hit single, “All About My Girl.” From the mid-’60s through the 1970s, his records were produced by Sonny Lester, on the Solid State, Blue Note and Groove Merchant labels; his own 1971 live album, “The Black Pearl,” as well as another with the blues singer Junior Parker, were recorded at his own club in Newark. He also played with Buddy Rich’s band for a stretch in the late ’60s and early ’70s. In 1986 he started working regularly with the saxophonist Hank Crawford, making records and touring; he continued to record as a leader for the Milestone label and made his last recording in 2006, a live album done at the Manhattan jazz club Smoke. He stopped playing in 2007. In addition to his wife, Margaret, Mr. McGriff is survived his mother, Beatrice, and brother, Henry, both of Philadelphia; his sisters, Jean Clark of Amherst, Va., and Beatrice Evans of Philadelphia; two children, Donald Kelly of Philadelphia and Holiday Hankerson of the Newark area; and five grandchildren.

Is that a real mandolin or a Sears mandolin? .

Vandals Damage Stonehenge With Hammer Friday , May 23, 2008 AP LONDON — Two men attacked the ancient monument of Stonehenge with a hammer and chipped off a piece of stone the size of a large coin, a conservation group said Thursday. Two men hacked the piece from the Heel Stone — the central megalith at the ancient site — last week, English Heritage spokeswoman Debbie Holden said. They were spotted by security guards but escaped by jumping over a fence and driving off. Wiltshire police are investigating the incident at the UNESCO World Heritage Site located 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of London. "The damage is very, very slight because security guards spotted them straight away, but the whole thing is still upsetting," said Holden. "This kind of thing has not happened for decades." The mysterious Stonehenge site is one of Britain's best known and least understood landmarks. It has become popular with Druids, neo-Pagans and new Agers who attach mystical significance to the strangely shaped stones. There is still great debate about the actual purpose of the site.

think of the possibilities for threads....musicians in touch with their higher power which they choose to call Boy Howdy.

.

slow day at work? .

I guess it was only a matter of time until we had a thread like this. .

Another piece of my past gone. I remember Laugh In. .

Posted on Mon, May. 26, 2008 Jazz, blues organist Jimmy McGriff dies at 72 The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA - Longtime jazz and blues organist Jimmy McGriff, known for the 1960s recordings of "I've Got a Woman" and "All About My Girl," has died. He was 72. McGriff's death on Saturday from multiple sclerosis was confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday by his wife, Margaret McGriff. At the time of his death, McGriff lived in Voorhees. According to his Web site, James Harrel McGriff was born in Germantown. His parents were both pianists, but McGriff started out on bass and saxophone and later played drums, vibes, and piano. He served as a military policeman during the Korean War and spent 2 1/2 years as a Philadelphia policeman, moonlighting as a bass player, according to the site. He was offered a recording contract after a scout heard him play "I Got A Woman" at a small club in Trenton. That song on Sue Records became one of McGriff's greatest hits, and he also recorded for Solid State, United Artists, Blue Note, Groove Merchant, Milestone, Headfirst and Telarc. A viewing is planned for June 2 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Bradley Funeral Home in Marlton, Margaret McGriff said. Another viewing is planned for June 3 from 9 to 11 a.m. at the Harold O. Davis Memorial Baptist Church, 4500 N. 10th St., Philadelphia, with the funeral service to follow.

I think that's the one.