M Is FOR MASHUP - January 19th, 2011
Mashups As Heard On The Qradips Show w/DJ Useo
By DJ Useo
I tell you I love regular mashups. I play them all the time & I hope I make them all the time. Still, for 71 shows & several specials, I've been playing whacked-out mashups on
Sound-Unsound Radio
( www.soundunsound.com/ )
. The show is called 'The Qradips Show' after an old American Indian word meaning 'combined smoke signals'. I suppose I was corrupted from listening to Dr. Demento radio shows as a child, but about once a week I like to hone my normal musical tastes by putting my ears to the grindstone of novelty music, including novelty mashups. (Some think all mashups are novelty, I've found) So doing a weekly radio hour like 'The Qradips Show' is a cinch, & a pleasure. I simply arrange a tracklist, which is fun, & then host it live, recording it for afters. Most people listen to the archive anyway, with only a small number showing for the Tuesday broadcast.
As I mentioned, the show is now nearing the 75th anniversary & to celebrate I picked a wonderful batch of the most popular tracks from the earlier shows & have now posted it as a fine 25-track file. I guarantee you that it'll please you so much you'll tell pals. The creativity is high on this collection with mashups using Andy Williams, Woody Woodpecker, Lady Gaga, South Park, Tim & Eric, The Andrews Sisters & enough more to boggle your brain. It's an all-star cast of bootleggers like GHP, DJ John, The Kleptones, & again EMTBYB! But, mind you, these tracks betray a mad genius combined with a twisted playfulness. There's not been many mashup collections of this style.
Meanwhile,'The Qradips Show w/DJ Useo' will continue up to the 100th show, & then we'll see. It's really great playing regular mashups,too. You can hear proof of that with the newest
RAMDOM THOUGHTS
( ramdom.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/163-ramdom-thoughts-mashups-remixes/ )
podcast. I am the guest host & you'll hear mainstream mashups so great your mind will imprint on the show & pass it on to your children's genes. If you've heard 'The Qradips Show,' then you also know chances are likely there'll be a funny mashup skit or an original humorous song. Oftentimes DJ Petrushka drops in to do her hi-larious standup bits. Like 'what if God-Zilla was a stand-up comic'? ROFL good times.
Feel free to listen in Tuesdays on Sound-Unsound Radio. 3PM est & again at 7 PM est.
Look for the new mashup collection 'Mashups As Heard On The Qradips Show w/DJ Useo'
here
( groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/2011/01/mashups-as-heard-on-qradips-show-w-dj.html )
& see the Qradips Show archive
here
( qradip.blogspot.com/ )
Mix Of The Week
The Kleptones Mix/Podcast "Hectic City' is topnotch finestkind. Subscribe to the feed, or at least bookmark the site
( www.kleptones.com/blog/2010/11/08/hectic-city-11-moombahtronica/ )
The "Moonbahtronica' episode is so great.as are they all, actually. Imagine Global & Techno together as blended by a master. This is that. Thanks, Kleptones!
Latest Useo Thing
I entered another 'Get Your Bootleg On' challenge. You get 2 days to mix what last week's winner chooses. My entry is '
Touch Me Rebel Bang Moon' (Edo B & the Melody Maker vs Mark Ronson & The Business Intl vs Billy Idol vs Sonic Cube) & it has received some high praise in its short life. The well-known masher, Chocomang, said of my challenge entry 'This is very nice, I always liked Echo and the Bunnymen's killing moon, and this sounds like the best of the 80's in one mix, with a 2011's feel. Kudos'. I sure enjoyed that comment. Hear for yourself
here ( official.fm/tracks/197025 )
or
here ( groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/2011/01/touch-me-rebel-bang-moon-edo-b-melody.html )
Mashup Tip - Tell people you'll do anything for a few good pellas.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Dennis Powell: Adams & Jefferson suggest English safe from the Internet (Athens News)
Will the Internet be the death of spelling and maybe the English language?
Jesse Bering: Darwin's Rape Whistle (Slate)
Have women evolved to protect themselves from sexual assault?
Charles Swinbouurne: The pigs that love to eat, er ... willies (Guardian)
TV subtitling doesn't always get it right.
A.O. Scott: Defy the Elite! Wait, Which Elite? (New York Times)
Speaking personally, but also out of a deep and longstanding engagement with the history and procedures of my profession, I have to say that the goal of criticism has never been to control or reflect the public taste - neither thing is possible - but rather the simpler (but also infinitely difficult) work of analyzing and evaluating works of art as honestly and independently as possible.
Roger Ebert: Review of Mike Leigh's "Another Year"
Not quite every year brings a new Mike Leigh film, but the years that do are blessed with his sympathy, penetrating observation, and instinct for human comedy. By that I don't mean "comedy" as in easy laughter. I mean that comedy that wells up from movies and allows us to recognize ourselves in characters both lovable and wretched.
John M. Glionna: Park Chan-wook: The South Korean director gets dialed in (Los Angeles Times)
Park Chan-wook tested the bounds of new technology by using an iPhone 4 to film "Paranmanjang" ("Ups and Downs"). The smart phone brought many changes to the set, including some surprises.
Dana Stevens: Barney's Version (Slate)
Inside this shaggy movie is a bracing jolt of pure, uncut Paul Giamatti.
Brooks Barnes: The Thing That Ate Saturday Night (New York Times)
"Mega Python vs. Gatoroid" is one of the many television movies that Syfy has created to fill the drought of B-movie features.
Alan Light: A New Start And a Gumbo Of Old Sounds (New York Times)
Gregg Allman is releasing a new album produced by T Bone Burnett and with a guest artist, Dr. John.
Heather Holley: Soaring With Christina Aguilera (Wall Street Journal)
In songwriting, it's all about the "hook"-that catchy combination of music, melody and lyric that sticks in your head. The hook is the message we want to leave you with. It's what we're selling.
David Bruce has 39 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $39 you can buy 9,750 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," and "Maximum Cool."
BadtotheboneBob
The Weekly Veterans Report
wrote:
answered:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
Some Guy
Organ Donors
Guess I'll be takin my name off the organ donor list for a while!
Heartbroken in DC
some guy
Thanks, some!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
It wasn't this warm last August!
Stepping Down
Regis Philbin
For such a famously excitable guy, Regis Philbin made his big announcement with surprising calm: He's retiring from his show.
Philbin delivered the news at the start of Tuesday morning's "Live With Regis and Kelly," which he has hosted for more than a quarter-century, most recently sharing hosting duties with Kelly Ripa.
He said he would be stepping down from the show around the end of the summer, though he didn't specify a departure date.
His brief remarks came during the show's off-the-cuff "host chat," after he and Ripa had batted the breeze about the Golden Globes, football and the icy weather outside.
Regis Philbin
Stepping Into 'American Idiot'
Melissa Etheridge
Melissa Etheridge is about to get in touch with her punk side.
The Grammy- and Oscar-winning singer will temporarily step in for Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong while he takes a break from performing in his Broadway musical, "American Idiot."
Etheridge, best known for her song "Come to My Window," will play drug dealer "St. Jimmy" from Feb. 1 to Feb. 6. Armstrong, the composer and co-author of the musical, returns Feb. 10.
The high-octane show follows three working-class characters as they wrestle with modern life. One joins the Army, one becomes a father and one descends into a drug-fueled life - thanks to St. Jimmy.
Melissa Etheridge
Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year
Julianne Moore
Oscar-nominated actress Julianne Moore is being honored at Harvard University as the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year.
The four-time Oscar nominee is to receive her pudding pot at a Jan. 27 roast by Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the nation's oldest undergraduate drama troupe.
Hasty Pudding Theatricals says Moore's talents extend beyond the film screen to her roles in Broadway productions and to her success as author of two children's book series.
In 2002, Moore became the ninth person in Academy Awards history to receive two acting Oscar nominations in a year for her performances in "Far From Heaven" and "The Hours."
Julianne Moore
Nominations
BAFTA
Colin Firth and Natalie Portman could replicate their best actor Golden Globe success at BAFTAs, after they were both nominated Tuesday for Britain's top film awards.
Their respective films, "The King's Speech" and "Black Swan" led the way, with the study of king George VI's battle with his stammer receiving 14 nominations and the ballet thriller earning 12.
Thriller "Inception", starring Leonardo DiCaprio, follows with nine nominations, while director Danny Boyle's rock-climbing drama "127 Hours" and "True Grit", the Coen brothers' film, are in eight categories.
"The Social Network", the movie about the founding of Facebook which won the most Golden Globes on Sunday, including best picture, is up for six gongs.
"Alice In Wonderland" has five nominations, while "The Kids Are All Right", about a lesbian couple and their children, and British film "Made In Dagenham", have four apiece.
BAFTA
Approves New Holmes Story
Conan Doyle Estate
Sherlock Holmes is to be brought back to life in the first new novel about the great Baker Street detective to be officially approved.
Anthony Horowitz, author of stories about teenage spy Alex Rider, has been chosen by Arthur Conan Doyle's estate to write the full-length novel, which will be published by Orion in September.
No details of the new tale or even its title have been revealed.
Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson have appeared in a vast legion of films and plays, but this is the first time the estate has given official approval for a story since the last novel was published in 1915.
Conan Doyle Estate
Won't Do It Again
Ricky Gervais
British comedian Ricky Gervais, whose weekend stint as host of the Golden Globes was panned by critics, said on Tuesday he would not host the Hollywood awards show again.
"I'm not going to do it again," Gervais told celebrity website TMZ.com in a brief video interview on the streets of New York.
"I think twice is enough," added the creator of hit TV show "The Office".
Ricky Gervais
Comcast Wins FCC Approval
NBC
The Federal Communications Commission is giving Comcast, the country's largest cable company, the green light to take over NBC Universal, home of the NBC television network.
With the deal certain to transform the entertainment industry landscape, regulators are attaching conditions to prevent Comcast Corp. from trampling competitors once it takes control of NBC's vast media empire.
Among other things, the government is requiring Comcast to make NBC programming available to rival cable companies, satellite operators and new Internet video services that could pose a threat to Comcast's core cable business.
The FCC voted 4-to-1 Tuesday to let Comcast buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal from General Electric Co. for $13.8 billion in cash and assets.
NBC
DUI Sentencing
Vince Neil
Motley Crue singer Vince Neil is taking a plea deal that will get him two weeks of jail time plus two weeks of house arrest for driving drunk in his Lamborghini near the Las Vegas Strip.
Tess Driver, an aide to Clark County District Attorney David Roger, said Tuesday that the 49-year-old rocker has agreed to plead guilty Jan. 26 to misdemeanor driving under the influence stemming from his arrest last June.
He's due to begin serving his sentence Feb. 15.
In a statement provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Neil took responsibility for his actions and said he would learn from the experience.
Vince Neil
DUI Hearing Postponed
David Cassidy
A judge in Florida says former teen idol David Cassidy is expected to enter a plea of guilty or no contest following a drunken driving charge in November.
Cassidy didn't show up for a status hearing Tuesday, but St. Lucie County Cliff Barnes says he expected the 60-year-old "Partridge Family" star to enter a plea without attending a court hearing. If Cassidy enters the written plea, he'll likely be sentenced Feb. 16.
Cassidy was arrested Nov. 3 after authorities said they spotted his car weaving on Florida's Turnpike near Fort Pierce.
The Highway Patrol's report says Cassidy failed a field sobriety test. Authorities say breath tests at the jail showed his blood-alcohol content at 0.139 and 0.141, above Florida's legal limit of 0.08.
David Cassidy
La Prova Irrefutabile
Vatican't
A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police - a disclosure that victims' groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests.
The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations and determine punishments in house rather than give that power to civil authorities.
Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, the letter instructs Irish bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory "gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature."
Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the 1997 letter demonstrates that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but ordered by them.
Vatican't
Smuggling A Nun's Skeleton
Cypriot Monk
Monk caught with nun's skeleton at
ATHENS (Reuters) - A Cypriot monk caught at a Greek airport with the skeletal remains of a nun in his baggage on the weekend told authorities he was taking the relics of a saint back to his monastery.
The 56-year-old Cypriot was detained at Athens airport on Sunday after security staff discovered a skull wrapped in cloth and skeletal remains in a sheet inside his baggage.
The remains were those of a nun who died four years ago. She was not a saint in the Greek or Cypriot Orthodox Churches, but had once been a nun at a Cypriot convent, police said.
Revering the skeletal remains of saints is common in the Greek Orthodox tradition. A sect within the church may have venerated the nun even though she was not an official saint.
Cypriot Monk
Settles Dispute Over Movie Company
Ellen Barkin
Cosmetics magnate Ronald Perelman has ended his legal fight with ex-wife Ellen Barkin over a movie production company they started while married but squabbled over for years after divorcing, according to court records and Barkin's lawyers.
The Revlon Inc. chairman and the "Sea of Love" actress settled the lawsuits over Applehead Pictures, according to Barkin lawyer Jacob W. Buchdahl. Court records show the cases were closed Friday.
"The case is over," Buchdahl said, declining to discuss the terms or comment further. Perelman spokeswoman Christine M. Taylor declined to comment Tuesday.
The settlement came after an appeals court ruled against Perelman last month in one of the lawsuits, saying he owed more than $4.3 million to Applehead. The sum represented contributions he'd promised the company, plus interest. At the time, Taylor said Perelman planned to keep pressing his claims.
Ellen Barkin
Family Problems
Etta James
A Southern California judge has ruled that Etta James' husband may use $60,000 of the ailing R&B singer's savings to pay for her medical care.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cahraman said at a hearing Friday that the money should last until Feb. 24, when Artis Mills is expected back in court to continue seeking control of more than $1 million of James' money.
The Riverside Press-Enterprise says Mills is challenging the legitimacy of a claim by James' son, Donto James, that his mother gave him power of attorney in 2008.
Court documents show the 72-year-old singer of "At Last" and other standards lives in the Woodcrest area of Riverside County, has been diagnosed with dementia and is undergoing treatment for leukemia.
Etta James
What Climate Change?
Earth
Shrinking ice and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is reflecting ever less sunshine back into space in a previously underestimated mechanism that could add to global warming, a study showed.
Satellite data indicated that Arctic sea ice, glaciers, winter snow and Greenland's ice were bouncing less energy back to space from 1979 to 2008. The dwindling white sunshade exposes ground or water, both of which are darker and absorb more heat.
The study estimated that ice and snow in the Northern Hemisphere were now reflecting on average 3.3 watts per square meter of solar energy back to the upper atmosphere, a reduction of 0.45 watt per square meter since the late 1970s.
As ever more ground and water is exposed to sunlight, the absorbed heat in turn speeds the melting of snow and ice nearby.
Earth
Schedule Changes
NBC
NBC said on Tuesday it has indefinitely delayed the return of "Law & Order: Los Angeles" and the reality series "The Marriage Ref," giving a sense of deja-vu to the high-powered creators of the rookie shows.
The latest entry in producer Dick Wolf's billion-dollar "Law & Order" crime franchise is undergoing what a source called "some adjustments" in the wake of the recent axing of actor Skeet Ulrich and two others.
Wolf did the same thing during the first season of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" in 1999-2000, dropping several players, bringing in rapper Ice-T and sharpening the show's focus. Now in its 12th season, "SVU" is the highest-rated drama at the struggling network.
"The Marriage Ref," from another NBC cash cow, Jerry Seinfeld, was intended to return for its second season on March 6. But NBC said that Sunday slot will now go to the competition series "America's Next Great Restaurant," which had originally been scheduled to debut on Wednesday, March 16.
NBC
Family Moves
'Sister Wives'
A Utah polygamous family whose reality TV show launched a criminal bigamy investigation has moved out of state.
Washington-based attorney Jonathan Turley says his client Kody Brown has moved his family of four wives and 16 kids to Nevada to pursue new opportunities.
The family is featured on the TLC reality show "Sister Wives." The show first aired in the fall and triggered an investigation by Lehi police into allegations of bigamy.
Bigamy is a third-degree felony in Utah. Under the law, a person can be found guilty of bigamy through cohabitation, not just legal marriage contracts.
'Sister Wives'
Lover Sues
French TV
A French celebrity TV news anchor, accused this month of plagiarism in his new biography of Ernest Hemingway, now faces trial for allegedly using his ex-lover's letters in a novel, a report said Tuesday.
Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, a household name in France for the past three decades, is being sued by Agathe Borne for violation of privacy and plagiarism for using her letters in a 2009 novel he penned, L'Express magazine reported.
PPDA, as he is popularly known here, was accused in early January of lifting around 100 pages from a previous biography of Hemingway and passing them off as his own in his new biography of the late US novelist.
Poivre d'Arvor, who denies copying the extracts, was exposed in 1991 for using press conference footage and, interposing his own questions, pretending it was his own "exclusive" interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
He presented the evening news on France's main private channel TF1 from the mid-1980s until 2008 and is also a best-selling author.
French TV
Fans Not Deterred
Edgar Allan Poe
Fans of American author Edgar Allan Poe are heading to Baltimore again this year to try for a glimpse of the shadowy figure known only as the "Poe toaster" - even though the mystery visitor was a no-show last year.
An anonymous caller had left three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on Poe's grave on the Jan. 19 anniversary of the writer's birth every year for some six decades, but the person failed to appear in 2010.
But that's not the end of the story. If anything, the no-show has deepened the mystery, attracting more curiosity to the ritual.
The curator of the Poe House and Museum says he's expecting a larger crowd than usual Wednesday morning as fans gather in hopes that the Poe toaster will return. Poe was born in 1809 and died Oct. 7, 1849.
Edgar Allan Poe
Make A Splash In Japan
'Toylet' Games
Japanese toilets are famed for functions such as posterior shower jets and perfume bursts, but entertainment company Sega has gone a step further by installing urine-controlled games in Tokyo urinals.
Four types of "Toylets" games are available to be played during a test period ending this month at four male bathrooms in pubs and game arcades, in a project aimed at drawing attention to digital adverts.
Each urinal is fitted with a pressure sensor, and a small digital display is placed at eye level. Digital adverts are shown after the games.
Games include "Graffiti Eraser" in which a user tries to aim at the pressure sensor in the urinal to erase virtual graffiti on the display.
Or there's "Mannekin Pis" -- named after a Brussels fountain depicting a urinating boy -- which measures the volume of the user's stream.
'Toylet' Games
In Memory
Milton Rogovin
Milton Rogovin, a social documentary photographer who built a life's work by looking through a lens at people who were invisible to others, died Tuesday at age 101.
Rogovin was in hospice care after a brief illness and died at his home in Buffalo surrounded by family, said his son, Mark.
After being blacklisted in the communist scare of the 1950s, Rogovin dedicated his life to photography. His pictures documented the lives of the poor, the dispossessed, the working class - in particular those living in a six-square-block neighborhood in Buffalo near his optometry practice.
"He referred to these people as the 'forgotten ones,'" his son said. "These were poor and working people who were not ever in the limelight."
His first project was a documentary series on Buffalo's black churches. Living on his wife's schoolteacher salary, he traveled to Appalachia, Chile and Mexico to take portraits of working people - always using a vintage Rolleiflex, a bare bulb flash, occasionally a tripod, and black and white film.
Born in New York City in 1909, Rogovin moved to Buffalo in 1938 to practice as an optometrist. He married Anne Setters in 1942, the same year he bought his first camera and was drafted into the U.S. Army. After returning from the war, he organized an optometrists' union in Buffalo and served as a librarian in the city's Communist Party. In 1957, he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
With his optometry business sliced in half because of negative publicity, Rogovin turned to photography - although he never studied it formally.
In 1972, Rogovin turned his lens closer to home - the Lower West Side of Buffalo, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the state, a place where Italian-Americans had been replaced after World War II by Puerto Ricans, blacks, American Indians and poor whites.
Although he was first suspected of being a police officer or FBI agent, Rogovin eventually gained their trust, shooting 1,000 portraits over three years and always making sure to get a copy back to the subject.
In 1984, he returned to the neighborhood, tracked down his original subjects and rephotographed as many as he could. He did the same in 1992 when he was 83 and recovering from heart surgery and prostate cancer. He remained working until 2002.
Rogovin's wife, who taught mentally disabled children, died in 2003 at 84.
Rogovin also is survived by two daughters, Ellen Rogovin Hart and Paula Rogovin; five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Milton Rogovin
In Memory
Sargent Shriver
R. Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy in-law whose career included directing the Peace Corps, fighting the War on Poverty and, less successfully, running for office, died Tuesday. He was 95.
Shriver, who announced in 2003 that he had Alzheimer's disease, had been hospitalized for several days. The family said he died surrounded by those he loved.
The handsome Shriver was often known first as an in-law - brother-in-law of President John F. Kennedy and, late in life, father-in-law of California Gov. Arnold $chwarzenegger.
But his achievements were historic in their own right and changed millions of lives: the Peace Corps' first director and the leader of President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," out of which came such programs as Head Start and Legal Services.
Within the family, Shriver was sometimes relied upon for the hardest tasks. When Jacqueline Kennedy needed the funeral arranged for her assassinated husband, she asked her brother-in-law.
In public, Shriver spoke warmly of his famous in-laws, but the private relationship was often tense. As noted in Scott Stossel's "Sarge," an authorized 2004 biography, he was a faithful man amid a clan of womanizers, a sometimes giddy idealist labeled "the house Communist" by the family. His willingness to work for Johnson was seen as betrayal by some family members.
Although known for his Kennedy connections, Shriver, born in 1915, came from a prominent old Maryland family. His father was a stockbroker, but he lost most of his money in the crash of 1929.
Shriver went on a scholarship to Yale, then went on to Yale Law School. He served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
Returning home, he became an assistant editor at Newsweek magazine. About this time, too, he met Eunice Kennedy and was immediately taken by her. They married in 1953 in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Her father, Joseph P. Kennedy, hired him to manage the Kennedy-owned Merchandise Mart in Chicago. He was a big success on the job and in Chicago in general - and even was elected head of the school board in 1955.
Shriver had fought for integration in Chicago and helped persuade John F. Kennedy to make a crucial decision in the 1960 campaign despite other staffers' fears of a white backlash: When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Georgia that fall, Kennedy phoned King's wife and offered support. His gesture was deeply appreciated by King's family and brought the candidate crucial support.
Soon after taking office, Kennedy named Shriver to fulfill a campaign promise to start the Peace Corps. Although it was belittled by some as a "kiddie corps," Shriver quickly built the agency into an international institution.
After Kennedy's assassination, in 1963, Johnson called upon Shriver to run another program which then existed only as a high-minded concept: the War on Poverty.
In early 1968, with Shriver rumored to be on the verge of quitting, Johnson offered him the ambassadorship to France. He accepted it even though some family members wanted Shriver to support Sen. Robert Kennedy's presidential candidacy instead.
He campaigned for congressional Democrats in 1970, and two years later McGovern drafted him to replace Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his running-mate. Eagleton dropped out because of questions about his medical history.
In 1994, Shriver received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Bill Clinton.
Sargent Shriver
In Memory
Don Kirshner
Rock promoter Don Kirshner, whom Time magazine once dubbed the "Man With the Golden Ear," died Monday in a Florida hospital, a close friend and business associate said. He was 76.
Promoter Jack Wishna told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Kirshner was in a hospital in Boca Raton being treated for an infection.
Kirshner was behind "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" in 1972, and gave national exposure to musicians including Billy Joel and The Police. The show also boosted careers of comics including Billy Crystal, Arsenio Hall and David Letterman.
The show also featured artists Kirshner helped launch including Prince, The Eagles, Lionel Richie and Ozzy Osborne.
Wishna said Kirshner was a pioneer who developed a system for singer-songwriters to share in the profits of selling music.
He also ran three labels, Dimension Records, Colgems Records and Kirshner Records.
Don Kirshner
In Memory
John Ross
John Ross, a U.S. poet, author, journalist and political activist who lived in Mexico and wrote extensively on its leftist political movements, died of liver cancer on Monday, according to a longtime friend. He was 72.
Ross died at the Casa Santiago guest house in the township of Tzintzuntzan, near Lake Patzcuaro, in the western state of Michoacan, said Kevin Quigley, who runs the bed and breakfast and had known Ross for 24 years.
Ross was the author of several books, including a gritty portrait of Mexico City, where he spent almost all of his time since 1985.
He was part of the Beat movement, and first came to Mexico in the late 1950s. Born in New York City, Ross also lived in San Francisco, California prior to returning to Mexico.
He was one of the early draft resisters during the Vietnam War, and in early 2003 he traveled to Iraq, hoping to serve as a "human shield" to help protect Iraqi civilians prior to the U.S.-led invasion. The volunteers were forced out of the country because they were critical of the Iraqi government's choice of sites to protect.
A prolific journalist, Ross wrote countless articles for San Francisco newspapers, CounterPunch, Pacific News Service, and the Mexico City daily La Jornada.
He is survived by a sister, two children and a granddaughter.
John Ross
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