Brownian Motion

Star Jones Davey Jones Peter Maxwell Davies ← Peter Piper Pied Piper Piper Laurie

Kenny Barron Kenny Boy Boy George

Bill Monroe Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs Doc Watson

Is this the same Mainstream label that was founded in the mid-1960s to reissue the Commodore catalogue, and then began recording a few new dates, most notably "Big Brother and the Holding Company" with Janis Joplin?

What with all the recent valentines being tossed in the direction of such disparate musical luminaries as Lawrence Welk, Ray Anthony, and 101 Strings here in the Organissimo Forums, I decided it was past time for a thread where each of us can unload our dirty little musical secrets. I like the singing of Glen Campbell, specifically the Jimmy Webb-John Hartford material that he recorded in the late '60s or early '70s. Even the sugary strings and blaring horn sections can't disguise the quality of the songs and the sincerity of Campbell's delivery. Next.

This place is a drag. What jazz board do the wits migrate to?

Jumpy Enough to Chew a Chair? Try DogCatRadio By DINITIA SMITH Published: November 2, 2005 "Remember, be kind to your mailman," said Jane Harris, a disc jockey. Then she softened her voice until it was a little insinuating: "He only wants to deliver the mail." It is a message that many of her listeners need to hear. Ms. Harris is a D.J. on DogCatRadio.com, a new Internet radio station for pets. Now dogs, cats, hamsters and parrots can keep the anxiety, the loneliness, the restlessness at bay while their owners are out. It is radio just for them, live 17 hours a day, 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. Pacific time, and podcast for the rest of the 24 hours. Those who listen to DogCatRadio will find that there is generally an animal motif to the playlist, like "Hound Dog": "You ain't nothin' but a hound dogcryin' all the time." This Elvis song is a frequent request from listeners (presumably the owners), as are the Baha Men, singing: "Who let the dogs out (woof, woof, woof, woof)." And Dionne Warwick is also popular, especially her soothing song "That's What Friends Are For": "Keep smiling, keep shining,/Knowing you can always count on me." Since many pets are apparently bilingual, DogCatRadio also has a "Spanish Hour," 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific time daily, with Hispanic commentary and music, like Luis Miguel's "No Sé Tú": DogCatRadio.com was started last June by Adrian Martinez, who is also president of Marusa records, an independent record label in Los Angeles. He runs the station out of a customized RV parked in his office lot in the Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles. Mr. Martinez, 34, who owns six dogs and two cats, said he founded the station because "my cat, Snickers, asked me to do it." One day, Snickers was pacing the floor restlessly and meowing. "I said, 'What do you want?' " Mr. Martinez recalled in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "I turned up the music, and she was fine." He discovered that Snickers likes 80's rock, particularly the Eddie Money version of the song "Take Me Home Tonight:" "I feel a hunger /It's a hunger that tries to keep a man awake at night." Mr. Martinez added, "I wanted to do something for the pet community." The first week that DogCatRadio was broadcast, the local CBS television station showed a feature about it. As a result, so many people tuned in, 130,000 in one day, that the server crashed, Mr. Martinez said. "We had to get a bigger server to accommodate more listeners." Now, he said, "We average close to 8,000 hits a week. We have a meter that tracks it." "People are just e-mailing us," calling from all over the world, Mr. Martinez said. "I love what you are doing, but please don't forget our equine friends," an e-mail message from Australia said. When Mr. Martinez gets requests, he springs into action. "We go to Tower Records within the hour," he said. "Since we're conquering the globe, we want to make sure we can accommodate these people." Sometimes Mr. Martinez broadcasts from the field. DogCatRadio showed a segment on people walking their dogs first thing in the morning outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena - a very popular early morning route for dog walkers, bikers and joggers - with interviews (with the owners). It reports on animal charity events like "Walk for Paws," recently sponsored by the group "Nuts for Mutts." Internet radio, which claims about 20 million regular listeners, is still in the early stages of development and has a relatively small number of fans who use their laptops, desktops or hand-held computers to tune in. Mr. Martinez said he believed he had latched onto something unique with his little station: "With all the news you hear on Iraq, it's something to balance the bad news." Meanwhile, the broadcast has received some notice. Dr. Larry Family, who has a talk show program, the Pet Vet, on WROW-AM in Albany, recommends DogCatRadio to his patients' owners. "It's of interest to those people whose pets have certain phobias or anxiety issues," he said in a telephone interview from the outskirts of Schenectady, where he has his practice. "I have recommended it to those whose dogs are having certain problems behaviorwise in the home environment," he said. "It might be helpful with dogs with separation anxiety issues," Dr. Family went on. "Dogs, especially, are interested in watching TV with their owners and listening to music." Mr. Martinez said that at the moment, the station has no advertising and is making no money. But, he said, "I'm not in it for the money." He added, "Eventually, I'm sure, people will advertise." That is not such a leap, since it is estimated that American pet owners will spend $35.9 billion this year on everything from electric toothbrushes for dogs to bird pedicures to self-flushing litter boxes for cats, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. So far, the six people associated with the station, four of whom act as D.J.'s, are paid only a small stipend to cover expenses. "I'm so involved with the pet community," said Ms. Harris, the D.J. and an owner of five dogs. "I'm looking to this as an avenue to open something up." When Ms. Harris isn't broadcasting on DogCatRadio.com, she works as a market researcher. "How are all my furry friends doing out there?" Ms. Harris asked her listeners recently. "We hope you're doing great and not chewing on anything but your toys."

I'd bid for it 'cept I already own it. But I wouldn't be keen on sending money to the city of Pineville, LA. Sounds like a black hole. Isn't there a bigger city nearby, like Bogalusa, Lafayette, or Algiers whose greater metropolitan area you can pretend to be part of?

I laughed too. It was a divine joke.

I like those, Berigan.

The New York Times October 30, 2005 Phil Hays, Illustrator and Teacher, Is Dead at 74 By STEVEN HELLER Phil Hays, an illustrator and teacher, whose lush watercolor portraits of legendary blues artists like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday for LP covers defined a distinctive graphic style of album art in the 1970's, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 74. Mr. Hays, who lived alone, was found in his apartment, said a friend, the illustrator James McMullan. The cause of death was not officially known, although he had been suffering from emphysema. In the mid-1950's Mr. Hays was one of a young band of expressive and interpretative illustrators, including Robert Weaver, Jack Potter, Tom Allen and Robert Andrew Parker, who, rather than paint or draw literal scenes based entirely on an author's prose, interpreted texts with an eye toward expressive license. Mr. Hays said that representational illustration was an art of nuance, and his work routinely dug below the surface, drawing on Impressionist, Expressionist and Surrealist influences. In 1957, Mr. Hays was hired by Silas H. Rhodes, a founder of the School of Visual Arts in New York, to teach his first illustration class, and later he became chairman of the illustration department. As a teacher he introduced novels, plays and films to students as a way to increase their visual and verbal literacy. "Phil's favorite expression is 'Why not?,' " wrote the poster artist Paul Davis, a former student of his, on the occasion of Mr. Hays's being awarded the Society of Illustrators 2000 Distinguished Educators in the Arts award. "He welcomes experimentation and innovation." At the time Mr. Hays was not much older than his students, but he was already deep into a successful career. His editorial work appeared regularly in Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, McCall's and Esquire. One of his more notable advertising commissions was a very painterly-looking piece for Coca-Cola. Philip Harrison Hays was born in Sherman, Tex., on March 14, 1931. In 1936 his family moved to Shreveport, La., where he went to school until joining the Air Force in 1950. In 1952 he enrolled at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and in 1955 he moved to New York and started a career as a freelance illustrator. His early watercolor approach, partly inspired by Vuillard, was often quite loose but also extremely detailed. By the mid-1960's his approach to fiction in Esquire and visual reportage in Sports Illustrated "had become darker and more serious," Mr. McMullan noted. He also found a new métier doing portraits of blues and rock 'n' roll musicians. His rendering of Bessie Smith for Columbia Records in the early 70's glows out of the darkness in what appears to be a drug haze, and his Jerry Lee Lewis looks to have stepped out of a seedy motel room. "It was no accident that his most memorable portraits were of performers that lent themselves to Phil's particular kind of visual decadent glamour," Mr. McMullan said. In 1979 Mr. Hays moved back to California to become chairman of the illustration department at the Art Center College of Design. He retired in 2002. He is survived by a brother, Richard, who lives in Tennessee.

Happy Birthday! Save one of these for me!

Love it! A terrorist attack masquerading as a heavenly aroma!

The New York Times October 28, 2005 Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers By KAREEM FAHIM An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome. "It's like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes," he said. "It's pleasant." The odor had followed Mr. Padilla and his friend along their walk in Lower Manhattan, from a dormitory on Fulton Street, to Pace University on Spruce Street, and back down again, to where they stood now, near a Dunkin' Donuts. Maybe it was from there, he said. But it wasn't. Mr. Padilla was not alone. Reports of the syrupy cloud poured in from across Manhattan after 9 p.m. Some feared that it was something sinister. There were so many calls that the city's Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to look into it. By 11 p. m., the search had turned up nothing harmful, according to tests of the air. Reports continued to come in from as far north as 112th Street shortly before midnight. In Lower Manhattan, where the smell had begun to fade, it was back, stronger than before, by 1 a.m. "We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there's nothing hazardous," said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. "What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don't know." There were conflicting accounts as to its nature. A police officer who had thrown out her French vanilla coffee earlier compared it to that. Two diplomats from the Netherlands disagreed, politely. Rieneke Buisman said it smelled like roasted peanuts. Her friend Joris Geeven said it reminded him of a Dutch cake called peperkoek, though he could not describe that smell.

Happy Birthday, Brownie!

The thing that most concerns me about drip coffee makers is having the boiling water drip through a plastic basket. I can't imagine that the plastic isn't being added to the finished coffee. Does anyone know of a drip maker that uses a ceramic or stainless steel basket instead of a plastic one?

I like Blakey's "Night in Tunisia" on Victor. Very nice trumpet throughout the date from Bill Hardman, and the drum-bass intro on the title cut moves.

Is that a hat? Carmen Marenda!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/apps/ve/katrina.htm?a=1/ You can type your address in the box on this page and get a bird's eye view of your neighborhood. (I don't know whether it works for addresses outside the US.)

Happy Birthday, Maren!

I've always found this fellow an irritant.

Thanks for your many contributions to making this an interesting and inviting place to hang out.

Hack writing. Probably fancies himself a real iconoclast.

Sometimes there is a higher truth than the merely factual. Ralph Berton's memoir "Remembering Bix" was probably equal measure fact and fiction. Is it still one of the great memoirs of the "Jazz Age"? Without question.

He's also one of the last of the Louis Armstrong All-Stars.