Friday, November 12, 2004

Wildlife: I had to navigate my way around three small groups of Whitetail deer in the Middle Foy's Lake neighborhood last evening.

Charity Alert: Children's Health Site

Weather: Steel gray and cold -- there's a layer of mist over the whole valley.

In the Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art had a get-some-new-members-signed-up party last night -- free admission and FREE BEER. (Over a hundred folks showed up!)
The annual "Art Walk" is next -- December 3, 2004. Hockaday Museum of Art
Seussville University on our campus is ramping up for the 17th of November -- I've been helping the people who are performing a play called "What Was I Afraid Of?" from one of Ted Geisel's "Sneeches" stories. I'll videotape it too, like last year.
My Current Events tape for Flathead Valley Community College was a real trip getting shot and edited this weeek -- interruptions and changes created many interesting sessions.
Bresnan Cable

Media Watch: I saw a film about the great engineer/producer Tom Dowd over the weekend. He's the man who produced Aretha Franklin's greatest singles, and many other fine recordings.
He was engineer on "Disraeli Gears," and told a story about recording "Sunshine of Your Love" -- mainly that it wasn't working out until Baker emphasized the downbeat (AKA "The One"), according to Dowd's suggestion.
So THATS the reason why "Sunshine" sounds funkier than the rest of Cream's catalog, at least to my ears!
BTW -- Nothing was said about Cream's late lamented producer Felix Pappalardi.
Tom Dowd is also my earliest quoted source of the word "funky" for describing music. I'm sure the term was used by others (Dowd's boss, Ahmet Ertigan, uses "funky" in the movie to describe the sound of Atlantic's studio.) -- but someone's gotta find it written down somewhere!
It's hard to believe that people like Louis Jordan, Little Richard, or Ike Turner weren't saying it too, in the 50's.
Reading: History of the Islamic World (up thru Saladin and the Ottoman Turks -- had to take the book back)
King Kong -- a rather bad novelization of the 1930's movie from 1976 -- I'd love to read Edgar Wallace's treatment from 1933!
I hated the Dino DiLaurentis movie, and have NO expectations that Peter Jackson's upcoming production will be any good at all. (His Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was like watching a kid play a video game on a Middle Earth theme -- uninspired and banal.)
Warner Brothers Movies 1927 - 1949 -- very opinionated, but I can relate to that! (Ruby Keeler had talent, no matter what anyone says.)