Welcome to Fangboy Village Links. Fangboy is a Cat who has a story. He was a very young lad, a wandering stray, yes wandering the alleys in Miami. A well to do matron from Boca Raton happened uponse him and she took him in. When I met him he lived on a Oceanside estate in Light House Point. He didn't live in the main house, but neither did I. We were just happy to be there. Renters. Well, he never paid rent. I lived in the Kato Kaelin shack in the back. Who cares you're on the Ocean. I tried to get Fangboy his own movie.

Chris Carter is the Author of "How To" Predict The Future" and also known for his famous virtual Duet with Fiona Apple, has anyone told Fiona yet? oh Nevermind, Chris met Liz Phair and a slew of famous 90's rock stars when he worked as Jerry's sidekick at the JBTV Music Video Show in Chicago. Here is UK band XTC showcasing some animations from the JBTV Music Video Show
XTC - All Along The Watchtower

Helgato Negro. This guy is amazing, he's like a massage for your brain. Check out his "Hometown Dreams"

Another Helgato Negro mind massage "Ghost Dance"

Dweezil Zappa narrating his Guitar Collection. Each one, its history and specifications.
The Collection: Dweezil Zappa

Here's MMB the Mike Michalak Band doing, "American Soldier." This song had no video so instead of using typical soldier imagery I used Signs, Stencils and artifacts from a Combat Base in Afghanistan to demonstrate what you would see if you went there on the battlefield on any given day.
MMB American Soldier

All the Jethro Tull album covers on one page, here it is at the band's website-
Jethro Tull website Album Covers

Visit the YogaPets page and see how your Pet can be Enlightened
YOGA PETS

• Frank Zappa List of Members of the Senate
• Frank Zappa List of Members of the House
  
• The Onion Real World News. I get all my info here.
• Citizens Against Government Waste
• Three Stooges I get a lot of good info from here.

A few of the Ye Ole Villagers and wayward citizens of the mind.

• Recipes From The Chefs Kitchen Recipes!
• Canvas Films Florida Commercial and Film Production from Director Phil Ruesch
  
• Grady Sain CEO Positive Fields, nonprofit community-based arts tech education center Positive Fields.org
• Michael DiGioia conversations with Michael DiGioia Blog
• Paul Remo creator of NightLight Studio and his new venture Atomic Television Las Vegas https://atomic-tv.com/
  
• Bon Harris the driving force behind Nitzer Ebb.. Here's some - Bon Harris videos
• Here's a Bon Interview Bon Harris Interview Bon is the bomb.
  

• Garage Films a garage, some film, you get quality. From director Gary Halpin.
  
• Architectural Ceramics Shelly Neymark
  
• Post Logic Hollywood I used to work here, I used to be cool.
• Dave "DavyForce"Foss Master Animator
• Chicago House Music pioneer Rocky Jones DJ International
  
• Jeff Pittle ANIMATOR ex tror dinaire Pittleworks.com
• Tony Fitzpatrick Artist from Villa Park Tony Fitzpatrick Studio Store Gallery
  
• Christian White Final Cut Pro Editor
• JBTV Music Television Jerry Bryant TV Chicago
• Dean Lyon at imdb and Dean Lyon Splinter Studio
• Bill Wildt Motorsports Unlimited TV Chicago
• Gary Halpin - Moto TV Network. Customizable In-Store Television. Moto TV Network.com 
  
  
• We opened our Gallery doors in the Fall of 2010 after Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick converted his longtime studio space on North Damen. I think it was they turned it into an exhibition space along with the help of his partner Stan Klein. Firecat Projects
  https://www.firecatprojects.org/news
  

The Ozark Music Festival 1974 who remembers that train wreck? Giant Music Festival in the 1970's, what could go wrong with that... the comments are a time capsule!

That Ozarks thing is a American train wreck, here is the UK version. They did it in 1971, and they had Hell's Angels in the mix imagine that (yes we have). The 1971 Weely Music Festival North Essex.

Here is XTC they rock out — XTC - www.chalkhills.org

Computer Tech Radio Shows

• Kim Komando COMPUTER TIPS TRICKS

Cool Movie Posters Movie Posters! Be careful this is addicting.

Jon Stewart The Daily Show Archives

Musical Links Like get your Dub at World Dub-
World Dub and here some Dub mon Dub Flash

Afro Pop Worldwide with Host Georges Collenit

Joan Armatrading www.JoanArmatrading.com

THE SECRET TO LIVING IN AMERICA - Freedom is not free. Buy Your Freedom. When yer young Time is money. When yer old Time is freedom. When yer old you wanna be spending time not buying it. Time is money when you run out of time. And you will. Time aka Freedom is not free. But it’s cheap when you’re young. When I was young freedom was free, worth little, and seemed not worth buying. I wanted to spend it not buy it. It seemed counterintuitive to buy time because ya don’t need it, and it’s assumed easy to get it any time. Wrong. Buy freedom when yer young and its cheap. Buy low sell high.

Buy freedom in 3 Step$. How to get rich? Stop trying. Stop buying. Stop lying to your Self. Stop living beyond your means just because you think you never can. Stop the bleeding. The more you live beyond your means the more this is gonna cost you. You gotta either make more or spend less. Which is easier?
1.) Stop EVERYTHING and get out of debt.
2.) Live Within your means.
3.) Now cut that in half.

Implement the algorithm of life here's how it goes: It's called the "Relation Ship." It is a ship it is out to sea, it is you and me. The algorithm is:
Don't Sink The Ship. You can do anything you want but you can't sink the ship.. Passion doesn't keep the ship afloat. The foundation is a separate process than the passion. One always likes to get ahead of the other. It could be just You and your Self, if it's with a partner it is them and their Self, now its the four of you's. Either way it's—
THE RELATION SHIP

In school you are given no Fiscal Literacy. You are not told how to buy freedom back when it's cheap. You are setup to be a financial slave (that's so you can support the rest of us to live in freedom). That's how the economy, the medical system and the food chain is setup. Not for you. It's a closed bubble. George Carlin said, "The table is tilted, folks, the game is rigged.” Carlin added, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”

What is "the club"? I think it's INFORMATION. You put your money into the mortgage and it's tied up for 30 years meanwhile the Bank gambles with that money and makes money and gives you exactly none of that profit. With information you could do that instead of them, you got the house AND you control the money. Information is becoming more valuable than currency. In only a 100 years we doubled and tripled our Life Expectancy. Our cognitive info diet tripled and we are not ready for that. For all the previous centuries not a lot mattered when you only lived to age 35. Information was scarce. Today your problem is you prolly won't die. Today we are all connected. Today the biggest issue is trust. Trust always was important but it never touched every person the way it does today. THAT i think is "the club."



My theory is things are evolving faster than humankind can keep up with. Any feelings the country is going backwards is an illusion, really it's just not keeping up with the new version of Forwards. The good news is you don't have to outrun that Grizzly Bear chasing you. You just need to outrun the slowest bloke in the group. The secret is to be poor but live rich. If you have no debts it's all pretty simple. Everything about America is to sucker you into debts so you can support the fat cats. Stop playing their game! Just Stop It- The Bob Newhart Stop It Therapy

Ten things designed to rip you off - STOP IT ; Prescription Glasses, Anything For A Wedding, Auto Sales, Divorces and Dental Insurance, Clothing, Crypto, College Textbooks, Cars That Run By Computers, Funerals, Bottled Water, Starbucks, Anything At Theme Parks, Strip Clubs, Casinos, 1/3 of the Internet, 1/3 the stuff at the grocery store.

Tao Te Ching – Verse 33 If you realize that you have enough,
 you are truly rich.
The Fixx - How Much Is Enough?
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TWO WEBSITES FOR ADVICE
If you live in America and you have no debts -You Are Rich. By analyzing the tax code and looking at personal finance through the lens of financial independence, you can develop your own advanced strategies, spreadsheets and freedom. All this talk about retiring is nonsense. Retirement means you’re beginning to end. You should never retire. What you should do is run your business on your terms. Business means work on what you like doing. Take time off any time. Work from anywhere. Owning a Home -is a business. Why do you live like a financial slave and vote against your own interests. You never put diesel in your gas engine so what is there to not understand? Stop It.
Mr. Money Mustache

The whole country seems to be displaying the same odd behavior: living ridiculously, beyond their means while thinking they are completely normal, and then being baffled when they have no money left over to buy their own freedom. All while being so busy that they didn’t even have time to investigate the science behind this behavior. This freedom is achieved not through luck or amazing skill, but simply by living a lifestyle about 50% less expensive. The economy is made for to you to think you can "live the dream" even though your broke. Stop it.
  Mad Fientist
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At the grocery store you buy 9 items and come out with 12 bags. Plastic bags. Plastic is everywhere and nobody cares. It's been this way since the beginning of time. Only a small group of people are aware. Here is Professor John Boik on the bigger picture with his "Systems Approach" to us humans living long eating wrong, clueless, beyond our means. Stop it. We need to do what he's talking about BEFORE super AI gets here and does it for us (to us) in a way we don't really like, prefer.
  Engineer Data Scientist John Boik Interview

After the Original Mirrors circa 1981, in 1983 Ian Broudie recorded and wrote tracks under the band name "Care" with vocalist Paul Simpson. The duo released only one album on 1997, "Diamonds & Emeralds." It says they released three Singles from the album, I would say just about every song on that album is a excellent Single. What's really cool is they did an Instrumental version of some of the songs like "White Cloud" and the music stands up on its own all alone. Not many bands can do that.

Around 1989, Liverpool Brit Ian Broudie began writing and recording under the name Lightning Seeds, releasing the album Cloudcuckooland through Rough Trade on the independent label Ghetto Records, eventually putting together a live touring band in 1994. The Lightning Seeds achieved great commercial success during much of the 1990s. In 2004, Broudie released an album titled Tales Told under his own name. The Lightning Seeds reformed in 2006 and released their sixth studio album Four Winds in 2009. A seventh album, See You in the Stars, was released in 2022.

Ian Zachary Broudie got creative, as one does, and after emerging from the post-punk scene in Liverpool in the late 1970s as a member of Big In Japan, Broudie went on to produce albums (sometimes under the name Kingbird) for artists including Echo & the Bunnymen, the Fall, the Coral, the Zutons and the Subways. Big in Japan began from the same Merseyside scene that would produce Echo & the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes and OMD. Big In Japan bassist Holly Johnson performed in a flamboyant manner which he would later take further in Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

The simple idea that I own my own self and own my happiness, was brand new radical thinking. In 1776. This begs the question WHAT were we thinking before this? For 30,000 years what were we thinking? The idea that you own your self that you own your happiness is a recent concept? Who knew. Fortunately in America we would never ban books or try to re-write history choke choke chortle but in other countries they do ban books and re-write history. Each generation if people never get the memo they start believing the wrong things. In 1949 George Orwell said, If you can own the past you can own the future. He correctly predicted peddling misinformation would threaten all mankind let alone democracy. He didn't know it would be the internet and AI but he knew the concept.  

Do we forget so quickly in 1776 the idea, that, "all mankind are created equal; with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" even though it did not include women, native Americans or slaves it was still considered a radical new concept. You mean I no longer have to be a slave to the King, to the Landowner or corrupt businessmen or the crooked bank or any kind of businessmen? How cool is that. I can own my happiness I can sell it (as long as I'm not a woman) I can do as I wish with my happiness.

If we never knew we had a right to life, Liberty, and we were created equal, and had the right to pursue our happiness, -what was the deal before we knew this? Whatever we were told? Is that what it was? Why was it that nobody brought this up until Tom Jefferson wrote it down? Nobody brought up a lot of things until Jefferson wrote it down, like antitrust laws.

Thomas Jefferson brought up the conversation about antitrust provisions in 1790 but it took a hundred years for the first antitrust law to be enacted in 1890 in Iowa. It was the farmers — reacting to abusive business practices by monopolistic grain elevators and railroads — that led the effort for fair markets and competition in 1890.

Ok after the first antitrust law was enacted in 1890, go forward a hunerd years to 1980, antitrust laws begin to erode. Have we been going backwards on this for 50 years now?

It has happened before, big business along with government officials undermine and reverse labor, environmental, and other such laws, rules and norms.

This pesky Bill of Rights defending freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of commerce against monopolies, , okay but there are folks today, if they had their say, none of these three would make the cut in the Bill of Rights.

We really do need to make sure history is not just taught but is available for all to view. Goerge Orwell said, "Whoever controls the past controls the future." Everyone likes to tell their own version of history. History needs to go on the Blockchain.

Thomas Jefferson, through his friendship with Marquis de Lafayette, was heavily influenced by French philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. These guys had trouble in France.

In their often CENSORED writings, those philosophers advocated that men were born free and equal. This later led to the French Revolution of 1789 and the concept of Human Rights. As usual not everybody got the memo.

Fanfare Playhouse

Common Man: You mean I own my own body? I am FREE to live and be happy?
Messenger: Yes
Common Man: Well WTF how come nobody ever bloody told me this?
Messenger: Because you never asked?
Common Man: Why I oughta kill you.
Messenger: Don't shoot me.
Common Man: All this time I work like a slave I am a slave and it was known that I own my body and my self?  
Messenger: Well Skippy what did you expect. You would be let in on everything? And Overlords couldn't exploit you and create greedy monopolies?
Common Man: Oh. Oh ok. Hey thanks.
Messenger: Anytime pal.

Everybody and his cousin wants to come to America. Our Border can only accommodate a certain number. How do we decide who to help? Ukraine needs our help. Israel needs our help. The women in Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan need our help. What about Haiti and Burkina Faso, they need us badly. The Republic of Congo deserves help, I think they got screwed over more than anybody over the centuries if we're doing a triage here.

There has to be something we can do. Somewhere we can start. One place to startis is called SUKHI 222. Why do we spend over 50 billion dollars a year on bottled water? Reusable bottles will hurt sales thats why. The whole "recycle" thing turns out to have been a dupe, and we are the dopes being duped. In America for the envorment we been living wrong while living long for so long now that some say it's irrevsiible. Its irrasable. Its irresposible. Talkin bout my generation.

The Declaration of Independence declared in 1776 from now on people are born with the right to life and can pursue happiness. Everyone in that signing event was born before 1776. So everyone born before 1776 wasn't born with the right to life? That's not what the Bible says. Good thing I was born way after 1900. It further declares I was born with Liberty free from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views. Isn't that more about where I was born rather than how I was born? If I was born with this Liberty this protection from false arrest, torture, and political murder then I should be safe wherever I go because I was born this way. Okay.

If I get abducted will the kidnappers know I'm born bulletproof with liberty? I'm worried if my kidnappers don't believe in God then they will consider human rights just another political opinion, meaningless human social construct. Maybe God is like the Blockchain. A spiritual verification authentication. Whether God is real or not isn't the main point, the point is that we need something to "verify" that we are in the same club. The club that recognizes human rights. If God uses Blockchain crypto algorithm SHA256 bit encryption we should be authenticated and safe from "false Gods."

That way if we recognize each others 256 bit crypto hash then we know the other person is in the human rights club. It's like "God Currency." Paper fiat currency is just a human social construct that is made-up, it's not a real thing, it's not backed by God, Gold, or anything anymore. This is why BitCoin is a threat to Fiat paper currency. You ever notice that people who don't believe in the same God or the same culture, government or same society are more than willing to use the same money.

I invented just the thing. It's called Geospatial Health Psychology Crypto Currency. Except I don't use SHA 256 encryption. I use a organic algorithm. It's much more powerful than SHA 256 or any digital algorithm.

It took until 1776 so that means for a thousand centuries leaders and rulers never told us about this stuff. Even in 1776 nobody piped up. Until, Tom Jefferson who said something like, "dang blammit I've had it with this folly, time for a new idea" and he wrote it down. In school we're never taught why this took so long. I want reparations. Could've been done a long time earlier. Everybody has an excuse and a ruse to cover history. Thank God Al Gore invented the internet so we could look this all up.

The contradiction between the claim that "all men are created equal" and the existence of American slavery, including Thomas Jefferson himself owning slaves, attracted comment when the Declaration of Independence was first published. Before final approval, Congress deleted nearly a fourth of the draft, including a passage criticizing the slave trade. At that time many other members of Congress also owned slaves. Even today politicians always try to change or erase history. If America did not come along would it be another 1,000 years before someone some other country brought it up? What was the rest of the world thinking?

Do the dead outnumber the living?

By Wesley Stephenson BBC News

The population of the planet reached eight billion in October, according to the United Nations. But what's the figure for all those who have lived before us?

The living do not outnumber the dead. Not even close. I dunno why the BBC asks such a silly question. How many people ever were here, ever? Jerry Garcia is no longer with us. He's one. He dead, I mean all the people every last one of them who have has ever lived ever, the number is in the several 10s of billions. Alice Cooper said, "I Love The Dead.

Well I have the Chart Of The Dead. It shows the major moments in all of history where the most number of humans died like the Black Plague. I have to find the Chart. Before I die. I made it like 10 years ago.

Scientists say the number of people who have ever lived ever from the beginning of humans is between 60 and 105 billion. Thats quite a spread. My question is, in all that time what was the majority cause of death? Disease, war, incest, murder, incest along with murder, what. Cleopatra was the last generation of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, it died out from incest and family murder. My point is the point is more often than not, the cause of demise was something human related. That says alot. SIt says stay out of your own way and life will favor you. Let's look at some algorithms that help do this.
Decoding Bruce Lee

Engineer Data Professor John Boik's

Systems Approach To Planet Earth

............................................................................................

CHICAGO: Studio Run And Gun circa 1992

There was no internet it was the 1990's the world was changing. Who knew.



Duelin' Firemen was a 1990's pioneering video game on the 3DO format.

Now what, they got some super cool Duelin' Firemen Comic Books?
Yes you heard that right and you never wanna be wrong. The DF Comics will debut in
on May 17th 2025! Get your comix and some swag too!

What is Duelin' Firemen?
It's sort of a campy humor highly stylized ridiculously absurdist surreal primary hue stocked to the gills with cultural leanings and pop psychology in a almost virtual reality that is hitherto unknown to the young people today.

Step inside the history of Duelin' Firemen and see the new DF Comics!

ENTER THE 3DO GAME FROM CHICAGO

Duelin' Firemen cast o characters
Mark Mothersbaugh Devo Muzak
Timothy Leary Harvard Professor he swoops so high he swoops so low he knows exactly which way to go, Timothy Leary.
David Yow The Jesus Lizard Band Chicago yes he is.
Steve Albini Producer
Rudy Raymoore Actor, where were you in 1975? Rudy Raymoore was DOLEMITE! He rocks.
Chris Carter Author. Animator. Producer. Musician wannabe. Editor. Dreamer. Pro Crasstinator.

Duck inside the world of Duelin' Firemen

ENTER THE 3DO GAME FROM CHICAGO

Yes you seen that correct, that is the infamous Banjo Gyro.
From Director Grady Sain

You have never seen anything like this before. Buckle up and check it out.

Play Grady Sain's Banjo Gyro right now click here quickly!
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HERE WE HAVE BILL BURR ON CONAN EXPLAINING HOW THINGS WORK. JUST WATCH THIS-

Bill Burr is over the top.


Here another clip BILL BURR Ranting on about CRAZY LIBERALS, CONSERVATIVES AND SOCIALISM

Enter Conversation County

This Run And Gun documentary could be the greatest documentary ever told. It was a time that I would say is one of the greatest "changes" in human history. Think about it, humans have been analog for 300k years. It is our generation that is split in half. The 1990's are the exact divide in the roughly 80 year transition from the analog world to the digital world. We are the last generation in human history to touch up against the analog world. In a hundred years they will look back at us as in one of the greatest transitions generations in all human history. Hunting to agriculture, the wheel, The Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, are some pf the top ten moments in human history. On every "list" is the internet circa 1995. The internet itself is not the big breakthrough, it's the concept of digitization. Along with "Formats." It opens up the whole world of darkness to the light. Once something is digitized it could theroetically live forever, by changing formats. In the analog world everyone was innocent until proven guilty. In the digital world it is somewhat the opposite, everyone is suspect until verified. You no longer answer the phone, the phone answers the phone and then you decide whether to talk. Never before in history did everyone know what everyone is doing. It's the birth of the digitization of information for the verification of authentication. That's a fancy way of saying it's the democratization of reality, fact, and truth. No longer kept by a select few at the top. For 30,000 years there never was a definition of health. It was always if you woke up in the morning you were healthy. If you made it to Friday you were successful. You rarely made it past 30 or 40 years old. Then suddenly out of the millennia our 1990's generation, for the first time ever human life expectancy has doubled and tripled. Is the human mind ready for this sudden expansion? I think not. Health has changed more in the past 50 years than the past 5,000 years. Lifespan was always capable of 90 or 100, life expectancy could never get that far. Until now. In the analog world you never had a way to authenticate information you just had to believe whatever anybody told you. In the News they'll have you believe "truth" is somehow going away when its the exact opposite. Truth, Fact, Reality, is coming down upon us like rain. In the 1990's the internet changed reality. Reality is not a thing it's a Time Constraint. A moving target. Time is (was always) a analog measurement of the past to present. The idea of a clock revolves around making observation more accurate, all that does is create more observations -that you’re lucky to see, if you have the time. We look at "time" as the default system of measurement and then stuff happens along this metric we call "time." What if it's the other way around? Frank Zappa suggested something like this. I began to think more about what Zappa said ever since I starting studying quantum mechanics. I made a cartoon to illustrate my concept of what Zappa said in relation to quantum mechanics. You can see this cartoon i made on the bottom of the Zappa Disagrees with Einstein white page, not the black page, that's another story. The internet is not the star of the show, idea of digitization is. That means EVERYTHING can be seen (tagged). Nothing is invisible anymore. Everything can have a digital ID and also a grid coordinate. A car, a cup, a conversation, a thought, a fart, a dog fart, a reaction, groups and sub groups, the sky’s the limit to what can be “tagged” and once its tagged (give it a grid too) you put it into a database. Now each ID/Grid-Coord is a Layer on a Map. Layers never seen "together" are now seen together. Suddenly you can SEE the past move along the Map as on e does, hence enabling you to guess (predict) the future. The more combinations, the more accuracy. Humans are more predictable than not. This used to be secret military stuff not too long ago. Meanwhile it was thought impossible to predict the future. Today this is not only possible it's become a business model. Netflix, Google, Amazon, Walmart, etc. Predicting what we will watch, buy, eat, sleep, shit, often before even we do. This “geospatial intelligence” is no secret anymore its everywhere and expanding. This all started in the 1990's. We were all right there. Watching Run And Gun and Duelin' Firemen.

R. Crumb Artwork and Museum

R Crumb and his early experience with women
R Crumb Official site
R Crumb Museum
R Crumb Exhibition
R Crumb Sketches and Covers

Allan Watts on psychedelic drug use, "When you get the message, hang up the phone."

HISTORY OF PROMOTION COMPANY "CELEBRATION CONCERTS"
Music exec Bruce Kapp dies at 57. Concert Promotion Touring industry veteran Bruce Kapp, who is credited with helping to develop the concept of national gigging, was born with concerts on the brain: While in high school, he booked bands in and around his hometown, Chicago. After receiving a degree in marketing from Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.), Kapp opened his own talent agency, which booked bands throughout the Midwest.

By the 1970s, he formed Celebration Concerts, a concert-promotion company whose clients included the Super Bowl of Rock series at Chicago's Soldier Field stadium featuring Emerson Lake and Palmer, Pink Floyd, Ted Nugent and Peter Frampton. "Celebration-Flipside" promoted many top acts of the 70's. Crazy Frank worked there and he had no drivers Liciense, so the deal was, give him a ride to the Show and you get backstage Passes! Crazy Frank RIP

JBTV Music Video This Show is and always was about MUSIC. NO corruption, no corporate PlayList, no payola. The record companies used to bring all the artists to JBTV that MTV wouldn't play. Yes MTV used to actually play Music Videos! Long time ago. The first half of the 90's MTV was dying but it wasn't dead yet. They had a very tight VooDoo formulae to get things on the playlist. JBTV benefited off this and had some excellent Music Videos in the period I worked there from 1990 - 1995. By the end O the 90s I would say MTV was all was completely brain dead. It's playlist excluded 90 percent of the Music videos out there. Because of that many people have mistakenly gone so far as to say that Music Video is a limited artistic medium, even claiming it's ruined the music business. The corrupted playlist of MTV has always been cited as proof. The fact is the music business was dooming itself just fine without including the folly of MTV's narrow corporate playlist. Contrary to what a lot of people say including some musicians themselves "Music Video" is not a limiting medium. It can be! That doesn't mean it IS.

FRANK ZAPPA ON POLITICS
Politics is like the 1,000 clowns at the circus who get out of the tiny car, and you're supposed to be amazed. That's what politics is. They don't really stick their heads in the tiger's mouth. Politics is a bunch of show and blow for people who don't understand. The real decisions are not conducted at the polling place; they're conducted over a glass of Perrier in some luxurious resort where people with lots of bucks decide how they're going to chop up the world.

FRANK ZAPPA ON POLITICS
"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry" Politics is bullshit, basically, it's salesmanship.
We have a diverse population in the United States, with all kinds of different needs that have to be taken care of. That is the righteous function of government.
Government is about statesmanship not salesmanship. If you are making political statements, remember, you are not addressing the real needs of government. You're just talking about the Madison Avenue aspect.

Bogart 9 Presents the Matt O'Neil Wheaton Central Denver Art Exhibit
Denver artist Matt O'Neil sets himself apart from the crowd by inviting his friends from High School to his Denver Studio.

The Clash 1980 album Sandinista
THE CLASH - SANDINISTA
This one goes way back.

....... Bungle in the Jungle......
of course
JBTV Chicago
Christian White Editor and Director

Howie Samuelson Production House in Glencoe, Illinois. Owner and legendary activist Howie Samuelson founded the company to produce his ’70s Ch. 26 series “Underground News.” Mark Tulloss has been Production House managing producer since 1988. Chicago Tribune article on Howie Samuelson

90's Indie film Raging Hormones produced by Canvas Films, Fort Lauderdale.
Special cameo by Chris Carter aka Bogart 9.

History of radio station WXRT Chicago
In the 1960's and early 70's for some reason all songs on the radio had to be under 3 minutes, and they HAD to have vocals. No instrumentals allowed. There were exceptions but few and far between. Did the industry think people were too dumb to comprehend anything beyond 3 minutes? And if it didn't have vocals it wouldn't keep their tiny brains attention?

I have a feeling that was not true. The real reason I think, it was not profitable to get people out of their comfort zone. Better to keep them where they are, and rake in the ratings. Let people "grow" themselves on their own dime, not on the station budget. Same story today, that's why we got the crap on TV and radio.

In the 1960's I was listening to Chicago AM Radio, WLS had Clark Weber, Dick Biondi. Larry LuJack had CHICKEN MAN and THE TOOTH FAIRY yyhahh those were great. Larry LuJack had his sidekick "Lil Tommy" they did ANIMAL STORIES. There was no FM Radio! Progressive Rock FM. It wasn't invented yet, even though there was all that cool music in Record Stores where the albums were only $3 dollars! WXRT FM rock radio was not here yet.

WXRT Radio started in 1972 and only came on 9pm at night. During the day it was Spanish Programming. I was only 13 I had to sneak up at night with the Headphones (on that Grundig Stereo system) and secretly listen to this new thing called progressive FM. Jim Hendrix All Along The Watchtower and King Crimson were not played on the radio up to that point. My parents would see me passed out late and yell at me to get to bed. It was so exciting to hear that then because the radio would not play it. Some weird songs are still stuck in my head like Manfred Mann Father of Day Father of Night. EVentually WXRT came on at 6pm then it broke thru to 24 hour programming. Terri Hemmert is the only original WXRT DJ she is still there today.

"1975 well, it's about time," is the response Chicago's fine rock station WXRT is receiving about the announcement that they are expanding programming to 24 hours. "It's the once impossible dream," according to program director John Platt. Three and one half years ago, Platt introduced quality the format of high progressive programming to the station, after the demise of WOPA and WGLD. They operated on WXRT (at that time Chicago's number one foreign language station) from midnight to six a.m.

Slowly but surely, the station expanded its progressive hours, moving to 6 p.m. in January of 1975, and then to 3 p.m. in November of last year. The move in November marked the most dramatic point in WXRT's career. At that time, station owner Dan Lee said, "the expansion represents a commitment on the station's part toward the support of progressive programming. The move tilts the balance of the station's programming to progressive, and is significant to us because it will show if it can really go." At that time, there were vague rumors of the station going 24 hours, but no future statement was made at that time.

"We didn't expect anything would happen this soon," said Platt last week, just after the announcement was made. "We didn't take into account the momentum caused by the move to three o'clock. It stimulated a lot of interest." And that it did, as the early spring ratings on the station showed WXRT the number one FM station reaching adults 18-34 years of age from 3:00-midnight, number three overall. "It's something we've worked 3½ years for," says Platt, "and now (at the time of the announcement) we have 3½ weeks to pull it all together." They've hired Ken Terry, an announcer who grew up in Chicago but had been working in Houston. "Ken had applied here two years ago," explained Platt, "and we seriously considered him, but at that time selected John Bell. Ken has kept in touch with us since that time, and I'm glad we're finally able to bring him to WXRT." (At press time other announcers were still being considered.)

WXRT has looked forward to the day that they can provide a 24 hour progressive radio station to Chicago. It will fill a hole that's been gaping for so long (although partially covered by Elgin's 24 hour progressive station WJKL). "We'll be able to do more, news and public affairs, which is important," says Platt, "yet our programming policies will remain the same -no jingles or commercial product that we would not normally play." So WXRT, 93 FM, joins in the realm of Chicago's full time radio menagerie, and hopefully continue programming Chicago's finest rock.

By 1970 little radio stations sprung up through the cracks in the sidewalks like little weeds struggling for the light of day. WXRT Chicago was one of them. They daringly took BIG chances by playing the uncut full version of "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter Group and "Hocus Pocus" by Focus. Classic rock stations still today cut those songs short. What a joke. I don't know who to blame for the lunacy of 3 minute songs. Radio stations are a Business, I guess they have to pay the rent. Anyhow we have the internet now days so who cares. We are finally free at last. Radio went down first, then the record industry collapsed. Now its all swallowed up into one mass. Hopefully the internet will not get taken over by toll booths and roadblocks from a master AI Overlord.

ALt Rockers "The Posies" were just on the radio the other day (back in 2009) saying how they STILL owe the record company from 10 years prior. When they signed to a major label. The record company doesn't tell you that you're going in deep debt like a slave. It's supposed to be up to you and your Manager to notice that all kinds of garbage is being charged to YOUR accounts while you are out on stage thinking your Rock Gods. That's show business. If you don't watch out you'll end up chock full of leeches that eventually suck all your blood out. It's bad enough the system sucks you dry, VH1 Behind The Music shows your own Manager is more likely to be doing you in as well.

How come the radio would not play Black Sabbath? Ozzie Osbourne and the boys laughed all the way to the bank.

DJs from THE FOX radio station go to WXRT. WJKL was "The Fox" radio station in Elgin Illinois. "The FOX radio".. Fox River Valley. Hardly a Valley, more like a steep driveway. Chicago's WXRT's Tom Marker landed a job at WJKL where he worked from 1975 to 1980. Soon after Norm Winer became ‘XRT’s program director in 1979. Tom Marker was one of his first hires.

CHICAGO AM RADIO. On May 2, 1960, WLS transformed into a top 40 radio station for the first time under the programming of Sam Holman. Early jocks of this emerging format at WLS were Clark Weber, Bob Hale, Gene Taylor, Mort Crowley, Jim Dunbar, Dick Biondi, Bernie Allen and Dex Card. Two WLS jocks, Ron Riley and Art Roberts each interviewed the Beatles. Clark Weber became morning host in 1963, two years after joining the station. He was Program Director from 1966 until 1968 when John Rook arrived. Weber then moved to WCFL for a few years and then did a series of other Chicago radio gigs for many years.

WLS still aired several news programs during the early sixties to meet FCC requirements. WLS rose to the top three during this period along with WGN and WIND. Dick Biondi did nights for three years then ended up at KRLA in Los Angeles but later returned to Chicago at WCFL.

In 1965 WCFL switched from labor news to top 40 as "Super CFL," bringing competiton to WLS, which billed itself as "Channel 89" and then "The Big 89." WLS emerged as the victor by 1967 under the direction of Station Manager Gene Taylor. A new jock line-up was brought in that included Larry Lujack in mornings, Chuck Buell, Jerry Kay and Kris Erik Stevens. Program Director John Rook tightened the station and by 1968 WLS was number one and won a "station of the year" award from The Gavin Report. Larry LuJack had "Chicken Man, Animal stories with Lil Tommy and The Tooth Fairy.

The only time Super CFL beat WLS in the top 40 battle was in the summer of 1973. It led to changes at WLS as Tommy Edwards advanced as PD and Fred Winston moved from afternoons to mornings. New talent was brought in that included Bob Sirott, Steve King and Yvonne Daniels. By the Fall WLS was back to number one. WCFL dropped the format in 1976 as WLS continued its dominance until the late seventies.

WLS-FM (94.7) was previously WENR FM. It became WLS-FM in 1965 ?? playing "beautiful music" and sports programming????? In 1968 it began simulcasting the WLS-AM morning shows Clark Weber (6a-8a) and Don McNeill's Breakfast Club (8a-9a). In September 1969 ABC decided to change the FM's format to progressive rock after an experimental show called "Spoke" tested well. WLS-FM became WDAI in 1971 while remaining progressive. Steve Dahl started solo around 1977, he later partnered with Gary Mier.

In 1978 the format completely switched to disco. Steve Dahl was let go so he went across town to WLUP with partner Garry Meier, having great success. Meanwhile, the disco trend only lasted a few years and by 1980 WDAI-FM had burned out, so it switched format to oldies in 1980 briefly as WRCK then as WLS-FM again, which began simulcasting the AM's evening show. In 1986 WLS-FM became WYTZ (Z-95) as a top 40 competitor of B96 (WBBM 96.3). The call letters shifted back to WLS-FM again in 1992 and became a full-time simulcast of the AM, which had moved completely to a talk format in 1989. From 1995 to 1997 it was country station WKXK (Kicks Country), up against rival WUSN. Then it changed again in 1997 to classic rock as CD 94.7 under the Programming of Bill Gamble, who had success leading Q101 as an alternative station. In 2000 CD 94.7 became The Zone," moving more toward alternative music.

WXRT (93.1) Norm Winer had previously programmed WBCN in Boston and did mornings at KSAN in San Francisco before arriving as head of programming for WXRT. In 1991 ownership changed hands from Daniel Lee to Diamond Broadcasting. In 1995 the station was acquired by CBS Radio, which later merged with Infinity Broadcasting. In the nineties, when the alternative format had its highest ratings, Q101 (WKQX) was one of the top alternative stations in the midwest. Throughout the eighties it was a top 40 station owned by NBC, who sold it to Emmis in 1988. The station kept the call letters but flipped to alternative in 1992 under the programming of Bill Gamble, who jumped across town five years later.

Chicago's top morning show from the mid-nineties through early 2000s was Mancow Muller. He had come from top 40 station Z95 in San Francisco, in which he had made national news by getting arrested for holding up Bay Bridge traffic - as he got a haircut. It was a stunt that lampooned an incident involving President Clinton. Muller first came to Chicago in July 1994 at rock station WRCX. The show was called "Mancow's Morning Madhouse." The show expanded to national syndication in 1997. The following year Mancow moved his morning show to Q101. In 2001 Mancow's show came under intense scrutiny by the FCC, resulting in several fines concerning the show's content.

WLS-AM's flip to talk radio in 1989 was a symptom of the fact that by the eighties, music fans had moved to FM. Other AM talk stations at the time included WLUP (1000), WVON (1450) and WJJD (1160). WIND (560) had also done talk before being sold and going Spanish. It's interesting to note that even though music fans primarily moved to FM in the eighties, the top station in town at the end of the decade was adult contemporary station WGN-AM (720), owned by Tribune. WBBM-AM (780) also soared to the top three by the late eighties as a news station. Although its sister FM, B96, was the leader in contemporary hits, WGCI (107.5) and WVAZ (102.7) ranked higher in the ratings with their urban formats. Evergreen's WLUP (97.9) also did well as a rock station. Then it sold to Bonneville, in which it failed as an adult contemporary station but returned to rock in July 1997.

WXRT Radio Current Programming Personnel:
Norm Winer (Vice President Adult Rock Programming) John Farneda (Operations Manager/Music Director) Marty Lennartz (DJ/Creative Assistant to Programming/Host of the Big Beat/Going to the Show with A Regular Guy) Mike Pentz (Production Director) Lin Brehmer (Morning show host) Mary Dixon (News anchor) Marc Alghini (morning show producer/DJ) Terri Hemmert (DJ/Host of Breakfast with the Beatles) Frank E. Lee (DJ) Jason Thomas (DJ) Tom Marker (DJ/Host of Blues Breakers) Wendy Rice (DJ/Host of Saturday Morning Flashback) Richard Milne (DJ/Host of Local Anesthetic) Barry Winograd (Host of Jazz Transfusion) Leslie Witt (DJ) Johnny Mars (DJ) Ken Sumka (DJ) Doug Levy (DJ) Bill Artlip (DJ). Norm Winer, who worked at pioneering progressive rock radio stations WBCN in Boston and KSAN in San Francisco , has been the XRT Program Director for over 25 years.

Special Effects studio "Boss Films"
Richard Edlund
Special Effects Studio 
Boss Films Corp


Director Martin Weisz did the X-Files video "One" classic Three Dog Knight song by the band Filter. I worked on that video!
The X-Files director, "Chris Carter"

The Cut Hut, Brentwood. The later great producer Shursen and director Joseph Kahn did Brandy's video for 1998's platinum selling hit "The Boy Is Mine" with Monica. Brandy was nominated for 2 MTV Video Music Awards with Monica for Best R&B Video. I rotoscoped Brandy in that video oh yes i did.

In the 90's Post Logic Studios in Hollywood had the computer system "Inferno" by famous Montreal VFX company Discreet Logic which is now part of AutoDesk.
Digital artist Chris Carter used that Inferno to do film restoration for the BBC Films contract to Warner Brothers DVD restoration at Post Logic Studios.
The film restorations that I worked on are  "Rebel Without A Cause" starring James Dean. "My Fair Lady." Audio Video Revolution calls this restoration, "a gorgeous DVD, crystal clear in both image and sound."  I worked on was the John Ford classic Mister Roberts. The last Warner Brothers DVD release, I worked frame by frame through all Humphrey Bogarts cigarette smoke in "Casablanca." It's been called the second-best American film ever made. BBC Reviewer Almar Haflidason said-

The Casablanca classic restoration and transfer onto DVD of this film is superb and it brings an essentially great drama right up to date on a technical level.

Holy Cow remember these Cards? I used to Live for these WXRT Featured Artist cards. I remember getting them often at Flipside records on Finley Road in Lombard. Flipside had the the three Genesis records "Foxtrot, Nursery Cryme and Tresspass" for $3.95 each. That was the going rate for albums in the 1970's.
This WXRT card is Aug. 1979

What does it mean when people say they don’t believe in science? Or they do but they say that science is always changing? As the great Voltaire once said, “If you wish to converse, define your terms.” Is it science the verb or science the noun? The verb means an approach to knowledge, to philosophy as methods for developing an understanding of reality. The noun means some sort of truth “proven.” In other words science is a map and science is a destination. That’s two different things.  

A good algorithm can provide both. Some ambiguity, complexity, statistics and details of scientific evidence as well as in combination with -confident narratives and heartwarming testimonials (that contain far less real evidentiary value).  

The latter without the former gives faith-based explanations a significant public relations advantage over science and skepticism. But the fact remains that truth is messy and full of uncertainty, and if someone is selling telling you something as extremely simple, clear-cut, and too good to be true, they probably are selling you a hope or a fantasy, not a reality. Nothing wrong with hope! Just don’t bet the Farm on it. 

We were just talking about Pet products that will kill your dog and cat. Flea Collars! Don’t use them, it’s a scam, and can be dangerous. For good info look at this "Science Based Pet Health" website. Not just Pets it has a great explanation / definition of science in general. It says science means anything and everything can and does change. But that's not how we live our life. We live life with propositions that achieve a level of supporting evidence that makes any serious doubt about their truth perverse and irrational. 

Wow that’s just very profound. All your nutty friends that have a problem believing in science send them here to this page -

What Does “Scientifically Proven” Really Mean?

The Skeptvet - What Does Scientifically Proven Really Mean

Founded by musician Rocky Jones, DJ International records was the right label in the right place at the right time. Chicago in 1985 was a city which was moving to its own particular beat and that beat was House Music. The key movers and shakers in the clubs were Frankie Knuckles at The Warehouse and Ron Hardy at the Music Box, who were responsible for influencing a whole new generation of Chicago-based artists who were experimenting with the unique rhythms they were hearing at these two Chicago clubs.

Before long a steady stream of new artists began to emerge from Chicago club land and inevitably they beat a path to the hottest new label with the coolest name in town, DJ International. The list is like a who's-who of House Music and includes Steve "Silk" Hurley, Chip E, Fingers Inc, Tyree, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, Kenny "Jammin" Jason, Bam Bam, Sterling Void, Joe Smooth, Adonis, Fast Eddie and veteran Frankie Knuckles amongst many other names like "Nick The White Knight"one of the first white boy rappers.

The impact which DJ International had upon the spread of House Music internationally cannot be understated. They scored a No.1 UK Pop hit with Steve "Silk" Hurley's "Jack Your Body? and a top 10 UK smash with Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's "Love Can't Turn Around" as well as being the first label to take their artists to the UK and Europe thus putting House Music on the global map. Following over 200 releases across no less than 4 different labels within the group, DJ International ruled the early era of House and it's legacy survives to this day with virtually all of the releases now commanding huge prices on the 12" collectors circuit and it's ideas being routinely sampled and copied by today's new producers and artists. DJ International has always remained privately owned by Rocky Jones and he is proud to announce that the label will be promoting it's first new record on DJ International since the early 1990's.
Written by- Ian Dewhearst

Who is Karl Pilkington? A crazy man, or is it just an act? It's no act. He is weird. An interviewer for The Daily Telegraph concluded that Pilkington's persona is genuine. 

Karl Pilkington gained prominence as the producer of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's radio programme on Xfm. He appeared on The Ricky Gervais Show, presented the Sky travel comedy series An Idiot Abroad and made his full acting debut (following a cameo appearance in the final episode of Extras) on Gervais's 2012 comedy–drama series Derek. Pilkington is a co-founder, along with Gervais and Merchant, of RiSK Productions, a television production company. Pilkington also starred in the Sky 1 travel documentary comedy series The Moaning of Life (2013–2015). In 2018, Pilkington starred in a new scripted comedy series, Sick of It.

Pilkington's presence on The Ricky Gervais Show podcasts significantly increased his fame. He has often been mentioned in interviews given by Gervais, and is often the victim of Gervais' practical jokes. After Pilkington said "I could eat a knob at night" (rather than for breakfast) on the podcast (in relation to I'm a Celebrity contestants eating a kangaroo penis), Gervais encouraged his listeners to sample the sound bite and mix it into dance music. The phrase spawned several dance music mixes, T-shirts and other merchandise. Many of Pilkington's quotes have since gained publicity, particularly on the Internet. Reuters described Pilkington as a "phenomenon" who had made "Internet history."

On 23 November 2010, while appearing live on Richard Bacon's Radio 5 Live afternoon show, Gervais surprised Pilkington with an on-air phone call. This led to a conversation in which Pilkington, who claimed to have been interrupted while grouting his kitchen, claimed that he had not yet been paid for his work on An Idiot Abroad and concluded the interview with an off-the-cuff link into the hourly news.

Pilkington has worked independently of Gervais and Merchant on several projects. He appeared as a guest on the shows Flipside TV and The Culture Show, and appeared in several short films as part of the Channel 4 project 3 Minute Wonders.

Merchant and Gervais have repeatedly denied claims that Pilkington's persona is their creation. In an on-air response to similar claims made by Chris Campling during a broadcast on Xfm, Merchant stated that he would be "ashamed" if the radio show had been scripted, and added that "I would not have squandered a character that good on this poxy radio station." Gervais concurred, pointing out that writing a single series' worth of six half-hour episodes of shows such as The Office and Extras consumed as long as a full year of their time. An interviewer for The Daily Telegraph concluded that Pilkington's persona is genuine.

Chicago Radio WLS with Larry Lujack Show

Larry Lujack of WLS in Chicago was the first to air the series. Dick Orkin, an award-winning voice actor and commercial radio producer, created the Chickenman series in the late 60's while working at WCFL in Chicago. The series, with the famous catch phrase, "He's everywhere! He's everywhere!" spoofed comic book heroes and was loosely based on two original TV series of the 60's - Batman and Get Smart.

In the early 70's, as a follow-up to his Famous Chickenman Radio program, Dick Orkin created The Secret Adventures of the Tooth Fairy, a 325-episode, 2 1/2 minute, radio serial. Larry Lujack of WLS in Chicago was the first to air the series.

Both Chickenman and Tooth Fairy have aired in more than 3,000 cities across the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Worldwide via the Armed Forces Radio, making them the longest running radio serial of all time. Chickenman continues in broadcast syndication today via the Chicago Radio Syndicate, Inc. in the U.S. and by Grace Gibson Productions in Australia.

"Distributing the Chickenman and Tooth Fairy radio programs is a great example of how we strive to diversify our catalogue with new content outside of the music realm," says Michele Ito, VP of Labels at BFM Digital.

"New and old fans alike email us all the time and ask how they can get copies of the Chickenman and Tooth Fairy programs for themselves. And in this digital age, BFM is the perfect vehicle by which we can honor those requests", says President of Radio Ranch, Sandy Orkin. " These programs have always appealed to listeners of all ages."

The first episodes of Chickenman and Tooth Fairy are now available Worldwide for download at the Radio Ranch- https://radio-ranch.com

WHO OWNS THE DEFINITION OF REALITY? Larry Lujack?

If you’re a stickler for reality you can dive into the 2006 two volume set by professor Margaret A. Boden called, “Mind as Machine.” It’s billed as the most comprehensive account of the history of the cognitive sciences yet to appear. While you’re looking for that I’ll give the short answer. Cognitive science is the study of the mind, intelligence, and learning. This would include psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. I think the really short answer is, “How you talk to yourself.” That covers what you think you’re doing, which leads to how you see the world. It turns out everybody lives in their own little custom version of reality. Obviously there is not enough overlap between our little reality bubbles or there would be peace on earth and harmony amongst everyone. This begs the question, “Who owns the latest definition of reality”? Whoever was last in charge, basically. Okay let’s backup a little bit. Chicago 1978. 

Scholars interested in the history of cognitive science agree some sort of cognitive ‘revolution’ took place during the 1950s. It was a eureka moment coinciding with the invention of computers, artificial intelligence and linguistics. The eureka moment was rejecting behaviorism as the explanation for why we do the nasty things we do. The theory was that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. If you didn't see it, hear it, or read it, then it wasn't real. What happen in 1968  basically amounts to a radical departure from BF Skinner behaviorist psychology and its general rejection of mental states as explanatory of behavior.

Why is linguistics involved? Noam Chomsky told me some stuff about universal language that we all speak, culture and religion is an attempt to verbalize this inner language.

Wait a minute wasn't all this brought up by Socrates, Aristotle, Plato and friends back in ancient Greece? Yes. Back then this was philosophy. It was not science. Today it is science. The history of the study of the mind has been the province of philosophy and or behaviorism until very recently. The 1950's. At that time the 1950's to 1970's people like Noam Chomsky, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Bruce Lee, and many others were part of this cognitive revolution where the study of the mind began to switch from philosophy over to science.  

The cognitive revolution broke the 10,000 year grip of the "narrative" philosophy and mystery "facts" that held 95% of the population. Today it's less than 50% that are still stuck in the past. For 10,000 years the theory was that knowledge comes only or primarily, from sensory experience. If you didn't see it, hear it, or read it, then it wasn't real. Philosophy became so academic so that didn't help out. Academics in general are a very recent arrival. Pretty much nobody went to college before 1940, the year Bruce Lee was born. He went to college and studied philosophy. In 1975 only 67% of the workforce had a high school diploma. Alan Watts told me about most of this stuff. Bruce Lee was a big fan of Alan Watts. Jeet Kune Do was to be a template people could use to figure this stuff out. It was a work in progress that for the most part was barely just getting started. To use it as it was in 1973 for 2021 takes some special effort. That's the goal of the Decoding Bruce Lee Project.  

PRINCE DECLARES THE INTERNET IS OVER

This Is What It Sounds Like When The Internet Cries
by Chris Willman & Lyndsey Parker

So this week, while all the blogosphere was abuzz about George Michael's SEVENTH car crash, LeAnn Rimes' controversial canoodling pics with boyfriend Eddie Cibrian, Crystal Bowersox's new teeth, Liz Phair's credibility-killing new musical direction, and the Grammys' revised eligibility rules, the World Wide Web itself was under attack by Prince, aka The Artist Formerly Known As The Internet's Biggest Supporter. Yes, online readers, according to His Purple Majesty's new royal decree, the Internet is kaput. Over. Finished. You may as well turn off this website and go back to your abacus now.

"The Internet's completely over," Prince declared to England's Daily Mirror, sounding like he's ready to party not quite like it's 1999, but more like '79. "I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else [digitally]. They won't pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can't get it....All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

Prince's rejection of all thing Interweb came as quite a shock, considering that the man was once seemingly completely besotted with the digital revolution. For a man who very publicly battled with his record label, Warner Bros., because he wanted to release more product than Warner was willing to, a guy with hundreds of unreleased songs under his purple belt, it seemed like the perfect means to get all that music to the fans, eliminating the middleman.  
So after Prince escaped from the clutches of Warner Bros. in the mid-'90s, he released a series of increasingly little-heard albums on his own label, NPG Records--some of which were only available through (you guessed it) the Internet. And even as recently as March 2009, Prince was introducing a heavily promoted new subscription website,

LotusFlow3r.com; for an annual membership of $77, fans would theoretically not only get the digital version of the three-CD set he was releasing through Target at that time, but loads of new and unreleased material unavailable anywhere else. But as the Wall Street Journal reported this past April, the website turned out to be a bust, at least for the disgruntled followers who never got the stream of rarities and bonuses they were expecting. And just as the mercurial Prince put the kibosh on his New Power Generation Music Club subscription site back in 2006, early this year he gave the order for the LotusFlow3r.com site to be shut down as well.

And now it seems like Prince wants ALL sites to be shut down--including iTunes!

While Forbes writer Quentin Hardysurprisingly sided with Prince (in an article self-explanatorily titled "Prince Is Right. The Internet Is Over."--which, ironically, was widely read on THE FORBES.COM WEBSITE), most musicians weren't so quick to turn their backs on the entire Interweb. Even soft-jazz saxophonist Kenny G--a man no oneever thought would seem cooler than Prince--spoke out against Prince's remarks, jokingly telling the Associated Press: "If the Internet is dead then I must be dead too, 'cause I use it all the time. Maybe I've got a sixth sense, and I only see dead people." The very-much-alive Mr. G then expressed every intention to continue distributing and promoting his new album, Heart & Soul, digitally. Additionally, many other, hipper artists who've embraced online distribution--Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Beck, and Lil' Wayne and countless other mixtape-popularized rappers--hardly jumped to Prince's defense, and not even Metallica's Lars Ulrich, once Napster's most angry opponent, spoke up.

Maybe all this is a sign o' the times, so to speak. After all, it's understandable in this post-Napster age that artists might no longer be in favor of a completely open Internet, since many industry pundits argue that it is illegal file-sharing and even legal free downloads and streams that are responsible for their music biz's current slump. Still, it seems a little silly to expect people to abandon their "digital gadgets" and the online distribution methods (iTunes, Rhapsody) via which the majority of avid music fans play and receive their music nowadays. But, IF Prince is right, then what is going to replace the Internet?

Will Prince will release his next album on 8-track, wax cylinder, or in the "smoke signal" format long favored by traditionalists? No, in all seriousness, the distribution model Prince is now favoring is...giving his music away free with newspapers.

Yes, Prince's latest CD, 20Ten, will be included with July 10 copies of the Daily Mirror in the U.K. and Daily Record in Ireland, as well as other print publications in Belgium and Germany. For someone making the argument that music is undervalued, Prince has a funny way of proving its integrity when he gives CDs away like shampoo samples. (Maybe, somewhere along the way, he confused his Parade album with the Parade magazine included in many Sunday papers.)

There's no plan yet to distribute 20Ten in America, but Prince is reportedly in talks with his old label, Warner Bros. (yep, the aforementioned "slave"-drivers who allegedly held him so captive that he was forced to carve S.O.S. messages into his sideburns) for a future U.S. release. Apparently Prince is so convinced that the Internet is over, he's not the least bit concerned about hundreds of thousands of Europeans, who will receive free copies of 20Ten this weekend, leaking the album online for all interested Americans to hear.

And, highly ironically, right now three preview samples from Prince's new CD are available for streaming on...the Daily Mirror's website. So maybe the web isn't obsole te after all. But just in case, check the songs out by clicking here...quick, before the Internet self-destructs!

Half Man Half Biscuit are an English rock band, formed in 1984 in Birkenhead, Merseyside. Known for their satirical, sardonic, and sometimes surreal songs, the band comprises lead singer and guitarist Nigel Blackwell, bassist and singer Neil Crossley, drummer Carl Henry, and guitarist Karl Benson.

Half Man Half Biscuit were formed by two friends from Birkenhead, Neil Crossley and singer, guitarist and songwriter Nigel Blackwell who was (in his own words) at the time "still robbing cars and playing football like normal people do". In 1979, Blackwell was editing a football fanzine (Left For Wakeley Gage); he met Crossley when he went to see the latter's band play. In 1984, when Half Man Half Biscuit were formed, Crossley moved to bass and the two were joined by Nigel's brother Simon Blackwell (lead guitar) and his friend Paul Wright (drums), both previously with a group called Attempted Moustache. The quartet started to rehearse in the Liverpool-based Vulcan Studios, where they soon turned a five-piece, with David Lloyd now on keyboards.

Their debut album, 1985's Back in the DHSS, topped the UK Indie Chart and reached number 60 in the UK Album Chart. Its title was a play on The Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R." and also a reference to the DHSS, the government department that dealt with the unemployed, Nigel Blackwell having been on unemployment benefits since 1979. The band's first single, "The Trumpton Riots", topped the British independent chart in 1986, and they went on to perform at Glastonbury Festival. The second single, "Dickie Davies Eyes", also topped the indie chart. In late 1986, the band split up, giving as reason "musical similarities". They followed with album Back Again in the DHSS, containing previously issued, unreleased and live tracks.

The band reformed in 1990, with a performance at the Reading Festival following, and a new single, "Let's Not" issued before the year was out, followed in 1991 by a collaboration with Margi Clarke on a version of Edith Piaf's "No Regrets". The third album was McIntyre, Treadmore And Davitt, released in October 1991. By the time This Leaden Pall was released in 1993, Wright and Lloyd had left the band, with Carl Alty joining on drums. Simon Blackwell left the following year, with Ian S Jackson joining. Jackson (who later joined Rooney) and Alty (who joined Joyrider) departed in 1996, to be replaced by Ken Hancock (guitar) and Carl Henry (drums). Since reforming, the band have produced an album every two or three years.

Half Man Half Biscuit were championed by DJ John Peel, for whom they recorded twelve sessions, and it was on his programme in 1990 that the band announced their return.
Half Man Half Biscuit turned down the chance to appear on The Tube, as Tranmere Rovers were playing that night, even though Channel Four offered to fly them by helicopter to the game. Blackwell has been a fan of the team since "sometime after the Coventry City cup win in 1968".

The band's styles parody popular genres, while their lyrics allude to UK popular culture and geography. Blackwell often refers to Wirral and to North Wales, often in the context of hillwalking in Snowdonia; he also appears fond of Shropshire, East Anglia, The West Country, and Oxfordshire. British or international football, Sylvia Plath, Thomas Hardy, and the Bible are referenced in his lyrics. As the 1990s progressed, Blackwell's love of blues and folk became more apparent. Bassist Crossley's tastes include late 1970s and early 1980s new wave or post-punk bands, and during live sets HMHB have performed covers of acts as diverse as Joy Division, Magazine, Tim Buckley, The Beach Boys, Tommy James and the Shondells and Ike and Tina Turner.

In 2001, Blackwell provided the voiceover for a BP television advert.

In April 2010, the band's song "Joy Division Oven Gloves" from their 2005 album Achtung Bono was the subject of a Facebook campaign to get it to No. 6 on the chart for 12 April 2010, in response to the rumoured closure of the indie-supporting radio station BBC 6 Music. The song reached No. 56 on 11 April 2010: this was their first UK Singles Chart appearance. It also reached No. 3 in the Official Independent Singles chart the same week, and was No. 1 in the HMV UK Digital Downloads Top 40 Tracks on 16 April, knocking Ultravox's song "Vienna" off the top spot – itself part of a separate Facebook campaign the previous week. Victoria Loop has played live several times with the band on tenor horn, cornet and bass guitar. She is affectionately known as 'The 5th Biscuit'.

Ken Hancock played his last gig with the band in summer 2017, and was replaced at the end of the year by Karl Benson.

Dean Lyon's Computer Graphic's History
As told to me in Hollywood, by Dean himself.

ColorGraphics was formed in 1979 as a partnership between Terry Kelly and Richard Daly. Kelly and Daly had both worked in theUniversity of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering department, developers of the McIDAS weather display system. McIDAS used downloaded satellite cloud cover images and superimposed them on locally generated maps. Designed for the National Weather Service, McIDAS was a high-end system well beyond the budget of a television station.
Kelly's idea was to adapt the McIdas concept for lower cost home computer systems that were appearing in the late 1970s. Their first system, "LiveLine", was based on the Apple II. Its graphics system could not be genlocked, so a TV camera had to be pointed at the screen to send the video into the production systems. This initial system was soon replaced by a similar one running on Cromemco computers using a modified version of their Dazzler color-graphics card. In spite of its simplicity and low resolution, the fast production and "high tech" look caught on, and by the mid-1980s the system was almost universal, replacing bluescreen systems on cardboard maps that had previously been used. The company notes that 70% of the top 50 TV markets were using the system by 1982.
In 1982 the company was purchased by Dynatech, an expanding electronics company. The Colorgraphics system started being used by the Post production Industry. Before it could make real headway Dynatech purchased Cromemco and rolled the two companies together and divested all of its media properties in the early 1990s. Kelly and Daly purchased the rights back from Dynatech in 1994, operating under the Weather Central name. In 1995 they introduced the new "GENESIS" platform on Silicon Graphics computers, which later moved onto Hewlett-Packard workstations.
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Dean Lyon's History of Computing and VRE Timeline
As told to me by Dean in a bar in Las Vegas

Profile: Arthur Lyman

The Mood Merchant of Exotic Music casts his Spell Again in Waikiki
by Rick Carroll

A conch shell honks, bamboo sticks rattle, a jungle bird cries out.

It's 1958 all over again: Arthur Lyman is making the music that made him oh so famous and rich so very long ago.
He's doing it in Waikiki on weekends now before silvery-haired Mati-tip sipping couples who sit holding hands, proof old mood music still works.
Now 67, the vibraphonist Time magazine once called the "mood merchant," of exotic music, casts the same tropical spell that captivated the nation more than four decades ago.
Old favorites like "Yellow Bird, "the Haitian folk song he turned into an American standard and nostalgic selections from his first album, "Taboo," which sold 2 million copies and still haunts anyone over 50.
He still keeps time with parrot squawks, bamboo sticks and temple bells but it's been a long time since Lyman was No 1 on the nation's pop charts. "Arthur who?" he laughs. With Diamond Head crater over his shoulder and Waikiki's azure waves lapping the golden shore, Lyman looks like he just stepped off one of his old album covers.

"Isn't it beautiful," he says, "that's why I like to play here." Here is the open air bar of the New Otani Kaimana Beach hotel on Waikiki's quiet side. He plays private parties and regular gigs in Waikiki for $100- a-night, a bargain for the exotic music maker man who once commanded thousands. "I never thought my music was exotic," he laughs. "It was natural to me-the crash of the waves, the rustle of the palm trees, the birds." Over vodka in the afternoon he reminisces about the glory days. "It was rough," he said, "three months on the road, back here, three months on the road." He ran though four piano players, four bass players and three wives. Got married once on Valentine's Day in Las Vegas after appearing with Harry Belafonte. His bride, a nightclub camera girl, became his manager. "She was a good manager," he said "but we had problems when she started to tell me what to play."

Alone now, a survivor of 11 banner years on the road, he's back in Hawaii and happy, neither broke nor rich. "Wives," he said, "they got all my money. I never smelled it." On a toy piano he plunked out "You Are My Sunshine" when he was only five. "My father said, 'You're going to be a musician and he made me practice, practice, practice. He was blind and he would kick me in the butt when I hit a wrong note." At 8, Lyman made his public debut on the "Listerine Amateur Hour" on Honolulu radio station KGMB (now K-59), playing "Twelfth Street Rag." "I won a bottle of Listerine," he laughed. He turned pro at 17, playing in a Kakaako club called Leroy's. "I went to school days and played nights with a group called The Gadabouts. We did George Shearing stuff, cool jazz. I got $45 a week.

"When I got out of McKinley High School in '51, I finally told my father, I quit. I went to Halekulani Hotel and worked there as a desk clerk. "That's where I met Martin Denny," he said, "He'd heard I played vibraphone. I was making $280 a month as a hotel clerk. He said, 'You'll be making $109 a week playing for me.' I went back to music.

In late 1956, he formed his own band with John Kramer on bass, Allan Soares on piano, Harold Chang on drums and Augie Colon on bird calls. They opened at the Hilton Hawaiian Villages' Shell Bar and might be playing there still except for millionaire golfer France Ii Brown. He invited Lyman and the band to California's Pebble Beach to play for a private party during what was then called the Bing Crosby Pro-am Golf tournament. Some very important people at that party liked what they heard and suddenly Arthur Lyman had a big-time Mainland gig. "We played Vegas the next week," he said. "And then New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Tokyo and..."

In 1962, the year he turned 30, he earned $120,000, same as Willie Mays, big money in those days. He was headlining Chicago's Edgewater Beach Hotel, playing two sets a night, six nights a week. That same year he produced six albums in 45 days.

Five years later, exotic was old hat, the Beatles were hot, and Arthur Lyman was out of a job. The band broke up in Vegas in 1968-the year Janis Joplin appeared on Newsweek's cover-and they all came home to early retirement in Hawaii.

In his meteoric 12 year career, Arthur Lyman and his band produced 33 albums, won three gold records, and recorded 396 songs that even today conjure up dreamy island images of tropical escape. "We always tried to do that," Lyman said, "to get people to come here so we wouldn't have to go there but, funny thing, we were never as popular here in the Islands as we were on the mainland." He's up for a mainland tour, he said, but until that happens you can only see Arthur Lyman on the beach in Waikiki.

Arthur Lyman

Born 2 February 1932, Kauai, Hawaii
Died 24 February 2002, Honolulu, Hawaii
Considered by many to be at the top of the pantheon of exotica artists, Lyman got his start as a vibes player in Martin Denny's combo and can be heard on Denny's legendary first album, "Exotica."

Lyman's family moved to Honolulu after his father was blinded in an accident. Arthur began playing with a toy marimba and from playing along with records, was able to reproduce Lionel Hampton solos note for note. His performing career began early, when he won a talent contest on Honolulu radio station KGMB. By the time he graduated from high school, he was playing professionally with a small combo called "The Gadabouts," imitating the piano/vibes sound of George Shearing and Cal Tjader.

In 1951, he was hired to play in the bar at the Halekulani Hotel, where Martin Denny met him in the early 1950s. Denny hired him, and the two remained together for the next five years.

Denny's breakthrough success with his cover of "Quiet Village" paved a path for Lyman as well. Shipbuilding magnate and Hawaiian developer Henry J. Kaiser (of Kaiser Aluminum and Liberty Ship fame) hired him to replace Denny in his Honolulu nightclub. Soon after, Hi Fi Records in Los Angeles capitalized on Liberty's success with Denny and hired Lyman as their featured artist.

Even though the two men were competitors on vinyl, they remained close friends until the end. "He had a keen ear for music and a great imagination," Denny once remarked,"and I would say that his success and exposure paralleled mine. There were debates on who came first, but as far as I'm concerned we did it together." After both had ceased to record, Denny and Lyman often appeared together at performances on Oahu. And when Lyman entered a hospice as he entered the last stages of his fight with throat cancer, "Martin would take Arthur out in the sunshine and give a private show," according to a family friend.

Lyman's style was softer than Denny's, but he went much further in his use of exotic environmental sounds. The combination of macaw shrieks and gentle vibes was a vein Lyman mined consistently for over 30 albums. Unlike Denny, whose heavy touring schedule often forced his label to use a stand-in pianist on his albums, Lyman recorded almost exclusively in Hawaii. His Hi-Fi albums were usually recorded in Kaiser's Aluminum Dome auditorium in Honolulu, and still stand out for their superb audio qualities.

Lyman's combo included John Kramer on bass, guitar, and other stringed instruments, Alan Soares on piano and other keyboards, and Harold Chang on percussion. In between tours, the group played the Shell Bar at the Hawaiian Village Hotel for nearly 10 years, and reunited on a number of occasions thereafter. Hawaiian-born jazz vocalist Ethel Azama also appeared with Lyman in the early 1960s, and her version of "Lullaby of the Leaves" can be heard on the The Leis of Jazz.

The group appeared on numerous television variety shows in the 1960s, including "The Red Skelton Show," "The Andy Williams Show," and "The Steve Allen Show." But their best-known TV appearances were their guest spots on "Hawaiian Eye," the Robert Conrad - Connie Stevens private eye show set on Oahu. The show regularly featured the main characters hanging out at a mock-up of the Shell Bar and listening to Lyman playing one of his favorite numbers.

Lyman's signature tune was his cover of "Yellow Bird", which spent 10 weeks on Billboard's Top Ten chart in 1961, reaching #4. When his contract with HiFi ended in 1968, Lyman broke up his combo after an appearance in Las Vegas, and headed back for the islands. He was happy to leave the touring life behind: "It was rough," he once said, "three months on the road, back here, three months on the road." He went on to perform at most of Waikiki's best-known clubs, including Don the Beachcomber and the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel.

A Time magazine article from 1962 describes a typical stateside performance at the height of Lyman's fame:

A conch shell wailed, the conga drums thump-thumped, the bamboo sticks clattered," the magazine wrote. "The four men on stage were constantly on the move — clacking wooden blocks, scratching a corrugated gourd, flailing away at Chinese gongs, weaving rhythms that were insistent, sinuous and hypnotic. Occasionally, when the spirit moved them, they barked like seals or whooped like cranes. The happy audience at Chicago's Edgewater Beach Hotel rattled the rafters whooping back.
Lyman was a much more accomplished instrumentalist than his usually relaxed playing style suggested. He usually played with four mallets at once, a much more difficult technique than the standard two-mallet approach, more like playing a piano. Denny once called him "The best in the islands, maybe the best in the world."

He never took his success too seriously, though. He was just as proud of his awards for paddling in canoe races. His four marriages left him with little in the bank, which is one reason he kept performing until felled by throat cancer.

Lyman's many friends and fans said their final farewell by paddling canoes out from Waikiki to scatter his ashes upon the waters of Honolulu Bay. At the ceremony, Denny offered a last salute: "You are the true spirit of aloha, and may God speed you to your celestial vibes."

CD label Ryko released immaculate reissues of Lyman's best Hi-Fi albums in the late 1990s. Check them out!

TRACK LISTING

1. Andy Partridge & Harold Budd “Ceramic Avenue”
2. Marconi Union “Sleepless”
3. Brian Eno & Jah Wobble “Like Organza”
4. Brian Eno “Triennale”
5. Djivan Gasparyan “7th December 1988”
6. Brian Eno “Blissed”
7. Harold Budd “Widows Charm”
8. Brian Eno “Neroli”
9. Harold Budd “The White Arcades”
10. Roger Eno “Winter Music”
11. Djivan Gasparyan “Brother Hunter”
12. Jon Hassell “Out Of Adedara”
13. Vacabou “Russia In White”
14. Brian Eno “Fractal Zoom”
15. Brian Eno & John Cale “Cordoba”
16. Roger Eno “Fleeting Smile”
17. John Cale “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
18. Harold Budd “Marion Brown”

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BANDS WEBSITE LIST

This list is evolving as bands disappear, maybe it's
just webmasters disappear!

1. www.Supergrass.com
2. www.GreenPlastic.com Radiohead
3. www.DepecheMode.com
4. www.Marillion.co
5. www.Nirvana.com
6. www.thedickies.com
7. www.melodymakers.com
8. www.theProdigy.com
9. www.PeteTownshend.com
10. www.GrandFunk.com
11. www.Sting.com
12. www.PearlJam.com
13. www.9inchnails.com
14. www.Coldplay.com
15. www.nin.com
16. www.Slipknot.com
17. www.bunnymen.com
18. www.SugarRay.com
19. www.ChristinaAguilera.com
20. www.EddieVedder.com
21. www.chumbawamba.com
22. www.Gorillaz.com
23. www.Eminem.com
24. www.TheCharlatans.com
25. www.NickCave.com
26. www.sexpistols.com
27. www.DavidBowie.com
28. www.AlanisMorissette.com
29. www.PrimalScream.com
30. www.ElvisNews.com
31. www.whitestripes.com
32. www.undergroundhouse.com
33. www.robbiewilliams.com
34. www.ministryofsound.com
35. www.thedjlist.com
36. www.AliciaKeys.com
37. www.GeriHalliwell.com
38. www.radioheaditalia.com
39. www.elvis.com
40. www.DefLeppard.com
41. www.ChemicalBrothers.com
42. www.biggie.com
43. www.SarahPalin.com
44. www.history-of-rock.com
45. www.MartinBarre.com
46. www.SimplyRed.com/
47. www.Suede.com
48. www.BobMarley.com
49. www.Shaggy.com
50. www.Zooropa.com
51. www.AndyTaylor.com
52. www.Beyonce.com
53. www.TheBeatles.com
54. www.Beatles.com
55. www.Virgin.com/megastores
56. www.Coldplay.com
57. www.Weezer.com
58. www.Bjork.com
59. www.Aerosmith.com
60. www.ManicStreetPreachers.com
61. www.Blur.com
62. www.Lush.com
63. www.Nirvana.com
64. www.Radiohead.com
65. www.DuranDuran.com
66. www.GeorgeMichael.com
67. www.Madonna.com
68. www.Spicegirls.com
69. www.Vangelis.com
70. www.JimmyPage.com
71. www.Moby.com
72. www.SexPistols.com
73. www.MercuryRev.com
74. www.JBTV.com
75. www.Lollapalooza.com
76. www.RollingStone.com
77. www.JeffBeck.com
78. www.HocusPocus.com
79. www.JohnnyRotten.com
80. www.JohnLydon.com
81. www.HawkWind.com